Godless (50 page)
How did the disciples survive the alleged persecution and torture to live long enough to write those books? Being martyred is no way to double your life expectancy. It makes more sense to think those anonymous documents were composed by a later generation of believers. They were not eyewitnesses.
In any open question, we should argue from what we do know to what we do not know. We do know that fervent legends and stubborn myths arise easily and naturally. We do not know that dead people rise from the grave. We do know that human memory is imperfect. We do not know that angels exist.
Some Christians argue that the period of time between the events and the writing was too short for a legend to have evolved; however, we know this is not true. The 1981 legend of the Virgin Mary appearance at Medjugorge spread across Yugoslavia in just
two days,
confirmed by repeated corroborative testimony of real witnesses who are still alive. International pilgrims visited the place almost immediately, some claiming they were healed at the spot. Yet few Protestants believe the story. Shall we start looking for the empty tomb of Mary?
two days,
confirmed by repeated corroborative testimony of real witnesses who are still alive. International pilgrims visited the place almost immediately, some claiming they were healed at the spot. Yet few Protestants believe the story. Shall we start looking for the empty tomb of Mary?
The legend of Elian Gonzales, the young Cuban refugee who was rescued off the coast of Florida in 1999, developed into an organized cult within a couple of weeks. There were claims that he was the “Cuban Messiah” who would set his oppressed people free from the Castro Devil, sightings of the Virgin Mary in downtown Miami, and tales of his protection by angels and dolphins (actually dolphin fish).
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The extraordinary 19th-century stories of Mormon founder Joseph Smith were accepted as gospel fact within a few short years.
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The extraordinary 19th-century stories of Mormon founder Joseph Smith were accepted as gospel fact within a few short years.
There was plenty of time for the legend of the resurrection of Jesus to evolve.
We do know that people regularly see deceased relatives and friends in dreams and visions. My own grandmother swore to me that she regularly saw my dead grandfather entering the house, smiling and waving at her, often accompanied by other dead relatives who were opening and closing drawers. Should I have dug up my grandfather’s grave to prove she was only dreaming or hallucinating in her grief? Would that have made any difference?
Yet some Christians insist that this is exactly what would have happened if the story of Jesus were false. If the tomb were not empty, detractors could have easily silenced the rumors by producing the body. But this assumes that they cared enough to do such a thing—they didn’t do it when Herod heard rumors that John the Baptist had been raised from the dead.
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It was a crime to rob a grave, and who would have known where to find it? (Early Christians never venerated Jesus’ empty tomb, which is another evidence it did not exist.) Also, it was at least seven weeks after the burial before the resurrection was first preached during Pentecost. By the time anyone might have cared to squelch the story, two or three months would have passed—and what happens to a dead body in that climate for that period of time? The body of Lazarus was “stinking” after only four days.
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If someone had had the gumption to locate and illegally dig up the decayed body of Jesus and parade it through the streets, would the disciples have believed the unrecognizable rotting skeleton was really their Lord and Savior? I don’t think so, any more than my grandmother would have been convinced she was deluded.
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It was a crime to rob a grave, and who would have known where to find it? (Early Christians never venerated Jesus’ empty tomb, which is another evidence it did not exist.) Also, it was at least seven weeks after the burial before the resurrection was first preached during Pentecost. By the time anyone might have cared to squelch the story, two or three months would have passed—and what happens to a dead body in that climate for that period of time? The body of Lazarus was “stinking” after only four days.
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If someone had had the gumption to locate and illegally dig up the decayed body of Jesus and parade it through the streets, would the disciples have believed the unrecognizable rotting skeleton was really their Lord and Savior? I don’t think so, any more than my grandmother would have been convinced she was deluded.
During one of my debates, Greg Boyd offered the simple argument that the resurrection
must
have happened because otherwise we have no explanation for the birth and the tremendous growth of the Christian Church. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, he insisted. But this argument can be equally applied to the “smoke” of other religions, such as Islam, with hundreds of millions of good people believing that the illiterate Muhammad miraculously wrote the Koran.
must
have happened because otherwise we have no explanation for the birth and the tremendous growth of the Christian Church. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, he insisted. But this argument can be equally applied to the “smoke” of other religions, such as Islam, with hundreds of millions of good people believing that the illiterate Muhammad miraculously wrote the Koran.
It can be applied to the “smoke” of Mormonism, with millions of moral and intelligent individuals believing the angel Moroni gave Joseph Smith gold tablets inscribed with the
Book of Mormon
. “Why should non-Mormons find the story hard to believe?” Robert J. Miller asks. “After all, it is no more plausible than dozens of stories in the bible (for example, Jonah and the whale) that many Christians believe with no difficulty at all. The difference has very little to do with the stories themselves and a great deal to do with whether one approaches them as an insider or an outsider. Putting it a bit crudely perhaps, stories about
our
miracles are easy to believe because they’re true; stories about
their
miracles are easy to dismiss because they’re far-fetched and fictitious.”
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Book of Mormon
. “Why should non-Mormons find the story hard to believe?” Robert J. Miller asks. “After all, it is no more plausible than dozens of stories in the bible (for example, Jonah and the whale) that many Christians believe with no difficulty at all. The difference has very little to do with the stories themselves and a great deal to do with whether one approaches them as an insider or an outsider. Putting it a bit crudely perhaps, stories about
our
miracles are easy to believe because they’re true; stories about
their
miracles are easy to dismiss because they’re far-fetched and fictitious.”
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It could also be applied to the Moonies, Jehovah’s Witnesses and many other successful religious movements. If smoke is evidence of fire, are they all true?
If the story is not true, then how did it originate? We don’t really know but we can make some good guesses, based on what happened with other legends and religious movements and what we know about human nature.
Assuming that the New Testament is somewhat reliable, Robert Price offers one sensible scenario. Peter’s state of mind is the key. The disciples had expected Jesus to set up a kingdom on earth, and this did not happen. He was killed. They then expected Jesus to return, and this did not happen. Nothing was going right and this created a cognitive dissonance. Peter, who had promised loyalty to Jesus and then denied him publicly a few hours before the crucifixion, must have been feeling horrible. (The day after “Good Friday” is called “Black Sabbath,” the day the disciples were in mourning and shock.)
Imagine you had a horrible argument with a spouse or loved one where you said some unpleasant things you later regretted, but before you had a chance to apologize and make up the person died. Picture your state of mind: grief, regret, shock, embarrassment, sadness, and a desperate wish to bring the person back and make things right. That’s how Peter must have felt.
Believing in God and the survival of the soul, Peter prays to Jesus: “I’m sorry. Forgive me.” (Or something like that.) Then Peter gets an answer: “I’m here. I forgive you.” (Or something like that.) Then Peter triumphantly tells his friends, “I talked with Jesus! He is not dead! I am forgiven!” His friends say, “Peter talked with Jesus? Peter met Jesus? He’s alive! It’s a
spiritual
kingdom!” (Or something like that.) Paul then lists Peter as the first person to whom Christ “appeared.”
spiritual
kingdom!” (Or something like that.) Paul then lists Peter as the first person to whom Christ “appeared.”
We don’t need to know exactly what happened, only that things like this do happen. Look at the 19th-century Millerites, who evolved into the Seventh Day Adventists when the world did not end as they had predicted. Or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose church rebounded after the failed prophecies of Charles Russell and Joseph Rutherford that the world would end in 1914. Oops, they meant 1925. (They got creative and said Jesus actually returned to earth “spiritually.”) After the 21st-century death of Rulon Jeffs, the Prophet of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints church who was predicted to rise from the dead, his son Warren Jeffs declared that his father had, in fact, been resurrected “spiritually” and was now directing the church from another dimension. Warren then took his father’s many young wives, the ones that did not run off. (See
Stolen Innocence
by Elissa Wall.)
Stolen Innocence
by Elissa Wall.)
Robert Price elaborates: “When a group has staked everything on a religious belief, and ‘burned their bridges behind them,’ only to find this belief disconfirmed by events, they may find disillusionment too painful to endure. They soon come up with some explanatory rationalization, the plausibility of which will be reinforced by the mutual encouragement of fellow believers in the group. In order to increase further the plausibility of their threatened belief, they may engage in a massive new effort at proselytizing. The more people who can be convinced, the truer it will seem. In the final analysis, then, a radical disconfirmation of belief may be just what a religious movement needs to get off the ground.”
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There have been other plausible scenarios explaining the origin of the legend, but we don’t need to describe them all. The fact that they exist shows that the historicity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus cannot be taken as a given.
The idea of a legend is respectful of the humanity of the early Christians. We do know that the human race possesses an immense propensity to create, believe and propagate falsehood. So, what makes the early Christians exempt? Weren’t they just people? Did they never make mistakes? Were they so superhuman that they always resisted the temptations of exaggeration and rhetoric? Did they have perfect memories? Given the discrepancies in their accounts, why not treat those early believers like ourselves, not as cartoon characters but as real human beings with normal human fears, desires and limitations? The fact that my grandmother was hallucinating did not make me love or respect her any less.
The legend idea is respectful of the historical method. We are not required to jettison the natural regularity that makes history work. We can take the New Testament accounts as reports of what people sincerely
believed
to be true, not what is necessarily true. We can honor the question, “Do you believe everything you read?”
believed
to be true, not what is necessarily true. We can honor the question, “Do you believe everything you read?”
The legend idea is respectful of theology. If Jesus bodily ascended into physical clouds, then we are presented with a spatially limited flat-earth God sitting on a material throne of human size, with a right and left hand. If Jesus physically levitated into the sky, where is his body now? Does he sometimes need a haircut? If the bodily resurrection is viewed as a legendary embellishment, then believers are free to view their god as a boundless spiritual being, not defined in human dimensions as the pagan gods were.
Bible scholars conclude: “On the basis of a close analysis of all the resurrection reports, [we] decided that the resurrection of Jesus was not perceived initially to depend on what happened to his body. The body of Jesus probably decayed, as do all corpses. The resurrection of Jesus was not an event that happened on the first Easter Sunday; it was not an event that could have been captured by a video camera… [We] conclude that it does not seem necessary for Christians to believe the literal veracity of any of the later appearance narratives.”
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Finally, the legend idea is respectful of the freedom to believe. If the resurrection of Jesus were proved as a blunt fact of history, then we would have no choice, no room for faith. You can’t have the freedom to believe if you do not have the freedom not to believe.
PART 4
Life Is Good!
Chapter Seventeen
We Go to Washington
“When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
—Benjamin Franklin
During the presidential campaign of 2000, George W. Bush visited Milwaukee and posed for a photo op at Faith Works, a publicly funded faith-based agency housed in a convent. He promised that when he became president, programs like this would receive billions more in public aid. He pledged to “level the playing field,” to allow overtly religious organizations with religious agendas to compete for public dollars to provide social services.
Of course, many religious groups were already receiving vast infusions of public money. Prior to the Welfare Reform Act, however, these groups were required to form a different “secular” arm and keep separate books. If they took down their crosses and religious symbols and did not preach or proselytize, they could use tax dollars to feed the hungry, provide housing for the homeless and perform other useful social services. We at the Freedom From Religion Foundation had been uncomfortable with that arrangement because money that tax-exempt religious organizations would have used for social work could be spent on ministry. But we had never sued over such subsidies, since the government could claim a purely secular agenda in granting such money and the religious organizations ostensibly were using the tax dollars for “secular” purposes.
While many religious people and organizations have done truly good work, using their faith as a vehicle for charity, what is often ignored is the fact that, while their church gets the credit, the taxpayers often get the bill. Groups such as Catholic Charities USA, Lutheran Social Services and Jewish Social Services have provided community services for decades with little apparent proselytizing (although not without occasional scandal, such as when audits revealed that Catholic Charities took free U.S. government surplus grain and sold it to famine victims).
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