Why I Am Not a Christian

In March of 1927, Bertrand Russell delivered a speech to the National Secular Society entitled Why I Am Not a Christian. To this day, it is revered as one of the hallmarks of freethought literature. Having devoted years of study to the history of religions and biblical criticism, as well as a thoroughgoing introspection on the existence of God, I considered how I might speak on the topic if provided the same public forum. The following is an encapsulation of my views in the same vein as Bertrand Russell’s original lecture.

First, from a very young age, I already had a firm grasp on what historians call the principle of analogy, which states that we should judge matters of history based on the standard of modern day experience. If we don’t witness large-scale, miraculous events such as parting seas and rising corpses now, what reason is there to think that it actually happened then? It all sounds analogous not to present day experience, but to mythological tendencies in antiquity. There’s no good reason to credit the biblical narratives any more than we do those of the Iliad or Odyssey. To do so is simply a matter of special pleading.

And, indeed, the Bible is demonstrably rooted in earlier pagan mythology. The god of Abraham is clearly derived from the High God of ancient Canaan, El Elyon–supreme ruler over the pantheon of Canaanite gods known as Elohim. We even get a glimpse of El presiding over the divine assembly in Psalm 82. He’s vividly depicted in combat with the Canaanite sea dragon, Lotan, for which we have the Hebrew cognate, Leviathan, in Job 41. This Canaanite god of Abraham would later be assimilated with the god of Moses, Yahweh–probably a volcanic storm god of Midianite origin as conveyed by Exodus 13:21, 19:12, 19:16-18 & 20:18, which would’ve served well as the fierce, albeit fictive, figurehead for the early Hebrews’ nationalistic and militaristic purposes. We’re even presented with something of a corporate merger between the two deities, El and Yahweh, in Exodus 6:3: “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as El Shaddai, but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them,” an after-the-fact explanation for Yahweh’s elevated status to one and the same as El. In fact, in English versions of the Old Testament, the title “LORD God” is translated from the Hebrew, “Yahweh Elohim,” an ancient amalgam denoting the Hebrews’ attempt at streamlining the pantheon for the sake of introducing biblical monotheism.

The creation account in Genesis is a monotheistic rendition of earlier, polytheistic creation narratives from ancient Mesopotamia–the Sumerian Eridu Genesis and Babylonian Enuma Elish. The story of Noah’s Flood is inspired by earlier Deluge (flood) myths, such as the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and the Akkadian Epic of Atrahasis. The apocalyptic visions of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are spiced up with elements of Zoroastrian eschatology (end times belief), a result of Jewish exposure to Persian religiosity after King Cyrus freed the Jews from captivity in Babylon. The term “Pharisee” actually has etymological roots denoting “Persian,” and Cyrus himself is exalted to messianic status in Isaiah 44-45.

The divine conception of Jesus runs parallel to that of such historic figures as Alexander the Great, Plato, Pythagoras, and Gautama Buddha, as well as mythic figures like Romulus, Perseus, Attis, Dionysus, and the Zoroastrian Saoshyant. Jesus’ miraculous feats are merely echoes of the sort found in tales of Asclepius and Empedocles. His titles of divinity, “Savior” and “Son of God,” reflect contemporary titles bestowed upon Caesar Augustus. The sacred star at his birth only counters earlier claims about a sacred star associated with Julius Caesar. His ascension in the gospel of Luke mirrors that of Romulus, Augustus, and Heracles. Romulus too parted ways with a Great Commission, just as Jesus does in Matthew’s gospel.

The scenario by which Christ confers salvation and everlasting life through sacramental participation in his death and resurrection is adopted from ancient Greek and Egyptian mystery cults, featuring such risen deities as Osiris, Dionysus, Kore, Zalmoxis, Adonis, and Attis. The mystery cults were originally agricultural faiths whose dying and rising gods symbolized the death and rebirth of croplife–thus the spring celebrations of popular gods like Attis. Over time, man came to believe that performing certain rituals of initiation could mystically unite him with the fate of the risen god, effecting for him a spiritual death and rebirth already in this life and, ultimately, a blessed existence in the next. This mystical concept is explicit in Romans 6:3-5, Philippians 3:10-11, Colossians 2:12, etc., in which baptismal initiation of the Christian neophyte brings about his metaphorical death and resurrection to new life in Christ, with the implication that he will share literally in the gift of eternal life to come. The conceptual roots of this salvation scheme can be dated to Pyramidal texts from the 3rd millennium BC regarding the resurrection of Osiris.

Several New Testament passages also make use of symbolic mystery cult imagery–the death of the planted seed and its sprouting to new life (1 Corinthians 15:35-37). Not to mention, the terminology employed by Paul–mysterion (mystery/initiation) and teleios (perfection/maturity). It should come as no surprise that Paul would be immersed in such mysticism, given the fact that he hailed from Tarsus, an ancient city that rivaled both Athens and Alexandria in Hellenistic predominance during his day. What’s more, Tarsus was a major cult site of the mystery god Attis, as revealed by archaeological finds from the 1st century BC. It would also have been to his advantage to appeal to Hellenistic sensibilities among converts in Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, etc., wherein the sacred rites of the mystery religions were already prominent.

Even the symbolic consumption of the savior’s flesh and blood as a means to immortality (John 6:53-58) is preceded by the mystery religions, which Paul has in view when admonishing such practices in 1 Corinthians 10:16-21 for the sake of excluding all but the Christian eucharist. Paul’s use of the term “Lord’s Supper” stems from the Greek kuriakon deipnon, the same expression used in the mystery rites. Early church fathers like Justin Martyr and Firmicus Maternus attempted to write this off as diabolical mimicry, suggesting that Satan counterfeited the real thing in advance. For today’s rationalists, this is pure comedy.

It is significant that this particular brand of mysticism reached a fever pitch during the Hellenistic Age from which Christianity emerged and, moreover, that syncretism was a widespread phenomenon during that era. Obviously, the New Testament is a product of its time and place, cut from the same cloth as contemporary cultic rites and mythemes. As historian and classicist Earl Doherty put it, “The dominant ideas of an age inevitably impose themselves on a wide range of practice [and belief].”

Renowned apologist, C.S. Lewis, desperately rationalized in his essay, Myth Became Fact, that such similarities were merely God’s way of foreshadowing the “real thing” to come. However, a proper understanding of the historical currents involved–the rampant syncretistic trends of the Hellenistic Age–severely undermines Lewis’ fallacious argument–a case of egregious special pleading to begin with. Contrary to the specious claims of Christian apologists, the stories of Christ’s miraculous feats and conquest over death have no greater, historical verisimilitude than the previous myths and legends. The 2nd century Greek philosopher, Celsus, understood this all too well:

Is your belief based on ‘fact’ that this Jesus told in advance that he would rise again after his death? … Are you ignorant of the multitudes who have invented similar tales to lead the simple minded hearers astray? … quite apart from all these risings from the dead, we must look carefully at the question of the resurrection of the body as a possibility given to mortals. Doubtless you will freely admit that these stories are legends, even as they appear to me; but you will go on to say that your resurrection story, this climax to your tragedy, is believable and noble … Are these distinctive happenings unique to the Christians, and if so, how are they unique? Or, are ours to be accounted myths and theirs believed? … In truth, there is nothing at all unusual about what the Christians believe…

Second, there is the issue of scriptural contradictions and inconsistencies. There are so many, I can only take time to mention a few. Were animals created before man (Genesis 1), or was man created prior to animals (Genesis 2)? Did Jesus ascend on Easter evening (Luke 24), or did he stick around for 40 days (Acts 1:3)? Is the resurrection body fleshly (Luke 24:39), or not (1 Corinthians 15:50)? Are we still under the Law (Matthew 5:18), or not (Romans 6:14)? Are good works integral for salvation (James 2:14-26), or not (Ephesians 2:8-9)? Does God condemn murder (Exodus 20:13), or condone it (Joshua 6:21-27 & 10:39-41, Deuteronomy 20:16-18, 1 Samuel 15:2-3)? The list could go on and on.

And don’t bother insisting that Exodus 20:13 refers only to premeditated murder. The Hebrew word employed here, raw-tsakh, is an all-encompassing reference to unjust killing of any form. Slaying even women, the elderly, and children for the sake of conquest is tantamount to mass murder, and cannot be justified by any sensible person. Christian apologists attempt to do so, but how can such a thing be justified when an all-powerful and loving God is at the helm? Are we really to believe, given his supposed omnipotence and omnibenevolence, that he was unable to provide any form of justice other than complete extermination? Not that I grant the historicity of these tales to begin with, but the attempt to justify genocide is absurd.

Third, the New Testament’s doctrine of eternal damnation for non-Christians exceeds even the wickedness of the Old Testament. Most of us are a product of our cultural environment, and our beliefs tend to be molded as such. How could God possibly fault someone in Iran for being Muslim, or someone in India for being Hindu? For that matter, how could God even fault the nonbeliever in a predominantly Christian nation, given the myriad of issues raised here? To consign someone to eternal torment based merely on what they believe or disbelieve? What kind of brutish, cosmic dictator would implement so severe a penalty for thoughtcrime? And, given that homo sapiens have existed for roughly 200,000 years, what about the vast majority (99%) of people who lived prior to Christ? Confronted with this problem, we get the apologetic plea for retroactive salvation, which is so contrived as to not even necessitate a rebuttal.

Fourth, there is the issue of the New Testament’s utterly fallacious appeal to Old Testament prophecy. Once again, there is more territory to be covered here than one essay will permit. One can narrow the scope simply by addressing the incongruity of a dying and rising god with the Old Testament’s prophetic view of the Messiah. The Jewish Messiah is prophesied in the Old Testament to be a revolutionary king who will, among other things, bring about peace and sovereignty for the nation of Israel (Isaiah 2:4, 9:6, 11:6-9 & 65:19, Zechariah 9:10, Micah 4:3, Hosea 2:18, etc.).

What the Old Testament certainly does not say is that the Messiah (or God Incarnate) will have to suffer, die, and rise again for the salvation of mankind. Christianity developed this belief partially via the influence of the Hellenistic mystery cults, which accounts for the New Testament’s emphasis on eternal life–something with which the Old Testament is hardly concerned. (In fact, several passages in the Old Testament convey outright mortality: Psalm 90, Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, etc.) Following Jesus’ death, selections from the Old Testament were lifted out of context in order to reconcile the tragedy with an atonement doctrine–a tradition, by the way, stemming from the barbaric practice of scapegoating, in which the sins of the tribe were cast upon an innocent goat who was driven into the desert to starve (Leviticus 16), or hurled off a rugged cliff to its bone-crushing demise.

The most brazen example of misemployed prophecy is Isaiah 53‘s suffering servant, written in the 6th century BC in order to express the hardship of the quintessential Israelite captive to Babylon, as well as his eventual vindication at the hands of Persian intercessors. The suffering is even presented in the past tense–not what we’d expect of a prophecy of things to come. The Babylonian Exile is in view in such passages as Psalm 22 and Zechariah 12, which are also fallaciously claimed messianic and prophetic. When one carefully examines these issues, the reasons for Christianity’s split from its parent religion, Judaism, become exceedingly clear.

In terms of prophecy, there is also the fact that much of what is foretold in the Bible fails to come to fruition. The earliest Christians undoubtedly expected Christ’s return during their very generation in the 1st century. In Mark 9:1, Jesus proclaims, “Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God come with power.” (See parallel verse in Matthew 16:27-28.) Paul seems to expect it within his generation as well, according to 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17. C.S. Lewis himself stated that Matthew 24:34 “is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible,” given that Jesus foretells the end of times during “this generation.” Christianity, like so many other doomsday movements, survived and flourished despite these prophetic gaffes.

Fifth, there are no contemporaneous sources on Jesus, i.e. nothing written about him during the time he is said to have lived. Some take this to mean that a historical Jesus never existed, though such a conclusion doesn’t necessarily follow. There are many, prominent historical figures whose lives go unattested until many years later, and we do not question their existence. What does strike me as discrepant is that Jesus is said to have worked fantastic miracles–halted tempests, healed the blind, cast out demons, raised the dead and, most importantly, conquered death himself… yet there’s no contemporaneous evidence for this man? Granted not all historic figures are contemporaneously attested, there are indeed some–Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Socrates, Plato, etc. How could someone have done the things that Jesus is said to have done without making an indelible mark very early on? It just doesn’t add up. However, if we consider that Jesus was merely a martyred messianic hopeful, later deified to mythic proportions as the years ensued, the evidence as we have it makes perfect sense.

Then again, there is the very great possibility that no singular, historical Jesus did exist–that he is simply a literary amalgam of both mythic and historical figures: would-be messiahs, Jewish martyrs and prophets, dying and rising gods, Gnostic redeemers, Hellenistic heroes, etc. But, that opens a whole other can of worms, which we needn’t deal with here.

Sixth, there is the issue of scientific inaccuracy with which the Bible is condemnably rife. Again, an entire shelf of books could be written on this topic, but I shall suffice to zero in on the apologetics of famed evangelical scholar, William Lane Craig. Craig attempts to prove the existence of God by appealing to Big Bang cosmology (i.e. The Kalam Cosmological Argument). What it really boils down to is this: We don’t know what caused the Big Bang. We have no fully fleshed scientific explanation for the Universe seemingly bursting forth from nothing, so it must have been the conscious choice of a supernatural agent of cosmic proportions, namely God.

This line of thinking represents a recurring pattern throughout human history. Wherever there is a current gap in knowledge, simply insert a god into the equation and, presto, the phenomenon is sufficiently explained. Or not. In actuality, this is the old god of the gaps fallacy. By arbitrarily selecting your favored deity as the explanation for something, you’ve prematurely bypassed an as-yet undiscovered naturalistic explanation, and thus you’ve settled for explaining nothing. It is no different from some primitive ascribing storms to Baal or Dumuzi. Now that we understand the naturalistic processes behind weather–now that we’ve filled that gap in knowledge–a deity is an unnecessary and even laughable hypothesis. And so it is with the Big Bang. A naturalistic explanation likely awaits us, and the field of quantum physics seems promising in that regard.

It should be noted that, when physicists refer to the Big Bang as the emergence of the Universe from “nothing,” they are being rather misleading. They know full well that the nothingness of which they speak is not a state of absolute nothingness, but a quantum vacuum. To quote Dr. Craig himself (for the sake of irony), “the vacuum is not nothing, but is a sea of fluctuating energy endowed with a rich structure and subject to physical laws.” Ergo, the Universe would’ve indeed spawned from something–the quantum field–arguably the substratum of all existence. Where did it come from, you might ask? Well, why would it need to have come from anywhere? It has probably always been. And, given the first law of thermodynamics–that energy is neither created nor destroyed–there is indeed good reason to think so. As physicist Victor Stenger put it, “If their imagined God did not have to come from something, because she had no beginning, then neither did physics.”

It’s great to see, however, that evangelicals like William Lane Craig accept the scientific validity of such models as the Big Bang. One must assume, if he’s consistent with his application of astronomy, that he also accepts the scientific model for our solar system’s beginnings–that a massive, nebular accretion disc first formed the sun at its center, subsequently forming planets as a solar by-product in the outlying portions of cumulating mass. Thus, the formation of the sun had to occur prior to the formation of the earth. Yet, according to Genesis, God created the earth on Day 1 and the sun on Day 4. To the Christian apologist, I ask, which is it going to be? Science or Genesis? The two don’t mesh.

Lastly, there is the problem of tragic human suffering, which pervades the world like a plague. The believer attempts to brush this aside by recourse to “Free Will,” insisting that we are the makers of our own misery. There is some truth to this. But, it’s not a fully sufficient explanation. There are many atrocities of which we are not the cause–tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. These are the so-called “acts of God,” not that I actually posit a deity for whom to blame. I need only think of a story told to me about the deadly tornado that struck my hometown–Evansville, Indiana–in November 2005. In the aftermath, a baby lie on the street with its head twisted 180 degrees. The mother clung to the child, devastated. Now, you cannot tell me that there’s a loving God, one capable of divine intervention, in compatibility with that reality. The theist will no doubt answer such challenges with daft replies like, “Some things we’re not meant to understand,” or, “God works in mysterious ways.” Such pat answers are mere cop-outs, evangelical smokescreens designed for the purpose of cognitive dissonance reduction. Granted we cannot explain everything, some explanations are far more rational than others, even if not desirable. As Carl Sagan said, “It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” Besides, I find it quite telling that these “mysterious ways” in which God supposedly works are practically indistinguishable from his not working at all. Occam’s Razor bids us accept the simpler explanation.

So, I am an atheist in that I disbelieve in the existence of a personal God. Such a thing is clearly the product of man self-projecting, imposing his own image onto the heavens for the sake of comfort in an unpredictable and oftentimes tumultuous world. But, I am struck with a sense of awe and humility when lying beneath the stars, something for which a deity is entirely unnecessary. The immensity and grandeur of the cosmos is indeed something to behold. The magnificence of nature is such that there’s no need for dubious appeals to the supernatural. And, as a secular humanist, I believe firmly in the notion that we are all here for each other. Regardless of what the heavens may have to offer, the greatest beauty can be found right here on earth, amongst one another.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

NIV, KJV & Archaeological Study Bibles
The Jewish Study Bible
Why I Am Not a Christian, by Bertrand Russell
A History of God, by Karen Armstrong
God: A Brief History, by John Bowker
A History of Religious Ideas, by Mircea Eliade
Yahweh, online by Ilil Arbel, Ph.D.
Christ A Fiction, online by Dr. Robert M. Price
Official Home Page of Robert M. Price
The Reason Driven Life, by Dr. Robert M. Price
Deconstructing Jesus, by Dr. Robert M. Price
Jesus is Dead, by Dr. Robert M. Price
The Pharisaic/Zoroastrian Link, online by Deacon Duncan
Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False? online by Dr. Richard Carrier
The Jesus Puzzle, online by Earl Doherty
Myth Became Fact, by C.S. Lewis
The True Doctrine, by Celsus
Resurrection: A Symbol of Hope, online by Lloyd Geering
The God Who Wasn’t There, directed by Brian Flemming
Exodus 20:13 and the KJB critics, online by Dr. Thomas Holland
Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, by E.A. Wallis Budge
Man, Myth & Magic, S.G.F. Brandon’s article on Osiris
Osiris and Pagan Resurrection Myths, Frontline Apologetics online
The Pre-Christian Belief in the Resurrection of the Body, by Alfred Bertholet
The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts, by Marvin W. Meyer
The Mythmaker, by Hyam Maccoby
A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament, by Rabbi Samuel Sandmel
The Resurrection: History & Myth, by Geza Vermes
The Case Against Faith, online by Paul Doland
The Skeptics Annotated Bible (online)
God is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens
Messiah Truth Project (online)
The Christian Delusion, edited by John W. Loftus
The Kalam Cosmological Argument, by Dr. William Lane Craig
The God of the Gaps, online YouTube Lecture by Neil deGrasse Tyson
The Other Side of Time, online by Dr. Victor J. Stenger
Atheist Universe, by David Mills
A Universe from Nothing, online YouTube Lecture by Lawrence Krauss
Why the Kalam Cosmological Argument Fails, online YouTube Discussion by “antybu86″
The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan
New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, by James Strong