Lying is not commendable. If people are delusional, indeed dangerously so, causing them to destroy lives, promulgate their bigotries against gay and trans people and women’s rights, and support wars abroad and oppression at home, oppose aid to the poor, and pretty much everything ruining the world today, we would be liars if we did not call that out for what it is. And so we are doing.

We can “work together” when they and their delusions stop preventing them from working with us toward ending all their evils. And that requires disabusing them of their delusions. Until then, they will never work with us.

This problem extends even beyond the conservative Christians such as this article is directly about. Even liberal religion is harmful. The more so when it causes its adherents to not even acknowledge the far more extreme dangers of their conservative fellows—who outnumber them in every orbit of power. The liberal believer can work with us only when they acknowledge this and join us in openly combating it, such as I am doing here. And some, indeed, already do.

I am sixty-six years old and only now am I “losing my religion”. I wish I could do so in an atmosphere of calm and kindness, graciousness and dignity. No name-calling on either side, no off the cuff diagnoses of “delusional” mind-sets, no crazy Christians, Muslims, etcetera, etcetera–running wild on the Net and causing chaos, exposing their astonishing lack of higher education….must this be the locus of our struggle when the radioactive one is in the White House and our very way of life is at stake? People, PUT ASIDE YOUR DIFFERENCES, create a coalition of disparate world-views, and work to get rid of that day glo blot on the American Constitution. After that’s accomplished, we can argue ourselves hoarse.

It’s in my book, Not the Impossible Faith, Ch. 18.

It’s also demonstrated by sociologist and Christian apologist Rodney Stark.

Thanks so much!

1) “Strong” historicism is a tall order; I’d settle for even “weak” historicism. But the answer is given in OHJ, at the end of every evidence chapter: just remove or reverse the evidence I list that produces the probabilities I find, to reverse the probabilities. One can infer similar things for the prior when reading Ch. 6 (simply: remove or reverse all the data that produces the prior I reach). In other words, had the evidence been different, historicity would be assured. It is only not assured because the evidence didn’t turn out that way.

I discuss this philosophical point directly in my article on Hannibal—and all associated articles and material, which I summarize in paragraph one of my Spartacus article, linked therein. This makes clear what it takes to establish a person’s historicity, which is lacking for Jesus. So just put in what they have, that Jesus lacks, and Jesus’s historicity will be as certain as theirs.

For example, if the historical record started in the 50s with personal memoirs of witnesses or letters discussing his earth-life as learned from mentioned witnesses, and only became more exaggerated and mythical over time, that would conclusively establish historicity. Alas, the record is the other way around: it starts with him as a celestial superbeing known only through visions, and subsequently becomes more historicized over time, out of contact with any identifiable witnesses (culminating in the most historicizing of Gospels, and yet the least believed: John).

Really, just a sentence or two from Paul worded more clearly to indicate Jesus had recently been hanging out with people on earth and not just seen in visions would suffice. Provided no evidence existed calling its authenticity into question (e.g. as for the Pastoral epistles or the anti-semitic sentence added in 1 Thess. 2, both discussed in OHJ.)

2) As for “the Biblical God” (a very specific horrific monster; not at all the same thing as just “God”), the whole world’s history would have had to be different. Therefore, to be convinced now, I’d need solid evidence of something like that the Devil had been tricking me or even the whole world with a mass hallucination, and with God’s consent somehow. Almost impossible even to conceive, and vastly unlikely ever to happen.

Even more unlikely than that some evidence would convince me the earth is really flat and its sphericity is a two-thousand-year-old lie supported for eons by a massive international ancient conspiracy and a massive complex of extraordinary delusions. Extraordinarily unikely such evidence will ever turn up. Which is why we are sure the earth isn’t flat. The Biblical God’s existence is even less likely than the earth turning out to be flat, as it is a vastly more extraordinary claim, contradicted by a vastly greater array of evidence.

It didn’t have to be that way. Had that God existed, the world and its history would be so different as to make his existence as obvious to us as it was to the mythical Jews following him around in the desert. A point I explicitly make, with examples, in Sense and Goodness without God (cf. pp. 222-24). I expanded the point in my debate with Wallace Marshall, outlining what evidence would have to have been the opposite, to get the opposite conclusion.

Two questions:

1) What evidence could be realistically discovered that would push you from tentative mythicism to strong historicism on the existence of Jesus (the man, not the god/messiah)?

2) What evidence could be realistically (this is the crucial point on both questions) discovered that would convince you that the god of the bible exists (though perhaps in some less contradictory way – being very powerful but not omnipotent, knowledgeable but not omniscient)?

Hickling is not an attorney so be extremely wary of any analysis he makes regarding “principles of evidence.” The Bible is a major fail if some of those same principles are used against it as it is rife with hearsay, unauthenticated documents, scientifically unreliable events, and so on.

Oh yes. It’s on my list of things to look into. Though if he is relying as I’m told on such dubious sources as Strobel and McDowell, this is going to be hack work. But I’ll check it out when I find time.

I don’t watch videos.

But there are a lot of late stupid legends like that. See Wikipedia for a bunch.

This one originated in 1899 and was soundly debunked.