NOTES AND REFERENCES

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AN INTRODUCTION

It is a curious thing that most of us ardently believe that we solved the ultimate question of the universe before we even learned how to tie our shoelaces. If philosophers, theologians, and scientists have struggled with the concept of existence for millennia without arriving at a definite solution, our naïve childhood assessment that a divine entity simply wished it were so certainly requires a reevaluation. This painfully obvious appraisal would seem readily acceptable if I were talking about something other than our sacred religious beliefs, but the growing dangers from religious fanaticism do not permit me the freewheeling luxury of discussing anything else. I find it nothing short of an incomprehensible tragedy that anyone in this age of reason would have to write a book debunking a collection of ridiculous fantasies from an era of rampant superstition. I find myself consistently preoccupied with how it is possible that humans have been able to cure disease, travel to the moon, and create nanotechnology in an era where we still worship a creator who allegedly inspired one of the foulest books ever produced.[1] This manuscript is my attempt at an explanation of how we arrived in our present state.

To support my behavioral observations of those I believe to be mired in false superstition, I will frequently reference the two most widely consulted books ever written on persuasive psychology: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini and Attitudes and Persuasion: Classic and Contemporary Approaches by Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo. Social psychologists have long considered these two books to be the cornerstones for explaining the oft-irrational methods through which people acquire and maintain their beliefs. Whenever I find that I can never hope to express certain religious ideas with equal justice as those who preceded me, I will cite additional texts on religious thought, relying heavily on the following works: The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism by David Mills, Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris.[2]

I hope that my latest endeavor will take the best of these efforts and incorporate them with my own responses to those who have disparaged progressive-thinking disbelievers for not accepting fairy tales like Noah’s Ark, Balaam’s talking donkey,[3] and the resurrection of Jesus as historical events. As a great deal of these correspondence originate from individuals who, due to their isolated Christian environments,[4] could never develop reasonable unbiased arguments, I’ll allocate a large portion of the text for explaining what I suspect are the psychological processes that form their arguments and block them from accepting more rational perspectives. In other words, we will see why certain people continue to believe the silly things that they believe despite facts to the contrary.

Human psychology plays such an enormous and indispensable role in forming and maintaining religious beliefs that I have dedicated more material to this matter than any other topic in this book. I cannot emphasize enough how people are victim to the persuasions of society and the natural gullibility of human rationale. Conditioning, bias, dissonance, and intelligence are all factors that play enormous roles in our decision-making. We will eventually consider each of these aspects and discover to what extent people shun rational thought in favor of observing their indoctrinated religious beliefs throughout life.

The standalone-italicized portions you will see throughout the text are authentic past reader statements that have been presented to me in defense of God, Christianity, the Bible, or all of the above. These reader opinions are often condensed or summarized–without destroying the original connotation or stripping it of supporting ideas–and brushed up grammatically; I would otherwise be accused of doctoring a number of them with terrible grammar in order to make the arguments look even shoddier than they sometimes reveal themselves to be. I fully appreciate that many of these responses are not indicative of the preeminent apologetic works available, but I believe they are an accurate portrayal of the objections that embolden the minds of mainstream Christians.

In addition to the upcoming excerpts from letters of criticism that range anywhere from pleasantly constructive to feloniously malicious, there have been a number of subsequent supportive letters thanking me for my work, a few that credit me with starting or assisting in the deconversion process, and plenty from those who wanted me to know that their faith is now stronger than ever. I am not at all surprised with the results from the latter since it has long been said that more faith is required in the presence of growing counterevidence. Many Christian readers have also taken the time to inform me that they have prayed for my soul so that I might somehow understand how I have been misguided into not understanding their particular interpretations of the Bible. Although on some level I appreciate their good intentions, I highly doubt that God is going to appear and defend the seemingly innumerable logistical and ethical problems of the Bible. Instead, the infallible God apparently relies on fallible apologetic messengers who utilize bankrupt logic and disagree even among themselves on how to set everything straight for the nonbelievers. I will leave it to the readers to consider the fundamental ramifications of such a curious decision from the almighty.

RELIGIOUS THOUGHT, OR THE LACK THEREOF

When writing on the topic of why people hold religious beliefs, my mind always drifts back to the story of The Crucible. The tale was based upon the seventeenth-century religious community of Salem, Massachusetts who zealously executed an incredible number of people accused of practicing witchcraft and conspiring with the devil. As I recall details of the town’s gullibility, I can think of nothing else but how absurdly hypocritical it is for any modern Christian to believe that the people of Salem were in any way more foolish than the people living there now. I am completely unsurprised that a small town of ignorant people was fooled into believing that the devil was among them because the difference in the absurdity between the people of the colonial period and the citizens of modern-day America is relatively minor.

I can show you, at this very moment, a civilized nation (the world’s only remaining superpower, no less) in which the majority of its people believe in things even more preposterous than this. I can show you a country with a majority of citizens who believes in the ability to predict specific details in the distant future, the existence of winged-messengers living in the sky, the worldwide flood as told in Genesis, and the resurrection of a man who had been dead for many hours.[5] While these individuals believe they are enlightened enough to explicitly claim the veracity of such outlandish beliefs, is there any doubt that they are mentally ill-equipped to provide the name of one famous psychic, the name of one angel in any piece of literature, the name of the mountains in which the ark landed, or the names of the four canonical gospels that tell of the resurrection?[6] They believe simply because they want to believe, they have always believed, and others around them have the same beliefs.

If you can place a young boy within a society that widely believes in the Tooth Fairy, and teach him the sacred importance of believing in the Tooth Fairy, he will most likely believe in the Tooth Fairy until the day he dies. If you can place him within a society that widely believes the earth is flat, and teach him the sacred importance of believing the earth is flat, he will most likely believe that the earth is flat until the day he dies. In either scenario, he will almost certainly teach his children to believe the same and to pass those beliefs on to his grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. People believe what they are taught it is important to believe, and the vast majority will stick to those beliefs throughout life despite overwhelming evidence and observations to the contrary.

Individuals in the Islamic states were not taught about Tooth Fairies or flat earths, but rather about the final prophet riding a winged horse into heaven and suicide bombers who receive a reward of seventy-two virgins in paradise. Individuals in American Mormon communities were not taught about tooth fairies or flat earths, but rather about an enormous Jewish kingdom in North America many centuries ago and golden tablets translated by studying rocks placed in a hat. While these ideas might seem ridiculous to contemporary Americans, most in this society believe in an omnipotent deity that is petty enough to torture his underlings forever if we do not satisfy his ego by worshipping him.

While God could choose any absurd method of interaction he wanted, we never stop to consider if God would manifest in this way. God could choose to continue his declaration to the world by having a man read it out of a hat, but would he? God could choose to retrieve his final prophet by sending him a winged horse, but would he? God could choose to communicate with a man through a talking donkey, but would he? God could choose to give salvation to the world by sacrificing and resurrecting himself in bodily form, but would he? Since any of these scenarios is physically possible if we assume the existence of an all-powerful deity–and since rational evidence for these claims is practically nonexistent–belief boils down to whichever book you were raised to think is reliable. It is not a matter of accepting that one must be true and deciding that our hastily chosen belief sounds the least superstitious (or perhaps just as good as the next), but rather determining if any suggestion can stand on its own as a sensible avenue for God to take. The reasons given for each belief are driven not by rational thought and reasoned arguments, but in response to indoctrination, bias, and cognitive dissonance, which too often yield rationalizations and other superficial answers. So you must excuse me for not joining the crowd who laughs at specks in the Puritans’ eyes when there are planks in just about everyone else’s.[7] Harris puts the matter in perspective quite bluntly:

It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are. This is not surprising, since most religions have merely canonized a few products of ancient ignorance and derangement and passed them down to us as though they were primordial truths. This leaves billions of us believing what no sane person could believe on his own. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.[8]

Indeed. The Puritans taught themselves that it was normal to believe that the devil was lurking in the shadows, and they were constantly able to find him. The Muslims taught themselves that it was normal to believe that Allah would provide a paradise for suicide bombers, and they are constantly able to recruit them. The Mormons taught themselves that it was normal to believe in a pre-historic Western Jewish kingdom, and they are constantly able to find scholars who will attest to its existence. The Christians taught themselves that it was normal to pray to an earthly savior who miraculously rose from the dead, and they are constantly finding miraculous evidence of his benevolence. Christians believe this notion because, like the others, they are lifelong members of a society that has continually reinforced the “special” nature of their beliefs. It should go without saying that every religion is “special” in its own isolated environment of observance. Christians believe strange things for what objective outsiders perceive to be very strange reasons. What one society perceives as normal, another perceives as collective insanity.

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Explaining the various thought processes behind why people belong to a certain religion is not intended to serve as proof that the belief system in question is wrong, but rather to demonstrate that the belief system is being observed in a fashion that is completely void of rational and independent thought. In other words, the religious belief was offered, it was accepted, it was practiced, it was justified, and it was passed; but it was not seriously questioned. A particular religion will be a strong presence in surroundings where children are continuously taught that it cannot be seriously questioned, much less possibly proven false. Christian environments, particularly fundamentalist ones, provide such conditions. I would never deny that exceptions to this process exist (as just about everyone claims to be such an exception–the possibility of which we will investigate shortly), but I will indefinitely stand by my position that the overwhelming majority does not join a religion in this fashion. The only major religious study of the twenty-first century dealing with this question reports that 84 percent of Americans belong to the exact same religion as their parents.[9] Coincidence? Hardly.

Does it come as any surprise that the self-proclaimed exceptions who claim to have chosen Christianity through rational deduction just happened to pick the one religion out of hundreds that was already widely practiced and accepted in their environment? Is there any reasonable doubt that if they had been born in Morocco, Egypt, or Iraq under similar conditions, they would have arrived at the parallel conclusion that Islam was the correct religion? Is there any reasonable doubt that they would have been just as confident about the Qur’an–through the use of equally effective self-convincing rationalizations–as they are now about the Bible?

The oversimplification of my position from one apologist, “you believe what your parents taught you,” will apply an overwhelming majority of the time to religious preference and serves as the primary reason that Christianity has flourished to enormous proportions in the West. Followers of Christianity are great in number because their predecessors spread, conquered, and converted in a very efficient manner during an era in which people rarely chose to question Christianity.[10] The masses of people following Christianity today are not doing so because God wants to ensure that the correct religion has a sizable lead over the others. This would be a ridiculous ad hoc claim, one that any religion in the lead could utilize.

People who purportedly “choose” Christianity do not consider the religion as the first belief for consideration as a result of this large society having studied its history and declaring its veracity, but rather because this large society (the product of migration, conquest, and conversion) presented the religious belief as the most, if not the only, viable option. Even in homes where parents raise children without religion, the religious beliefs of a society are vocal enough and widespread enough to suggest constantly to a young child that there might be some sort of legitimacy to the religion. If 90 percent of people in your extended society believe in something you do not, you are likely to soon begin looking for reasons why this is so. Individuals who claim to have made a rational, uninfluenced decision to join Christianity seem oblivious to how likely it was that they would walk right into the church. If that society had been propagating an Islamic viewpoint, the odds are that it would be right into the mosque. If that society had been propagating a Jewish viewpoint, it would be right into the temple. I could continue with a seemingly endless list of buildings for worship, but I hope the point is clear.

A treatise on why a considerable portion of the world’s population belongs to the Christian faith is beyond the scope of this book. To summarize two thousand years of religious history in a paragraph, Paul of Tarsus and other early Christian writers presented a much more digestible version of the old Hebrew religion to the Roman Empire, which in turn promoted its newly found religious persuasion as it extended its borders throughout the European continent. While the philosophies of Islam began to flourish several centuries after the fall of Rome, pre-existing religions in the East and a series of Crusades with the Christians in Europe led to a defeat for those wanting to advance the ideas of Islam to unconquered regions of the globe. The explorers who would eventually find a new world in the Western Hemisphere came primarily from England, Spain, France, or Portugal–areas that resided within and shared the religious philosophies of the defunct Roman Empire. We are discussing Christianity instead of some other religion primarily for these reasons. While this summary may help explain why we are destined to enter the world as Christians, it is an entirely different matter as to why we leave it as such. For this, we must turn to childhood indoctrination.

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It is not a shocking discovery that parents pass on their religious beliefs through their children. Muslim parents tend to have Muslim children; Christian parents tend to have Christian children; atheist parents tend to have atheist children. As I mentioned earlier, studies have consistently shown that children will habitually accept their parents’ religious beliefs as their own. This trend remains true, as far as researchers have investigated, throughout the ten thousand distinct religions still in observation.[11] I think it would be perfectly fair to say that if the most avid Christian preacher of your hometown had been born in Israel to Jewish parents, there is a great possibility that he would have been the most avid Rabbi in a comparable Israeli city. Subsequently, he would have been just as certain that he was preaching the truth about Judaism as he is now doing for Christianity. It also follows that he would view Christians as misguided and pray to God in order for them to stop acknowledging Jesus as his son. The man's parents would have raised him to practice Judaism, and he would have likely believed anything else that they instructed was sacred to believe. Petty and Cacioppo summarize what is already obvious:

Since most of the information that children have about the world comes directly from their parents, it is not surprising that children’s beliefs, and thus their attitudes, are initially very similar to their parents. For example, social psychologists have well documented that children tend to share their parents’ racial prejudices, religious preferences, and political party affiliations.[12]

Such consistent traditions simply cannot be maintained by chance alone. Because religious beliefs are certainly not in our DNA, a child’s environment must necessarily affect his religious affiliation to an extensive degree. In fact, all children are born without specific religious ideas and remain in a state of impressionability until influenced by the religious convictions of their parents or other similarly motivated individuals. In effect, all children are born classical atheists. Smith rightly points out that some readers will have problems with the observation that children are born atheistic, to which he offers the following reply:

If the religionist is bothered by the moral implications of calling the uninformed child an atheist, the fault lies with these moral implications, not with the definition of atheism. Recognizing this child as an atheist is a major step in removing the moral stigma attached to atheism, because it forces the theist to either abandon his stereotypes of atheism or to extend them where they are patently absurd. If he refuses to discard his favorite myths, if he continues to condemn nonbelievers per se as immoral, consistency demands that he condemn the innocent child as well. And, unless the theist happens to be an ardent follower of Calvin, he will recognize his sweeping moral disapproval of atheism for what it is: nonsense.[13]

We can safely say that individuals become members of their respective religious groups primarily because their parents were also members. Likewise, the parents are probably members because their parents were also members. This developing pattern should prompt the question of how far back this visionless trend continues–and who knows why that first person decided what he did. Instead of initiating an honest and impartial analysis of the new evidence that science and enlightened thinking have provided, people simply bury their heads in the sand and continue to observe whatever beliefs they were conquered with or whatever religion their ancestors thought they needed thousands of years ago. They believed it as children, and they will continue to believe it as adults. Moreover, this type of reckless behavior goes unnoticed because religious individuals exhibit it throughout almost every culture around the globe.

Psychologists have further linked the increased tendency for children to share such beliefs, rather convincingly, to the level of indoctrination. One important study in social psychology by Frank Sulloway revealed that birth order was the strongest factor in determining intellectual receptivity to innovation in science–stronger than the date of conversion, age, sex, nationality, socio-economic class, number of siblings, degree of previous contact with leaders of the innovation, religious and political attitudes, fields of scientific specialization, previous awards and honors, three independent measures of eminence, religious denomination, conflict with parents, travel, education attainment, physical handicaps, and parents’ ages at birth. In our example, the order of birth correlates to the level of indoctrination because firstborn children receive more attention from their parents than their younger siblings receive. Earlier born children also have more responsibilities to maintain the status quo while their younger counterparts are further removed from parental authority. For this reason, children further down in the birth order are less inclined to adopt the beliefs of their parents and are therefore less likely to have their parents indoctrinate them with fantastical beliefs.[14]

Shermer explains that of the components of the Five Factor model, the most popular trait theory in psychology for the moment, openness to experience is the most significant predictor of an individual’s levels of religiosity and belief in God. However, the results are quite the opposite of what you might anticipate. Despite pleas from the religious crowd geared toward the skeptics for open-mindedness, a study by Shermer and Sulloway showed that people with open minds compose the one group less likely to be religious or have a belief in God.[15] This conclusion might seem counterintuitive, especially considering how mystical ideas are commonly purported to reveal their veracity to those with open minds, but the results should be obvious upon further reflection. Skeptics are doubtful but willing to consider; the religious are indoctrinated not to seriously question. It does not take a willfully open mind to accept the existence of God because it is essentially the default position. People accept such beliefs during childhood, a stage of development known for its readiness to accept ideas as outrageous as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. It does take an open mind, however, to consider the possibility that one’s most sacred beliefs might be false.

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Let us take a closer look at this coerced process of indoctrination taking place within religious communities across the globe. When children in the United States are at a very young age, most parents unknowingly initiate the conditioning process by informing their children that we are all imperfect and need to take on the perfect Jesus Christ as a role model. By turning their lives over to Jesus, they receive forgiveness for their imperfections and inadequacies. Fundamentalist parents also make their children fear the consequences of remaining alone with their imperfections by convincing them that hell, a place where you suffer through perpetual agony, is the ultimate destination for people who don’t rely on the provided support system. Since the consequences of not accepting the support system are so horrific, and the steps necessary to eliminate the consequence are so simplistic, children will learn to adopt these beliefs, if only to keep a distance from the supposed punishment. By this point, children certainly become willing to follow those who know this system best.

The influence that such fear messages holds over an audience is two-fold and certainly not to be underestimated. Petty and Cacioppo offer a study to explain how high-fear messages can be so upsetting that the audience engages in defensive avoidance and refuses to think critically about or be motivated by the issue.[16] Additionally, high-fear messages are more effective than moderate-fear or low-fear appeals when supporting arguments are reassuring and leave the audience with effective means of protecting themselves. The psychologists summarize the thought process quite nicely, and it is worth quoting at some length:

Let’s look more closely at how fear-arousing messages are constituted. These messages describe: (a) the unfavorableness of the consequences that will occur if the recommended actions are not adopted; (b) the likelihood that these consequences will occur if the recommended actions are not adopted; and (c) the likelihood that these consequences will not occur if the recommended actions are adopted. In other words, the message arouses fear in a person by questioning the adaptiveness of the current state of affairs. In addition, the message arguments motivate a person to accept the recommendations by outlining explicit undesirable consequences of doing otherwise. That is, the message arguments explain the high likelihood that a set of dire consequences will occur if the recommendations are ignored, consequences whose seriousness and unpleasantness are graphically depicted. The better understood and the more reassuring the message arguments, the more attitude change toward the recommended action that should occur…In sum, fear-arousing messages are effective in inducing attitude change particularly when the following conditions are met: (a) the message provides strong arguments for the possibility of the recipient suffering some extremely negative consequence; (b) the arguments explain that these negative consequences are very likely if the recommendations are not accepted; and (c) it provides strong assurances that adoption of the recommendations effectively eliminates these negative consequences. [17]

According to Petty and Cacioppo, as the message bearer more clearly defines the three message points, the speaker will convince a larger portion of the audience to adapt to his position. With respect to these three points regarding our discussion of hell, the unfavorableness of the consequences that will occur if the recommended actions are not adopted is absolute because hell is complete (and often asserted to be eternal) agony;[18] the likelihood that these consequences will occur if the recommended actions are not adopted is absolute because it is decreed as the rule of an all-powerful being;[19] and the likelihood that these consequences will not occur if the recommended actions are adopted is absolute because it is likewise decreed as the rule of an all-powerful being.[20]

Hardly any conceivable message could be more motivating than the threat of hell, and we have good reason to believe that the nature of the message can be upsetting enough to deter critical thinking, especially when the audience is too young and tender to have developed a discipline that would rationalize or challenge the validity of such assertions. Just the opposite, children habitually give benefit of the doubt to their parents and other role models. Petty and Cacioppo report that children are “increasingly persuasible until around the age of eight, after which time the child becomes less persuasible until some stable level of persuasibility is reached.”[21] Naturally, religious indoctrination is firmly in place well before the age of eight, making any subsequent attempts to remove the indoctrination quite difficult to say the least. After all, since parents tend to be correct on just about every other testable matter of importance, it is unfortunately reasonable for a child to extend this pattern into the realm of non-falsification. There is obviously good reason why a large number of children do not question the veracity of hell. According to Dawkins:

More than any other species, we survive by the accumulated experience of previous generations, and that experience needs to be passed on to children for their protection and well-being. Theoretically, children might learn from personal experience not to go too near a cliff edge, not to eat untried red berries, not to swim in crocodile-infested waters. But, to say the least, there will be a selective advantage to child brains that possess the rule of thumb: believe, without question, whatever your grown-ups tell you. Obey your parents; obey the tribal elders, especially when they adopt a solemn, minatory tone. Trust your elders without question. This is a generally valuable rule for a child. But, as with the moths [flying into a flame], it can go wrong.[22]

To continue the conditioning process, parents must successfully keep their children free from external contradicting influences by encompassing them within a Christian environment in a Christian country often with weekly Christian refreshment.[23] Even the more advanced instructors of a child’s religion, such as Sunday School teachers, are reasonably consistent with parental beliefs. Do they tell their students that they should impartially study both sides of the religious debate in order to discover the truth, or do they tell them that Christianity is true and give them reaffirming material if they have doubts? If any such teacher fits the former category, I would be very impressed since I have yet to hear of anyone who does. Instead, they use the latter method because alternative religious and secular sources would obviously present conflicting information and weaken their bonds with Jesus Christ, the head of the religious support system. The other religions would also illustrate the contradictions and consequential uncertainties shared amongst all faith-based beliefs. A young child fortunate enough to appreciate this contrast would certainly be much more likely to question his beliefs than one who is not.

Just as Paul told his various audiences that there was a sense of urgency in accepting Jesus, many fundamentalist parents graciously tell their children that they believe people who know about Jesus and refuse to worship him might go to hell.[24] Since Jesus could possibly return today or tomorrow, time is of the utmost essence. The requirement to accept Jesus is absolute, and it would be beneficial to do so as soon as possible in order for God to save them from the chance of perpetual punishment. If they choose not to accept Jesus before death, that trip to hell may very well be in order.

While we have spent considerable time describing the punishment of refusing Jesus, we must not forget about the ultimate reward for accepting him: an eternal stay in heaven with infinite happiness. How many impressionable young children could possibly refuse this “genuine” offer? By this point, children have heard and hastily accepted the proposal. As time goes by, the vast Christian American environment gently but consistently drives the imperative system into their heads day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. By their teenage years, most Christians could not possibly consider the presence of a fundamental error in the Bible, much less a completely erroneous foundation, because it is already–unquestionably–the perfect word of God to them. And for what other reason than the perceived importance?

Any attempt to educate children based solely on the facts, instead of faith, is seen (ironically) by many Christians as attempted indoctrination. Consider this excerpt from an article that contains the opinion of a Christian mother of two who is speaking out against the refusal to allow Intelligent Design into public schools: “‘If students only have one thing to consider, one option, that’s really more brainwashing,’ said Duckett, who sent her children to Christian schools because of her frustration.”[25] The irony in that line is astonishing. Moreover, just for the sake of pointing out even further irony, Jesus himself even seems to have appreciated the notion that children are unbelievably gullible and may have had this observation in mind when he declared, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”[26] Smith elaborates beautifully on the danger of this idea:

To be moral, according to Jesus, man must shackle his reason. He must force himself to believe that which we cannot understand. He must suppress, in the name of morality, any doubts that surface in his mind. He must regard as a mark of excellence and unwillingness to subject religious beliefs to critical examination. Less criticism leads to more faith–and faith, Jesus declares, is the hallmark of virtue…The psychological impact of this doctrine is devastating. To divorce morality from truth is to turn man’s reason against himself. Reason, as the faculty by which man comprehends reality and exercises control over his environment, is the basic requirement of self-esteem. To the extent that a man believes his mind is a potential enemy, that it may lead to the ‘evils’ of question-asking and criticism, he will feel the need for intellectual passivity–to deliberately sabotage his mind in the name of virtue. Reason becomes a vice, something to be feared, and man finds that his worst enemy is his own capacity to think and question. One can scarcely imagine a more effective way to introduce perpetual conflict into man’s consciousness and thereby produce a host of neurotic symptoms.[27]

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Following their childhood indoctrination, individuals exhibit their desire to be in groups by surrounding themselves with those who hold similar interests in order to reinforce the perceived appropriateness of their beliefs and opinions. When I was younger, I also underwent this near-universal conditioning process and tried to recruit/assimilate others into my group because that is what my environment told me that God wanted me to do. I discovered that this was my reality when I was sitting in church one Sunday and realized that I would believe in the veracity of whatever religion was instilled within me. I understood that I would have believed in Hinduism if I had been born in India. I understood that I would have believed in Islam if I had been born in Iraq. But somehow, I was “lucky.” I was born with the “correct” religion. And how did God decide who would have the advantage of being born into the proper religion? For whatever reason, the system was inherently unfair. Dawkins describes the dilemma wonderfully:

If you feel trapped in the religion of your upbringing, it would be worth asking yourself how this came about. The answer is usually some form of childhood indoctrination. If you are religious at all it is overwhelmingly probable that your religion is that of your parents. If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam false, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination. Mutatis mutandis if you were born in Afghanistan.[28]

If you believe in a book with a talking donkey[29] because you feel it is the special exception to the rules of common sense, but realize that you would believe in a different book, perhaps one with a dancing giraffe or a flying horse, if you had been born elsewhere, something has obviously gone very wrong with your way of thinking. Otherwise, our reality is an omnipotent creator of the universe carrying out some sort of game in which his test subjects must suspend common sense and choose the correct religion from thousands, of which any can be accepted with a little bit of faith.

That Sunday morning in church, I wondered why the adults did not realize this and reevaluate their own beliefs.[30] In addition to their oblivious decision to follow Christianity, I later came to realize that most adults don’t even know what they really believe because they never take the time to read a considerable amount of the Bible, much less the whole text. In fact, only 40 percent can name half of the Ten Commandments.[31] Because of this shockingly lazy choice exercised by the vast majority of Christians, they are ill-equipped to answer challenges to their belief system. As a result, the common response to presented complications usually boils down to “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” When it comes to religion, the mainstream believers exhibit no more in-depth thinking than members of any local cult. Regardless of the actions such religious people take, however, I could never deem them evil because I now understand that they are victims of an unfortunate destiny (or more accurately, an unfortunate hardwiring of the brain) misleading them down a path of ignorance and unwitting gullibility.

Many Christian readers who have taken the time to write me will admit that nothing I say will convince them that the Bible is not the word of God. It’s quite pointless to speak to people who admit that they will not change their minds on an issue no matter what evidence is presented and no matter to what extent their arguments for the position are destroyed. The exercise of this book isn’t an attempt to change the minds of such individuals, but rather to provide a perfect illustration for the more rational audience members on how people are conditioned to accept whatever society informs them is critical to accept. How many Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and Mormons would respond exactly like these Christians had I asked them if they were willing to admit that it is possible that their respective holy books were wrong? I can imagine nothing other than a perfect parallel.

Religion thrives with stubborn behavior implemented by years of conditioning. It is not the perceived high quality of evidence apologetically offered in favor of the Bible that makes religious people feel comfortable maintaining their beliefs. After all, they will not change their minds under any circumstances. One could offer perfect evidence of the Bible’s moral and historical bankruptcy if it existed, yet the believers would not accept it because the conditioned indoctrination has made the belief concrete. As Harris brilliantly puts it:

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.[32]

To compound further this obtuse mental fallibility, researchers have shown that people become more confident about their decisions as time progresses, despite a complete lack of evidence to support the veracity of their choices. Cialdini reports that after placing a bet at a racetrack, and with no additional information to consider, individuals are much more confident of their chances of winning than they were just before laying down the bet.[33] As humans, we simply are not as comfortable considering the notion that we might be wrong. We enjoy being right. As a result, on some inexplicable level, we strive to convince ourselves that we have followed proper revenues of belief rather than consider the possibility that we might have behaved improperly. This nature is highly illogical, intellectually dishonest, and potentially dangerous. In an upcoming section, we will consider the implications of an individual confronted with the notion that his most sacred beliefs have come into question–decades after those beliefs have been set.[34]

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To what great extent are people of deep religious faith conditioned to avoid questioning their core beliefs? Consider the following example. Suppose the world witnesses the descent of a great entity from the sky. This being proclaims that its name is God and the time for the world to end has finally arrived. It should go without saying that people are going to want to see proof of its claims. Whatever miracles one requests of God, he is happy to oblige. He has the power to make mountains rise and fall at will. He can set the oceans ablaze at the snap of a finger. He can even return life to those who died thousands of years ago. God can do anything asked of him. Then, someone from the gathered crowd makes an inquiry as to which religion holds the absolute truth. God replies, “The religion of truth is Islam. The Qur’an is my one and only holy word. All other religious texts, including the Bible, are entirely blasphemous. All those who do not acknowledge my word will undergo a lengthy punishment for not following my teachings. Now is your chance to repent.”

What choice does the Christian community make in this situation? This entity has already demonstrated that it possesses the omnipotence and omniscience of a supreme being. Do Christians readily switch over to the side of observable and testable evidence, or do they declare that this being is the Devil tempting their faith in God? Stop and think about it for a minute because it’s an interesting predicament. After careful consideration, I believe we all know that a good portion of Christians would denounce this new being in order to please “The One True God, Heavenly Father of Jesus.” As a result of their collective decision, the supernatural entity forces them to undergo unimaginable torment for a few weeks before offering them a final chance to repent. Do the Christians embrace the teachings of this creature after experiencing its capabilities firsthand, or do they still consider it the final test and refuse to denounce their faith in the Bible? We should not be at all surprised to find that a large portion would still maintain their present beliefs. Childhood indoctrination is that strong and that crippling to sensibility. Once the concept of faith is introduced, the test is simply not fair; yet if Christianity is true, it is the very test that we would all be expected to pass.

While many believe that they have arrived at their Christian beliefs through logical deduction and not childhood indoctrination of faith, Shermer demonstrates the existence of an Intellectual Attribution Bias, which will help support my earlier insinuation that people claim far too often to be an exception to the indoctrination process. One of his studies shows that an individual is nearly nine times more likely to believe that he arrived at his religious position from critical thinking than he is to believe that any other Christian chosen at random did the same. Shermer argues that “problems in attribution may arise in our haste to accept the first cause that comes to mind” and that “there is a tendency for people to take credit for their good actions…and let the situation account for their bad ones.”[35] He continues:

Our commitment to a belief is attributed to a rational decision and intellectual choice; whereas the other person’s belief is attributed to need and emotion. This intellectual attribution bias applies to religion as a belief system and to God as the subject of belief. As pattern-seeking animals, the matter of the apparent good design of the universe, and the perceived action of a higher intelligence in the day-to-day contingencies of our lives, is a powerful one as an intellectual justification for belief. But we attribute other people’s religious beliefs to their emotional needs and upbringing.[36]

In other words, people are able to recognize that many religious believers are only in the faith because of the influence from society, but they are more than willing to pass over such consideration for themselves and will instead seek out a rational explanation for a belief that they never freely chose. Finding the gullibility of others is an easy task; finding it within ourselves can be a difficult and discomforting one.

I will indefinitely stand by my observation and the identical observation made by countless other freethinkers who have left organized religion: almost all religious people, Christian or not, have been strongly conditioned as children to believe what society has encouraged them to believe. It is my hope that readers can appreciate that people tend to believe in whatever religion their society believes and that religious believers are typically able to rationalize their beliefs even in the presence of overwhelming contrary evidence. This rationalization process, to which we will now turn our attention, is the result of the believer’s favoritism toward his preconceived notions.

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If you wanted safety information on a used car, would it be wiser to trust the word of a used car salesperson or the findings of a consumer report? I hope that you would trust the consumer report over the salesperson because the salesperson has a vested interest in the quality of his products and an even larger one in getting you to accept his opinion on his products. The consumer report, on the other hand, would likely have no interest in advancing a one-sided view of any product. Similarly, if you wanted to obtain information on the historicity and veracity of Islam, would you ask an Islamic scholar who has been taught about Islamic sanctity since childhood, or would you ask a secular scholar with no emotional investment in Islam? Would you not also do the same for Hinduism, Mormonism, Buddhism, etc? If you utilize the same reasoning and choose the unbiased scholar in each instance, as you very well should, why make an exception only for Christianity? People who study a concept in which they have no emotional investment are going to offer more reliable conclusions than those who want the concept to yield a specific result. The decision in each case should be easy.

Scholars who began with no emotional investments in Christianity present the most unbiased conclusions on Christianity simply because they are more open during their studies to accept evidence that contradicts their tentative conclusions. Just as the used car salesperson will be hesitant to acknowledge and relay information that is damaging to the quality of his vehicles, the Christian scholar will be hesitant to acknowledge and relay information that is damaging to the veracity of his religion. We have no reason to think that belief in Christianity provides a special insight into the veracity of it because every religion can make a parallel claim. The opinions of individuals with ego involvement, emotional investments, or vested interests in the outcome of a debatable issue are less likely to change when confronted with new information because people have an innate inclination to seek only evidence that confirms their pre-established beliefs. We can describe this phenomenon, termed confirmation bias, as the tendency to seek out answers that will confirm our beliefs and ignore answers that will not. Research has long established the presence of this phenomenon in persuasive psychology. Shermer put it best:

Most of us most of the time come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning…Rather, such variables as genetic predispositions, parental predilections, sibling influences, peer pressures, educational experiences, and life impressions all shape the personality preferences and emotional inclinations that, in conjunction with numerous social and cultural influences, lead us to make certain belief choices. Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weight them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational belief, regardless of what we previously believed. Instead, the facts of the world come to us through the colored filters of the theories, hypotheses, hunches, biases, and prejudices we have accumulated through our lifetime. We then sort through the body of data and select those most confirming what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that are disconfirming.[37]

According to Shermer, psychologists have discovered a process that people follow when given the task of selecting the right answer to a problem. Individuals (a) will immediately form a hypothesis and look only for examples to confirm it, (b) do not seek evidence to disprove the hypothesis, (c) are very slow to change the hypothesis even when it is obviously wrong, (d) adopt overly-simple hypotheses or strategies for solutions if the information is too complex, and (e) form hypotheses about coincidental relationships they observe if there is no true solution.[38] Moreover, by adopting these overly simple hypotheses and strategies for complex issues, we gain immediate gratification. Shermer elaborates:

Good and bad things happen to both good and bad people, seemingly at random. Scientific explanations are often complicated and require training and effort to work through. Superstition and belief in fate and the supernatural provide a simpler path through life’s complex maze.[39]

Cialdini provides a personal anecdote that exemplifies the beginning of this practice quite well:

I had stopped at the self-service pump of a filling station advertising a price per gallon a couple of cents below the rate of other stations in the area. But with pump nozzle in hand, I noticed that the price listed on the pump was two cents higher than the display sign price. When I mentioned the difference to a passing attendant, who I later learned was the owner, he mumbled unconvincingly that the rates had changed a few days ago but there hadn’t been time to correct the display. I tried to decide what to do. Some reasons for staying came to mind–‘I really do need gasoline badly.’ ‘This pump is available, and I am in sort of a hurry.’ ‘I think I remember that my car runs better on this brand of gas.’

I needed to determine whether those reasons were genuine or mere justifications for my decision to stop there. So I asked myself the crucial question, ‘Knowing what I know about the real price of this gasoline, if I could go back in time, would I make the same choice again?’ Concentrating on the first burst of impression I sensed, the answer was clear and unqualified. I would have driven right past. I wouldn’t even have slowed down. I knew then that without the price advantage, those other reasons would not have brought me there. They hadn’t created the decision; the decision had created them.[40]

People who begin with specific beliefs on an issue are highly unlikely to be persuaded by counterarguments, even when those arguments are greatly superior to the internal justifications for the previously established beliefs. Shermer reports that he has demonstrated this experimentally–with subjects ignoring, distorting, and eventually forgetting evidence for theories that they do not prefer. Moreover, as the degree to which the subjects internally justified their beliefs increased, so did the confidence of their positions.[41] With respect to religion, this phenomenon is certainly expected. Independent of the amount of influence and persuasion that Christians have absorbed, would we not expect the lukewarm followers to be far more reachable through logic and reason than the ardent ones? Petty and Cacioppo elaborate:

Social judgment theory emphasizes the importance of one additional factor in determining the amount of persuasion that a message will produce–the person’s level of ego involvement with the issue…Since involved persons have larger latitudes of rejection, they should be generally more resistant to persuasion than less involved persons, because any given message has a greater probability of falling in the rejection region for them.[42]

Our analysis of emotionally involved scholars should lead us to an important question in desperate need of an answer. What good is a researcher who will preclude viable possibilities and refuse to consider that his point of view may simply be wrong? If past research tells us that there are three hypothetical scientific disciplines capable of yielding a hypothetical cure for a hypothetical disease, would we ever trust a scientist who was indoctrinated since childhood to believe that only one of the three could produce a cure? Should we honestly believe that apologists for biblical inerrancy, who began with the notion of a perfect Bible, would readily consider the possibility of a textual error? Should we honestly believe that other biblical apologists, who began with the notion of an inspired Bible, would readily consider the possibility that their holy book is fundamentally flawed? Many of the top Christian apologists even admit that when the data conflicts with the text, we should trust the text.[43] So I ask, what’s the point in listening to them?

This is the problem with all religious apologists, regardless of the specific belief. They will begin by presuming certain premises to be true (e.g. talking donkey, man coming back to life, DNA changes via peeled branches,[44] moon splitting in half[45]) and mold an explanation to patch the apparent problem, no matter how insulting the explanation and the claim itself are to common sense.[46] Are these implausible solutions not the superficially confirming answers that doubting Christians want to find? This practice is how religions thrive in the age of scrutiny and reason.

I am not foolish enough to think that defenders of the Bible cannot find a “resolution” to any problem that I or other rationalists mention. It has been done a million times before, and it will be done a million times in the future. No skeptical author can offer anything that Christian apologists think they cannot answer. The consideration we need to give with respect to those answers is the likelihood of the offered explanation and how an unbiased, dispassionate individual would rule on the explanation. Is the suggestion a likely solution to the problem, or is it a way of maintaining predetermined apologetic beliefs? Since most staunch Bible defenders have already declared that nothing is going to change their minds (and the solutions to presented biblical complications often reflect this disposition), we must be highly suspicious of the intellectual honesty put forth toward the development of the apologetic solutions. After all, as we will see, there are even apologists for specific, contradictory schools of thought within Christianity itself. How could two groups of people consistently use two contradictory avenues of thought yet consistently arrive at the same answer unless the conclusion itself consistently preceded the explanation?

In short, either religious followers ignore evidence that is contradictory to their beliefs, or they superficially rationalize it. They interpret according to their preconceived notions and biases. When a skeptic points out a likely error, the Christian begins with the premise that it is not an error and then proceeds to defend by any means necessary what he is already convinced is the truth. Misguided believers often accomplish this intellectually dishonest defense by citing a biblical authority who may have been influenced and conditioned to a degree even greater than that of the Christian who is repeating it. After all, God wrote it, so it must be true–even if it violates common sense. Shermer provides a wonderful example of how a premature conclusion influences observations from those who are not even affected by indoctrination:

When Columbus arrived in the New World, he had a theory that he was in Asia and proceeded to perceive the New World as such. Cinnamon was a valuable Asian spice, and the first New World shrub that smelled like cinnamon was declared to be it. When he encountered the aromatic gumbo-limbo tree of the West Indies, Columbus concluded it was an Asian species similar to the mastic tree of the Mediterranean. A New World nut was matched with Marco Polo’s description of a coconut. Columbus’s [sic] surgeon even declared, based on some Caribbean roots his men uncovered, that he had found Chinese rhubarb. A theory of Asia produced observations of Asia, even though Columbus was half a world away.[47]

In the same manner that Columbus’ theory of Asia produced observations of Asia, I would suggest that a Christian’s theory of a divinely inspired Bible produces observations of biblical veracity. All of the observations tend to make sense to the believer once the faulty premise is accepted. It is human nature to base explanations on premature conclusions, but knowing that it is human nature to do so allows us to think outside the box and subsequently consider uncomfortable possibilities.

As a terrific religious example of confirmation bias, Sagan provides his readers with data for miraculous healings attributed to the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France. The Catholic Church recognizes less than a hundred miraculous healings over the past 150 years, but they claim that these recoveries are proofs of supernatural intervention. The spontaneous remission rate of cancer, on the other hand, would accumulate a hundred such “miracles” in a population far smaller than those who have actively sought a cure from the Virgin Mary. “The rate of spontaneous remission at Lourdes seems to be lower than if the victims had just stayed home. Of course, if you’re one of the [survivors], it’s going to be very hard to convince you that your trip to Lourdes wasn’t the cause of the remission of your disease.”[48] If you have been indoctrinated to believe in the reasonable possibility of your hypothesis beforehand, and you get the result you are expecting, an explanation of your bad reasoning isn’t going to convince you that a miracle did not occur. You believed in miracles from the start, sought a way to obtain one for yourself, and never considered the possibility of an alternative explanation. Preconceptions make all the difference.

The importance of the fact that religious apologists were often indoctrinated with outlandish beliefs from childhood simply cannot be overstated. This is why Christians must excuse me for wanting authorities, if they must constantly appeal to them, who have started with minimal religious influence in their environment. Practice of religion clouds judgment; understanding of religion does not. In the same vein, if an atheist represses evidence for God, he is committing the same mistake as the Christian who represses evidence against God. Someone who has been convinced since childhood that God does not exist is of no better use to us than a person who has been convinced since childhood that he does. The trouble for members of the religious side, however, is that the vast majority of disbelievers were not heavily influenced with hostility toward Christianity during childhood. In fact, most were once believers. Even with years of reinforcement from the environment working against them, the number of people leaving religion greatly outweighs the number joining it.[49] Uninfluenced people rarely join Christianity because they recognize the absurdity of it just as easily as a Christian recognizes the absurdity of Wicca, Hinduism, or any other religion that is not closely related to his own.

Very, very rarely do we see experts skilled in skepticism become religious. You might hear of apologists claiming that they were once atheists, but these claims are highly dubious and depend on the specific quality of atheism. If we are speaking of the classical definition of having no specific beliefs or disbeliefs, the point of claiming a conversion is moot because they lacked familiarity with the subject. Their inability to provide skeptics with remotely reasonable arguments for their conversions lends credence to this position.[50] Conversely, there are scores of well-known skeptics who are former ministers with doctorates in religious studies. Unlike a person who would have been instilled with atheism since birth, these skeptics are not experiencing any detectable psychological glitches that drive their defense of freethinking atheism/agnosticism/deism. A lack of a belief based upon a known lack of evidence is not the same as a lack of a belief based upon being told there is a lack of evidence. Freethinkers did not earn their name by starting with no influence from their parents, their peers, and their society; they typically fought their way through it.

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Some of my Christian readers have provided examples that perfectly demonstrate my position that many cannot differentiate a biased conclusion from an unbiased one. The most comical of which was a hypothetical verbal exchange between two individuals that an apologist named Jim and Bob. In his example, Jim informed Bob that Bob’s mother was a prostitute, to which Bob offered a vehement denial. Jim then concluded that Bob was wrong simply because Bob was biased toward loving his mother and did not want to accept the rational conclusion about her line of work.

This example was somehow supposed to parody my argument that bias prevents religious people from impartially weighing evidence. This apologist’s interpretation of my position was greatly disappointing because it did not have any bearing on the process of weighing and validating known evidence to draw a conclusion–much less a conclusion on a matter with extreme emotional significance attached. As the verbal exchange between Jim and Bob does not afford the opportunity to weigh evidence, it is irrelevant to the issue of how bias can interfere with rational decision-making. Of course, with no evidence to offer, Bob’s opinion, due to his presumed familiarity with his mother’s activities, is going to trump Jim’s opinion.

Consider, however, a situation in which Jim actually saw the evidence that Bob’s mother was a prostitute. Suppose that Jim saw a police video of Bob’s mother clearly propositioning men for financial gain. In this scenario, there can be several obstacles for Bob to accept Jim’s story readily. Perhaps Bob's mother raised him to believe that she was an engineer or a member of some other socially acceptable profession. Perhaps his mother always told Bob elaborate stories about her engineering projects. Like many people, Bob does not approve of prostitution and believes his mother would never engage in such activities. Bob loves his mother and has great respect for her, but he has no respect for prostitutes. Considering all of these factors, the notion that she has been working as a prostitute obviously does not sit well with Bob. It is only natural that he is going to strive to vindicate his mother. It is highly unlikely that Bob is going to weigh the evidence objectively and render a dispassionate verdict.

Once Jim shows Bob the video, uneasy feelings are going to stir within Bob and drive him to create possible scenarios that would explain what he has seen. Perhaps it is a scripted movie; perhaps it is a practical joke; perhaps the woman only looks like her; perhaps his mom has a long-lost twin sister. As far as Bob is concerned, any one of these scenarios is more likely to be factually correct than what the evidence plainly indicates because the evidence directly contradicts Bob’s core beliefs of his mother having a different profession. Bob must ask himself if it is truly more likely for his mother to have a long-lost twin sister than it is for her to have deceived him out of fear of ridicule. He must decide how a dispassionate person would rule on the evidence.

Bob’s bias prevents him from accepting the most rational conclusion on his mother’s occupation. In short, Bob has an enormous emotional investment that renders his conclusions much less reliable because he does not want his mom to be a prostitute. Jim, on the other hand, is thoroughly dispassionate and does not care about Bob’s mother one way or the other. We should therefore consider Jim more reliable than Bob on the subject at hand because Jim is able to view the evidence without bias. The most likely conclusion, given the weight of the evidence, is that she works as a prostitute.

As this example relates to biblical study, Bob would be the religious scholar who has been told by his peers, his parents, his mentors, and his society for as long as he can remember that the Bible is a sacred book. Jim would be the secular scholar who has no emotional investment in the Bible and has recently stumbled upon overwhelming evidence and a number of solid arguments that indicate its complete lack of reliability. Just as the apologist will invent unlikely scenarios to explain the new evidence (and we will see many such examples), Bob has invented unlikely reasons why the evidence is not what it seems. It will be extremely difficult for Bob to accept Jim’s story, just as it is extremely difficult for a Christian to accept evidence against the Bible’s reliability. If the video were of anyone other than Bob’s mom, Bob would have no problem concluding that the woman was engaged in prostitution. Correspondingly, if the evidence were against any religion other than Christianity, the Christian apologist would have no problem seeing how the evidence was detrimental to that religion.

Even with this demonstration in mind, biblical apologists will continue to protest such an inevitable conclusion because they claim that nonbelievers also have biases that prevent them from drawing rational conclusions. This is no doubt true on occasion, but apologists cannot deny the existence of a great disparity between skeptics and believers. How many religious skeptics actually have emotional investments with atheism, and how important is that lack of belief to them? How many religious believers have spent their lives observing their sacred belief systems, and how deep do those emotional bonds run? There simply can be no comparison between the levels of importance placed on the respective beliefs.

I have no emotional attachment, ego involvement, or confirmation bias toward relatively minute biblical inconsistencies, such as whether or not there is a contradiction about the permissibility of public prayer.[51] If the evidence pointed away from my current position, and it seemed as though I had made an error in judgment, I would have no problem in admitting so. My world does not come crashing down around me when I am wrong. There are several passages that I previously believed were erroneous or contradictory, and I had no problem letting them go once I found a sufficient (or at least a vaguely plausible) explanation. The passages that I continue to regard as contradictions do not have a known feasible rectification, and it will take an enormous philosophical rethinking to demonstrate otherwise. In great contrast to my outlook, an apologist of biblical inerrancy cannot allow even the smallest of problems to enter the text because each one destroys the whole foundation of infallibility. Thus, as Bob invented unlikely scenarios to protect his deepest convictions, so will the apologist.

The thought processes of liberal Christian scholars who uphold the Bible but realize its limitations from human authorship are not much different. Instead of premises based around inerrancy, their convictions are often built around an unalterable foundation. While they might accept that there is a historical inaccuracy in one passage, a difference of author opinion in another, and a scientific absurdity in a third, the idea that the Judeo-Christian God never existed is an inconsiderable position because it conflicts with the foundation that has likely been in place since childhood. While they believe that mistakes, contradictions, cruelties, and absurdities are human reflections of an infallible god, they never seriously consider the ramifications of an infallible god that would allow a great measure of mistakes, contradictions, cruelties, and absurdities to be his textual reflection. It is much more sensible to say that a perfect being had absolutely nothing to do with the Bible, but since they prematurely used their conclusion as a premise, these Christians will not seriously consider such a possibility. A dispassionate outlook is an indispensable necessity when in search of the truth. Religious scholars who began as religious believers lack that critical component.

It is an inescapable reality that the vast majority of people who have spent a great deal of time studying the Bible believe it is the word of God. While stating that 90 percent of experts agree with a given position is usually a valid point to make, it is a mere appeal to authority on its own. Should we then at least leverage some credibility to specific claims based on the position of the authorities? My answer is that it depends.

I am perfectly aware that the vast majority of experts in the history of the Ancient Near East will back positions that are beneficial to Christianity–but that is because the vast majority of experts in the history of the Ancient Near East were born in a Christian society. The majority of those who will back the Qur’an were born in an Islamic society. The majority of those who will back the Torah were born in a Jewish society. We can best predict the distribution of experts on a highly emotional issue by evaluating biases toward their respective predetermined conclusions, not by weighing the evidence.

My claim of bias refers not only to the confirmation bias practiced by the experts, but to the affiliation bias of the sample as well. People who have an interest in pursuing knowledge of the history of Christianity are most certainly those who have already been indoctrinated with the importance of it. If they believe in Christianity ardently enough to pursue a career from it, they are unquestionably more likely to interpret evidence so that it is favorable to their preconceived notions. Should it come as any surprise that the vast majority of experts in any religion believe in the very religion that they study, even though no religious belief is even close to holding a majority opinion in the world? Christians make up 33 percent of the world, yet 90 percent of experts in Christianity probably practice it. Muslims make up 21 percent of the world, yet 90 percent of experts in Islam probably practice it. Mormons make up far less than 1 percent of the world, yet 90 percent of experts in Mormonism probably practice it.[52] I could continue with Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Jainism, Shintoism, etc., but I trust that I have made the point that the scholars long believed in their respective religions before they ever studied them in depth.

If one wishes to argue that the number of Christian scholars is disproportionately larger than that of other religions, we need only remind ourselves that most religions are not in the business of defending their claims and proselytizing potential converts through structured argumentation. Hindus and Buddhists generally do not feel the obligation to convert others or threaten them with eternal punishment for not accepting their respective positions. The distribution of religious scholars might also parallel the availability of such studies within each region. Religious believers in impoverished areas of the world are more likely to be concerned with feeding their families than building advanced universities for studying the intricacies of their beliefs using Western methods.

As for confirmation bias, it is clear that apologists of every religion begin with the conclusion that their scriptures are true and work backwards to find the supportive evidence. They are not interested in the most likely conclusion that they can draw from the evidence, but rather the most likely conclusion that does not invalidate their beliefs. We can say with unflinching near-certainty that if Christian apologist A were born with religion X instead of Christianity, Christian apologist A would instead be just as confident that religion X was the correct belief. There are countless apologists for every religion who claim to be able to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that each of their respective, contradictory belief systems is true. If 90 percent of scholars studying Christianity agree with a position on a hypothetical dichotomy that favors Christianity, I would make the bet every time that roughly 90 percent of the scholars came into the field as Christians. The opinion of such authorities, who began with a certain conclusion instead of analyzing the evidence to reach that conclusion, cannot be trusted simply because they are authorities. Conclusions based upon evidence are important; conclusions based upon evidence that has been interpreted to support an a priori assumption are what we should take with a handful of salt.

Rightfully so, I put little stock in the opinions of people who began studying Christianity years after they accepted the existence of a talking donkey. If we brought in an intelligent, rational group of people who were never indoctrinated, who were never even exposed to the idea of religion, and asked them to become experts in the ancient history of the Near Middle East, I would be extremely confident that it would be the unanimous consensus of the group that the Bible is bunk. They would not be subjected to the centuries of aura and mystique that society has placed on the Bible, and there is absolutely nothing in the book that would impress critically thinking dispassionate outsiders. To them, the Bible would be just another book in the mythology section of the library. You simply cannot trust those with huge emotional investments to be objective on critical issues.

Not only does the problem of experts with premature conclusions reach outside of Christianity, it continues outside of religion. Think of other fields of study that skeptics and rationalists regard as mythical. For example, consider UFOs. What percentage of people who are UFO experts believe that UFO sightings are evidence of flying saucer-shaped vehicles piloted by gray aliens? I have not been able to find a statistic on the question, if such a study has even been undertaken, but should we not feel confident that the vast majority of UFO experts are UFO apologists? People with such interests will naturally flock to such fields, initiating their studies with the determination to validate their unusual beliefs, continuing with the notion that seemingly inexplicable phenomena have radical solutions, and striving to convince people of their outlandish beliefs. The problem is multiplied for religion because we must appreciate the much greater impact that society has on reinforcing an expert’s belief in a personal god compared to an expert’s belief in UFO visits, as well as the overwhelming elevation of emotion and identity that experts have invested in religion compared to UFOs.

Just like the biblical defenders who are prone to practice confirmation, UFO apologists do not pay much attention to evidence and explanations that debunk their beliefs; they find ways of making it consistent. Since they are not interested in simple, rational explanations for sightings–just as religious believers are not interested in simple, rational explanations for miracles–they begin with the premise that the sighting is authentically alien–just as religious believers begin with the premise that the miracle is authentically divine–and mold explanations without breaking their foolish premise.[53]

Have you ever seen the pseudoscientific techniques and equipment used on television shows that delve into the world of ghost hunting? Like the Young Earth Creationists who inappropriately use carbon dating on living organisms in an attempt to discredit the method,[54] these ghost hunters will determine that unusual electromagnetic fields present in old houses, typically caused by bad wiring, are spirits of the deceased looking for someone among the living to avenge their deaths. While this ghost hunting process may seem foolish to discerning Christian readers, it is no different from Christian scholars using ridiculous apologetic and hermeneutical studies to eliminate obvious textual inconsistencies. The answers are obvious, but they aren’t the answers that they want. In each discipline, researchers ignore the simple explanation while advancing the interesting explanation that in turn advances the preconceived notion.

We can say the same for those who promote cryptozoology, gambling systems, mind reading, paranormal beings, astrology,[55] etc. The believers have the desire to become the experts; disbelievers have no real interest in the matter. Thankfully, you will occasionally find rationalists dedicated enough to devote some time to explain that glowing spherical objects in ghostly photographs are just illuminated dust particles, memories of alien abductions are the result of sleep paralysis, and tales of vengeful gods who demand to be worshipped are remnants of ancient folklore. These rationalists, who have studied with great interest but without preconceived notions, are the ones who offer natural explanations for unusual phenomena.

There is every compelling reason to believe that average people who take the time to learn both sides of the debate, and who did not enter with interest in the paranormal, will agree with the naturalistic explanations offered by skeptics. The skeptic, because he has no emotional investment in Bigfoot, will eventually conclude that the creature is based upon myth since the evidence does not support the claims of the believer. Despite the opinion of the objective skeptic, and with no good evidence in favor of the existence of Bigfoot, the believer is going to continue believing what he wants to believe, thanks in part to dubious evidence and crippled thinking skills. The Bigfoot enthusiast will not listen to reason because he convinced himself long ago of the veracity of his beliefs. Otherwise, he will have to accept that he wasted his life on nonsense–and who wants to come to terms with that?

To someone who has never heard of the Judeo-Christian God or the American Bigfoot, the nature of each should be no different. Since no special privilege has been bestowed incessantly upon either entity, debunking the existence of one should be no more difficult than debunking the existence of the other. Intelligent believers in each, however, often pose a problem because they are extremely gifted at coming up with ridiculous scenarios that maintain their increasingly ridiculous proposals. Likewise, intelligent apologists are quite skillful at making an argument seem valid when a critical eye can tell that it is not. I see the solution to this problem, not as a matter of debunking those ridiculous explanations that believers offer, but rather as a matter of exploring the best options to make them appreciate the underlying reasons for their beliefs. Once this is accomplished, the foolishness of the defense should eventually become apparent. Appreciating the absurdity of the Judeo-Christian God is a simple task for an outsider; similarly convincing a crowd who has believed in a talking snake since they were children proves much more challenging.

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There can be a tendency within us to make the erroneous assumption that a large volume of repetitious material that defends a certain proposition somehow increases the validity of the proposition. Many Christians have made the mistaken assumption that there must be something legitimate about the religion due to the large number of books promoting and defending it. This outlook borders on the logical fallacy of arguing by numbers. Of course, we should apply the same rule to disbelievers and non-Christian authors. If a million people repeat what I have written in this book, the statements are no more valid than they were when I wrote them. The validity of the statements rests entirely upon how well someone can demonstrate them as factual.

The importance of this point is that religious veracity is not a matter of deciding which major world religion with widespread publication is the right one. Circumstances independent of the veracity of those religions’ claims created the current distribution of observation. Fundamental beliefs in aggressive conversion, rapid changes in social structure, and localized advances in information technology all certainly play a role in the availability of literature that supports a particular viewpoint on a global debate.[56] All things equally considered, any of the ancient religions might be correct. It is not logically sound to disqualify a belief system from consideration as the correct one just because a very small population observes it. Conquering and converting for several centuries might very well increase the number of adherents, but these methods do not increase the likelihood of the conquerors having the correct religion. Since the number of followers of a religion has never been (and probably never will be) empirically demonstrated to correlate with the veracity of that religion, Christianity is just as likely to be true from the onset as Jainism, for example. Again, there are religious scholars of every belief system who contend that they can prove the veracity of each of their respective religious beliefs. There is simply no consensus among unbiased scholars as to which, if any, makes the most reasonable claims. It is a great intellectual dishonesty to think that your religion has “something to it” simply because it has the highest number of authors who support its veracity.

There is further difficulty in accepting the veracity of Christianity based partly upon these books. While I have already demonstrated the illogical methods through which the overwhelming majority of experts come to accept the divinity of the Bible, it is also worth noting that many Christian authors obtain doctorates and other titles from diploma mills in part to increase their audiences’ perception of credibility.[57] Petty and Cacioppo offer a study in which an audience “agreed more with statements attributed to respected and trusted sources, such as Abraham Lincoln, than with the same statements when they were attributed to nonrespected, nontrusted sources, such as Vladmir Lenin.”[58] Cialdini reports that people will even view someone as taller when they have an official title because height is often associated with reliability.[59]

People are persuaded to a greater extent, quite understandably, by a person who they perceive to have more expertise on a subject.[60] It would be reasonable to assume further that people would similarly find an argument more persuasive when written by someone who lists their formal title as opposed to someone who omits it. I would never argue that it is a bad practice to consider arguments more heavily when they are from authorities, but many diploma mill graduates have taken advantage of this finding. I can think of no better illustration than a recent episode of The Simpsons, in which creationists have gone to court in order to fight for the opportunity to teach their nonsense in public schools. When a witness for the plaintiffs is asked for his title, he trumpets, “I have a Ph.D. in Truthology from Christian Tech” to the awes of the jury.[61] Due to such widespread manipulation, I have decided to omit my formal title, gained from eight years of post-secondary education, from the cover of the book. I will let my arguments stand on their own merit.

Petty and Cacioppo elaborate on the effectiveness of one-sided messages targeted toward those with confirmation bias. Such communications are effective on those who have made pre-determined conclusions on the issue in question and those who know very little about it. I have found that a solid majority of religious believers fit both descriptions quite well. Two-sided message, on the other hand, are often persuasive to audience members who are well-versed on the issue and have the intellectual curiosity to be persuaded in either direction. Furthermore, commercial advertisements (in our situation, apologetics) often utilize one-sided messages on an audience when the product (correspondingly, the religion) is well-liked, widely consumed, has few competitors, and enjoys loyal customers.[62] All four qualities can easily be applied to Christianity in America.

DISSONANCE

As we have seen, people will often acquire their religious beliefs in illogical fashion, primarily through childhood indoctrination, and justify those beliefs using illogical methods, notably by relying on faulty sources. The reality, however, is that from time to time, conflicting information will be unavoidable. Human beings passionately strive to remain free from internal conflict because there is a strong tendency to maintain consistency among the elements of our cognitive systems. This motivation is inseparable from Bob’s uneasy feeling that drove him to explain the video of his mother prostituting. It is provoked by cognitive dissonance, which the mind has the innate tendency to eliminate as quickly as possible.

The founder of Cognitive Dissonance Theory compared the psychological drive to physiological hunger.[63] Just as hunger is a motivation to eat and rid oneself of the hunger, dissonance is a motivation to explain inconsistency and rid oneself of the dissonance. Explanations, therefore, work toward satisfying dissonance just as nutrients work toward satisfying hunger. He suggested three modes that we use to rid ourselves of cognitive dissonance.

1) An individual can alter the importance of the original belief or new information. Suppose that you believe in the Judeo-Christian God. If someone presents evidence that contradicts your belief, you can alleviate the dissonance by deciding that the existence of God is not important to you or that the new information on his existence is irrelevant because the debate falls outside of human understanding. Encountering the former is rare, but we see the latter on occasion when discussing aspects of religion, particularly when an apologist for biblical inerrancy finally surrenders to the idea that the Bible might not be perfect. As one can decide that an inerrant Bible is not a necessity for believing in God, the question of inerrancy becomes moot. Note that this avenue does not necessarily resolve the discrepancy, but instead relegates it to a matter of non-importance–a move that successfully eliminates the uneasy feelings.

2) An individual can change his original belief. Suppose again that you believe in the Judeo-Christian God. If someone presents evidence that contradicts your belief, you can also alleviate the dissonance by deciding that the information is correct and your previous belief was premature. We almost never see this in matters of religion because of the perceived level of importance that childhood indoctrination has placed upon Christianity. Someone who cares very little about religion, on the other hand, is more likely to be persuaded by the veracity of the argument.

3) An individual can seek evidence that is critical of the new information. Suppose yet again that you believe in the Judeo-Christian God. If someone presents evidence that contradicts your belief, you can also alleviate the dissonance by convincing yourself that the new information is invalid. Needless to say, this is what we usually see in matters of religion. Since religious people do not want to trivialize or change their beliefs, finding information that supports the original belief and/or information that brings the new evidence into question is the quickest method to eliminate the cognitive dissonance. Therefore, cognitive dissonance primarily drives confirmation bias. We will thus consider this phenomenon for the remainder of the section.

It makes perfect sense for an individual to want to study the issue in question when a conflict arises, but unfortunately, we often fall victim to confirmation bias and use illogical reasoning to rid ourselves of the conflict when it manifests on important issues. In situations where the information cannot support our decisions, such as the undeniable reality that we have based our religious affiliations primarily on environmental cues (without any real knowledge of other religions), we often resort to methods that will increase the attractiveness of our decisions and decrease the attractiveness of the unchosen alternatives.

Petty and Cacioppo cite a number of studies in which subjects utilize the practice of spreading the attractiveness of two contrasting decisions, even when there are no objective facts on which to base the reevaluations of the alternatives. People simply become increasingly sure of their decisions after they have made them by “rationalizing one’s choice of alternatives, [which] serves to reduce the cognitive dissonance produced by foregoing the good features of the unchosen alternative and accepting the bad features of the chosen alternative.”[64] When it comes to religion, a believer will defend his faith and attack the alternatives in part simply because he has already rendered a decision on the matter.

Furthermore–and this is where the strength of the motivation kicks into overdrive–Petty and Cacioppo explain that the effects of cognitive dissonance and the subsequent practice of confirmation bias increase as the positions between the two beliefs diverge and the perceived importance of establishing a position grows.[65] Could any two positions be in sharper contrast than the existence and nonexistence of God? Could any dilemma be more important to the Christian than whether or not God exists? It naturally follows that questions on the issue of God’s existence provoke the most cognitive dissonance within those who are deeply involved in the issue. As this debate generates the greatest amount of cognitive dissonance, it naturally follows that people are increasingly willing to accept explanations that alleviate the uncomfortable feelings and decreasingly willing to consider disconfirming arguments. As the uneasiness becomes more powerful, people become more willing to surrender to whatever arguments are offered–just as when hunger becomes more powerful, people become more willing to eat whatever food is offered. This will subsequently lead to highly illogical justifications for maintaining highly important beliefs.

Imagine the contrasting levels of cognitive dissonance generated in the following two scenarios of a married economist with a 5 percent failure rate on private financial predictions:

For the only time in his life, the economist publicly proclaims the wisdom of investing in a certain mutual fund, based on his professional understanding that the value of the fund will increase quickly and dramatically. However, his trusted private detective friend tells him that he is almost certain that he spotted a secret earnings report, which stated that the value of the fund will immediately fall 50 percent. A moderate amount of cognitive dissonance is generated in this individual because his failed understanding might cost him his reputation as a reputable economic forecaster. The economist has three options for eliminating the dissonance: he can convince himself that the decrease in value is irrelevant to his status; he can accept that he is not really an economic expert; or he can convince himself that the new information presented to him by his friend is wrong, and he is therefore still an economic expert. It is clear that the last avenue yields the most desirable results. From our understanding of confirmation bias, he will likely want to confirm his original belief by finding a way to convince himself that his friend is wrong.

In addition, after having been faithfully married to his wife for twenty years and having absolutely no reason to distrust her, our economist is told something else by his trusted private detective friend. The detective is almost certain that he spotted the economist’s wife in a hotel room with another man while on an unrelated assignment. A large amount of cognitive dissonance is generated in this individual because his perception of being a good husband is of higher personal importance than his perception of being an expert in the economy. He has three options for eliminating the dissonance: he can convince himself that his wife’s infidelity is irrelevant to his standing as a good husband; he can decide that she cheated because he has not been a good husband; or he can convince himself that the information presented to him by his friend is wrong, and he is therefore still a good husband. It is clear that the last avenue again yields the most desirable results. From our understanding of confirmation bias, he will likely want to confirm his original belief by finding a way to convince himself that his friend is wrong.

The economist is now battling with two pieces of discomforting news. The issue now becomes which conflict he will be more likely to resolve by accepting the idea that his friend was mistaken. Since the perceived difference in his potential career status is not as important as the perceived difference in his potential husbandry status, I would strongly argue that he will likely sooner believe that his friend was mistaken on his second claim than his first, even though this judgment is contrary to his own field of expertise.[66]

The economist will pursue methods to invalidate the new information, not based on the unlikelihood of the new information, but rather on how much he dislikes the new information. If our subject were a completely rational individual who stuck to the facts, it should be much harder for him to accept the information on the investment than the information on his wife. He is wrong on economic forecasts only 5 percent of the time, and given the nature of his unique declaration, he no doubt committed an extraordinary amount of time to researching the mutual fund. Being faithfully married for twenty years barely makes him an average husband, and studies have shown that over one-half of all American marriages likely experience some sort of infidelity.[67]

Because of his greater bias for wanting confirmation of his wife’s fidelity, he will seek reasons, many of them highly unlikely, for the new information to be erroneous. Being convinced of a comfortable belief is of much higher priority than coming to an objective conclusion based solely on the facts. Despite the possibility of tangible evidence pointing to the conclusion of his wife’s infidelity, he still may not be fully convinced. He may need to hear his wife’s confession personally to believe the story–and even then, he may briefly remain in a state of denial. The new information on his economic prediction, on the other hand, he will likely not take so personally. The stronger the conviction in question, not necessarily the more unlikely the possibility, the stronger the resistance against contradicting evidence will be.

Now imagine the level of dissonance he would feel after receiving information that is contradictory to his core religious beliefs that have served him throughout life. These solid ideas tell him that there is no good reason to accept the existence of his god. His parents and grandparents are not in heaven; the man who kidnapped his missing child might never be punished; no one is really listening when he prays out of desperation; complete justice is an idealistic fantasy; eternal happiness does not exist. While one-half of all people will experience marital infidelity, at least two-thirds of all people in the world have the wrong religion.[68] Thus, the likelihood of an expert botching a once-in-a-lifetime economic prediction is low (5%), the possibility of experiencing marital infidelity is relatively high (50%), and the prevalence of being born into an incorrect religion is widespread (67+%). Nevertheless, he becomes increasingly less willing to believe the outcomes even as the chances of those outcomes become increasingly probable. Cognitive dissonance, due to individual preference, will cause him to accept increasingly unlikely explanations as long as he uses them to prevent having to accept increasingly undesirable consequences. When cognitive dissonance becomes more and more involved in thought processes, decision making is driven less and less by the facts.

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The methods chosen to eliminate cognitive dissonance in unfamiliar territory do not necessarily need to be complex, especially when tensions are high and stress inhibits proper judgment. While some bewildered people will quickly manufacture outlandish explanations to eliminate the feelings from the dissonance, others will simply appeal to the positions of authorities. Very rarely will people decide to undertake a meticulous fact-finding exercise in order to understand the best reasons for each position when their most sacred beliefs are being questioned.

Many people with whom I discuss the Bible in person will put the method of appealing to authority into practice as a first line of defense. If I cite a foundational problem with their religion, such as why an all-knowing creator cannot co-exist with free will,[69] they will often report later that they received satisfaction after finding a wealth of material in books or webpages that justified their original beliefs. Perhaps they came across an individual with some sort of degree who runs a website chocked full of articles that offer a long, complex argument as to why my suggested difficulty is nothing to worry about. The previously troubled Christians might not peruse, comprehend, or even read the entire argument offered on that website, but the mere fact that the article exists for public review satisfies them that there is a reasonable answer to my suggestion. Never mind the fact that anyone can probably cite an authority who agrees with a particular position, especially when it comes to interpreting religion. Due to the innate bias to confirm what we already believe, the article surely is not going to be scrutinized or tested against a rebuttal. The Christians were interested in feeling comfortable with their beliefs, not in dispassionately evaluating them. While such actions will successfully alleviate the uncomfortable feeling accompanying the realization of conflicting information, the individuals experiencing these emotions have not actually rectified the problem. To the Christians, the invalid dispute is now gone; to everyone free of emotionally predetermined conclusions, the conflict still requires a logical and justifiable resolution.

Eliminating the cognitive dissonance is of foremost importance. People want to feel reassured that they are correct in their beliefs, especially when there is a lot of emotion, personality, history, and identity at stake. If those Christian were actually interested in the truth, they would analyze the article critically and thoroughly to see if it adequately addressed the points of my suggestion. But they are not questioning; they are defending. We have all taken the easy way out at some point, but freethinkers appreciate the intellectual dishonesty in such an approach and have already made a decision to follow the truth wherever it leads.

To evaluate the idea that involving topics arouse high levels of illogical thinking, consider a series of real world examples of religious followers being confronted with what ordinary people would consider damning evidence against their beliefs. The following is from Leon Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails:

The group was a private and cohesive band of individuals who believed that the world would end by flood before the sun rose on 21 December. This belief was based upon a “message” received from aliens on the planet Clarion by the group’s leader, Mrs. Keech. The aliens also indicated that they would use their flying saucer to save the members of the group on the eve of the flood. Following the flood, the group would be returned to earth to create a better world.

The eve of the great flood arrived. The eve turned to night, then to early morning. The aliens and flood failed to materialize, and the group was downcast. Suddenly, Mrs. Keech received another “message” from the aliens saying that the world had been spared because of their faith. Hearing this, the group members rejoiced, reaffirmed their faith in their purpose, and set out to recruit new members for the group. The undeniable disconfirmation of their beliefs left them not only unshaken, but more convinced of their truth than ever before. As illustrated in this case, people sometimes think, feel, and act in ways that don’t appear plausible. People sometimes hold or change attitudes despite the objective facts.[70]

This report is from an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology:

A southwestern evangelical Christian group believed that there was soon to be a devastating nuclear attack. One hundred three members of the group descended into bomb shelters so that they might survive the attack and build a better civilization. After forty-two days and nights in the bomb shelters, the members surfaced, accepting the fact that no nuclear attack had occurred as expected. But rather than accepting the obvious conclusion that they had erred in their prediction, group members proclaimed that their beliefs had been instrumental in stopping the nuclear attack.[71]

Consider a third story in which followers of a popular American religion are unconvinced that their beliefs are a sham, even when smacked in the face with hard evidence.

Joseph Smith purportedly translated The Book of Mormon, the holy text of the Latter-Day Saints, from golden tablets provided to him by an angel. He did not perform the translation by looking at the ambiguous text on the tablets, which incidentally no one else ever laid eyes upon, but rather by burying his head in his hat, staring at a rock that he placed inside, and using a spiritual medium to transcribe what he saw on the rock.[72] After completing 116 pages of translation, Smith loaned the pages to his scribe who either destroyed or lost them. The scribe was replaced, and the lost pages were never retranslated. Smith claimed that God forbade him to retranslate the lost pages because the ones who stole the manuscript planned to publish an altered version in order to discredit his ability to translate the golden tablets. Instead, Smith translated an abridged version out of the hat.

To anyone who was not indoctrinated with Mormon beliefs, it is clear that Smith could not retranslate the tablets because he could not remember the nonsense that he had made up and rattled off as he went along. The Church of the Latter-Day Saints commonly explains the obvious fraud by declaring that the decision was made by God and therefore unquestionable. Apologists for the Book of Mormon can no doubt defend this position to the satisfaction of its adherents, but because the rest of us were not indoctrinated to accept the veracity of Smith’s translation, we see right through the smokescreen. The Mormons simply see the matter as a judgment from God, and this explanation is perfectly satisfactory to them because they are already believers. Outsiders, however, see the matter as God never having made such a declaration because Joseph Smith was lying or delusional. This defense is very similar to the Christian belief that arguments provided by nonbelievers are resolved by citing “the incomprehensible and mysterious ways of God.” Where the Mormon chooses not to question God’s decisions regarding the Book of Mormon, the outsiders (Christians and other non-Mormons) see their reasoning as an absurd alibi. Correspondingly, where the Christian chooses not to question “the incomprehensible and mysterious ways of God,” the outsiders (non-Christians) see their reasoning as an equally absurd alibi.

The explanations offered by Mrs. Keech and Joseph Smith relieve the uncomfortable dissonance generated in the believers immediately after external elements showed that the facts were inconsistent with their beliefs. I imagine that even most of the Christian audience is asking how the doomsday cults and Mormons could be so foolish as to not acknowledge the obvious, but I say to this Christian audience that the evidence against your own beliefs is every bit as strong. Jesus’ failed return prophecies (not to mention his resurrections and demonic exorcisms, among other absurdities) are no more deterring to Christians than alien/nuclear absences are to doomsday cults or translational hoaxes are to Mormons–simply because believers have accepted the veracity of each respective suggestion as the essential foundation for each respective belief. Just as the cult members used wild explanations for the failures of their outlandish predictions, Christian apologists offer lengthy speculations that the failed textual prophecies of Jesus returning to earth in the near future were a product of misunderstanding or mistranslations. Others even believe that Jesus already fulfilled the predictions sometime in the first century.[73] Never mind that there is no rational evidence for either suggestion; all that matters is maintaining an internally justifiable belief in the Bible’s veracity. Anyone who has not been socially indoctrinated to accept the Bible’s veracity sees the clear mistake. The apologists for each belief were likely aspiring for the plausible or probable, but they reluctantly settled for the tenuously possible.

Consider a similar topic that arouses almost as much nonsense as religion–politics. One study performed just prior to the 2004 US Presidential Election enabled researchers to empirically demonstrate, using MRI scanning, that people who were strongly loyal to one candidate did not use areas of the brain associated with reasoning to resolve contradictory statements made by their candidate. The supporters instead relied upon regions of the brain associated with emotion to justify their personal allegiance with their candidate.[74] I could continue to cite similar studies that demonstrate irrational behavior from highly involved individuals for the remainder of this book, but I hope this will be sufficient to establish my point that people do not utilize dispassionate critical thought when justifying their most important beliefs. Human beings are highly emotional creatures who shun logic when something challenges our personal values.

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In addition to Cognitive Dissonance Theory, there are two other compatible and/or complementary theories currently floating amongst persuasive psychologists that may explain additional reasons why people provide illogical defenses for their beliefs. Impression Management Theory suggests that people increasingly stick by their decisions because consistency leads to social reward and inconsistency leads to social punishment.[75] In this case, a Christian may be inclined stick to his beliefs because his peers may frown upon an inconsistency if he changes his mind and decides, for example, that the Bible is not without flaw and that donkeys consequently have never talked.

Psychological Reactance Theory suggests that people increasingly stick by their decisions when others threaten the opportunity to express those decisions freely.[76] It is my opinion that this explains, in part, the boom of Christian beliefs in Rome during the infant years of the movement. While most religions were readily accepted and incorporated into Roman culture, Christian followers gained the disdain of authorities by refusing to worship emperors and attempting to convert others into doing the same. It should be obvious that this upset a number of Roman officials.

A lengthy discussion of the persecution and laws against Christianity in the Roman Empire is beyond the scope of this text, but consider two examples. Nero is often believed to have burned and crucified Christians for their beliefs.[77] Diocletian, in addition to burning and torturing Christians for their beliefs, ordered the destruction of Christian scriptures and places of worship.[78] Even for someone who knows next to nothing about persuasive psychology, it’s not difficult to imagine how people would become more dedicated to and firm in their beliefs when faced with such violent opposition. Petty and Cacioppo point out that people in such a situation are “driven to respond by performing the threatened behavior; counterarguing, often covertly, the reasons for and benefits of the restriction; and changing attitudes toward the various alternatives, particularly revealing more favorably the threatened or eliminated alternative.”[79] It is obvious that under such circumstances, any group will respond by dropping their relatively minor differences and uniting for a common cause. Others outside the group may then naturally desire what the authorities have forbidden and investigate the beliefs of the persecuted.

As the Roman Emperors openly punished people for observing Christianity, the findings of modern psychology indicate that this may have had the opposite effect of what the Emperors intended. We cannot ignore the ramifications of affecting people’s desires by denying them from what they might otherwise be indifferent to or requiring them to do what they might have done anyway. Cialdini reports several cases of outrage and increased rebellion in cases requiring residents of a town in Georgia to buy firearms, the banning of laundry phosphates in Miami, and the banning of speeches on university campuses.[80] In addition, there are the more popular cases of Prohibition in 1920s America, pornography regulation on the internet, the banning of certain books from libraries, and the scorn of religion in the Soviet Union. Thus, the overbearing punishments for observing the Christian religion in all certainty generated more interest in it and support for it. Furthermore, the ostracizing of Christians in the Roman Empire was a sharp reversal of religious freedom, a course much more likely to lead to revolt than the perpetual absence of religious freedom. Cialdini explains:

It is not traditionally the most downtrodden people–who have come to see their deprivation as part of the natural order of things–who are especially liable to revolt. Instead, revolutionaries are more likely to be those who have been given at least some taste of a better life. When the economic and social improvements they have experienced and come to expect suddenly become less available, they desire them more than ever and often rise up violently to secure them.[81]

THE JUSTIFICATION OF CONTRADICTION

Now that we have a rough explanation for why individuals hold their misguided beliefs, let us see how conditioning, bias, and dissonance come into play when defending those beliefs. We will do this with three examples of an apologist supporting his inerrancy beliefs by attempting to eliminate the presence of contradictions and inconsistencies in the Bible. Contrary to the opinion of the religious community, the average disbeliever does not base his decision to disregard the Bible on the presence of contradictions. After all, the Bible could be 100 percent free from contradiction, detectable error, historical anomaly, female oppression, animal cruelty, etc., but this does not mean that God has returned dead men to life, made donkeys talk, or that he is beyond ethical judgment for drowning the entire world. In my first book, I made the retrospectively unfortunate decision of offering a long list of major contradictions without elaborating much on why the presence of contradictions was important. Not that the long list is a bad thing of which to have a good appreciation, but it can get quite boring for people who are not interested in knowing everything about an admittedly boring book. Instead, I hope to illustrate the existence of contradictions with three examples and demonstrate what lengths defenders of the Bible will go to in order to maintain their predetermined perceptions of the Bible’s divine perfection.[82]

The first contradiction example involves a discrepancy of at least ten years between two gospel accounts on when Jesus of Nazareth was born. The more popular account of Matthew has King Herod alive at the time of Jesus’ birth.[83] We know from several reputable historical sources that Herod’s reign ended in or before 4 BCE.[84] Thus, according to Matthew, Jesus must have been born in or before 4 BCE.[85] However, Luke says that Mary was still with child during the time Quirinius was conducting a census as Governor of Syria.[86] According to relatively meticulous Roman history, Quirinius could not have carried out this census until at least 6 CE. Thus, according to Luke, Jesus must have been born in or after 6 CE. In order for the two accounts to be harmonious, Jesus had to be born before 4 BCE and after 6 CE: a contradictory feat that is impossible even for a supernatural being. The two accounts provide a ten-year discrepancy in need of a difficult resolution. This is the equivalent of two people disagreeing today on whether Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States when Bob Hope was born. The potential importance of Bob Hope, however, is nothing compared to that of the alleged son of God.

While it is true that we have increasingly accurate records in our modern society, it should not have been insurmountably difficult for biblical authors to remember a specific year when an individual was born because they tended to base their dates relative to concurrent events. If the author of Luke wanted to convey the year that we now understand as 4 BCE as the year of birth, he could have just as easily said that Mary was still with child during the time that Quintilius, not Quirinius, was Governor of Syria. Such a comparative detail can hardly become exaggerated by the passage of time. If, on the other hand, someone whimsically created the supernatural birth story decades after its setting and neglected to attach a definite time period, which is what we have very good reason to believe actually happened, we could anticipate such discrepancies. It is also important that we not forget that the gospel writers had the advantage of divine inspiration for maintaining consistency. What modern technology in timekeeping could possibly be more helpful in preventing complications in your writings than an omnipotent god’s assistance? Nevertheless, Christians would like the world to believe that Jesus was born during the distinctive incumbencies of King Herod and Quirinius.

To rectify this insurmountable problem, Christians initially proposed, without justification but much desperation, that Quirinius was a Syrian Governor twice. As the argument goes, in order for Luke to be consistent with Matthew, Quirinius held this phantom governorship sometime before 4 BCE. Here’s what we know from Roman history: Quintilius was Governor from 6 BCE to 3 BCE; Saturninus was Governor immediately before that from 9 BCE to 6 BCE; Titius was Governor immediately before that from 12 BCE to 9 BCE; and Quirinius, the Governor mentioned in Luke, didn’t obtain consulship until 12 BCE, making him ineligible to hold Syrian Governorship before that time. Furthermore, no one ever held the Governorship of Syria twice; Josephus and Tacitus, the two most important historians from the early Common Era, never mentioned Quirinius holding the post twice; censuses of provincial inhabitants were few and far between, making the “coincidence” of there being a census during Quirinius’ tenure far less likely; and there would be no reason for Quirinius to conduct a census prior to 6 CE because Judea wasn’t under Roman control until that time.[87]

Most Christian apologists have come to abandon this argument for good reason. Nevertheless, since the indoctrinated Christian often deems the Bible flawless before he ever opens it, he is convinced that there must be a self-satisfactory solution somewhere. A rational person would simply conclude that the text was in error, but the consequences of doing so are too detrimental to the inerrancy fundamentalists. Thus, the apologists must find a new “solution”…

The word Governor (Greek hegemoneuo) should have been translated as holding a command rather than specifically holding governorship.

In a vacuum, this is certainly an acceptable translation. However, many contextual problems still exist with this wild explanation. There is still no reason for Quirinius to conduct a census prior to 6 CE because Judea wasn’t under Roman control until that time; it makes little sense for the author of Luke to relate the era to an otherwise irrelevant figure when he could have just as easily mentioned the true Governor of Syria; Quirinius was assigned to fight in Galatia, not Syria, from 6 BCE to 1 BCE; such a rendition is in sharp contrast to the direct meaning of the passage and only derived ad hoc to superficially satisfy the contradiction; and secular scholars agree that the grammar of the passage does not support such a rendition.[88]

While this wild suggestion cannot be 100 percent invalidated using hard logic, it is only reasonable, given the overwhelming evidence, to conclude that the passages are contradictory. However, if you begin with the premise of biblical inerrancy, instead of dispassionately testing the book and arriving at that conclusion, it is only reasonable to believe that the apologetic suggestion is correct.[89] This is where premature conclusions and confirmation bias certainly come into play. In the minds of the believers, wild scenarios become more likely than reasonable conclusions. Tenuous possibilities that maintain inerrancy are more acceptable than probable explanations that do not. If the situation were reversed, and the doctrine of inerrancy required the meaning of Matthew to change in order to match what the text plainly states in Luke, you could bet your last dollar that the apologists would find a way to have King Herod in power ten years after his death.

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The Bible has a definite inconsistency on whether God looks favorably upon those who pray in public. Most churches observe public prayer in accordance with the (supposedly) divinely inspired author of Timothy who says, “I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands.”[90] However, Jesus specifically told his followers to refrain from this behavior: “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”[91] I will be the first to grant that the people who pray in public are not hypocritically doing so just to let others see them, but they are still violating a direct order given by Jesus to avoid prayer in public. Jesus was very clear in his desire of not wanting his true believers to have commonalties with the hypocrites who pray in public for counterfeit reasons. This is why he specifies that his followers should pray in secret.

A lesser-known online apologist[92] has raised a vehement objection to the idea that there is a contradiction about public prayer in the Bible. It is his position that Jesus is speaking in Matthew 6:5-6 against public prayer for the purpose of being noticed, but this is obviously not what an objective reader without a strong confirmation bias would conclude. Jesus was quite clear in the passage that he wanted people to pray in private. The whole notion of praying in public did not sit well with him because that is how the people who wanted to be seen chose to pray. Since Jesus wanted his believers to be nothing like the hypocrites, he ordered them to go into a state of privacy when they wanted to pray. It does not matter whether or not your prayers are genuine when praying in public, it is the act of praying in public that Jesus forbids in this passage. Pray privately, and you will be rewarded publicly. That is distinctly how Jesus said prayer should work.

It should be clear to dispassionate readers that the apologist has completely misunderstood and/or misinterpreted this passage, possibly through no conscious fault of his own, when he states that Jesus’ command is “an instruction against public prayer, done for the purpose of being noticed.” The command is in fact “an instruction against public prayer, because others do it for the purpose of being noticed.” If Jesus wanted to say, “Don’t pray in public for the purpose of being noticed, but it’s okay to pray in public if you aren’t doing it for that reason,” he would have said so. He did not. The apologist prays in public, has probably always done so, has always noticed others doing so, sees nothing wrong with it, and consequently feels that uncomfortable drive to make the text say something other than what it plainly says.

Although he does not need to attack my interpretation of the contrasting verse, he chooses to take that route as well. It is his position that First Timothy 2:8 is not a direct instruction for prayer. While this much is no doubt true, the author nevertheless expresses his hope that men pray everywhere. That desire would necessarily include him hoping that men would pray in public. One cannot logically satisfy the hope of a divinely inspired author of the Bible wanting us to pray everywhere, as the author of First Timothy expresses, without praying in public, which Jesus forbids.

Consider the dilemma in this fashion: A person reading only First Timothy would believe it was okay to pray in public, but a person reading only Matthew would know that Jesus forbade it. A person reading both would understandably become confused. This is a terrific example of the Bible’s inconsistency on a very important issue. The two passages are in no way complementary. If you merely believe in a somewhat divinely inspired Bible, not necessarily an inerrant one, ask yourself this question: If the authors of the Bible were divinely inspired, why does God inspire one man to record an encouragement for people to pray everywhere while he inspires another to strictly forbid it?

The interesting part of our exercise here is that the patent inconsistency is not even a major issue for Christians who have managed to gain a more progressive style of thought. It’s simply a matter of one fallible man making the mistake of saying something that he probably should not have said. However, this glaring inconsistency is a big deal to the apologist who defends the idea of inerrancy and cannot allow a single contradiction in the Bible. Thus, the text must be twisted in some fashion to fit with the premise of inerrancy.

The apologist later published a rebuttal to my response, and he took two indefensible steps while doing so. The first blunder is that he tries to make it sound as though I need First Timothy 2:8 to mean that we have to pray non-stop in every place under every circumstance. The apologist sarcastically proclaims, “Like this means Paul envisions people stopping while climbing down ladders, or doing surgery, or skiing down a slope, to pray!” I suspect the apologist knows on some level that I only need the passage to show that “praying everywhere” means that prayer must not necessarily be done in private. I can think of no reason why he would elect to make such accusations if he has any academic or intellectual integrity.[93] The apologist continues, “[Jason] Long merely tries to strain ‘everywhere’ into a physical location for the act of prayer, when the clearest meaning is that ‘everywhere’ modifies ‘men’ and that men are to then follow some mode not specified in Timothy.” This is a new argument that he did not bother to offer originally, but I suspect that on some level he saw the bankruptcy in his original position and felt the necessity to make a new one.

So we must now consider if the author meant to convey that he wanted “men everywhere to pray” as the apologist and the editors of 25 percent of the major Bible versions suggest–or “men to pray everywhere” as I and the editors of 75 percent of the major Bible versions suggest.[94] How exactly does the apologist determine that “the clearest meaning is that ‘everywhere’ modifies ‘men’?” We do not know because he provides no argument–only an assertion that it is “the clearest meaning.”

On the other hand, we are on solid ground to argue that the passage is a clear declaration of prayer policy because it tells not only where to pray, but also how to pray: “lifting up holy hands, without wrath or doubting.” I have even taken the time to consult three experts in ancient Greek, all of whom assure me that I have translated the verse properly.[95] According to them, the phrase everywhere (Greek en panti topo) is the recipient of the infinitive verb to pray (Greek proseuchesthai) and that it can, without question, only be rendered as “men to pray in every place.” Furthermore, the literal English translation, “I want therefore men to pray in every place,” is also consistent with the 405 CE Latin Vulgate of the New Testament (volo ergo viros orare in omni loco). I could belabor this relatively meaningless point further, but this is not the verse of the contradiction to which the apologist objects. Therefore, I will leave it up to the readers to consider the matter further. At the very least, however, does the realization that the issue is open to debate not smell of human fallibility in the writing? Could an all-powerful god not inspire an author to provide writing that is beyond dispute?

The second blunder in his response is that he accuses me of ignoring a supposed qualifier in Matthew 6:5 that allows public prayer. However, he is the one who completely ignores the meaning of Matthew 6:6, which is the verse with Jesus ordering people to pray in private because hypocrites pray in public. The apologist states, “Either ‘that they may be seen of men’ is missing from Long’s Bible; or else he thinks that extended pointless rambling will cover his error. None of this negates the presence of the clear qualifier of why: ‘to be seen of men.’ Thus public prayer for an altruistic purpose is not forbidden, no matter how much Long wishes to pretend that the qualifying phrase is not present.”

The apologist attempts to convey to his audience that his assertion is so unquestionably accurate that the only remaining explanation for my position is that my Bible is missing words. However, I am not the one who circumvents what the text clearly states. Jesus does not say it is okay to pray in public as long as it is not “to be seen of men.” He explains that hypocrites pray in public to be seen of men, then gives very specific instructions to pray in private in order not to be like the hypocrites. If the verse means what the apologist wants it to mean, Jesus’ entire exercise of ordering his followers into privacy before praying is useless, irrelevant, and without meaning. He would have just ordered them not to pray for hypocritical reasons and left it at that.

Suppose I state, “Politicians help impoverished people in the open to gain public approval. Don’t be like them. When you help impoverished people, do so anonymously because God can still see you and will reward you with public approval.” In no way can one honestly twist this to mean that I am endorsing or condoning the act of helping people in public as long as it is not for the purpose of public approval. I am giving a direct command to help people anonymously just as Jesus gave a direct command to pray in private. If Jesus had not given the specific order to go into private, one might be able to interpret the text to support the apologetic argument successfully, but such an overreaching agenda certainly does not reflect reality. It does not even rise to the level of tenuous possibility, much less probability or plausibility. Again, if Jesus wanted to say, “public prayer is okay as long as you aren’t doing it to be seen” as opposed to “pray in private,” he would have said so. He did not. The matter is not open for serious debate, but even if it were, does the opportunity for misinterpretation not smell once again of human fallibility in the writing?

–

Let’s now consider one of the most popular contradictions in the Bible. Shortly before the crucifixion, Jesus tells Peter that he will choose to disavow any knowledge of Jesus on three occasions. After these events manifest, a cock will crow to remind him of Jesus’ words. In the books of Matthew, Luke, and John, Jesus warns Peter that all three of his denials will take place before the cock crows.[96] In these three accounts, the situation unfolds exactly how Jesus predicted. The cock crows after, and only after, Peter’s third denial is made in accordance with what Jesus states, “the cock will not crow until you have denied me three times.”[97] However, the details are different in Mark. Here, we see Jesus warning Peter that he will deny their friendship three times before the cock crows twice.[98] Of course, this is exactly how the events play out in Mark.[99] The cock crows after the first denial and again after the third denial. At face value, this is an undeniable contradiction without a rational explanation. If Mark is correct, the cock must have crowed after the first denial–even though Jesus said, in the other three gospels, that it would not crow until after the third denial. If these three gospels are accurate, Mark is wrong because the cock could not have crowed until after all three of Peter’s denials. How does the apologist handle this one?

What it runs down to, in terms of weight of evidence, is that 14:30 and 14:72 are likely to have been part of Mark originally, whereas the key verse in 14:68 (“and the cock crew”) is not, and was likely added to make the fulfillment of Jesus’ prediction more exact.

In other words, God allowed someone to alter his perfect, divinely inspired word by adding a non-existent crowing. Mark 14:68, which takes place after the first denial but before the next two denials, reads, “But he denied, saying, I know not, neither understand I what thou sayest. And he went out into the porch; and the cock crew.” The apologist asserts that the last part of the verse, “and the cock crew,” was “added to make the fulfillment of Jesus’ prediction more exact.” When there can be no other solution, he claims that the Bible says something God did not want it to say. If a phrase gives him trouble, the apologist throws it out and justifies his best reason for doing so.

Since the apologist argues by assertion instead of argumentation, I will have to speculate on his reasoning. The duplicate crowing in Mark 14:68 (along with segments of dozens of other verses) do not appear in one of the two oldest (currently) discovered complete New Testament manuscripts. This fourth century manuscript, Codex Vaticanus, stands in contrast to other early extant manuscripts that contain both crowings, as well as all major English translations that chose to include them. As the apology stands, God apparently lets the majority of the world think for centuries that there was a crowing after the first denial–even though there really wasn’t. In short, the apologist is hardly arguing for weight of evidence, but more likely for the sake of maintaining inerrancy.[100]

This is confirmation bias in its finest hour. The apologist does not thoroughly scrutinize the Bible before drawing a conclusion on its infallibility; he does not consider for one second that the text might have an otherwise insignificant error; he begins with the premise of its infallibility and subsequently offers ways around its errors in order to remain consistent with his premise. What book could we not hold as infallible by employing such disingenuous methods? Practices like these render the idea of an inerrant text meaningless.

That said, what of the fact that the other gospels do not say “twice”? Strictly speaking, there is no contradiction in action, since of course if Peter denied before the cock crowed once, he also did it before the cock crowed twice!

And the same would be true when the cock crowed three, four, or seventy-two times, but the prediction in Mark says that the cock would crow twice for what later appears to be a clear textual reason. This apologist’s defense, on the other hand, is the rationalization we receive after he has removed whatever is inconvenient for his cause.[101]

In that light, I would suggest that Mark offers the original verbiage of the prediction (as might be expected, if Mark is recording from Peter), while the other gospels contain a modified and simplified oral tradition that follows the usual oral-tradition pattern.

If the author of Mark was indeed getting his information from Peter,[102] how is it that Peter’s guidance provided a more thorough account for the author of Mark than God’s divine inspiration did for the authors of Matthew, Luke, and John? God had to have known that, when combined, the gospels create a mess of the denial story. Is this subsequent confusion what we would expect from divine inspiration–or is it what we would expect from variance in fallible human memories?

A different apologist would later extend this argument by asserting that the second (and now only) crowing in Mark referred to the second crowing of the day, which was also the first crowing after the three denials. This apologist convinced himself that the first crowing of the day was a standard middle-of-the-night crowing that Matthew, Luke, and John decided not to count, even though most early manuscripts of Mark specifically tell us that the first crowing was after the first denial. This explanation is an ad hoc assertion for the sake of inerrancy that has never amounted to anything more than mere speculation. The supporting passage typically referenced is Mark 13:35, which states, “Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning.” It is my position that one must shun intellectual integrity to argue that the cockcrowing in this passage is referring to the middle of the night. Having grown up on a farm, I would not deny that a cock often crows throughout the day and night, but it has never been established that it crowed just once in the middle of the night and that this was understood to be the day’s first crowing. The cockcrowing should clearly be interpreted via its normal context as the early morning period that divides the nighttime from the daytime. The apologist also argued that the post-denials crowing was the second daily crowing, which is the supposed symbolic start of the day, and that this crowing is apparently what most people (but not Jesus) counted as the first (not the second) crowing of the day.[103] Therefore, the post-denials crowing can be counted as either the first crowing (due to supposed “modified and simplified oral tradition”) or the second crowing (due to supposed local understanding that the middle-of-the-night crowing was actually the first) and can then alternate between the two explanations as gospel circumstances require.[104]

Some apologists have argued instead that the cock crowed twice in succession following the third denial and that the second crowing was an “attention-getter.”[105] Other apologists have suggested that the first crowing actually did take place after the first denial, but that it shouldn’t count because Peter didn’t hear it.[106] Still others regard the expression of the cock crowing twice as a local idiom that was not to be taken literally.[107] Not all of these wild speculations can be right, but they can all certainly be wrong.

If we are to simply brush the textual connotations off as a disparity due to the simplified oral tradition found in three of the four gospels, why not just say that the story details themselves are different due to the same shortcomings of oral tradition?[108] Mark is internally consistent on the matter. Matthew, Luke, and John are internally consistent and consistent among each other on the matter. The only problem is that Mark is not consistent with the other three. The simplest answer is that the author of Mark made a simple error. The apologist, on the other hand, would have his audience believe four propositions: 1) Three of the gospels are “modified and simplified oral traditions” that do not fully explain the details. 2) The fourth gospel mentions that the cock crowed a second time without mentioning that the cock crowed a first time because the post-denials crowing just happened to be the second crowing of the day.[109] 3) The audience understood that the true first crowing was in the middle of the night. 4) God allowed someone to tamper with Mark 14:68 after he inspired a perfect record of what actually happened, thus misleading Christians for centuries. The apologist readily admits that oral tradition is fallible, played a role in the formation of the current text, and was responsible for details being left out, yet the apologist will not allow the skeptic to use the same reason, the fallibility of oral tradition, to explain the error already in the text–simply because the apologist predetermined that the original manuscripts, which he has never seen, were free from error.

Within this context, this is not considered a “contradiction” or “error”–no ancient reader would have thought this!

A different apologist once offered me this explanation for why gospel writers attributed Old Testament sayings to the wrong prophets.[110] Since other readers of the day thought the misattributions were factually correct, and since no ancient reader would have called the authors on their mistakes, no errors were apparently committed. I hope even the most novice of readers can appreciate the absurdity of such an argument. It does not matter what ancient readers reached as a consensus. What matters is whether the recorded facts are consistent with reality. If they are not, they are in error. I do not care whether ancient readers would have considered the cockcrowing stories contradictory; I care whether we can regard all four as consistent with reality. Explaining why no ancient reader would have thought of something as a contradiction is pretty much admitting the contradiction and explaining the reason for it. I ask again, what book could we not hold as infallible by employing such disingenuous methods? Inerrancy would lose all meaning.

Incidentally, it is not my intention to have you think that I am arguing that all of the apologetic positions are unattainable; I am arguing, given the weight of the evidence, that they are unlikely.[111] The apologists, on the other hand, will not grant the opposing viewpoint the slightest possibility of being correct because it is tantamount to admitting that the text might be errant–and this would still invalidate their predetermined, emotionally bound premises. I will close the topic here to let the readers decide which explanation is more likely, and which party is more objective.

–

These three examples are a small part of a larger set of biblical incongruities. God’s holy word contains contradictions of every kind from cover to cover within accounts of important events, rules for worship, how to get into heaven, the nature of God, historical records of birth and rule, and the teachings of Jesus.[112] An impartial ear can even translate many of the common apologetic justifications for these problems as the Bible saying something it doesn’t mean or meaning something it doesn’t say. Honestly accepting the existence of such contradictions would destroy the ideal quality of the book that many set out to explain by any means necessary. Intellectually dishonest, inconsistent, biased, thoroughly conditioned apologists, on the other hand, feel that as long as they put out a nonsense scenario that tenuously satisfies the contradiction, it’s up to everyone else to prove otherwise. This is a very implausible attempt at holding the Bible to be perfect. Since anyone can do that to any book, the practice is not logically permissible. If all else fails, remember, apologists often brush aside unexplainable objections as “the incomprehensible and mysterious ways of God.” Smith describes this phenomenon rather well:

While it is true that the Christian will never find a contradiction between the propositions of reason and his religious beliefs, this is true only because he will never permit such contradictions to exist. The apologist reduces all contradictions to apparent contradictions, which he claims are ultimately reconcilable…If there exists a conflict between reason and religious dogma, we are assured that this apparent conflict results from our insufficient understanding of divine truths. Whenever consistency, logic, or science became uncomfortable for the Christian, he can safely retreat into his incomprehensible God and argue that our problems are a consequence of man’s puny understanding.[113]

The textual contradictions exist for a reason. First of all, as I have said many times before, there was no true divine inspiration from God guiding the authors to write their material. Each person wrote through his own limited interpretations and experiences because no one honestly expected the collection of books to grow in popularity to their current state. In addition, no one had any way of knowing which books were going to be enshrined in the Bible and which ones were destined to face omission. It would have been too daunting of a task for the authors to check every historical record for contradictions with their compositions. Instead, it is likely that most authors simply tried to keep a steady theme set by preceding authors. Reasonable, freethinking people accept this conclusion. Indoctrinated apologists who cannot appreciate the psychological forces driving their misguided beliefs continue to promote their unlikely resolutions.

It is my hope that one day, when a biblical apologist proposes some wild explanation for what is obviously a textual error, I will be able to reach his audience’s intellect by simply pointing out that the apologist used the same methods of reasoning to conclude the veraciousness of a talking donkey and a literal resurrection. But as long as the human mind finds conflicting information uncomfortable, troublesome issues steeped in deep emotional investments will rarely be rectified by the use of such an otherwise obvious argument.

You must be careful of dishonest or irrelevant counterarguments used by Christian apologists. Although there is an enormous amount of Christian material claiming to debunk skeptical arguments, you have a duty to ask yourself some uncomfortable questions regarding these works. Can you better describe the apologetic arguments as wild scenarios rather than probable solutions? Do the arguments originate from a biased researcher with a deep emotional investment or an obvious agenda to prove something one way or another? Do the arguments resort to the use of fallacious logic to reach a desired conclusion?[114] Do the arguments take biblical passages out of context or use a premise that is contradicted by what the Bible plainly says? If you have answered yes to any of these questions after considering an apologetic explanation for anything that you have read, keep looking. I encourage you to read books on Christianity by both secular and religious authors. Think dispassionately about the issues, and you will no doubt discover which group acts as its own worst enemy by grasping at slippery straws to support its erroneous viewpoints. Don’t fall into the trap described by Smith:

Volumes are written on the subject of God, pro and con, but fresh material is rarely presented. The Christian presents the standard arguments for the existence of God, and the atheist presents the standard refutations of these arguments. The Christian responds with a flurry of counter-objections, and the atheist retaliates.

Meanwhile, the average bystander becomes confused and impatient. He has observed arguments, but he has not been told why these arguments are important. He has witnessed disagreements, but he has not been presented with the basic conflicts underlying them. While this person may have absorbed a smattering of divergent theories and ideas, he lacks an overall perspective, a frame of reference from which to integrate and evaluate the particulars that have been thrust upon him. Consequently, he frequently dismisses the philosophical investigation of theism as too abstract, remote and irrelevant to merit his attention. He will leave philosophy to the philosophers; and, while they construct endless debates, he will rely on what he has been taught, or on what his friends believe–or on what his “common sense” and “intuitions” tell him.[115]

Even if you have heard an argument that you think solidly disproves something I have written, I hope you will choose to bring it to my attention. I would certainly like to be able to respond to any claims made against the ones in this book. I may be able to more clearly explain the problem or, perhaps, correct my own mistake. You see, no author is truly infallible.

LEAVING SUPERSTITION BEHIND

The decision to denounce the Christian faith and leave the comfortable confines of the religion has a strong correlation with at least three factors of extreme importance: low levels of exposure, high levels of intelligence, and high levels of self-esteem. From my anecdotal observations, I noticed that individuals who left Christianity were less indoctrinated, more intelligent, or more confident about themselves than the average person. Once I made this discovery, I noticed that those who had all of the aforementioned qualities tended to question the Bible’s veracity at an exceedingly early age, while those who had only one or two of those qualities took a while longer. I strongly feel that a general point exists where a certain level of intelligence, influence, and self-esteem reach the threshold necessary to allow someone the opportunity to become a freethinker.

Christians probably would not deny that a strong influence persuades a person to remain active in church. From what we have considered thus far on indoctrination, it’s only logical to conclude that a lack of the same influence increases the chances a person will leave the faith. The intelligence and self-esteem elements to my hypothesis, on the other hand, are surely insulting and certainly difficult for Christians to swallow. For this reason, I will now begin providing a defense for my position.

Petty and Cacioppo point out that influential messages are much more likely to persuade individuals with a lack of self-esteem compared to those with normal or high self-esteem.[116] As misfortune would have it, one of the central tenants of Christianity targets such an audience. The very foundation of the religion is built upon the suggestion that we are insignificant creatures compared to the creator of the universe and that it is not possible to carry out a meaningful existence without accepting the biblical belief system. Jesus even points out that we are not worthy of following him if we place the love for our parents or children above our love for him.[117] However, once we accept the biblical teachings (and only after doing so), we become worthy of God’s gift of eternal life. Such ideas are no doubt appealing to those with little or no self-confidence and self-worth, but they probably carry less weight with someone confident of his own abilities and intelligence. Smith has something pertinent to say on this topic:

It is not accidental that Christianity regards pride as a major sin. A man of self-esteem is an unlikely candidate for the master-slave relationship that Christianity offers him. A man lacking in self-esteem, however, a man ridden with guilt and self-doubt, will frequently prefer the apparent security of Christianity over independence and find comfort in the thought that, for the price of total submissiveness, God will love and protect him.[118]

There is a vast wealth of experiments that effectively demonstrate the idea that intelligence and religious disbelief go hand in hand. The first meta-analysis of all such studies conducted since 1927 was published in 1986. It showed that nearly three-fourths of all investigations considering a correlation between intelligence and religious affiliation have found that the proportion of self-proclaimed atheists, agnostics, and deists increases dramatically as you move up the scale in school grades, exam scores, and IQ tests. The remaining one-fourth of the studies shows no correlation, while zero reviews suggested that people in organized religion are more intelligent than those with secular beliefs.[119] A more recent meta-analysis, published in 2002, reveals that the percentage of studies confirming this position has risen to over 90.[120] Another recent major poll[121] suggests that individuals who have graduate degrees, live in regions of the country where standardized test scores are higher, or belong to the male gender are less likely to believe in the Judeo-Christian God.[122]

It is important to note that when I speak of a study confirming a position, I am not talking about a “more than likely” conclusion, but rather that each study on its own typically has a confidence standard of 95 percent or greater. In other words, the likelihood of such results occurring by chance for each individual study was less than 5 percent in each individual instance. When meta-study analyses review the compounded results of multiple tests, the likelihood of obtaining these results by chance decreases exponentially. The apparent conclusion to draw from the data is that people who are more intelligent tend to disbelieve religions based upon books that include things like a talking donkey. Come to think of it, could we honestly name one single issue on which intelligent people are less likely to be correct than unintelligent people?

I recently came across the updated demographics and related statistics for the American MENSA[123] chapter while browsing the internet. I wasn’t too surprised at what I found. Almost 20 percent positively identify belonging to the unreligious designations (atheist, agnostic, and Unitarian[124]) compared to just over 1 percent of the general American population. Roughly 49 percent consider themselves Christian, compared to 76 percent of the general American population.[125] In other words, those who belong to MENSA are several times more likely to have no affiliation with religious beliefs and almost 40 percent less likely to be a Christian. Likewise, 93 percent of members of the United States National Academy of Sciences, a group composed of the country’s most prominent scientists as voted on by their peers, do not believe in a personal god.[126] Less prominent scientists disbelieve in a personal god at a rate of only 60 percent, but 60 percent is still much higher than the 5-10 percent for the American public at large.[127] The British equivalent of the NAS, Fellows of the Royal Society, only has a 3.3 percent rate of belief in a personal god.[128] In other words, members of the NAS are roughly ten times more likely to disbelieve in a personal God, and perhaps even thirty to fifty times more likely to positively identify with atheistic beliefs.

You will of course hear the religious apologists offering subsequent defenses for the benefit of their fellow religious followers. They will often assert that the figures from these organizations are not truly representative of the intelligent part of the population. Members of MENSA, they claim, typically fall within the less religious ages, but how does their overly optimistic math account for such an enormous difference? Members of the NAS and FRS, they claim, work in fields that ignore the supernatural and explain the universe strictly in natural terms, but how do the apologists not spot the irony in such an explanation?

Who would have ever thought that MENSA, comprised of people with IQs in the top 2 percent, would increasingly disassociate itself from a religion based on a dead man coming back to life? Who would have ever thought that the NAS and FRS, comprised of people who have the best understanding of the universe, would disbelieve fantastic stories of magical creation written thousands of years ago? In all seriousness, the most important thing we can take from these studies and observations is that the more intelligence a person has, the less likely he is to believe in the divinity of a book with a talking donkey. Dawkins adds:

The efforts of apologists to find genuinely distinguished modern scientists who are religious have an air of desperation, generating the unmistakably hollow sound of bottoms of barrels being scraped. The only website I could find that claimed to list ‘Nobel Prize-winning Scientific Christians’ came up with six, out of a total of several hundred scientific Nobelists. Of these six, it turned out that four were not Nobel Prize-winners at all; and at least one, to my certain knowledge, is a non-believer who attends church for purely social reasons.[129]

While we should be confident that people with higher intelligence are less likely to believe in the Judeo-Christian God, this still does not explain why. One suggestion could be that it takes critical thinking to appreciate indoctrination and confirmation bias. Another could simply be that intelligent people are less gullible. Petty and Cacioppo, who may have the best answer, report that individuals with below average intelligence are especially susceptible to influential messages when such communications are readily comprehensible.[130]

To satisfy ourselves that the religious communications are indeed easy to understand, we must remember that the premise of Christianity is quite simple: God is the creator, obey his word, and follow his son. That’s pretty much all most Christians know about their religion–and what person couldn’t understand a premise as simple as that? However, the precise details of the movement, laid out over 800,000 words in the Bible, are quite involved and often ignored due to the tedious complexity of learning the complete message. Petty and Cacioppo correctly point out that such individuals would likely yield to the ideas of such a complex document, if only they were capable of comprehending the text in its entirety. Intelligent people, on the other hand, are less susceptible to influential messages and may be able to offset certain amounts of indoctrination during childhood by silently developing counterarguments for the religious assertions.

Even though people with higher intelligence tend not to accept religion, one cannot deny that many still do. If we are to extrapolate the demographics of MENSA into the American population, there are still three million people in the country with an IQ over 130 who consider themselves Christians. Granted that we have no way of knowing exactly how many of these people believe in the more absurd biblical accounts, such as the six-day creation, Noah’s flood, and Jesus’ resurrection, we should still feel confident that hundreds of thousands of people with vastly superior intelligence believe that these events actually took place.

The question is still why, and the best answer, in my opinion, comes from Shermer within the very argument that he became famous for coining: “Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”[131] The phenomenon applies wonderfully to religion itself, which is exactly the institution I think that he had in mind. Believing in otherwise absurd stories simply because they are part of a religion bestowed upon you by your parents and other influences in your society obviously qualifies as believing in something for “non-smart reasons.” The intellectual breakdown arrives from such gifted people inventing extremely clever (but equally absurd) reasons why they think their beliefs are correct.

Most of my former Christian friends and I once did the same thing. We invented absurd extrabiblical rationalizations for biblical problems. After all, we were beginning with the premise that the Bible is true and molded all considerations around that central idea. The ease with which smart people can interpret the facts is powerful. More than anything else, we wanted to avoid just admitting that we didn’t believe it anymore. Intellectually, it would have been much easier and much more satisfactory, but the absurd suggestions that we conjured were our way of being able to say (not to mention convincing ourselves) that we believed–while at the same time not appearing foolish for accepting such ridiculous claims at face value. Even in the confines of solidarity, I could not be realistic about my beliefs for one key reason: It is never easy to be honest with yourself about the Bible when a mind-reading god is always present. Simply thinking that God did something wrong might be as discomforting to someone as saying that a potentially abusive authority figure did the same. As Smith succinctly put it, “We are told that God is monitoring us at every moment, and that he has complete knowledge of our innermost thoughts and feelings. If the notion of an omnipresent voyeurist does not create a high level of nervous tension and anxiety, not to mention guilt, nothing will.”[132]

This point about God reading our minds is not by any means something we should take lightly. I have intended for it to be salient to skeptics and compassionate toward believers. This obstacle to reasoning, perhaps more than any other, prevents people from thinking rationally about religion. If Big Brother is listening, he knows you are having doubts about his authority and existence. Such ideas supposedly do not go unnoticed and perhaps unpunished. Guilt certainly follows. People who were never indoctrinated with a religious belief often fail to appreciate the consequences of this dilemma.

I’m afraid that I don’t have much advice to give to those who are battling with intellectual self-honesty–other than to point out the inherit unfairness of a system in which an all-powerful being mistreats anyone who has the intellectual curiosity to arrive at his existence through reason rather than through faith. Perhaps you can tell God that you are going to set his existence aside for a moment and partake in a series of exercises that are designed to determine if the Bible is really his word. Ask for forgiveness in advance if you feel you must, but if the evidence for God is as strong as the religious experts would have you believe, should it not find you rather easily?

To be thorough, I should point out that there are also very unintelligent and illogical reasons why some people leave religion, such as God missing a deadline to respond to a request in a certain way. Unfortunately, I have had a few individuals write and tell me that this applies to them. Such people give God a deadline to meet, leave the religion once the deadline passes without the evidence, and will usually return when they receive an acceptable result–because the deadline is no longer a factor as to whether God exists since the positive evidence for some arbitrary individual goal has now manifested itself. Others may simply dislike their religious denominations. These self-professed former atheists experienced a very shallow form of secularism that mirrors the very shallow form of Christianity widely practiced today. In other words, they just decided to be atheistic without researching the veracity of the system in depth, which of course is not within rational grounds for a positive atheistic belief. They relied instead on individual preferences and anecdotal observations.

The individuals who return to religion after initially professing disbelief typically describe their former selves as being coldhearted and self-obsessed, but such personal traits are more about foolishness and moral depravity than they are about the absence of religion. Perhaps these people would like to share what valid reasons they had for abandoning freethought and embracing a particular religion, especially the religion that they just happened to begin with. What made them leave the religion? Did they do in-depth dispassionate analyses of the presented historical inaccuracies, contradictions, absurdities, and cruelties of the Bible; or did they have an emotional experience that caused them to abandon belief in God? More times than not, those who leave a religion and rejoin do not offer logical reasons for rejoining, which naturally leads us to believe that they probably did not leave for logical reasons either. People who undergo such transformations usually attribute them to “traumatic, life-changing experiences.” Petty and Cacioppo offer five major studies to support the idea that rapid conversion often follows an emotionally traumatic event in a person’s life.[133]

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Since we can see that childhood indoctrination, threats of punishment, cultural isolation, biased argumentation, cognitive dissonance, low self-esteem, and low intelligence lead people to illogical conclusions about religion, the question should now become how to undo the effects of some of these phenomena. One of the primary findings of persuasive psychology is that, outside of the rare instances of instinctive and biochemical factors, people are tied to their opinions through emotional and/or logical deduction. In other words, people believe that certain concepts are true for emotional and/or logical reasons. Therefore, in order to instill a new belief into an individual, we must remove the existing belief by appealing to people through the exact avenues by which they have derived their beliefs.

Let us consider a hypothetical scenario in which we are entrepreneurs who have just opened a business on the top floor of an old city skyscraper. Everything is set to go, but there is one major problem with which we need to contend. The only business consultant in the entire city refuses to take the elevator to such a high elevation because he has deduced that something tragic could possibly take place at that height.

Since our first impulse is to conclude that the man has a fear of heights, let us first consider that this is in fact the correct scenario. We must now ask ourselves whether this man has a fear of heights for emotional reasons or for logical ones. Barring the presence of a series of tragic events that have taken place while the consultant was in similar structures, it is a reasonably safe assumption that the man has a fear based on emotion. This should be nothing new to us because we realize that phobias are typically emotional fears often attributed to isolated events that took place at an impressionable age.[134] Therefore, the next logical step here is to ascertain why the consultant is afraid of heights. If he cannot articulate a legitimate reason and relies instead on such explanations as “I just get scared when I look out,” we know we have made a safe assumption that the man holds his belief for an emotional reason.

How do we eliminate this fear? Should we bring in the experts who built the structure to ensure him that it won’t fall? Should we show him the evidence that demonstrates the skyscraper was constructed according to proper building codes? Should we show him the statistics of how unlikely it would be for a tragic event to take place at that height? None of these measures would likely work because the logic falls on ears that are deaf to reason. The man has an emotional fear of heights, thus we cannot appeal to his senses through pleas of logic. As he is perfectly aware that millions of people go into tall buildings every day and return to the ground unharmed, what good would it do to tell him what he already knows? Instead, we must appeal to his emotion. One such recommendation would be to have the man ascend the building slowly, allow him to look outside on each floor, and let him adjust to his surroundings each time until he feels comfortable progressing up the skyscraper. Such methods are how psychologists often remove unreasonable fears in their patients.[135]

Let us now consider a situation in which the man thinks that the building will fall because he believes that old skyscrapers are not as safe as the newer ones. Instead of having an emotional fear, our business consultant has formed what he believes is a logical reason to avoid ascending the building. Do we use the same measure as we did in the previous scenario? Will having him slowly ascend and allowing him to adjust to his surroundings alleviate his fear? No. Why would such a tactic fail to work? The man has a logical fear, thus we cannot appeal to his senses through pleas of emotion. We must show him the evidence that the building was constructed according to code. We must bring in the experts who built the structure to ensure him that it will not fall. Such methods are how we appeal to logical intellect in order to remove unreasonable fears from reasonable people.

Religious beliefs, like the beliefs of the consultant, must also be held for emotional and/or logical reasons.[136] With this in mind, how should someone free of indoctrination approach the practice of convincing others of their false beliefs? As before, we must delve into the history of the individual’s beliefs to find the avenue from which they originate. I would be confident that if we undertook this exercise in a large group of people, almost the entire sample would have built their beliefs upon emotional reasons. Remember four conclusions we reached earlier: 1) Children are introduced to the emotional components of Christianity before the logical ones. 2) Notions of God being perfect, Jesus loving us, and heaven being for the saved are consistently instilled in children long before they are approached with evidence and arguments that weigh the genuine or fraudulent nature of such claims. 3) Smart people believe dumb things because they are very gifted at coming up with ideas that support their irrational viewpoints. 4) Apologists are masterminds at creating quasi-logical reasons for the defense of their emotional beliefs.

If our tentative conclusion is accurate that religious beliefs are primarily built on emotional grounds, we now know the avenue that one should take to change the incorrect beliefs held by Christians. This discovery, of course, does not destroy the layers of conditioning that one will have to fight through, nor does it remove the individual’s propensity to invent absurd justifications to eliminate cognitive dissonance. It does however demonstrate the near-certain futility in trying to convince someone that the gospels are unreliable by pointing out factual discrepancies like the year of Jesus’ birth. People with emotional ties will emotionally cling to the gospels’ veracity in this instance while the apologists’ absurd “Quirinius was a governor twice” or “Quirinius was a co-governor” explanations alleviate their cognitive dissonance.[137]

Life, however, is rarely as black and white as we can make it in hypothetical scenarios. Often we find emotional and logical reasons for religious belief closely intertwined. The apologists who purport that they have all the answers have in reality weaved a tangled web of what they believe are logical defenses for the foundational beliefs and emotional attachments acquired from the most persuasible stage of human development. While simply clearing the emotional attachments before destroying the perceived logic may work for ordinary individuals, this tactic will surely not work on those who have come up with clever ways to convince themselves that their beliefs are solid. With a network of logical and emotional bonds to wade through in order to reach the apologist, how does one even begin? For the answer, I believe we should revisit the business consultant scenario offered earlier.

Let us now consider a hypothetical situation in which the consultant has a combination of emotional and logical reasons for not wanting to visit us at the top of the skyscraper. Not only has he developed an emotional fear of heights beginning at a young age, he has also convinced himself of the legitimacy of his fear by reinforcing his decision with a network of misinformation built upon logical inaccuracies. Now the man has created a wall of what he perceives are legitimate reasons as to why his emotional fear is a sensible one. How do we handle this situation?

Since we wish to invoke clear thinking in order to get people to drop their misplaced beliefs, we must decide whether emotion or logic is the biggest initial obstacle of instilling rational thought. This choice should be obvious since emotion is often irrational, and logic is closely related to rationale itself. In short, we cannot begin appealing to logic when emotion is in the way. We must defuse as much irrationality as possible before we can begin to utilize reasoned arguments in support of our position. We cannot simply usher the man to the top of the building by allowing him to adjust to his surroundings because there will come a time when the logical fears of being higher than floor three will be outweighed by the emotional fears of being higher than floor ten. The amount of success in this initial step of tackling emotion will vary from person to person, but through much time and effort, we might be able to force the man to make enough concessions on his emotional beliefs to eliminate enough emotional irrationalism so that we can illustrate how his logical fears of floors four through nine are misplaced. If this much easier step of tackling logic proves fruitful, then we simply lather, rinse, and repeat.

Admittedly, this is much easier said than done when it comes to matters of high personal importance, such as politics, patriotism, and religion. When some of the constructs of emotional beliefs include “God is perfect,” we find that locating a sword sharp enough to put chinks in perfect armor can be difficult. Not all is lost, however, because we know that it is possible to intellectually reach people who believe that God is perfect; communities of former believers would otherwise not exist. Consider what the Chinese disingenuously accomplished against American prisoners in a POW camp during the Korean War:

Prisoners were frequently asked to make statements so mildly anti-American or pro-Communist as to seem inconsequential…But once these minor requests were complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related yet more substantive requests. A man who had just agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the United States is not perfect might then be asked to indicate some of the ways in which he thought this was the case…Suddenly he would find himself a “collaborator,” having given aid to the enemy. Aware that he had written the essay without any strong threats or coercion, many times a man would change his image of himself to be consistent with the deed and with the new “collaborator” label, often resulting in even more extensive acts of collaboration.[138]

Petty and Cacioppo offer what I believe to be an obvious and more reasonable course of action for adjusting an individual’s religious beliefs:

The theory of reasoned action makes it clear that any influence attempt–whether the goal is to change an attitude, norm, intention, or behavior–must always be directed at one or more of the individual’s beliefs. The beliefs that serve as the fundamental determinants of the variable that one is trying to change are called primary beliefs. The beliefs that the influence attempt is designed to change are called target beliefs. For example, a persuasive message will be successful in changing someone’s attitude about smoking to the extent that the target beliefs the communication is designed to change correspond to the primary beliefs that serve as the foundation of the person’s attitude toward smoking.[139]

In other words, we attack the notion that God inspired the Bible by attacking the reasons people believe that God inspired the Bible. Where one should ideally begin this task is debatable when the targets are unwilling to offer a reasoned answer, but I strongly feel that attributing human authorship to the Bible is the proper avenue to take. This course of action does not invalidate the premise that God is perfect because it makes room for such possibilities as God allowing humans to write their own history and God not concerning himself with perfection of every detail. These ideas seem harmless enough on the surface, but they begin to provoke questions with bigger impact potential, such as why God would choose such avenues when they lead to increased doubt and logical ambiguity.

THE HANDICAPPING OF SKEPTICISM

To this point, we have explored a few of the reasons why skeptics are at a nearly insurmountable disadvantage when trying to educate a religious audience on the hard reality of their belief acquisition. The overwhelming majority of religious followers were indoctrinated during childhood by certain aspects of their environment to accept those beliefs. Parents who unknowingly condition their children to shun logic and reason when confronted with testable and observable Bible-debunking evidence perpetuate the domination of Christian beliefs. Contributors to our environment deceitfully teach us that certain things are unquestionably true, and such nonsensical ideas begin at an age at which we have yet to behave or think in a rational manner. The same ideas are also continuously reinforced in an isolated Christian environment until they accumulate to a degree at which conditioning trumps rational inquiry, bias influences judgment, cognitive dissonance leads to absurd rationalizations, intelligence becomes increasingly unimportant, and religious beliefs render common sense impotent. When confronted with evidence against conditioned thoughts, the logical and emotional components of which can be hard to discern and address directly, people will seek out only evidence that supports their beliefs. Uneasy feelings from cognitive dissonance weaken the faculties for critical thought and will allow the believers to accept highly irrational reasons for their beliefs. Quite simply, people hold beliefs that are fundamental to them even thought there is no conclusive evidence for those beliefs.

As if all of these obstacles were not enough to discourage a freethinker from assisting others, the practice of persuading an audience through critical analysis is further handicapped from the beginning by the very nature of skepticism. There are a number of reasons why this is so.

The practice of skepticism entails the exploration of any possible argument that would debunk preconceived notion. While some of the arguments are often strongly supportive of a skeptical position, many are only moderately convincing yet still valid. In contrast, the shallow counter-solution that “God works in mysterious and incomprehensible ways” is widely applicable and hardly attackable. The inclusion of the moderate arguments against Christianity weakens the perceived credibility of the person presenting them. Petty and Cacioppo explain that “providing a person with a few very convincing arguments may promote more attitude change than providing these arguments along with a number of much weaker arguments.”[140] In effect, people are prone to believe that if they can argue against a moderate message, they would probably be able to spot the fallacies of the other messages if they considered them long enough. This can be an unfortunate aspect of human psychology because the addition of lesser arguments onto a pile of already strong arguments should only add credibility to the position and not affect the veracity of the stronger arguments.

People are motivated to defend their beliefs from attacks, particularly when they are forewarned of a speaker’s intent, and even more so when the belief is closely linked with identity.[141] Not only are religious beliefs effectively synonymous with identity for a number of people, religious followers have been inoculated from skeptical arguments because they have been forewarned and exposed to weak or patently ridiculous arguments that are allegedly offered by disbelievers. This “poisoning of the well” modifies individuals to be more resistant to attitude changes toward the position that they already believe to be fundamentally weak. Examples might include the supposed atheism of harsh dictatorships, lack of morality in an atheistic worldview, absence of atheists in foxholes, atheism requiring enormous amounts of faith, atheists being unhappy, atheism being a childish form of rebellion, atheists being mad at God, etc. You can even find such ridiculous assertions within the Bible.[142] If it were not for these inoculations, Christianity might otherwise be vulnerable to adjustment due to its cultural nature as a truism: a belief that is widely accepted, rarely defended, and consequently malleable.

The targeted audience for the skeptic is often very large, and people tend to be decreasingly persuaded by messages as the size of the potential audience grows.[143] Petty and Cacioppo report that subjects are often motivated by strong arguments and discouraged by weaker arguments if the subjects are under the impression that the communications were intended to be heard only by a small number of people. In contrast, when subjects believe that a larger number of people are hearing the exact same arguments, the perceived difference in quality between the strong and weak arguments shrinks dramatically. In such a situation, listeners perceive weaker arguments as stronger, perhaps because the subjects feel that the arguments must contain merit since they are going to be heard by a wide audience; and stronger arguments are perceived as being weaker, perhaps due to the perceived decrease in personal importance. The difference would normally be a wash, but in mainstream culture, where arguments against Christianity are far superior to arguments in its favor (as anyone will attest as long as you replace the word “Christianity” with someone else’s religion), skepticism is at a disadvantage because there is less perceived difference in the strength of weak arguments for Christianity and strong arguments against it.

There is no pressure from society to understand or defend against the position of skeptics. Petty and Cacioppo report that subjects are often motivated to understand an issue when they are led to believe that, as a part of the study, they would have to discuss the issue with someone who took a contrasting position.[144] Without this pressure, subjects are less likely to consider the position of the opponent. Since people do not have true interest in evaluating their innermost beliefs, those who have been conditioned to believe in a book with a talking donkey will never actively seek someone to challenge this position.

Society has painted a nasty picture of atheism and skepticism in general. Even though I left Christianity several years ago, the words still carry a sort of negative connotation with me–in the same sense that the meaningless word alaria sounds soothing while peklurg sounds irritating. It is of little question that people who do not believe in God are the least trusted minority in America.[145] Petty and Cacioppo report that the likeability of the message’s source plays a major role in the message’s capability of persuasion.[146] The disparity in the amount of attitude change resultant from identical messages provided by a likable source and an unlikable source is comparable to the disparity in the amount of change resultant from identical messages provided by an expert source and nonexpert source. In other words, you can obtain the same amount of perceived credibility by being likable as you can by becoming an expert. This is an enormous blow to objectivity, but I suppose we have to write it off as human nature and find some way to work around it.

Human beings are unbelievably gullible and illogical creatures. The ability to think skeptically is not innate; it requires practice. One-half of America believes that a person can use extrasensory perception to read another person’s mind.[147] Nearly the same amount believes we can communicate with the dead.[148] Otherwise sane individuals have been known to send death threats to meteorologists, not for inaccurate predictions, but for the actual weather conditions.[149] Among other feats of incredible sheepishness, Cialdini reports that people are more likely to buy unusual items when priced higher, more likely to buy items with coupons despite no price advantage, more likely to respond to requests when empty reasons are given, more likely to agree to absurd requests if preceded by ones of greater absurdity, more likely to consider people intelligent and persuasive if they are attractive, and less likely to take an enemy prisoner during warfare if the potential captive offers them bread.[150] If people are so prone to follow foolish patterns under such poor assumptions in order to help guide them through this complex world, should we be at all surprised when people hypothesize the existence of a personal god in order to explain intelligent life, distant galaxies, childbirth, universal physical constants, starving children, crimes against humanity, natural disasters, and suicide bombers?

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Human beings have an innate tendency to search for patterns and simple explanations in order to make sense of the world. Such a practice results in an incorporation of elements that fit into an understandable answer and a neglect of elements that do not. Psychologists often use this phenomenon to explain the reason people believe in clairvoyance, horoscopes, prayer, and other such foolishness. In a sense, we remember when these methods “work” and forget when they do not. With respect to religion, people will often remember “answered” prayers but forget or rationalize the unanswered ones. Have you ever noticed how people will trumpet abundances of miracles when there are a few survivors of an accident or natural disaster yet say nothing about the many people who died? It’s the same principle. Dawkins alludes to this:

[Pope John Paul II’s] polytheistic hankerings were dramatically demonstrated in 1981 when he suffered an assassination attempt in Rome, and attributed his survival to intervention by Our Lady of Fatima: “A maternal hand guided the bullet.” One cannot help wondering why she didn’t guide it to miss him altogether. Others might think the team of surgeons who operated on him for six hours deserved at least a share of the credit; but perhaps their hands, too, were maternally guided.[151]

It is very easy to claim that prayer healed a person dying of a terrible disease, but quite another to prove it. Study after study demonstrates that prayer has no effect on patients when they are unaware that they are being prayed for.[152] On the other hand, when subjects do realize that they are being prayed for, two results tend to reoccur:

1) Patients typically improve from holistic methods, such as laying on of hands, meditation, compassionate care, etc. This is nothing new. Medical researchers have well established that the mind can work wonders and inexplicably heal the body. The problem with crediting God for the healing, other than the fact that it only works in concert with the patient’s knowledge of being prayed for, is that the results appear across the religious/irreligious spectrum.

2) Patients sometimes take a turn for the worst due to what some believe is a form of performance anxiety. They may stress over the need to get better in order to not let the people who are praying for them down. Perhaps they might also start dwelling on the severity of their conditions because the physicians are using drastic, unorthodoxed measures like prayer to assist them.[153] People use prayer as their way of appealing to God and use God’s will as an explanation for why certain things happen. Since we can easily discredit the idea of prayer serving as a simple pattern for the complex natural events of the world, its usefulness should be self-evidently ridiculous.

Suppose we really wanted to test the power of prayer and see to it that no confounding variables from the temporal realm would be present. To begin the study, we gather a group of fifty atheists and a group of fifty Christians who volunteer to have an extremely lethal dose of bacteria injected intravenously. Following the injection, we provide the fifty atheists with a regimen of broad-spectrum antibiotics to counteract the infection. We then isolate the atheists in a secret location and tell no one that they are involved in the experiment. Essentially, they do not exist to the rest of the world. Likewise, we isolate the Christians in a secret location but refuse them the antibiotic regimen. News of the fifty Christians injected with the lethal bacteria will then be broadcast over the entire Christian world. The report will ask everyone to pray to God for their facilitated recovery from the infection so that deductive reasoning will force the world to acknowledge the one true religion because of the unquestionable and verifiable power of God and prayer. Because no one knows about the atheists in isolation, no one is specifically praying for them. All they have are antibiotics, while the Christians have the power of prayer from hundreds of millions of certain volunteers and the omnipotence of God. After two months, we will end the experiment and see which group has the most survivors.

Whether or not Christians are willing to admit it, I think everyone knows which group would fare better in this study. No semi-rational Christian would ever sign up for this deadly experiment even with the added promise of a great monetary compensation for the survivors. They know that God isn’t really going to answer the divinely directed requests of hundreds of millions of Christians because God only seems to answer prayers in some mystical and unobservable fashion. Deep down, these Christians may even realize that they cannot consider prayer dependable. Some Christians reading the results of this hypothetical experiment would simply appeal to authorities who assert that there have been studies demonstrating just the opposite. Other Christians would manufacture reasons such as “God doesn’t like being tested”[154] or “People didn’t have enough faith.”[155] They will avoid the rational conclusion that prayers are only “answered” by placebo effect. They will avoid admitting that tragic events or unbelievable coincidences are the result of complex natural factors. They will avoid admitting that prayers have answers just as often as problems have solutions. [156]

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Messages favoring the veracity of Christianity and religion in general typically arrive through more persuasible channels than those that support a nonreligious viewpoint. Petty and Cacioppo report that psychologists have repeatedly found face-to-face appeals to have a greater impact than appeals through mass media.[157] Let us suppose that an ordinary Christian has begun having doubts about the existence of God. What course of action does he take? I have previously noted that, due to confirmation bias, religious doubters will first seek out testimonies and other pieces of evidence that would support the school of thought to which they already belong. These would include discussions with the preacher, family, friends, and possibly members of a church group. If, in the rare interest of intellectual honesty, the doubter wants to hear arguments from those with contrasting beliefs, where does he turn? To an atheist lecturer? To his atheist family members? To his atheist friends? To an atheist church group? Chances are that he has none to which he can turn. Instead, he will likely rely on the mass media, more specifically, a paperback written by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or perhaps even this admittedly inferior piece of work. In doing so, the freethought literature must be superior enough to overcome not only indoctrination, dissonance, and the Christian message itself, but also the difference from the perceived level of superiority attributed to face-to-face communication.

It has been said that people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer.[158] Although it’s not exactly a traditional face-to-face appeal, Cialdini reports the findings of a study in which socially withdrawn children were individually shown a twenty-three minute film of other socially withdrawn children deciding to join social activities, much to the enjoyment of the other children in the video.

The impact was impressive. The isolates immediately began to interact with their peers at a level equal to that of the normal children in the schools. Even more astonishing was what [researcher] O’Connor found when he returned to observe six weeks later. While the withdrawn children who had not seen O’Connor’s film remained as isolated as ever, those who had viewed it were now leading their schools in amount of social activity. It seems that this twenty-three-minute movie, viewed just once, was enough to reverse a potential pattern of lifelong maladaptive behavior. Such is the potency of the principle of social proof. [159]

Cialdini offers an additional example of how people are prone to follow others marching, almost literally, off a cliff:

The People’s Temple was a cultlike organization that began in San Francisco and drew its recruits from the poor of that city. In 1977, the Reverend Jim Jones–who was the group’s undisputed political, social, and spiritual leader–moved the bulk of the membership with him to a jungle settlement in Guyana, South America. There, the People’s Temple existed in relative obscurity until November 18, 1978, when four men of a fact-finding party lead by Congressman Leo J. Ryan were murdered as they tried to leave Jonestown by plane. Convinced that he would be arrested and implicated in the killings and that the demise of the People’s Temple would result, Jones sought to control the end of the Temple in his own way. He gathered the entire community around him and issued a call for each person’s death in a unified act of self-destruction.

The first response was that of a young woman who calmly approached the now famous vat of strawberry-flavored poison, administered one dose to her baby, one to herself, and then sat down in a field, where she and her child died in convulsions within four minutes. Others followed steadily in turn. Although a handful of Jonestowners escaped rather than comply and a few others are reported to have resisted, the survivors claim that the great majority of the 910 people who died did so in an orderly, willful fashion.[160]

There are two additional difficulties in getting equal attention from the doubting Christian if the doubter seeks Christian reassurance from group discussion. Petty and Cacioppo explain the handicapping that arises from both.

Numerous investigations have shown that the arguments generated by people in a group are learned by and can change the attitudes of the other people in the group. Because people are often persuaded by the arguments that others in a group discussion generate, an interesting phenomenon may occur as a result of a face-to-face discussion–group polarization. That is, people’s attitudes after group discussion are often more extreme than the attitudes held prior to discussion. The group polarization effect is most likely to occur when most group members are on the same side of the issue, and group members have different reasons for favoring that side of the issue. Thus, during discussion most group members will hear arguments on their own side of the issue that they had not considered previously.[161]

The undeniable reality that a group of Christian apologists will have different (often contradictory) interpretations of biblical texts, ideas, and philosophies, yet they all arrive at the same conclusion (that the Bible is the word of God), is often quite convincing due to the phenomenon of group polarization.[162] Mainstream religious skepticism, typically differing only in relatively quibbling details and possible methods of conveying rational thinking to the believers, has no such foundational polarity. Rational people accept the facts, follow where they lead, and roughly end up around the same place. When a religious social group support is available, an individual hears all the varying reasons to believe in God and tends to become a more ardent follower than ever when no one in the group is convinced by the evidence that is driving his doubts. The individual is then prone to settle on an explanation that he deems to be a reasonable solution to his original dissonance.[163]

The second difficulty in having a doubting Christian turn to a group is that it is a “well-known finding in social psychology that when people are confronted with the opinions of others who disagree with them, there is considerable pressure to go along with the group.”[164] Billy Graham, for one, has been known to arrange an army of revival volunteers with instructions on when to create the impression of a spontaneous mass outpouring.[165] Furthermore, social proof is such a strong psychological force, it has been found that not only are people much more likely to commit murder or suicide following similar stories broadcast in the media, the individuals who do so share traits with the original subject to a much higher degree than you would anticipate by chance.[166] This phenomenon, termed The Werther Effect, is even strong enough to evoke racially motivated violence following heavyweight championship fights. Whether black or white, members who are the same race as the victor of the fight tend to commit more homicides against people who are the same race as the loser of the fight.

This group pressure, however, goes well beyond the level of importance placed on the actions and judgments of one’s peers. Individuals whose opinions are facing group opposition “are motivated to think of the arguments that might have led these other people to hold their discrepant views.”[167] Knowing that others have chosen differently stimulates individuals in the minority to generate explanations for the divergence of opinions. So not only do people feel the need to conform in such a situation, they are also actively convincing themselves that their new opinions are probably wrong.

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The realization that rational skepticism is not as interesting, promising, or comforting as optimistic romanticism is perhaps more formidable than any other obstacle. It’s only human to believe in things that make us happier. If you have admired a book since childhood because it says that your lost loved ones are waiting for you in heaven when you die, it’s going to take an extraordinary amount of work to convince you that the talking donkey also found in the book might mean that the book is not proper evidence for such an optimistic idea. Consider this final story told by Cialdini, which is one of the best examples of religious foolishness I have ever heard. It is worth including in its entirety because it contains a great deal of the psychological processes that we have assessed.

One night at an introductory lecture given by the transcendental meditation (TM) program, I witnessed a nice illustration of how people will hide inside the walls of consistency to protect themselves from the troublesome consequences of thought. The lecture itself was presided over by two earnest young men and was designed to recruit new members into the program. The program claimed it could teach a unique brand of meditation that would allow us to achieve all manner of desirable things, ranging from simple inner peace to the more spectacular abilities to fly and pass through walls at the program’s advanced (and more expensive) stages.

I had decided to attend the meeting to observe the kind of compliance tactics used in recruitment lectures of this sort and had brought along an interested friend, a university professor whose areas of specialization were statistics and symbolic logic. As the meeting progressed and the lecturers explained the theory behind TM, I noticed my logician friend becoming increasingly restless. Looking more and more pained and shifting about constantly in his seat, he was finally unable to resist. When the leaders called for questions at the completion of the lecture, he raised his hand and gently but surely demolished the presentation we had just heard. In less than two minutes, he pointed out precisely where and why the lecturers’ complex argument was contradictory, illogical, and unsupportable. The effect on the discussion leaders was devastating. After a confused silence, each attempted a weak reply only to halt midway to confer with his partner and finally to admit that my colleague’s points were good ones “requiring further study.”

More interesting to me, though, was the effect upon the rest of the audience. At the end of the question period, the two recruiters were faced with a crush of audience members submitting their seventy-five dollar down payments for admission to the TM program. Nudging, shrugging, and chuckling to one another as they took in the payments, the recruiters betrayed sings of giddy bewilderment. After what appeared to have been an embarrassingly clear collapse of their presentation, the meeting had somehow turned into a great success, generating mystifyingly high levels of compliance from the audience. Although more than a bit puzzled, I chalked up the audience response to a failure to understand the logic of my colleague’s arguments. As it turned out, however, just the reverse was the case.

Outside the lecture room after the meeting, we were approached by three members of the audience, each of whom had given a down payment immediately after the lecture. They wanted to know why we had come to the session. We explained, and we asked the same question of them. One was an aspiring actor who wanted desperately to succeed at his craft and had come to the meeting to learn if TM would allow him to achieve the necessary self-control to master the art; the recruiters had assured him that it would. The second described herself as a severe insomniac who had hopes that TM would provide her with a way to relax and fall asleep easily at night. The third served as unofficial spokesman. He also had a sleep-related problem. He was failing college because there didn’t seem to be enough time to study. He had come to the meeting to find out if TM could help by training him to need fewer hours of sleep each night; the additional time could then be used for study. It is interesting to note that the recruiters informed him as well as the insomniac that Transcendental Meditation techniques could solve their respective, though opposite, problems.

Still thinking that the three must have signed up because they hadn’t understood the points made by my logician friend, I began to question them about aspects of his argument. To my surprise, I found that they had understood his comments quite well; in fact, all too well. It was precisely the cogency of his argument that drove them to sign up for the program on the spot. The spokesman put it best: “Well, I wasn’t going to put down any money tonight because I’m really quite broke right now; I was going to wait until the next meeting. But when you’re buddy started talking, I knew I’d better give them my money now, or I’d go home and start thinking about what he said and never sign up.”

All at once, things began to make sense. These were people with real problems; and they were somewhat desperately searching for a way to solve those problems. They were seekers who, if our discussion leaders were to be believed, had found a potential solution in TM. Driven by their needs, they very much wanted to believe that TM was their answer.

Now, in the form of my colleague, intrudes the voice of reason, showing the theory underlying their newfound solution to be unsound. Panic! Something must be done at once before logic takes its toll and leaves them without hope again. Quickly, quickly, walls against reason are needed; and it doesn’t matter that the fortress to be erected is a foolish one. “Quick, a hiding place from thought! Here, take this money. Whew, safe in the nick of time. No need to think about the issues any longer. The decision has been made and from now on the consistency tape whenever necessary: ‘TM? Certainly I think it will help me; certainly I expect to continue; certainly I believe in TM. I already put my money down for it, didn’t I?’ Ah, the comforts of mindless consistency. I’ll just rest right here for a while. It’s so much nicer than the worry and strain of that hard, hard search.”[168]

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE

While an understanding of human psychology demonstrates that the focus of an individual’s religious dedication is heavily reliant upon mere chance, the presence of observable and falsifiable scientific evidence is perhaps the most compelling reason for concluding that Christianity itself fails to contrast with hundreds of other false religions. Because scientific findings clearly yield many conclusions that are contradictory with direct statements from biblical authors, we can safely say that the Bible is an imperfect book containing flaws of human origin. Due to the overwhelming amount of scientific errors the book possesses, you should have great comfort in deciding that there was no divine inspiration or intervention during its creation. Furthermore, the vast categories of errors contained in the Bible demonstrate that the mistakes are not confined to a single author or field of study, a realization that should devastate the foundation and intent of the book as a whole. We need look no further than Genesis to find an extraordinary number of bogus claims: the universe was created in six days only six thousand years ago; an ocean remains aloft in the sky; plants and light existed prior to the sun, moon, and stars; DNA can be altered by placing peeled branches in front of mating livestock; populations of centuries-old humans can inexplicably mushroom within a matter of years; the entire world was killed in a flood; and heaven was in danger of being breeched by a manmade tower. For the Christian readers wise enough to disregard Genesis as ancient mythology, let’s not forget that the New Testament claims that seizures and blindness were caused by demons and that stars were small enough to fall to the earth.[169]

In my first book, I made another questionable decision of offering a summary treatise in defense of all the scientific disciplines that support the finding that the earth is billions of years old. This is perhaps a less than ideal way to go about the matter. I could have simply offered the basic foundations of a number of scientific disciplines that support a young earth, referenced supporting studies, and briefly stated the conclusions of those findings. All of that could have been done in a fraction of the time that I spent elaborating on the sciences, but I was falsely under the impression that people were more likely to accept a principle if you took the time to explain it to them. I was wrong. People will either accept facts, or they will not.

Instead, I will now simply say that several fields of scientific study are founded on the principle that the earth is billions of years old and that no evidence has ever brought any of these foundations into question. According to experts in the scientific community, the age of the earth is in no more question than the basic shape of it. The percentage of today’s scientists who believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old is less than 1, a distribution yielded almost certainly because the dwarfed minority holds their position out of dogmatic desperation. I often wonder if any questioned premise in any scientific discipline is in less dispute than the age of the earth.

These self-proclaimed scientists in the minority are determined to make all evidence fit with a young earth while ignoring the completely overwhelming juggernaut of counterevidence working against their predetermined conclusions. Such research methods are very unscientific and blatantly dishonest because a true scientist does not start out to prove something one way or another. Such researchers should always remain impartial and undecided before considering all of the available evidence to make a rational and logical decision that is independent of their hopes and beliefs. Instead, they surround themselves with so-called scientific evidence and call evolution a religion because they understand that science is the driving force in our education system. [170] Confirmation bias has no place in progressive scientific discovery.

Before I begin answering the specific Christian responses to critical interpretations of the Bible’s reliability on scientific matters, the complete incompatibility between mainstream science and literal biblical fundamentalism makes it necessary to divide Christian views into three distinct categories based on their approach toward science. Since this incompatibility is indisputable and Christians do not even attempt to deny it, they must avoid cognitive dissonance by altering their view of science, the Bible, or both. While it is certainly possible for Christians to hold positions that are not necessarily entirely within a single distinction, they incorporate their opinions on the matter of science and the Bible from one or more of them.

The core beliefs of each category are as follows: 1) Science, when properly applied, is a valid discipline that validates a literal reading of the Bible. We often refer to individuals in this group as Young Earth Creationists. 2) Science is a valid discipline that invalidates a literal reading of the Bible, which is instead often figurative, allegorical, or metaphorical in nature. This position, often termed Old Earth Creationism, does not dispute mainstream scientific findings and consequently takes the most time to dissect. Whereas Young Earth Creationists twist scientific evidence to fit with the Bible, Old Earth Creationists twist the Bible to fit with scientific evidence. 3) Science is not a valid discipline and consequently cannot be applied to interpretations of the Bible. This position is so absurd that I would hesitate to address it if so many readers had not already tried to advance it. I’ll begin with arguments from category one.

–

True science helps to validate the Bible.

I have received a number of similar statements from high school students who are reporting that they are convinced that there are major problems with biological evolution, based on the things they have heard or read outside of the science classroom. Sadly, I believe that this phenomenon is indicative of the low critical thinking ability found in the general high school population. Sagan put the problem best, “If we teach only the findings and products of science–no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be–without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?”[171]

I do not wish to pick on high school students in particular, but this is the point in the educational experience where people tend to have already drawn their conclusions on many key issues in life. This is why it is of the utmost importance to teach students critical thinking, a discipline rarely touched upon when I was in school. I can only hope that these individuals are curious enough in college to discuss the creation/evolution “debate” with reputable biology professors and to discuss religious beliefs with social psychologists who specialize in persuasion and the formation of beliefs.

Some of the more conservative state governments are even considering bills that allow high schools to teach the Bible as an elective. Now this may come as a shock to some, but I think that teaching the Bible in school can actually turn out to be a positive thing for society. Comparative religion would be even better. As Dawkins requested, “Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility.”[172] My optimism for this plan is only in principle, however, because I highly doubt that any teacher will keep his job if he remains objective. I have always said that if more people read the Bible, less people would believe it. If the teacher simply got up there and addressed the scientific mistakes, historical inaccuracies, and moral bankruptcy among the writers, along with the apologetic solutions for these difficulties, some students might actually begin to think critically about what everyone hastily accepts as unquestionably authentic. In reality, teachers would probably forget to leave their biases at home, and the vast majority of teenage students are probably already lost to the ideas of their childhood indoctrination.

The suggestion that the Bible is lacking a realistic scientific foundation is nothing less than a colossal understatement. The Bible has failed fair, impartial, and universally applicable tests in multiple fields of science. If God truly is the inspiration behind this purportedly divine declaration to the world, he shows absolutely no interest in its understandability or accuracy in astronomy, cosmology, zoology, botany, anthropology, geology, ecology, geography, or physiology.[173] In fact, the Bible handicaps those who use their “God-given” talents of reason and logic to settle blatant biblical problems. Nothing can be more detrimental to the authenticity of a biblical claim than contradictory phenomena that we readily observe and experience. With no other evidence to consider, these clues from natural manifestations should always override what we might hope to be correct explanations for unignorable discrepancies. Such is the power of science and reason. They are the impartial pursuit of answers to questions, not the biased search for supplemental evidence to predetermined answers.

The presence of erroneous biblical claims throughout Genesis is one of the most popular reasons why many Christians continue to turn their backs on a literal interpretation of the creation tale. If we were to allow other religions the same amount of leniency, could we ever possibly determine which one is making the legitimate claims? Due to the overwhelming amount of observable, testable, and falsifiable evidence, we can comfortably denounce the proclaimed authenticity of the Bible solely on its erroneous, pseudoscientific claims. Those who accept these findings yet still believe that the Bible is of divine origin are either unaware of what the Bible says or were driven by cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias to seek out absurd ways of bringing science and the Bible into congruency.

Scientists date the earth layers based on the fossils in that layer, which are in turn dated by the layer in which they were found. The earth’s antiquity is therefore based on circular reasoning.

Some people genuinely think that our best and brightest are truly dumb enough to use such fallacious logic. I realize that dismantling Young Earth Creationist arguments is like taking candy from a baby, but since I encounter this assertion at least once a month, I’m going to address it anyway. Scientists accepted the idea of dating layers of the earth well before the evolution of species was a scientific discipline.[174] Scientists independently reached methods for the dating of layers and the dating of fossils, and the results of both processes are in agreement with a third process, radiometric dating.[175] Is it merely a coincidence that fossils found deeper in the ground have undergone more radioactive decay and have a less evolved structure? The stupidity of Young Earth Geology is so astounding that I will not give its specific qualms against mainstream science an air of respectability beyond this paragraph. If you are similarly convinced by such nonsensical disputes, I can only encourage you to seek out and read mainstream scientific publications.

There’s a great book recently published [title omitted] which outlines in a VERY science-friendly way, both naturalistic and supernaturalistic theories of life’s origins. It then uses current peer-reviewed journal publications to assess the state of our knowledge with devastating effect to proponents of naturalistic origins. Life as we know it is not just improbable, it is physically impossible.

I have completely lost count of all the book suggestions and appeals to authority that readers have offered me over the past few years. First, it is hardly conceivable that we should consider a book dealing with supernaturalistic theories to be science-friendly when the very act of using the existence of the supernatural directly violates scientific principle. Natural ideas are theories; supernatural ideas are constructs. One is testable; the other is not. Would we suggest that a hypothetical book, which happens to suggest how invisible pink unicorns could have created the world in the supernatural realm, is science-friendly simply because it does not violate any known scientific laws? We should make no such suggestion because it begs the question of the supernatural when there is no good reason to consider it. Substitute God for the invisible pink unicorns, and all of a sudden, it’s supposed to sound feasible to a monotheistic-centered society. It’s a small wonder that the authors of the recommended book do not submit their claims to the scientific community and win a Nobel Prize by becoming the people who overthrew the cornerstone of modern biology.

The supposed boundary between non-life and life is not even as definitive as we were taught years ago; in fact, it is completely arbitrary.[176] Studies of abiogenesis[177] have demonstrated transitions from nothing to atoms, atoms to molecules, molecules to amino acids, amino acids to proteins, and proteins to prions, all without the need for supernatural intervention.[178] In fact, scientists have already created a fully functioning synthetic cell from scratch and expect to create an actual organism by 2017.[179]

It is also quite absurd to suggest that something is “impossible” unless it’s on the basis that it is logically impossible. After all, God could have supernaturally created life using naturalistic methods in the exact way described by biologists, thereby rendering the argument useless. I wonder how the conclusion that life as we know it is “physically impossible” leads to the “possible” supernatural explanation. For whatever conclusion that drives us to the supernatural, why can we not say that it applies to the natural? I have absolutely no problem with the existence of an impersonal higher power that is distantly controlling the universe, but I have many problems with these pitiful supposed proofs that do nothing but attack aspects of the natural and beg the question of the supernatural. Confirmation bias greatly affects the authors of the vast majority of these books, and what good are the scientific opinions of those whose sole intent is to advance the scientific validity of the Bible?

The chances of evolution being true are the same as the chances of a tornado going through a junkyard and assembling an airplane.

This little gem is otherwise known as the argument from improbability. The act of invoking it displays a complete lack of comprehension regarding natural design. I could write an entire book dealing with just the responses from readers who literally do not understand the first thing about evolution. I would suggest some reading material to them if they cared to learn, but most of them make it obvious from the onset that they have no desire to review anything that contradicts what they have merely accepted as the truth since childhood. These individuals often challenge me to name something that produces something other than its own “kind,” which is an utterly ridiculous proposal since there is no such objective scientific designation as a “kind.” Young Earth Creationists often use similarly vague terminology in defense of the feasibility of gathering animals for the biblical flood, but they have never been able to decide what constitutes a discrete “kind” and how the immediate outliers are objectively disqualified from belonging to the “kind.” The arbitrary boundaries always suit the user.

To make the issue disturbingly worse, this “kind” argument is not even close to reflecting how evolution by natural selection works. The challenge is the same old “an orange will always be an orange” straw man that creationists have been proposing for years. Forcing an organism to undergo changes to make it in incompatible with organisms farther up the hierarchy is not how the products of time and genetic mutation eventually manifest. One need not demonstrate that two members of one species can create an offspring belonging to a new species; one need only demonstrate that two different species are the product of a common ancestor, slowly separated by genetic mutation in the past. These things take time. There are far better primers for learning about evolution than what I can propose in a few paragraphs, but since there may be some readers who have no interest or intention on reviewing the matter further, I could not forgive myself if I had a chance to educate them briefly and did not do so.

All known cellular organisms contain DNA, which determines genetic makeup, which in turn gives the organisms their traits and appearances. DNA, however, often does not copy itself perfectly during reproduction because random amounts of genetic mutation take place on random generations for a number of reasons. Evolution, in its simplest terms, is the change of these traits and appearances over time. This change in the DNA is responsible for the transformation of organism traits and appearances. Some mutations are harmful while others are beneficial. If an organism is born with a harmful mutation, it is less likely to survive and pass the harmful mutation on to its offspring. On the other hand, if an organism is born with a mutation that is beneficial to its survival, it is more likely to survive and pass the mutation on to its offspring. In this manner, organisms constantly improve in their likelihood of adaptive survival over time.

Let us suppose that there is a population of a certain species living within a specific area. If one segment of the population chooses to migrate to a different area, the population splits itself into two groups. If these groups remain isolated from each other, they will only reproduce within their respective gene pools. The genetic mutations within each group will be random, and those mutations will almost certainly be different from one group to the other. As time progresses, the mutations will accumulate and the genetic makeup of the two groups will begin to diverge from one another. While a thousand years of reproduction might only produce a very small difference in their DNA, several thousand years might produce a difference large enough so that the two groups would no longer be capable of reproducing with each other if they elected to converge. We would now have two new distinct but closely related species, and the original species would no longer exist. This phenomenon, responsible for the creation of different types of organisms, is what we call speciation. Over the course of a billion years, one would expect to see enough divergence to produce a hierarchy of life similar to the one to which we belong.

We call this entire process of mutation and reproduction the Theory of Evolution, but it is anything other than a theory in the popular sense. In scientific terminology, the word theory does not imply in any way that there is some sort of uncertainty on the existence of a process. A theory is simply a tentative explanation on the observance of facts. It is a fact that gravity is a part of our universe, but the explanation of why all objects are attracted to one another is called Gravitational Theory. It is a fact that microorganisms often cause disease in higher organisms, but the explanation of how this process works is called the Germ Theory of Disease. It is a fact that organisms have undergone speciation for billions of years, but the explanation on why associated phenomena take place is called the Theory of Evolution. Evolution is a fact; the explanation of evolution is the theory.

Responding directly to the airplane analogy, there is never a specific result to which evolution is leading. Humans were never a “goal” of evolution–in sharp contrast to the apologetic implication that the airplane was the “goal” of the tornado. Moreover, there is no one “tornado,” but rather a seemingly endless series of reproductions and mutations that remain only when beneficial. In short, “We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it. No real fundamentalist would ever say anything like that.”[180]

The eye could not have evolved since all of the parts are required for vision.

As many times as others have destroyed this argument for irreducible complexity, I will address it briefly for readers who have not heard it before. We will also revisit a similar concept later. The offered claim is patently false, and most apologists know better than to suggest it. A defective or incomplete eye is better than no eye at all. Any organism with a genetic mutation that is beneficial enough to be remotely light sensitive is more likely to survive and pass that trait on. As beneficial visual mutations accumulate, the vision improves. Some species have relatively primitive vision compared to our own; some species have relatively superior vision compared to our own. Logic forces the apologist to admit that our own eyes are “unfinished products” when compared to those of a hawk or some other organism with superior vision. This is a necessary admission that is obviously contrary to his intention. For more reasons than we need to delve into here, many biologists often light-heartedly point out the poor nature of the eye’s “design” as evidence of a poor “designer.”

[Random bankrupt creationist claim found in a book suggestion omitted]…This is one of the many ways the fossil record and modern geology lean toward a young earth.

No, this is one of the many ways that creationists present false/inaccurate/partial scientific information that they probably do not fully understand in an attempt to make their pre-determined beliefs seem valid. This is also one of the many ways that uncritical minds are fooled into believing what they read because the author appears to have great knowledge on the subject. Creationists at the most widely consulted pseudoscientific websites do not even recommend the argument that this individual offered. That is one of the reasons I omitted the claim; the other is that I do not wish to turn this work into a lengthy list of rebuttals against arguments that no unbiased scientist would seriously consider.

Why should I read a book suggested by someone who does not take the time to confirm scientific material presented by an author who holds an opinion against the overwhelming majority in the field we were discussing? Why should I read a book that even the Young Earth Creationist community does not hold in any esteem? The problem here, in addition to confirmation bias, is a total failure to investigating the claims. Reading introductory material on earth science, speaking with geologists, or discussing evolution with professors who teach entry level college sciences will show how popular creationist claims are bankrupt. Since people don’t bother to do any of these, the public often views creationism as a viable alternative to a grounded scientific discipline. Unfortunately, there seems to be an innate tendency for people to be fooled by partial or fake evidence. According to Cialdini, people can behave by automatic response, evidenced by the response from canned sitcom laughter.

We have become so accustomed to taking the humorous reactions of others as evidence of what deserves laughter that we, too, can be made to respond to the sound and not to the substance of the real thing. Much as a [recorded] “cheep-cheep” noise removed from the reality of a chick can stimulate a female turkey to mother, so can a recorded “ha-ha” removed from the reality of a genuine audience stimulate us to laugh. The television executives are exploiting our preference for shortcuts, our tendency to react automatically on the basis of partial evidence. They know that their tapes will cue our tapes.[181]

Young Earth Creationism is just another discipline found on a long inventory of pseudosciences. There is even a brand of pseudoscience quickly gaining popularity in my primary field of study called homeopathy, which offers a terrific illustration on how someone can manipulate information before presentation. Homeopathy is the principle that a disease can be cured by giving very small amounts of a substance that produce symptoms similar to the ones produced by the disease. According to homeopathy, as you further dilute the concentration of the medicinal substance that you administer to someone, the active ingredient will accomplish an increasingly desirable result. Mainstream pharmacologists (who all realize that homeopathy is bunk) understand that most drugs work on production inhibition or under enzyme-receptor theory. We know that as you increase enzymes levels introduced to the body, more receptors will become stimulated and produce greater effects. We also know that as more inhibitors are introduced to working processes, fewer enzymatic goals will be accomplished. These are currently undeniable facts of science; and the field of nonsensical homeopathy is in direct contrast to these foundational theories of medicine.

Substances that follow the principles of homeopathy cannot actually work to any appreciable degree if they are not present in sufficient concentrations.[182] Manufacturers of homeopathic products can even legally sell their products in the US as long as they carry a warning that the Food and Drug Administration does not evaluate their claims. As an alternative, you will find many supporting studies referenced on the product labels that support their claims. So if the products do what the manufacturers say they do, and there are studies to support their claims, why do these products not go through the FDA approval process? The answer is very similar for both homeopathy and creationism.

The FDA serves as the governing body that orders drug manufacturers to present all relevant evidence for review–not just evidence favorable to the manufacturer. If you run enough studies, according to the statistical laws associated with chance, you will eventually get a result that you want.[183] One of the shortcomings with our administration of scientific research is that there are no governing bodies controlling what studies are published and advertised to consumers. The best that the scientific community can do is separate journals that publish only peer-reviewed findings from ones that will publish anything offered. Creationists do not publish in peer-reviewed journals because those involved in the appraisal process know that their methods are too flawed for other scientists to consider seriously. This observation came to light in the 1987 United States Supreme Court Case Edwards v. Aguillard, which decided that teaching creationism in public schools is unconstitutional because it a religious belief that cannot be factually supported.[184]

In addition to bogus claims designed to derail the credibility of evolutionary biology, I have also received my fair share of urban legends that someone started in order to make the religious believer more comfortable with his faith. I have actually found it curious that these stories amaze religious followers. Would a firm believer not just brush the results off as what we should naturally expect? To me, they reek of insecurities.

I do know that the Hubble telescope has in recent years convinced the majority of astronomers that the universe isn’t billions of years old. I’m not an astronomer, but it had something to do with the number of a certain type of stars being few in number - hundreds instead of thousands.

I have been unable to track down the origin of this myth, but would it not serve this individual well to consider the discovery’s potential ramifications within the scientific community? This consequence is irrelevant however because, if you remember, the Bible defender cares not for rational thought–only comforting evidence. The Hubble telescope story is one of those comforting myths that Christians pass among each other to externally justify their beliefs. As a former Christian, I was also once guilty of only wanting to hear scientific testimony that substantiated my blind faith. Anyone who does a modest amount of research, however, will discover that there is only evidence for the contrasting position, which is that the universe is about fourteen billion years old.[185]

NASA found a missing day in time, which supports the story of the sun standing still in Joshua.[186]

According to the researchers at snopes.com,[187] this myth has been around since 1936 when the author Harry Rimmer virtually invented the story when allegedly referencing another work written in 1890. As for the growing popularity of this tale, I could not possibly provide a better explanation than those who already addressed it:

To those who’ve given over their hearts to God and the Holy Word, this is a deeply satisfying legend. Faith is, after all, the firm belief in something for which no proof exists, a quality that can leave believers — especially those who find themselves in the midst of non-believers — feeling unsatisfied. As steadfast as their certainty is, they cannot prove the rightness of the path they tread to those who jeer at their convictions. And this is a heavy burden to shoulder. A legend such as the “missing day explained” tale speaks straight to the hearts of those who yearn for a bit of vindication in this life. Being right isn’t always enough — sometimes what one most longs for is sweet recognition from others… Our willingness to accept legends depends far more upon their expression of concepts we want to believe than upon their plausibility. If the sun once really did stand still for a day, the best evidence we’d have for proving it would be the accounts of people who saw it happen. That is what the Bible is said to offer. Some of us accept that, and some of us don’t.[188]

Didn’t you hear that a large group of scientists got together and determined that evolution wasn’t true?

The Discovery Network’s Science Channel recently ranked evolution as the greatest scientific discovery in the history of humankind.[189] Viewers considered it more important than the discovery of cells, the discovery of penicillin, the Germ Theory of Disease, Mendel’s laws of heredity, Newton’s laws of motion, and Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, among others. People who believe such rumors have no idea how significant it would be for the mainstream scientific community to repeal the foundation of biology. Since such a bald assertion would never convince a rational person without sufficient evidence to support it, I shall not give it the air of respectability by providing further comment. Some of us will accept that, and some of us will not.

–

Defenses of the Noachian Flood and Young Earth Creationism almost always go hand in hand. If you are gullible, stupid, ignorant, or indoctrinated enough to believe in one, you will almost certainly believe in the other. If you think one is false, then it pretty much follows that you are going to reject the other as well. Stories like the one of Noah’s ark and countless other absurdities probably reclaim more victims from Christianity than skeptical critiques ever could–and for good reason. First and foremost, the stories in the first five books of the Bible are patent nonsense. However, if you wish to throw common sense out the window and put the matter to other tests for validity, there are still plenty of reasons to disbelieve just about everything you find in the earliest biblical writings.

An increasing number of modern scholars have all but concluded that the first five books of the Bible, traditionally considered to have been written by Moses (a supposed eyewitness to the majority of the events), are actually a combination of several different legends by several different authors written several centuries after the setting. There are a number of reasons why we believe this is so. The east side of the Jordan River is referred to as the “other side” when Moses never crossed over into the west side. The dates of conquests of cities do not match the dates yielded by archaeological digs. There are many contradictions and repetitions in close proximity to one another. Different names for God are used. Lists of people who were born after Moses died are recorded. The text speaks of Moses in the third person, even going as far as calling him meek and superior in the same verse–which is hardly plausible as a self-declaration. Moses died and was buried in the final chapter. Camels were already domesticated in the stories even though secular historians believe they were not domesticated until centuries later. Names of pharaohs are omitted. Future names of cities are provided. Moses has knowledge of certain matters that no one from the period would have had.[190] Furthermore, the entire book of Deuteronomy is likely a forgery “discovered hidden in the Temple in Jerusalem by King Josiah, who, miraculously, in the midst of a major reformation struggle, found in Deuteronomy confirmation of all his views.”[191]

The overwhelming majority of secular scholars (and many progressive religious scholars) agree that the final biblical version of the flood account culminated long after the deaths of Noah and Moses, perhaps around the time of the Babylonian Exile. During this troubling period for the Israelites, their priests likely embellished the historical event with supernatural attributes, possibly as a way of manufacturing propaganda to intimidate their captors and console their fellow captives. In essence, the Israelites may have wanted to increase their own power by frightening others with a deity angry enough to decimate even his own people. If the mystery behind Noah’s ark has this much simpler explanation, why should we not apply the same reasoning to the remaining ridiculous, unverifiable, supernaturally based accounts found throughout the incredulous Old Testament? Even if we ignore all this evidence and instead suppose that Moses was an eyewitness to the events he records during his life, Noah’s ark still predates him by several centuries. Thus, when considering whether the story of Noah’s ark is a literal occurrence, we must realize that the story was written between one thousand (traditional dating) and two thousand (scholarly dating) years after it happened.

A little known but important piece of information about the Noachian flood is that the extremely similar Epic of Gilgamesh in the Sumerian legend predates Noah’s story by at least one thousand years in the written form and perhaps five hundred years for the setting.[192] The similarities between the two tales are so remarkable that we cannot write them off in good conscience as mere coincidences. In the earlier flood legend, Utnapishtim receives instructions and exact dimensions on how to construct a large ship to avoid an imminent flood (as does Noah in Genesis 6:14-16), takes animals and his family aboard to preserve life on earth (as does Noah in Genesis 6:19-7:1), lands the ship on a mountain after the flood has stopped (as does Noah in Genesis 8:4), releases a dove and a raven from the ship in order to aid his search for dry land (as does Noah in Genesis 8:6-11), and burns a sacrifice after the flood for the gods who find its odor pleasing (as does Noah in Genesis 8:20-21). Because several additional minor parallels exist, I would encourage everyone to read Tablet XI of the short epic in its entirety in order to appreciate fully the similarities between the two legends. Since the Gilgamesh tale is the earlier version of the two, we can only surmise that the authors of Genesis copied the Epic of Gilgamesh or inadvertently patterned the story of Noah’s ark on an even more ancient flood legend that we have yet to discover. This fact alone is sufficient for unbiased people to conclude that Noah’s ark is a story borrowed from another culture, but this does not stop uninformed criticisms from rolling in.

We know that the biblical story of Noah’s Ark is true and that the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh is false because the latter lacks the details and simplicity of the biblical account.

To which I shall respond by declaring that this guy has it backwards. That is to say, we know the Sumerian version is the correct one because the Bible lacks the vagueness and complexity of the Sumerian account. Now of course this is a terrible argument I’ve just made, but it only goes to show what straws people will grasp at in order to avoid having to admit that their religious stories are wrong. How does the inclusion of what one person arbitrarily considers graphic details and simplicity make one story true over another? The individual offering this argument simply declares the biblical story true and attempts to discredit other stories based on how they differ from the one that he arbitrarily declares to be the winner. To restate the individual’s argument in a more realistic fashion: the epic disagrees with the Bible, so the epic is wrong. Such a suggestion is not even coherent enough for us to consider the presence of confirmation bias. Why does the individual not want to address the issue that the Bible has no less than five major parallels with the older story? If the biblical flood is true, how is it that the Sumerians knew exact details of the future centuries before it happened? Why does the individual not want to address extant written records from other civilizations straight through the flood era? Why does the individual not want to address any of the logistical problems with the voyage?[193]

Noah’s Flood didn’t mean the whole world was flooded.

It is painfully obvious upon in-depth analysis that the story burdens itself with a number of significant logistical problems, not to mention the presence of historical records from a number of civilizations that fail to mention their demise.[194] For this reason, many apologists will attempt a hopeless defense for it by suggesting that the tale was speaking of a local flood. This notion, however, clearly contradicts the text, which states that all the mountains of the earth are covered.[195] Although the Hebrew word in the text used for earth, erets, has an ambiguously additional meaning of land, we can still easily determine the author’s intended connotation for this specific passage. How else would God’s flood annihilate every living thing on earth, as this was his stated intention, unless the elevated water extended well beyond the Middle and Near East? How else could the ark travel hundreds of miles to Ararat without water high enough to reach out and spill into the oceans? Liquids seek their own level and do not stand in one area without complete confinement. Since the barriers required for this magical constrainment are not present, we can only conclude that a local flood scenario is not only logically impossible but also entirely incompatible with the biblical text.

Recent archaeological evidence, on the other hand, has shed some light on the possible origins of the ancient global flood legends. A couple of researchers have gained notoriety for arguing that the Mediterranean Sea had likely become swollen with glaciers during the most recent ice age.[196] If this proposal is truly representative of past conditions, it is quite likely that the water pressure increased to the point where a fine line of earth previously serving as a barrier between the Mediterranean Sea and the land currently under the Black Sea collapsed. Such a scenario would then allow a violent surge of water to rush inland and create the Black Sea. Needless to say, this feasible natural process would result in widespread devastation in areas now buried under hundreds of feet of water. As a further consequence, survivors who witnessed the aftermath of the tragic event would certainly spread their consistently diverging, consistently exaggerating stories to neighboring regions.

The story’s utter ridiculousness is probably why many polls indicate that an increasing number of Christians no longer claim a literal belief in the Old Testament and are moving toward the relatively rational category that we’re going to consider next.[197] It is evidence that Christians are capable of believing anything, no matter how ridiculous, because God can do anything, no matter how ridiculous. Sure, one can easily explain the logistical problems of the whole fiasco by appealing to the use of miracles: God made all the water appear and disappear; God prevented all the water from becoming too hot; God collected the animals and put them into hibernation; God kept the ark afloat; God repopulated the earth with life; and God erased all evidence of the flood. By invoking the miracle clause, however, Christians are using unverifiable events that any person can insert into any scenario in order to maintain the legitimacy of any religion. To rectify all of these problems in such a deceitful manner is to go against the whole purpose of constructing the ark in the first place. Applying such implausible explanations would also mean that God intentionally misleads people who rely on their logical and observational talents that he himself gave them for deducing answers to readily apparent problems. Searching for the truth behind Noah’s ark isn’t a matter of coming up with any solution for a problem that makes the story fit, but rather discovering the most likely solution to the problem so that we have the most likely answer.

The intent of the story is sparkling clear. A global flood wiped out all life on the planet with the exception of one human family. Like every other global deluge story that came before and after Noah, the biblical flood is a lie. The source of the entertaining tale was most likely a tremendous flood that a series of individuals would later embellish to fantastical proportions. When taken literally, the tale of Noah’s ark is an insult to human intelligence and common sense. If the story did not appear in the Bible, as is the case for dozens of other flood legends, no one would be giving it a second thought. Christianity, and every other ancient religion for that matter, emerged in an era of mysticism where people readily believed that miracles happened every day.

Fast-forward two thousand years. Some of the more liberal Christians have come to this realization and formed a new camp of belief. They interpret, according to their beliefs, where there otherwise need be no interpretation. This is the quintessence of the next group.

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The belief in a symbolic or figurative Bible is synonymous with moderate or liberal Christianity. Harris has something very poignant to say about this before we start:

The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism. We cannot say that fundamentalists are crazy, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief; we cannot even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivaled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don’t like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture imposes on us. This is not a new form of faith, or even a new species of scriptural exegesis; it is simply a capitulation to a variety of all-too-human interests that have nothing, in principle, to do with God. Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance–and it has no bona fides, in religious terms, to put it on a par with fundamentalism. The texts themselves are unequivocal: they are perfect in all their parts. By their light, religious moderation appears to be nothing more than an unwillingness to fully submit to God’s law. By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally. Unless the core dogmas of faith are called into question–i.e., that we know there is a God, and that we know what he wants from us–religious moderation will do nothing to lead us out of the wilderness.[198]

I have studied a considerable number of figurative interpretations surrounding Genesis and have found them to be desperate attempts to reconcile the Bible with scientific data. There are a number of descriptive terms floating around for this method, but they all basically assert the same thing: God intended for us to interpret Genesis figuratively. If there is something definitive in the original language to support this position (as opposed to forcing puzzle pieces to fit with known data), let those who object to a literal rendition present a valid reason for a figurative one. This will be difficult to do because the intent of the creation story is clear.

We still have no good reason to conclude that the authors’ intentions were anything other than to convey that God literally created the earth over a six-day period about six thousand years ago. No amount of textual manipulation can change what the original text states; and no unbiased hermeneutic[199] endeavors have created any reasonable support for the position of the moderate and liberal Christians. Moreover, there was no reason for the author to be figurative. It is merely because the text is inconsistent with reality that people suggest a figurative interpretation. An unbiased eye can see that the authors display no more historical knowledge than any of their contemporaries. Thus, there is nothing in Genesis to distinguish the Bible’s creation myth from any other ancient creation myth.

You seem to read the Bible as though it were a scientific or historical document, as though it were measurable and logical. You provide no reason why you read it in this manner.

No, I do not read it as a scientific or historical document; I read it as a book of information. If I am to accept that God wrote or inspired the book, I expect the information to be accurate. When the science or history is woefully inaccurate, I tentatively conclude that an omniscient being had nothing to do with it. Many of the latter books in the Old Testament, however, I do read entirely as attempts at history because they are widely acknowledged to be such. Hence the designation given by biblical scholars: the historical books. I consider the Old Testament to be within the measurable bounds of scrutiny and logic because the events described within either happened or not. These are the standards by which I measure the Bible. Is logical soundness too much to expect from an omnipotently inspired book that demands a lifetime of adherence?

I analyze it in this manner for the same reason that I read any other book of reports in this manner–it is either true or false. Trying to place a book on some different plane of esoteric thought by begging the question of its divine nature is wrong for so many reasons, primarily because we can do it for any work. What book cannot maintain its inerrancy by simply being deemed figurative whenever it fails tests of scientific scrutiny? I once ran across a terrific point on the internet written by a skeptic and former English professor:

A very basic principle of literary interpretation is that the words in a written text should be interpreted literally unless there are compelling reasons to assign figurative meaning to them, but a desire to make the text inerrant is not a compelling reason to assign figurative meaning, because that approach is based on an unverifiable claim that biblical writers were divinely inspired in what they wrote, and so they could not have made mistakes.[200]

Do you suppose its many stories were ever intended as literal actual accounts?

Let those who disagree demonstrate how they can separate fact from fiction, literal from figurative, metaphorical from allegorical, etc. To my knowledge, no one has ever been able to develop a reliable method or formula to do so. Intense hermeneutic studies consistently yield inconsistent conclusions because the problem with biblical interpretation is that the interpreters can interpret by utilizing a seemingly endless variety of disciplines. If we are simply going to hold the Bible to some sort of common sense litmus test when deciding what is literal, as the one asking this question seems to suggest, we must immediately rule out Jesus’ resurrection as a historical account. Why conclude that the fish swallowing Jonah is clearly figurative while a man returning to life after being dead for over a day is clearly literal? Since the vast majority of Christians will never make this concession, we should see an enormous problem with the suggested arbitrary approach. After all, moderate and liberal Christians, who are willing to accept scientific and logical conclusions, will attempt to shrug off the absurdities by claiming that the statements are merely figurative; fundamentalists Christians, who will not accept obvious scientific and logical conclusions, attempt to invent their own non-testable solutions. The best answer freethinkers can provide–that primitive minds spread fantastic stories in a time when humans understood virtually nothing in the universe–goes unheard by all religious parties.

Aesop’s fables contain no actual occurrences yet they contain a deeper meaning: colloquially- a moral.

This is a false analogy because Aesop’s fables are set in a fantastical environment and are clearly intended to be works of fiction that convey an underlying meaning. The Bible, on the other hand, is an attempted history of the Ancient Near East that intertwines documentation of a specific god’s earthly actions with stories of talking animals and other such absurdities. If moderate Christians have valid arguments that the Bible was clearly intended to be figurative or colloquial, let them present those arguments. Better yet, let them present those arguments to the fundamentalist Christians who have valid arguments that the Bible was clearly intended to be taken literally. Once again, we see that apologists cannot agree among themselves what the Bible is supposed to be, yet they all expect non-believers to accept their contradictory positions toward the same conclusion: that the Bible is the word of God. If this does not demonstrate that the apologetic conclusion of the Bible’s divine origin was made before the gathering of evidence, nothing will.

Most people understand that the bible is full of allegories, metaphors and symbolism.

Not really. For every person who believes that a certain story is allegorical, metaphorical, or symbolic, I guarantee that I could find another person who believes it is entirely literal. I further guarantee that each person could use hermeneutics to find textual justification for their respective positions. What does this say? How can one definitively determine literal from figurative? Is the resurrection of a dead man allegorical, metaphorical, and symbolic? If not, why not? “Most people understand that the resurrection is full of allegories, metaphors, and symbolism.” How is that statement less valid than the one above? Dawkins elaborates:

Modern theologians will protest that the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac should not be taken as literal fact. And, once again, the appropriate response is twofold. First, many many people, even to this day, do take the whole of their scripture to be literal fact, and they have a great deal of political power over the rest of us, especially in the United States and in the Islamic world. Second, if not as literal fact, how should we take the story? As an allegory? Then an allegory for what? Surely nothing praiseworthy.[201]

The fact of the matter is that those who argue that the Bible is an allegorical, metaphorical, or symbolic book belong to a generation that has merely retreated from the position of their predecessors. Apologists for religion have changed over the years, just as apologists for other pseudoscientific disciplines have incorporated new interpretations for more recent evidence that debunks their disciplines. The first ghost photographer was found to be a fraud when living people started showing up in his pictures, but this doesn’t discourage the field from forming new explanations for subsequent ghost photographs.[202] The first spirit-rapper confessed that the otherworldly sounds in her sessions were the popping of a joint in her big toe and not communications from the dead, but this doesn’t discourage the field from continuously pressing the validity of subsequent ghost whisperers.[203] The first footage of Bigfoot was admitted to be a hoax by the man who made the suit and the man who wore the suit, but this doesn’t discourage the field from forming new explanations for subsequent films.[204] The first verifiable crop circles were made by two men who confessed to having invented the whole idea in a pub, but this doesn’t discourage the field from forming new explanations for subsequent crop circles.[205] Abductees alleged that the first space aliens told them that they came from Mars and Venus, but once scientists determined those worlds to be inhospitable to life, abductees talked of subsequent abductors hailing from far away solar systems.[206] In this same manner, once science destroyed a literal reading of the Bible, the book retreated into the realm of symbolism and other such explanations. Sagan explains the consequences:

The religious traditions are often so rich and multivariate that they offer ample opportunity for renewal and revision, again especially when their sacred books can be interpreted metaphorically and allegorically. There is thus a middle group of confessing past errors–as the Roman Catholic Church did in its 1992 acknowledgement that Galileo was right after all, that the Earth does revolve around the Sun: three centuries late, but courageous and most welcome nonetheless.[207]

The Catholic Church has never made any assertion to the effect that the Bible is literally true.

I placed this hilarious statement after Sagan’s quote for an obvious reason. What the Catholic Church does and does not do is irrelevant to whether or not the Bible is literally true. Is the Catholic Church the ultimate authority on the Bible? Hardly. Does all of society base its opinions on the Catholic Church? Hardly. More importantly, the Catholic Church once arrested Galileo, one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, for presenting scientific hypotheses that were contrary to literal statements of the Bible. I’m pretty sure that the Catholics did not go around arresting people for making scientific discoveries that contradicted figurative stories. I am certainly not going to delve into the history of the Catholic Church because any reasonable person knows what a deplorable history the institution has made for itself. One hundred years after Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species, a Pope declares that evolution might be true. Centuries after the Catholic Church persecuted Galileo for his scientific discoveries, another Pope offers an apology. The reader apparently believes that these admissions somehow help the Catholic Church’s credibility in the argument for figurative interpretations. I disagree.

The stories of the Old Testament are clearly, and have been understood as such since their inception, origin stories that reveal a religious truth.

Then why is it that no one has been able to support this assertion with a satisfactory argument? Then why is it that fundamentalist Christians claim to be able to support a literal reading of the stories? Then why is it that Christians cannot agree on what is figurative and what is literal? How could one even begin to argue such a ridiculous notion when we have overwhelming evidence that people held the exact opposite as true throughout the Middle and Dark Ages? Even today, many studies show that a large portion of Americans believe the stories to be literally true.[208] Nevertheless, let us step back and look at the big picture for a moment. What can we say about a god who inspired a book that inspires so much confusion? I ask readers to take the time to consider the ramifications of this question.

The word begat often skips generations, so the dating for Creation is wrong.

There are a few passages that liberal Christians cite to support this view, but those passages are easily explained by none other than the fundamentalist Christians. As these specific arguments are far too detailed to dwell on here,[209] I will simply move on to the overall absurdity of the notion that the biblical genealogies skip generations. We can obviously denounce the idea that they are allegorical, metaphorical, symbolic, or summary in some fashion because there is no reasonable explanation as to why the authors would record them in this manner. Mills elaborates beautifully:

If we are to interpret these names and numbers metaphorically, then I suppose that the telephone book–which is also a list of names and numbers–is also a collection of deeply profound metaphors. And anyone who can’t appreciate this ‘fact’ is a narrow-minded literalist incapable of elevated, metaphorical abstraction…When viewed in isolation, the Genesis genealogies themselves posit no miraculous events or supernatural Beings. If we cannot interpret these mundane genealogies literally, then we cannot interpret anything in the Bible literally. These same creationists, however, demand that we interpret literally the existence of God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, the Devil, Angels, Heaven and Hell. All miraculous events portrayed in the Bible are likewise to be interpreted in a strictly literal sense: Jesus literally turned water into wine–literally cast out demons–literally walked on the Sea of Galilee–literally placed a magic curse on a fig tree–literally rose from the dead. Apparently, it’s only the Genesis genealogies that we are suppose to interpret metaphorically.[210]

Yours is indeed a curious exercise, ignoring so many hermeneutical tools that are well established in critical literary analysis.

I do not ignore the process of hermeneutics; I often delve deep into it in order to see if it has merit. On the other hand, I ignore ad hoc interpretations of passages to explain errors when they conflict with the clear intentions of the passages. As one can use hermeneutics to find a way to interpret the Bible to mean whatever he wants it to mean, and just about any Christian will agree with this assessment, what good is the process? There is an enormous problem with applying hermeneutics to a widely interpretable piece of work. If ten people undertake the practice, you are likely to get ten entirely different conclusions–yet they all somehow support the divinity of the Bible. And we all saw it coming