20
. Ibid., 129–34, 375–83.
21
. Ibid., 247–57.
22
. I thoroughly analyze the evidence in ibid., 161–218, 329–68.
23
. For ample evidence of this, see ibid., 385–405 (with 230–40). See also sources cited in Loftus,
The Christian Delusion
, 419 (note 56).
24
. I thoroughly demonstrate this in “Why the Resurrection Is Unbelievable.”
25
. On what makes unremarkable prophesies not supernatural, see Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 247–52. On cultural and psychosomatic phenomena causing imagined ailments and psychologically effected cures-just like what Christians reported-see Edward Shorter,
From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era
(New York: Free Press, 1992) and James Randi,
The Faith Healers
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1989). On the natural psychology of demonic possession, see: Simon Kemp and Kevin Williams, “Demonic Possession and Mental Disorder in Medieval and Early Modern Europe,”
Psychological Medicine
17 (1987): 21–29; T. Craig Isaacs, “The Possessive States Disorder: The Diagnosis of Demonic Possession,”
Pastoral Psychology
35, no. 4 (June 1987): 263–73; Nicholas Spanos and Jack Gottlieb, “Demonic Possession, Mesmerism, and Hysteria: A Social Psychological Perspective on Their Historical Interrelations,”
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
88, no. 5 (October 1979): 527–46; also: Stefano Ferracuti and Roberto Sacco, “Dissociative Trance Disorder: Clinical and Rorschach Findings in Ten Persons Reporting Demon Possession and Treated by Exorcism,”
Journal of Personality Assessment
66, no. 3 (June 1996): 525–39.
26
. Carrier,
Not the Impossible Faith
, 219–21.
27
. W. H. C. Frend, “Martyrdom and Political Oppression,”
The Early Christian World
, ed. Philip Esler (New York: Routledge, 2000), 2:818.
28
. Alan F. Segal,
Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West
(New York: Doubleday, 2004), 314, 285–321; see also Arthur Droge and James Tabor,
A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians andJews in Antiquity
(1992).
29
. Carrier,
Not the Impossible Faith
, 221–25.
30
. Ibid., 240–45.
31
. Hence hardships were of no account, see ibid., 230–36. That Christians understood their movement as just such a war is explicit: see ibid., 225–30.
32
. I thoroughly debunk this myth in ibid., 297–321.
33
. See ibid., 369–72.
34
. For a complete discussion of everything to follow, including citations of the sociological literature, see ibid., 259–96.
35
. For many discussions and examples (of both targeting families and the disaffected, and how associated recruitment and retention difficulties were dealt with), see ibid., 131–33, 230–36,260–68,295–97, 335–36, 385–86.
36
. For a full discussion of this tactic and why it works and how missionaries still employ it, see David Eller, “The Cultures of Christianities,” in Loftus,
The Christian Delusion
, 25–46.
37
. Formally, when P(h|b) = 0.5, then P(h|e.b) = P(e|h.b) / [P(e|h.b) + P(e|~h.b)], because the priors cancel out. For the full equation, see chap. 12.
38
. I already make a complete case for it in Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, and my argument there has important conceptual support from John Loftus, “The Outsider Test for Faith Revisited,” in Loftus,
The Christian Delusion
, 81–106.
39
. For example, on how Mithraism's failure is fully explained by its not being in the same social position as its rival, Christianity, see Carrier,
Not the Impossible Faith
, 435–40.
40
. See Valerie Tarico, “Christian Belief through the Lens of Cognitive Science,” in Loftus,
The Christian Delusion
, 47–64; Jason Long, “The Malleability of the Human Mind,” ibid., 65–80; Loftus, “Outsider Test,” ibid., 87–88; and discussion and scholarship cited in
The Christian Delusion
, 305–306 and Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 202–208.
41
. I provide a much more extensive demonstration of this in Richard Carrier,
Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith
(Richmond, CA: Philosophy Press, 2011).
42
. For example: even if C is 0.99 (i.e., 99%), if D is greater (e.g., 1), then C / (C + D) = 0.99 / 1.99 = 0.497 or 49.7% (and C is almost certainly far less than 0.99). Formally: P(CHRiSTiANiTY|e.b) = [0.5 X 0.99] / [(0.5 x 0.99) + (0.5 x 1.0)] = 0.497 (rounded). Whereas for C = 1% (and again D = 100%), the probability that Christianity is true is less than 1 %
even ifits prior probability is 50%
(which it certainly is not).
43
. Carrier, “Why the Resurrection Is Unbelievable,” 308–309.
44
. For yet more examples, see Carrier, “Why I Am Not a Christian”; Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 253–89; and John Loftus,
Why I Became an Atheist
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008), 192–96.
45
. John Loftus, “At Best Jesus Was a Failed Apocalyptic Prophet,” in Loftus,
The Christian Delusion
, 316–43.
46
. See Ken Pulliam in
chapter 7
, “The Absurdity of the Atonement.”
CHAPTER 3
1
. Keith Parsons, “Goodbye to All That,”
Secular Outpost
, September 1, 2010,
http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2010/09/goodbye-to-all-that.html
. Parsons wrote:
“I think a number of philosophers have made the casefor atheism and naturalism about as well as it can be made. Graham Oppy, Jordan Howard Sobel, Nicholas Everitt, Michael Martin, Robin Le Poidevin, and Richard Gale have produced works of enormous sophistication that devastate the theistic arguments in their classical and most recentformulations. Ted Drange, J. L. Schellenberg, Andrea Weisberger, and Nicholas Trakakis have presented powerful, and, in my view, unanswerable atheological arguments. Gregory Dawes has a terrific little book showingjust what is wrong with theistic ‘explanations.’ Erik Wielenberg shows very clearly that ethics do not need God. With honest humility, I really do not think that I have much to add to these extraordinary works
.” Parsons's chapter on hell for this book will be among his last in this area. He's now focusing on astronomy, geology, paleontology, and the history of those fields.
2
. I thank Keith Parsons for this suggestion and helpful advice here.
3
. I'm reminded here of Pierre-Simon de Laplace, who famously said to Napoleon about God, “Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis.” Liberal versions of Christianity only have more probability to them as they embrace the sciences, so to fully accept the sciences is to completely reject religion. To the degree that a professing Christian can sign the Humanist Manifesto I, the Humanist Manifesto II, and the Neo-Humanist Manifesto (all of which can easily be found online) is the degree to which I think such a person is being more reasonable with the evidence-even if I still see no good reason to embrace faith at all. On the improbability of liberal Christianity, see Paul Tobin, “The Bible and Modern Scholarship,” in
The Christian Delusion
, ed. John Loftus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010), 169–73.
4
. Christians will try to claim that the set of creedal affirmations they embrace are not ten in number but one thing: faith in Christ Jesus. But this presupposes what needs to be shown, simply because there are other Christianities who accept different sets of creedal affirmations who claim they, too, only believe in one thing: faith in Christ Jesus. The only way to differentiate between Christianities is to ask the adherents to specify and defend what they believe about each one of these creedal affirmations.
5
. On this poor evidence, see
chapter 8
in my book
Why I Became an Atheist
, 181–98. See also the chapters on biblical history by myself and Richard Carrier, Robert Price, and Paul Tobin, in Loftus,
The Christian Delusion.
Detailed summaries of the problem are available in Paul Tobin,
The Rejection of Pascal's Wager: A Skeptic's Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus
(Bedfordshire, England: AuthorsOnLine, 2009); Hector Avalos,
The End of Biblical Studies
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007); Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman,
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
(New York: Free Press, 2001); and Bart Ehrman,
Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know about Them)
(New York: HarperCollins, 2009).
6
. For a logical demonstration of this principle, see Richard Carrier, “Why the Resurrection Is Unbelievable,” in Loftus,
The Christian Delusion
, pp. 298–99 (with notes 4–6, pp. 310–11).
7
. See David Eller, “Christianity Evolving: On the Origin of Christian Species,”
chapter 1
in the present volume and “The Cultures of Christianities,” in Loftus,
The Christian Delusion
, 25–46; see also my own chapter “What We've Got Here Is a Failure to Communicate,” ibid., 181–206.
8
. Robert Burton,
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not
(New York: St. Martin, 2009), ix.
9
. See “The Strange and Superstitious World of the Bible,”
chapter 7
in Loftus,
Why I Became an Atheist
, 124–80.
10
. The reason why criteria (1) must be met is argued for in my books. At this point I highly doubt that anything but a personal miracle would change my mind about this.
11
. See David Eller's presentation of atheism and agnosticism in
chapter 6
of his excellent book
Natural Atheism
(Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2004), 153–172. Agnosticism is probably best thought of as skepticism following Thomas Huxley, who first coined the word. If we use Huxley's definition of agnosticism as skepticism, then agnostics who have concluded there are no supernatural beings or forces are atheists. In any case, whether we think of agnostics as skeptics following Huxley or as people who are skeptical of both supernaturalism and metaphysical naturalism, they make no extraordinary claims about supernatural beings or forces and so aren't represented separately apart from atheists on this chart. If we think of agnosticism in this latter sense, which is a legitimate understanding of the word, agnosticism becomes the default position. See my discussion in Loftus,
The Christian Delusion
, 88, 98. Either way, by limiting what they believe to what they can confirm (and then concluding “I don't know” for everything else), they make no extraordinary claims.
12
. Christians may want to escape this conclusion by making a distinction between the number of extraordinary events, or miracles, being claimed and the number of extraordinary persons who can work these miracles. If so, Christianity still has at least one more miracle worker than these other faiths do in Jesus. We need also to add all of the apostles who supposedly could work miracles (2 Corinthians 12:11–13) and the New Testament writers who were supposedly given the miraculous gift of inspiration. Nonetheless, it's not logical to say only one extraordinary claim is being made “because one agent (i.e., Jesus) worked many extraordinary events or miracles,” because it's still more improbable for one agent to do two improbable things than to have done only one; likewise three is more improbable than two; and so on. In other words, if I tell you I levitated across the room, you might think my story has an extremely small chance of being true. If I tell you I levitated across the room
and
transmuted water into wine, that doesn't make my claim any more likely, but less. Even by the law of dependent probabilities, if we could prove somehow that levitators are more likely to also have the power of transmutation than ordinary people, unless
all
levitators have that power (meaning, it is logically impossible for a levitator to
not
be a transmutator), it's still less likely that I'd be
both
a levitator
and
a transmutator than that I'd just be a levitator.
13
. Richard Carrier explains in our personal correspondence:
According to Bayes’ Theorem (which has been formally proven), extraordinary claims entail a low prior probability, and the prior probability of multiple claims equals the product of their (albeit dependent) prior probabilities.
Therefore the more claims you add, the lower the prior probability is; and if the claims being added are extraordinary, the progression is very steep. As you just showed already, even for claims with the relatively high odds of 1 in 100. Lower odds only make it worse. For example, getting two royal flushes in a single hour of playing poker is not only less probable than getting just one, it's
vastly
less probable-hundreds of thousands of times less. Now imagine getting three of them in an hour; now four…And yet, royal flushes are documented to happen quite often. They are not even remotely as extraordinary as the things Christians are claiming. The only way to sustain such a steep decline in prior probability is to have evidence that is just as vastly improbable on any other explanation than all those claims being true. But since many alternative explanations are almost always readily available, and however improbable they may be they are almost always far more probable than all these more bizarre claims actually being true, stacking up extraordinary claims simply reduces the probability your system of beliefs is true…by a lot. To put it another way, Christianity must necessarily be millions of billions of times less probable than the named competitors here, yet does not have anywhere near millions of billions of times more evidence that its claims are true. Therefore, it's wildly improbable. The conclusion follows necessarily as a matter of logic.