The problem, as I see it, is estimating how good evidence is in any particular case, and where is the best place to stand on the credulous/skeptical scale.

Yeah, you’re certainly right that different people have different standards. For some, all it takes is a friend telling them a story; others require more evidence before they believe. I accept that most people are convinced of what they believe, but I maintain that people can become convinced for really bad reasons.

Carl Sagan’s insightful comment is that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (that might not be word-for-word, but it’s something like that). If I tell you that I have a pillow on my couch right now, you’ll probably believe me on that statement alone, because it’s not a very extraordinary claim. If, on the other hand, I told you that right now I have a real live alien sitting on my couch, you probably wouldn’t believe me, because the claim was more extreme. You’d require a serious scientific investigation before accepting a story like that as true.

The same principle certainly applies to the multitude of “risen savior” stories that have cropped up throughout history, Jesus included. The claim is so unnatural and extraordinary that unless evidence emerges to support it outside ancient fables, the far, far more likely explanation is that it did not happen.

Thanks for your comment. I agree that we should have good evidence for our examined beliefs (i.e., I’m not a fan of credulity or gullibility), but this should be based on the preponderance of accumulated evidence, not a desire for absolute proof or certainty, which is not only impossible but flies in the fact of continued honest inquiry and openness to new data as your understanding of a problem or issue evolves. (I think we agree on this.) My belief is that Jesus was not God. Nothing remotely resembling reasonable evidence has been presented for this claim.

I think the main question here is whether intelligent people can firmly believe something that isn’t demonstrably true. Personal experience or eyewitness testimony is a bit of a red herring because no writings from eyewitnesses of Jesus exist today.

The gospel writers were composing their narratives in Greek (not Aramaic or Hebrew), and they were certainly more educated than the common disciples whose names have been applied to their accounts. They were also writing 40-60 years after Jesus’ crucifixion, at which point oral tradition and perhaps fragmented narratives had borne the burden of delivery as the new religion developed and spread. Before the canonization process solidified an “orthodox” version of Christianity hundreds of years later, theology was considerably varied and competing gospel narratives were written with different theological emphases, which were later condemned as heresy by the version that happened to win out in the councils (significantly, Nicaea in 325).

To get to the point: the gospel writers almost certainly believed what they were writing, but I don’t think they had to be particularly gullible, based on what they had heard and the time that had elapsed for the stories about Jesus to grow via oral tradition and a motivating bias on the part of the storytellers. Itinerant miracle-working apocalyptic prophets (like Jesus, or others like Apollonius of Tyana) were not uncommon in first century Palestine. Stories of miracles were widespread, and almost everyone believed in the POTENTIAL of the supernatural, even if they doubted the specific supernatural claims of other belief systems.

Even in today’s world, miracle workers like Sai Baba exist with hundreds of followers who give eyewitness testimony to dramatic miracles (including a resurrection!). Should we believe every sincere storyteller or person who thinks s/he’s witnessed a miracle? What about all the people (and entire families) who give corroborating testimonies of alien abduction? Should be believe their tales? Sincere group delusion is possible, and even educated people can believe nonsense from time to time (e.g., many educated people put faith in elaborate medical placebos like homeopathy or acupuncture).

When I was a Christian, I loved intelligent writers like G. K. Chesteron who could expound upon the theological implications of familiar scripture passages and help me realize spiritual “truths” that I hadn’t seen before. There’s no denying the intelligence of Chesteron (or Lewis, or St. Paul), but in my opinion, they also bought into some fundamentally stupid assumptions. Every person (as well as every generation, on a larger scale) has their blind spots and areas of unexamined belief that influence what they say and do from that point forward. You can construct a VALID argument that isn’t SOUND, i.e., a logical argument that follows and yet has false premises.

Christians think Islam is obviously false even though there are thousands of brilliant minds who accept Islam as truth. I think Mormonism is absurd, but there are also many intelligent Mormons. Another angle might be the observation that many rational, intelligent men think their wives are the most beautiful in the world, even though this belief might be obviously false. When you care about something or believe it, even for bad reasons, it doesn’t mean all of your intellect falls apart, or that you can’t build a complex philosophy on a foundation of sand. The point here is that nobody is 100% gullible or 100% rational. The gospel writers need be no different.

I’ve probably rambled on far too long to hold your interest, so I’ll tie it up here. But feel free to write back or clarify if you don’t feel like I’ve answered your question. And thanks for the discussion. I always appreciate a good chat.

Hey, Mikhailovitch, back in the days when you did Christianity, you sure learned it good! But your piece about CS Lewis, reminds me of a difficulty I have which you may be able to help with. It goes like this. I believe that, as far as possible, we ought to be able to prove the things we hold as certain. Not necessarily beyond reasonable doubt, but at least on the balance of probability. I take your point that Jesus might have said some true things especially as some of the things are similar to things said by the Rabbis. But the things which are really at issue are what he said about himself and the conclusions of the new testament authors that he was the son of god. Whether the message came from him or from those who wrote about him, the basic claim is either true of false. If it is false, the writers either knew and were therefore liars or they were taken in and were pretty gullible. Now it is certain that the people of the ancient world were not generally taken in by religious fraud. People knew that the oracles at the shrine of Apollo at Claros, for example, were not really oracles at all – but the priests made them up. But they went along with it because for Greeks, believing was a matter of political co-operation, but they weren’t going to die for their belief in the oracles of Claros. The people in the new testament seem much more convinced than that. So perhaps they are really stupid. Greeks said nobody, but nobody, has ever been raised from the dead. So the new testament authors must have been pretty stupid to believe the story they’d heard about Jesus.
On the other hand, as you have shown, christianity seems quite complicated. Your criticism of the atonement shows this clearly – you were able to point out the weaknesses of the theory, but at least there was a theory! You couldn’t produce a criticim of say, alchemy, like that because the whole thing is garbage. In contrast, christianity does seem to be pretty thoroughly worked out, and quite a lot of that work seems to have been done in the new testament.
The problem I have with all this, is that the authors and the people who came after them, had to be quite clever (if misguided) and also pretty stupid at the same time. If the whole story is false, you’d have to be smart to get the meaning of the cross, and a fool to believe the resurrection. Is there a way out of this seeming reduction to absurdity? What is your best reading of the jesus phenomenon which takes account of these seemingly conflicting factors? I’d be interested to hear.

Nevertheless, the way Jesus’ remarks were received in the Gospel of John indicates that their meaning was clear. For example, here is one of Jesus’ strongest statements about godhood, in John 14:7-10:

“If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.”

There are other passages like this one. According to the same gospel, Jesus’ contemporaries viewed statements like this as the equivalent of saying, “I am God.” Here’s John 10:31-33:

Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?”
“We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”

I’m curious – does the Bible specifically have an instance where Jesus says the words “I am God” ? I was always told he never said that outright, but danced around it and said he was “the son of God” – but no more or less than any other person could also be a “child of God” – you seem much more well versed in Bible passages than I ever was (boy, I was a bad Christian).

I think religious folks use the False Dilemma argument to defend a lot of their positions, simply because they are ignorant of scientific progresses.