Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion Read online

  Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion by John W. Loftus

  Foreword

  Chapter 8 of Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith is titled "I Still Have

  Doubts, So I Can't Be a Christian." Within this chapter, Strobel comforts

  believers who "fall prey to doubts." He assures us that doubt can actually

  strengthen faith.

  I'm not sure why, but as an epigraph, he includes a quote from me:

  In their most inner thought,, even the most devout Christians know that

  there is something illegitimate about belief. Underneath their profession of

  faith is a sleeping giant of doubt.... In my experience, the best way to

  conquer doubt is to yield to it.

  -Dan Barker, pastor-turned-atheist

  Strobel doesn't comment on this, positively or negatively. I'm guessing he

  figures that what I said is so patently absurd that it needs no refutation. He

  probably knows I was mimicking Oscar Wilde's famous quip that "the only way

  to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it," so if doubt equals temptation, then it

  must be horrible.

  Strobel's fluffy inspirational advice to doubters is not only erroneous (the

  previous chapter repeats the falsehood that Hitler was a "deliberate antitheist"),

  but it also stereotypes nonbelievers. He confesses that his own doubts as an

  atheist were motivated by the fear that "my hard-drinking, immoral, and self-

  obsessed lifestyle would have to change if I ever became a follower of Jesus, and

  I wasn't sure I wanted to let go of that." The roots of doubt, he insists, have

  nothing to do with the shaky truth claims of Christianity-because if we had the

  facts, "what we would have is knowledge, not faith." (And that is bad?) One of

  his interviewees assures us that "all unbelief ultimately has some other

  underlying reason." Many famous atheists, he claims, had a strained relationship

  with their father, "thus creating difficulty in them believing in a heavenly Father." Each argument of the skeptic is "just a smokescreen ... merely a fog ... to

  obscure his real hesitations about God." If we critics point out the psychological

  components of faith, he says, "Yes, people have a psychological need to believe-

  just as some people have psychological needs not to believe.... What's the reason

  you don't want to believe? Is it because you don't want the responsibility faith

  brings with it? Is it because of despair over your own incorrigibility? Or is it

  because you don't want to give up parties?"

  How did he know!

  So if Strobel is right that faith trumps knowledge, why put that faith in

  Christianity? Why not another religion? Strobel's expert, a minister who

  counsels church leaders, reports that "when it comes right down to it, the only

  object of faith that is solidly supported by the evidence of history and archeology

  and literature and experience is Jesus."

  Well, which way is it? If faith is paramount, why do we need any evidence at

  all? Doesn't it follow that the less you know, the stronger your faith?

  The most important question we can ask about any religion is this one: "Is it

  true?" Is the evidence forJesus "solidly supported," as Strobel claims? When I

  started asking myself that question after almost two decades of preaching the

  Gospel, my beliefs began to unravel. The more I learned, the less respect I had

  for faith. Today, given the choice (regardless of my "psychological reasons"), I

  would rather know-or not know-than believe. The case for faith is a case for

  ignorance.

  It's been said that converts make the best Catholics. OrJews. Or fill-inthe-

  blanks. You have to be quite motivated to focus intently enough on the details of

  a new worldview to learn exactly what you are embracing. On average, converts

  probably have more zeal than those who got their religion simply by being born

  into it. Like learning a second language, it is exciting to feel you are becoming

  fluent, and you want to use what you have acquired to justify the effort. The very

  fact of changing (if not the actual facts of the religion) can give the mind an

  exciting feeling of new ness, wonder and color of purpose that was probably

  lacking, or fading, in what came before. Otherwise, why change?

  Perhaps it is also the other way around. If we can infer anything from the life

  stories of the contributors of this volume, maybe deconverts make the best

  critics. Or atheists or agnostics. Or fill-in-the-blanks. All but one of these

  skeptical authors have emerged from a religious background. Some of them, like

  me, were fanatical preachers-even ordained clergyof the Christianity we now

  discard.

  But it's a question of averages. No one in the country is more dedicated to

  atheism or capable of critiquing religion than my wife, Annie Laurie Gaylor, a

  third-generation nonbeliever. David Eller's penetrating and devastating chapters-

  written by a "natural born atheist"-show that what unites the authors of this

  volume is not revenge for having been victimized by the deceptions of religion,

  but a burning desire for actual facts. If we doubters do have a psychological

  motivation, perhaps it is the mental hunger, the intense craving to truly fill in the

  blanks of knowledge. As you read the following chapters, you will sense-almost

  palpably-the searing human drive to understand.

  I was only seventeen years old in the summer of 1966 when I was "called by

  God" to Nogales, Mexico, to convert Catholics into Christians. I preached for a

  week in downtown churches and took a team of young evangelists into the

  streets to round up children who needed to be saved from their sins by the love

  of Christ. We hiked up a muddy hillside to visit some of the humble homes, and

  I still vividly remember my first taste of a chile relleno, served under a smoke-

  blackened ramada with chickens running under our feet. (When I jokingly said,

  "This is delicious! What's for dinner?" they pointed under the table.)

  There is no way to know, but it is not impossible that one of those children

  who came to hear us was named Hector. I learned years later that Hector Avalos

  (a contributor to this book) was born in that very neighborhood. Hector, like me,

  became a child preacher, a true believer who happened to fall too much in love

  with the Bible. The language captivated him-not the Reina Valera or King James

  versions, but the original languages. Hector went on to get a PhD in Hebrew

  Bible and Near Eastern Studies at Harvard and is today one of the most highly

  respected biblical scholars in the country, the "atheist Bible professor" whose

  classes, I hear, are always frill. He is one of those eager and helpful experts

  whose brain I often get to pick when preparing for debates.

  Richard Carrier is another one of those deconverts who make the best critics.

  Or rather, a de-deconvert. Raised nominally Christian, Richard became a devout

  Taoist, immersing himself so thoroughly in the religion t
hat he arrived at the

  place where he could see its limitations. Broadening his studies, he read the entire Bible, word for word. "When I finished the last page," he reports, "though

  alone in my room, I declared aloud, `Yep, I'm an atheist."' Today Richard is

  another one of those resources whose knowledge and advice on history and

  philosophy are invaluable, especially when it comes to the early Roman Empire.

  Robert Price was a bornagain, evangelical preacher with Campus Crusade and

  InterVarsity, starting as a teenager. He immersed himself in apologetics, but after

  years of convincing nonbelievers to "come to the Lord," he, too, discovered that

  he had learned too much, and today is one of those go-to guys, a towering expert

  on the (non)historicity of Jesus.

  Ed Babinski is a Catholic-turned-fundamentalist-turned-agnostic, and Valerie

  Tarico also comes from a fundamentalist background, which might explain her

  fascination with psychology. Jason Long says he was "born agnostic" (weren't

  we all?) and returned to agnosticism after years of Christian Sunday school and

  Bible study failed to make sense. Paul Tobin was born and raised a Roman

  Catholic, dabbled a little in Pentecostalism (Assemblies of God) as a teenager,

  went back to the church and slowly "evolved" into an atheist.

  And then there's John W. Loftus, editor of this volume, a former student of

  William Lane Craig, the renowned apologist, and a true-believing minister and

  Christian apologist who eventually "saw the light." Nobody understands better

  than John what it is like to believe from the inside, and no one else is in a better

  position to have formalized the "outsider test" for religious faith, a test that is

  fast becoming an indispensable part of the critical arsenal. More evidence that

  insiders make the best outsiders.

  No one can pretend that the contributors to this volume have not given Jesus

  and the Bible a fair shake or that they don't know intimately what they are

  talking about.

  Something is happening in the United States. All of the polls show that this

  country is becoming gradually less religious. According to the definitive

  American Religious Identification Survey (2009), currently the fastest growing

  "religion" in America is nonreligion. Between 15 percent and 20 percent of adult

  Americans report they are free from religion. Although only about 10 percent

  can be classified as thoroughly secular atheists, agnostics, and nonbelievers

  (about the same as this book's contributors were raised!), that is still much larger

  than Jews, for example, a respected minority that has shrunk to 1.2 percent.

  Among young people from college age to age thirty, it is 25 to 30 percent who

  are free from faith, the least religious generation in recent memory. I think that is

  exciting!

  Whatever it was that happened in Europe-after centuries of deep religious

  history and zealous divisiveness, where today most people are totally secular and

  the beautiful churches stand empty-seems to be starting to happen on our own

  continent. What occurred in Europe was not a result of atheist missionaries

  diligently converting a malleable populace. It happened naturally. An evidence

  of a similar cultural shift on our own continent is the phenomenal organic rise of

  freethought clubs on college campuses. The Secular Student Alliance and the

  Center for Inquiry have their hands full signing up new

  freethought/atheist/humanist/skeptic groups, often composed of students who

  thought they were all alone in their efforts, only to learn that they are part of a

  larger movement with no followers (we are all leaders), a growing population of

  critical, caring young people who don't care a hoot about any "next world." They

  are in love with this world, and want to remove all obstacles to science, reason,

  morality, and progress.

  It is obvious-and many students confirm it-that the Internet has been a real

  "blessing" for free inquiry. It is now impossible for religious leaders and

  apologists to hide the embarrassing facts of biblical scholarship. The availability

  of clear and documented critical information on the Secular Web (infidels.org),

  for example, or the Freedom From Religion Foundation (ffrf.org), or the

  individual Web pages of the contributors to this volume (look them up!), and

  many other dozens of wonderful resources, virtually guarantees that those of us

  who want to know-not believe-will not be starved into sectarian submission.

  Another evidence of a profound change is the success of blockbuster atheist

  and antireligious books by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens,

  Daniel Dennett, Victor Stenger, and others. This proves that there is a vast,

  growing "market" out there for skeptical ideas. (If not, who is buying all these

  books?) I have little doubt that this current volume will not simply be riding that

  wave but will be helping to propel it.

  Dan Barker

  Copresident of the Freedom from Religion Foundation and author of

  Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists the editor of this book I envisioned it as an extension of my -

  previous one, Why I Became an Atheist. A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity

  (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008), which I think of as important

  background reading for the chapters in this one, although you don't need to read

  it in order to understand and benefit from this present book. All the themes in

  this book expand on issues raised there. I personally think this book delivers a

  powerful blow to Christianity, especially when combined with its predecessor.

  Someone has to tell the emperor he has no clothes on. These two books help to

  do just that.

  In part 1 David Eller, Valerie Tarico, Jason Long, and I elaborate and defend

  my Outsider Test for Faith, which calls upon believers to examine their

  culturally given faith from the perspective of an outsider, with the same level of

  skepticism they use to examine the other religious faiths they reject. Eller does

  so from an anthropologist's perspective, while Tarico and Long do so from the

  perspective of psychology. Eller argues that there is no such thing as Christianity.

  There are only local Christianities, since Christianity is a cultural phenomenon

  that is both affected by its culture and in turn affects the culture in which it

  thrives. Among other things Tarico argues that the sense of certainty that faith

  gives believers is a psychological malaise. Long shows us from several different

  studies that we human beings are often irrational and gullible people. Then I

  revisit the argument by defending it from additional criticisms. I happen to think

  such a test is devastating to believers who think Christianity, or any other

  socalled revealed religion, is true.

  In part 2 are chapters related to the Bible as God's word. Edward Babinski

  goes into detail about the flat-earth, three-tiered cosmology we find in it. Paul

  Tobin then surveys what biblical scholarship tells us about the rest of the Bible.

  It is inconsistent with itself, not supported by archaeology, contains fairy tales,

  failed prophecies, and many forgeries. Then I argue that since the Bible was used


  by the church to justify some horrific deeds, God did a poor job of

  communicating his will in it. This is what I call the Problem of Miscommunication. The Bible cannot be God's word in any meaningful sense at

  all.

  In part 3 are two chapters related to the problem of evil. Hector Avalos takes

  aim at Paul Copan's attempt to justify Yahweh's actions in the Old Testament,

  which utterly fail. Then I argue there is no good reason for the amount of animal

  suffering in the world if there is a perfectly good God. These two chapters show

  convincing reasons why the Judeo/Christian view of God is indefensible.

  Part 4 contains chapters that question what Christians believe about Jesus.

  Robert Price deals with Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd's book The 7esus Legend

  and finds their whole methodology wrong. Richard Carrier applies my Outsider

  Test for Faith to the New Testament stories about a resurrected Jesus. Then I

  argue that at best Jesus is to be understood as a failed apocalyptic prophet, since

  the prophesied new age (or eschaton) never occurred in his generation as

  predicted. Together, in one way or another, we show that what Christians believe

  about Jesus is not the case, to say the least.

  Finally, in part 5 are chapters arguing that modern society does not depend on

  Christianity for morality or science. David Eller shows us how human morality

  arose. We don't need a god to explain morality, so consequently there is no moral

  lawgiver, and no argument from morality to the existence of God. If God wrote a

  moral code within us, he did so in invisible ink. Hector Avalos decisively

  answers the claim that atheism was the cause of the atrocities of Hitler. In fact,

  centuries of Christian antiSemitism were more to blame for the Holocaust. Then

  Richard Carrier closes the book by effectively arguing that Christianity is not to

  be credited with the rise of science. He compiles a massive amount of material

  showing that Greek science was blossoming way before Christianity arose on the

  scene.

  I want to sincerely thank each and every contributor to this volume in hopes

  that our combined efforts will make a difference. I think every chapter is

  significant and insightful, all written for the college-level reader, for the most

  part. Richard Carrier did a yeomen's job with peer-reviewed comments on each

  one of the chapters, which has made this a better book. A FAQ site to discuss

  this book can be found at http://sites.google.com/ site/thechristiandelusion,

  where we will attempt to answer critical reviews of it when they appear, so look

  for it. Alas, we can already predict the effect this book will have. What typically

  happens in every generation as Christians are forced to confront skeptical

  arguments against their beliefs is that instead of giving up their faith, they

  reinvent it. Every skeptical attack is countered by Christians in every generation

  in order to save their faith from refutation, and so far Christians have been

  successful. After all, Christianity is still around. But they do so at a high cost.

  In my own lifetime I have seen Christianity reinvent itself like a chameleon

  changes colors. Because of the onslaught of skeptical arguments, more and more

  Christians are claiming that their faith is a "properly basic belief," and as such, it

  doesn't need any evidence to support it (a la Alvin Plantinga in Warranted

  Christian Belief). Others like William Lane Craig are arguing that the witness of

  the Holy Spirit "trumps all other evidence" since it's "an intrinsic defeater of any

  defeaters brought against it." (Question 68: "The Witness of the Holy Spirit" at

  http://www.reasonable faith.org). In effect, Christians have insulated their faith