I Heart Matt Dillahunty

I've been busy with a few things lately, and haven't had time to write anything. I would like to share this with you, though. It's a response given by Matt Dillahunty to an email he received. The email basically said "I have a friend who's a Christian who claims that his religion lives up to a standard of evidence sufficient to be considered historically accurate, both through the bible and through extra-biblical references. Is this true?" This was Dillahunty's reply.

The short answer to your question is no. The long answer is that he's like millions of other christians who are completely ignorant about what their bible says, about the history of the biblical canon, about the history of their religion, about what evidence actually exists, about what historians have to say, about what sort of evidence historians consider sufficient to justify claims of existance, and about what sort of evidence one would need to have in order to rationally justifiably believe that a miracle has occurred.
The facts are these; there are no contemporary extrabiblical accounts of any events specific to the life of Jesus. that means no independant sources from any eye witnesses with regards to his birth, life, miracles, ministry, death, or proposed resurrection.
The gospels are anonymous, we have no original manuscripts, they do not agree on details, they do not agree with recorded history, and the consensus of new testament scholarship is that none of them were written by eye witnesses. The bible has stories about eye witnesses but we don't have a single comment from anyone claiming to be an eye witness.
The process of canonization included books that doctrinally agreed with those in power, and eliminated and attempted to destroy books that were considered heretical by those in power... Yet those same books were considered [divinely] inspired by other sects. Books like Revelation barely made it into the bible, as many considered them to be uninspired, books like the Shephard of Hermas and the Apocalypse of Peter which had traditionally been considered divinely inspired were excluded. Paul's epistles, some of which are of questionable authorship were the first books of the new testament to be written, and that was decades after the purported life of Jesus. The gospels were written many years later, perhaps many decades later, by unknown authors. Historians from the late first and second century do mention christians, and some refer to Jesus, but none of these were eye witnesses, and most of them couldn't even have spoken to someone who could have claimed to be an eye witness.
So, we have the bible. a collection of stories by largely unknown authors who are unlikely to be eyewitnesses and we don't have originals of their work. We have copies of copies of copies of translations of copies of copies. Anonymous books recording an oral tradition passed down decades or centuries after the purported events in a time when myths, superstitions, and god-men claims were plentiful. During a time when fact-checking and literacy were rare, and when doctrinal wars prompted forged documents (paul even mentions this in the bible,) in order to prop up competing theoligies as unorthodox or heretical.
For my money, that means none of it is believable. Contrast this, for example, with claims of alien abductions. You can, if you like, actually speak to people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. If you look around, you'll find groups of people who tell consistant stories and might even claim to have been abducted together. There are countless reports of UFO sightings, often by groups of people or in rare cases by dozens or hundreds in a particular town or area. These reports have been ongoing for decades, reported by countless new sources, in addition to specialized periodicals. Many of these people sincerely believe their story. Do you? Does your friend?
I don't, because there isn't sufficient evidence, yet the quantity and quality of evidence for these claims is vastly superior to any miracle claims reported in the bible. We have more evidence and we're not 2000 years removed from the events, and we still don't believe, and we find the most fervent believers to be a little crazy. Yet somehow, millions of largely ignorant, well meaning, nice people sincerely believe third-hand reports of miracles from thousands of years ago, and they don't just believe - they strongly believe. They consider it not only absurd for others to disbelieve, but also their sacred duty to convince others at a minimum, and legislate their beliefs on others - or worse. and yet we somehow don't consider these people to be a little crazy. Instead, we give them special treatment, and their majority status shifts the public perception about those of us who actually embrace reality, to the point where we are the ones denegrated. Your friend's probably read Josh Mcdowell and Lee Strobel, and has never actually studied what real historians, scholars, philosophers, scientists, or any other critical examiner has to say about their religion. That's... the longer answer.

Altruism vs The Ten Suggestions

I'd been planning on writing about this for a while, as it's a pretty common argument for God's existance. My friend Quinn is not the only one to have posed the question "how does an atheist perceive right and wrong," or "without God, what reason would we have to be good?"

The first thing I usually point out when asked this question is that in the US and Canada, atheists average about 13.75% of the population (11% in the US, 16.5% in Canada) In our prisons, however, the atheist population is less than one percent. (.25% in the US, .4% in Canada.) While this doesn't nessecarily prove that atheists are "more morally concious," it definately sheds a little light on just how morally concious our religious counterparts are. These statistics are occasionally met with another suggestion, "those people committed crimes, and then 'found God' once they were in prison to repent." When you consider that in Canada alone, over 50% of released prisoners will become repeat offenders, it would appear that "finding God" did little to help their morals.

Biblical morality indisputably stems from The Ten Commandments, a collection of suggestions handed down by Zeus to Minos of Crete to... wait, no, I've already done that one. Handed down by God to Moses as the ten most important rules for how to live our lives. These, in my opinion, can be summed up in 4 commandments.

1: God Angry
2: Don't kill
3: Don't steal
4: Sex Bad

These Ten Commandments, these rules from god, are these really the ten most important rules to live our lives by today? They don't include things like rape, discrimination, animal cruelty - "thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal," and "thou shalt not bear false witness" are pretty vague when compared to all of the subjects that could be tied into those, like genocide, fraud, embezzlement, the list goes on.

Not only that, but the bible actually encourages some of those things. In the story of Job, when he was met by angels, in order to prevent a mob from raping them, he offered them his own daughters to rape. What a stand-up guy. Everything from discrimination against non-believers (If a man doesn't abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned) to animal sacrifice, to "holy wars" is contained in the bible, often ordered by God, or at the very least by his favourite prophets. (And I'm not even going to get into genocide.)

So how are we "good," anyway? If we don't get our sense of morality from God, where do we get it? First off, we aren't the only creatures on the planet with a built in desire to help those we perceive to be in distress. Nature is abundant with examples of animals willing to put themselves at risk, not only to help members of their own species, but even other animals. This can't be attributed to God or the Bible, because after all - according to God, none of these animals have souls. There's no heaven for them, no risk of hell if they turn a blind eye. There was no Doggy Moses that came down with the Ten More Commandments for all of the animal kingdom. They just do it, not all the time, not every time, but it happens. I'm not a biologist, and I won't claim to have a higher understanding of genetics than I do, but I will say that there is something within these animals that has given them the drive to lend a helping hand, or... paw, I guess.

The same could be said for human beings. We don't always strive to do what we perceive as the right thing to do, but we do it anyway. It happens all around the world; in places where nobody's ever even heard of the bible - yet they've survived anyway, and it's safe to assume that they're probably pretty nice people.

I'd like to conclude this little rant with, ironically, a bible quote. A bible quote with an atheist spin on it.

Romans 6:14
For Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye lie not under law, but under Grace.

In religious terms this means, with a finger pointed in your direction, "GOD IS WATCHING, DON'T FUCK UP." I however, prefer to interpret it a different way;

You're going to do the right thing, not because you're afraid of punishment, but because you know it's the right thing to do.

All of the statistics and links provided in this short article were found with relative ease; and I encourage anyone who reads this to check up on them. Educate yourselves on the subject, read about altruism in nature, or even biblical morality (for all of it's faults :P )

Thanks for your time.