Post by drakim on Feb 24, 2009 11:10:52 GMT -5
It's my turn to employ some articles! : D
atheismblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/jesus-sharpshooter-fallacy.html
The Texas Sharpshooter gets his rifle and fires a round at the side of a barn. Then he goes over, draws a big circle around the bullet hole and proudly announces that he’s a perfect marksman.
It has become very common for Christians to proclaim the virtues of the Bible. It’s a singular, coherence narrative, they say. Or they are awestruck by the seeming consistency between the different Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life (they aren’t very consistent, but we’ll leave that alone for the moment.) They marvel that Jesus was the culmination of lots of Old Testament prophecies about a savior. They say, “How else could so many people over so many centuries come to agree about so much and have such an integrated view about what God is?” The book itself, it seems, is evidence enough that the book itself is profoundly accurate.
What the modern believer often fails to realize is that they are at the receiving end of a very long, complicated historical Sharpshooter fallacy. From the time of Jesus until about 250 A.D., hundreds of early Christian writings came into existence and began to circulate among early followers. These documents told a wide range of stories about Jesus, God, and the early history of Christianity. In some Jesus was not resurrected from the dead; he was only a man. In others, the course of events is very different than that told in the four Gospels. Intense debates and analysis resulted. By sometime in the mid 200s, those debates were being won by a sect of followers who had settled on the 27 book canon of the New Testament that we have today. Part of what was on their minds, it seems, were questions about consistency, plausibility, coherence with other older texts, and unification. That is, when these 2nd and 3rd century Christians were sifting through all of these hundreds of documents they made a deliberate effort to settle on one story. They consciously excluded the stories that did not seem to fit with the favored view, they even ruled some texts heretical. In short, they took a very large set of diverse writings and carved the version of the New Testament that we have out of them. That’s why you haven’t been reading the stories in Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of the Twelve, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of the Basilides, Gospel of Mathias, Acts of Andrew, Acts of Paul, Acts of John, and the Epistle to the Laodiceans. And That’s why you probably haven’t heard of Marcionism, gnosticism, the antitactici, Montanism, and other apocryphal writings, especially the ones that do not tell the same stories about Jesus.
So for the modern Christian to hold that book up centuries later and marvel at its coherence and unified message creates an ironic embarrassment. The reason that that book has those stories with those features in it and not some others is because a bunch of the early Christians went through all the early writings and found the ones that would hang together in that fashion. You’ve been handed an impressive looking bullseye, with a bullet hole through the center, but what they didn’t tell you is that after taking thousands of shots at a barn, they just found the one they liked and drew a circle around it. It’s a bit like leaving some money in an old savings account, forgetting about it, and then being surprised to find it in there years later. Except in the Bible case, Christians are using this false fortuitous event as support for a whole world view from the Iron Age, and wrecking our social, educational and political structure in the process.
It’s a wonder then, perhaps even a miracle, that the doctored text that we got isn’t more coherent and unified. But even a casual read reveals countless inconsistencies. Take just the accounts of the resurrection that we get in the four Gospels, and let’s throw in the non-cannonical Gospel of Peter.
In the Luke account, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women go to the tomb, find it open, talk to two men in shining garments, and then go tell what they saw to the other disciples.
In Mark, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome go to the tomb, find it open, and find one man sitting there in white inside. They talk to him, then they run away in fear and they do not say “any thing to any man; for they were afraid.”
In the Matthew account, Mary Magdalene and the “other” Mary go to the tomb. A great earthquake opens it by rolling the stone away. They go inside and find an angel of the Lord in white. Then they leave with fear and joy and run to bring the disciples word.
In the John account, Mary Magdalene (by herself) finds the tomb open. She goes and gets Simon Peter and the other disciple “that Jesus loved.” The two of them go to the tomb and find it empty. They leave, but Mary stays crying. Then two angels appear to her. Then Jesus himself appears to her. She talks to him and then goes to tell the rest of the disciples.
In the Gospel of Peter, the account of the resurrection that suggests grave robbing, and perhaps that’s part of why it got thrown out when they were “tidying” up and getting their story straight. In it, the Jews get Pilate to put Roman guards at the tomb. The guards hear a voice and then see two men come down from the sky and then carry a body out of the tomb. Later, Mary and her friends find someone dressed in white in the tomb who claims that Jesus is gone.
The Jesus sharpshooter fallacy and the starkly different stories of Jesus that persist should raise serious questions for anyone who thinks that this book can be employed as a reliable historical document or trusted for accuracy. The billions of Christians in the world celebrate the empty tomb, for instance, as the proof of their dogma, but if we include the Gospel of Peter account, then in four out of the five accounts, the tomb isn’t found empty at all; rather some one or two people (“angels”) are found inside. And in one case, they are seen removing the body. And none of the accounts tell the same story about who went to the tomb and the series of events after.
So now instead the Christian claim that the Jesus story is remarkable isn’t even as good as our hapless Texas sharpshooter. He shot one bullet at the barn and then drew the target around it after the fact. The baffling messiness of the resurrection stories are more like spraying thousands of bullets into the barn wall, drawing a convoluted shape around a handful of them, and then proudly announcing that you are an incredible shot.
atheismblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/jesus-sharpshooter-fallacy.html
The Texas Sharpshooter gets his rifle and fires a round at the side of a barn. Then he goes over, draws a big circle around the bullet hole and proudly announces that he’s a perfect marksman.
It has become very common for Christians to proclaim the virtues of the Bible. It’s a singular, coherence narrative, they say. Or they are awestruck by the seeming consistency between the different Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life (they aren’t very consistent, but we’ll leave that alone for the moment.) They marvel that Jesus was the culmination of lots of Old Testament prophecies about a savior. They say, “How else could so many people over so many centuries come to agree about so much and have such an integrated view about what God is?” The book itself, it seems, is evidence enough that the book itself is profoundly accurate.
What the modern believer often fails to realize is that they are at the receiving end of a very long, complicated historical Sharpshooter fallacy. From the time of Jesus until about 250 A.D., hundreds of early Christian writings came into existence and began to circulate among early followers. These documents told a wide range of stories about Jesus, God, and the early history of Christianity. In some Jesus was not resurrected from the dead; he was only a man. In others, the course of events is very different than that told in the four Gospels. Intense debates and analysis resulted. By sometime in the mid 200s, those debates were being won by a sect of followers who had settled on the 27 book canon of the New Testament that we have today. Part of what was on their minds, it seems, were questions about consistency, plausibility, coherence with other older texts, and unification. That is, when these 2nd and 3rd century Christians were sifting through all of these hundreds of documents they made a deliberate effort to settle on one story. They consciously excluded the stories that did not seem to fit with the favored view, they even ruled some texts heretical. In short, they took a very large set of diverse writings and carved the version of the New Testament that we have out of them. That’s why you haven’t been reading the stories in Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of the Twelve, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of the Basilides, Gospel of Mathias, Acts of Andrew, Acts of Paul, Acts of John, and the Epistle to the Laodiceans. And That’s why you probably haven’t heard of Marcionism, gnosticism, the antitactici, Montanism, and other apocryphal writings, especially the ones that do not tell the same stories about Jesus.
So for the modern Christian to hold that book up centuries later and marvel at its coherence and unified message creates an ironic embarrassment. The reason that that book has those stories with those features in it and not some others is because a bunch of the early Christians went through all the early writings and found the ones that would hang together in that fashion. You’ve been handed an impressive looking bullseye, with a bullet hole through the center, but what they didn’t tell you is that after taking thousands of shots at a barn, they just found the one they liked and drew a circle around it. It’s a bit like leaving some money in an old savings account, forgetting about it, and then being surprised to find it in there years later. Except in the Bible case, Christians are using this false fortuitous event as support for a whole world view from the Iron Age, and wrecking our social, educational and political structure in the process.
It’s a wonder then, perhaps even a miracle, that the doctored text that we got isn’t more coherent and unified. But even a casual read reveals countless inconsistencies. Take just the accounts of the resurrection that we get in the four Gospels, and let’s throw in the non-cannonical Gospel of Peter.
In the Luke account, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women go to the tomb, find it open, talk to two men in shining garments, and then go tell what they saw to the other disciples.
In Mark, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome go to the tomb, find it open, and find one man sitting there in white inside. They talk to him, then they run away in fear and they do not say “any thing to any man; for they were afraid.”
In the Matthew account, Mary Magdalene and the “other” Mary go to the tomb. A great earthquake opens it by rolling the stone away. They go inside and find an angel of the Lord in white. Then they leave with fear and joy and run to bring the disciples word.
In the John account, Mary Magdalene (by herself) finds the tomb open. She goes and gets Simon Peter and the other disciple “that Jesus loved.” The two of them go to the tomb and find it empty. They leave, but Mary stays crying. Then two angels appear to her. Then Jesus himself appears to her. She talks to him and then goes to tell the rest of the disciples.
In the Gospel of Peter, the account of the resurrection that suggests grave robbing, and perhaps that’s part of why it got thrown out when they were “tidying” up and getting their story straight. In it, the Jews get Pilate to put Roman guards at the tomb. The guards hear a voice and then see two men come down from the sky and then carry a body out of the tomb. Later, Mary and her friends find someone dressed in white in the tomb who claims that Jesus is gone.
The Jesus sharpshooter fallacy and the starkly different stories of Jesus that persist should raise serious questions for anyone who thinks that this book can be employed as a reliable historical document or trusted for accuracy. The billions of Christians in the world celebrate the empty tomb, for instance, as the proof of their dogma, but if we include the Gospel of Peter account, then in four out of the five accounts, the tomb isn’t found empty at all; rather some one or two people (“angels”) are found inside. And in one case, they are seen removing the body. And none of the accounts tell the same story about who went to the tomb and the series of events after.
So now instead the Christian claim that the Jesus story is remarkable isn’t even as good as our hapless Texas sharpshooter. He shot one bullet at the barn and then drew the target around it after the fact. The baffling messiness of the resurrection stories are more like spraying thousands of bullets into the barn wall, drawing a convoluted shape around a handful of them, and then proudly announcing that you are an incredible shot.
