You’re probably aware that the person making a claim has the burden of proof. In the courtroom, for example, the prosecution has the burden of proof. There are no ties—when neither side makes a convincing case, the side that failed to carry its burden of proof loses.
The same is true for people who claim “God exists”—they have the burden of proof. That makes it easier for atheists. But now I want to make a positive claim: that atheism explains reality better than Christianity.
I plan a series of posts making arguments in support of the claim “God doesn’t exist.” Here’s the first argument: historians reject the Bible story.
You never find the details of the Jesus story in a history book, like you would for Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great. Why is that? Why is the Bible not cataloged in the library in the History section?
Christians correctly point out that the historical grounding for the Jesus story has some compelling points. For example, there are not one but four gospel accounts. The time gap from original manuscripts to our oldest complete copies is relatively small. And the number of Bible manuscripts is far greater than those referring to anyone else of that time.
The enormous difficulty, however, is that historians reject miracles—not just in the Bible but consistently in any book that claims to be history.
Remember the story of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon? The historian Suetonius reported that Julius saw a divine messenger who urged him to cross. This is the same Suetonius that Christians often point to when citing extra-biblical evidence for the historicity of the Jesus story.
Remember Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor who reportedly ordered the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem? He was himself divinely conceived, and he ascended into heaven when he died1—or so the stories went.
Everyone knows about Alexander the Great, but legends about his life grew up in his own time. Did you hear the one about how the sea bowed in submission during his conquest of the Persian Empire?
Strip away the miracle claims from Julius Caesar or Caesar Augustus or Alexander the Great and you’re left with precisely the story of those leaders that we have in history. But strip away the miracle claims from the Jesus story, and you have just the story of an ordinary man—a charismatic rabbi, perhaps, but hardly divine.
Christians argue that we should treat the Gospel story like any other biography of the time, and I agree—but I doubt they will like where that takes them.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
1Charles H. Talbert, What is a Gospel? (Mercer University Press, 1985), p. 32.
Other posts in the God Doesn’t Exist series:
- Christianity Relies on Indoctrination
- Christianity Looks Invented
- Believers Are Products of Their Environment
- Christianity is Self-Defeating
Galileo Unchained 
This should be interesting to watch where you go with this. Holding my comments for more relavant moments to present them.
I plan a bunch of short pro-atheism (instead of con-Christianity) posts. I’ll be interested in reading what you think.
Don’t 3 of the 4 gospels appear to be copies of each other too? I mean, ask 3 out of 4 people to recall an event they all experienced and it (probably) still won’t be as closely related as Matthew, Mark, and Luke are.
The synoptic gospels don’t even claim to be eyewitnesses. That’s easy to see as well: why would Matthew and Luke copy so much of Mark if they were eyewitnesses?
the bible is pure drivel
The only issue I have, and I guarantee that the author nor any reader will be able to prove otherwise, is that I can only “like” this once via the Facebook widget. And a word of advice for any atheist coerced into an argument about the existence of any god, simply tell them “Yes, I would be happy to debate on this subject. As soon as every believer of any religion is able to agree on every aspect of said existence, in other words, once you have an actual point to argue.” It never gets the response I want it to, just wishful thinking.
The gospels were all written some 40-70 years after the events they calim to portray. They are hearsay to the nth degree. Then, too, none of the early gospels were even attributed to any individual. For a hundred years or so after they were written, they were simply referred to as “Memoirs of the Apostles.” Only in the latter half of the 2nd century, did church fathers start to assign names to them (See Forged by Bart Ehrman P225).
When speaking about evolutions, creationists claim they can’t believe in something they haven’t observed. But they believe in the gospels, a story that no one observed. The writers were building upon legend and who knows what their agenda was. Maybe they believed, maybe they had other reasons, but still, its all anecdotal. No historian alive at the time Jesus was supposed to be there even mentions him. But their sorry excuse that they can’t believe in something they can’t observe doesn’t seem to apply here.
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Interesting also that the Epistles of Paul, written a mere 20-30 years after the supposed climax of of Jesus’ life, make absolutely no mention of Jesus as an actual historical person and provide no biographical details of his life at all. It’s as if Paul hadn’t heard the gospel stories, which makes sense if they hadn’t been dreamed up yet.
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The story of Jesus is BS, therefore God doesn’t exist? Logic FAIL!
The Christian story has Jesus and Yahweh tied together. If one doesn’t exist, the Christian story goes out the window.
A simple mind can only apprehend the existence of a higher entity if it’s based in a bible story. The logic inherent in disproving that mythology is also very simple-minded! The bigger picture is missing from both viewpoints.
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