A friend who is laid up with covid, and watching New Atheist videos (Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, etc.) for the first time, sent me a new (six-day-old) [rp=atheist video made by someone I didn’t know. That would be Darante’ LaMar Martin, a former pastor who deconverted. In this 17.3-minute video, he makes two assertions: that there is no tangible evidence supporting the miracles of the Bible and thus the foundational claims of Christianity; and the spread of Christianity was based on “imperial enforcement” by king rather than on its truth. (Later adherents would have no way on checking the truth, anyway, and we know that the sole evidence underlying the world’s most popular religion, with 2.6 billion adherents, is solely the Bible. There is no extra-Biblical evidence for a person, much less his acts, on whom the New Testament is based.
You probably have heard some of the arguments against Jesus’s miracles before (e.g., the lack of contemporaneous evidence for a Jesus Man, as well as the absence of evidence that, upon the Crucifixion, the sky darkened and dead saints emerged from their graves. But the stuff about the subsequent spread of the faith, like the story of Constantine’s conversion (or rather, cooption), was new to me. (I can’t vouch for this other stuff; perhaps readers can judge it.)
It’s not clear whether Darante‘ believes that there was a Jesus figure on whom the faith was based. He implies that there was a “spiritual figure” named Christus, a man who didn’t have a lot of followers but was executed by the Romans because he posed a “fringe threat.” As he says, “The Romans didn’t kill a king; they killed a failed prophet.”
About the spread of Christianity he adds this: “The story of Christianity’s rise is not a story of truth triumphing over doubt. It’s a story of power rewriting the rules of belief. Christianity didn’t spread because Jesus walked out of a tomb. It spread because Christianity coopted its rivals, aligned with empire, absorbed its enemies, and forged its own legitimacy with law, violence, and theological branding.”
You know of prominent Christians who expound their beliefs in the mainstream media. Some, like Andrew Sullivan, irk me because while I admire their political views, I see their religious belief as a form of irrationality or even hypocrisy: they accept things without the evidence they’d demand for political assertions. Others include Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom I’m not too hard on because she found religion to be the only palliative for her severe, suicidal depression.
The most irksome is Ross Douthat, whose new book is Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. Douthat is flogging it everywhere (the NYT gives him a big platform), and making no bones about believing in not only Jesus and the Crucifixion, but also the afterlife, Satan, assorted demons, purgatory, and angels. While Sullivan and more liberal believers are clearly reluctant to describe the contents of their beliefs, Douthat has purchased the whole hog and proffers slices of ham to everyone.
Martin’s YouTube page, with more atheist videos, is here. (try “The ten top lies I told as a pastor.“) He has a charismatic style of speaking, and I can imagine that he was a good preacher before he saw the light.
“… it became true because it co-opted its rivals, attached itself to power, and re-wrote the record after the fact.”
This is 100% paltering Dialectical inversion and a Gnostic temptation to Leftism which pretty much means Marxism here since “power” is emphasized and Marxists worship power – Iron Law of Leftist Projection never misses.
Not all atheists go one god further.
You got that right.
🙏 but it’s atheistic 😁
A useful comparison:
Christianity started as a cult sometime around AD 50, and then it became powerful and spread to domination when, in AD 312, the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and then Christianised the Empire.
Mormonism started as a cult in the 1820s. We know that it is an entirely made-up religious variant, made up by the known con-man Joseph Smith. In 2012, the Mormon Mitt Romney narrowly lost out (51% to 47%) in becoming President and the most powerful man in the world.
Now the American constitution prevents a President converting the whole nation to his personal faith, but — let’s consider the counterfactual of the much-more-usual situation where a King/Emperor/President could do just that — that historical circumstance could have resulted in an entirely fabricated religion becoming the dominant one. Perhaps that’s what happened under Constantine.
Constantine didn’t make Christianity compulsory though. His was an act of freedom of religion. Christian religion became the official one some 70 years later.
Correct. It was emperor Theodosius I who mandated the conversion to Christianity. “ In 380 CE, the emperor Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica, which made Christianity, specifically Nicene Christianity, the official religion of the Roman Empire. Most other Christian sects were deemed heretical, lost their legal status, and had their properties confiscated by the Roman state.” -Khan Academy
Sure, at some point Christianity became a state religion but before that it had a spectacular rise from the bottom up and something made it more appealing than other religions in the Roman empire. Here is a great articles about the subject (it is a book review) that focuses on the early stages. The main message is that is worked better socially.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-rise-of-christianity
OK, but the rise wasn’t that “spectacular”, it was a successful cult, yes, but a couple of quotes from your link:
“From 1,000 to 6,000,000 in 260 years implies a 40% growth rate per decade. Stark finds this plausible, because it’s the same growth rate as the Mormons, 1880 – 1980 (if you look at the Mormons’ entire history since 1830, they actually grew a little faster than the early Christians!)”
“Instead of being forced to attribute the Christians’ growth to miracles, we can pin down a specific growth rate and find that it falls within the range of the most successful modern cults.”
The “spectacular” rise didn’t happen until Theodosius declared it the sole state religion in 380. Before that it was a tiny cult.
7,500 Christians by the end of the first century (0.02% of sixty million people);
40,000 Christians by 150 AD (0.07%)
200,000 by 200 AD (0.35%)
2 million by 250 AD (2%)
Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity
Jerry’s strikes me as a bit of a straw man. It’s not whether you believe the literal truths, it’s whether religion fulfills a need in you as an individual, and benefits society (so is a “good”). The religious are happier, it’s said. The religious are better citizens, it’s said. To obsess on whether it’s “true” is to miss the point.
Comment 4 was so long it might be confused with the original post. Comment 5 (Steve Lawrence) is interesting because it is one of the arguments “for God” considered and refuted in Hitchens’ “God is not Great” which I enjoy listening to annually on audiobook.
The “point” of the New Atheists is that there is no God. I am completely happy to ‘obsess’ with whether it is true and am very thankful to PCC et al. for focusing on the truth. Again the perspective of comment 5 that ‘truth’ isn’t important is interesting and may fit with PCC mention of Ayana Hirsi Ali who deserves understanding and respect.
100%
Corollary : we ska society is not god.
That would be theosophy.
Comment (oops, now Comment 4) is wrong in many ways. The evidence suggests that, contrary to his claims (“…it is said…”), many of the countries with the happiest and best-functioning societies are also the most secular. So his major premise is wrong. Of course, according to him, he doesn’t care if a claim is true or not; all he cares about is whether it makes him feel good.
The original omment #5 has been deleted for many reasons.
good”). “The religious are happier, it’s said. The religious are better citizens, it’s said. To obsess on whether it’s “true” is to miss the point.” To the contrary, it is entirely the point.
Michael this is an awesome comment. I don’t know anything about this area of scholarship and I respect the work that went into crafting a comment (5540 words) 10.2x longer than OP (543). Even Rudi Tanzi never clocked in at anything over 2x.
For fun, while I wait for the drywallers to arrive, I asked ChatGPT to “Please summarize the evidence for the historical rise of christianity in the Roman world in the first century. Please include references to T.S. Eliot, Dr. Greg Woolf, the book “Pagan Ritual and Monotheism”, the Book of Genesis, Dr. M.D. Magee, Tacitus, Martin Linssen, Erik Zara, Margaret Merisante, Percy Gardner, the Persian emperor Artaxerxes, the book “One God: Pagan monotheism in the Roman Empire”, Origen, Jennifer Uzzell, Cicero, Narve Strand, William S. Abruzzi, Benjamin Sommer, John Crossan, Rene Salm, Ken Humphreys, Plutarch, Amora Hillel, Theodora Suk Fong Jim, Socrates, Tertullian, and Richard Miller.”
Again I know nothing about this so have no idea whether it’s any good. By pure coincidence the AI contribution is ~exactly the same length as OP (529 words).
“Summary: The Historical Rise of Christianity in the Roman World (1st Century CE)
The emergence of Christianity in the Roman Empire during the first century CE was a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, involving cultural, philosophical, religious, and sociopolitical factors.
Background in Jewish Monotheism and the Hebrew Scriptures
The Book of Genesis and broader Hebrew scripture provided the foundational monotheistic worldview upon which Christianity would build. Scholars like Benjamin Sommer and William S. Abruzzi have emphasized the Hebrew Bible’s influence on early Christian theological development, particularly the idea of covenant and divine election.
Syncretism and Pagan Monotheism
Christianity emerged in a Roman world already permeated with pagan monotheistic tendencies, as documented in the book “One God: Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire” and “Pagan Ritual and Monotheism”. Cicero, Plutarch, and Origen reflect this philosophical trend, wherein gods were increasingly abstracted into a single divine principle. Margaret Merisante and Narve Strand explore how early Christians both opposed and incorporated Greco-Roman religious elements.
Greco-Roman Intellectual and Cultural Climate
T.S. Eliot noted in works such as The Idea of a Christian Society that Christianity’s rise was partly due to its philosophical resonance with a society in existential and moral transition. Roman thinkers like Socrates and Cicero posed questions that Christianity would later answer in theological terms.
Historical Testimonies and Early References
Roman historians like Tacitus referred to Christians in the context of Nero’s persecution, confirming their presence in Rome by the mid-1st century. Percy Gardner and Dr. Greg Woolf analyze archaeological and textual evidence supporting the geographic spread of Christian communities.
Challenges to Historicity and Alternative Theories
Skeptical scholars such as Ken Humphreys, Rene Salm, and Dr. M.D. Magee question the traditional historical narratives of Jesus and early Christianity, proposing that mythologization, literary borrowing, or philosophical allegory shaped the early texts.
Christian Apologetics and Early Theologians
Writers like Tertullian and Origen defended Christianity intellectually and morally, helping to solidify its doctrines. Their works illustrate early Christian engagement with Roman philosophy and critique of pagan practices.
Sociological and Anthropological Perspectives
John Crossan and Richard Miller present Christianity’s rise as a grassroots movement rooted in social justice and resistance to Roman imperial power. Jennifer Uzzell and William S. Abruzzi further examine how Christianity’s appeal to the poor and marginalized contributed to its spread.
Persian and Eastern Influence
References to Artaxerxes, the Persian emperor, reflect the broader Middle Eastern religious context that influenced Jewish and Christian apocalyptic thought. Erik Zara and Amora Hillel have explored Zoroastrianism’s potential impact on early Christian eschatology.
Ritual Practice and Adaptation
Scholars like Theodora Suk Fong Jim focus on how Christian rituals adapted and reinterpreted pagan ones to establish a distinct yet familiar religious identity. Martin Linssen highlights how early Christian communities often met in secret and practiced ritual meals, echoing both Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions.
Conclusion
The rise of Christianity was not an isolated miracle but the outcome of a confluence of Jewish tradition, Roman religio-political dynamics, philosophical transformation, and grassroots social movements. A broad spectrum of scholarship—from ancient historians like Tacitus and Tertullian to modern analysts like Crossan, Woolf, and Eliot—helps contextualize this pivotal development in world history.”
It’s a serious subject. If you want to dispel a two thousand year old fabrication and ideological brain virus like Jesus you have to bring it!
As a strong believer in the First Amendment’s free expression clauses, I see the marketplace of ideas as a powerful antidote to false ideas. And, indeed, it is hard to think of falsehoods from the time of Tiberius that are still widely believed. The relentless pounding of evidence to the contrary (or lack of evidence in support) makes most false ideas dissipate. As a determinist, I feel bound to say that the curious success of Christianity is just the way it is, ultimately due to the interweaving of the forces of nature
If you look at the current almalgination of political/religious belief with racism and lust for power, you can get a picture of the trends of humanity toward the fantastical. This is recgonized by political/religious leaders in their quest for money and power, the only true motivations for most of humanity ( and especially leaders0 over the centruies. It is NOT motivated for a search for truth. In fact, for most humans (if they are lucky enough to live in countries were education is available and are able to develop critical thinking skills), growing up is a process of discarding cultural beliefs which have proven to be falacious.
I’ve always liked and respected you, Jerry, and I still do. FWIW, I am a lifelong atheist who has never entertained doubts for longer than a few seconds, and a few minutes only once or twice.
But while I’m still an atheist, and expect to always be one, I’ve found a measure of respect for Christianity. The main bulwark of this is G.K. Chesterton’s caution that people who give up religious belief don’t turn to non-belief, they turn to other irrational (and often very damaging) beliefs instead.
As Dawkins has said (paraphrased), “I don’t believe in Christianity, but if it’s the only thing keeping Islam at bay, then I’ll tolerate it.” That’s pretty much my position, though I can add this: people are strange and they can and DO believe in strange things. Why make an exception for a tolerant view of religion?
I still have a powerful dislike for religious fundamentalism, if that helps.
Just FYI, there is evidence of the existence of Pontius Pilate. Not that it amounts to any proof whatsoever to the existence of Jesus. It doesn’t. If anything it means that Jesus didn’t exist. Otherwise, given the reputation of Jesus, there would surely be many “Jesus Stones” (or any archeological or extra – biblical evidence) found by now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilate_stone#:~:text=The%20Pilate%20stone%20is%20a,of%20Caesarea%20Maritima%20in%201961.
Henrich (The WEIRDest People) says Christianity was adopted and accepted, but then evolved in ways that led to more Church control and wealth, and to the shedding of kinship society. People became more individualistic, less beholden to family and clan. A form of society evolved that succeeded, and grew. (Seems to me it copied Judaism some.) Just as “more fit” (adaptive) individuals tend to pass on more to future generations, better adapted societies rise. Probably largely accidentally.
good”). “The religious are happier, it’s said. The religious are better citizens, it’s said. To obsess on whether it’s “true” is to miss the point.” To the contrary, it is entirely the point.