The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails

by John W. Loftus

Solomon's temple is described in detail in 1 Kings 6, yet despite the extensive archaeological digs in the city, in the words of archaeologist John Laughlin, “not a single piece of this building has been found.”

Finally, the clincher. Both Matthew and Luke said Jesus was born during the time of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1, Luke 1:5). Herod's date of death is unassailable—it was 4 BCE. The date of Quirinius's census is also firmly established—6 CE. In other words, there

is a discrepancy of about ten years between the two events—the death of Herod and the Quirinius census.57

pseudepigraphs are forgeries

conscious attempt to deceive.

The first is to avoid using the word “forgery” at all cost and use abstruse words like “pseudepigraphy” and “pseudynomity” instead. The second step is to claim that the disciples of Paul (or Peter or James or Jude) wrote under their master's name because the letter “was intended as an extension of his thought—an assumption of the great apostle's mantle to continue his work.”90 The final step is to then say that the ancients accepted pseudepigraphy as something normal and would not consider it negatively as we would today.

2 Thessalonians with what we find in the genuine Pauline Epistles.

Liberal or modernist theologians would happily admit to all of the findings mentioned in this chapter but would dismiss them as “insignificant” objections to their faith. Yet, strange as it may seem to the average person, these theologians still consider themselves Christians.

Sarah concerning Ishmael, Abraham's biological son by Hagar, a slave-woman in Genesis 21:10: “Cast out this slave-woman with her son; for the son of this slave-woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.” God tells Abraham to follow this injunction regardless of Abraham's sympathy for Ishmael (Genesis 21:12). So where Abraham might represent a humanizing tendency, God actually demands the more inhumane option.

Indeed, if we proceed to the New Testament (NT), slavery may have gotten even worse, not better, compared to Amos. In 1 Peter 2:18-20, we read: “Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to the kind and gentle but also to the overbearing. For one is approved if, mindful of God, he endures pain while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it, if when you do wrong and are beaten for it you take it patiently? But if when you do right and suffer for it you take it patiently, you have God's approval.”

Jewish elders all saw a gigantic cross hopping along behind Jesus as he exited his tomb, and then saw Jesus grow thousands of feet tall before their very eyes, there isn't a Christian alive who believes this. And yet that was among the most popular Gospels in the Christian churches of the second century,

The lone exception among all these wonders is the miraculous tearing of the temple curtain, which Matthew and Luke both borrow from Mark, but still no Jew ever seems to have noticed this, apparently not even the priests whose only job was to attend to that very curtain.2

We just get to hear what some unknown guy decades later said someone else saw, with no idea how he even knows that, or who told him (or why we should believe them).

We live in an age of science and reason, and yet millions of people still seriously believe the world's dead will rise again when an immortal superman flies down from outer space to destroy the earth. I'll be honest with you: people who believe things like that scare me.

There are twenty-one Epistles in the NT. None are dated, so we can only guess at when they were written. Of these, thirteen claim to be written by Paul.

Most scholars agree 1 and 2 Peter are forgeries,

In fact, Paul reveals the earliest Christians were hallucinating on a regular basis, entering ecstatic trances, prophesying, relaying the communications of spirits, and speaking in tongues—so much, in fact, that outsiders thought they were lunatics (e.g., 1 Corinthians 14).

So Paul tells us he received the Gospel by revelation alone. No one taught it to him. He learned it only in a vision.

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 7:53-8:11). That's now known to be a forgery, too; it was deceitfully inserted after the fact.

No Roman magistrate (least of all the infamously ruthless Pilate), would let a murderous rebel go free, and no such Roman ceremony is attested as ever having existed.

But the ceremony so obviously emulates the Jewish ritual of the scapegoat and atonement, in a story that is actually about atonement

Barabbas means “Son of the Father” in Aramaic, yet we know Jesus was deliberately styled the “Son of the Father” himself. He...

epiphany of Romulus,

Nor is morality the sole or essential component of religion: religion also includes myths, rituals, roles, and institutions of behavior.

some nonhuman species demonstrate moral—that is, orderly and standard-conforming—behavior.

religion is related to morality and why it often appears that morality depends on religion but that this is part of the ideology of religion, not the nature of morality.

there are religions without god(s), without (much) ritual, without (much) myth, without (many) institutions, and—depending on who you talk to—without morality.

What is important is that humans are inveterate agent-detectors, looking for will or intention or purpose or goal-oriented behavior in each other and in the world around them. And we tend to find it, whether or not it is there.

Allah (simply the Arabic for “god”)

as one expression of the human concern to organize one's (and others’) behavior according to standards of appraisal,

The Catholic Church then reinforced the separate religious identity of Jews through marriage laws, professional restrictions, spatial separation in ghettos, and distinctive garb, which made Jews even more different and even more identifiable targets.

Every single point in Luther's plan was implemented by Nazi policy.

Hordes of “crusaders” stormed into towns such as Cologne, Mainz, and Worms, and left some three thousand Jews dead.

“Hitler was merely doing what the Church had done for 1,500 years.”

For example, a Nazi report indicates that by 1938, 51.4 percent of SS members were identified as Protestant, 22.7 percent were Catholic, and 25.7 percent were “God-believers”

Pope Innocent III wanted to exterminate Jews or other heretics in the Middle Ages.

These two quotes succinctly describe a new delusion creeping around the halls of conservative academia: the belief that Christianity not only caused modern science, but was necessary for modern science even to exist.

whether East or West, once Christians dominated the culture, no Scientific Revolution ensued.

The few books that got copied enough to survive were rarely or barely copied at all, often not understood, and never substantially improved upon for nearly a thousand years.