Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself In The Car

 Condensed thoughts on the Christian god.  (2024-04-08)

Jesus may have existed.  I'm happy to grant that he may have existed.  Not that he did, definitely, beyond a shadow of doubt, exist, but that he may have.  That doesn't get the Christian anywhere with me, though, because for his life in the first century to be consequential for me today, he has to have actually, factually, definitely existed, AND he has to have had either some supernatural aspect to himself, or some supernatural assistance from another being. 

I often hear Christians (and other religious people) talk about how there's no more verifiable historical evidence for Julius Caesar or Alexander The Great than there is for Jesus.  That may be.  I haven't actually done a thorough census of the evidence for each, but I'm happy to grant the point for the purpose of this discussion.  As I said, I'm happy to grant that Jesus of Nazareth may have been a real historical figure, as an ordinary man, just as I'm ready to grant Julius or Alexander may have been real historical men.  Under that grant, Jesus has just as much current, immediate importance to my life as Julius or Alexander.  For Jesus to matter to me, here and now, in a way much more immediate and dynamic than in possibly embelleshed reported speech from millenia past, Jesus needs a supernatural assist.  It's the supernatural assist to which I I object, as it is unsupported by available objectively verifiable direct empirical evidence.  To this charge, religious folks will often raise the spectre of "Historical Science" and "Historical Science" is a sham.  It's not, but that's irrelevant.  If Jesus is supposed to have a current  dynamic, and interactive impact on my life right now, then "Historical Science" don't enter into it at all, and the demand for objectively verifiable direct empirical evidence stands.  Hic Rhodus, hic salta.

Of course, the god of Abraham is supposed to have created the Universe we observe by speaking it into existence, and be currently superintending it (and us) with its tri-omni magnificence.  Speakers, including William Lane Craig, Frank Turek, Ken Ham, Todd Friel, Greg Koukl, and J. Warner Wallace (among a sea of other, less well-known imitators) use the same threadbare rhetoric as their their forebears to frighten listeners into believing that there is a god to whom they owe everything, and which will send them off to Hell for eternal punishment for finite (and, in some cases, to the secular mind, laughably petty) "crimes" (shrimp cocktail, anyone?).  Despite their handful of "arguments" whose premises are universally unsupported by objectively verifiable direct empircal evidence, nothing they have predicted has come to pass (with any more reliability than simple chance), nothing supernatural that they have claimed to exist has ever been demonstrated to actually, meaningfully, materially, consequentially exist with objectively verifiable direct empirical evidence.  Heaven, Hell, souls, spirits, angels, demons, devils, gods, saints, miracles... all claims without supporting evidence.

The proposition that Jesus was ... connected, somehow... to the god of Abraham... either he WAS the god of Abraham in human form, or he was the son of the god of Abraham, or he was a regular man chosen by the god of Abraham to represent him on Earth... is unsupported.  Given that the god of Abraham has not been demonstrated to exist, any supposition that Jesus is in the god's "crew" is so far unsupported, if not flatly absurd.  Upon that unsupported stack of assumptions, rests the claim that the god set Jesus (who may, according to some interpretations of the literature, actually be the god himself) up to be killed as a sacrifice to himself, to serve as a loophole to get humanity out of punishment for rules he, the god, created and could suspend if he chose... and it turns out the salvation only works if you join the right version of his fan club, and keep up on your dues.  ...and you'll never know if you really have the right fan club until after you die.  Talk about selling an invisible product!  

Finally, there's the matter of the so-called "empty tomb".  Since Jesus (whom you may remember has not been solidly, factually demonstrated to have existed, but whose "mere human" existence I am willing to grant for the purposes of discussion) is supposed by Christians to have been "bodily resurrected" following his crucifixion and burial (which are also, thus far, mere conjecture.  There is so far no known objectively verifiable direct empirical evidence of these events) -- there are varying, and mutually conflicting accounts of who discovered the tomb to be empty, and a variety of details, but let's set that aside for the moment.  There are points which work against the aggregated, smoothed-over "empty tomb" narrative.  The "gospels" offer accounts of people returning to the tomb, and finding it empty.  Collectively, these accounts are the_claim that Jesus rose from the dead.  There are additional claims about what he supposedly did after rising from the dead, but nearly every Christian apologist will point to the "empty tomb" as the coup de grace which irrefutably shows the truth of Christianity.  Of course the "empty tomb" narrative is just as dependent on all the undemonstrated drivel discussed previously as the rest of the Jesus story -- gods, supernatural realms and powers, souls, and so on.  Without all that being demonstrated to be real, the best I can offer is, "Cool story, bro."  The gospels are the claim, not the evidence to support the claim.  One person telling you an obvious bullshit story is unbelievable.  Two people telling you roughly similar obvious bullshit stories should be no more convincing.  Neither should four be.

To the supposed god of Abraham and all its pretended minions and realms, I say, "Hic Rhodus, hic salta."