"The God Who Wasn't There" - Part 3

Back to Brian's little film.

He's back to interviewing Christians on the street, asking them what they know about Mithra, Dionysus and Osiris. Note what JP Holding says about Osiris' "resurrection", that he was murdered, his body was torn to pieces, then the pieces were scattered. Afte that, he was rejoined and became the god of the underworld. Some resurrection, huh? Brian does succeed in showing here that most Christians do need to understand a little more about pagan religions, but he's in no better position to teach anybody about those religions.

He spends the next four minutes of his film whining about how bloody "The Passion of the Christ" was, which he cleverly calls "The Smashin' of the Christ". Is Brian a hemophobe? He'd have a point if the violence in "The Passion" was gratuitous, but it doesn't seem to occur to Brian that for us Christians, Jesus' suffering has a very deep personal meaning.

Next up, Brian shows us some clips of fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell. He is shown saying "We need to raise up an army"....leading to clips of Christians marching with rifles, burning books, and well, back to marching with rifles. This leads to Brian showing us a page of Force ministries which has Christians in military camouflage, toting machine guns. What else would Bria Christian ministry that serves the military have on its website?

Richard Carrier, a historian, comes back, and Brian asks him, "Religion does no harm at all. Discuss." Carrier responds, "The evidence of history and even contemporary evidence refutes that. Even if we set aside the obvious war, conflict, violence, that has always plagued society, and has gotten particularly worse under the Judeo-Christian religions, even if you set that aside we have ordinary, every day things that are going wrong. The sort of dehumanization and mistreatment of homosexuals is a prominent example, and it's getting worse in this country actually. It was getting better for a while but now there's this backlash. That's bad. That's bad for humanity. And a religion that encourages that or even allows that is wrong."

Brian then shows us a clip of an interview with a man named Dean Wycoff of the Moral Majority where Dean says that homosexuals should be executed. Leviticus 20:13 comes on screen (The film says that it's Leviticus 18:22, but it's not).

There's no denying that Christians have done some pretty terrible things, but Carrier fails to mention that more people have died at the hands of atheistic regimes like the Khmer Rouge than in all the religious wars of history, the Inquisition, witch-hunts, etc. As far as homosexuality goes, number one, Christians understand the relationship of the Old Testament law to the new covenant under Christ. He has accepted the punishment for all of our sins. Number two, I do believe that homosexuality is a sin, but everyone is a sinner, myself included. I'm really no better than they are. All I'm saying is that the dehumanization of homosexuals simply isn't Christian, and anybody, whether they're an atheist or a Christian, who says that it is greatly misrepresents our faith. Leviticus 20:13 doesn't show God hating homosexuals...it shows God hating homosexuality. Big difference there.

After going on a diatribe against moderate Christianity, Brian tells us that God is not a moderate. We are shown Luke 19:27: "But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me." The problem here is this is in a parable, the parable of the ten minas. Talk about quoting out of context!!!

Now Brian talks about the Inquisition, anti-semitism, etc. Plain rhetoric. Brian asks "What the hell is moderate Christianity? Jesus is only sort of the Son of God? He only somewhat rose from the dead? Your eternal soul is at stake, but you shouldn't make a big deal out of it? Moderate Christianity makes no sense. Is it any wonder that so many people choose Christian leaders that actually have the courage of their convictions?"

You see, what Brian is doing here is arguing against a strawman. He's arguing against moderate Christianity by attributing beliefs to it that don't represent moderate Christianity at all. Let me be clear about this. I consider myself a moderate. I fully believe that there is a God. I fully believe that there was a Jesus Christ. I fully believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I fully believe that Jesus Christ was crucified, that he died and rose on the third day. The difference between fundamentalist Christianity and moderate Christianity isn't here. The differences are a lot more complex than this simple minded analysis.

Next Brian shows how bothered he is by rapture eschatology. He interviews Scott Butcher of Rapture letters, a website where Christians can leave letters to loved ones that can be read after the Rapture. Sam Harris, a well known atheist and neuroscientist, says that belief in the Rapture is maladaptive to planning for a sustainable future for the earth, or avoiding conflict, because conflict is the precursor to Jesus returning to the earth. Harris again: "And really it's not an exaggeration to say that some significant percentage of the American electorate which if they turned on their television and saw that a mushroom cloud had replaced Jerusalem, they would see a silver lining in that cloud." "Insofar as people like that elect our Presidents and Congressmen or get elected as our Presidents or Congressmen, it's a terribly dangerous state of affairs." This is all just argument by outrage that doesn't deserve a response.

Carrier again:"You have someone make up a fake quote (like this "quote" from Pope Leo X?:""What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!", see here and scroll down to Leo X), or misrepresent a document (like what Robert Price did with the Toledeth Yeshu in this movie?) misrepresent the evidence (like what Brian did by dating Mark's Gospel at AD 70?), then they'll put it in a website (like "The God Who Wasn't There"?) or put it in a book that's published by what people think is a respectable publisher (like "The Jesus Mysteries", Kersey Graves' "The World's 16 Crucified Saviors"?), and then hundreds or thousands of Christians (like Brian, who know calls himself an "atheist Christian"?) will read this and believe it because they assume, "Well this guy wouldn't lie. He wouldn't have made this stuff up." And so they go and repeat it, and so you get the lie repeated many times (like this one?:"Jesus didn't exist") mostly by people who aren't lying, who really do think it's true, but they just didn't check."

More from Scott Butcher talking about the rapture, saying that Saddam Hussein has rebuilt literal Babylon and got Madonna to "christen" it. Christians throughout the film are portrayed as either intolerant, insane, or just plain stupid. I wonder how Brian would handle someone like William Lane Craig, or Ben Witherington, or N.T. Wright. Anyone of these guys would cream Harris or Brian in an empty tomb debate. Harris again:"Faith really is a conversation-stopper. If someone says, 'It's my faith that life is sacred, that God creates life and man should not meddle in it', that really stops the conversation. You can't challenge someone further (why not? Is he afraid of asking the question?) and treat them as if they're drawing their ethics out of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which is really what I think we should be able to do. When the President of the United States says, 'I plan to appoint common sense judges who know that our rights are derived from God', I think someone in the White House Press Corps should be able to stand up and say, 'How's that different from thinking you're going to appoint common sense judges who think our rights are derived from Zeus?' That's clearly an impertinent question, but it's a reasonable question." I have a better question, why doesn't Harris debate someone like Craig, Witherington, or Wright about the existence of Zeus as opposed to the existence of the God of the Bible?

More rapture eschatology from Scott Butcher. Brian is really obsessed with the rapture, as he next shows us a film about the rapture from the 1950s.

Next, Brian talks about his schooling as a fundamentalist Christian, at Village Christian Schools. Brian:"Our mascot was a crusader, because our mission was to do battle with the secular world. But not just the secular world, we knew that Satan also worked through other versions of Christianity, and we fought those too. In chapel every Friday, we learned that the only way to salvation was to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and every week, we had an opportunity to accept Jesus as our personal savior. What is salvation? Well it's the opposite of damnation. I learned that hell is a real place where you really do go if you have not been forgiven by Jesus Christ. When the school says that each student will be encouraged to develop a relationship with Jesus Christ, this is what encouragement means (as a painting of souls being tortured in hell rolls by), be forgiven or be damned." Nothing but pure argument by outrage, no response is deserved.

Brian: "But Jesus was a great guy. He'd forgive you for anything. Lying, murder, internet pornography, he'd even forgive you for speaking against Jesus himself. But apparently just to make things interesting, he added one extra rule to the mix. There actually is one unforgivable sin. Denial of the Holy Spirit. If you do that, you are eternally damned." Luke 12:10 and Mark 3:29 are shown on-screen. Wrongo, bucko. Denial of the Holy Spirit is not the same as blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, see here. If denial of the Holy Spirit was the unforgivable sin, then no one who wasn't a Christian could convert to Christianity and be saved! The last I checked, most atheists don't believe in the Holy Spirit. Is there no possibility of them being saved? Check this out. If you take the verses in context, it's apparent that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan. This renders Brian's whole diatribe about Christians being eternally damned if they "dare to think" entirely moot.

Brian then obtains an interview with the superintendent of the school (under false pretenses), ostensibly how he could teach children such frightening doctrines such as hell. In between, more of Harris' blatherings about how Christians believe completely uncritically. If someone denies the Holocaust or says they can communicate with aliens, they're regarded as crazy because we challenge people when they believe things strongly in contradiction to a mountain of evidence, according to Harris. I guess then that atheists must also have psychological problems. Harris then goes on to blather about someone trying to get a medical degree, and who has theories about the human body that aren't backed up by evidence, but he has strong convictions about his theories, well that person would be laughed out of the room. I wonder what he'd say to me as someone who came to faith after a reasonable and critical evaluation of evidence. Brian asks the superintendent for hard scientific evidence for the existence of hell. The superintendent points out that there is solid historical data for the existence of Jesus Christ, and for his resurrection, but that "hell" is a matter of faith. Brian asks, "Well have you thought then that teaching 1800 students that the world does operate this way and you don't have any evidence that it does, have you considered that it might be the height of irresponsibility to do that?" The superintendent responds, "No absolutely not. I think it would be the height of irresponsibility to ignore the reality of God, to ignore the reality of the person of Jesus Christ." After a few more questions like this, the superintendent asks if he can ask Brian a question off camera. Brian refuses. The superintendent rightly points out Brian's dishonesty in setting up the interview, walks out of the room and ends the interview.

You can't help but feel at least a little bit sorry for Brian. It is absolutely horrifying to watch Brian throw what is a basically a huge howl of pain over his fundamentalist upbringing while talking to the man he blames for it. You can hear his voice crack with emotion as he talks to the superintendent, and I can't help but think that if this man is responsible for Brian's horrible religious education, then he deserves the barrage that Brian throws at him. But all that has happened here is that Brian has turned from a gullible fundamentalist Christian who believes everything he's told by other Christians to a gullible fundamentalist atheist who believes everything he's told by other atheists. He thinks he's learned the ability to think for himself, the truth is that he's as FAR away from it as he ever was.

Brian then goes into the chapel of the school, where he was saved three times. He points that camera at himself, and says, "I deny the Holy Spirit".

This is by far one of the saddest movies I've ever seen.