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Anthony J. Crincoli 4 Addressing the Rumors | Pamela Whissel
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6 A Secular Grief Observed | Becky Garrison
Shelley Gaudia
Den Jackson 12 Bart Ehrman: The Passion of the Professor | Natasha Stoynoff
AMERICAN ATHEIST PRESS
MANAGING EDITOR 16 Barren and Batty Mitzvahs | Ross Rosenfeld
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JESUS
THE LOVING – JUST – MERCIFUL – AND FORGIVING JESUS
IS THE JESUS PEOPLE LOVE AND WORSHIP
UNTIL ATHEISTS CONFRONT THIS FACT
THEY ARE FAILING MILLIONS OF INTELLIGENT PEOPLE
WHO WILL NOT LEARN THE TRUTH WITHOUT HELP
It is the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, the Jesus who BUT THIS WAS ONLY GOD’S SECOND SIN. WE RARELY
forgives his crucifiers, the Jesus who will not allow a single HEAR OF HIS FIRST AND GREATEST SIN, THE ONE
hair on the heads of innocent children to be harmed, who is EASIEST TO EXPLAIN, IMPOSSIBLE TO DENY, AND AS
loved — the Jesus in the flower garden and of countless beau- DIFFICULT TO DEFEND AS A SQUARED-CIRCLE.
tiful and affecting hymns.
It occurred BEFORE THE BEGINNING, before anything
There is no intellectual argument which can begin to could be blamed on man. There, he created human beings
cope with this powerful fact for the millions—but still only out of their innocent nothingness, KNOWING he would later
a fraction—of intelligent people who do not and will not read send most of them to Hell to suffer forever—never to die and
or hear our brilliant philosophic, historical, and scientific rea- never to receive mercy or forgiveness! [Jesus said ‘many’ to ‘a
sons why the whole story is man-made. lake of fire’ and only a ‘few’ saved.]
We should, for a change, try critiquing the religion on its own Where is the forgiveness in being forever damned? This
terms, and present the demonstrable scriptural and creedal must be denounced as the moral abomination it is, as Robert
facts in a way that, for some, will generate such moral disso- Ingersoll did so brilliantly.
nance that it will open them to learn more, while delivering a
never-heard-before moral rebuke to the rest. And we have it! The young, naturally open to new ways of thinking, and
always highly sensitive to issues of justice and fairness, can
The theologians have armed us with dogmas and creeds be expected to be especially responsive to this undeniable and
which make our case a logical certainty: These are: very simple argument. They are already our richest and
largest source for new recruits.
1. God’s attributes as defined by virtually all, if not all,
Christian denominations and sects: He is unchanging, all- After God’s first and second sins, dozens more of morally
powerful, needs nothing, knows everything, past, present, indefensible deeds fill the Bible. And thanks to the Trinity
future, and even possible; he a loving, just, merciful, and Doctrine, they are all incontestably the doings of gentle Jesus:
forgiving Father, who cares for us, and always hears our ONE with God always! And thanks to God being, in the words
prayers. In every respect he is perfect. of the Catholic Catechism, “the author of the Old and New Tes-
taments, in all its parts, whole and entire”, Christians can only
2. The Holy Bible—Both Roman Catholic and the Protes- defend them by reversing the meaning of words.
tant denominations with the vast majority of adherents,
declare it to be true and without error. The Catholic Church HOW MANY CHRISTIANS REALLY UNDERSTAND THAT
states: "For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the THE TRINITY DOCTRINE MAKES JESUS RESPONSIBLE FOR
apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical, the books ALL THE ATROCITIES RECORDED OF GOD IN THE OLD
of the Old and New Testaments, whole an entire, with all TESTAMENT, GENOCIDE AS WELL AS SINGLE CRIMES?
their parts, on the ground they have God as their author
and have been handed on as such entirely." (Catechism of From the Old Testament:
the Roman Catholic Church—The Profession of Faith—
105, page 31) • God/Jesus ordered, “… kill every male among the little
ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying
3. The Holy Trinity Doctrine, which making Jesus ONE with him. But all the young girls who have not known man
with the “Lord” of the Old Testament, always and forever. by lying with him, keep for yourselves.” (Numbers 31:17-18)
With these as our authorities, our logical certainty is also • God/Jesus was so insanely enraged that he struck
an irreconcilable disaster by the moral standards of the Uzzah dead for touching the Ark, when God knew Uzzah
Sermon on the Mount. was only trying to keep it from falling. (2 Samuel 6:1-7)
By the standards of our civilization, nothing could be so From the New Testament:
fundamentally unjust and reprehensible as punishing the
innocent for the conduct of others, as God did to the descen- • We first learn of the greatest of all evil, eternal punish-
dents of Adam and Eve. ment in Hell. Jesus said the way to Hell was broad and
‘many’ would take it, while ‘few’ would be saved. No
IT IS SO SIMPLE: GOD HAD INFINITE OPTIONS 1. That at the very least, the secular community should
AND INFINITE POWER. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE THAT HE add these simple and lethal arguments to our arsenal, and
COULD BE A LOVING-JUST-MERCIFUL-FORGIVING aggressively look for opportunities to deploy them in talks,
FATHER WHO CARES FOR US, AND DAMN ANYONE debates, and writings?
TO SUFFER FOREVER.
2. That our organizations should be doing more to reach
In this very year I have taken this case to the 300,000 those in the masses who are already most likely to be
claimed readers of the South Bend Tribune, home of Notre receptive to the all the reasons the Christian religion is man-
Dame University, in the form of advertisements to be deliv- made and even evil?
ered every Sunday for 14 straight weeks, in 6 full pages and
the rest at least half pages. CORRECTION! They were on this Please email me at fellowfeather@gmail.com.
schedule, approved by the paper, when after printing 9,
they refused to print 1, and within days, cancelled the DOWNLOAD
remaining 4, with no explanation! You can download These ads may be easily accessed and downloaded
these—see below. at www.theingersolltimes.com. It will be in a tab titled,
The Infamous South Bend Atheist Ads.
Do any of your students ever start questioning their And Jesus’ last name is Christ!
religious faith in class? They kind of laugh about that, but you can tell that some
Some put up huge barriers and put their fingers in their of them are laughing sheepishly, like, “Oh, I guess that isn’t
ears and start humming loudly because they don’t want to right, is it?” These kids grew up in church, so you’d think
hear what I’m saying. Others become far more thoughtful, they’d know something about the Bible. My students have a
and they eventually ask, “What do I really think?” It happens far greater commitment to the Bible than knowledge about
all the time. it, and they realize that pretty quickly in class, too, and are
surprised by it.
I imagine them having emotional, tear-filled revelations
and outbursts in the middle of your lectures. One of your audio lectures was the tipping point for
Nope [laughing]. I approach the topics with a good sense my atheism. You talk about Mary and Joseph going to
of humor. Students realize that I’m not trying to trash them or Bethlehem for the census, and you then point out there was
destroy anything. I’m just trying to get them to think. Rather no census!
than falling apart, they become more thoughtful. That’s the Everybody knew that Jesus came from Nazareth. But to
key for me. fulfill Old Testament prophecy, he needs to have been born
I have students all over the map. I have students who are in Bethlehem somehow. So you come up with a census. The
atheists. I have students who are Jewish. I have students who are question is whether somebody sat down and plotted it out and
liberal Christians. I have students who are very conservative said, “I think I’ll make this up,” or if it happened as a rumor—
Christians. I have far more conservative Christians than somebody just tells a story, and somebody else tells the story,
anything else because I teach in the Bible Belt. I’m not and after a while nobody knows where it came from. In either
interested in de-converting them or getting them to change event, the census did not happen. I just had this very discussion
their views, but I am interested in them being intelligent about in my undergraduate class, and I could see the light bulbs over
their religious views. If you’re not a knowledgeable Christian, the head of one of my students.
then you’re an ignorant Christian, and ignorant Christians are
really dangerous. But it wasn’t about facts when you became a born-again
Christian around age fifteen.
You’re famous for the quiz you give on the first class of In the beginning it was emotional. But I did become
every semester to see how much students—especially the convinced that you could argue for the rationality of
theists—actually know about Christianity and the New Evangelical Christianity, for the rationality that there really is
Testament. a God, that Jesus really is his son, and you could demonstrate
Every time, somebody says that [Saint] Paul’s last name is that Jesus rose from the dead, and that the Bible is inherent
“of Tarsus.” revelation from God.
To me, it seems that the triumph of Christianity was like What about the persecution of the Christians? It’s not as
a math equation with all the right components. In other extensive as we’ve been led to believe. Is hiding in the
words, another religion could have triumphed had it been catacombs completely made up?
the one to combine the right ingredients. The Christians were not hiding out in the catacombs in fear
Christianity was the only evangelistic religion in the of their emperor killing them. That’s just a legend.
ancient world. Other religions had no desire to convert you
because they all were both polytheistic and welcoming. If And yet, so many believe this is true.
you wanted to worship their god, you could without giving It’s amazing what some Christians believe.
up your other gods. If you wanted to start worshiping Apollo,
then you would just start worshiping Apollo. You wouldn’t If you could go back in time, what would you ask Jesus?
have to stop worshiping Zeus or Athena or anyone else you If I could have one evening with Jesus, I would like it to
happened to be worshiping. be during his last week in Jerusalem. I would like to find out
Christians, on the other hand, wanted converts. The who he thinks he is, and what he thinks is going to happen in
Christians were also exclusivist. If you accepted their God, the future.
then you couldn’t worship the others. Judaism was the only
other exclusivist religion, but they didn’t go out and try to win Something like, “What are your intentions, young man?”
converts. Jews didn’t care whether you became a Jew. They just Exactly. I don’t think he came to be crucified. I have a
wanted to be left alone to be Jews. very clear view of who I think Jesus was, and it’s a view that’s
different from what most people in our society think, but it’s a
The threat of eternal damnation if a Christian did worship view that a lot of scholars have had for a long time, and I’d like
other gods also contributed to the triumph. to know whether it’s correct.
Right. Christians said, “You need to convert, you can’t I’d also like to talk to some of his followers after his death.
worship the other gods, and if you don’t worship our God, What did they think, why did they think it, and why did they
you’re going to hell forever.” Christianity is the only religion believe he rose from the dead? I’d love to know how many
saying these things, and there wasn’t any competition. As people actually claimed to have seen him.
Continued on page 37
2ND QUARTER 2018 AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org | 15
Barren and Batty Mitzvahs
by Ross Rosenfeld
Jesus and Mo
© JesusAndMo.net
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Follow a former FBI Special Agent on his Our apologies to the authors and
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of Catholic doctrine and his exit from the
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Contact PWhissel@Atheists.org
Some 300,000 readers of the South Bend Tribune, were scheduled to receive, for 14 Sundays in a row, full-
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In your book Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest I’ve heard some of his supporters say, “God chose him to
Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories save us.”
of the Savior, you point out that such visions are common, Unbelievable.
even today.
A lot of people have visions of deceased loved ones. People Did you hear what reality-actress and former White House
seeing their grandmother in their bedroom two weeks after staffer Omarosa Manigault said about Vice President Mike
she died is very common. Religious figures like the Blessed Pence? He thinks Jesus tells him what to say and do. He
Virgin Mary show up all the time. literally hears his voice.
Scary. The people who conducted the Inquisition thought
Christianity may have triumphed, but where will it be in that Jesus was speaking to them, too.
fifty or one hundred years? Will it still be around?
The most unsettling trend is that the growing churches
tend to be the Evangelical ones, which have a very conservative Natasha Stoynoff is an award-winning journalist and New York Times
theology and a very conservative social agenda. The churches bestselling author. She lives in Manhattan and is working on her
that are losing numbers hand-over-fist are the liberal ones second screenplay.
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