Religion is a Mental Illness

No, it’s not historically accurate. There are some real places and people described in it, but that doesn’t make it accurate.

I’m going to skip over the fact that Genesis is historically inaccurate. Everything we understand about the world contradicts special creation, a worldwide flood, and people living to 900+ years. Instead, I’ll give you a few simple examples that are based on history, rather than science that she might reject and/or not understand.

1. We know the Exodus never occurred. If about two million people (Exodus 12:37: ”about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children” if we grant each man, on average, a wife and one child) migrated from Egypt to Israel, it should have been noticed. Egypt’s economy should have been decimated by this huge manual labor force leaving. There should have been a record of all the dead firstborn. There should have been a huge cultural shift in Egypt as a result of both. There should be traces of this huge migration throughout the region. There should be stories of two million people wandering around lost in the 429km between Cairo and Jerusalem - that you can traverse on foot in two weeks - for 40 years. One estimate suggests that if they walked ten-abreast, with comfortable distancing between each row, complete with animals, etc, the parade should have reached half the distance of the direct route. That is, by the time the last ones left, the first ones should have reached the halfway point.

Instead, there is nothing. No physical evidence, no local tales. Jewish scholars recognize this as myth.

2. In the “Cleansing of the Temple,” Jesus goes all rampagey through the temple, disrupting the money changers. This is a story that could only have been written by someone who didn’t know anything about Jewish worship practices.

Jewish tradition held that you were to make a sacrifice at the temple. Pilgrims would travel from afar, but it was impractical to drag a sacrificial animal with them the whole way. Instead, they’d bring their money and buy one locally to be sacrificed. As any traveller knows, money in one location can be different from that in another. And that’s what the money changers were there for. To exchange foreign currency for local currency, so that pilgrims could buy an animal for their offering. The money changers were absolutely crucial to Jewish worship.

Jesus should certainly have known this, if he existed at all. This supposed “anti-capitalist” gesture would actually be regarded as one of the most anti-Semitic scandals for decades to have reverberated through Jewish culture. But, again, nothing.

Only someone who didn’t understand how all this worked would invent such a story.

3. Crucifixions weren’t conducted in the manner described. The Romans only crucified the absolute worst criminals. As far as the Romans were concerned, he was a crackpot blasphemer, which was not a crime that earned crucifixion. Even if we accept that the Romans were scared of Jesus, he was said to have been crucified alongside two men who were merely thieves. And who were, conveniently, unidentified. Thieves would not have been crucified. So, that’s nonsensical in itself.

Even if we leave that aside, the Romans left the dead bodies strung up to act as a warning and deterrent to others.

If he’d been crucified, Jesus would never have had a tomb in which to kick back for a day and a half. The Romans wouldn’t have given a shit about Jewish sensibilities, and Jesus would have decomposed on the cross where he was nailed, as a warning to others.

To say nothing of the in-story inconsistencies of how many of who went where, when, and what they saw, which is irreconcilable from one Gospel to the next. And that the Gospel of Mark ended (Mark 16:8) with the women running away when they saw the empty tomb; Jesus is never actually seen.

Everything beyond this point in Mark is an addendum a forgery from a later author. And Matthew and Luke, which “borrow” from Mark, simply absorb and replicate this retcon, as if it was always there.

Bonus: There’s tons of lots of little things. According to the bible:

You may enjoy some books by David Fitzgerald, Michael Paulkovich or Richard Carrier.

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There’s bigger problems though.

Any amount of historical accuracy is not the problem. Any number of “hits” doesn’t address the plethora of “misses.” The problem is how a book that cannot get basic human events correct could be regarded as reliably conveying an accurate understanding of the celestial creator and ruler of the entire universe. Or that it exists at all. Defending the bible on the basis of translation errors, oral history, metaphors or pretty any other reason casts a shadow over how valid the literally supernatural notions are. Why would we trust a map that has all the landmarks on it in the correct places, but all the roads are wrong? Or vice versa?

Worse than all of this is why is the bible even relevant at all? Why should we care what it says? Isn’t this just arguing about who can and can’t pick up Thor’s hammer?

Even if James Cameron had avoided all the inaccuracies in Titanic, this still doesn’t mean Jack and Rose existed and sailed on it.

Historical stories can have fictional characters. Take Forrest Gump or Gone With The Wind. Xtianity doesn’t live or die by whether or not so-and-so was Pharaoh of Egypt, or such-and-such was Emperor of Rome. It doesn’t even live or die based on whether a man named Yeshua existed and traveled around preaching love, division and killing pigs. We can concede that such a man may have existed without any pain. Even though there’s no reason to think such a man did exist, beyond a composite of the Jewish prophets roaming around at the time.

What matters is whether we have any reason to think he was literally magical. Or “divine” if you prefer. If he wasn’t, then Xtianity is false.

We don’t have to prove that he wasn’t, but if there’s no evidence to support this requirement, then we don’t have to worry about Xtianity, let alone how historically accurate the bible is or is not.

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What’s most interesting about this line of argument is what it reveals about the believer: they don’t believe in their god. They believe in their bible as primary, not their god. They believe their bible, the bible says the god exists, therefore the god exists. The bible bootstraps the entire process.

The other option is that they believe in their god, which can be verified without the bible, and therefore they believe in the bible. That is, you can start with the god as primary, then refer to the bible and verify, yes this is the same guy.

But as far as I can tell, almost none of them seem to believe in their god as primary. If they did, they wouldn’t spend so much time fixating on the bible.

We don’t have to “believe” in evolution solely due to On the Origin of Species. We can - and do - ignore Charles Darwin’s book entirely, and still understand evolution. Other scientists around the world and throughout history had previously noticed this phenomenon as well.

In the case of the bible, they seem to have placed their “faith” in these unreliable humans, who got history and science wrong, who claim that a god exists and that they’ve captured “god’s word.” Aren’t all the attributes and qualities and properties their god supposedly possesses only supplied by the bible? When you’re told “god is love,” isn’t this only because the bible says so? Isn’t literally everything about this god ultimately defended by citing a bible verse?

I think that would be a fascinating question to ask her: does she believe in the bible OR does she believe in god. Which one is the starting point for belief in the other? I think, like many, she only believes in the bible, which is where she finds her god, which then authenticates the bible, in nice circular affirming-the-consequent “logic.”

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You don’t have to “be” anything. You either believe a thing or you don’t. Decide that first. If you had to make a list of all the things you believe exist, are you willing to put “a god/gods” onto that list? This isn’t a question about gods, and whether or not they exist, whether or not we can know they exist... it’s a question about you. If you’re not willing to write “a god or gods” as a positive belief on your list, then I’d call you an atheist; a belief in a god or gods is not a thing you possess.

Agnostic isn’t a middle-ground between belief and non-belief. Agnostic is an adjective, not a noun, and relates to knowledge, not belief.

An agnostic atheist doesn’t believe (atheist) a god exists, but doesn’t claim to know (agnostic).

A gnostic atheist doesn’t believe a god exists and claims to know one does not.

Ditto theism. An agnostic theist believes a god exists, but doesn’t claim to know for sure, or claim that it’s even knowable at all. A ghostic theist believes and claims to know that their god exists.

Figure out what you believe and what you don’t believe. The rest is just labels. They’re not an identity to “be”.