Reason, Faith, and Revelation

excerpted from the book

Atheism

The Case Against God

by George H. Smith

Prometheus Books, 1989, paper

p100
Many Christians freely admit the conflict between reason and faith and have declared war on reason. Martin Luther, to take a famous illustration, calls reason "the devil's bride," a "beautiful whore" and "God's worst enemy." "There is on earth among all dangers," writes Luther, "no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason, especially if she enters into spiritual matters which concern the soul and God. For it is more possible to teach an ass to read than to blind such a reason and lead it right; for reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed." According to Luther, "Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees it must put out of sight, and wish to know nothing but the word of God."

This gross irrationalism is abhorrent to any person with a semblance of respect for logical thought. The conflict between reason and faith carried to its extreme ... is the focal point of critical atheism. For the atheist, to embrace faith is to abandon reason. One atheist defines faith as "the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. "s Another atheist writes that "Christian faith is not merely believing that there is a god. It is believing that there is a god no matter what the evidence on the question may be."

p102
The presence of an idea or belief in one's consciousness does not constitute knowledge; one can have false ideas and false beliefs. If man is to acquire knowledge, he must have a method of distinguishing truth from falsity, beliefs which correspond to reality from beliefs which do not.

To qualify as knowledge (i.e., as a correct identification of reality), a belief must be justified; it must warrant acceptance by rational standards. If a belief meets the requirements of these standards, it is a rational belief; if a belief cannot meet the requirements-but is adopted nonetheless-it is an irrational belief.

p103
How does faith differ from reason? This is the question that will ultimately decide the issue of compatibility. Christians have provided many answers to this question but their answers share a common characteristic: all defenses of faith as a means of acquiring knowledge rely upon an (implicit or explicit) deprecation of reason, such as by proclaiming the limits of reason or its undesirability in certain areas. Nor can this be otherwise. The limiting of reason is a necessary ingredient for the concept of faith; it is what makes the concept of faith possible.

This point can be illustrated by looking at our original question-How does faith differ from reason?-from a somewhat different perspective. Consider this question: Why does the Christian employ two concepts, reason and faith, to designate different methods of acquiring knowledge, instead of just using the concept of reason by itself? In other words, why is it necessary for the Christian to introduce the idea of faith at all? What purpose does it serve that is not served by reason?

The answer is obvious: the Christian wishes to claim as knowledge beliefs that have not been (and often cannot be) rationally demonstrated, so he posits faith as an alternative method of acquiring knowledge. Faith permits the Christian to claim the status of truth for a belief even though it cannot meet the rational test of truth. Thus, the Christian is forced to defend the position that there are two methods by which man can arrive at knowledge: by reason and by faith.

Faith is required only if reason is inadequate; if reason is not deficient in some respect, the concept of faith becomes vacuous. The Christian creates the need for faith by denying the efficacy of reason. Without this element of denial, faith is stripped of its function; there are no gaps of knowledge for it to fill.

If reason is comprehensive, if no sphere of reality is exempt from its scrutiny, there are no grounds on which to posit faith as an alternate method of cognition. If reason can tell us anything there is to know, there is no longer a job for faith. The entire notion of faith rests upon and presupposes the inadequacy of reason.

This explains why discussions in favor of faith are always accompanied by references to the limits of reason. The Christian must use this procedure in order to prepare the necessary groundwork for faith. Without this preparation, he will be in the position of advocating the use of a concept for which there is no use.

The Christian who postures as an advocate of reason is often quite subtle in his attack on reason. Yes, he says, reason provides man with knowledge of reality; yes, reason is vital to man's existence; yes, man's rational capacity is his distinguishing characteristic-but some aspects of existence cannot be comprehended by man. Some facts are closed to rational understanding. Reason is fine as far as it goes, but it is limited. And here faith makes its grand entrance. Faith is called upon where reason is said to fail, and faith is represented as a supplement to reason, not an enemy. In the words of Aquinas, faith "perfects" reason.

A Christian may claim that reason cannot fulfill the psychological and emotional needs of man, or that reason is limited in its application, or that reason is defective in some respects-but, regardless of the details, reason must be pushed aside to accommodate faith.

p107
... it is by shrinking the range of reason that the Christian attempts to create a sphere for faith. Reason is examined, declared to be ineffective in some area, and faith is assigned to this virgin territory.

If the Christian expands the sphere of reason, he diminishes the boundaries of faith. If reason is declared fully capable of understanding all facts, if no aspect of existence is decreed "off-limits" to man's mind, the need for faith is eliminated. Like air rushing in to fill a vacuum, faith rushes in to fill the void allegedly left by reason. A harness must be placed on reason to manufacture the need for faith. If reason is released from its bondage, faith is its first-and only-victim.

Here we see the critical role of the "unknowable" in perpetuating the Christian scheme of faith. The unknowable is where reason cannot tread; it is the sole province of faith.

... This is why reason and faith are incompatible. Faith depends for its survival on the unknowable, the incomprehensible, that which reason cannot grasp. Faith cannot live in a natural, knowable universe. As Pascal observed, "If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element."

A man committed to reason, a man committed to the unswerving use of rational guidelines in all spheres of existence, has no use for the concept of faith. He can adopt faith only at the expense of reason.

p113
The tragic fate of Galileo 's a paradigm case of the conflict between religion and science. The heliocentric theory of the solar system as defended by Galileo was dubbed "atheistic"; and one Church Father, in opposition to it, declared that "geometry is of the devil" and that "mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies." The Catholic Church with the sanction of Pope Paul V decreed that "the doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture." Galileo, imprisoned and threatened with torture, was forced to retract his theory and "abjure, curse, and detest the error and the heresy of the movement of the earth." The Catholic Encyclopedia candidly states that "the theologians' treatment of Galileo was an unfortunate error; and, however it might be explained, it cannot be defended."

This admission by the Catholic Encyclopedia is disturbing. One must wonder why the treatment of Galileo was "an unfortunate error." Was it an error because it is immoral and unjust to coerce any man to change his beliefs, regardless of what those beliefs are? If so, much of the history of the Catholic Church has been a massive "unfortunate error." But this is not the implication of the above passage. One must suspect that the case of Galileo was "an unfortunate error" simply because Galileo was correct and the Catholic Church was incorrect. This apology-like most religious apologies for past mistakes-is one of embarrassment, not of moral disapproval.

Cases of persecution similar to Galileo's (which are also found in Protestantism) are a significant indicator of the extent to which Christians themselves have been aware of the conflict between reason and faith. The issue is not whether Galileo was right or wrong. The issue is: Why has Christianity found it necessary and desirable to suppress free inquiry with the threat of force? If reason will only lend support to the dogmas of religion, why have those countries with a strong Church-State alliance displayed such an eagerness to enforce religious dogmas and eliminate dissent through the power of the State? Why has Christianity refused, whenever possible, to allow its beliefs to compete in a free marketplace of ideas? The answer is obvious and revealing. Christianity is peddling an inferior product, one that cannot withstand critical investigation. Unable to compete favorably with other theories, it has sought to gain a monopoly through a state franchise, which means: through the use of force.

The bloodstained history of Christianity is a dramatic testimony to the conflict between reason and faith, and it illustrates that many Christians, especially those in power, have themselves been aware of the deadly threat that reason poses to faith.

The responsibility of explanation lies with the Christian. If there is no conflict between reason and faith, why has Christianity insisted on rigorous censorship of dissent? If the Catholic Church is an institution committed to rationality and truth, why has it subjected dissenters to torture and death? The man of reason, the man concerned with arriving at truth, supports his ideas with reasons and evidence-not with a torture rack and stake.

Any Christian of today who wishes to parade as an advocate of reason must begin with an unequivocal condemnation of Christianity's brutal past. He cannot be content with criticizing those specific cases where the persecuted party happened to be correct; he must condemn the policy of ideological persecution and censorship as such. For the Catholic, this entails that he condemn what has been an official policy of the Catholic Church for centuries-and what remains a policy today, if to a lesser degree, in those countries unfortunate enough to fall under Church domination.

p115
With science left to the scientists and the unknowable left to the theologians, it is unlikely that we will ever again experience such blatant conflicts between science and religion as those in the past. Christian beliefs, especially those of Protestant liberalism, are sufficiently disconnected from the real world that no new knowledge about the real world can affect them.

p116
Liberal Protestants freely concede the historical unreliability of the Bible; in fact, they are largely responsible, through the development of "higher criticism," for its ruthless dissection and demise as a factual source. Rudolph Bultmann, an influential Protestant who popularized "demythologizing," frankly admits that "the whole framework of the history of Jesus must be viewed as an editorial construction, and... a whole series of typical scenes ... must be viewed as creations of the evangelists."

p117
The atheist argues that Christian doctrines conflict with reason and should be rejected; the liberal argues that Christian doctrines conflict with reason and should be revised.

p118
Hell is described quite vividly by the New Testament writers, who make no attempt to conceal the hideous fate awaiting nonbelievers. The great Christian theologians also take hell seriously. In his monumental Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas discusses such pressing issues as whether the damned will be tortured by corporeal fire, whether this fire will be the only method of punishment, and whether the damned will weep with actual tears.

Rarely do we hear the liberal Protestant discuss the fate that awaits nonbelievers. If the liberal denies hell, he must explain why Christianity is important, because there is no longer anything to be "saved" from. If he admits the existence of eternal torment (which is unlikely), he must reconcile vicious cruelty with what is represented as a religion of love and compassion. Typically, the theologian says as little as possible on this subject-which is incredible when one considers the importance of hell as a historical teaching and a religious concept. But to pretend that a doctrine does not exist does not eliminate its E conflict with reason.

p119
Philosophy is committed to the discovery of truth; it is not obliged, as a discipline, to defend any particular set of beliefs at any cost. Such is not the case with theology. Theology, as a discipline, is concerned with the defense of a particular set of beliefs; Christian theology is concerned with the defense of the, Christian religion.

p119
Interpretation is the life-blood of theology. It is the method by which theology perpetuates its own existence...

p119
The Christian theologian will never find a contradiction between the propositions of faith and reason, because it is his job to interpret them out of existence. As a theologian, he has decided beforehand that the propositions of faith can be defended, and by defending them he is simply doing theology. Through the prior assumption that his beliefs of faith are true, the Christian necessarily concludes that any "conflict" between ' reason and faith is a mistake. He does not want contradictions, J so he will refuse to accept anything as evidence of a contradiction. There is no apparent contradiction that cannot be explained away-even if it entails the castration of the Christian religion and the sacrifice of reason.

p164
The biblical antagonism to reason is one of its most striking features. The Bible is a paradigm of misology-the hatred of reason. This attitude permeates the Bible, beginning with the book of Genesis. Adam and Eve, we are told, were evicted from their blissful state of ignorance as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge. When the serpent was tempting Eve, he told her that "God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil." The serpent was correct: man did acquire knowledge, and Christianity views this defiant act as the source of man's inherent evil.

p166
This tie between faith and virtue is responsible for the Christian equation of doubt and disbelief with immorality. One is not morally free to investigate the truth of the Christian doctrine by means of reason; instead, one must believe uncritically or be condemned as immoral. A man is thus forced to choose between morality and truth, virtue and reason. The paragon of virtue, according to this view, is the man who refuses critically to evaluate his ideas-and one can scarcely imagine a more vicious form of irrationalism.

p167
If the prospect of eternal life does not provide sufficient motivation for belief, we are also informed that the man who lacks faith - the skeptic, atheist or disbeliever - faces the wrath of an omnipotent God:

p168
Jesus warns us to "fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell," and he predicts an ominous fate for sinners:

... if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. (Mark 9. 43-48)

p169
The threat of punishment for disbelief is the crowning touch of Christian misology. Believe in Jesus-regardless of evidence or justification-or be subjected to agonizing torture. With this theme reverberating throughout the New Testament, we have intellectual intimidation, transcendental blackmail, in its purest form. Threats replace argumentation, and irrationality gains the edge over reason through an appeal to brute force. Man's ability to think and question becomes his most dangerous liability, and the intellectually frightened, docile, unquestioning believer is presented as the exemplification of moral perfection.

p169
As for Christianity's alleged concern with truth, Christian faith is to free inquiry what the Mafia is to free enterprise. Christianity may be represented as a competitor in the realm of ideas to be considered on the basis of its merits, but this is mere disguise. Like the Mafia, if Christianity fails to defeat its competition by legitimate means (which is a foregone conclusion), it resorts to strong-arm tactics. Have faith or be damned-this biblical doctrine alone is enough to exclude Christianity from the domain of reason.

p170
Faith is basically trust in authority, or "assent to or acceptance of the word of another that something I is true." Faith "is believing something on the authority of another. "

p173
Much of our knowledge depends on our faith in authorities, i.e., our trust in the testimony of men who have devoted considerable time and effort to a particular field and who have thus acquired specialized knowledge. The subject of theism is essentially no different than these other spheres of inquiry. Those men, such as the ancient prophets, who have devoted their entire lives to the quest for religious truth possess the superior wisdom and insight one acquires as a result of diligent and disciplined study. While these religious authorities sometimes disagree over points of detail, they agree unanimously on one issue: that there exists some kind of transcendent being, a being beyond the realm of the natural universe. Therefore, concludes the Christian, it seems blatantly unreasonable to rely on authority in so many areas of human inquiry and yet deny the overwhelming testimony of religious authorities concerning the existence of God. If we are to have faith in human authorities, which we obviously must, we cannot arbitrarily refuse to have faith in the testimony of religious authorities as well.

This appeal to authority as a source of religious knowledge is beset by serious problems. To begin with, we must recognize that authority is never a primary source of knowledge. A proposition is not worthy of belief merely because a supposed authority testifies in its behalf. The authority himself must be able to rationally defend his position through proof and argumentation; indeed, it is his ability to do so that qualifies him as an authority in the first place.

p174
The appeal to authority is not a special method of acquiring knowledge; it is just one of the many ways which reason employs to gather evidence in the search for truth. We accept the testimony of authorities in some cases, but never uncritically. The appeal to authority is simply an epistemological short cut that must always occur within rational guidelines.

What are these guidelines? First, the authority must be willing to present evidence in support of his beliefs. Second, the proposition of the authority must be verifiable in principle by any person who cares to take the time and effort required. Third, the propositions of the authority can never contradict the laws of logic. A contradiction can never be true, regardless of the academic qualifications of the person advocating it.

Once we see that the appeal to authority, rather than being an alternative to reason, must always be subsumed under the principles of reason, we can readily judge the religious appeal to authority to be an evasion.

p176
If the theist may appeal to his religious authority ... the atheist may appeal to his own religious authority ... If the theist may argue that his authority must be accepted on faith, the atheist may argue that his authority must also be accepted on faith. We then have an inevitable clash of authorities, which makes us realize that the original appeal to authority was an epistemological dead end,

Why is it that many theists do not recognize the inevitable

p176
Why is it that all religious authorities unanimously agree on the existence of a supernatural being? Simply because the Christian considers the belief in a god to be a defining characteristic of a "religious authority." The Christian surveys ancient and contemporary history for religious scholars who believed in theism, and these comprise his cadre of religious authorities. The Christian thus manufactures his experts to meet desired specifications, and atheists will never be able to make the grade. The religious authorities will always testify in support of theism because they were selected as experts with this condition in mind.

p182
Blaise Pascal ... in his famous "wager," argued as follows:

"God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.

... but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

... Pascal's comment to the effect that one has nothing to lose through a commitment to theism, even if it remains undemonstrated, is absolutely incredible. But Pascal demands even more, for he is not just speaking of theistic belief in general; he is referring to the doctrines of Catholicism. One should become a Catholic, he states, on the possibility that Catholicism is correct, in which case one will have gained eternal happiness and avoided eternal torment. In reply to the objection that it is difficult to make oneself believe in the absence of sufficient reasons, Pascal recommends that one begin in the same way that most people come to accept Christianity: through blind obedience and ritual:

Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness .... What have you got to lose?

What have we got to lose? Intellectual integrity, self-esteem, and a passionate, rewarding life for starters. In short, everything that makes life worth living. Far from being a safe bet, Pascal's L wager requires the wager of one's life and happiness.

p185
In his famous essay, "The Will to Believe," William James presents a voluntaristic theory of faith that is modeled after Pascal's wager in some respects, although it is more thoroughly argued. Also, unlike Pascal, James appeals to happiness in this life rather than in an afterlife as the primary motive of belief.

"The Will to Believe," states the author, is "an essay in justification of faith, a defence of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced. In other words, James contends that some propositions are worthy of belief even though the evidence in their favor is insufficient to compel our rational assent.

p187
A strong emotional commitment may help achieve a desired goal in the future, but it cannot alter present facts. A god will not spring into existence if only one believes strongly enough. A desire for an afterlife, however intense, cannot create a heavenly paradise. Facts are facts, independently of one's desires, fears and hopes.

p189
The Bible is the core of Christianity, and overwhelming irrationalism is significant as a pace-setter. The Bible, especially the New Testament, vividly illustrates (the theme of the previous chapter) that reason must be attacked to create a sphere of influence for faith. Although the New Testament is technically unpolished, its philosophical message is crystal clear: reason and criticism must succumb to faith, blind obedience and threats of violence. In its own modest way, the Bible is a remarkable compilation of vulgar skepticism. Can we understand its enormous appeal within the context of men living hundreds of years ago? Perhaps. Can we understand why contemporary, intelligent scholars persist in treating the Bible as something more than a mildly interesting collection of documents written over a span of centuries? Or can we understand why enlightened theologians parade as devout Christians and yet ignore the blatant intellectual oppressiveness and viciousness of the Bible? I, for one, cannot.

p193
Revelation is a disclosure, a direct communication, from god to a man.(Since Christian theology relies heavily on revelation, and since most theologians claim that revelation must be accepted on faith, it is appropriate to discuss this subject in conjunction with faith.)

... revelation, since it entails a communication from God to man, presupposes the existence of God-so one must first accept the existence of the Christian God before one can believe in Christian revelation. Our problem is complicated by the failure of Christian theology to provide us with a coherent meaning for the term "God." We know roughly that the Christian God is supposed to be a kind of supernatural being-since this is entailed by the definition of "god"-but we do not have an intelligible, noncontradictory description of this mysterious being.

p194
The primary source of Christian revelation is the Bible, a compilation of material claimed by its defenders to have been inspired by God. Through selected authors, God chose to reveal himself to man-and the result, the Bible, constitutes the foundation of the Christian religion.

Christians disagree radically among themselves concerning the veracity of the biblical record. On one extreme we have fundamentalists who uphold the Bible as literally infallible, and on the other extreme we have liberals who-to put it more bluntly than they would care to-take the alleged factual accuracy of the Bible with a grain of salt. The fundamentalist position is described by Professor W. F. Tillett as follows:

Those who hold the view commonly designated as plenary and verbal inspiration claim that the biblical writers were divinely secured against any and all mistakes by virtue of their divine inspiration, and affirm, further, that that which constitutes the Bible a divine book is the fact that the Holy Spirit so dominated and guided the minds and pens of those who wrote as to make their writings free from mistakes of any and all kinds, whether it be mistakes of history or chronology or botany or biology or astronomy, or mistakes as to moral and spiritual truth pertaining to God and man, in time or eternity. According to this view of biblical inspiration, whatever the Bible says must be true because it is God's own Word; what it says is what God says.'

This traditional view of the Bible has posed more of a problem for Protestants than for Catholics. It has been said that when Protestantism abandoned the authority of the Church and left the Bible to individual interpretation, it effectively surrendered the inerrancy of the Bible. Considering the many sectarian disputes within the ranks of Protestantism, this statement is well founded. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, recognizing the possibility of contradictory interpretations of the Bible, maintains that "the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra... is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals." Using the Church as a final arbiter in the case of doctrinal disputes has enabled Catholicism to escape many of the theological battles so common among Protestant theologians.

Every Christian believes that the Bible is "inspired" in some way, but there is widespread and bitter disagreement over what it means to be inspired. Fundamentalists, as we have seen, argue that the Bible is factually correct in every respect. To admit error in any instance, they maintain, is to surrender the principle of divine inspiration. If the Bible is conceded to be mistaken or based on superstition in some instances, what is to prevent us from rejecting all of the supernatural accounts in the Bible-including the life and Resurrection of Jesus-as myths? Liberals disagree. They point out that the Bible, a collection of books written over a span of approximately one thousand years, was written by fallible men who were not exempt from the prejudices and superstitions of their day. God revealed himself to man, not through written propositions, but through historical incidents such as the life of Christ. The Bible derives its inspiration, not from the men who recorded these events, but from the divine nature of the events themselves. The Bible does not reveal propositions about God; it reveals God himself through his actions. Thus, concludes the liberal, it is not necessary to believe that the Bible is accurate in every detail; it is only necessary to believe that the biblical writers were witnessing acts of God within their historic framework. And although they may have misinterpreted or exaggerated these events at times, we are able, through interpretation guided by faith, to reach the true meaning of these inspired events. Rather than accept the Bible uncritically as the fundamentalist would have us do, we must subject the Bible to textual and historic criticism in order to gain a true perspective of the biblical message.

The meaning of inspiration is a controversy which we can safely leave for Christians to decide. The attitude of the atheist towards the alleged inspiration of the Bible was summed up nicely by Robert G. Ingersoll, the famous nineteenth-century "infidel":

Now they say that this book is inspired. I do not care whether it is or not; the question is, Is it true? If it is true, it doesn't need to be inspired. Nothing needs inspiration except a falsehood or a mistake.

p197
While disclaimers of the Bible are common fare today, they would have led to execution in some countries a few centuries ago-so it is understandable why detailed critiques of the Bible are a fairly recent phenomenon.

p200
America was one of the first countries where freedom of speech was relatively secure, and Thomas Paine, the inspirational spark behind the American Revolution-,published an overt attack on Christianity in the late eighteenth century. Now considered a classic of free-thought literature, the Age of Reason still stands as one of the most trenchant critiques of the Bible and Christianity ever published.

Like many of his colleagues, Paine believed in the impersonal god of deism, a god who created the universe and then left it to its own devices. Paine was suspicious of organized religion in any form: "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

Paine was extremely hostile to revealed religion, especially that of Christianity:

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted ,I the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the

most dishonorable belief against the character of the Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us ....

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity.

Because Paine believed in a benevolent deity, he appealed to what he termed "moral evidence against the Bible" to show "that the Bible is not entitled to credit as being the word of God." Referring to the many atrocities recorded in the Bible, Paine states:

To charge the commission of acts upon the Almighty, which, in their own nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are crimes, as all assassination is, and more especially the assassination of infants, is matter of serious concern. The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. To believe, therefore, the Bible to be true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of God; for wherein could crying or smiling infants offend? And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.

p203
Most modern theologians would agree with Paine that the New Testament contains a mass of contradictions and that the Gospels (or at least three of the four) are of unknown authorship, written anywhere from 40 to 150 years after the death of Jesus. This brings out a curious parallel between many nonChristians and liberal Christian theologians regarding their view of the Bible. Yet most theologians couch their rejection of the Bible in theological terms, which gives them the appearance of strengthening Christianity while ripping the reliability of its source book to shreds. Few theologians would care to pursue their research to its logical conclusion and finally assert, as did Paine, that the biblical account of Jesus "has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it."

p204
Alfred Loisy, one of the leaders in the movement known as "Catholic Modernism," published two works whose tone is sometimes reminiscent of Thomas Paine. Loisy, a widely acknowledged biblical scholar, was a professor at the Institute Catholique in France from 1889 until his excommunication from the Church in 1908. Loisy firmly denied any supernatural influence in the Bible. Concerning the New Testament, he wrote:

A long, slow process brought the Gospels to their present form without any sign of divine initiative at the beginning or the end or at any point between the two; at a given time they were selected, from among many, by the Church authorities and the text of their content finally determined .... The apostolic Epistles, authentic or not, are personal works called forth by particular occasions. Moreover a considerable part of them are forgeries, for which it would be unseemly enough to make God directly responsible .... In short, the idea of God as author of books is a myth, if ever there was one, and a myth redolent of magic .... The books reputed all divine are simply not filled with truth from beginning to end-far from it! They contain as many errors as books of their kind, written when they were, could be made to hold.;'

After citing numerous contradictions between the various stories of the Resurrection, Loisy concludes:

From all this the conclusion follows that what we have here is not a historical tradition of a factual resurrection... but an assertion of faith. The stories of imagined apparitions are, for the most part, apologetic constructions for buttressing belief by clothing it in material form. Whence it follows in this crucial case, as in that of miracles in general, that the only history we can glean from stories of supernatural magic is the history of belief.

Loisy found it incredible that learned scholars, especially his Catholic colleagues, continued to defend the infallibility trine. Since the evidence against this belief is so overwhelming, he bluntly accused other theologians of intellectual dishonesty:

In the supernatural so understood we have here no part or lot, for the plain reason that it is untrue, that it crumbles to pieces, save so far as it is held together by the ignorance of the believing masses, and by the willful blindness of the theologians who refuse to see what is before them; nor can the suspicion be avoided that these theologians sometimes play a part which ranges them with opportunists, apologetic politicians, exegetical strategists, rather than with those who really and personally believe in this false supernaturalism, which they seem determined to impose as a perpetual burden on the religious mind. We beg to tell them, and to say it once for all, that their pretensions are preposterous and their assumption of infallibility an unpermitted revolt against exact knowledge.

Atheism - The Case Against God

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