The Problem With Pronouns

One of the struggles with the English language is the lack of a gender-neutral pronoun. Sure, we have they, them and it, but that doesn’t really do the trick when trying to describe a potential person of unknown gender. In such cases, we usually resort to saying “s/he”, which works in writing, but not when speaking. There is also the trouble of trying to use pronouns to describe people who may not identify as male or female. 

This issue is not new, and has been something that English speakers have struggled with for several centuries. In America alone, people have been attempting to introduce a gender-neutral pronoun into the language since 1884.¹ During that year, there were attempts to popularize the words thon, hi, le, hiser and ip. Obviously, none of these caught on, and despite many attempts by many individuals and groups, no new gender-neutral pronoun has ever successfully been adopted by English speakers. A few other failed examples include co, ey, hesh, hu, per, re, jee, ve, xe, ze, zir and zhe.² 

So what’s the deal? Everyone agrees that gender-neutral pronouns are useful and would make things easier, so why hasn’t a single one ever caught on? The answer comes from linguistics. In language, there are open-class words (OCW) and closed-class words (CCW). OCW are things like verbs and nouns—words that are able to be created, changed and expanded upon to make new words. For example, google is a noun, but then was turned into a verb when you mean to say that you looked something up online—you googled it. On the other hand, we have CCW which are very difficult to create. Generally, CCW are words (like pronouns) that describe the relationship between things and actions. Now, it should be noted that when we say a type of word is “closed”, that isn’t some sort of prescriptive law—it’s just a description of patterns we see in language. That isn't to say that it's impossible for a new pronoun (or CCW) to come into usage, it’s just very rare. So rare that the linguist Allan Metcalf pointed out that “English hasn’t had a new pronoun for about a thousand years, and there is no sign it will acquire one any time soon.”³

However, coming up with a new word (regardless of it being an OCW or CCW) is only part of the problem. Having the word catch on is another issue—and the success or failure of a word is mostly regarded as a mystery by linguists. Even if an OCW is created to fill a lexical gap, that doesn’t mean it will be successful. 

For instance, some people noticed that English was in need of a word that meant “high-tech aesthetic in product design.” As in, “the new iPhone is really ____.” As such, the marketing firm Lexicon Branding worked to come up with a word which could fill this gap. After much work, they decided on the word “neen.”⁴ As you already know, this word completely bombed, and has never been used in such a way. However, in 1976, Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” to describe a cultural idea that copies and mutates (originally meant to describe things like jokes, commercial jingles, etc) – similar to how genes work.⁵ In this case, the word has been incredibly successful, and is used all over the internet.

However, there are a few trends that linguists have noticed in regards to why so many new words fail. One example would be when a new word stands out by calling attention to itself. For example, the feminist spellings of womyn and herstory (as opposed to women and history) are far too clever and conspicuous to be accepted by the general public. However, words such as firefighter (rather than fireman) and server (rather than waiter or waitress) have adapted to be more gender inclusive, and have been successful—perhaps because they are more subtle. 

The other issue with introducing new words is that linguistic change, much like biological change, is a bottom up process (rather top down). No one ever decides “okay everyone, we are gonna say ‘selfie’ now.” And if someone did, you would quickly find that no one really cares. In the movie Mean Girls, a character learns this when trying to popularize the word fetch. “Gretchen, stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen. It's not going to happen!” Linguistic changes have to come about naturally, not by someone mandating them. And so it goes for gender-neutral pronouns—no matter what group or individual tries to get their new gender-neutral pronoun accepted and used by the general public, the word is facing overwhelming odds, and will almost certainly fail. Not because anyone is anti gender-neutral pronouns, or worried that such a thing would “upset the privilege balance” (as I was once heard a student say), it’s just a matter of how language works.

However, there is hope! In recent years, an inner-city school in Baltimore came to the attention of linguists, as the word yo started to be used by students as a gender-neutral pronoun.⁷ For example, “yo borrowed my pencil.” So here we have a word (a CCW, no less!) which has come about from the bottom up. While its foundation is on strong ground—we just have to see if it catches on (which, like all new words, is unlikely, but at least the creation and spread of it has been natural). Will yo make a jump from the Baltimore school and into mainstream culture? Unlike Katniss Everdeen, the odds are not in its favor… but only time will tell for sure.

1. Boston Daily Advertiser, “A New Pronoun” (Aug 6, 1884).
2. Dennis Baron, “The Epicene Pronouns: The Word That Failed”, American Speech 56, pg 83-97 (1981).
3. Allan Metfalf, “Predicting New Words”, pg 94-96 (2002).
4. Steven Pinker, “The Stuff of Thought”, pg 309 (2008).
5. Richard Dawkins, “The Selfish Gene”, pg 192 (1976).
6. NPR, “Yo, Peep, Yo! The Birth of a Gender-Neutral Pronoun” (Jan 31, 2008).

The Unanswerable Question

"Intellectual arrogance, in the utmost degree, is being displayed by those who dismiss out of hand the considerate opinion of someone who has studied a field for 25 years only because they cherish a particular religious worldview that has no independent foundation in reality." 

 -Massimo Pigliucci

For better or worse, I have had a fair amount of experience with internet debates. When I made my atheist video, I was inundated with hundreds (maybe thousands) of emails from people saying they loved it, hated it, and everything in between. For the people who didn’t like it, I often ended up in lengthy debates about all sorts of things pertaining to religion. One common debate was on evolution, and whether or not it was true.

Eventually, the torrent of emails slowed to a trickle, and it’s now been a few years since I have received anything. As such, my debates with creationists have pretty much stopped. I can’t say I'm disappointed, as repeating the same thing over and over again wasn’t super exciting.

In recent years, I have taken an interest in New Testament history, specifically regarding the study of the historical Jesus. Unfortunately, there are a group of atheists who don’t actually think Jesus existed. These “mythicists”, as they call themselves, are, in my opinion, an embarrassment to atheism. As such, I have also had my fair share of debating them. In a previous blog post, I explained why the existence of the historical Jesus is the best explanation of the data, but also how mythicists are very similar to creationists in regards to the logic of their arguments.

Through my debates with creationists and mythicists, there has emerged what I call “the unanswerable question.” It’s a question which NO creationist or mythicist has ever answered. Ever. I have asked probably hundreds of creationists, and a dozen or so mythicists this question, and no one has ever had the guts to answer it. I have even asked the same person this question numerous times, reminding them that they haven’t answered it yet. Despite my requests and reminders to have the question answered, NO ONE I have ever conversed with has done so. Even when I explain that no one has answered this question, it hasn’t helped to coax an answer out of anyone. I find this very amusing, but also extremely revealing.

Of course, by now, you are certainly thinking “well Zak, what's the question!?” And on the off chance that a creationist or mythicist is reading this, they surely are thinking “I’m not afraid of any question! I will answer it!” Well, maybe.

So here is the question. I will first pose it for the creationists, and then pose it for the mythicists…

Dear creationist,
What is more likely, that the thousands of biologists (who cover a wide spectrum of religious beliefs), who have dedicated their lives to studying evolution are wrong? Or that you, a person with zero education in biology (who has likely never even read a book on evolution), are wrong? More simply: is it more likely that you know and understand biology better than the people who have spent their lives studying it, or that you are in error?

Dear mythicist,
What is more likely, that the thousands of historians (who cover a wide spectrum of religious beliefs), who have dedicated their lives to studying ancient history are wrong? Or that you, a person with zero education in ancient history (who has likely never even read a book on the historical Jesus), are wrong? More simply: is it more likely that you know and understand ancient history better than people who have spent their lives studying it, or that you are in error?

There is always a lot of hemming and hawing from the target audience. A lot of excuses about how all biologists are atheists, or how all historians who study the Bible are Christians. In both cases, as I’ve indicated in the question, this is wrong.

It seems that when this question is presented, both groups of people, as arrogant as they may be, simply cannot deny the fact that of course it’s more likely that they are in error. However, people of such persuasions are generally so certain about their beliefs that admitting this fact, to them, is to admit that their beliefs are wrong. This is unacceptable, so they simply refuse to answer the question. The cognitive dissonance that would be caused by answering the question is too much, and must be avoided.

Of course, we don’t need to stop with creationists and mythicists. I would pose the same question to anyone who thinks GMOs or vaccines are bad for you, as well as people who think global warming is a myth. In both cases, like with evolution and the historical Jesus, the expert consensus is clear, unambiguous and overwhelming.

There are two additional “non-answers” I should also address. The first is an appeal to Galileo. The argument goes like this: “Galileo was said to be wrong by all the so-called experts, and he was right! So how dare you not take me seriously!” Sure, but you’re not Galileo. And anyone could say this about literally anything. “I don’t think Antarctica exists!! How dare you laugh at me! The so-called experts laughed at Galileo!” Carl Sagan puts this fallacy to rest quite nicely, stating “The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”

The second non-answer is to just deny the scientific consensus. I see this mostly with creationists and people who are anti GMOs. In both cases, these people mostly filter out every bit of dissenting opinions they come across, so it does seem like no one actually supports such things. When one refuses to listen to scientists, I can see how they might think that no scientist actually disagrees with them.

It's common for these these non-arguments and non-answers to be focused upon by the target audience, in an attempt to change the subject. This is generally extremely obvious, and I just continue to press the question. Eventually, the person just stops responding, with the question never having been answered.

So when dealing with certain questions in your own life, find out what the experts think. If you disagree with them, ask yourself “Is it more likely that I know something the experts don’t, or that I am wrong?” Of course, you might just be the next Darwin or Einstein, but especially if you have zero formal education on the subject… I doubt it.

God and Neuroscience (part two)

In a much earlier post, I stated that when it comes to arguing against the fact that the mind is a product of the brain, there is basically only one rebuttal that proponents of dualism use.¹ The argument is that even though there appears to be a perfect causal relationship between mind and brain, it’s simply a correlation, and nothing more. The reality of the situation, dualists argue, is that the mind is related to the brain like a radio wave is related to a radio. When you twiddle with knobs on a radio, it changes what you hear, and if you were to damage the radio, what you would hear would be distorted—but none of this has any effect on the radio wave itself. Or to use another analogy, say you are driving a car, and your axel breaks, causing the car to swerve all over the road. Just because the car can’t drive properly, we shouldn’t then conclude that there is something wrong with the driver. Likewise, if you damage the brain, you aren’t damaging the mind, just the ability for the brain to properly carry out the desires of the mind.

These analogies are very clever, and sound superficially plausible. But what does it imply when you use those analogies to explain the mind/brain relationship? Obviously, it means that even though the brain is changed, the mind is totally fine. According to dualism, a change to the physical brain will change the external output that the mind creates, but the mind itself is completely intact. How anyone can seriously argue for this boggles my mind (which also shouldn't happen, since my mind shouldn't be able to be affected by anything).

Most of us have been under the influence of some sort of substance that changes our mental experience. For example, most of us have been drunk, been under general anesthesia, or something similar. Now, when you are drunk, the alcohol is having a physical effect on your physical brain. As a result, your mental experience is changed. It’s not that your body just won’t respond to how your mind wants it to—it’s not that your mind is completely clear, but the alcohol is preventing you from getting the words out. No, the physical changes to your brain have a direct and profound effect on your mind—something that is metaphysically impossible if dualism is true.² If dualism were true, we would expect any sort of mind altering substance³ to create a “locked in” sort of effect where the patient is completely conscious and lucid, but cannot get their body to do what their mind wants.

Now, if you haven’t ever been drunk, taken drugs, been under local anesthesia, etc, watch this video of a girl who has just woken up from getting her wisdom teeth removed. Is this girl behaving in a way that you would expect if her mind was perfectly unaltered? Do you really think that her thoughts are just as clear as always, but her brain is preventing her from speaking coherently? Of course not.

Another neat example is from people who suffer from Capgras Delusion. These unlucky folks have suffered brain damage in a way that the “wires” that connect the part of the brain that processes emotion to the part of the brain that processes vision have been cut. When the patient sees something that normally would elicit an emotional response (such as a loved one), the emotions don’t show up. The brain doesn’t know what to do with this bizarre experience, and comes to the conclusion that the loved one is an imposter! “That looks like my wife, sounds like my wife, but it is NOT my wife.” It’s truly fascinating.

Now, are we to actually believe that the person is thinking “THAT IS MY WIFE!!!!!” but when they try to say the words, some part of their brain is preventing them from saying it, writing it, etc? It would be like on Liar Liar when Jim Carrey is trying to say that a blue pen is actually red, but is physically incapable of it, even though he can think it. Absurdity.

Now, all this talk on the mind and brain can get complicated, and some people might just tend to think “I don’t even care. It’s all really complex, and I don’t understand the arguments well enough to know what to think about it.” Fair enough. So let me present the exact same argument dualists use, but with using something other than the mind/brain. This way, you just see just how silly the dualist position is.

Instead of the mind/brain, let’s say the argument was in regards to muscles. Let’s propose that there are two aspects to your muscle: the physical (called the muscle) and the immaterial (called the musoul). Now, whenever you use a muscle, you actually are using the musoul, via the muscle. Just like the brain supposedly works via the immaterial mind/soul, the muscle works via the musoul. It’s not the muscle that gives you strength to lift heavy things, it’s the musoul. Now, you might say “That’s absurd. The more you work out, the bigger your muscle gets, and the stronger you become. Or, if you were to get in an accident, and you lost a bunch of muscle, you would lose strength in that part of your body.”

But au contraire! Like the neuroscientists and philosophers who insist that the mind is a result of the brain, you are just presuming materialism—assuming that there is no immaterial aspect to muscles. In reality, all these facts are completely consistent with the idea of a musoul, and you are just mistaking correlation for causation.

You see, the more you work out your muscle, the bigger it gets. However, it’s just like if you had a bigger antenna for your radio you would get a stronger signal. So the bigger your muscle is, the more you are able to receive strength from the musoul. And when the muscle is destroyed or damaged in an accident, it’s just like damaging or destroying the antennae on a radio. You are no longer able to access the musoul, and therefore, you have no strength.

Of course, this muscle/musoul argument is absurd. The probable response to my argument would be “yeah, but mind and consciousness require some sort of non-physical explanation. The nature of mind is much different than the nature of strength.” However, that completely begs the question. Yes, the nature of consciousness is mysterious and unknown… but the little insight we do have strongly suggests it’s the result of a physical brain.

So, if you are sympathetic to dualist views, you have to not only account for the arguments I already laid out, but also account for why you aren’t a dualist in regards to muscles and strength. If immaterial entities that are as complex as the mind exist, isn’t it likely that immaterial entities could also exist that do simple things, like give muscles their strength?

1. There are a few other arguments that dualists use, but they are astonishingly incompatible with any sort of modern understanding of neuroscience. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop some people from using them.

2. It’s also metaphysically impossible for an immaterial mind to have any effect on a physical brain, and this has been a HUGE problem for dualists for the last 400 years. To quote John Searle, “No dualist has ever been able to give an account of how a brain can affect a mind, or how a mind can affect a brain. Dualism, for most philosophers today, is not a real option.” 

3. We would also call these things brain altering substances, not MIND altering—but this is a very immaterial point (heh).

A Skeptic's Argument for the Historical Jesus

After a certain amount of time, being a skeptic becomes fairly easy. Most people involved in skepticism are used to dealing with creationists, and when you start dealing with people in other areas of denial, you see the exact same pattern of arguments being used. For example, holocaust deniers, anti-GMOers, anti-vaxers and global warming deniers all have very similar structured arguments. Expert consensus is generally viewed as a conspiracy, and the main dissenters are amateurs who get most of their information from internet blogs and other amateurs. Unfortunately, there are some skeptics who are guilty of the same sort of bad reasoning. They call themselves mythicists, and claim that Jesus is a myth—that he never existed.

The point of this post is to lay out several arguments to show why skeptics should accept that Jesus was a real person. Along the way, I will be contrasting common arguments that I hear against the existence of Jesus, and showing why they are exactly the same types of arguments that creationists use. By the end, hopefully, I will have provided a convincing case on why skeptics should not be skeptical of the historical Jesus.

BACKGROUND

When I was in college, and started to become interested in atheism, I watched a documentary titled “The God Who Wasn’t There.” The premise of the documentary was that Jesus never existed. Upon watching it, I was completely convinced. Around that time (2005), I would often write out my views on different topics, to help clarify my thoughts, and at that time, my view of Jesus was that “It is very possible that someone named Jesus was around at the time existed, but I don’t know for sure. I suppose I am agnostic on the historical Jesus. If he did exist, great. But as far as I have seen, there is not any evidence to support that idea.” The rest of the document went on to explain why I held this view, and goes into a variety of arguments that are common among mythicists.

My view back then was fairly standard of most mythicists I encounter today, which shows a complete lack of understanding of New Testament history. As time went on, I found that almost no one with any historical training actually believed the stuff that was in the documentary. In fact, the only two historians I could find that held that view were Richard Carrier and Robert Price (both who are in the documentary). This was troubling to me, because if the arguments were so strong, then why were only two historians on earth convinced by them? The fact that they were both atheists was also somewhat troubling—similarly to how everyone who denies evolution just happens to be religious.

CREATIONIST / MYTHICIST PARALLELS

When confronted with the fact that there is a near complete consensus on the existence of Jesus, mythicists have a ready argument. “Well of COURSE Biblical historians believe Jesus existed. They are all Christians!” The good skeptic will recognize this line of argument from creationists. “Of COURSE all biologists accept evolution. They are all atheists!” In both cases, the conclusion that these researchers have come to as a result of having dedicated their lives to studying a topic is dismissed as a result of presuppositional bias. Of course, not all biologists are atheists. Ken Miller and Francis Collins for example, are Christians. And the same goes for Biblical scholars. Both Bart Ehrman and Gerd Ludemann are not Christians. 

The view that all scientists are a bunch of raving atheists who want nothing more than to disprove God is a common view among creationists, and it seems that mythicists also view every Biblical historian as a Christian fundamentalist whose only goal is to confirm their religious beliefs. In both cases, these arguments make it clear that the creationists and mythicists who hold these opinions have never done any actual research on the topic, and have no idea what they are talking about. As I already pointed out, both fields are filled with people of a variety of religious viewpoints. 

What is happening is that the mythicists and creationists are rejecting the overwhelming consensus of the experts because they don’t like the conclusion that the experts have come to. They accuse the experts of deep bias, which I find hilariously ironic, since it is in fact that the creationists and mythcists who are obviously biased to anyone with a basic understanding of the topics.

Now, a mythicist might protest, saying “Uh, yeah I DO know what I am talking about!” In such cases, I ask the mythicist how many books on the historical Jesus they have read. Are these books by respected scholars, or just Carrier and Price (or worse, someone who is “self-taught” and self-published)? Mythicists would surely agree that people who only read books by Michael Behe or Stephen Meyer (intelligent design advocates) aren't getting the full picture of what evolution is, so why would one expect to get the full picture of the historical Jesus if you are only reading fringe scholars?

Likewise, creationists and mythicists are mostly falling victim to the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The effect states that ignorance breeds confidence. When someone has just a little bit of information, their confidence regarding that topic is much higher than their level of knowledge should allow for. This is obviously the case with creationists, and for mythicists, I believe the same holds true. If you are a mythicist, are you so confident of your position because of years of careful study, or because you watched a few youtube videos and read atheist blog posts?

I will often ask creationists what they think they know that literally every biologist on earth for the last 150 years has missed. I ask Jesus mythicists the same thing. What do they know that every historian on earth for the last 2000 years has missed? Is it more likely that people who have devoted their lives to studying something have made an enormous mistake, or that someone with essentially zero historical training has made an amazing discovery? Both creationists and mythicists refuse to answer this question.

One final parallel that I often see is the practice of quoting of someone who has zero training in the relevant field as an authority. It is extremely common for creationists to quote a PhD who thinks that evolution is nonsense, but fail to note that the person quoted got their PhD in engineering, astronomy or something else that is just as irrelevant. Likewise, mythicists often quote people who have zero training in any relevant field. I am often linked to articles by geologists, physicists and physiologists, explaining why Jesus didn't exist, or some other related nonsense. The fact that mythicists would absolutely pounce on a creationist for such intellectual dishonesty, but then turn around and do it themselves is troubling.

MYTHICIST MISUNDERSTANDINGS

These creationist/mythicist comparisons are all well and good, but I am here to explain why a skeptic should have no problem with the idea of the historical Jesus existing. So, what are some reasons to think that Jesus existed? Well, as I have already alluded to, literally every single ancient history historian on earth thinks that he did (except for Carrier and Price). “Argument from authority!” the mythicists cry. However, would they consider the fact that basically every biologist on earth accepts evolution to be a fallacious argument as well? Probably not. It’s not the best argument out there, but it is indicative of something. If there is a consensus by experts—people who have dedicated their lives to studying a topic, should we discount this as irrelevant? Of course not. The opinion of experts is extremely telling, and is only dismissed by people who don't like the conclusion.

Now, one problem that mythicists have is that they expect history to work like science. I have had mythicists tell me they want eyewitness testimony of Jesus, otherwise they won’t accept that he existed. Likewise, the creationists want eyewitness testimony that evolution happened (“Were you there?” is a common rebuttal from creationists regarding evolution and the age of the earth). It is important to realize though, that unless someone was of enormous importance in ancient history, the likelihood that there will be any contemporary report of said person is basically zero. We have the writings of Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, but there are zero mentions of him by any of his contemporaries. Even the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, who is considered one of the greatest military leaders of all time, has no surviving contemporary mentions of him. So here we have the greatest general in the world, and yet there are no surviving documents that mention him. Is it then a surprise that we don’t have any direct mentions of backwoods Jewish preacher?

Of course, things that happened in the past are a challenge to study. We have to look at the data and ask “what theory best accounts for this evidence?” With biology, evolution best accounts for the evidence. With history, Jesus existing best accounts for the evidence.

“What evidence though??” We have no eyewitness testimony, the gospels were written decades after the fact, and the first historian to mention Jesus (Josepus) was writing 60 years after Jesus’s death. So how can this be evidence? Welcome to ancient history—this is just how it is. Historians have to piece things together, and try their best to get a clear picture of what happened.

Now, many mythicists freak out, saying that it’s absurd to use the gospels as historical sources, since they are filled with obviously non-historical aspects (miracles and whatnot). However, this view doesn’t take seriously what the gospels are—documents from ancient history. They are not written as literature, and not intended to be received as fiction. Comparisons to Harry Potter books simply betray the mythicist’s historical competence. Completely rejecting the gospels as 100% false is something that only those with a deep bias, and even deeper ignorance of history, do. Historians are trained to tease apart documents from ancient history, and try to figure out what parts are true, what parts are not true. It's like creationists who say that since Nebraska man was a faked fossil, evolution is all wrong, and no evidence for evolution can ever be trusted.

The main issue that both creationists and mythicists have is that they fail to take the evidence seriously, and refuse to engage with it honestly. It is easy for mythicists to think “the gospels were written by idiot, superstitious Christians who wanted everyone to believe what they believed… therefore you can’t trust anything they said.” But this sort of ignorance is exactly what tells scholars that mythicists have no interest or knowledge of what they do.

We first need to realize that when historians are studying the historical Jesus, they are trying to figure out what PROBABLY happened. No critical scholar thinks that we can say Jesus did miracles or rose from the dead, but it seems like most mythicists are under the impression that if they admit Jesus existed, then that means they have to accept that he was a virgin born, miracle working, resurrected son of God. No. It just means an itinerant preacher named Jesus lived 2000 years ago, caused a bit of a scene and was executed by the Romans. Later, stories about him started to circulate and were eventually written down.

Creationists are always guilty of trying to just poke holes in evolution, and thinking that if they do it enough, it will prove them right. Of course, that’s not how it works. Creationism is not the idea that rises to the top if evolution falls. In order for creationism to succeed, it has to account for the evidence better than evolution can. Likewise, mythicists think they can just poke holes in the arguments for Jesus and then declare victory. However, they need to come up with a theory that explains the evidence better (and is more probable) than the theory that Jesus existed.

Now, I know that I keep mentioning the evidence, but I haven’t presented any yet, so let’s get to it! 

EVIDENCE FROM EMBARRASSMENT

If Jews were looking to make up stories about a messiah who was the son of God, and came to set up a kingdom on earth, why would these story-spinners say that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist? This is relevant, because people are baptized in order to be forgiven for their sins. If Jews were making up a story about God becoming a sinless man, why would he need to be baptized? Furthermore, when a baptism takes place, the person being baptized is spiritually inferior to the person doing the baptism. How could Jesus, the God of the universe incarnate, be spiritually inferior to John? How does this help sell the idea that Jesus was divine? And indeed, it seems that early Christians were in fact embarrassed about this, because the story of Jesus being baptized is only found in the synoptic gospels (Mathew, Mark and Luke). When we get to the latest gospel, John, the story of Jesus being baptized is gone.

So what is more likely: that Jews made up a story which doesn't conform to their beliefs in order to convince people that these beliefs are true, or that these events actually happened? How many examples can you think of in which someone lies to help their agenda? Tons. But how many examples can you think of in which people lie to hurt their agenda? Seeing as people don't make up stories in order to hurt their agenda, it is much more probable that the story of the baptism actually happened.

Similarly, if Jews were making up this story in order to push their agenda that the messiah was coming to conquer their oppressors (Romans), why would their story state that the messiah completely and utterly failed? Instead of overthrowing the Romans, he was caught and crucified (the most shameful was to be executed) with other common criminals. If you are making up a story in which you want people to believe that God has come to earth to overthrow the enemies and set up a kingdom, would you say that he was caught and executed by those same enemies? How does help the agenda of the people making up the story?

Another example of something that early Christians wouldn’t make up is Jesus’s view that the world was about to end (this view is called apocalypticism). Throughout the synoptic gospels, we have a variety of quotes from Jesus talking about the end of the world (Matthew 24:34, for example). Jesus says that God’s kingdom will soon be here, and the Romans will be overthrown. This will be happening so soon, that it will actually happen before his current followers die (Mark 9:1). The Romans caught wind of this, didn’t like the cut of Jesus’s jib, and decided to show everyone what they thought about people who claim the Roman Empire is going to be overthrown. However (spoiler alert), God’s kingdom didn't arrive. The world that we know of kept trucking along as usual, and over time, the apocalyptic message of Jesus was dropped. Like the baptism story, by the time the Gospel of John was written, all of the apocalyptic sayings were gone. Clearly, this is because Christians started to realize that “oh… yeah, Jesus was wrong about the coming kingdom.” Such an idea was embarrassing to the Christians, so why would they make the sayings up to begin with? (I should also note that the evidence of Jesus's apocalyptic views are not from just a few sayings—this view is absolutely infused throughout the synoptic gospels.)

There are a number of examples of these sorts of things, and mythicists need to be able to account for them. They can’t just say “I don’t believe any of it”, they need to explain why it is more probable that someone would make up a story which disconfirms their agenda than it is that someone wouldn't make up a story that disconfirms their agenda. That is to say, the mythicist explanation of these "embarrassing" stories need to be accounted for in a way that makes more sense than the explanation that Jesus existed.

EVIDENCE FROM ANCIENT CRITICS

There are a lot of reasons why the moon-landing deniers are wrong, but no matter what evidence you present, the proponents of this funny idea will just claim that such evidence is only evidence of a conspiracy. However, one response to the conspiracy charge is as follows: if there was even the slightest possibility of a conspiracy to fake the moon landing, the Russians (who were in a space-race with us at the time) would go insane, and work their hardest to expose it. The Russians didn’t do this, which is pretty telling. If our biggest competition was convinced that we actually landed on the moon, perhaps we really did.

How does this relate to our topic? Well, as long as there have been Christians, there have been critics of Christianity. One of the earliest critics was a Jewish philosopher named Celsus, who wrote a scathing attack on Christianity around the year 177. In all of Celsus’s writings (as well as critiques from other early critics), none of the arguments revolved around anything regarding Jesus’s existence. Early critics would accuse Christianity of being incoherent, accused Christians of being foolish and gullible, and even offered arguments to refute the miracles, divinity and resurrection of Jesus. However, the existence of Jesus was not something that was ever brought up. While early critics found a lot of things to criticize Christians and Christianity about, the existence of Jesus was not one of them.

We also have the writings of early church fathers, starting at the middle of the first century, who were often responding to critics, as well as what they believed to be heretical beliefs that were floating around. These responses are interesting, because they give historians a clue as to what other critics (and supposed heretics) of Christianity were saying. As you might expect at this point, none of these early church fathers ever made any attempt to prove Jesus existed—it wasn’t a point that critics argued.

The main point is that no one in the entire history of early Christianity ever argued that Jesus didn’t exist. It just wasn’t something that people found to be weak point. Mythcists have to account for this: if Jesus didn’t exist, why is it that the earliest critics of Christianity didn’t point out this problem? If the evidence for Jesus's existence was so weak, why did the harshest early critics have no problem accepting it? I suspect their answer is “because the critics were just as gullible as everyone else.” How convenient. Perhaps the Russians were also just as gullible regarding the moon landing.

EVIDENCE FROM PAUL

Lastly, we have what I view to be the strongest argument for the existence of a historical Jesus. Any mythicist worth their salt knows what I am about to discuss, and is already getting ready to spin and deny things in a way that would make even the most ambitious conspiracy theorist blush.

Mythicists, like most atheists, enjoy pointing out that the gospels were written decades after the fact, by people who didn’t even speak Jesus’s language (the gospels were written in Greek, but Jesus spoke Aramaic) to Christians who don’t know anything about the Bible. However, we also have several letters written by Paul, who never met Jesus, but was one of Christianity's biggest evangelists and also started a number of churches.

In Galatians 1:18-20, Paul tells us that three years after his conversion to Christianity (around the year 36—only a few of years after Jesus died), he travelled to Jerusalem to meet Peter. Peter, it just so happens, was not only one of the twelve apostles, but was part of a very close inner circle which included two other apostles who were present at several major events involving Jesus. Paul spent fifteen days with Peter, and during this time, Paul also met James, the brother of Jesus.

Now, I think we can reasonably conclude that if Paul met one of Jesus’s closest disciples, as well as his brother, and Jesus didn’t actually exist, these two men would have let Paul know. Furthermore, if Jesus didn’t exist, how would there be a disciple and a brother to track down to begin with?

So here we have the writings of Paul, who was a contemporary of Jesus, who met two of the people closest to Jesus, and this is still not enough for the mythicist. There is not a mythcist out there who would have any problem accepting this evidence for any other person in ancient history, which is to say, no one could objectively approach this evidence and not find it convincing.

I mentioned earlier that there is an enormous amount of denial and spin that mythicists come up with to try and wiggle out of this. For example, they claim that James was not actually the biological brother of Jesus, he was just his spiritual brother (similar to how members of a church would refer to each other as brother or sister in Christ). This is nonsense, because we would then expect Paul to refer to Peter as a brother of Jesus as well. In regards to Peter, mythicists sometimes have flat out denied that Paul actually met Peter, suggesting that Paul made the whole thing up. Another argument is that Peter wasn’t the Apostle Peter. The idea that this fake Peter would spend over two weeks with Paul strains credulity. “This random guy filled with religious fervor clearly thinks I am someone I’m not… screw it, I will just play along. I have nothing better to do.”

The mythicists also claim that Paul never thought Jesus existed as a physical person--only as a spiritual being. This is not true, as Paul specifically states that Jesus was born of a woman (Galatians 4:4), was a descendent of King David (Romans 1:3), had a brother (Galatians 1:19), then died and was buried (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

Mythicists want contemporary, eyewitness testimony. And here we have a man, Paul, who lived during the time of Jesus, who wrote about meeting two people who were closest to him. If this isn’t considered good evidence, then most of ancient history should be thrown out.

At this point, however, most mythicists have to simply just deny this evidence, since their other arguments don't work. The main thing I hear is "Paul was lying." Of course, there is no argument given on why this is likely, or why Paul would lie about this. It's just an empty assertion born out of desperation. When faced with no other way out, the only option the mythicist has is to deny, deny, deny (as changing one's mind is not a possibility).

CONCLUSION

If one wants to hold the mythicist position, they need to not only poke holes in the story of Jesus, but they need to create a coherent theory that explains all of the data better than the theory of Jesus existing does. They need to explain why every nearly every historian on earth, regardless of their religious views, accepts the historicity of Jesus. They need to explain why Jews would invent a story, but add bits to the story that work against their agenda. They also need to explain why ancient critics of Christianity never argued that Jesus didn’t exist. Lastly, they need to explain how Paul could track down the closest disciple, as well as a brother of a man who apparently never existed, and then after spending over two weeks with them, somehow never learn that Jesus never existed. 

Of course, while doing this, they need to be careful not to resort to any of the same types of arguments that creationists use. As we have seen, they have a very difficult time with such a task, and there is a very good reason for this—the mythicist position, like creationism, is completely bankrupt.

And similar to creationists, the mythicists have rebuttals for everything—sometimes superficially plausibly sounding. But like with creationist rebuttals, just taking a few minutes to research the issue exposes the rebuttals as silly, ad hoc, and sometimes straight up dishonest.

Does this mean that the skeptic now has to accept that Jesus was God incarnate, born of a virgin, did miracles, was crucified, resurrected three days later and then ascended to heaven? Not at all. The historical Jesus is not who Christians believe in today, and no historian believes these things (at least not on historical grounds). What the majority of critical scholars do accept about the historical Jesus was that he was a Jewish preacher from Galilee who lived 2000 years ago. He was baptized by John the Baptist, and neither he nor his disciples thought that he was God. He did think that the end of the world as we know it was right around the corner, and that God would set up a kingdom on earth. He was crucified by the Romans, and proven wrong as the end never came. After his death, many people believed to have seen him, and then several decades later, educated, Greek-speaking Christians started writing the stories of Jesus down. As time went on, his humanness was downplayed, and stories of him being a divine miracle worker were played up.

That is the Jesus of history, and one that all skeptics should embrace as having been a real person.