Paul Tobin’s new book,
The Rejection of Pascal’s Wager: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus has arrived and I am very glad it did. It is the best skeptical work on the Bible as a whole. Gerd Lüdemann, author of several skeptical works on early Christianity, recommends it
“with the utmost enthusiasm.” I do too.
Tobin’s whole argument is aimed to show that Pascal’s famous wager has no effect on us because we are not forced to choose between Pascal’s Catholic brand of Christianity and unbelief. Why? Because the central claims of Christianity are false. He takes aim at the Bible to show that while it may be a great work of literature it is not the word of God. And Tobin backs his claim up with his massive 652 page book, complete with a nice bibliography and indexes.
If you’re a former Christian who has deconverted at a later time in life then you need to re-learn most all of what you were taught about the Bible. If you were college and seminary trained like me, this can be a difficult thing to do. So, you could go on a massive reading binge, spending many hours and a lot of money feasting on book after book. Or, you could read this one. Given that choice I highly recommend you get this one. Tobin masterfully takes us through the Bible using critical scholarship to show us what we can and cannot know about it. It has helped me remember several things I learned back in college and seminary but had forgotten. It taught me some very interesting things I hadn’t yet thought through as a skeptic, and I think I’ve read a great deal on the subject since my deconversion. Tobin showed me I hadn’t read enough.
It’s all here for the most part in an encyclopedic fashion, covering the ancient myths, the errors, the lack of confirming archaeology, the failed prophecies, and the forged authorship. He also covers the ad hoc canonization process and the textual transmission of these texts. Tobin is a very good guide to these topics, using the results of critical scholars whom he refers to time and again.
He writes and thinks well too. Take for instance Noah’s Ark. Tobin tells us simply that on the one hand “it is too big,” in that the structure could not be seaworthy. On the other hand “it was too small,” with not enough room for all of the animals it would have had in it. (pp. 75-77).
Tobin also spends a few pages effectively dealing with the minutia of numerical “contradictions” in the Bible, like the value of π (pi) found in Kings 7:23-26 (pp. 29-38). He even shows how that the evangelical New International Version has purposely mistranslated several passages to eliminate the appearance of difficulties inherent in the original languages (pp. 197-204).
And he addresses how the liberals view the Bible by concluding that they “did not reach their conclusions by abstruse theological reasoning: they were forced by external circumstances—the findings of science, comparative religions, enlightenment philosophies and historical criticism.” (pp. 187-196).
If you want to know why scholars think the Gospel of Mark was written first you may only need to read this book. If you want to know why scholars don’t think Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the authors of their gospels, and why they are written later than evangelicals claim, you may only need to read this book. If you want to know why the Nativity stories are fictions you may only need to read this book. If you want to know why scholars have serious doubts about what Jesus may have said, or why they doubt the Passion Narratives and resurrection stories, you may only need to read this book.
If you have only one skeptical book about the Bible as a whole this one is all you need. And even if you have some other books, this one will still inform you of issues you probably haven’t read up on, like it did with me.
Tobin did a massive amount of work here. I will use it as a reference when dealing with some of these topics in the future. It’s worth the price. I liked it so much I asked Tobin to write a chapter for a book I’ve been editing/writing.
Chapter 13: The Bethlehem Star, by Dr. Aaron Adair, in Christianity in the light of Science: Critically Examining the World's Largest Religion (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Press, 2016): 297-313. [Used with permission].
About two
centuries ago, there was a major transition in the way scholars were
approaching the stories of the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. There
was a greater attempt to look at the historical context and formation of the
holy book and its stories, and the tales of Jesus were a major issue for
critical scholars and theologians. It was also at around this time that the
acceptability of wondrous stories was not palatable, at least for the educated
where a deistic god was more ideal, one that did not perform miracles and was consistent
with the universe of Newtonian mechanics. A naturalistic understanding of the
world, inspired by the success of the physical sciences, along with inspiration
from Enlightenment thinkers, changed the way people looked at the world, and
that caused for a significant reassessment of the spectacular stories of the
ancient world. What was one to do with the miracle stories of Jesus if miracles
don’t happen? The solution was a series of rationalizations, none seen as
terribly plausible but preferable to claiming a miracle or a myth. For example,
Jesus walking on water was a mistake on the part of the Disciples, seeing their
master walk along the beach shore on a foggy morning and not actually atop the
water. Even the resurrection of Jesus was so retrofitted into scenarios that
are unlikely, to say the least, but at least they weren’t impossible.
When John Loftus informed me that there is a “book length rebuttal” available on the net to The Christian Delusion I was expecting an intellectual challenge but instead what I found amounts to no more than relatively lightweight and easily dismissed assertions.
[Written by John W. Loftus] What I’m engaging in here at Debunking Christianity is a huge challenge. I like big challenges. So let me offer one to Christians...
It's because I was finishing up editing a new book to be published by
Prometheus Books. I sent the manuscript off to them this week. See below for the table of contents:
The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails
Foreword by Dan Barker
Introduction
Part One: How to Think About and Test Faith.
1 The Cultures of Christianities. Dr. David Eller
2 Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science. Dr. Valerie Tarico
3 The Malleability of the Human Mind. Dr. Jason Long
4 The Outsider Test for Faith Revisited. John W. Loftus
Part Two: Why the Bible is Not God’s Word.
5 The Cosmology of the Bible. Edward T. Babinski
6 The Bible and Modern Scholarship. Paul Tobin
7 What We’ve Got Here is a Failure to Communicate. John W. Loftus
Part Three: Why the Christian God is Not Perfectly Good.
8 Yahweh is a Moral Monster. Dr. Hector Avalos
9 The Darwinian Problem of Evil. John W. Loftus
Part Four: Why Jesus is not the Risen Son of God.
10 Jesus: Myth and Method. Dr. Robert M. Price
11 Why the Resurrection is Unbelievable. Dr. Richard Carrier
12 At Best Jesus Was a Failed Apocalyptic Doomsday Prophet. John W. Loftus
Part Five: Why Modern Society Does Not Depend on Christian Faith.
13 Does Christianity Provide the Basis for Morality? Dr. David Eller
14 Was Atheism the Reason Hitler Killed So Many People? Dr. Hector Avalos
15 Was Christianity Responsible for Modern Science? Dr. Richard Carrier
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I have been sending Dr. Michael Martin the material along the way. He is professor of philosophy emeritus and author of the books The Case Against Christianity, and Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Of this book he wrote:John Loftus and his distinguished colleagues have certainly produced one of the best and arguably the best critique of the Christian faith the world has ever known. Using sociological, biblical, scientific, historical, philosophical, theological and ethical criticisms, this book completely destroys Christianity. All but the most fanatical believers who read it should be moved to have profound doubts.
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As the editor of this new work I designed it to be an extension of my book Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, and so it further argues for the things I did there. To read recommendations of that work, click here.