2017

Carrier on Jesus-myth scholarship

Bad Jesus Scholarship for Atheists

Dr Richard Carrier and I disagree on a lot of points regarding Jesus, but in our debate last summer there was one important point on which we agreed. Most of the Jesus-mythicism scholarship out there is bad scholarship. He called out in particular the parallels between Jesus Christ and Horus as an example. Carrier and I did not delve into why so many atheists are willing to accept bad scholarship about Jesus not existing. To me, the answer is simple: tribalism. Humans have instinctive tribal feelings that lead us to see our own “tribes” in a positive light and to see “enemy tribes” in a negative light. See, for example, The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene. For lots of atheists, Jesus Christ is the “sacred totem” of the “enemy tribe”. They are willing to accept bad scholarship provided it tells them what they want to hear, which is that Jesus never existed. 

The phenomenon that energizes me about this topic is the emotional commitment that many atheists have to mythicism, all while portraying themselves as more objective than mainstream historians. I know an atheist who says that hearing the phrase “historical Jesus” makes him want to retch. That reaction is visceral, not rational. In the local atheist book club, the topic of whether Jesus was historical is prohibited in side conversations. In the past, too many discussion were derailed by emotional arguments over this issue. Christians, for their part, also disagree with mainstream historians about who Jesus was. For example, they consider the gospel of John to be historically valuable. Christians have perfectly understandable reasons for preferring a nonstandard view of early Christian origins. Muslims also have their pet ideas about who Jesus was. So do a lot of New Age promoters, such as Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull. And along come atheist mythicists proving that atheists are human, too. Atheists sometimes let their tribal affiliations channel their thinking, and lots of atheists promote their pet ideas about Jesus over the longstanding consensus of mainstream scholars. 

In my dream world, atheists would use the Jesus-mythicism controversy as a reality check. The well-documented willingness of atheists to accept bad Jesus-myth scholarship would wake us atheists up to our own biases and tribal instincts. Even atheists who think that Carrier is right would acknowledge that the track record for atheists evaluating Jesus-myth scholarship is dodgy. Atheists commonly criticize religious people for letting their feelings cloud their judgment, and the Jesus-myth phenomenon could be eye-opening for us atheists. We could acknowledge that being led astray by tribal feelings is part of the human experience. Tribal thinking is not a unique sin committed only by people who believe in the supernatural. Am I dreaming? Can atheists really be the first “tribe” to acknowledge our own tribalism and rise above it? Probably not, but hope springs eternal. 

As I mentioned in my debate with Carrier, I once got a little carried away with some bad scholarship about Muhammad not existing. Like any human, I’m vulnerable to having my intellect be swayed by feelings. I also had some unrealistically positive feelings about the historical Jesus before I did the research and accepted the evidence. Contradicting what I’d been taught, I learned that Jesus’ message was to his fellow Jews, not to the whole world. I like Jesus, so I don’t like the idea of him being so “ethnic”, but that’s where the evidence points. My message to my fellow atheists is not, “Be without bias”. That’s unrealistic because we’re all human. If you think you’re without bias, you’re probably more biased than average. Without bias, I couldn’t get up in the morning. Every hour I care more about some things than other things. That’s bias. Instead of “Don’t be biased”, my message to my fellow atheists is, “Acknowledge your own bias and humbly follow the evidence”. 

For his part, Carrier sets himself above other mythicists because he takes on a greater challenge than they do. He not only tells people that they “might have reason for doubt” about historical Jesus, he also offers an explanation for how 1st-century Christianity originated. Who started it? How did it develop? How did it leave behind the historical traces that we have today? If there was no historical Jesus, how did everyone—believers, heretics, and skeptics alike—come to think that he had existed on this Earth? Carrier offers an explanation. In brief, someone had a vision (or claimed to have a vision) of an angel being crucified in outer space to free Jews from the Temple, and soon enough the allegorical stories about this celestial angel were misunderstood as historical stories about an actual historical figure. Carrier does a favor to everyone interested in Jesus mythicism by providing an alternative account of Christian origins. We can look at his account and judge how plausible it is compared to the mainstream account. If Carrier is wrong, then most likely Christianity is based on the life and teachings of a Jewish, hillbilly faith healer and preacher. Carrier says that this mainstream account is plausible. In our debate, Carrier did not summarize his own account of 1st-century Christianity, and his 3-page summary in On the Historicity of Jesus is light on details but heavy on argumentation. Here he describes one part of his account as ”not so implausible as it may seem”. He’s written about his history on his blog and Facebook, but it looks like he’s not going to spell out his account in a clear, chronological outline. My guess is that he knows that his account would sound implausible if it were laid out end-to-end with no embellishment. 

What Carrier and I agree on is that atheists are too willing to accept bad scholarship that says Jesus didn’t exist. If you hate that statement, and if you can feel that hate in your gut, that’s probably a tribal instinct at work.

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4 minutes of Christian origins: My summary of Christian origins, from Jesus’ career to the composition of Mark (video from the debate).

Am I a fake atheist?: How my fellow atheists treat me when I betray “the tribe”.