New Testament Plot Fixes

Jesus' repentance and baptism under John
required a lot of explanation.

We modern people are sophisticated consumers of media. In our commercially oriented lives, we have heard more sales pitches than people in any other time or place in history. We hear and evaluate propaganda from our political and societal leaders. We are better educated, savvier, and harder to fool than ever. Today we find it easy to read between the lines and guess at an author’s motives. The Christian gospels were written for a less sophisticated audience, so it’s easy for us to see through them. The gospels were written generations after Jesus’ ministry, and all four of them plus Paul’s letters include “elaborations”. With our modern eye for shams, we can see the authors struggling to make the historical elements fit their mythic Christ figure. In particular, many parts of the New Testament read like answers to skeptical questions that 1st-century Christians may have heard from their dubious neighbors. Here is a list of hypothetical skeptical questions and the Bible verses that look like early Christian responses to them. 

Scripture Sources

Responses to each question are in chronological order, as found in the following works.

  Q, a lost compilation of Jesus’ sayings, written by c 50

  Paul’s letters about theology and conduct, written c 60

  Mark’s gospel, about how Jesus had secretly been the Messiah, written c 70

  Matthew’s gospel, which is Mark + Q + extras, edited for a Jewish audience, written c 80

  Luke’s gospel, which is Mark + Q + extras, edited for a gentile audience, written c 90

  John’s gospel, a bold retelling with an all-divine, not-at-all-secret Jesus, written c 100

Skeptical Question: If Jesus was the Son of David, why was he from Nazareth instead of from Bethlehem? 

  Matthew: Jesus was born in Bethlehem where his father lived, but they had to flee to Nazareth (by way of Egypt) to escape evil King Herod.

  Luke: There was this weird census, and Jesus ended up being born in Bethlehem because that’s where his father’s lineage was from.

SQ: If angels or wise men came to herald Jesus’ birth, why didn’t Jesus’ neighbors know he was special? (The story of Jesus’ neighbors not having faith in him is in Mark and Matthew.)

  Matthew: Jesus family was lying low, since the authorities were out to get Jesus. 

  Luke: Mary kept Jesus’ miraculous birth to herself.

SQ: John the Baptist preached about a great apocalyptic figure to come, but he never named Jesus as that figure. Why didn’t John recognize him?

  Q, Matthew, Luke: John was in prison when Jesus started his ministry, but he sent his followers to ask about Jesus, and that’s how he came to recognize Jesus as the Son of God.

SQ: If the Holy Spirit came to Jesus the instant he was baptized, why didn’t John recognize him then?

  Mark: As soon as the Holy Spirit came to Jesus, it drove him into the wilderness. John was already in prison when Jesus came back and started his ministry, so John never had the chance to recognize Jesus. 

  Matthew: Actually, John did recognize Jesus, but secretly. In fact, Jesus was born of a virgin, so he was already the Son of God before he was baptized, and John recognized him as such.

  Luke: Actually, John did recognize Jesus. In fact, Jesus was born of a virgin, and John recognized him as the Son of God before the two of them were born (because their mothers were cousins, you see). 

  John: What are you talking about? Jesus was never baptized. That’s for sinners. He’s the incarnation of God’s own Word, the pure Lamb of God. And John the Baptist told everyone that Jesus was the great figure that he had predicted. We have his sworn testimony on record. 

SQ: But why did Jesus get baptized anyway? If he was the perfect Son of God, then why did he need baptism for the remission of sins? Was he a follower of John’s?

  Matthew: Of course he didn’t need to be baptized, and John said as much privately, but Jesus insisted that they do the baptism in order to fulfill all righteousness. 

  Luke: Why are you so fixated on Jesus’ baptism anyway? The Holy Spirit came to Jesus after John was done baptizing everyone, when Jesus was praying.

  John: Jesus showed up where John was baptizing people, but he didn’t get baptized himself.

SQ: If Jesus was the Son of God, why didn’t he tell people? 

  Mark, Matthew, Luke: It was a secret.  

  John: What do you mean, not tell people? He told everyone who would sit still that he was eternally one with the Father. That’s why those devilish Jews wanted to kill him. 

SQ: Jesus said that we in this generation wouldn’t get a sign, but if he had given people signs, wouldn’t more people have believed and gotten saved? Wouldn’t mighty signs have brought more people to your church? 

  Q, Matthew, Luke: You know what, that’s exactly what the Devil said to Jesus in the desert. Satan tempted Jesus with the easy route of proving his divinity by mighty signs. So no he didn’t just win people over with special effects. That would have been giving in to Satan. 

  John: What do you mean, no sign? Jesus’ ministry is basically six miraculous signs proving his divinity, with his resurrection as the mystical seventh sign.

SQ: What did Jesus mean when he said that the hungry were the ones with God’s blessing? Going without food is a curse, not a blessing. And how can the poor be blessed? Wealth is a blessing, not poverty. Was he crazy, like his family thought? (Jesus says that the hungry and the poor are blessed in Q, Luke, and Thomas. Jesus’ family thinks he’s out of his mind in Mark.)

  Matthew: What he said was, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Also, blessed are the poor in spirit. He wasn’t talking about physical hunger or poverty. 

SQ: I talked with some other disciples, and they never said anything about Moses and Elijah showing up to give Jesus their endorsement. 

  Mark, Matthew, Luke: Actually, only Peter, James, and John saw that. 

SQ: While Jesus was alive, even Peter, James, and John didn’t say anything about Jesus meeting Moses and Elijah. 

  Mark, Matthew, Luke: Jesus swore the three of them to secrecy.

SQ: If Jesus was the anointed king of the Jews and their savior, why did they reject him? If the Jews didn’t accept him, why should gentiles? 

  Mark: The Jews only rejected Jesus because he intentionally hid his message from them. He taught in obscure parables so that the Jews would lose their opportunity to repent and thus be destroyed.

  Luke: Jesus came for all people, not just the Jews. Jews in his hometown tried to kill him at the start of his ministry when he told them that his saving message was for gentiles, too. 

  John: The Jews are basically in league with Satan. 

SQ: If Jesus was God’s Son and everything, why were the Romans able to nail him up on a cross like a runaway slave? 

  Paul: Being “hung on a tree” allowed Jesus to suffer a curse of guilt, which otherwise would never afflict a perfect being. It was all part of God’s plan.

  Mark, Matthew, Luke: That was all part of Jesus’ plan. He even taught the disciples about how he was going to be killed and resurrected. 

SQ: If Jesus taught the disciples that he was going to die and then rise from the dead, why were they surprised when he was killed and when he rose from the dead? 

  Mark: They didn’t understand his teaching.

  Luke: They didn’t understand his teaching because Jesus used veiled language.

SQ: If the crucifixion was all in God’s plan, why did Jesus cry out in despair as he was dying on the cross? (Reported in Mark and Matthew.)

  Luke, John: What do you mean? He took his crucifixion in stride, with no show of fear, pain, or weakness. The crucifixion didn’t even kill him. He willed his own death when the time was right, in accordance with scripture.

SQ: So if the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate had Jesus crucified, does that mean Jesus was an enemy of Rome? (In the late 60s, Jews across the empire were in revolt, making this question particularly salient.)

  Mark: It was really the Jews who were behind it. Pilate couldn’t even figure out why they wanted Jesus dead and offered to release him. 

  Matthew: Pilate’s wife told him Jesus was innocent based on a dream she had, and Pilate washed his hands to symbolize that he did not participate in the judgment. The Jews called for his death, accepting the guilt of their act on themselves and their children. 

  Luke: Pilate found Jesus innocent, but the Jews called for his death.

  John: Pilate tried twice to release Jesus, and he even placed Jesus in his own judgment seat. But the Jews screamed that he should be crucified.

SQ: Bodies of crucified criminals are thrown to the dogs. How was there a tomb for Mary Magdalene to visit? 

  Mark, Matthew, Luke, John: A respected member of the Jewish council took Jesus’ body for burial. 

SQ: You say Jesus supposedly “appeared” to a couple followers after his death. So what? Sometimes people see things.

  Paul: He appeared to 500 people at once. Five hundred people can’t just be “seeing things”.

  Luke: Is that right? Well, the disciples didn’t believe the women at first, either, but then they learned the truth. Don’t be like them.

  John: Actually, there was a disciple who doubted, too, but once he put his fingers in Jesus’ wounds, he believed. Don’t be like him. 

SQ: Now that Jesus is dead, you Christians are claiming that he taught stuff that no one has heard before.

  Mark: He taught the disciples secret knowledge. That’s why you haven’t heard this stuff before.

  John: Jesus told us disciples that he would send us messages in prayer, so some of this teaching is new to us, too. But it’s still Jesus saying it.

SQ: The disciples don’t have any authority. They’re just a bunch of guys that tagged along after Jesus.

  Mark, Matthew, Luke: Actually, Jesus hand-picked his disciples and even knew their names before talking to them. 

SQ: Jesus never said that the disciples had any of his authority or set any of them up as a leader.

  Matthew: During a private meeting, Jesus gave authority to Peter and to the disciples. 

  John: When he came back from the dead, Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit over the disciples, giving them the authority to forgive sins, or not. And another time when he was back from the dead, he told Peter to feed his sheep, meaning lead the church.

SQ: Jesus never baptized anyone. Why are you Christians baptizing people? That was John the Baptist’s thing.

  Matthew: When Jesus came back from the dead, he told the disciples to baptize people.

  John: Jesus did too baptize people. In fact, his disciples led a bigger baptism campaign than John did. 

SQ: I get having a meal in Jesus’ honor, but where does all this sacrificial blood imagery come from? (A once-lost document called the Didache reveals an early Christian community with a memorial meal but without a blood covenant.)

  Paul, Mark, Matthew, Luke, John: Jesus privately established a new covenant in his blood. 

SQ: When Jesus was alive and for the following 20 years, his sect was strictly Jewish. Now this guy Paul is founding gentile congregations, and gentiles no longer have to convert to Judaism to become Christian. That can't be right.

  Matthew: Once when Jesus appeared to the disciples after his death, he told them to make converts in all nations. The Jews used to be God’s Chosen, but now it’s the Christians. 

  Luke: Jesus said right from the start that he had come for all people, which is why his wicked Jewish neighbors tried to throw him off a cliff.

All these cover stories point back to a historical Jesus. Christopher Hitchens said that the amount of fabrication in the gospels is impressive evidence that the stories are based on a historical figure. (Here’s a link to the video.) If there hadn’t been a historical Jesus doing things like getting baptized, the reasoning goes, then there would be no need for these layers of justification. Mainstream historians reach much the same conclusion. 

Spotting Crow Families

An adult on either side, the juvenile in the middle.

This post is for animal lovers and especially for science-loving parents with little kids. Learn the call of the juvenile crow, and you’ll be able to find crow families for fun and education.

Here in Seattle, you can often hear fledged juvenile crows pestering their parents for food. Here’s a link to an audio clip of this distinctive call.

Juvenile crow call

In this call, a parent might recognize the whiny tone of a demanding child. It’s April, and the complaining has begun.

If you hear this call, it’s often easy to find the juvenile. They’re not in the nest. Instead, Mom and Dad are taking Junior out for a scavenging tour. Mostly Mom and Dad get food and fly it back to Junior. Sometimes you’ll hear Junior’s call start fine and get garbled. That’s when a parent puts food in its mouth in mid-whine. As Junior grows, Mom and Dad act less and less accommodating. Junior has to fly closer and closer to the food to get fed. Eventually Junior has to follow Mom and Dad to where the food, and finally Junior is scavenging on its own.

You can spot a juvenile crow because it looks like a goof. Adult crows are just the opposite: savvy, aware, together, and poised. Juveniles are awkward, with clumsy posture and a certain air of cluelessness. Sort of like a teen boy who’s grown so tall in the last year that he doesn’t know what to do with his limbs. Other than this cluelessness, juveniles are hard to tell from the parents. A juvenile’s feathers puff out and make it look big, probably an adaptation that helps juveniles get eaten less often.

If you spook the parents, they may fly away, in which case the juvenile will follow them. If you hold still, you may be able to observe the adults feeding the child. Looking straight at a crow makes it more wary. It’s less threatening to watch them out of the corner of your eye.

If you’re a city parent, crow families are an opportunity to show your kids a little bit of nature and the cycle of life. For example, crows are a lesson in pair-bonding. Mom and Dad crow work side-by-side, not just raising kids year after year but scavenging day to day. Very different from robins, where the males love to fight each other and the most successful ones establish families with multiple females. Robins also choose mates over again each mating season. That’s a different sort of lesson for your kids.

Bonus self-referential question: Ask a kid if they can think of any other kind of animal that takes its young ones out and about to learn about the world. If you’re walking with that kid in a park telling them about crows, then the answer is you.

Kids and Grandmother Fish

Kids loved even this early draft of  Grandmother Fish.

Macmillan is picking up Grandmother Fish for a second edition in September, and Karen and I are ecstatic. We’ll reach a lot more kids, and we won’t have to do the packaging, shipping, and marketing. This deal is really quite a milestone for us, and it’s a joy to bring the miraculous story of evolution to lots of little kids. Last year at this time, I was really excited by the response that the book had gotten from parents and educators. Now I’m even more excited because I’ve seen and heard how children respond to Grandmother Fish. 

Before finishing the book, we had lots of people read sketchy versions to children, and the results seemed promising. We even saw the “light go on” when a girl, having the story read to her by her mother, saw Grandmother Human and realized that the story was about her. The only test that counts, however, is when parents are reading the finished book to their children. Now that we have self-published the book, we have heard from plenty of parents about how kids in their own homes respond to it, now complete with all of Karen’s lovely art. The verdict? Kids love Grandmother Fish. Lots of parents tell me that this book is their children’s favorite book, or even that their kids want the story read to them every night. 

A professional editor said she was surprised that both her 3-year old and her 6-year old loved it. One 4-year old has memorized the book and now “reads” it to his dad, something he’s never done with any other book. 

For an older girl, it’s the first book she was motivated to read (actually read) by herself. 

One 2-year old delights in telling people “I AM A HUMAN!” She belts out that phrase at the store or over the phone—wherever she finds a listener. 

A 4-year old reportedly asked his parents, “What do you think we’ll evolve into?” His dad told me that the question made his heart and his wife’s heart “sing a little.” 

One father, an author I greatly respect, sent me a video of his little girl struggling to read the “cuddle” page. Then, in a heart-melting comment, she says she wants to put the book in her “beauty drawer,” where she keeps beautiful things forever. 

A blogger and mother of two boys with autism says Grandmother Fish is great for her kids. 

Lots of parents also tell me that kids love studying the phylogenetic tree in the back, a great feature that Karen encouraged me to add to the book. 

It’s been tremendously gratifying to hear all these stories. As near as I can tell, the book really seems to connect to kids. Wiggling like a fish is a lot of fun, but I think what really appeals is that the story grounds the child in the family of living things. When a 2-year old announces to strangers “I AM A HUMAN,” she’s saying “I see where I fit in.” I would say that reaching kids this way is a dream come true, but honestly I never dreamed that children would respond so deeply to Grandmother Fish. Karen and I can’t wait until the second edition releases in September. Then we’ll all really see what the reaction is like. 

2016

Description of first PNW gathering

Oasis Coming to Seattle

Oasis is a secular community that started in Houston, spread to Kansas City, and is now opening chapters across the US. Founders from Houston and Kansas City came to the Pacific Northwest to support locals who are interested in opening a chapter here, and I was curious enough to attend the first gathering. A group of mostly ex-Mormons, connected over the Internet, is providing the core of interested people bringing Oasis here. It’s similar to Sunday Assembly, although with weekly gatherings, less singing, and better childcare. Overall, I liked what I saw, and I recommend folks check it out. 

Oasis meets weekly, which is great if it works. Folks are not expected to attend every week, but they’ll still probably attend more often than folks attend Sunday Assembly, which meets monthly. In terms of building community, the more you meet, the better. 

Music at Oasis is provided by musical guests for attendees to listen to, as opposed to the group singing that typifies churches, Sunday Assembly, and all manner of communal gatherings back to our primordial history. Lots of secular people feel weird singing in groups, so for them Oasis is going to be more comfortable. As for me, I’m not much of a spectator, so listening to someone perform isn’t as compelling as singing in a group. I can’t really sing, but I don’t let that stop me. By not singing together, modern people are turning their backs on our universal heritage, but that’s a whole other story. 

Oasis offers childcare, although it doesn’t yet have a curriculum or formal program. They’re already ahead of the game if they provide a casual program where secular kids have fun together while their parents do something more adult. They also have their ducks in row as far as background checks and other security precautions you need when dealing with children. Kids’ programming, or at least childcare, is something that most secular groups leave out, and usually you have to go to a church to find an intergenerational community. (That’s what I do. I’m a Unitarian.) For me part of being a feminist is supporting parents and families. If a program offers no options for kids, that’s a burden for both men and women, but mostly for women. 

Like Sunday Assembly, Oasis features informative and personal talks as well as music. Talking and listening to talks is one activity that secular people have nailed. In fact, if even listening to songs is too churchy for you, the Seattle Atheist Church offers a program that’s all talk. As for Oasis, I’m happy to report that their policy is not to take their gatherings as an opportunity to carp about religion. There’s more than enough negativity in the atheist community already.

Oasis also features social events. In fact, in Kansas City the atheist group there is devoted to activism, leaving Oasis as the default place for organizing secular get-togethers and service projects. Some participants skip the services and just participate in the social and service programs. Here in Seattle, the social angle is already well covered. Seattle Atheists has a huge array of get-togethers and a few regular service projects, Sunday Assembly offers a parallel track of get-togethers, and smaller secular groups provide more options for social gatherings. Seattle Atheists has a book club, Sunday Assembly has a book club, and Oasis will probably have a book club. Seattle Atheists has game nights, so does Sunday Assembly, and I bet Oasis will, too. It sure would be great if there were an easy way for someone to see all the social options there are out there for secular people in the Seattle area.

A big question is where the gender ratio will end up at communities like Oasis. Atheists are mostly men, and church appeals disproportionately to women. So where does that leave “atheist churches”? We’ll see. Given how hostile the atheist community can be for women, I'm sure that these groups focusing on community will do better than atheist forums on the Internet. 

The information meeting was in Tacoma, but the first chapter might open in Seattle, where the largest number of interested people were from. The group is organizing a launch team to prepare for a launch in June. If you’re interested in getting involved, the Meetup group is a great place to start [http://www.meetup.com/Seattle-Oasis-Secular-Community/], and you can contact organizers there.

2016

Clades Card Preview

Squamates, by Karen Lewis

Karen recently updated the card face for Clades, the secret game we’re working on, and here’s what they look like. With this nice look, I’m getting excited about this game. For years I was stumped by the question of how to do an evolution game. Now I have one.

All my life I have loved biology, but I never learned what a clade was until I started studying evolution to write Grandmother Fish. Now that I know what a clade is, I’m so excited about the idea that I created a game about it. A clade is any complete branch of the evolutionary family tree. In other words, it is an ancestral population plus all the descendants of that population. “Mammal” is a clade because all mammals descend from an early mammalian population, and no other animals do. The category “reptile” is not a clade because birds descend from the same early reptiles that lizards and crocodiles descend from. Since “reptile” doesn’t include birds, it doesn’t include all the descendants of those early reptiles and can’t be a clade. Biologists have reclassified living things along cladistic lines, putting birds with reptiles in the “sauropsid” group (meaning “lizard-face”).

The top card shown is the clade Squamata (“scaly”). Squamates are lizards and snakes. The card also shows four smaller clades: the chameleon clade, the snake clade, the gecko clade, and the Toxicofera clade (including snakes and chameleons but not geckos). In turn, the Squamata clade shown on this card is part of the sauropsid clade with birds, turtles, and crocodiles. The bottom card is the clade Whippomorpha, which includes whales, dolphins, and hippos. The whippomorphs are part of a major mammal clade including deer, pigs, horses, carnivores, and most large land animals.

Whippomorphs,  by Karen Lewis

Since the concept of the clade is based on common descent, clades demonstrate that evolution has happened. The only reason that scientists can read the genomes of different organisms and classify them together in clades is that different species evolved from common ancestors. When we say that hippos are closely related to whales, we don’t mean that they’re alike. We mean that their common ancestor lived not too long ago, maybe 50 million years ago in this case. In the 1700s, Linnaeus classified organisms according to their traits, such as whether they have scales. Today, we classify organisms according to their evolutionary family history.

The clades concept helped me create an evolution-themed game that kids and grownups can both play. For years I’ve mused about how one could create an evolution-themed game that didn’t compromise on the science. The big problem, as Richard Garfield has observed, is that games are about players planning to reach a goal, which is the opposite of evolution. By its nature, evolution defies the default structure of a game. Another problem is that you “win” evolution by reproducing. Computer games can model reproduction easily, but that’s hard to do with a tabletop game. One year when the Burning Man theme was evolution, I ran mate-choice simulations using playing cards, but we couldn’t do successive generations because there’s no easy way to represent reproduction. And that’s where I was stuck. Thanks to my research on Grandmother Fish, I learned about clades. That gave me a new angle from which to approach the problem of how to do an evolution-themed game, and I’m gratified to have finally designed one. Happily, this game is all about Karen’s cute, little pictures of animals, which are on all the cards. 

As with Grandmother Fish, it’s exciting to be on the side of scientific literacy, especially evolutionary science. Scientific literacy has been on the rise for the last century, and that may have contributed to the rise in IQs. Science is so well-proven that even the opponents of science, such as creationists, pretend to be scientists. Evolution in particular is a great topic to be working with because it’s a scientific topic that people respond to emotionally. Some people hate it, but others respond warmly to it. It’s about who we are, and I bet that’s why it matters to people. 

No more details yet. Just wanted to offer a peek at the cards and rave about clades. The plan is to run a Kickstarter later this year. Stay tuned. 

Clades in Grandmother Fish: post from last August.

More on clades: The Berkeley site Understanding Evolution has some nice explanations of clades free online. I also worked on the Wikipedia page. 

Historical Jesus Beats Mythical Jesus

150 years ago, David Friedrich Strauss described 

the gospels as part history and part myth, a formulation

that has stuck ever since.

Sometimes people ask me why, as an atheist, I'm so sure that Jesus existed as a real guy. Here's why. Historians conclude that Jesus probably existed because that’s the best explanation for the evidence we have.  There is a ton of evidence that an apocalyptic sect popped up within Judaism in the first century AD, and historians hypothesize an actual Jewish faith healer and martyr as the inspiration for this sect. The Jesus-myth hypothesis, on the other hand, doesn't offer any alternative explanation for where this sect came from. In fact, it  doesn't even try. Finally, you can just look at the state of Jesus mythicism and tell that it’s not credible scholarship.

Who founded Jewish Christianity?
A thriving Jewish sect existed before Paul established Christianity for gentiles. Who started it? Where? Historians say it was Jesus in Galilee. Mythicists have no clear answer.

Why did early Christianity have no official leader, rules, or creeds?
Early Christians struggled to figure out who could be a Christian, what you had to believe, whose direction to follow, and even who Jesus had been. There was no church hierarchy or pope to specify which people and beliefs were legitimate. Historians say that Jesus’ execution left the sect without clear direction and leadership. Mythicists don’t explain why the people who invented the sect left these leadership issues up in the air.

How did certain leaders in the early church get identified as Jesus’ brother and apostles?
Paul meets with Jesus’ so-called brother James, and with two so-called apostles, Peter and John. Historians explain this by saying those people were Jesus’ brother and disciples. Mythicists have no clear answer.

Who is the preacher who composed the sayings attributed to Jesus?
The gospels include a lot of unremarkable teaching attributed to Jesus that really anybody could have said. The synoptic gospels, however, also include a body of original teachings that challenged the assumptions of 1st century Jews. We underestimate the power and originality of these sayings because 2000 years later they’re old hat, but at first they were so unusual that evangelists sometimes “tamed” them with a little editing. Who came up with these remarkable sayings? Turn the other cheek? God's reign is like dirty leaven? Who is behind this distinctive voice? Historians say it was Jesus who said these unusual things. Mythicists have no clear answer.

Why did the author of Mark create a new literary genre, the gospel?
Today we take gospels for granted, but the first gospel was unprecedented. According to historians, the author strung together elements from written and oral traditions to synthesize a narrative. While myths tend to be about great heroes of the distant past, this was the story of a hillbilly bastard exorcist who had died a loser’s death just a generation or two earlier. Historians say that this genre-creating work was inspired by Jesus. How do mythicists explain Mark?

Why don’t Jewish and pagan critics of Christianity question Jesus' existence?
Critics said he was a fool, magician, fraud, or bastard but not a fiction. Historians say that Jesus was a public figure, so even critics of Christianity acknowledged that he had lived and died. What is the mythicist explanation?

Hitchens asks, why are the gospels full of weird details?
That's right, Hitchens laid out "impressive" evidence for why he thought there may have been a historical Jesus, whom he characterized as a charismatic, deluded rabbi. Hitchens makes the point that the gospels have enough weird elements that they are evidently “not a whole-cloth fabrication”. If Jesus were merely an invention, why would the gospels say he was from Nazareth in Galilee and not the “right” city, Bethlehem in Judea? Early Christians had to invent two competing explanations for how Jesus could have been born in Bethlehem despite growing up in Nazareth. If he were just a myth, why bring in Nazareth at all? And why are the first witnesses to the resurrection just lowly women and not higher-status men? Again, not a detail that one would invent. Here is a link to a video clip of Hitchens making his case.

What are the telltale signs of a fringe idea?
Revolutionary ideas, such as natural selection, deny the scholarly consensus and offer something better. Fringe ideas merely deny the scholarly consensus. Creationist arguments are primarily criticisms of evidence for evolution, not a better explanation of the fossil record. Mythicist arguments are primarily criticisms of evidence for Jesus, not a better explanation for how Christianity started. Where is the biologist who uses creationism in their work? Where is the historian who uses Jesus mythicism to write a better history of Christian origins?

What are the telltale marks of group-identity bias?
If a fringe idea is largely confined to an identity group, it’s probably the product of group identity rather than evidence. The same is true if the idea is especially popular with the more outspoken members of that group and if it readily inspires emotional arguments. Young-earth creationism is like this, and so is Jesus mythicism.

More evidence
My arguments are holistic and brief. If you want to get down to brass tacks and assess evidence in detail, here’s a great article in which an atheist historian lays it all out for us. Again, Jesus mythicists will try to pick apart each piece of evidence, but they can’t propose a more plausible explanation for where Christianity came from.

The Big Picture: Jesus Mythicism and Atheism
Accepting the historical consensus on Jesus and rejecting mythicism would be a great way for the atheist community to show that we value scholarship and evidence over our own group-identity bias.

2015

The amniote clade split into countless smaller clades.

Clades in Grandmother Fish

Last week the printer shipped me two of the first finished copies of Grandmother Fish, which I raised money for last year on Kickstarter. There’s a lot I can say about Grandmother Fish: the 15 years I’ve been working on it; the help I got from science communicators, parents and children; how Karen’s art brought out the soft side of evolution; the difficulty of turning evolution into a story; or the power of kinesthetic learning. Today what’s on my mind is the concept of clades. In the old way of thinking, each living thing went into one or another categorical bucket, as in bird, reptile or mammal. In terms of clades, there are no buckets. Instead there are countless branch points, each leading on to more branch points. A clade is an ancestral population and all living things that ever descended from that population. Each time the evolutionary tree of life branches, both new branches are still part of the original clade, but each also represents a smaller clade of its own. Grandmother Fish shows children how living things are related, branch by branch. What excites me about this is that it demonstrates a new way of thinking about relatedness. In the old way of thinking, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals were all classes of vertebrate. In the new way of thinking, reptiles and birds are in one clade, with mammals in a sister clade. Those two clade combine in the amniote clade, with amphibians as their sister clade. Then the amniotes and amphibians combine in the tetrapod clade, and so on. Where 19th century scientists saw tetrapods as four classes, 21st century scientists see them as countless nested populations defined by sequential branching in the family tree. That’s one of the subtexts of Grandmother Fish, that we organize living things according to their lines of evolutionary descent.

Creationists can’t create a book to match Grandmother Fish. They have no cogent explanation for why animals resemble each other the way they do. The evolutionary family trees in Grandmother Fish show children how various sorts of animals are related to each other. Creationists can’t even generate a list of which animals are which kind. They say that each animal is in one and only one kind, and that these kinds have biological reality, but they can’t assign each animal to a kind. That’s because animals come in clades, not kinds. Relationships among animals are complex. Creationism reduces relationship down to a single factor: for any two animals, are they the same kind or not? Evolution posits a more complex and informative question: for any two animals, what was their most recent common ancestor, what was it like, when did it live, and where?  That’s what the five Grandmothers are in Grandmother Fish, they’re common ancestors found at major branch points in the history of our lineage.

The two-page phylogenetic tree in Grandmother Fish was a stretch goal, and I’m glad we added it to the book. Getting each branch point in the right sequence was a challenge, especially because genetic testing is rewriting the tree year by year. But the hard work means that these two pages include a large amount of scientific information, all distilled down to a simple, visually appealing diagram. It’s the sort of information that one can’t imagine without understanding the concept of common descent.