The Resurrection

Robert Todd Carroll

The Resurrection

The Resurrection refers to the alleged coming back to life of Jesus of Nazareth (or was it Bethlehem?) after he had been executed by crucifixion about 2,000 years ago. It is the keystone of Christianity.

As a child, I was taught the story that an omnipotent, omniscient, all-good creator kindly sent his son, who was one with the creator and with the holy ghost, to redeem mankind for the original sin committed by Adam and Eve. This god/man was crucified by the Romans in order to save mankind from eternity without the creator. Three days after he was buried, the story goes, Jesus rose from the dead.

As a child, I believed this story and many others like it. All the adults I came in contact with seemed to think it was true and that believing it was essential to my salvation. I didn't really understand what "my salvation" was but even as a child I knew it was better than "the eternal torments of hellfire."

I grew up and studied these and many other philosophical and religious matters in a context where I was not required to believe in order to avoid being ostracized. I eventually even taught courses in world religions, where one should learn that stories of supernatural feats like rising from the dead are rather mundane. I now consider these stories to be preposterous propaganda. Gods and holy men who die and rise after being crucified or drowning in a river or whatever are fabrications. That people make up such stories is easy to understand and forgive. That people believe them and take them as literal truths is harder to forgive.

I wouldn't bother with posting an entry on this subject had I not been challenged to do so by someone who probably thinks of himself as a good Christian on the road to salvation, while I am on the road to perdition. (I confess that in my youth I thought of myself as saved and felt pity for those who were not as fortunate as I was, having been born into a Catholic family. Eventually, I met Protestants, Jews, atheists, and other non-Catholics and discovered things were not exactly as I had been taught.) Here is the missive from "Tim":

I find it cowardly to overlook the resurrection in your otherwise complete outline of skepticism on everything else skeptical, But without it, you've completely wasted your time. Which is a shame because to you, after you're dead, you believe you have none.

There is no other skeptical topic that succeeds the greatness of the Resurrection. Perhaps it is the 500 + witnesses or the many documents, the historical evidence or you're just afraid of battling Christian scholars. Personally, I think you're just another fake atheist...true skeptics search until they find belief, because there is no other answer.

Actually, the reason I haven't posted this entry before now is that I didn't see any need to. The Resurrection is just one of thousands of religious myths that deserves to be covered in a comprehensive take-down of religions. Though I am an atheist, I don't consider The Skeptic's Dictionary to be an anti-religious website. As far as I'm concerned, if you and a billion other people want to believe in crucified gods and resurrected deities or prophets, go ahead. There are billions who believe in other gods and other resurrections and equally preposterous stories. Let them. As long as they don't try to force their beliefs on the rest of us or try to harm us or their children, let them believe in peace.

The stories of Jesus as a miracle worker, healer, crucified god, savior of mankind, resurrected being, etc., were all written long after his death and after other stories were squashed by the church at Rome. The main propagandist, Paul of Tarsus, never met Jesus and didn't witness any resurrections, but he did more to spread the Jesus is Christ myth than anyone then or since.

Why won't believers like Tim just admit that they accept Christianity on faith and accept that atheists reject it because it does not resonate with anything resembling the truth? If he, or anyone else, believes in the resurrection because of alleged eyewitnesses or other historical testimony, they are not using their critical thinking skills (whether these are a gift from some god or a blessing of nature).

To those who say "a billion Christians can't be wrong," I remind them that they think a billion Muslims are wrong and a billion Hindus and Buddhists are wrong. Each of these religions thinks the others are deluded. I think they're all deluded. To paraphrase Stephen F. Roberts that as an atheist I reject one more god than you do: both of us, atheist and theist, believe billons of people are deluded about gods and religion; we just disagree over which ones are deluded.

See also communal reinforcement.

further reading

repressed memory therapy

Last updated 11/08/08

retroactive clairvoyance