Making Sense - Sam Harris - May 01, 2018


#125 — What Is Christianity？


Episode Stats

Length

49 minutes

Words per Minute

161.48285

Word Count

8,018

Sentence Count

319

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

15


Summary

Bart Ehrman is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a leading authority on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity. He is the author of more than 30 books, including the bestsellers Misquoting Jesus and How Jesus Became God: And How the Church Became God, and The Triumph of Christianity: How Forbidden Religion Swept the World. He s been featured in Time, The New Yorker, The Daily Show, and the Washington Post, and has been in many documentaries. His most recent book is The Triumph Of Christianity: The Story Of How Christianity Spreaded Through The World, which details the story of how Christianity spread through the world. In this episode, Bart talks about his background as a born-again Christian, and his loss of faith once he became a true scholar of the Bible and began to question his faith. He also talks about the role of miracles and the nature of heaven and hell in the Bible, and why he believes that Paul was the most important apostle of the church. Sam Harris is a former Christian who left the Christian faith and became an agnostic, and what it means to be a skeptic in the eyes of the modernist. We don t run away from God, but from God. What does it mean to be an atheist? And what does it look like to be born again? ? What is a born again Christian? and what does that look like in the world of theologically? And how does it have to do with it? How does it relate to the Bible? -- and the Bible and God s relationship to the Christian life How did he become an atheist and becomes an atheist what does the Bible say about the Bible mean to him how does he know that he s a Christian why he s not a Christian anymore? What s the difference between being a Christian and being born again to God does he feel about God and being an atheist, and how does that relate to his faith in Jesus . Why does he have a problem with God s love for Jesus and his relationship with the Bible ? and so on? Is he a Christian or not who is not a believer in Jesus Christ or is he a believer are they different from each other do they have a difference between God and Jesus?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.
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00:00:46.680 Today I am speaking with Bart Ehrman.
00:00:50.040 Bart is the author of more than 30 books, including the bestsellers Misquoting Jesus and How Jesus
00:00:56.620 Became God.
00:00:58.200 He's a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,
00:01:02.420 and a leading authority on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity.
00:01:08.320 He's been featured in Time and The New Yorker and The Washington Post and many other places.
00:01:13.660 He's been on The Daily Show.
00:01:15.600 He's been in many documentaries.
00:01:17.500 And his most recent book is The Triumph of Christianity, and this details the history
00:01:23.960 of how Christianity spread through the world.
00:01:28.540 Bart, as you'll hear, is a former believer.
00:01:32.260 He's now, I think he calls himself an agnostic at this point, though that didn't come up.
00:01:37.700 But we had a great conversation.
00:01:39.220 This was really the full tour of what Christianity is as a belief system and how it got that way.
00:01:48.440 I wanted to come at it as though from Mars and consider the whole doctrine as though I'd
00:01:55.660 never heard of it before.
00:01:57.620 We did that, and it was fascinating.
00:02:00.080 We talked about his background as a born-again Christian and then his loss of faith once he
00:02:06.340 became a true scholar of the New Testament.
00:02:09.640 I asked him what the most convincing argument in defense of Christianity is.
00:02:15.300 We talked about the status of miracles.
00:02:18.300 We spent some time talking about the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus and the nature
00:02:23.300 of heaven and hell.
00:02:25.120 We talked about the end times and biblical prophecy and about who Jesus likely was and
00:02:31.780 who he thought he was.
00:02:32.880 We focus on Paul as the most important apostle and then discuss how it was that he likely
00:02:43.000 converted so many people to the faith.
00:02:46.800 Anyway, I thought it was a very interesting conversation.
00:02:50.140 Sometimes it's good to examine something that you're familiar with as though you've never
00:02:56.240 seen it before.
00:02:57.520 And that's what we do here.
00:02:59.540 I now bring you Bart Ehrman.
00:03:02.880 I am here with Bart Ehrman.
00:03:09.420 Bart, thanks for coming on the podcast.
00:03:11.820 Thanks for having me.
00:03:12.900 So you have a fascinating new book, The Triumph of Christianity, How Forbidden Religion Swept
00:03:18.080 the World, which we will definitely talk about, I want to talk about.
00:03:22.180 But it comes on the back of many books you've written about Christianity.
00:03:27.000 And you have a very interesting story with respect to your own faith and scholarship.
00:03:33.040 So I just want to start there, which is not really the subject of your current book.
00:03:38.100 For those listeners who don't know you, take us back to some of the crucial moments in your
00:03:45.420 development as a thinker on this topic.
00:03:47.820 What is your background religiously?
00:03:49.560 And where did you wander on the landscape of faith and doubt?
00:03:54.500 Yeah, no, I'm a bit of an odd duck in the field of New Testament and early Christian
00:03:58.920 studies, because I'm a scholar of the New Testament.
00:04:02.660 My PhD is in New Testament, but I'm actually not a Christian myself.
00:04:07.500 And there aren't very many non-Christian scholars of the New Testament out there.
00:04:11.480 I was raised Christian, though.
00:04:13.840 I was raised when I was a kid.
00:04:15.880 I was in the Episcopal Church and grew up fairly religious.
00:04:20.980 When I was in high school, I had a born-again experience.
00:04:25.260 And I committed my life to Christ.
00:04:27.740 And that's how I got really interested in the Bibles, because I was religiously committed.
00:04:32.720 Tell me more about that.
00:04:33.500 What is a born-again experience?
00:04:36.300 We're going to talk about Saul and the road to Damascus that made him Paul.
00:04:40.200 But what was your experience?
00:04:42.280 So I was a church-going Episcopalian, and I started in high school attending a youth group
00:04:48.740 that was not connected with the church, but was a very religious youth group.
00:04:53.980 It was called Campus Life Youth for Christ.
00:04:56.760 And the leader of this group was a 20-something guy who was very charismatic in his personality,
00:05:02.700 who insisted that the only way to be a real Christian was to ask Jesus into your heart
00:05:11.040 and to commit your life to him as your Lord and Savior.
00:05:15.100 And so I decided I had to become a Christian.
00:05:18.860 It wasn't clear to me what I was before that, because I went to church every week.
00:05:23.380 But this was sort of a personal commitment that somebody would make.
00:05:29.260 And so being born again meant making this commitment.
00:05:32.120 And then you were given a new life.
00:05:33.960 Your old life was over, and now you began your life as a Christian.
00:05:37.700 But was it merely a matter of deciding to do this?
00:05:41.460 Did it entail some experience that seemed confirmatory of the belief structure?
00:05:48.740 Was there some evidence that came crashing down subjectively that seemed to verify the truth of the doctrine?
00:05:58.260 Yeah.
00:05:58.660 So the way it worked and still works in these circles is that it involves saying a prayer
00:06:04.040 and making a personal profession of God, of faith in Christ.
00:06:09.340 And the confirmation is in a kind of feeling of elation,
00:06:15.020 where you have this kind of psychological moment of heightened emotion.
00:06:20.480 And that is sort of the beginning confirmation that something's actually happened,
00:06:25.720 and you're a different person now.
00:06:28.480 And so as a 15-year-old, having only been born 15 years earlier, I was born again.
00:06:34.660 Well, the liability here is at the level of epistemology is hard to ignore,
00:06:43.040 because what sort of group induction experience as a teenager wouldn't produce a feeling of elation?
00:06:51.420 I mean, you could imagine so many other things being swapped in for Christianity there.
00:06:55.740 Did you worry about this at the time,
00:06:58.320 or was it just was the truth of the beliefs that you were taking on
00:07:04.480 just kind of baked into you based on your background?
00:07:08.440 Yeah, no, I didn't worry about it a bit for many years.
00:07:12.620 I was convinced that I knew the truth,
00:07:16.200 and that if somebody wanted to have eternal life,
00:07:20.520 they had to also know this truth.
00:07:22.940 And there was one truth,
00:07:25.200 and it was rooted very much in an understanding of the Bible,
00:07:30.020 that the Bible was the revelation from God,
00:07:32.640 and one had to commit oneself to the truth of the Bible
00:07:36.680 in order both to know God and to have eternal life.
00:07:40.320 And anyone who didn't accept this message
00:07:43.300 was destined to the fires of hell forever.
00:07:47.200 So you would have called yourself an evangelical at that point?
00:07:50.320 Does anyone call themselves a fundamentalist,
00:07:53.000 or is that a word of opprobrium spoken by secularists who don't agree with him?
00:07:58.460 Well, not just secularists.
00:08:00.460 Fundamentalism tends to be the term you use for the guy who's to the far right of you.
00:08:05.880 Right, right.
00:08:06.400 And so even in Christian circles,
00:08:08.480 you have a lot of Christians who talk about fundamentalists,
00:08:11.560 and what they mean by that often is somebody who's sort of rabidly conservative.
00:08:16.080 But I'll say, I mean, when I went off to college,
00:08:19.380 I went to a fundamentalist Bible college,
00:08:21.400 and we were somewhat proud of the term fundamentalist,
00:08:24.620 because for us it meant that we subscribed to the very fundamentals of the faith.
00:08:30.260 Right.
00:08:30.560 And there were other Christians who were more liberal in their orientation,
00:08:34.260 who didn't accept even the very fundamentals.
00:08:36.580 And so we considered ourselves to be fundamentalists in what we thought was a positive sense,
00:08:41.860 that we held to the essential elements of the Christian faith.
00:08:46.080 Yeah.
00:08:46.540 I mean, wasn't it originally a coinage of Moody Bible College?
00:08:51.160 No, I'm not sure where it originally started,
00:08:53.880 but I think it actually started later than Moody started.
00:08:56.500 Moody started in the late 19th century,
00:08:59.460 and the term fundamentalist became a big deal in the 1920s,
00:09:03.880 when there was a split in several denominations over issues such as,
00:09:10.500 you know, was there a literal virgin birth?
00:09:12.820 Or is the Bible inerrant in all of its wording or not?
00:09:16.500 With conservatives saying, yes, it's inerrant,
00:09:19.120 and yes, there was a literal virgin birth,
00:09:20.800 and other Christians saying, no, not so much.
00:09:23.280 And so it divided into fundamentalists and liberals.
00:09:26.140 Okay, so take me forward from there.
00:09:28.900 So you're 15, you're now a fundamentalist Christian.
00:09:32.500 You believe, presumably, a whole raft of doctrines.
00:09:37.860 And now you're becoming, at some point, more of a formal student of the faith.
00:09:44.560 What did your academic background begin to look like?
00:09:47.720 So in high school, I was very active on the high school debate team,
00:09:51.680 and I was very involved in debate.
00:09:54.280 And when I was graduating from high school,
00:09:55.780 I had to decide whether I'd go on to Kansas University to be on the debate team
00:10:00.440 or to go off to a Christian school and further my understanding of the Bible.
00:10:05.680 And I ended up following the latter path.
00:10:09.080 This 20-something fellow who was the head of this youth group
00:10:12.380 had gone to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago
00:10:15.520 and told me that if I was going to be a serious Christian,
00:10:19.520 I, too, would go to Moody Bible Institute.
00:10:22.100 And so I did.
00:10:23.180 I went to Moody Bible Institute,
00:10:24.640 which was a three-year degree program that focused on Bible and theology.
00:10:32.360 And there, my classes, my initial post-high school education was taking classes.
00:10:39.400 One semester, I'd have a class on the Gospel of John
00:10:41.820 and another on the Book of Hebrews
00:10:43.460 and another on how to evangelize the pagans.
00:10:48.040 And it was all Christian kind of stuff.
00:10:50.900 And so I did that for three years.
00:10:51.640 That always comes in handy.
00:10:52.880 So did you start with the study of the relevant ancient languages at that point?
00:10:58.060 No.
00:10:58.560 When I was at Moody,
00:10:59.460 I wanted to take all the Bible and theology classes I could.
00:11:03.180 And even though I knew the importance of learning Greek for the New Testament,
00:11:07.280 I didn't want to waste time doing that
00:11:09.280 because I just wanted to master the Bible as well as I could.
00:11:13.960 And so I took all my classes on the English text.
00:11:17.860 But, you know, my first semester at Moody,
00:11:20.280 I took a class on the Gospel of John.
00:11:22.080 So the entire semester on this one book of the New Testament.
00:11:25.920 And during this class,
00:11:27.480 the guy who was teaching this class seemed really smart to me.
00:11:30.760 He was really organized.
00:11:32.080 And I thought, you know, this guy's getting paid to do that.
00:11:34.900 I want to do that.
00:11:36.560 And so already as a 17-year-old,
00:11:38.500 I decided I wanted to become a New Testament scholar.
00:11:41.460 So then you just went to graduate school still full of faith?
00:11:45.240 When did your study begin to erode your conviction in the truth of the doctrine?
00:11:52.100 Right.
00:11:52.400 So Moody was a three-year institution.
00:11:55.480 And to get the bachelor's degree,
00:11:57.840 you had to transfer somewhere else to get credits.
00:12:00.140 And so I transferred to, after Moody, I went to Wheaton College,
00:12:03.700 which was Billy Graham's alma mater.
00:12:06.420 And for me, that was a step towards liberalism
00:12:09.580 because they were not quite as fundamentalist as I was used to.
00:12:14.020 And at Wheaton, I took a, for my foreign language requirement,
00:12:17.960 I took Greek, ancient Greek.
00:12:19.860 And it turned out I was pretty good at it.
00:12:22.800 And so then I decided I wanted to do my graduate work
00:12:26.380 dealing with the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament,
00:12:30.460 studying the New Testament in the original Greek language.
00:12:33.740 And the world expert on the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament
00:12:36.860 was a man named Bruce Metzger,
00:12:38.480 who taught at Princeton Theological Seminary.
00:12:40.600 And so when I graduated from Wheaton with a degree in English,
00:12:44.480 I went off to Princeton Theological Seminary
00:12:47.680 to further my education in Greek manuscripts.
00:12:51.420 And then did that take you through your PhD?
00:12:54.940 So I did a master's degree there, a three-year master's degree.
00:12:58.140 And then I applied and got into the PhD program.
00:13:03.440 And so it was another four years getting my PhD.
00:13:08.160 And in the process, my first year of my master's program,
00:13:11.200 I took Hebrew so I could read the Old Testament
00:13:14.460 and the original Hebrew.
00:13:16.020 And I learned German so I could read what scholars in Germany had said,
00:13:20.180 and French so I could read what scholars in France had said.
00:13:22.420 And so I started getting involved in serious scholarship
00:13:25.940 as opposed to simply memorizing the Bible
00:13:29.640 or, you know, learning about the Bible.
00:13:32.120 I was actually studying it in the original language.
00:13:36.060 And that was largely what led me away from fundamentalist Christianity.
00:13:41.880 Well, so before we talk about the epiphanies you had
00:13:45.440 that led you to doubt or the various stages of doubt,
00:13:50.140 take me back to before that moment.
00:13:54.100 And at that time, if we had met you at your most educated,
00:13:58.640 with respect to the Bible, but also full of faith,
00:14:03.020 at that point, what would the young Bart Ehrman have said
00:14:07.720 is the most convincing argument in favor of Christianity?
00:14:12.160 I would have said that historians can prove
00:14:16.320 that Jesus was raised from the dead.
00:14:18.480 And that there's no explanation for the evidence
00:14:24.400 other than an actual resurrection,
00:14:26.800 which means that God must have raised Jesus
00:14:29.240 and that that proved the historical reliability
00:14:33.940 of the Christian claims.
00:14:35.440 And what would you have said the evidence was,
00:14:38.180 given that there's no doubt that most historians
00:14:41.100 would balk at any challenge to prove the resurrection?
00:14:45.700 So how would a historian go about doing that?
00:14:49.520 So again, so this is back in my very conservative day,
00:14:52.740 Christian days.
00:14:53.540 I would have said that there are two basic historical facts
00:14:59.100 that virtually everybody agrees on,
00:15:00.960 and people need to explain these two facts.
00:15:02.900 The two facts are that three days after Jesus was put in a tomb,
00:15:06.780 the tomb was empty,
00:15:07.480 and that some of his followers said they saw him alive again afterward.
00:15:13.100 And that any explanation for those two facts
00:15:16.860 has to explain both of them satisfactorily.
00:15:20.020 And then what I would do is I would go through various explanations
00:15:25.280 for why there would be an empty tomb
00:15:26.820 and why people would say they saw him alive afterward,
00:15:30.140 including groups of people.
00:15:31.820 And I would say that none of the naturalist explanations
00:15:36.380 simply work for those phenomena.
00:15:40.980 Well, so as a skeptic here,
00:15:42.840 some explanations just come rushing in for me,
00:15:47.560 as you might imagine.
00:15:48.560 And so I'm just wondering why,
00:15:51.540 and I guess I'm not speaking about you personally here,
00:15:54.880 but just as a matter of culture,
00:15:57.260 the culture of people like you
00:15:59.960 who are very well-versed in the Bible
00:16:02.780 who believe the central doctrines of Christianity
00:16:07.780 and anchor their belief to this claim.
00:16:12.500 I mean, so here's the first thing that,
00:16:15.220 as an atheist debater on this topic,
00:16:17.700 would come to mind to say.
00:16:18.900 I mean, obviously there's Hume's famous line
00:16:21.480 about there being, you know,
00:16:23.300 no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle
00:16:25.980 unless that testimony is of such a kind
00:16:29.480 that its falsehood would be more miraculous
00:16:32.860 than the fact which it's,
00:16:34.840 I think his word is endeavors, to establish.
00:16:37.980 So, again, translating that into modern English,
00:16:41.380 the testimony about the miracle,
00:16:44.200 it would have to be an even greater miracle
00:16:46.720 for that testimony to be false.
00:16:49.960 And that bar is almost never cleared.
00:16:52.880 I mean, like you can think of
00:16:54.240 an uncountable number of modern situations
00:16:56.940 where you have Western devotees of Indian gurus
00:17:01.060 who believe that their teacher has performed a miracle
00:17:05.300 and the culture of confirmation bias
00:17:08.160 and self-deception is just palpable
00:17:11.060 when you talk to these people.
00:17:13.300 I mean, you're surrounded by people
00:17:14.360 who even in a modern context
00:17:15.840 where they have all of the resources
00:17:17.260 of scientific skepticism at their disposal,
00:17:19.940 and when they haven't been indoctrinated
00:17:22.640 into these beliefs since birth,
00:17:24.520 you can still find Ivy League educated people
00:17:28.440 who are convinced of the veracity of various miracles
00:17:32.320 really on the basis of hearsay.
00:17:34.900 I mean, they're not disposed to put these claims
00:17:38.500 to any kind of empirical or logical test,
00:17:41.360 and certainly they're not meeting Hume's criterion here
00:17:45.520 that the testimony of these people,
00:17:48.620 the people who are delivering the hearsay,
00:17:50.480 is somehow so rock solid
00:17:53.680 that it would be an even greater miracle
00:17:56.660 that you'd have to admit
00:17:58.280 if you were to suspect that it's false.
00:18:01.700 How is it that you account for what seems,
00:18:05.040 at least from the outside,
00:18:05.900 to be such a disinclination
00:18:08.960 to put these claims to some obvious skeptical tests?
00:18:13.600 Right. I mean, I completely agree
00:18:16.960 with your view on this now,
00:18:19.100 and I have debates with people today,
00:18:22.900 public debates with people who want to argue
00:18:25.040 that resurrection really happened,
00:18:26.440 and it's incredible to me
00:18:28.140 that they continue to think that you can prove this.
00:18:30.360 But, you know, as you know from your debates,
00:18:33.060 people who are inside a particular tradition
00:18:36.580 evaluate probability differently
00:18:39.200 from people who are outside that tradition.
00:18:41.360 And so the Christians, people who, like me,
00:18:44.900 were fundamentalists,
00:18:46.580 what we would argue at the time
00:18:48.260 was a couple of things.
00:18:50.340 One is that the disciples
00:18:53.220 absolutely thought they saw Jesus raised from the dead.
00:18:58.240 They talked with him.
00:18:59.420 They ate with him.
00:19:01.220 They spent time with him after his crucifixion.
00:19:04.320 And the reason we know that they really did
00:19:07.440 is because they all were willing to be martyred
00:19:10.100 for this belief that he'd been raised.
00:19:11.960 And that, for us, was evidence that it happened.
00:19:16.260 But not only that,
00:19:17.280 but we're not just talking about individual things
00:19:19.200 where you could say that somebody had a dream
00:19:20.820 or a hallucination.
00:19:22.400 We have authors claiming
00:19:24.700 that 500 people saw him at the same time.
00:19:27.820 So it couldn't be a hallucination
00:19:29.920 because there, I mean,
00:19:31.140 you can't have a group of hallucinations
00:19:32.700 and 500 people.
00:19:33.620 So these are the kind of arguments we have.
00:19:36.260 And these arguments made real sense
00:19:39.060 to people who already believed in the resurrection
00:19:41.340 because it just seemed plausible.
00:19:44.560 And to outsiders, of course,
00:19:46.360 it just seems kind of crazy.
00:19:48.240 But to insiders,
00:19:49.900 you know, for everything with the past,
00:19:52.460 you're trying to evaluate
00:19:53.260 what probably happened.
00:19:55.240 And there's no reason
00:19:56.460 it probably didn't happen.
00:19:57.620 And so, well, okay,
00:19:58.700 it seems like it probably did happen.
00:19:59.940 Yeah, well, so the other issue here
00:20:03.660 which comes ready to hand
00:20:05.560 is the time at which
00:20:07.600 these various Gospels were composed.
00:20:10.600 Perhaps you can remind me
00:20:11.620 of the history here.
00:20:12.940 None of these documents
00:20:14.780 that are ostensibly reporting
00:20:16.860 these eyewitness accounts of miracles
00:20:19.820 were actually contemporaneous
00:20:22.580 with the miracles
00:20:23.920 or with the ministry of Jesus.
00:20:25.960 What is the earliest account we have
00:20:29.460 of anything that Jesus
00:20:32.280 is reported to have said or done?
00:20:35.600 Right.
00:20:36.020 So, yeah, so the basic dating
00:20:37.760 is that Jesus died around the year 30
00:20:40.400 of the Common Era.
00:20:42.240 Our earliest Gospel
00:20:43.580 is probably the Gospel of Mark,
00:20:45.180 which was written around the year 70
00:20:47.160 of the Common Era.
00:20:48.140 So it's 40 years later.
00:20:49.960 This is a kind of contemporary view
00:20:52.280 of critical scholars.
00:20:53.840 Matthew and Luke would have been
00:20:54.960 later than that,
00:20:55.720 maybe 80 to 85 of the Common Era.
00:20:58.100 John, maybe 90 or 95.
00:20:59.960 So we're talking 65 years later
00:21:01.560 for the Gospel of John.
00:21:02.780 And so when I was a fundamentalist Christian,
00:21:06.420 though, I didn't accept those dates.
00:21:07.920 I thought that Matthew and John
00:21:10.300 were written by people
00:21:12.000 who were actually disciples of Jesus,
00:21:14.660 and Mark and Luke were written
00:21:16.280 by people who knew eyewitnesses.
00:21:18.780 And moreover,
00:21:20.540 I would point out at the time
00:21:22.720 that even prior to the Gospels,
00:21:25.380 the Apostle Paul was writing,
00:21:27.280 and Paul wasn't one of Jesus' disciples,
00:21:31.180 but Paul claims that he himself
00:21:32.960 saw Jesus alive soon after his death,
00:21:36.300 within a couple years of his death.
00:21:37.880 And Paul tells us
00:21:39.400 that he knew 500 people
00:21:41.600 who had seen Jesus at one time.
00:21:43.240 And so, you know,
00:21:46.400 today, critical scholars would say,
00:21:49.340 look, we don't have these accounts
00:21:50.320 until decades later,
00:21:52.040 which I think is right.
00:21:53.560 But when I was a fundamentalist,
00:21:55.160 I would try to kind of argue back
00:21:57.640 closer to the time of Jesus
00:21:58.980 that we actually have people
00:22:00.180 who said they knew eyewitnesses.
00:22:02.440 And is that standard among fundamentalists,
00:22:04.600 however well-educated in the text,
00:22:06.620 that they would not agree
00:22:08.260 with the modern academic dating?
00:22:10.380 That's right, because the deal
00:22:11.920 with the modern academic dating
00:22:13.240 is the Gospel of Mark
00:22:14.740 seems to know
00:22:16.840 that the temple in Jerusalem
00:22:18.520 had been destroyed by the Romans.
00:22:20.800 That happened in the year 70.
00:22:23.020 And so probably it's written
00:22:25.060 sometime after the fact,
00:22:26.160 but fundamentalist Christians would say,
00:22:28.340 no, it's predicting it's going to happen.
00:22:31.340 And so, you know,
00:22:32.080 it could have happened,
00:22:32.800 it happened well before,
00:22:33.980 this Gospel is well before that.
00:22:35.660 And if you don't agree with that,
00:22:36.960 it's because you have
00:22:37.660 an anti-supernaturalist bias.
00:22:40.380 Oh, interesting.
00:22:41.540 So they get a kind of
00:22:42.620 an added benefit there.
00:22:44.280 They not only get
00:22:45.260 the contemporaneous record,
00:22:47.680 they get the truth of prophecy.
00:22:50.820 That's right.
00:22:51.960 Interesting.
00:22:53.000 It's good to focus on
00:22:54.480 why all of this is important.
00:22:56.580 There's a lot riding on this
00:22:57.760 because the resurrection of Jesus
00:22:59.780 is really the core miracle
00:23:02.620 that I guess I should just ask you,
00:23:05.380 what do you think,
00:23:06.220 or what is the,
00:23:07.040 is there a standard conception
00:23:09.140 of the minimal set of beliefs
00:23:12.340 that makes a person a Christian?
00:23:15.560 I understand that the fundamentalists
00:23:17.120 would draw the line
00:23:18.180 differently than others,
00:23:19.780 but I'm just reminded of
00:23:21.720 the line from,
00:23:23.500 I think it's 1 Corinthians,
00:23:24.920 from Paul,
00:23:25.580 where he says,
00:23:26.200 if Christ be not raised,
00:23:28.200 your faith is vain,
00:23:30.060 which is to say,
00:23:31.060 completely ineffectual,
00:23:32.260 you know, in error.
00:23:34.060 So there is no Christianity.
00:23:35.860 On Paul's account,
00:23:37.520 there is no Christianity
00:23:38.520 unless the miracle
00:23:40.660 of the resurrection is true.
00:23:42.760 At least that's how I read that line.
00:23:44.540 Is that the center of the doctrine
00:23:47.840 for most Christians,
00:23:50.860 or certainly anyone
00:23:52.320 who wouldn't be,
00:23:53.680 whose Christianity
00:23:54.260 wouldn't have evaporated
00:23:56.180 to a point where it really
00:23:57.240 has no supernatural characteristic?
00:24:00.180 Yeah, so the reality on the ground
00:24:02.000 is that there is a bottom line
00:24:04.900 for what one has to believe
00:24:06.260 in order to be a Christian,
00:24:07.600 and every Christian draws
00:24:09.140 that bottom line
00:24:10.060 in different places,
00:24:11.320 and every Christian thinks
00:24:12.520 that they're the only ones
00:24:13.500 who have the right line.
00:24:15.320 So yes,
00:24:16.980 there are lots of Christians
00:24:18.480 who would say,
00:24:19.520 if you don't believe
00:24:20.360 in a literal resurrection of Jesus,
00:24:22.460 then you really aren't a Christian,
00:24:24.060 whatever else you might say.
00:24:25.640 And they would quote that line
00:24:27.080 from Paul,
00:24:27.740 from 1 Corinthians 15
00:24:29.140 that you were quoting just now.
00:24:30.560 I know lots and lots of Christians
00:24:33.340 who don't believe
00:24:34.100 in a literal resurrection of Jesus.
00:24:36.820 They think that his body
00:24:38.360 stayed in the grave,
00:24:39.680 rotted in the grave,
00:24:40.580 and that the resurrection
00:24:41.740 is more of a spiritual event
00:24:43.440 or it's a metaphorical event,
00:24:44.980 but they still consider themselves Christian.
00:24:47.940 I mean, there are lots
00:24:49.200 of very highly educated Christians
00:24:50.940 who are sophisticated.
00:24:53.120 The more evangelical Christians
00:24:55.280 would say,
00:24:55.800 well, you're not really a Christian,
00:24:57.520 and the other Christians would say,
00:24:59.320 well, actually, you know,
00:25:00.140 you're not the one
00:25:01.340 who's been given the right
00:25:02.160 to define what a Christian is.
00:25:04.000 And so there are these
00:25:05.000 very large debates
00:25:06.360 within Christianity itself
00:25:08.440 about where the bottom line is.
00:25:12.420 Yeah, and I must say,
00:25:13.000 I have met very sophisticated people,
00:25:16.080 very well-educated people,
00:25:17.260 very successful people
00:25:18.320 who are believing Christians,
00:25:21.200 and when pressed on this point,
00:25:23.420 I have been astonished
00:25:25.300 to discover that
00:25:26.300 they actually believe
00:25:28.300 the literal story of resurrection.
00:25:31.020 I mean, these are not people
00:25:32.300 who I would have thought
00:25:33.680 were Bible thumpers
00:25:35.060 or fundamentalists of any sort.
00:25:37.360 This is like the last trench
00:25:38.780 that has to be defended
00:25:40.160 in the war against doubt.
00:25:42.300 Yeah.
00:25:42.600 No, there certainly are
00:25:43.640 a lot of people like that
00:25:44.720 who are otherwise,
00:25:45.740 I mean, who believe in evolution
00:25:47.000 or believe in,
00:25:47.680 I mean, they believe,
00:25:48.540 you know,
00:25:49.220 they believe in science.
00:25:50.640 I mean, you know,
00:25:51.160 they think the universe
00:25:51.960 is 13.8 billion years old
00:25:53.500 and whatever,
00:25:54.200 but they would draw the line
00:25:55.740 at a literal resurrection.
00:25:58.020 And there are a lot of other people,
00:25:59.580 not as many,
00:26:00.500 but there are sophisticated
00:26:02.040 Christian thinkers
00:26:03.820 who say,
00:26:04.780 no, that it's not
00:26:06.300 a literal resurrection
00:26:07.680 and that, in fact,
00:26:08.780 the earliest Christians
00:26:09.800 didn't believe
00:26:10.440 in a literal resurrection,
00:26:11.760 that that was a later
00:26:12.540 imposition on the faith.
00:26:14.720 Hmm.
00:26:15.320 Let's talk about
00:26:16.340 a few other doctrinal claims
00:26:18.400 that may or may not be central.
00:26:20.640 So, what is the place
00:26:22.740 of heaven and hell,
00:26:24.780 would you say,
00:26:25.460 in Christianity generally
00:26:27.580 and your version
00:26:29.680 when you were a believer
00:26:30.840 in particular?
00:26:32.080 Yeah, so this is something
00:26:32.980 I'm very interested in
00:26:33.980 because it's what
00:26:34.500 my next book is on,
00:26:36.160 is where the question
00:26:37.460 of heaven and hell,
00:26:38.180 where the issue
00:26:38.980 of heaven and hell
00:26:39.520 came from.
00:26:40.080 Because, you know,
00:26:41.640 the standard Christian belief
00:26:43.480 is that when a person dies,
00:26:47.120 their soul goes to heaven
00:26:48.460 or hell,
00:26:49.000 goes for eternal reward
00:26:50.340 or eternal punishment.
00:26:52.140 And that teaching's
00:26:53.800 not in the Old Testament
00:26:54.820 and it's not what
00:26:56.140 the historical Jesus thought.
00:26:57.900 And so, where'd it come from?
00:26:59.820 And so, that's what
00:27:01.240 my next book is.
00:27:02.780 When I was a fundamentalist Christian,
00:27:05.500 I was a fervent believer
00:27:07.060 in a literal heaven
00:27:09.200 and a literal hell.
00:27:10.880 And I believed that hell
00:27:12.480 was a place of eternal torment,
00:27:15.920 that it would never end,
00:27:17.900 with no possibility of escape,
00:27:19.640 and it was the destination
00:27:22.120 of the vast majority
00:27:23.560 of the human race.
00:27:25.420 So, you know,
00:27:27.340 the kind of arrogance,
00:27:29.440 you know,
00:27:29.740 involved with that kind of claim,
00:27:31.340 you know,
00:27:31.540 that I'm going to be
00:27:32.580 rewarded forever,
00:27:33.420 but my next door neighbor,
00:27:34.620 well, poor sap,
00:27:36.000 he's going to hell forever.
00:27:37.120 That's the arrogance of it,
00:27:38.920 I don't think,
00:27:39.440 actually struck me at the time.
00:27:41.680 And were you actually
00:27:42.840 psychologically affected by it?
00:27:45.360 I mean, presumably,
00:27:46.400 you knew people
00:27:47.600 who you recognized
00:27:48.880 to be good people,
00:27:50.760 who you had nice connections with,
00:27:53.340 but who you were sure
00:27:55.060 were going to spend eternity in fire.
00:27:57.820 Was that belief deep enough
00:28:00.160 so as to cause you
00:28:02.140 any feeling of psychological pain
00:28:05.060 or compassion,
00:28:06.200 or how did you feel
00:28:08.040 interacting with people
00:28:08.920 who you knew were destined
00:28:10.400 to be tortured for eternity?
00:28:11.660 Yeah, no,
00:28:12.600 it absolutely did have an effect.
00:28:15.080 And where it was practically manifest
00:28:18.300 was in my desire to convert people,
00:28:21.120 because I believed that goodness
00:28:24.160 had nothing to do with it.
00:28:25.480 It didn't matter
00:28:26.140 whether you were a good person
00:28:27.560 or a rotten person.
00:28:28.800 If you didn't believe in Christ
00:28:30.780 for your salvation,
00:28:32.160 you were destined for hell.
00:28:33.820 And so this is what drove my attempt
00:28:37.400 to try and convert people,
00:28:39.000 just as in early Christianity,
00:28:40.820 it was this belief
00:28:41.940 that drove the evangelism
00:28:43.320 of the early church.
00:28:44.620 So it's always been
00:28:45.780 this kind of motivation
00:28:46.700 for Christians that,
00:28:48.140 you know,
00:28:48.420 if you really love somebody
00:28:49.540 and you know they're going to hell,
00:28:50.640 you need to sort of crack the whip
00:28:53.140 and make them convert.
00:28:55.060 There certainly are
00:28:55.920 scriptural justifications
00:28:58.340 for that belief.
00:29:00.600 Now we're up against the limits
00:29:01.820 of my Bible scholarship,
00:29:03.420 but I seem to remember
00:29:04.900 many passages
00:29:05.700 where it's suggested
00:29:07.700 either directly
00:29:08.600 in the words of Jesus himself
00:29:10.760 or at least by
00:29:11.640 one of the gospel writers
00:29:13.600 that there is no path
00:29:15.860 to the Father
00:29:17.140 but through the Son, right?
00:29:19.360 That's right.
00:29:20.140 That's the emphatic teaching
00:29:21.600 of the Gospel of John
00:29:22.620 and that everybody
00:29:23.720 who doesn't believe
00:29:24.500 in Christ
00:29:26.380 is going to be condemned.
00:29:28.960 But in the Gospels,
00:29:30.940 it's not clear
00:29:32.320 that this is eternal torment
00:29:34.280 in a particular place.
00:29:35.940 The idea of eternal torment
00:29:37.700 comes more clearly
00:29:40.460 in the book of Revelation
00:29:41.680 at the end of the New Testament
00:29:43.320 where those who are opposed to God
00:29:46.340 are thrown into a lake of fire
00:29:48.320 and they burn in this lake of fire forever.
00:29:52.820 I seem to remember
00:29:53.440 that Jesus is presiding
00:29:55.100 over that lake of fire.
00:29:56.240 Well, so, yeah,
00:29:58.360 it's very, it's actually,
00:30:00.240 part of the intrigue
00:30:00.980 of the book of Revelation
00:30:01.780 is how intricate the scenario is,
00:30:05.280 which is, I think,
00:30:06.080 one of the reasons
00:30:06.700 people have been so drawn to it
00:30:08.000 over the years
00:30:08.480 because it isn't just kind of
00:30:10.280 a straightforward statement,
00:30:11.460 it's actually this graphic narrative portrayal
00:30:14.940 and trying to piece it all together
00:30:16.920 because you've got, you know,
00:30:18.340 you've got Christ
00:30:19.020 and you've got God
00:30:19.920 and you've got the angels
00:30:20.820 and you've got the Antichrist
00:30:23.380 and the prophet of the Antichrist
00:30:24.720 and so you have this entire scenario going on.
00:30:27.700 But, yeah, Christ and his followers
00:30:30.360 are given an eternal reward
00:30:32.340 in the new Jerusalem
00:30:33.940 and all those opposed to Christ
00:30:35.960 are sent to the lake of fire.
00:30:38.220 So if one were going to read the Bible,
00:30:41.400 both Old and New Testament,
00:30:42.940 straight through
00:30:43.640 and form on the assumption
00:30:46.080 that everything there is true
00:30:48.620 and inerrant
00:30:50.100 and that it's sort of on the reader
00:30:53.340 to resolve any apparent contradictions,
00:30:56.840 what rational understanding
00:30:59.140 and expectation of the afterlife
00:31:02.120 would one form?
00:31:04.100 And so this is now a picture
00:31:05.420 of the end times
00:31:07.280 and one's personal end,
00:31:09.160 you know, after death
00:31:10.120 and I guess after the resurrection
00:31:13.020 and this is now sort of uncontaminated
00:31:15.520 by the rest of the literature
00:31:17.480 that has grown up on this.
00:31:18.900 So let's leave Dante and Milton
00:31:20.740 and everything else
00:31:21.500 that has come since aside
00:31:23.040 what do heaven and hell look like
00:31:25.280 and what does the end of the world look like?
00:31:27.820 Yeah, so it really depends
00:31:29.140 on what the assumptions
00:31:30.580 of the reader are.
00:31:32.240 If you're a reader
00:31:33.540 who knows nothing about Milton
00:31:35.000 or Dante or anyone,
00:31:36.840 is just coming to,
00:31:38.460 but is intelligent,
00:31:41.880 but tries to reconcile everything,
00:31:45.220 what that person would argue
00:31:47.160 probably is in a view
00:31:50.700 of progressive revelation
00:31:52.260 where the ideas
00:31:54.740 that are most true
00:31:56.440 develop over time
00:31:57.680 and some of the earlier authors
00:31:58.980 don't recognize the truth,
00:32:00.980 the full truth.
00:32:01.980 They only have partial revelation.
00:32:04.400 And in that understanding of things,
00:32:06.020 the idea in the shield
00:32:07.620 of the Old Testament
00:32:08.800 where everybody goes
00:32:10.860 to this kind of netherworld
00:32:12.580 and they stay
00:32:14.860 in this netherworld forever,
00:32:16.120 that gets modified over time
00:32:18.060 until you get into
00:32:18.920 the Gospels
00:32:19.680 where the righteous
00:32:21.620 are rewarded
00:32:22.300 and the wicked
00:32:23.600 are punished,
00:32:24.720 but it looks like
00:32:25.580 they're punished
00:32:25.980 by annihilation.
00:32:27.820 That develops yet further
00:32:29.080 when you get to
00:32:29.600 the book of Revelation
00:32:30.360 when you find out
00:32:31.140 that in fact people
00:32:31.760 are not annihilated,
00:32:33.360 they're tortured forever.
00:32:36.100 And so the idea then
00:32:37.120 would be
00:32:37.600 that it's all consistent,
00:32:39.080 but only in the sense
00:32:40.260 that there was
00:32:41.340 a progressive revelation
00:32:42.520 and this reader of the Bible,
00:32:44.380 this hypothetical reader
00:32:45.200 of the Bible then,
00:32:46.260 basically agrees
00:32:47.060 with the final book
00:32:48.420 that there's eternal torment
00:32:50.100 or eternal reward.
00:32:52.380 Islam has a similar concept
00:32:53.940 of abrogation
00:32:55.440 where later verses
00:32:57.160 abrogate earlier verses
00:32:58.980 and as luck would have it,
00:33:00.920 the more violent verses
00:33:02.640 tend to abrogate
00:33:03.560 the more peaceful ones
00:33:04.940 to the benefit of all humanity.
00:33:07.520 So that is viewed
00:33:08.440 in the Christian tradition
00:33:10.340 that progressive revelation
00:33:12.140 not as any sort of data point
00:33:15.140 against this notion
00:33:17.080 of inerrancy.
00:33:17.960 You can still be inerrant
00:33:19.180 even while various gospel writers
00:33:21.920 or their predecessors
00:33:23.280 are laboring under incomplete
00:33:26.620 knowledge of God's plan.
00:33:29.140 Yeah, it's because of the view
00:33:30.540 of inerrancy
00:33:31.220 that this view developed
00:33:32.320 because you have to reconcile
00:33:34.140 these things.
00:33:34.900 And so what a critical scholar
00:33:35.960 would look at and say,
00:33:37.080 well, you know,
00:33:38.080 this is just inconsistent.
00:33:39.420 One author has one view
00:33:40.400 and another has another view
00:33:41.520 and they can't be lined up to you.
00:33:43.560 Then the way to get around that
00:33:45.180 is by saying,
00:33:45.940 yeah, it's progressive revelation.
00:33:47.900 So then what would heaven
00:33:49.720 look like to someone
00:33:51.360 who has gone through
00:33:53.040 this whole progression
00:33:54.000 and come out with
00:33:55.700 some kind of final expectation?
00:33:57.720 What is the picture
00:33:59.640 of the afterlife
00:34:00.620 if you go to the good place?
00:34:02.060 So this is the interesting point
00:34:06.300 is that if you're just
00:34:07.520 sticking with the Bible,
00:34:09.220 you don't have the idea
00:34:10.880 that you die
00:34:12.560 and your soul goes to heaven forever.
00:34:14.520 It's that at the end of time,
00:34:16.720 bodies are going to be raised
00:34:18.680 from the dead
00:34:19.360 and that there'll be
00:34:21.180 a final judgment on the earth
00:34:22.540 and God will destroy
00:34:24.380 the forces of evil
00:34:25.380 and he will send everybody
00:34:29.120 who is opposed to him
00:34:30.200 into eternal punishment
00:34:31.300 but he will raise from the dead
00:34:33.440 all of his righteous
00:34:34.900 and they'll live here on earth
00:34:36.900 forever in a utopian kingdom
00:34:39.420 and so the earth
00:34:40.180 will be returned
00:34:40.920 to the state that it was in
00:34:43.600 during the days of Adam and Eve
00:34:45.280 and it'll be
00:34:47.040 a perfect paradise forever.
00:34:49.140 So it is a terrestrial paradise
00:34:51.900 that presumably now functions
00:34:54.640 by a slightly tweaked
00:34:56.580 laws of physics
00:34:57.380 so that it can last forever here
00:34:59.520 but it's not somewhere else
00:35:02.080 and it's not in some
00:35:03.360 ethereal condition.
00:35:05.400 That's right
00:35:05.740 and in this view
00:35:06.960 the tweaking actually happened
00:35:08.380 with Adam and Eve
00:35:09.220 that originally
00:35:09.880 this world was created
00:35:11.620 as a paradise
00:35:12.520 and because of their sin
00:35:17.260 it got corrupted
00:35:18.860 and so God is going to reverse
00:35:21.500 the sin that was brought
00:35:22.980 into the world
00:35:23.520 by Adam and Eve
00:35:24.440 and bring it back
00:35:25.560 to its original state
00:35:26.740 which is supposed to be
00:35:28.100 a place of eternal bliss.
00:35:30.300 I must say
00:35:31.320 I'm rarely in conversations
00:35:32.880 with Christians
00:35:33.540 about these sorts of things
00:35:35.540 but this is certainly
00:35:36.980 not a scientific poll
00:35:39.020 but I am certainly
00:35:41.240 walking around
00:35:42.020 with the feeling
00:35:42.760 that most Christians
00:35:44.360 are believing
00:35:45.720 in a very different heaven.
00:35:48.020 I mean I think
00:35:48.560 when someone dies
00:35:49.900 close to them
00:35:50.960 who they think
00:35:51.600 is still in the faith
00:35:53.400 and destined for heaven
00:35:54.820 they're not picturing
00:35:56.620 that person
00:35:57.580 moldering in the ground
00:35:59.520 for thousands of years
00:36:01.960 or however long it takes
00:36:03.540 for Jesus to come back
00:36:05.100 and usher in the end
00:36:06.040 of the world.
00:36:06.720 They're picturing
00:36:07.660 that person's soul
00:36:10.100 more or less
00:36:11.520 moving directly
00:36:12.620 from the hospital bed
00:36:14.860 or wherever they were
00:36:15.740 when they died
00:36:16.460 into some ethereal condition
00:36:19.680 which is the afterlife
00:36:21.760 and it is eternal
00:36:23.260 and it's in the company
00:36:25.040 of God
00:36:25.620 or Jesus
00:36:26.300 or some circumstance
00:36:28.100 that's just a matter
00:36:29.640 of pure satisfaction
00:36:31.300 and well-being.
00:36:33.060 Two questions.
00:36:34.080 Am I wrong about that?
00:36:35.380 Isn't that what many
00:36:36.440 if not most Christians believe
00:36:38.440 and if so
00:36:39.940 what are the scriptural
00:36:42.720 antecedents for that belief?
00:36:45.880 You're right.
00:36:46.780 That is the belief
00:36:47.700 and that's one of the reasons
00:36:48.600 I'm writing this next book
00:36:49.920 about where these Christian ideas
00:36:51.740 of the afterlife came from
00:36:52.980 because most of the Bible
00:36:55.400 doesn't teach them.
00:36:57.620 You can get to that view
00:36:59.200 from a few passages
00:37:00.520 sort of random
00:37:01.960 and isolated passages
00:37:03.240 which don't actually
00:37:06.200 say quite that
00:37:07.420 about this ethereal
00:37:08.840 afterlife for the souls
00:37:10.140 but you do get
00:37:11.360 a couple passages
00:37:12.140 in the writings of Paul
00:37:13.380 where he seems to think
00:37:14.780 that yes,
00:37:15.380 there is going to be
00:37:15.940 this resurrection of bodies
00:37:17.260 at the end of time
00:37:18.140 but in the meantime
00:37:19.560 when people die
00:37:21.300 they've got this
00:37:22.300 immediate presence
00:37:23.060 with Christ in heaven
00:37:24.160 and I think
00:37:25.740 that that idea
00:37:26.720 that you have
00:37:27.460 this immediate presence
00:37:28.460 with Christ
00:37:29.140 at your death
00:37:30.160 gets transformed
00:37:31.760 into this idea
00:37:32.720 of an ethereal existence.
00:37:34.860 The thing is
00:37:35.460 that most Christians
00:37:37.180 who have this idea
00:37:38.180 of this kind of
00:37:39.140 existence of your soul
00:37:40.640 but not your body
00:37:41.620 have conflicted views
00:37:43.520 because they also think
00:37:44.760 that when they get to heaven
00:37:46.120 they'll be able to see
00:37:47.860 their grandmother
00:37:48.500 and talk with her.
00:37:50.400 Well, I mean,
00:37:51.280 if she doesn't have a body
00:37:52.880 what are you going to see
00:37:55.380 exactly
00:37:56.000 and how are you going
00:37:57.400 to recognize her
00:37:58.240 and, you know,
00:37:59.280 so they have to come up
00:38:00.100 with kind of weird explanations
00:38:02.080 for how, in fact,
00:38:03.640 it's your soul
00:38:04.360 but the soul has
00:38:05.720 the physical appearance
00:38:07.500 of your body
00:38:08.120 or, you know,
00:38:09.280 and even though
00:38:10.080 you don't actually
00:38:10.720 have eyes anymore
00:38:11.560 you can still see
00:38:12.620 and you can still hear
00:38:13.900 and so forth.
00:38:15.540 And how old
00:38:16.140 is your grandmother?
00:38:17.520 Is she restored to her
00:38:18.820 the prime age of 30
00:38:20.100 or is she still
00:38:20.880 granny in that condition?
00:38:22.360 Well, that's right
00:38:22.960 and if you've had
00:38:24.160 an infant child
00:38:25.020 who's died
00:38:25.640 is the child
00:38:27.420 still an infant
00:38:28.720 or, you know,
00:38:29.940 do they
00:38:30.280 what are they in heaven?
00:38:31.860 And so
00:38:32.180 you actually
00:38:33.160 you have Christians
00:38:34.300 who seriously
00:38:35.120 debate these issues
00:38:36.300 and actually write books
00:38:38.680 trying to explain
00:38:39.580 what it's really
00:38:40.760 going to be like.
00:38:42.120 I recall
00:38:42.480 St. Thomas Aquinas
00:38:43.700 dealing with
00:38:44.180 some of this stuff.
00:38:45.680 You have Christians
00:38:46.320 debating all sorts
00:38:47.740 of issues relating this
00:38:48.680 all the way back
00:38:49.300 into the second
00:38:49.980 Christian century.
00:38:51.040 I mean, you have
00:38:51.460 Christians asking,
00:38:52.760 you know,
00:38:52.940 if the body's raised
00:38:53.840 from the dead
00:38:54.360 at the end of time
00:38:55.260 and so all of the parts
00:38:57.140 of your body
00:38:57.680 are brought together
00:38:58.460 what happens
00:38:59.500 if you were eaten
00:39:00.360 by a cannibal
00:39:01.260 so that part of your body
00:39:02.940 became part of
00:39:03.640 the cannibal's body?
00:39:04.760 So when the parts
00:39:05.660 are raised from the dead
00:39:06.600 who gets the part?
00:39:07.680 You or the cannibal?
00:39:10.100 And so you have people
00:39:11.300 debating this kind of thing
00:39:12.320 all the way back.
00:39:13.700 It's tempting to picture
00:39:14.700 a very different history
00:39:16.040 where the doctrine
00:39:17.540 of Christianity
00:39:18.200 was just fatally confounded
00:39:19.860 by one cannibal.
00:39:21.120 Yes, right, right.
00:39:22.620 So then what is the picture
00:39:25.160 of hell
00:39:25.640 that one can rationally form
00:39:27.380 on the basis of Scripture?
00:39:29.480 So most of the Bible,
00:39:31.480 of course,
00:39:31.760 is the Old Testament
00:39:32.460 and in the Old Testament
00:39:33.480 there isn't a hell,
00:39:35.000 a place of torment.
00:39:36.600 There's this place
00:39:37.260 called Sheol,
00:39:38.300 which is a shadowy existence
00:39:39.960 where everybody goes,
00:39:41.420 good or wicked,
00:39:43.000 believers or non-believers,
00:39:44.240 and it's just,
00:39:45.400 you kind of,
00:39:45.880 you exist there
00:39:46.760 and not much happens forever.
00:39:49.060 When you get to
00:39:49.820 the teachings of Jesus,
00:39:51.840 Jesus thought that
00:39:52.660 there'd be a resurrection
00:39:53.540 of the dead
00:39:54.240 at the end of time.
00:39:56.340 And he appears
00:39:57.240 to have thought
00:39:57.800 that those who were
00:39:58.840 opposed to God
00:39:59.760 were not going to be
00:40:00.960 tormented forever,
00:40:02.100 they were going to
00:40:02.840 be annihilated.
00:40:04.800 Unlike the righteous,
00:40:06.440 the righteous will be given
00:40:07.440 an eternal reward,
00:40:09.320 but God will punish
00:40:10.180 the wicked
00:40:11.900 by destroying them.
00:40:14.120 And the Apostle Paul
00:40:15.720 never says anything
00:40:16.560 about hell
00:40:17.180 as a place
00:40:17.960 of eternal torment.
00:40:19.120 It's not really
00:40:20.120 until you get
00:40:20.720 to the book of Revelation
00:40:22.200 that you start getting
00:40:23.180 this eternal torment idea
00:40:25.120 of having this lake of fire.
00:40:28.000 Is it Revelation
00:40:28.560 that also gives us
00:40:29.660 the notion of the rapture?
00:40:31.300 Or is that prefigured
00:40:32.840 somewhere else?
00:40:33.400 Is that an Old Testament
00:40:34.600 prophecy that then
00:40:35.980 Revelation connects
00:40:37.480 the dots on?
00:40:38.440 Well, this is an interesting
00:40:39.440 point that even most
00:40:40.480 Christians don't know.
00:40:42.020 The book of Revelation
00:40:43.140 does describe what's going
00:40:44.700 to happen at the end
00:40:45.500 of time,
00:40:46.160 but it does not have
00:40:47.520 a doctrine of the rapture.
00:40:49.060 There's no rapture
00:40:49.940 in the book of Revelation.
00:40:51.260 The idea of a rapture
00:40:52.700 actually comes from
00:40:53.500 the Apostle Paul.
00:40:54.760 In the book of
00:40:55.480 1 Thessalonians,
00:40:56.660 Paul is talking about
00:40:57.740 what's going to happen
00:40:58.440 at the end
00:40:59.100 when there'll be
00:41:00.020 a resurrection of the dead.
00:41:01.940 And he says that
00:41:02.620 Jesus is coming back
00:41:03.680 from heaven
00:41:04.200 and those who have
00:41:05.900 died in Christ
00:41:06.760 are raised from the dead
00:41:07.980 and those who are
00:41:09.920 living at the time
00:41:10.700 will be taken up
00:41:11.520 with them
00:41:12.200 into the sky
00:41:13.700 and they'll meet
00:41:14.800 Jesus there
00:41:15.500 up in the air.
00:41:16.340 So it actually comes
00:41:17.620 from Paul's letters
00:41:19.700 rather than from
00:41:20.420 the book of Revelation.
00:41:21.660 Right.
00:41:22.740 So now,
00:41:23.340 did you believe
00:41:23.780 in the rapture
00:41:24.380 when you were
00:41:24.980 at this point
00:41:25.820 at the peak
00:41:26.480 of your faith?
00:41:26.940 I not only believed
00:41:28.380 in it,
00:41:28.720 I knew it was going
00:41:29.360 to happen
00:41:29.680 before the late 1980s.
00:41:32.560 Literally.
00:41:34.720 Wow.
00:41:35.260 So then,
00:41:36.340 had you lost your faith
00:41:37.440 by the time
00:41:38.020 the late 80s came around
00:41:39.340 or was that
00:41:39.860 one of the reasons
00:41:40.780 why you lost it?
00:41:41.660 Well,
00:41:41.900 I'd certainly lost
00:41:42.540 my faith in the rapture
00:41:43.440 by that time.
00:41:44.460 You know,
00:41:44.660 my loss of faith
00:41:45.480 was kind of a long-term process
00:41:47.500 and the rapture
00:41:49.260 was one of the first
00:41:49.960 things to go.
00:41:50.540 So what was the first doubt
00:41:53.620 that was truly insuperable?
00:41:58.700 Did it move in discernible increments
00:42:01.320 where you crossed
00:42:02.600 some kind of bright line
00:42:04.040 and couldn't get yourself back
00:42:05.640 to feeling the faith
00:42:07.300 you had felt the day before?
00:42:08.620 Yeah,
00:42:09.080 there were a number of lines,
00:42:10.860 but the sort of first moment
00:42:13.480 was when I realized
00:42:14.900 that the Bible
00:42:15.560 was not inerrant.
00:42:18.440 I had,
00:42:19.020 my first year
00:42:20.460 at Princeton Theological Seminary,
00:42:21.900 I was taking a course
00:42:22.780 on the Gospel of Mark,
00:42:23.920 which was based on
00:42:24.780 an interpretation
00:42:25.540 of the Greek text.
00:42:26.680 And so I knew Greek
00:42:28.100 by this time
00:42:28.740 and we had to translate
00:42:31.100 the entire Gospel of Mark
00:42:32.440 and we had to write a,
00:42:33.860 we did an interpretation
00:42:34.980 of every verse,
00:42:36.520 you know,
00:42:36.760 it was very deep and detailed.
00:42:38.540 And I had to write
00:42:39.360 a term paper
00:42:40.840 and I wrote a paper
00:42:41.660 on a passage in Mark
00:42:43.880 where Jesus is talking
00:42:45.420 about a story
00:42:46.060 in the Old Testament
00:42:46.840 that happens
00:42:47.540 and he says
00:42:48.720 that this account
00:42:49.560 happened when
00:42:50.380 Abiathar was the high priest.
00:42:52.860 This is in Mark chapter 2.
00:42:54.940 When you read
00:42:55.480 the Old Testament account,
00:42:56.580 actually,
00:42:57.640 the account that he's summarizing
00:42:59.340 didn't take place
00:43:00.040 when Abiathar
00:43:00.760 was the high priest.
00:43:01.660 It happened when his father,
00:43:03.140 Ahimelech,
00:43:03.680 was the high priest.
00:43:04.940 So I write this 30-page paper
00:43:06.500 arguing that even though
00:43:07.780 Jesus said
00:43:08.600 that Abiathar
00:43:09.540 was the high priest,
00:43:10.340 it didn't really mean
00:43:11.160 that Abiathar
00:43:11.800 was the high priest.
00:43:12.780 He knew that
00:43:13.380 Ahimelech
00:43:14.240 was the high priest.
00:43:15.280 So I write this long paper
00:43:16.280 and the professor
00:43:17.440 reads the paper,
00:43:18.140 he likes the paper,
00:43:18.860 gives me an A
00:43:19.460 because I had this
00:43:20.060 complicated grammatical argument.
00:43:21.980 But at the end of it,
00:43:22.820 he said,
00:43:23.940 maybe Mark just made a mistake.
00:43:26.640 I thought,
00:43:27.440 huh,
00:43:27.780 that'd be easier
00:43:29.080 than 30 pages
00:43:29.960 of dancing around the problem
00:43:31.220 and coming up
00:43:32.040 with this fancy grammatical thing.
00:43:33.980 You know,
00:43:34.320 in fact,
00:43:34.620 yeah,
00:43:34.840 maybe Mark just made a mistake.
00:43:36.040 And once I recognized
00:43:37.940 that there could be
00:43:39.040 a mistake,
00:43:40.560 it opened up the floodgates
00:43:42.140 and I started
00:43:43.880 finding mistakes
00:43:45.540 without wanting to
00:43:46.780 and then I started wanting to
00:43:48.020 and then I started finding them
00:43:49.140 all over the place.
00:43:50.760 There are mistakes
00:43:51.280 with respect to
00:43:52.380 facts we know
00:43:53.980 outside the text
00:43:55.780 of the Bible,
00:43:56.600 but
00:43:56.780 there are also just
00:43:58.280 there are contradictions
00:43:59.580 within the Bible
00:44:00.520 that are
00:44:01.260 any way you squint your eyes,
00:44:03.620 they are contradictions.
00:44:04.780 I remember there was
00:44:06.440 an old book,
00:44:07.560 I think it's probably
00:44:07.980 150 years old,
00:44:09.320 I remember
00:44:09.700 I have somewhere in the house
00:44:11.100 which I referenced
00:44:12.480 in my first book,
00:44:13.700 The End of Faith.
00:44:14.980 I think the title is
00:44:15.820 Self-Contradictions in the Bible
00:44:17.200 and some of these are just,
00:44:19.680 you know,
00:44:20.080 it's just that
00:44:20.700 the coin came up heads
00:44:22.180 or the coin came up tails.
00:44:23.440 You can't believe both.
00:44:25.480 I think one was,
00:44:26.300 you know,
00:44:26.420 John the Baptist
00:44:27.060 was in prison
00:44:28.240 at the time of
00:44:29.200 the crucifixion
00:44:30.420 or John the Baptist
00:44:31.220 was, you know,
00:44:32.060 somewhere else
00:44:32.540 at the time of the crucifixion.
00:44:33.700 How did you deal with those?
00:44:35.960 Well, you know,
00:44:36.740 the intellectual
00:44:38.780 task of fundamentalists
00:44:41.600 involves
00:44:42.980 reconciling differences
00:44:44.380 and
00:44:45.700 if you work hard enough at it,
00:44:47.560 you can reconcile
00:44:48.220 just about anything
00:44:49.600 and so,
00:44:50.920 you know,
00:44:51.280 this was,
00:44:51.700 it was like solving a puzzle.
00:44:53.480 You assume
00:44:54.420 that there are no errors
00:44:55.520 and
00:44:56.300 if that's your assumption,
00:44:57.760 well,
00:44:58.000 then there are no errors
00:44:59.280 and the task
00:45:00.120 is to find out
00:45:00.880 why this is not
00:45:01.900 a contradiction
00:45:02.580 and so
00:45:04.020 today,
00:45:05.140 I mean,
00:45:05.420 when I talk with
00:45:06.680 fundamentalist Christians
00:45:07.660 and try and point out,
00:45:08.720 you know,
00:45:09.520 the Gospel of John
00:45:11.260 says Jesus died
00:45:12.420 the day before the Passover
00:45:13.780 and the Gospel of Mark
00:45:15.280 says he died the day
00:45:16.300 after the Passover
00:45:17.320 and they both
00:45:18.600 can't be right.
00:45:19.940 Well,
00:45:20.200 they have a way
00:45:20.660 of reconciling it.
00:45:21.880 So that's what you do.
00:45:23.000 So what is the
00:45:24.560 hardest thing
00:45:26.160 to reconcile?
00:45:26.740 If you were going
00:45:27.400 to point out
00:45:28.060 one thing
00:45:28.880 that you think
00:45:30.700 stood the best chance
00:45:31.980 of toppling
00:45:32.880 the whole house of cards,
00:45:34.820 what is that thing?
00:45:36.660 Well,
00:45:37.060 the example I just gave
00:45:38.560 is the one
00:45:39.140 that I use
00:45:39.920 if I want to convince,
00:45:41.820 you know,
00:45:41.980 if I've got one example,
00:45:43.680 I walk them through
00:45:45.340 what happens
00:45:46.540 in John's Gospel
00:45:48.560 because John
00:45:49.320 explicitly dates
00:45:50.860 the day of Jesus' death
00:45:52.520 as the day before
00:45:53.420 that he explicitly says
00:45:54.780 what time of day
00:45:56.260 and which day it was on
00:45:57.480 and the Gospel of Mark
00:45:59.000 also explicitly says
00:46:00.780 what time of day
00:46:01.740 and which day it was on
00:46:03.020 and they just flat out
00:46:04.460 contradict each other
00:46:05.400 and so when you take
00:46:06.860 somebody actually
00:46:07.420 through the text
00:46:08.160 and show this to them
00:46:09.420 then that does it.
00:46:11.400 What I do with my students
00:46:12.820 is I do a number
00:46:14.880 of things with them
00:46:15.520 to get them to see
00:46:17.100 how there are different
00:46:17.960 views in the Bible
00:46:18.820 but one thing I do
00:46:19.680 is I have them compare
00:46:21.340 either the accounts
00:46:22.820 of Jesus' birth
00:46:23.820 in Matthew and Luke
00:46:25.000 or the accounts
00:46:26.200 of his resurrection
00:46:27.100 in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
00:46:28.540 and I simply say
00:46:29.380 look,
00:46:30.060 list everything
00:46:30.680 that happens in this Gospel
00:46:31.820 then list everything
00:46:33.140 that happens in that Gospel
00:46:34.420 and compare your two lists
00:46:36.320 and see if there's anything
00:46:37.800 that is impossible
00:46:39.420 to reconcile
00:46:40.040 and in both cases
00:46:41.980 there are things
00:46:42.820 you simply cannot reconcile
00:46:44.100 because they just
00:46:45.120 contradict each other.
00:46:46.560 Actually,
00:46:46.960 I think we should go back
00:46:47.780 to the time
00:46:48.720 at which these texts
00:46:49.660 were written
00:46:50.920 based on modern scholarship
00:46:53.720 for a moment
00:46:54.140 because if you accept
00:46:55.500 that there was
00:46:56.560 a significant delay
00:46:57.620 in the composition
00:46:59.100 of even the earliest Gospels
00:47:01.520 so if Mark was
00:47:03.480 40 years
00:47:04.500 after the death of Jesus
00:47:06.480 and that's the earliest text
00:47:08.800 just map that on
00:47:10.760 to our present conversation.
00:47:13.060 It's as though
00:47:13.880 you and I
00:47:15.440 were now talking about
00:47:17.280 without the aid
00:47:18.580 of any media
00:47:20.380 without the aid
00:47:21.100 of any real
00:47:22.160 written materials
00:47:23.360 or anything
00:47:24.760 it's as though
00:47:25.660 you and I
00:47:26.120 are in a world now
00:47:26.880 where we could talk
00:47:28.640 about some historical figure
00:47:30.200 who had a great influence
00:47:31.980 a generation and a half ago
00:47:34.040 we're talking about
00:47:35.000 JFK
00:47:35.740 or Martin Luther King Jr.
00:47:37.700 or somebody
00:47:38.760 who we never met
00:47:40.720 we may not have met
00:47:42.600 anyone who met that person
00:47:44.300 this person has
00:47:45.920 there's a kind of a residue
00:47:47.140 of their life's work
00:47:48.580 in the world
00:47:49.720 based on
00:47:50.980 almost entirely
00:47:52.220 verbal accounts
00:47:54.100 because again
00:47:55.200 we don't have the internet
00:47:56.080 we don't have
00:47:57.120 widespread literacy
00:47:58.760 and contemporaneous records
00:48:01.220 we just have
00:48:02.100 rumors of rumors
00:48:03.940 and now you and I
00:48:05.700 are going to put
00:48:06.500 pen to paper
00:48:07.660 or papyrus
00:48:09.700 and write an account
00:48:12.340 of exactly
00:48:13.980 what happened
00:48:14.720 in the last
00:48:16.040 years
00:48:17.240 and weeks
00:48:18.540 and days
00:48:19.260 of this person's life
00:48:20.960 that's the picture
00:48:22.440 at least I form
00:48:23.480 of what this
00:48:24.780 would look like
00:48:25.480 and the idea
00:48:26.360 that that kind
00:48:27.320 of effort
00:48:27.840 absent some
00:48:29.440 you know
00:48:30.000 direct line
00:48:31.440 to an omniscient
00:48:32.660 being who's just
00:48:33.400 simply telling you
00:48:34.100 what happened
00:48:34.540 that seems like
00:48:35.980 an all too human
00:48:37.180 enterprise
00:48:38.080 that if nothing else
00:48:39.640 will introduce
00:48:40.400 a fair amount
00:48:41.760 of error
00:48:42.260 and creative license
00:48:43.620 and whimsy
00:48:44.320 into the problem
00:48:45.140 if you'd like to
00:48:53.120 continue listening
00:48:53.720 to this conversation
00:48:54.580 you'll need to
00:48:55.540 subscribe
00:48:56.020 at samharris.org
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00:49:00.500 Making Sense podcast
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00:49:17.020 That's a big kind of
00:49:17.500 coming up
00:49:28.220 and I'll see you next time
00:49:30.400 on topic
00:49:30.660 available
00:49:31.260 front
00:49:32.920 and
00:49:33.100 that's
00:49:33.620 what we really
00:49:34.040 need
00:49:34.400 to
00:49:35.400 lie
00:49:36.140 to be
00:49:36.500 and
00:49:36.740 will be
00:49:37.680 open
00:49:37.860 and
00:49:38.240 we're
00:49:38.760 Squid