Panpsychism, the Emergence Problem, and the Fractures Inside Mythicism with Dr. Skrbina
Today’s conversation isn’t just about whether Jesus existed.
It’s about something sitting underneath that entire debate.
Most mythicist conversations, meaning scholars and skeptics who argue that Jesus may be a literary or constructed figure, operate inside a philosophical framework called materialism.
Materialism in this sense doesn’t simply mean “trust science.” It’s a deeper metaphysical claim: that everything that exists is ultimately physical. Matter is fundamental, and consciousness is something the brain produces when matter is arranged in the right way.
Revisit a past episode where we discussed the dogma of materialism further
In that picture, mind comes after matter. Meaning comes after biology. Religion becomes a byproduct of social evolution.
But there’s a philosophical tension hiding inside that assumption.
Evolution can explain how biological bodies change. It can describe how organisms adapt and diversify. What it does not explain is something much more basic:
Why is there subjective experience at all? Why does pain actually hurt? Why does the color red look like something?
If matter is completely mindless at the ground level, how does experience suddenly appear?
Philosophers call this the emergence problem.
One alternative view (panpsychism) proposes that consciousness isn’t produced by matter at all. Instead, consciousness may be fundamental to reality itself.
That’s where philosopher Dr. David Skrbina enters the conversation.
His book Panpsychism in the West traces this idea across centuries of philosophical thought, showing that the notion of a mind-infused cosmos has appeared again and again throughout Western intellectual history.
But Skrbina has also stepped directly into the mythicist debate with his book The Jesus Hoax. More recently, he published a sharp response to criticism from fellow skeptics David Fitzgerald and Richard Carrier.
Add to that Adam Green’s recent book The Jesus Deception, which approaches early Christianity from yet another angle, and something interesting starts to appear:
Mythicism isn’t a unified theory. It’s fracturing into camps.
So, this conversation moves across several layers at once:
• consciousness and materialism • the emergence problem • whether panpsychism overlaps with Neoplatonism • Paul: historical strategist or literary construct? • and how The Jesus Hoax differs from The Jesus Deception
Let’s start with the philosophical ground beneath it all.
Consciousness and the Return of Panpsychism
Panpsychism is one of those philosophical ideas that sounds strange the first time you hear it but becomes harder to dismiss the more you think about the alternatives.
In plain terms, the idea is simple: mind or experience may exist at some level throughout reality.
That doesn’t mean rocks are thinking thoughts. Rather, it suggests that the basic constituents of the universe may possess extremely simple forms of experience.
The reason this idea keeps resurfacing across centuries of philosophy is precisely because of the emergence problem.
If consciousness appears only when matter becomes sufficiently complex, we still have to explain how completely mindless matter suddenly gives rise to subjective experience.
Panpsychism flips that question around. Instead of asking how consciousness emerges from matter, it proposes that matter itself may already possess proto-mental properties.
Skrbina’s historical work traces this idea from ancient Greek philosophy through early modern thinkers and into contemporary debates in philosophy of mind.
The interesting thing is that the idea never quite disappears. Even in periods dominated by strict materialism, it keeps resurfacing whenever philosophers run into the same problem: explaining how subjective experience arises from purely physical processes.
Materialism and the Emergence Problem
Materialism has been extraordinarily successful as a scientific framework.
It assumes that the universe is composed of physical entities governed by consistent laws. That assumption has allowed science to model everything from particle physics to molecular biology.
But when we apply that framework to consciousness, something unusual happens.
If matter is entirely mindless at the fundamental level, then at some point in the evolutionary process subjective experience must suddenly appear.
But where?
There’s no obvious “magic neuron” where awareness switches on. There’s no clear moment in development when matter transforms from non-experiencing to experiencing.
This is the emergence problem in its most basic form: explaining how subjective experience arises from purely physical systems.
Some scientists have attempted to address this by looking deeper into physics itself. Theories like Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff’s Orch-OR model propose that consciousness may be connected to quantum processes occurring inside neurons.
Whether or not those models succeed, they reveal something important: even within science, researchers are exploring ways to rethink the relationship between mind and matter.
Panpsychism is one such attempt.
Is Panpsychism Just Neoplatonism?
Because panpsychism proposes a cosmos infused with mind, people often assume it’s simply a modern version of Neoplatonism.
But the two traditions aren’t identical.
Neoplatonism describes reality as a hierarchical structure flowing from the One— a metaphysical unity that gives rise to intellect and soul. It carries strong teleological and ethical implications about how humans align themselves with the structure of reality.
Panpsychism, by contrast, is often framed as a metaphysical hypothesis about the nature of matter and consciousness, without necessarily including the moral or spiritual framework found in Neoplatonic thought.
Still, the overlap is hard to ignore. Both challenge the idea that the universe is purely mechanical.
Both suggest that mind and reality may be deeply intertwined.
The Mythicism Debate Fractures
Another interesting tension here is that some of the things Skrbina is criticized for aren’t that far from ideas that already exist in mythicist literature.
One of the central claims in The Jesus Hoax is that St Paul and a small cabal of early Christians may have functioned as a kind of non-military strategy within the Roman world. Instead of armed revolt, the movement theologically conquered by the spread through ideas, theology, and cultural influence.
Skrbina frames this as a kind of ideological or narrative strategy that could reshape behavior across the empire.
What makes the criticism somewhat puzzling is that a similar concept appears in Richard Carrier’s own work.
In Not the Impossible Faith, Carrier describes early Christianity as a movement that spread not through military rebellion but through cultural transformation. Rome could defeat armed revolts, but it could not easily suppress ideas that moved through communities, texts, and belief.
Carrier even characterizes this as a kind of revolutionary strategy. If Rome would always win a military conflict, the only rebellion that could succeed would be a cultural one— a war ofideas rather than armies. (Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith, Ch. 9).
In that sense, the notion that early Christianity functioned as a non-military cultural movement is not controversial. It is widely recognized that the early Jesus movement spread through persuasion, networks, and theology rather than organized violence.
Where the real disagreement emerges is over intent and origin.
Skrbina interprets this cultural transformation as something that may have been deliberately constructed or strategically shaped. His critics tend to view it as an organic religious development rather than a coordinated narrative project.
Another point raised in the exchange concerns the authorship of the gospels, particularly the question of whether Luke was a Gentile writer. Skrbina notes that even if certain details of authorship were revised, for example: if Luke were ultimately shown to be Gentile, the core structure of his argument would not collapse. It would simply require refinement.
That willingness to concede smaller points while maintaining the broader model is something he addresses repeatedly in his response.
The broader takeaway from this debate is that mythicism itself is not a single theory. It is a field where scholars often agree that the traditional gospel narrative is historically unreliable but disagree sharply about what actually replaced it.
One of the most important figures in this entire discussion is Paul of Tarsus.
Skrbina’s model treats Paul as a strategic actor who played a central role in shaping early Christian theology.
But other scholars have raised a more radical possibility: that the Pauline corpus itself may not represent a stable first-century historical figure at all.
Research such as Nina Livesey’s work on the Roman literary context of the Pauline letters suggests that some of these texts may reflect later second-century developments.
If Paul himself were partly a literary construct, it would reshape the debate considerably.
Yet even in that scenario, Skrbina argues, the broader thesis of deliberate narrative construction would not necessarily collapse. It would simply require revision.
Adam Green and the Midrashic Jesus
Adam Green’s recent book The Jesus Deception adds another dimension to the conversation.
Green emphasizes the possibility that the gospel narratives were crafted through midrashic techniques, weaving together Hebrew scriptures to construct the story of Jesus.
This raises a broader question about how religious narratives function historically.
Are they simply stories? Or do they operate as cultural scripts that shape behavior across entire societies?
Green invokes a concept from cultural theory called hyperstition: the idea that beliefs can begin to influence reality because people act as if those beliefs are true.
In other words, a prophecy doesn’t need to be literally true to become historically powerful.
It only needs to be believed strongly enough that people start behaving in ways that bring it about.
That possibility becomes particularly interesting when we look at modern geopolitics.
Some recent reports have suggested that military personnel have framed conflicts in the Middle East through apocalyptic biblical language, describing events as part of a divine plan leading toward Armageddon.
Whether or not such interpretations reflect official policy, they illustrate how powerful religious narratives can be in shaping political imagination.
For readers who want to explore the topics discussed in this episode more deeply, the following books and research have shaped the ideas discussed in this conversation. These works cover philosophy of consciousness, panpsychism, early Christianity, and the intellectual history of the ancient world.
Philosophy of Consciousness & Panpsychism
Panpsychism in the West – David Skrbina A comprehensive historical survey tracing the idea that mind or experience may be fundamental to reality across centuries of Western philosophy.
Science Set Free – Rupert Sheldrake A critique of the assumptions underlying modern scientific materialism and an exploration of alternative ways of thinking about nature, consciousness, and scientific inquiry.
The Emperor’s New Mind – Roger Penrose A physicist’s investigation into the nature of consciousness, the limits of artificial intelligence, and the possibility that consciousness is tied to deeper physical processes in the universe.
The Jesus Hoax – David Skrbina Explores the possibility that early Christian narratives functioned as a strategic cultural movement within the Roman world.
The Jesus Deception – Adam Green Argues that the story of Jesus may have been constructed through Jewish midrashic storytelling traditions.
Not the Impossible Faith – Richard Carrier Carrier’s argument that Christianity’s success in the Roman Empire was historically improbable given the cultural environment of the time.
The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context – Nina Livesey A scholarly examination of whether the Pauline letters reflect later Roman literary production and rhetorical conventions.
The Opening of the Western Mind – Charles Freeman A history of classical Greek and Roman intellectual traditions and the philosophical foundations of the ancient world.
The Closing of the Western Mind – Charles Freeman Examines how classical philosophical traditions were gradually replaced by Christian orthodoxy in late antiquity.
A historical documentary blended with a personal reckoning and a cultural warning
This one has been sitting with me for a long time.
Six months, maybe more. Notes in the book margins. Tons of screenshots. Quotes stacked in my notes folder. Books half-highlighted and folded pages revisited. Every time I thought I was ready to write it, I wasn’t…
Because this isn’t just about history. It’s about a story we keep repeating with confidence: that Christianity saved the West and what happens when you actually slow down to examine that claim.
The claim that Christianity civilized Europe. Christianity gave us human rights, pluralism, rational inquiry, restraint. And if Western civilization feels unstable today, the prescription is simple— return to Christian moral supremacy.
I find myself increasingly tired of hearing it.
Tired of watching “Judeo-Christian values” invoked as shorthand for liberty. Tired of hearing that our freedoms, our intellectual life, our legal architecture all flow directly from the Bible. Tired of the way paganism is casually used as a synonym for barbarism, ego, domination — while Christianity is cast as the moral counterweight, the conscience that civilizes power.
A recent example sharpened that fatigue. Leighton Woodhouse published an opinion piece in The New York Times titled Donald Trump, Pagan King. The framing was familiar and rhetorically smooth. Paganism was associated with appetite, force, and unchecked authority. Christianity appeared as restraint, humility, moral seriousness. The implication was subtle but unmistakable: whatever is broken in our politics represents a departure from Christian virtue.
The structure of this narrative is ancient. Pagan equals raw power. Christian equals moral discipline.
But that framing rests on an assumption that deserves far more scrutiny than it receives. It assumes that Christianity is the moral software of the West. Before it, there was chaos; after it, civilization.
The deeper I have gone into late antiquity, through Catherine Nixey’s The Darkening Age, Charles Freeman’s analysis of intellectual narrowing, Ramsay MacMullen’s documentation of coercive conversion, and through primary sources from both Christian and pagan voices— the more that tidy civilizational story begins to unravel.
Because when Christianity gained institutional dominance, what followed was not the natural flowering of pluralism and inquiry. It was very opposite.
And for us to truly understand, we have to begin this story before Christianity held power.
A World Before Monopoly
The Greco-Roman world was not a utopia. It had power structures, that were often violent, and deeply unequal. But it operated within a religious and intellectual framework that functioned very differently from exclusive monotheism.
Roman religion was additive rather than subtractive. One could honor household gods, civic gods, the imperial cult, foreign deities, and philosophical conceptions of the divine without renouncing the others. Orthopraxy mattered more than orthodoxy. What counted was correct ritual performance, not exclusive belief. The pax deorum (the peace with the gods) was maintained through observance, not doctrinal conformity.
Philosophically, multiplicity was the norm. Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics, and Platonists argued openly about cosmology, ethics, and the nature of reality. Protagoras could admit uncertainty about the gods without being erased from the record. Cicero articulated natural law grounded in reason and universality long before Christianity gained political authority. Debate was public. Rhetorical training was a civic skill. Argument was like oxygen at the time.
Cicero
The Roman legal system developed sophisticated structures of administration and legislation that would profoundly shape Western law. None of this depended on exclusive revelation. It depended on human reasoning operating within a plural environment.
Rome suppressed what it perceived as politically dangerous. It was capable of cruelty. But structurally, it tolerated metaphysical competition. Truth was not framed as singular and jealous in the way later Christian orthodoxy would insist.
Christianity did not enter this world as one more school of thought among many. It entered with a different moral architecture. Not “add Christ to the pantheon.”
But “burn down the rest.”
That distinction is not merely cosmetic. It is foundational to understanding the real history.
The Architecture of Exclusivity
The Hebrew scriptures that Christianity inherited contain a recurring moral posture toward rival worship. Altars are to be broken down. Sacred groves burned. Idols smashed. “You shall have no other gods before me” is not a suggestion of preference; it is a declaration of exclusivity. Rival worship is not seen as a mere mistake; it is corrupting.
When confined to private devotion, this posture functions as identity formation. When fused with state power, it moves from conviction to coercion.
For the first three centuries of its existence, Christianity lacked imperial authority. It survived in the margins of society. The decisive shift came when Christianity aligned with imperial power under Constantine and his successors.
Estimates vary, but many scholars place Christians at roughly ten percent of the empire around the year 300. The exact percentage is debated (ancient demographic modeling is necessarily approximate) but the trajectory is clear. Within a few generations, that minority became the ruling faith. By the end of the fourth century, imperial law assumed Christianity as normative and increasingly treated rival ritual as illegal.
This demographic reversal was not merely theological. It was political.
Once exclusivist theology acquired enforcement capacity, differences in beliefs was no longer merely error. It was threat.
In the 380s and 390s, imperial edicts against non-Christian ritual multiplied. In 399, a Christian emperor issued a decree stating:
“If there should be any temples in the country districts, they shall be torn down without disturbance or tumult. For when they are torn down and removed, the material basis for all superstition will be destroyed.”
The language is bureaucratic. The effect was not.
These edicts provided legal cover for demolition. Bishops lobbied rulers for stricter laws. Congregations became demolition crews. Rival worship was framed as superstition whose material foundation had to be eradicated.
As Ramsay MacMullendemonstrates, once rival belief is conceptualized as spiritually dangerous, compromise becomes morally suspect. In a plural system, rivals are mistaken. In an exclusivist system, rivals are demonic. And demons are not debated. They are expelled.
This is the mechanism. And it becomes visible in stone.
Once theology fused with imperial authority, enforcement did not remain theoretical. It moved outward into public space. It moved into cities. It moved into stone.
Catherine Nixey opens The Darkening Age not with doctrine but with an image. The choice is deliberate. Arguments can be abstract. Statues cannot.
The Temple of Athena in Palmyra had stood for centuries. It was not a relic in a museum. It was part of a living civic landscape. Its columns had watched merchants pass through the city, soldiers march under banners, pilgrims move between worlds. Within it stood Athena— goddess of wisdom, of strategic intelligence, of disciplined thought. She represented more than devotion. She embodied the classical inheritance itself: philosophy, rhetoric, ordered reasoning, the cultivation of mind.
When the destroyers arrived, what they attacked was not simply stone.
Nixey describes a man entering the temple with a weapon and striking the back of Athena’s head with such force that the goddess was decapitated. The violence did not stop there. Her nose was sliced off. Her cheeks crushed. Her once composed face mutilated with intention.
And yet her eyes were left intact.
Those eyes still exist.
They look out from a ruined face that once symbolized wisdom.
This was not accidental vandalism. It was theology enacted physically. The old gods were not to be debated, not to be reinterpreted, not to be absorbed into new meaning. They were to be neutralized. Their presence was dangerous. Their very material existence was a threat to salvation.
The word often used for this period is triumph. Christianity triumphed over paganism. But triumph over what? Over multiplicity? Over a world in which philosophical disagreement could exist without annihilation? Over the idea that wisdom might not belong exclusively to one revelation?
The violence at Palmyra was not isolated. Temples across the empire were damaged, repurposed, stripped of ornament, or demolished. Some were converted into churches. Others were dismantled entirely. Sacred spaces that had structured civic and religious life for centuries were rendered spiritually illegitimate almost overnight.
What makes the image of Athena more destabilizing is its repetition.
In 2015, Islamic State militants bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud because it was deemed idolatrous. The reconstructed remnants of Athena were attacked again. Beheaded again. An arm sheared off again.
Different century. Different scripture. Different empire.
Same logic. When rival sacred presence is conceptualized as contamination, destruction becomes purification.
This is not about equivalence between traditions. It is about structure. When any Abrahamic framework defines truth as singular, exclusive, and threatened by proximity to rivals, pluralism becomes fragile. Once that framework acquires political power, fragility becomes enforcement.
And enforcement does not stop at statues.
Hypatia and the Enforcement of Certainty
If Athena represents symbolic erasure, Hypatia represents human cost.
Hypatia of Alexandria was not an obscure mystic. She was a philosopher, mathematician, and teacher in a city long known for intellectual life. Alexandria had been home to the great library and to competing schools of thought for centuries. Hypatia occupied a visible position within that tradition.
By the early fifth century, Alexandria was also home to a group known as the parabalani — often translated as “the reckless ones.” Officially devoted to acts of charity, they functioned in practice as muscle for ecclesiastical authority. By some estimates there were hundreds of them in the city. Roman legal documents describe them using the word terror.
Hypatia lived in the same civic space as these enforcers.
Her murder was not random street violence. It occurred within an atmosphere already shaped by escalating Christian authority and shrinking tolerance for rival influence. When exclusivist theology defines truth as singular and civic order as dependent upon that truth, intellectual figures outside that structure become destabilizing.
Hypatia was stripped, beaten, and killed by a mob associated with Christian zeal.
Her death did not mark the beginning of violence. It marked the normalization of it.
Once difference is framed as corruption and corruption as emergency, elimination becomes defensible.
This pattern appears again and again in late antiquity. Pagan philosophers were exiled. Schools were closed. Public debate narrowed. The emperor Justinian would eventually close the philosophical schools of Athens entirely. Inquiry did not vanish overnight, but the atmosphere changed. What had once been competition became suspicion.
And suspicion reshapes a civilization quietly before it reshapes it violently.
Fear as Teacher
One of the most revealing threads in the historical record is not the destruction itself but the emotional atmosphere that made it possible.
Demonology was not marginal superstition. It structured perception. Pagan temples were described as inhabited by malevolent spirits. Sacrifices were not merely mistaken rituals but demonic feasts. The world itself became morally charged terrain.
The Devil Belial before the Gates of Hell, from Das Buch Belial, published in Augsburg, 1473
Christians wrote anxious letters asking whether they could sit in places pagans had sat, use baths used on feast days, drink from wells near deserted temples, eat food that might have been associated with sacrifice. The fear was not symbolic. It was visceral.
Augustine’s response: that it was better to refuse contaminated food with Christian fortitude even if one starved, reveals a hierarchy of values. Survival could be negotiable. Purity could not.
John Chrysostom’s sermons described eternal punishment in sensory detail: rivers of fire, venomous worms, inescapable bonds, exterior darkness. Fear was not incidental rhetoric. It trained the imagination to view error as catastrophe and proximity to rival belief as existential threat.
When fear becomes formative, pluralism becomes psychologically intolerable.
And when that psychology is paired with law, narrowing becomes institutional.
The Disappearance of Thought
The destruction of statues is visible. The destruction of thought is quieter.
One of the most devastating aspects of late antique Christianization was not merely the smashing of temples but the narrowing of what was considered worth preserving.
The ancient Mediterranean world once contained the greatest concentration of written knowledge humanity had yet assembled. The Library of Alexandria, even allowing for scholarly debate about its exact size, symbolized an ambition toward accumulation. Knowledge was not singular. It was expansive. It was contradictory. It was messy.
Scholars selecting and reading scrolls in the Great Library of Alexandria hall
What remains of that intellectual inheritance is fragmentary.
By some estimates, only about one percent of Latin literature survives from antiquity. Entire authors are known only by name. Entire schools of philosophy survive only in hostile summaries written by opponents. Whole lines of speculation disappeared not because they were refuted but because they were not copied.
Copying is survival.
In the late antique world, the people doing the copying increasingly operated within Christian institutions.
And institutions preserve selectively.
“Stay clear of all pagan books!” reads the Apostolic Constitution. The warning is not casual. It reflects a moral anxiety about contamination. Texts are not neutral. They are spiritually charged. Exposure to the wrong argument is dangerous.
Celsus, one of the few pagan critics whose voice survives, accused Christians of discouraging inquiry. He mocked the posture: “Do not ask questions; just believe.” His tone is sharp, even sarcastic, but the anxiety is real. In Greek philosophy, reason was virtue. Inquiry was sacred. Faith, as unexamined assent, was the lowest epistemic posture.
Even Origen, writing within the Christian tradition, conceded the problem with striking bluntness, remarking that “the stupidity of some Christians is heavier than the sand of the sea.” The anti-intellectual reputation of early Christianity was not a later invention. It was noted by contemporaries.
The tragedy of Democritus crystallizes this narrowing.
Democritus — the philosopher often described as the father of atomic theory — wrote extensively across cosmology, mathematics, and ethics. He proposed a universe composed of atoms and void centuries before modern physics. And yet none of his works survive intact.
Not one.
What we know of his thought survives because it was partially preserved inside a single poem, Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, which itself survived precariously through a single manuscript discovered in a German monastery centuries later.
The physicist Carlo Rovelli has called the total loss of Democritus’s writings “the greatest intellectual tragedy to ensue from the collapse of the old classical civilisation.”
An entire philosophical lineage survived by accident.
That should unsettle anyone who claims Christianity simply “preserved learning.”
Yes, monasteries copied texts. But copying is filtration. Texts deemed dangerous, frivolous, obscene, or spiritually corrupt were less likely to be preserved. When a civilization narrows its moral boundaries, its archive narrows with it.
Charles Freeman, in The Closing of the Western Mind, argues that the most significant shift was not physical destruction but the narrowing of acceptable modes of thought. Public philosophical debate gradually gave way to appeals to authority and revealed certainty. Disputes were settled by councils backed by imperial power. Orthodoxy was defined not by open inquiry but by boundary enforcement.
The world did not stop thinking overnight. But the conditions for free competition of ideas shifted.
And once intellectual diversity contracts, recovery takes centuries.
The Martyr Myth and Moral Insulation
The martyr narrative sits at the emotional center of Christian self-understanding. It does more than preserve memory. It defines identity.
The story is familiar: early Christians were persecuted by a pagan empire. They were imprisoned, tortured, executed for their faith. They endured without retaliation. They did not conquer. They survived.
There is truth in this. The Great Persecution under Diocletian was real and brutal. Scriptures were burned. Churches destroyed. Christians were imprisoned and executed. No serious historian denies that.
What modern scholarship questions is scale and continuity. The most severe empire-wide persecution lasted roughly a decade. Other persecutions were local, sporadic, and uneven across regions. They were not a continuous three-century campaign of systematic eradication.
Martyr literature itself expanded over time. Detailed analysis of saints’ calendars reveals duplication, embellishment, and narrative layering. Some figures appear under multiple names. Some accounts contain anachronisms or miraculous flourishes that complicate their historical reliability.
The historian G. E. M. de Ste. Croix observed that later martyr literature increasingly displayed what he called “a contempt for historicity.”
That line matters. Because it signals a shift: suffering was not only remembered. It was shaped.
And shaped suffering serves a purpose.
Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian is an Italian Renaissance Tempera Painting created by Andrea Mantegna in c.1480.
Once Christianity aligned with imperial authority, the martyr narrative did not recede. It hardened into interpretive insulation. The same tradition that now authorized temple closures and school shuttings still understood itself as historically persecuted.
The story generates moral asymmetry: whatever Christians do can be framed as response, not domination.
And the function of the martyr narrative did not end in late antiquity. In modern apologetics, it often operates as proof. The logic runs like this: the apostles would not have died for something they knew was false; early Christians endured torture rather than recant; therefore, their testimony must be true.
But willingness to suffer proves sincerity, not metaphysical accuracy. People across religions have died for beliefs that contradict one another. Martyrdom establishes conviction. It does not establish truth.
This is why the martyr story is so stabilizing. It allows a movement to wield authority while retaining the self-image ofinnocence. It transforms power into protection and critique into persecution.
When temples were outlawed and philosophical schools shuttered, the tradition exercising authority did not see itself as conqueror. It saw itself as guardian of truth under threat.
If you are always defending truth, enforcement feels righteous.
The Last Pleas for Coexistence
One of the tragedies of this period is that the archive becomes overwhelmingly Christian. The winners preserved their own voices. The losing side survives in fragments.
But some fragments remain.
Libanius, a pagan orator in the fourth century, watched as temples across the empire were damaged, repurposed, or destroyed. His speeches are not the rantings of a fanatic. They are the anxious observations of a man watching his world contract. He describes sacred spaces falling into ruin, rituals forbidden, property seized. He notes opportunists dividing temple lands for personal gain under the cover of piety. What Christian historians later frame as triumph, Libanius experiences as loss.
Then there is Symmachus.
In 382 CE, the Christian emperor Gratian ordered the removal of the Altar of Victory from the Roman Senate House. For centuries, senators had offered ritual observances there before conducting civic business. It was not merely religious decoration; it was part of Rome’s public identity.
Symmachus wrote an appeal for its restoration.
His language is remarkable for its restraint. He does not demand dominance. He does not threaten revolt. He argues for coexistence.
“We look on the same stars,” he writes. “The sky is common. The same world surrounds us. What difference does it make by what pains each seeks the truth? We cannot attain to so great a secret by one road alone.”
It is difficult to imagine a clearer articulation of pluralism in the ancient world.
He closes not with hostility but with humility: “We offer now prayers, not conflict.”
He lost. The altar was not restored. The plea for multiplicity was overridden by certainty.
This moment matters because it reveals a collision between two moral architectures. One sees truth as approached through many paths. The other sees truth as singular and threatened by rival proximity.
Symmachus represents not pagan decadence but civic pluralism. He is not asking to suppress Christianity. He is asking for coexistence.
The answer he receives is enforcement. The narrowing was not accidental. It was structural.
The Long Return of Pluralism
The narrowing of late antiquity did not permanently extinguish intellectual life. But it did change its conditions. For centuries, inquiry moved within theological boundaries defined by ecclesiastical authority. Councils determined orthodoxy. Deviation could be punished. Philosophical speculation survived, but often cautiously, often cloaked.
What we now call the Enlightenment did not arise as a natural extension of Christian supremacy. It arose within tension — sometimes quiet, sometimes explosive — with religious monopoly.
Beginning in the Renaissance, Europe experienced a gradual rediscovery of classical texts. Manuscripts long buried in monastic libraries re-entered circulation. Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, preserving echoes of Democritus’s atomism, resurfaced. Greek philosophy was studied not merely as commentary on theology but as intellectual inheritance in its own right.
The recovery of classical thought did not instantly dissolve Christian authority. But it reintroduced plurality into the bloodstream of European intellectual life.
The Enlightenment sharpened that reintroduction.
Thinkers like John Locke articulated natural rights grounded not in revelation but in reason and shared human nature. Locke’s arguments for religious toleration did not emerge from biblical exclusivity; they emerged from a recognition that coercion in matters of belief corrupts both faith and civic peace.
Montesquieu analyzed the separation of powers not as a theological doctrine but as a structural safeguard against concentration of authority. His framework was explicitly concerned with preventing tyranny — whether monarchic or clerical.
These ideas did not descend seamlessly from medieval orthodoxy. They developed alongside, and often in resistance to, religious entanglement with state power.
When we reach the American founding, the tension becomes explicit.
The framers of the Constitution were deeply literate in classical thought. They read Cicero. They read Tacitus. They studied Roman republicanism. They were steeped in Enlightenment political theory. They feared concentrated power, including ecclesiastical power.
The Constitution contains no reference to Jesus Christ. It prohibits religious tests for office. The First Amendment forbids establishment of religion and protects free exercise. This was not a casual omission. It was intentional architecture.
The American experiment was not a biblical republic.
It was a republic designed to prevent religious monopoly.
Thomas Jefferson provides a particularly revealing case. Jefferson famously produced his own edited version of the Gospels, physically cutting out miracles and supernatural elements. The result, often referred to as the Jefferson Bible, retained ethical teachings while discarding divine intervention.
This was not the act of a man seeking to found a theocracy.
It was the act of a man separating moral philosophy from revealed absolutism.
Jefferson’s project reflects a broader Enlightenment impulse: to preserve ethical insight while disentangling it from exclusivist authority.
Roger Olson’s theological scholarship further complicates the claim that Christianity simply “gave us” pluralism. Olson emphasizes that Christianity was never doctrinally uniform in its early centuries. Orthodoxy was consolidated through contest, suppression, and boundary enforcement. The unity later invoked as civilizational foundation was itself the product of narrowing.
The Enlightenment did not grow naturally from that narrowing. It reopened debate.
It reintroduced skepticism as virtue.
It separated church and state not to destroy religion but to protect civic plurality.
If Christianity had already secured pluralism, the Enlightenment would have been unnecessary.
The fact that it was necessary tells us something profound.
Pluralism survived not because exclusivity reigned, but because exclusivity was restrained.
Did Christianity Give Us Human Rights?
At this point, the most common objection surfaces.
Even if there were excesses. Even if there was narrowing. Even if temples fell and texts disappeared. Christianity still gave us the concept of human dignity. Christianity laid the groundwork for human rights.
The claim sounds intuitive because Christian theology does contain a powerful moral idea: humans are made in the image of God. That idea has inspired reformers and abolitionists and activists. It matters.
But the existence of moral language is not the same thing as institutional pluralism.
The Stoics articulated a form of universal human rationality centuries before Christianity held power. Roman law developed ideas of legal personhood and universality that would influence later legal systems. Cicero’s natural law did not depend on revelation.
Christianity contributed to moral discourse. That is true.
But the institutional protection of dissent: the right to disagree publicly, to publish heterodox ideas, to worship differently without legal annihilation… did not emerge during periods of Christian monopoly. Those protections developed when religious authority was structurally limited.
Rights require restraint of power.
And historically, the moments when Christianity was most fused with state authority were not the moments when pluralism expanded.
What This Feels Like From the Inside
What unsettles me most about this history is not simply that it happened. It is that I recognize the mechanism.
I have lived the internal version of it.
Burn the books. Throw away the tarot cards. Remove your new age spirituality material. Avoid contamination of demonic entities. Guard the mind. Monitor the thoughts. Stay pure.
When you inhabit Christianity long enough, the anxiety internalizes. You become your own enforcer. You police your curiosity. You treat rival ideas not as intellectual challenges but as spiritual threats.
When I read about Christians in late antiquity asking whether they could sit where pagans had sat or drink from wells near deserted temples, it was too relatable.
The narrowing does not begin with demolition crews. It begins with fear.
Fear reshapes perception. Fear shrinks curiosity. Fear frames difference as danger.
Scale that fear across institutions and you have late antiquity.
Scale it across a nation and you have something far more consequential.
The Warning
This is why the rhetoric of Christian supremacy unsettles me.
Not because Christianity has contributed nothing to Western civilization. It has shaped art, music, law, charity, moral imagination. That is undeniable.
Much of this period is still narrated as civilizational triumph rather than suppression. As the academic John Pollini notes, “modern scholarship, influenced by a Judeo-Christian cultural bias, has frequently overlooked or downplayed such attacks and even at times sought to present Christian desecration in a positive light.”
But the claim that Christianity saved the West collapses complexity into myth. It erases the plural foundations of Greco-Roman thought. It erases the Enlightenment’s deliberate separation of church and state. It erases the long struggle to restrain religious monopoly.
Reformers like John Calvin did not argue for a secular state. In his Institutes, Calvin insisted that magistrates had a duty to suppress blasphemy and false worship.
Pluralism did not emerge from supremacy.
It survived by limiting it.
When modern commentators frame Christianity as the sole guardian of civilization and paganism as barbaric force, they repeat a frame older than they realize. They invoke a story in which exclusivity is equated with order and multiplicity with chaos.
History suggests something different.
Civilizations are stabilized not by monopoly but by constraint. Not by erasing rivals but by tolerating them. Not by conflating revelation with law but by separating the two.
If we forget that, if we mythologize exclusivity as the foundation of freedom, we risk mistaking that narrowing for renewal.
And that is not a mistake history makes gently.
aaaand that’s all I have for you today folks. If you’ve been here for a while, you know this is what Taste of Truth Tuesdays is about. Not tearing down for sport. Not defending tradition out of reflex. But slowing down long enough to ask: Is the story we’re repeating actually true?
and As always…
Maintain your curiosity. Embrace skepticism. And keep tuning in.
Endnotes
Leighton Woodhouse, “Donald Trump, Pagan King,” The New York Times, February 11, 2026. (Referenced as an example of contemporary framing of paganism versus Christianity.)
Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason (New York: Knopf, 2002). Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100–400) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). See also Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
On Roman religion as orthopraxic and plural in structure, see: Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Jörg Rüpke, Religion of the Romans (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007).
Cicero’s articulation of natural law appears in De Re Publica and De Legibus. See: Cicero, On the Republic and On the Laws, trans. James E. G. Zetzel (Cambridge University Press, 1999).
On late fourth-century anti-pagan legislation, see: Theodosian Code 16.10 (various edicts restricting sacrifice and authorizing temple closures). For analysis: Michele Renee Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy (Harvard University Press, 2002). Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire.
On the debated scope and frequency of early Christian persecutions: Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution (HarperOne, 2013). G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy (Oxford University Press, 2006). These works challenge the traditional narrative of continuous empire-wide persecution and note embellishment in later martyr literature.
On the parabalani and Hypatia: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, Book VII. Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Edward J. Watts, Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher (Oxford University Press, 2017). Roman legislation regulating the parabalani appears in Theodosian Code 16.2.42 and related laws.
On the Altar of Victory controversy and Symmachus: Symmachus, Relatio 3 (Petition for the Restoration of the Altar of Victory). Ambrose of Milan’s response in Epistle 17–18. See also: Michele Renee Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy.
On demonology and late antique Christian perceptions of paganism: Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom (Blackwell, 1996). Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age. Brown discusses the moralization of the inner life and late antique anxiety regarding contamination and spiritual danger.
On the survival rate of classical literature: It is widely acknowledged among classicists that only a small fraction of ancient literature survives. See: Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (Harvard University Press, 1997). James J. O’Donnell, Avatars of the Word (Harvard University Press, 1998). The exact percentage is debated, but the scale of loss is undisputed.
On Democritus and the loss of his works: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Book IX). Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems (Riverhead Books, 2016), where Rovelli refers to the loss of Democritus as a major intellectual tragedy. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, as the principal ancient source preserving atomist philosophy.
On the closure of pagan philosophical schools under Justinian: Procopius, Secret History. Edward J. Watts, The Final Pagan Generation (University of California Press, 2015).
On Enlightenment political theory and religious toleration: John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748).
On Thomas Jefferson’s edited Bible: Thomas Jefferson, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (commonly known as the Jefferson Bible), completed in 1820. See also: Edwin Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson (Eerdmans, 1996).
On early Christian theological diversity and consolidation of orthodoxy: Roger E. Olson, The Story of Christian Theology (InterVarsity Press, 1999). Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities (Oxford University Press, 2003) (for broader context on early doctrinal diversity).
Archaeology, “External Evidence,” and Groundhog Day in the Comment Section
Welcome back to Taste of Truth Tuesdays, where we stay curious, stay skeptical, and keep a healthy distance from any dogma, whether it’s wrapped in a Bible verse or a political ideology.
This is Part Two of my Jesus Myth series, and I’m going to be straight with you:
This one is a doozy. Buckle up, buttercup. Feel free to pause and come back.
Originally, the plan was to bring David Fitzgerald back for another conversation. If you listened to Part One, you know he’s done a ton to popularize the idea that Jesus never existed and to dismantle Christian dogma. I still agree with the core mythicist claim: I don’t think the Jesus of the Gospels was a real historical person. If you missed it, here is the link.
But agreeing with someone’s conclusion doesn’t mean I hand them a free pass on how they argue.
After our first interview, I went deeper into Fitzgerald’s work and into critiques of it (especially Tim O’Neill’s long atheist review that absolutely shreds his method.) While his critique of Fitzgerald’s arguments is genuinely useful; his habit of branding people with political labels (“Trump supporter,” “denier”) to discredit them is… very regressive.
It’s the same purity-testing impulse you see in progressive (should be regressive) spaces, just performed in a different costume.
And that’s what finally pushed me over the edge: The more I watch the atheist/deconstruction world online, the more it reminded me of the exact rigid, dogmatic cultures people say they escaped.
Not all atheists, obviously. But a very loud chunk of that ecosystem runs on:
dunking, dog-piling, and humiliation
tribal loyalty, not actual inquiry
“You’re dead to me” energy toward anyone who may lean conservative or shows nuance
It’s purity culture in different branding.
Then I read how Fitzgerald responded to critics in those archived blog exchanges (not with clear counterarguments) but with emotional name-calling and an almost devotional defense of his “hero and mentor,” Richard Carrier. For me, that was a hard stop.
Add to that: his public Facebook feed is full of contempt for moderates, conservatives, “anti-vaxxers,” and basically anyone outside progressive orthodoxy. My audience includes exactly those people. This space is built for nuance for people who’ve already escaped one rigid belief system and are not shopping for a new one.
He’s free to have his politics. I’m free not to platform that energy.
So instead of Part Two with a guest, you’re getting something I honestly think is better:
me (😜)
a stack of sources
a comment section that turned into a live demo of modern apologetics
and a segment at the end where I turn the same critical lens on the mythicist side — including Fitzgerald himself
Yes, we’re going there. Just not yet.
Previously on Taste of Truth…
In Part One, I unpacked why “Jesus might never have existed” is treated like a taboo thought — even though the historical evidence is thin and the standards used to “prove” Jesus would never pass in any other field of ancient history.
Then, in a Taste Test Thursday episode, I zoomed out and asked: Why do apologists argue like this at all? We walked through:
early church power moves
modern thought-stopping tricks
and Neil Van Leeuwen’s idea of religious “credences,” which don’t function like normal factual beliefs at all
Today is about the evidence. Especially the apologetic tropes that showed up in my comments like a glitching NPC on repeat.
⭐ MYTHS #6 & #7 — “History and Archaeology Confirm the Gospels”
Papyrus P52 (𝔓52), often called the oldest New Testament manuscript. (It’s the size of a credit card) Apologists treat it like a smoking gun. It contains… one complete word: ‘the.’
These two myths always show up together in the comments, and honestly, they feed off each other. People claim, “history confirms the Gospels,” and when that collapses, they jump to “archaeology proves Jesus existed.” So, I’m combining them here, because the evidence (and the problems) overlap more than apologists want to admit.
In short: Archaeology confirms the setting. History confirms the existence of Christians. Neither confirms the Jesus of the Gospels. And once you actually look at the evidence, the apologetic scaffolding falls apart fast.
1. What Archaeology Really Shows (and What It Doesn’t)
If Jesus were a public figure performing miracles, drawing crowds, causing disturbances, and being executed by Rome, archaeology should show something tied to him or to his original movement.
Here’s what archaeology does show:
Nazareth existed.
Capernaum existed.
The general layout of Judea under Rome.
Ritual baths, synagogues, pottery, coins.
A real Pilate (from a fragmentary inscription).
That’s the setting.
Here’s what archaeology has never produced:
no house of Jesus
no workshop or tools
no tomb we can authenticate
no inscription naming him
no artifacts linked to the Twelve
no evidence of a public ministry
no trace of Gospel-level notoriety
Not even a rumor in archaeology that points to a miracle-working rabbi. Ancient Troy existing doesn’t prove Achilles existed. Nazareth existing doesn’t prove Jesus existed.
Apologists push the setting as if it confirms the character. It doesn’t.
If the Gospels were eyewitness-based biographies, their geography would line up with first-century Palestine.
Instead, we get:
• Towns that don’t match reality
The Gerasene/Gadarene/Gergesa demon-pig fiasco moves between three different locations because the original story (Mark) puts Jesus 30 miles inland… nowhere near a lake or cliffs.
• Galilee described like a later era
Archaeology shows Galilee in the 20s CE was:
taxed to the bone
rebellious
dotted with large Romanized cities like Sepphoris and Tiberias
But the Gospels portray quaint fishing villages, peaceful Pharisees, and quiet countryside. This reflects post-70 CE Galilee: the era when the Gospels were actually written.
• Homeric storms on a tiny lake
Mark treats the Sea of Galilee like the Aegean (raging storms, near capsizings, disciples fearing death) even though ancient critics mocked this because the “sea” is a small lake.
Dennis MacDonald shows Mark lifting whole scenes from Homer, which explains the mismatch: his geography serves his literary needs, not the historical landscape.
• Joseph of “Arimathea” (a town no one can find)
Carrier and others point out the name works more like a literary pun (“best disciple town”) than a real toponym.
• Emmaus placed at different distances
Luke places it seven miles away. Other manuscripts vary. There was no fixed memory.
These aren’t the mistakes of people writing about their homeland. They’re the mistakes of later authors constructing a symbolic landscape.
3. The Gospel Trial Scenes: Legally Impossible
This is the part Christians never touch.
One of the most respected legal scholars of ancient Jewish law did a line-by-line analysis of the Gospel trial scenes. He wasn’t writing from a religious angle, he approached it strictly as a historian of legal procedure.
His conclusion? The trial described in the Gospels violates almost every rule of how Jewish courts actually worked.
According to his research:
capital trials were never held at night
they were not allowed during festivals like Passover
capital verdicts required multiple days, not hours
the High Priest did not interrogate defendants
witness testimony had to match
beating a prisoner during questioning was illegal
and Jewish courts didn’t simply hand people over to Rome
When you stack these facts together, it becomes clear:
The Gospel trial scenes aren’t legal history…. they’re theological storytelling.
That’s before we even get to Pilate.
Pilate was not a timid bureaucrat.
He was violent, ruthless, removed from office for brutality.
4. Acts Doesn’t Remember Any Gospel Miracles
If Jesus actually:
drew crowds,
fed thousands,
raised the dead,
blacked out the sun,
split the Temple curtain,
and resurrected publicly…
Acts (written after the Gospels) should remember all of this.
Instead:
No one in Acts has heard of Jesus.
No one mentions an empty tomb.
No one cites miracles as recent events.
Roman officials are clueless.
Paul knows Jesus only through visions and the scriptures.
Acts behaves exactly like a community whose “history” was not yet written.
5. Manuscripts: Many Copies, No Control
Apologists love saying:
“We have 24,000 manuscripts!”
Quantity isn’t quality.
almost all are medieval
the earliest are tiny scraps
none are originals
no first-century copies
scribes altered texts freely
entire passages were added or deleted
six of Paul’s letters are pseudonymous
many early Christian writings were forged
Even Origen admitted that scribes “add and remove what they please” (privately, of course.)
The manuscript tradition looks nothing like reliable preservation.
6. The Church Fathers Don’t Help (and They Were Tampered With Too)
This is where Fitzgerald’s chapter hits hardest.
Before 150 CE, we have:
no Church Father quoting any Gospel
no awareness of four distinct Gospels
no clear references to Gospel events
Justin Martyr (writing in the 150s) is the first to quote anything Gospel-like, and:
he never names Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John
many of his quotes don’t match our Gospels
he calls them simply “the memoirs”
Even worse:
The writings of Ignatius, Polycarp, Dionysius of Corinth, and many others were tampered with. Some were forged entirely.
So the apologetic claim “The Fathers confirm the Gospels” collapses:
They don’t quote them. They don’t know them. And their own texts are unstable.
Metzger claimed we could reconstruct the New Testament from the Fathers’ quotations but his own scholarship shows the Fathers don’t quote anything reliably until after the Gospels were circulating.
7. External Pagan Sources: Late, Thin, and Dependent on Christian Claims
This is the other half of the myth… that “history” outside the Bible confirms Jesus.
Let’s look quickly:
• Tacitus (116 CE)
Reports what Christians of his day believed. He cites no source, no archive, no investigation.
• Pliny (c. 111 CE)
Says Christians worship Christ “as a god.” Confirms Christians existed — not that Jesus did.
• Josephus (93 CE)
The Testimonium is tampered with. Even conservative scholars admit Christian hands were all over it. The “James, brother of Jesus” line is ambiguous at best.
These are not independent confirmations. They’re late echoes of Christian claims.
In closing:
You can confirm:
towns
coins
synagogues
political offices
geography
But that only shows the world existed, not the characters.
The Gospels are theological narratives composed decades later, stitched out of scripture, symbolism, literary models, and the needs of competing communities.
Archaeology confirms the backdrop. History confirms the movement. Neither confirms the biography.
Once you strip away apologetic spin, the evidence points to late, literary, constructed narratives, not eyewitness records of a historical man.
Myth #8: “Paul and the Epistles Confirm the Gospels”
Albert Schweitzer pointed out that if we only had Paul’s letters, we would never know that:
Jesus taught in parables
gave the Sermon on the Mount
told the “Our Father” prayer
healed people in Galilee
debated Pharisees
From Paul and the other epistles, you wouldn’t even know Jesus was from Nazareth or born in Bethlehem.
That alone should make us pause before saying, “Paul confirms the Gospels.”
Paul’s “Gospel” Is Not a Life Story
When Paul says “my gospel,” he doesn’t mean a narrative like Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. His gospel is:
Christ died for our sins
was buried
was raised
now offers salvation to those who trust him
No:
Bethlehem, Nazareth, Mary, Joseph
John the Baptist
miracles, exorcisms, parables
empty tomb story with women at dawn
And this isn’t because Paul is forgetful. His letters are full of perfect moments to say, “As Jesus taught us…” or “As we all know from our Lord’s ministry…”
He never does.
Instead, he appeals to:
his own visions
the Hebrew scriptures (in Greek translation, the Septuagint)
what “the Lord” reveals directly to him
For Paul, Christ is:
“the image of the invisible God”
“firstborn of all creation”
the cosmic figure through whom all things were made
the one who descends to the lower realms, defeats spiritual powers, and ascends again
That is cosmic myth language… not “my friend’s rabbi who did a lot of teaching in Galilee a few decades ago.”
The “Lord’s Supper,” Not a Last Supper
The one place people think Paul lines up with the Gospels is 1 Corinthians 11, where he describes “the Lord’s Supper.”
Look closely:
He never calls it “the Last Supper.”
He never says it was a Passover meal.
He never places it in Jerusalem.
He says he received this ritual from the Lord, not from human eyewitnesses.
The phrase he uses, kuriakon deipnon (“Lord’s dinner”), is the same kind of language used for sacred meals in pagan mystery cults.
The verb he uses for “handed over” is used elsewhere of God handing Christ over, or Christ handing himself over not of a buddy’s betrayal. The specific “Judas betrayed him at dinner” motif shows up later, in the Gospels.
Then, when later authors retell the scene, they can’t even agree on the script. We get:
Paul’s version
Mark’s version
Matthew’s tweak on Mark
Luke’s two different textual forms
and John, who skips a Last Supper entirely and relocates the “eat my flesh, drink my blood” thing to a synagogue sermon in Capernaum
That looks less like multiple eyewitness reports and more like a liturgical formula evolving as it gets theologized.
Hebrews and the Missing Connection
The author of Hebrews:
goes deep on covenant and sacrificial blood
quotes Moses: “This is the blood of the covenant…”
spends time on Melchizedek, who brings bread and wine and blesses Abraham
In other words: The author sets up what would be a perfect sermon illustration for the Last Supper… but he never takes it. No “as our Lord did on the night he was betrayed.” No Eucharist scene. No Passover meal.
The simplest explanation: He doesn’t know that story. He knows the ritual meaning; the later narrative scene in Jerusalem hasn’t been invented yet in his circle.
How Paul Says He Knows Christ
Paul is very clear about his source:
He did not receive his gospel from any human (Galatians 1).
He barely met the Jerusalem “pillars,” waited years to even visit them, and insists they added nothing to his message.
He says God “revealed his Son in me.”
His scriptures are the Septuagint, which he reads as a giant coded story about Christ.
In other words, for Paul:
Christ is a hidden heavenly figure revealed in scripture and visions.
The “mystery” has just now been unveiled.
That only makes sense if there wasn’t already a widely known human teacher whose sayings and deeds were circulating everywhere.
The Silence of the Other Epistles
If it were just Paul, we could say, “That’s just Paul being weird.”
But the pattern runs across the other epistles:
From the New Testament letters outside the Gospels and Acts, you would never know:
Jesus was from Nazareth or born in Bethlehem
he grew up in Galilee
he taught crowds, told parables, healed people, or exorcised demons
he had twelve disciples, one of whom betrayed him
there were sacred sites tied to his life in Jerusalem
“Bethlehem,” “Nazareth,” “Galilee” do not appear in those letters with reference to Jesus. Jerusalem is never presented as, “You know, the place where all this just happened.”
The supposed “brothers of the Lord” never act like family with stories to tell. The letters attributed to James and Jude don’t even mention they’re related to Jesus.
When these early authors argue about circumcision, food laws, purity, and ethics, they consistently go back to the Old Testament…not to anything like a Sermon on the Mount.
That is very hard to reconcile with a memory of a recent, popular Galilean preacher inspiring the entire movement.
Myth #9: “Christianity Began With Jesus and His Twelve Besties”
If you grew up on Acts, you probably have this movie in your head:
Tiny, persecuted but unified Jesus movement
Centered in Jerusalem
Led by Jesus’ family and the Twelve
Paul shows up later in season two as the complex antihero
That’s the canonical story.
When you step back and read our earliest sources on their own terms, that picture melts.
Fragmented from the Start
In 1 Corinthians, Paul complains:
“Each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor. 1:12–13)
That’s not “one unified church.”
He also:
rants about people “preaching another Jesus”
calls rival apostles “deceitful workers,” “false brothers,” “servants of Satan”
invokes curses on those preaching a different gospel (Gal. 1:6–9; 2 Cor. 11)
Meanwhile, the early Christian manual Didakhē warns communities about wandering preachers who are just “traffickers in Christs” (what Bart Ehrman nicknames “Christ-mongers.”)
Right away, we see:
multiple groups using the Christ label
competing versions of what “the gospel” even is
no sign of one tight central group everyone agrees on
Different Jesuses for Different Communities
By the time the Gospels and later texts are in circulation, we can already see:
Paul’s Christ: a cosmic, heavenly savior, revealed in scripture and visions, ruling spiritual realms
Thomasine Christ: in the Gospel of Thomas, salvation comes through hidden wisdom; there’s no crucifixion or resurrection narrative
Mark’s Jesus: a suffering, misunderstood Son of God who’s “adopted” at baptism and abandoned at the cross
John’s Jesus: the eternal Logos, present at creation, walking around announcing his unity with the Father
Hebrews’ Christ: the heavenly High Priest performing a sacrifice in a heavenly sanctuary
These are not just “different camera angles on the same historical guy.” They reflect:
different liturgies
different cosmologies
different starting assumptions about who or what Christ even is
And notice: there is no clean pipeline from “this man’s twelve students carefully preserved his teachings” into this wild diversity.
Paul vs. Peter: Not a Cute Disagreement
Acts spins the Jerusalem meeting as:
everyone sits down
hashes things out
walks away in perfect unity
Paul’s own account (Galatians 2) is… not that:
he calls some of the Jerusalem people “false brothers”
he says they were trying to enslave believers
he says he “did not yield to them for a moment”
he treats the supposed “pillars” (Peter, James, John) as nobodies who “added nothing” to his gospel
That’s not a friendly staff meeting. That’s two rival Christianities:
a more Torah-observant, Jerusalem-centered Jesus-sect
Paul’s law-free, Gentile-mystic Christ-sect
Acts, written later, airbrushes this into harmony. The letters show how close the whole thing came to a full split.
Where Are the Twelve?
If Jesus’ twelve disciples were:
real,
the main founders of Christianity,
traveling around planting churches,
we’d expect:
lots of references to them
preserved teachings and letters
at least some reliable biographical detail
Instead:
the lists of the Twelve don’t agree between Gospels
some manuscripts can’t even settle on their names
outside the Gospels and Acts, the Twelve basically vanish from the first-century record
Paul:
never quotes “the Twelve”
never appeals to them as the final authority
treats Peter, James, John simply as rival apostles, not as Jesus’ old friends
We have no authentic writings from any of the Twelve. The later “Acts of Peter,” “Acts of Andrew,” “Acts of Thomas,” etc., are generally acknowledged to be later inventions.
The simplest explanation is not that the Twelve were historically massive and weirdly left no trace. It’s that:
“The Twelve” are symbolic: twelve tribes, twelve cosmic seats, twelve zodiac signs, take your pick.
Their names and “biographies” were built after the theology, not before.
The Kenosis Hymn: Jesus as a Title, Not a Birth Name
In Philippians 2, Paul quotes an early hymn:
“Being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…”
Notice:
The hymn does not say God gave him the title “Lord.”
It says God gave him the name Jesus after the exaltation.
That is not what you expect if “Jesus” was already the known name of a village carpenter from Nazareth. It makes a lot more sense if:
“Jesus” functions originally as a divine name for a savior figure (“Yahweh saves”),
assigned in the mythic story after his cosmic act,
and only later gets retrofitted as the everyday name of a human hero.
Mark: From Mystery Faith to “Biography”
All of this funnels into the earliest Gospel: Mark.
Mark announces up front that he’s writing a gospel, not a biography. Modern scholars have shown that Mark:
builds scenes out of Old Testament passages
mirrors patterns from Greek epics
structures the story like a giant parable, where insiders are given “the mystery of the kingdom,” and outsiders only get stories
In Mark’s own framework, Jesus speaks in parables so that many will see but not understand. The whole Gospel plays that way: symbolic narrative first, later read as straight history once the church gains power.
So did Christianity “begin with Jesus and his apostles”?
If by that you mean:
One coherent movement, founded by a famous rabbi with twelve close disciples, faithfully transmitted from Jerusalem outward…
Then no. That’s the myth.
What we actually see is:
multiple competing Jesuses
rival gospels and factions
no clear paper trail from “Jesus’ inner circle”
later authors stitching together a cleaned-up origin story and branding rivals as “heresy”
Biographies came after belief, not before.
Myth #10: “Christianity Was a Miraculous Overnight Success That Changed the World”
The standard Christian flex goes like this:
“No mere myth could have spread so fast and changed the world so profoundly. That proves Jesus was real.”
Let’s slow that down.
But before we even touch the growth rates, we need to name something obvious that apologists conveniently forget:
Christianity wasn’t the first tradition built around a dying-and-rising savior. Not even close.
Long before the Gospels were written, the ancient Near East had already produced fully developed resurrection myths. One of the oldest (and one of the most important) belonged to Inanna, the Sumerian Queen of Heaven.
Ancient Akkadian cylinder seal (2350–2150 BCE) depicting Inanna
Inanna’s Descent (c. 2000–3000 BCE) is the earliest recorded resurrection narrative in human history.
She descends into the Underworld, is stripped, judged, executed, hung on a hook, and then through divine intervention, is brought back to life and restored to her throne.
This story predates Christianity by two thousand years and was well known across Mesopotamia.
In other words:
✨ The idea that a divine figure dies, descends into darkness, and returns transformed was already ancient before Christianity was even born.
So, the claim that “no myth could spread unless it were historically real” falls apart immediately. Myths did spread. Myths do spread. Myths shaped entire civilizations long before Jesus entered the story.
Now (with that context in place) let’s actually talk about Christianity’s growth..
Christianities Stayed Small…. Until Politics Changed
Carrier’s modeling makes it clear:
even if you start with generous numbers (say 5,000 believers in 40 CE),
you still don’t get anywhere near a significant percentage of the Empire until well into the third century
And that includes all groups who believed in some form of Christ — including the later-branded “heretics.”
So, for the first ~250 years, Christianity:
is tiny
is fragmented
is one cult among many in a very crowded religious landscape
The “miracle” is not early explosive growth. It’s what happens when their tiny, disciplined network suddenly gets access to empire-level power.
Rome Falls; Christianity Rises
Fitzgerald is right that Christianity benefitted from Rome’s third-century crisis:
chronic civil wars
inflation and currency debasement
border instability and barbarian incursions
trade networks breaking down
urban life contracting
As conditions worsened:
Christianity’s disdain for “worldly” culture
its emphasis on endurance, suffering, and heavenly reward
its growing bishop-led structure and charity networks
…all became more attractive to the poor and dispossessed.
“It was a mark of Constantine’s political genius … that he realized it was better to utilize a religion … that already had a well‑established structure of authority … rather than exclude it as a hindrance.” Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith & the Fall of Reason
But there’s a step many historians including Fitzgerald often underplay:
How Christianity destroyed the classical world.
From Tolerated to Favored to Tyrannical
A quick timeline:
313-Constantine legalizes Christianity (Edict of Milan). Christianity is now allowed, not official. Constantine still honors Sol Invictus and dies as a pagan emperor who also patronized bishops.
4th century– Christian bishops gain wealth and political leverage. Imperial funds start flowing to churches. Pagan temples begin to be looted or repurposed.
380– Emperor Theodosius I issues the Edict of Thessalonica: Nicene Christianity becomes the official state religion.
395 and after– Laws begin banning pagan sacrifices and temple worship. Pagan rites become crimes.
Catherine Nixey’s The Darkening Age and Charles Freeman’s The Closing of the Western Mind document how this looked on the ground:
temples closed, looted, or destroyed
statues smashed
libraries and shrines burned
philosophers harassed, exiled, or killed
non-Christian rites criminalized
Christianity didn’t “persuade” its way to exclusive dominance. It:
received funding and legal favor
then helped outlaw and dismantle its competition
That is not a moral judgment; it’s just how imperial religions behave.
The “Overnight Success” That Took Centuries and a State
So was Christianity a new, radically different, overnight success?
Not new: it recycled the son-of-god savior pattern, sacred meals, initiation, and rebirth themes common in the religious world around it. Even early church fathers admitted the similarities and blamed them on Satan “counterfeiting” Christianity in advance.
Not overnight: it stayed statistically tiny for generations.
Not purely spiritual success: it became powerful when emperors needed an obedient, centralized religious hierarchy to stabilize a collapsing state.
Christianity didn’t “win” because its evidence was overwhelming.
It won because:
it fit the needs of late-imperial politics
it built a strong internal hierarchy
it could supply social services
its leaders were willing to suppress, outlaw, and overwrite rival traditions
This is not unique. It’s a textbook case of how state-backed religions spread.
Why the Pushback Always Sounds the Same
After Part One, my comment sections turned into Groundhog Day:
“You’re ignoring Tacitus and Josephus!”
“Every serious scholar agrees Jesus existed.”
“Archaeology proves the Bible.”
“There are 25,000 manuscripts.”
“Paul met Jesus’ brother!”
“If Jesus wasn’t real, who started Christianity?”
“Ancient critics never denied his existence — checkmate.”
“You just hate religion.”
“This is misinformation.”
Different usernames. Same script.
This is where Neil Van Leeuwen’s work on religious credences helps:
Factual beliefs are supposed to track evidence. If you show me credible new data, I update.
Religious credences function differently: they’re tied to identity, community, and morality. Their job isn’t to track facts; it’s to hold the group together.
So when you challenge Jesus’ historicity, you’re not just questioning an ancient figure. You’re touching:
“Who am I?”
“Who are my people?”
“What makes my life meaningful?”
No wonder people come in hot.
That doesn’t make them stupid or evil. It just means the conversation isn’t really about Tacitus. It’s about identity maintenance.
Now Let’s Turn the Lens on Mythicism (Yes, Including Fitzgerald)
Here’s where I want to be very clear:
I am a mythicist.
I do not think the Jesus of the Gospels ever existed as a historical person.
But mythicism itself doesn’t get a free pass.
Carrier’s Probability Model: When Someone Actually Does the Math
Most debates about Jesus collapse into appeals to authority. Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus at least does something different: it quantifies the evidence.
Using Bayesian reasoning, he argues roughly:
about a 1 in 3 prior probability that there was a “minimal historical Jesus”– a real Jewish teacher who got executed and inspired a movement
about 2 in 3 for a “minimal mythicist” origin– a celestial figure whose story later got historicized
Then, after weighing the actual evidence (Paul’s silence, the late Gospels, contradictions, etc.), he argues the probability of a historical Jesus drops further, to something like 1 in 12.
You don’t have to agree with his exact numbers to see the point:
Once you treat the sources like data, not dogma, the overconfident “of course Jesus existed, you idiot” stance looks a lot less justified.
O’Neill’s Critique of Fitzgerald: Atheist vs Atheist
Tim O’Neill, an atheist historian, wrote a long piece on Fitzgerald’s Nailed and does not hold back. His basic charges:
Fitzgerald oversells weak arguments
cherry-picks and misuses sources
ignores mainstream scholarship where it contradicts him
frames mythicism as bold truth vs. “apologist cowards,” which is just another tribal narrative
When Fitzgerald responded, he didn’t do so like someone doing serious historical work. He responded like an internet keyboard warrior.
And that same ideological vibe shows up in how he talks about people in general, which I said in the beginning.
Atheism as New Orthodoxy
The more time I spend watching atheist and deconstruction spaces online, the more obvious it becomes that a lot of these folks didn’t escape religion, they just changed uniforms. They swapped their church pews for Reddit threads, pastors for science influencers, and now “logic” is their new scripture. Ya feel me? It’s the same emotional energy: tribal validation, purity tests–like what do you believe or think about this? And the constant hunt for heretics who dare to ask inconvenient questions.
Say something even slightly outside the approved dogma…like pointing out that evolution (calm down, Darwin disciples) still has gaps and theoretical edges we haven’t fully nailed down and suddenly the comment section becomes the Inquisition. They defend the theory with the exact same fervor evangelicals defend the Book of Revelation. It’s wild.
And look, I’m all for science. I’m literally the girl who reads academic papers for funsies. But when atheists start treating evolution like a sacred cow that can’t be questioned, or acting like “reason” is this perfect, unbiased tool that magically supports all their existing beliefs… that’s not skepticism. That’s a new orthodoxy, dressed up as a freethinker. Different vocabulary, same psychology. Good gravy, baby— calm down.
and….here’s the uncomfortable truth a lot of atheists don’t want to hear:
Reason isn’t the savior they think it is.
French cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have spent years studying how humans actually use reason and prepare yourself because: we don’t use it the way we think. Their research shows that reason didn’t evolve to help us discover truth. It evolved to help us win arguments, protect our identities, and persuade members of our group.
In other words:
confirmation bias isn’t a flaw
motivated reasoning isn’t a glitch
tribal loyalty isn’t an accident
They are features of the reasoning system.
Which is why people who worship “logic” often behave exactly like the religious communities they left… just with new vocabulary and a different set of heretics.
This is also why intellectual diversity matters so much. You cannot reason your way to truth inside an ideological monoculture. Your brain simply won’t let you. Without competing perspectives, reasoning becomes nothing more than rhetorical self-defense, a way to signal loyalty to the tribe while pretending to be above it.
John Stuart Mill understood this long before modern cognitive science confirmed it. In On Liberty, Mill argues that truth isn’t something we protect by silencing dissent. Truth emerges through friction, through the clash of differing perspectives. A community that prides itself on “rational superiority” but cannot tolerate disagreement becomes just another church with a different hymnal.
And that’s where many atheist and deconstruction spaces are now.
They haven’t transcended dogma. They’ve recreated it. Trading one orthodoxy for another.
This isn’t just about online atheists. This is about what happens when any movement stops questioning itself.
Challenging the Mythicist Side (Without Turning It Into Another Tribe)
Let’s get honest about the mythicist world too — because every camp has its blind spots.
Tim O’Neill’s critique of David Fitzgerald wasn’t just angry rhetoric. Strip away the insults, and he raises a few legitimate issues worth taking seriously:
1. Accusation of Agenda-Driven History
O’Neill argues that Fitzgerald starts with the conclusion “Jesus didn’t exist” and works backward, much like creationists do with Genesis.
Now Fitzgerald absolutely denies this. In his own words, he didn’t go looking for mythicism; mythicism found him when he started examining the evidence. And that’s fair.
But the deeper point still stands:
The mythicist movement can get so emotionally invested in debunking Christianity that it mirrors the very dogmatism it critiques.
You see this all over atheist spaces today — endless dunking, no nuance, purity tests, and very little actual curiosity.
That’s a valid critique.
2. Amateurism and Overreach
O’Neill also accuses Fitzgerald of relying too heavily on older scholarship, making confident claims where the evidence is thin, and occasionally overstating consensus.
Again — not entirely wrong. Fitzgerald’s book is sharp and compelling, but it’s not the cutting-edge end of mythicism anymore.
There are places where he simplifies. There are places where he speculates.
This matters because mythicism deserves better than overconfident shortcuts.
3. Fitzgerald doesn’t push far enough
And ironically, this is where I diverge from O’Neill entirely. He thinks Fitzgerald goes too far; I think Fitzgerald stops too soon.
There are areas where the mythicist case has advanced beyond Fitzgerald’s framework, and he doesn’t touch them:
• The possibility that “Paul” himself is a literary construct
Nina Livesey and other scholars argue that:
The Pauline voice may be a 2nd-century invention.
The letters reflect Roman rhetorical conventions, not authentic 1st-century correspondence.
The “apostle Paul” may be a theological persona used to unify competing sects.
Fitzgerald doesn’t address this— but it’s now one of the most provocative frontiers in the field.
• The geopolitical legacy of Abrahamic supremacy
Fitzgerald critiques Christian nationalism. Great. But he doesn’t go upstream to examine the deeper architecture:
It focuses almost exclusively on Christian excess while leaving the deeper architecture untouched: how Abrahamic identity claims themselves shape law, land, empire, and modern geopolitics.
When you zoom out, the story is not “Christian nationalism versus secular reason.”
It is competing and cooperating Abrahamic power structures, each with theological claims about chosen-ness, inheritance, land, and destiny.
Abrahamic Power Is Not Just Christian
Very few people are willing to look at the broader landscape of Abrahamic influence in American politics and global power structures. When they do not, they miss how deeply intertwined these traditions have been for over a century.
One under-discussed example is the longstanding institutional relationship between Mormonism and Judaism, particularly around shared claims to Israel and the “house of Israel.”
This is not hidden history.
In 1995, Utah Valley State College established a Center for Jewish Studies explicitly aimed at “bridging the gap between Jews and Mormons” and guiding relationships connected to Israel. One of the board members was Jack Solomon, a Jewish community leader who publicly praised the LDS Church as uniquely supportive of Judaism.
Solomon stated at the time that “there is no place in the world where the Christian community has been so supportive of the Jewish people and Judaism,” noting LDS financial and symbolic support for Jewish institutions in Utah going back to the early twentieth century.
This matters because Mormon theology explicitly claims descent from the house of Israel. Mormons do not merely admire Judaism. They see themselves as part of Israel’s continuation and restoration.
That theological framework shapes real-world alliances.
1. The Mormon Church Is a Financial Superpower
Most Americans have no idea how wealthy the LDS Church actually is.
The Mormon Church’s real estate & investment arm, Ensign Peak Advisors, was exposed in 2019 and again in 2023 for managing a secret portfolio now estimated at:
👉 $150–$200 billion
(Source: SEC filings, whistleblower leaks, Wall Street Journal)
To compare:
PepsiCo market cap: ~$175B
ExxonMobil (oil giant): ~$420B
Disney: ~$160B
Meaning:
📌 The LDS Church is financially on par with Pepsi and Disney, and not far behind Big Oil.
This is not a “church.” This is an empire.
And it invests strategically:
massive real estate acquisitions
agricultural control
media companies
political lobbying
funding influence networks
And let’s be clear: Mormons see themselves as a literal remnant of Israel (the last tribe) destined to help rule the Earth “in the last days.”
Which brings us to…
2. Mormonism’s Quiet Partnership with the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)
NAR is the movement behind the so-called “Seven Mountain Mandate”— the belief that Christians must seize control of:
Government
Education
Media
Arts & Entertainment
Business
Religion
Family
This is the backbone of Christian nationalism and it’s far more organized than people realize. But here’s the part that never gets discussed:
Mormon elites collaborate with NAR leadership behind the scenes.
Shared goals:
influence over U.S. political leadership
shaping national morality laws
preparing for a prophetic “kingdom age”
embedding power in those seven spheres
This isn’t fringe. This is the largest religious–political coalition in the country, and yet most journalists never touch it.
3. The Ziklag Group: A $25M-Minimum Christian Power Circle
You want to talk about “elite networks”?
Meet Ziklag: an ultra-exclusive Christian organization named after King David’s biblical stronghold. Requirements for membership: a minimum net worth of $25 million Their mission? Not charity. Not discipleship.
Influence the Seven Mountains of society at the highest levels.
Members include:
CEOs
hedge-fund managers
defense contractors
political donors
tech founders
Including the billionaire Uihlein family, who made a fortune in office supplies, the Greens, who run Hobby Lobby, and the Wallers, who own the Jockey apparel corporation. Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups.
AND YET…
Most people yelling about “Christian nationalism” have never even heard of Ziklag.
4. Meanwhile, Chabad-Lubavitch Has Met with Every U.S. President Since 1978
Evangelical influence isn’t the only Abrahamic power Americans ignore.
Chabad (a Hasidic cult with global reach) has:
direct access to every U.S. president
annual White House proclamations (“Education & Sharing Day”) explicitly honor a religious leader as a moral authority over the nation.
a network of emissaries (shluchim) embedded in power centers around the world
This is influence, not conspiracy.
This is religious lobbying at the highest level of government, treated as unremarkable simply because the public doesn’t understand it.
The Rebbe’s ambassador to Washington D.C., Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, addresses the crowd at an event in front of the White House organized by American Friends of Lubavitch, as President Carter and The Honorable Stuart E. Eizenstat, Chief Domestic Policy Adviser and the Executive Director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff, look on.
President Gerald Ford is greeted by Rabbi Abraham Shemtov (left), national director of American Friends of Lubavitch; Rabbi Moshe Feller (right), Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to Minnesota; and Senator Rudy Boschwitz; at the American Friends of Lubavitch Philadelphia dinner, May 1975.
President Ronald Reagan signs the Education Day U.S.A. proclamation
President Bill Clinton places a dollar bill in a charity box after receiving members of the American Friends of Lubavitch in the White House.
President George W. Bush speaks to Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis after signing the Education Day U.S.A. proclamation.
President Obama Welcomes Chabad-Lubavitch to the White House
Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis meet with President Donald J. Trump on Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A. in 2018. “The First Lady and I encourage all Americans to reflect upon the Rebbe’s teachings,” President Trump wrote in this year’s proclamation. “His inestimable dedication and unwavering example have become woven into the very fabric of our nation and its character. His memory remains a blessing to the world.”
Biden meets with over 100 Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis
See the Pattern Yet?
When people say “Christian nationalism,” they’re talking about one branch of a much older tree.
Christianity isn’t the problem. Atheism isn’t the solution.
The issue is Abrahamic supremacy: the belief that one sacred lineage has the right to rule, legislate, moralize, and define history for everyone else.
Across denominations, across continents, across political parties, the pattern is the same:
chosen-people narratives
divine-right entitlement
mythic land claims
sacred-tier influence operations
the blending of theology with statecraft
“Groupish belief systems that justify valuing one’s group above others must be inventable.” — Religion as Make-Believe.
Exactly.
These power structures aren’t ancient relics. They’re alive, wealthy, organized, and deeply embedded in American political life. And yet we’re told to panic exclusively about MAGA Christians… while studiously ignoring:
Mormon financial empires
NAR infiltration of U.S. political offices
Zionist influence networks
Chabad’s presidential pipeline
elite Christian dominionist groups like Ziklag
This isn’t about blaming individuals.
It’s about naming systems. Because if we’re going to talk honestly about orthodoxy, myth, and power…
we need to talk about all of it— not just the parts that are fashionable to critique.
4. Mythicism still hasn’t grappled with empire
Most mythicist writing stops at: “Jesus didn’t exist.”
Cool. Now what? The real question is:
HOW? How did a mythical figure become the operating system for Western civilization?
So, here’s where I actually land:
Christianity didn’t emerge from a single man. It emerged from competing myths, political incentives, scriptural remixing, imperial needs, and evolving group identities.
And if that makes me someone who doesn’t quite fit in the Christian world, the atheist world, or the deconstruction world? Perfect. My loyalty is to the question, not the tribe. That’s exactly where I plan to stay.
That’s exactly where I plan to stay.
aaaand as always, maintain your curiosity, embrace skepticism, and keep tuning in. 🎙️🔒
Footnotes
1. Jodi Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit (Eerdmans, 2011).
Archaeologist specializing in 1st-century Judea; emphasizes that archaeology illuminates daily life, but cannot confirm Jesus’ existence or Gospel events.
2. Eric M. Meyers & Mark A. Chancey, Archaeology, the Rabbis, and Early Christianity (Baker Academic, 2012).
Shows how archaeology supports context, not Gospel narrative details.
3. Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Hendrickson, 2003).
Explains why the Testimonium Flavianum is partially or heavily interpolated and cannot serve as independent confirmation of Jesus.
4. Alice Whealey, “The Testimonium Flavianum in Syriac and Arabic,” New Testament Studies 54.4 (2008): 573–590.
Analyzes manuscript traditions showing Christian editing of Josephus.
5. Louis Feldman, “Josephus,” Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 3 (Yale University Press, 1992).
Standard reference summarizing scholarly consensus about the unreliable portions of Josephus’ Jesus passages.
6. Brent Shaw, “The Myth of the Neronian Persecution,” Journal of Roman Studies 105 (2015): 73–100.
Shows Tacitus likely repeats Christian stories, not archival Roman data, making him a witness to Christian belief — not Jesus’ historicity.
7. Pliny the Younger, Epistles 10.96–97.
Earliest Roman description of Christian worship; confirms Christians existed, not that Jesus did.
8. Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus (HarperOne, 2005).
Explains why New Testament manuscripts contain thousands of variations, with no originals surviving.
9. Dennis R. MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (Yale University Press, 2000).
Argues Mark intentionally modeled episodes on Homeric motifs — supporting literary construction rather than eyewitness reporting.
10. Attridge, Harold W., The Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia Commentary Series).
Shows how Hebrews relies on celestial priesthood imagery and makes no connection to a recent earthly Jesus, even when opportunities are obvious.
11. Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle (1999).
Early mythicist argument emphasizing the epistles’ lack of biographical Jesus data.
12. Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus (Sheffield Phoenix, 2014).
Presents a Bayesian model estimating mythicist origins as more probable than historicity.
13. Richard Carrier, Proving History (Prometheus, 2012).
Explains the historical method he uses for evaluating Jesus traditions.
14. Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ (Yale University Press, 2000).
Demonstrates the pluralism and fragmentation within earliest Christianity.
15. Burton Mack, The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy (Continuum, 2006).
Describes the emergence of various Jesus traditions as literary and theological constructions.
16. Clayton N. Jefford, The Didache (Fortress Press).
Analyzes early church manual revealing “wandering prophets,” factionalism, and market-style competition among early Jesus groups.
17. Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age (Macmillan, 2017).
Documents the destruction of pagan culture under Christian imperial dominance.
18. Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind (Vintage, 2005).
Explores how Christian orthodoxy displaced classical philosophy.
19. Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (Yale University Press, 1984).
Shows Christianity expanded primarily through imperial power, incentives, and legislation, not mass persuasion.
20. H.A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
Outlines Constantine’s political use of Christianity and the shift toward enforced orthodoxy.
21. Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).
Provides context for how Christianity overtook the Roman religious landscape.
22. Neil Van Leeuwen, “Religious Credence Is Not Factual Belief,” Cognition 133 (2014): 698–715.
Explains why religious commitments behave like identity markers, not evidence-responsive beliefs.
23. Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (MIT Press, 2015).
Useful for understanding modern online purity culture dynamics, relevant to atheist-internet behavior discussed in your commentary section.
24. Joseph Reagle, Reading the Comments (MIT Press, 2015).
Analyzes comment-section behavior and ideological enforcement online.
25. Tim O’Neill, “Easter, the Existence of Jesus, and Dave Fitzgerald,” History for Atheists (2017).
Atheist historian critiquing Fitzgerald’s methodological errors, exaggerated claims, and misuse of sources.
26. Raphael Lataster, Questioning the Historicity of Jesus (Brill, 2019).
Secular academic arguing mythicism is plausible but insisting on higher methodological rigor than many popularizers use.
27. Richard Carrier, various blog critiques of Fitzgerald (2012–2019).
Carrier agrees with mythicism but critiques Fitzgerald for overstatement and inadequate source control.
The story of intellectual destruction hidden behind the narrative of salvation
Hey Hey, welcome back to Taste of Truth Tuesdays! Except today…it’s Thursday, which means it’s my bonus edition: Taste Test Thursday. Why a bonus? Because the comment sections lately have been overflowing with so much brain-dead apologetics, I had to dedicate an entire post just to unpack the anti-intellectual tricks Christians trot out like clockwork.
Last week I interviewed David Fitzgerald. On one hand, I was navigating a man who built his career dismantling Christian dogma. On the other, I found myself running headfirst into his own political certainties— rigid, unyielding, and just as unquestioned as the ideas he critiques. The irony wasn’t lost on me, especially as a moderate: the ex-Christian deconstruction space can be just as inhospitable to nuance as the faith it once rejected.
But what really matters here isn’t politics. It’s the dogma that never changes. Every time I debate the historicity of Jesus or the so-called “intellectual foundations” of Christianity, it feels like stepping into a twilight zone where facts and evidence are optional, and certainty always gets the last word.
Apologetics didn’t grow out of some noble pursuit of truth; it grew out of power struggles, suppression, and centuries of treating curiosity and inquiry as threats.
What gets labeled today as “defending the faith” has roots far older, far more political, and far more violent than most Christians realize. And understanding that history changes the way you engage with believers now— especially when they parrot the same canned responses that have been circulating (in one form or another) for almost 1,500 years.
And that’s what today’s episode is all about… to trace where this all actually came from….
Ancient Roots: When Apologetics Became a Tool of Power
For early Christians, defending their faith wasn’t just about theology, but survival in a world built on pluralism and reason. Thinkers like Justin Martyr, Origen, and Tertullian weren’t arguing from positions of power. Quite the opposite: they came from largely disenfranchised, low‑status communities— often slaves, women, and the poor— who were dismissed by Greco-Roman society. Early critics like Celsus, sneered that Christians were “only slaves, women, and little children … led by woolworkers, cobblers, and the most illiterate.”
But Christians were also up against a far more entrenched cultural reality: in the Greco-Roman world, it was normal (even comfortable) for people to participate in a number of cults simultaneously. Polytheistic religion meant multiple gods, multiple rituals, and no single institution claiming total authority. According to Charles Freeman, the intertwining of authority and Christianity was profoundly revolutionary: where one could previously be devoted to several deities at once, Christianity insisted that allegiance to one truth meant rejecting all others.
Early on, some of the Church Father’s work was intellectually sincere. They were trying to show Christianity wasn’t irrational. But as Charles Freeman points out, reason in theology faces a structural problem: unlike math or empirical science, it lacks universally accepted axioms. You can prove Pythagoras’ theorem because everyone agrees on what a right-angled triangle is. You can do inductive reasoning with empirical evidence because everyone can test and observe it. Theology? There are no such universal starting points. Revelations can be claimed by anyone, scripture can be interpreted in multiple ways, and even the most careful theologians disagreed on what counted as a “self-evident” truth.
The early Church quickly ran into this problem. Different communities drew on different texts, emphasized different letters of Paul, or debated competing visions of Jesus’ nature. The Montanists, for instance, were sidelined and crushed because their claims to divine revelation conflicted with what became orthodoxy. Even Thomas Aquinas, one of Europe’s “greatest rational thinkers”, had to suspend reason when it collided with doctrinal authority.
The point isn’t that Christians ignored reason — they didn’t. The point is that reason alone could never achieve consensus in matters of theology. Unlike other spiritual movements in the ancient world, Christianity insisted on a centralized authority, a single orthodoxy enforced across an empire of diverse cultures. That insistence on uniformity was revolutionary, and it set the stage for apologetics to evolve into a tool not just for defending belief, but for controlling it.
Once Christianity fused with political power (especially after Constantine) apologetics shifted again. It wasn’t enough to argue for the faith intellectually; it became a method of asserting authority, suppressing dissent, and standardizing scripture. Defending the faith became synonymous with maintaining control. What started as reasoning with skeptics gradually transformed into a mechanism to enforce orthodoxy across the Christian world.
It stopped being “Here’s why I believe” and became “Here’s why everyone must.”
As imperial authority was crumbling in the west, this is when the bishops of Rome gained political backing, apologetics morphed into:
A tool for defining orthodoxy
A justification for suppressing dissent
A way to control access to scripture
A mechanism of dominance rather than debate
This shift marks the beginning of Christianity’s long relationship with enforcing belief rather than exploring truth — a pattern that shapes the modern faith more than its followers realize.
The Darkening Age: When Suppressing Ideas Became Holy Work
The Triumph of Christianity Over Paganism, by Tommaso Laureti 1585
Christian doctrine and its alliance with political power didn’t just close off types of questioning— it restructured the very social fabric of religious life. In effect, early Christians weren’t only claiming a new faith — they were demanding a new kind of loyalty built around a singular, authoritative orthodoxy. Catherine Nixey’s The Darkening Age doesn’t sugarcoat this period. Christianity’s rise didn’t just change the spiritual landscape; it also reshaped the intellectual world through force. At its heart, the book is a painful reminder of just how much was lost due to zealotry and religious dogma.
Nixey challenges the conventional narrative of Christianity “saving” Western civilization by exposing the far darker story: philosophers beaten, tortured, interrogated, exiled; their beliefs forbidden; intellectual traditions silenced. As the historian John Pollini observes, modern scholarship has often downplayed or overlooked these attacks, even presenting Christian desecration in a positive light.
Between the fourth and sixth centuries:
Pagan temples were smashed or repurposed
Statues were mutilated
Philosophical schools were closed
Entire libraries and works of classical literature were burned or erased
The destruction wasn’t without precedent. As I reflected in my notes for an upcoming episode on The Darkening Age, Christianity, emerging from a Jewish context, carried forward a zeal for nullifying rival religious objects and practices. Deuteronomy explicitly commands:
“You shall overthrow their altars, break their pillars, burn their growth with fire… and destroy the names of their gods out of that place.”
Early Christians, many of them ethnic Jews, others European converts, obliterated traditional art — especially works venerating ancestors…in ways strikingly similar to this Torah mandate. The Talmud codifies the principle: defacing an idol: cutting off a nose, fingertip, or ear was a method to revoke its divine status. Once damaged intentionally, the object lost its sacred standing.
Germanicus Caesar Germanicus’s nose has been mutilated and a cross has been carved in his forehead–perhaps an attempt to “baptize” and neutralize any possible demons within
“As the Church Father Basil explained, such ecclesiastical censorship was not illiberal; it was loving. Just as Augustine advocated the beating of heretics with rods out of fatherly care, so Basil advocated the removal of great tracts of classical canon as an act of ‘great care’ to ensure the soul was safely guarded.” Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age the Christian Destruction of the Classical World
The primary sources are shocking. Some Christians didn’t just accept violence as a duty— they enjoyed it. Saint Augustine reportedly saw throwing down temples, idols, and groves as proof of abhorring paganism. Benedict of Nursia, revered as the founder of Western monasticism, was also celebrated as a destroyer of antiquities. John Chrysostom writes in The Homilies, On the Statues that punishing the pagan “sinner” (flogging, beating, even murder) was not harming them but saving them from the ultimate punishment. Murder in service of God was framed as prayer.
Reading this evokes deep visceral sadness. The destruction of creative thought, science, and philosophical inquiry is staggering. It’s impossible not to notice the echo in modern Christianity: when someone converts, they’re often asked to discard books, crystals, or other personal items that represent “pagan” or non-Christian influences. In some ways, the impulse to erase ideas, objects, and independent thought persists today.
ARCHIMEDES PALIMPSEST, C. IOTH-I3TH CENTURY
A tenth-century copy of Archimedes chalf Mechanical Theorems. In it, Archimedes had ingeniously applied mechanical laws, such as the law cl the lever, to find the volume and area of geometric shapes. Two thousand years before Newton, he had come tantalizingly close to deriving calculus. However, in the thirteenth century this work was scraped off and overwritten with a prayer book.
This isn’t apologetics as debate by any means. It was apologetics as a sledgehammer, operating under the conviction that only one worldview deserved to survive. Nixey’s work is enraging, tragic, and illuminating. It shows that while Christianity has morphed and evolved over centuries, the strategies of control, suppression, and moral justification remain recognizable today.
Closing of the Western Mind: When Faith Shut Down Reason
“By the fifth century, not only has rational thought been suppressed, but there has been a substitution for it of ‘mystery, magic and authority’ …” — Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith & the Fall of Reason
Charles Freeman’s The Closing of the Western Mind explains how Christianity, once in power, didn’t just defend itself; it fundamentally transformed the intellectual landscape of the West.
Greek philosophy, still vibrant in the early centuries, was gradually co-opted and subordinated to Christian authority. Faith, not reason, became the foundation of legitimacy. Independent philosophical traditions, especially those that didn’t align with Christian doctrine, were suppressed. Thought, inquiry, and debate were no longer neutral tools — they were potential threats
“Faith … involves some kind of acquiescence in what cannot be proved by rational thought.” — Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith & the Fall of Reason
The combination of church and imperial authority enforced orthodoxy across the empire.
“This ‘desire for control… of taxes and contributions’ was a corrosive feature of church politics. This linking of access to resources with orthodoxy was bound to lead to nasty rivalries when doctrine was so fluid.” Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith & the Fall of Reason
Freeman shows that this wasn’t simply an unfortunate side effect of religion gaining power.
“It was a mark of Constantine’s political genius … that he realized it was better to utilize a religion … that already had a well‑established structure of authority … rather than exclude it as a hindrance.” Charles Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith & the Fall of Reason
It was a structural choice: intellectual freedom was sacrificed for doctrinal control. The centuries that followed were marked by a persistent tension between reason and religion, one that would only begin to loosen with the reintroduction of Aristotle in the 13th century.
In other words, modern apologetics, the slick, defensive arguments Christians use today, didn’t appear in a vacuum. They are built on a foundation laid over centuries: a system where questioning authority was discouraged, curiosity was suspect, and dissent could be dangerous. Understanding this context changes the conversation entirely.
When we debate Christians today about history, scripture, or reason, we aren’t just dealing with modern arguments…we’re confronting a legacy of intellectual suppression stretching back over a millennium.
Modern Apologetics: A Thought‑Stopping System Dressed Up as Intellectualism
Fast‑forward to today, and the patterns from history are still painfully familiar. Modern apologists like Lee Strobel or Josh McDowell often present themselves as investigators, journalists, or historians. But underlying that veneer of investigation is something much more defensive: their method isn’t really about seeking truth — it’s about creating an insulated echo chamber in which questioning feels unsafe.
You’ll notice how in their approach:
Doubt is pathologized
Questions are reframed as attacks
“Answers” come prepackaged
Evidence is curated selectively
Authority is invoked instead of demonstrated
This isn’t accidental. It’s the legacy of a system built not to evaluate claims, but to preserve credence.
To underscore that, let’s look at a couple of real voices:
Lee Strobel, in The Case for Christ, has described the evidence for Jesus like this:
“I picture the evidence for the deity of Jesus to be like the fast-moving current in a river. To deny the data would be like swimming upstream against the current … What’s logical, based on the strength of the case for Christ, is to swim in the same direction the evidence is pointing …”
On the surface, that sounds rational. But it’s also subtly coercive — it frames belief as a natural, almost inevitable conclusion. If you resist, you’re not just wrong; you’re swimming against the current. That metaphor doesn’t invite open inquiry; it discourages it.
Robert M. Price, in The Case Against the Case for Christ, goes even further. He accuses Strobel of building his “investigation” on a very narrow foundation:
“His true intention becomes clear by the choice of people he interviewed: every one of them a conservative apologist!”
He also critiques the entire enterprise as a “long exercise in applying the fallacy of informal logic known as ‘the appeal to authority.’” By highlighting that Strobel only interviews like-minded evangelical scholars, Price argues that Strobel never really engages with real skepticism or dissent. Instead, he reinforces what his audience already believes— with authority, not argument.
Why This Matters
Thought-stopping by design. Strobel’s river metaphor isn’t an invitation to inquire — it’s a mental funnel. It teaches you to treat questions as temptations and answers as preselected. That’s classic thought-stopping: reframe uncertainty as spiritual danger, and the search ends before it begins.
Selection bias on display. Price highlights how most “investigations” in apologetics aren’t investigations at all. They’re confirmation exercises. The conclusions are fixed, and the evidence is hand-picked to match. Doubt gets pathologized; alternative explanations get caricatured; and any data that threatens the thesis gets quietly dismissed as “liberal scholarship.”
Authority over evidence. A hallmark of thought-stopping systems is the outsourcing of your epistemic agency. Rather than wrestling with contradictory ideas, you’re told to trust select authorities who have already “done the work” for you. The message is subtle but effective: Don’t think — defer. And the more you defer, the easier it becomes to confuse loyalty with truth.
Identity first, truth second. when belief is woven into group identity, truth loses priority. In that ecosystem, bad arguments don’t weaken the faith — they strengthen belonging. The goal shifts from discovering what’s true to protecting who we are. And that’s why apologetics so often functions as thought-stopping: it reinforces identity boundaries rather than expanding understanding.
Modern apologetics doesn’t just argue— it fortifies. And once you see it for what it is, it’s easier to call out the patterns and not fall back into the same historical traps of intellectual control.
Mark Noll and the Scandal Christians Don’t Want to Acknowledge
Mark Noll famously wrote: “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”
And Noll’s critique isn’t just an evangelical problem. He’s describing a deep pattern that Christianity carried for centuries. Long before Darwin, before fundamentalism, before American politics ever touched a pulpit, Christians had already built an intellectual culture that favored:
authority over investigation
doctrine over open debate
preservation over exploration
Noll shows how early Christian communities learned to treat intellectual life as something to be “managed” rather than expanded. Church leaders policed ideas to protect unity. Questioning official teaching wasn’t framed as curiosity — it was framed as disloyalty.
That instinct hardened over time. Through the medieval church, the Reformation, and the rise of Protestant denominations, Christians inherited the same reflex: the safest mind is the obedient mind.
By the time evangelicalism appears in America, the pattern is already set. What looks like modern “anti-intellectualism” is really just the latest expression of something older: a tradition that trained generations to fear the consequences of independent thought.
Seen through Noll’s lens, apologetics suddenly makes perfect sense. It’s not an attempt to think freely — it’s an attempt to stabilize belief. It functions exactly the way a system built on centuries of intellectual gatekeeping would function— it’s functioning exactly the way it was designed to.
Credence vs. Belief: Why Arguments About Jesus Go Nowhere
One of the most clarifying concepts for understanding why Christian apologetics often feels impervious to evidence comes from Neil Van Leeuwen’s work on religious credence. He distinguishes between factual beliefs (which hold across all contexts and guide our actions consistently) and religious credence, which function more like imaginative or conditional assumptions tied to specific social and ritual settings.
Factual beliefs remain operative regardless of context. If you imagine your bed is a boat floating down stream, the reality of your bed remains unchanged. Stage actors, for instance, can fully inhabit the world of Hamlet while still acting according to the real physics of a stage. Religious credence, in contrast, are activated by particular experiences: rituals, rites of passage, confrontations with mortality, or challenges to identity.
Consider a church that rents a local gymnasium for Sunday service: everyone knows they’re sitting on bleachers in a multipurpose building, yet within that context, the space becomes sacred. The credence imposed by ritual and communal belief transforms ordinary surroundings into objects of spiritual significance, even while factual reality remains unchanged.
This distinction helps explain why apologetics doesn’t behave like fact-checking. Modern Christian arguments are not primarily designed to persuade with evidence; they are structured to maintain credence. Doubt is framed as dangerous, questions are answered with prepackaged responses, and rituals, narratives, and appeals to authority reinforce the believer’s identity and group loyalty. In other words, apologetics isn’t just defending a claim — it’s protecting a cognitive system that operates independently of factual reality.
In fact, as Neil Van Leeuwen puts it:
“When a belief is rooted in somebody’s group identity, truth often takes the back seat if a certain kind of attitude is playing a role in defining or constituting a group identity. Truth is not as important, and in fact they might do this better if they’re not true.”
This gets to the heart of why modern apologetics is less about investigation and more about protection. Doubt isn’t just unwelcome— it threatens the social and cognitive structures that support identity. Prepackaged answers, appeals to authority, and ritual reinforcement aren’t failures of reasoning; they are deliberate mechanisms to safeguard credence, keeping the believer anchored in a worldview that serves the group, not necessarily the facts.
This is why arguments about Jesus’ historicity feel like Groundhog Day. You’re not dealing with beliefs designed to track reality… you’re dealing with identity-protecting narratives designed to resist reality.
In closing:
This isn’t about dunking on individuals. It’s about recognizing what you’re actually interacting with.
Understanding this history gives you clarity:
You’re not debating a modern argument; you’re confronting 1,500 years of institutional thought management.
The frustration you feel isn’t personal— it’s structural.
The “answers” you hear aren’t original. They’re part of a system designed to be immune to evidence.
And most importantly: Apologetics doesn’t function to seek truth. It functions to protect credence.
Which means the biblical Jesus, the “case for Christ,” and the endless spiral of apologetic books aren’t neutral intellectual exercises. They’re artifacts of a culture built on suppressing alternative ideas, discouraging inquiry, and elevating belief above accuracy.
Once you trace the lineage, from temple-burning zealotry and doctrinal power struggles to modern thought-stopping scripts, the pattern is unmistakable. What appears as reasoned debate is often a carefully maintained system of intellectual control. Understanding that history doesn’t just explain the past; it equips you to see how apologetics functions today and why challenging it can feel like swimming upstream.
Ultimately, the story isn’t just about one book, one belief, or one faith. It’s about recognizing the enduring architecture of authority, credence, and control while reclaiming the space for curiosity, evidence, and honest questioning.
Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All
Today’s episode is one I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. I sat down with author and researcher David Fitzgerald, whose book Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All has stirred up both fascination and controversy in both historical and secular circles.
Before anyone clutches their pearls — or their study Bible — this conversation isn’t about bashing belief. It’s about asking how we know what we think we know, and whether our historical standards shift when faith enters the equation.
Fitzgerald has spent over fifteen years investigating the evidence — or lack of it — surrounding the historical Jesus. In this first part of our series, we cover Myth #1 (“The idea that Jesus being a myth is ridiculous”) and Myth #4 (“The Gospels were written by eyewitnesses”). We also start brushing up against Myth #5, which explores how the Gospels don’t even describe the same Jesus.
We didn’t make it to Myth #7 yet — the claim that archaeology confirms the Gospels…. so, stay tuned for Part Two.
And for my visual learners!! I’ve got you. Scroll below for infographics, side-by-side Gospel comparisons, biblical quotes, and primary source references that make this episode come alive.
🧩 The 10 Myths About Jesus — According to Nailed
Myth #1:“The idea that Jesus was a myth is ridiculous!” → Fitzgerald argues that the assumption of Jesus’ historicity persists more from cultural tradition than actual historical evidence, and that questioning it isn’t fringe. It’s legitimate historical inquiry.
Myth #2:“Jesus was wildly famous — but somehow no one noticed.” → Despite claims that Jesus’ miracles and teachings drew massive crowds, there’s an eerie silence about him in the records of contemporaneous historians and chroniclers who documented far lesser figures.
Myth #3:“Ancient historian Josephus wrote about Jesus.” → The so-called “Testimonium Flavianum” passages in Josephus’ work are widely considered later Christian insertions, not authentic first-century testimony.
Myth #4:“Eyewitnesses wrote the Gospels.” → The Gospels were written decades after the events they describe by unknown authors relying on oral traditions and earlier written sources, not firsthand experience.
Myth #5:“The Gospels give a consistent picture of Jesus.” → Each Gospel portrays a strikingly different version of Jesus — from Mark’s suffering human to John’s divine Logos — revealing theological agendas more than biographical consistency.
Myth #6:“History confirms the Gospels.” → When examined critically, historical records outside the Bible don’t corroborate the key events of Jesus’ life, death, or resurrection narrative.
Myth #7:“Archaeology confirms the Gospels.” → Archaeological evidence supports the general backdrop of Roman-era Judea but fails to verify specific Gospel claims or the existence of Jesus himself.
Myth #8:“Paul and the Epistles corroborate the Gospels.” → Paul’s letters — the earliest Christian writings — reveal no awareness of a recent historical Jesus, focusing instead on a celestial Christ figure revealed through visions and scripture.
Myth #9:“Christianity began with Jesus and his apostles.” → Fitzgerald argues that Christianity evolved from earlier Jewish sects and mystery religions, with “Jesus” emerging as a mythologized figure around whom older beliefs coalesced.
Myth #10:“Christianity was totally new and different.” → The moral teachings, rituals, and savior motifs of early Christianity closely mirror surrounding pagan traditions and Greco-Roman mystery cults.
📘 Myth #1: “The Idea That Jesus Being a Myth Is Ridiculous”
This one sets the tone for the entire book — because it’s not even about evidence at first. It’s about social pressure.
Fitzgerald opens Nailed by calling out how the mythicist position (the idea that Jesus might never have existed) gets dismissed out of hand…even by secular historians. As he points out, the problem isn’t that the evidence disproves mythicism. The problem is that we don’t apply the same historical standards we would to anyone else.
Case in point: Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon.
Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon at the head of his army, 49 BC. Illustration from Istoria Romana incisa all’acqua forte da Bartolomeo Pinelli Romano (Presso Giovanni Scudellari, Rome, 1818-1819).
When historians reconstruct that event, we have:
Multiple contemporary accounts from major Roman historians like Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian, and Cassius Dio.
Physical evidence — coins, inscriptions, and monuments produced during or shortly after Caesar’s lifetime.
Political and military documentation aligning with the timeline.
In contrast, for Jesus, we have:
No contemporary accounts.
No archaeological or physical evidence.
Gospels written decades later by anonymous authors who never met him.
That’s the difference between history and theology.
Even historian Bart Ehrman, who does believe Jesus existed, has called mythicists “the flat-earthers of the academic world.” Fitzgerald addresses that in the interview (not defensively, but critically) asking why questioning this one historical figure provokes so much emotional resistance.
As he puts it, if the same level of evidence existed for anyone else, no one would take it seriously.
✍️ Myth #4: “The Gospels Were Written by Eyewitnesses”
We dive into the authorship problem — who actually wrote the Gospels, when, and why it matters.
🔀 Myth #5: “The Gospels Don’t Describe the Same Jesus”
⚖️ Contradictions Between the Gospels
1. Birthplace of Jesus — Bethlehem or Nazareth?
Matthew 2:1 – “Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king.” Luke 2:4–7 – Joseph travels from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census, and Jesus is born there. John 7:41–42, 52 – Locals say, “The Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he?” implying Jesus was known as a Galilean, not from Bethlehem.
🔍 Mythicist take: Bethlehem was retrofitted into the story to fulfill the Messianic prophecy from Micah 5:2. In early Christian storytelling, theological necessity (“he must be born in David’s city”) trumps biographical accuracy.
2. Jesus’ Genealogy — Two Lineages, Zero Agreement
Matthew 1:1–16 – Jesus descends from David through Solomon. Luke 3:23–38 – Jesus descends from David through Nathan. Even Joseph’s father differs: Jacob (Matthew) vs. Heli (Luke).
🔍 Mythicist take: Two contradictory genealogies suggest not historical memory but theological marketing. Each author tailors Jesus’ lineage to fit symbolic patterns — Matthew emphasizes kingship; Luke, universality.
3. The Timing of the Crucifixion — Passover Meal or Preparation Day?
Mark 14:12–17 – Jesus eats the Passover meal with his disciples before his arrest. John 19:14 – Jesus is crucified on the day of Preparation — before Passover begins — at the same time lambs are being slaughtered in the Temple.
🔍 Mythicist take: This isn’t a detail slip; it’s theology. John deliberately aligns Jesus with the Paschal lamb, turning him into the cosmic sacrifice — a theological metaphor, not an eyewitness timeline.
4. Jesus’ Last Words — Four Versions, Four Theologies
Mark 15:34 – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” → human anguish. Luke 23:46 – “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” → serene trust. John 19:30 – “It is finished.” → divine completion. Matthew 27:46 – Echoes Mark’s despair, but adds cosmic drama (earthquake, torn veil).
🔍 Mythicist take: Each Gospel shapes Jesus’ death to reflect its theology — Mark’s suffering human, Luke’s faithful martyr, John’s omniscient divine being. This isn’t eyewitness diversity; it’s evolving mythmaking.
5. Who Found the Empty Tomb — and What Did They See?
Mark 16:1–8 – Three women find the tomb open, see a young man in white, flee in fear, tell no one. Matthew 28:1–10 – Two women see an angel descend, roll back the stone, and tell them to share the news. Luke 24:1–10 – Several women find the stone already rolled away; two men in dazzling clothes appear. John 20:1–18 – Mary Magdalene alone finds the tomb, then runs to get Peter; later she meets Jesus himself.
🔍 Mythicist take: If this were a consistent historical event, we’d expect some harmony. Instead, we see mythic escalation: from a mysterious empty tomb (Mark) → to heavenly intervention (Matthew) → to divine encounter (John).
6. The Post-Resurrection Appearances — Where and to Whom?
Matthew 28:16–20 – Jesus appears in Galilee to the eleven. Luke 24:33–51 – Jesus appears in Jerusalem and tells them to stay there. Acts 1:4–9 – Same author as Luke, now extends appearances over forty days. Mark 16 (longer ending) – A later addition summarizing appearances found in the other Gospels.
🔍 Mythicist take: The resurrection narrative grows with time — geographically, dramatically, and theologically. Early silence (Mark) gives way to detailed appearances (Luke/John), mirroring the development of early Christian belief rather than eyewitness memory.
🌿 Final Thought
Whether you end up agreeing with Fitzgerald or not, the point isn’t certainty… it’s curiosity. The willingness to look at history without fear, even when it challenges what we’ve always been told.
And here’s the fun part! David actually wants to hear from you. If you’ve got questions, pushback, or something you want him to unpack next time, drop it in the comments or send it my way. I’ll collect your submissions and bring a few of them into Part Two when we dig into Myth #7 — “Archaeology Confirms the Gospels.”
and as always, maintain your curiosity, embrace skepticism, and keep tuning in. 🎙️
📖 Further Reading 📖
Foundational Mythicist Works:
Richard Carrier – On the Historicity of Jesus
Robert M. Price – The Christ-Myth Theory and Judaizing Jesus
Hey hey my friends, welcome back to Taste of Truth Tuesdays. Today’s episode is going to be heavier than usual, because I want to process something that has been shaking me to my core over the past week, the brutal death of Charlie Kirk.
Now, I need to start here: I did not agree with Charlie on everything, especially not his theology. You know me, I don’t subscribe to the idea that morality begins and ends with the Abrahamic scriptures. That’s a hard pass. But I also can’t deny the impact Charlie had on me. I spent years watching him debate, learning from the way he sharpened his arguments and stayed composed with people he deeply disagreed with. He’s one of the people who actually inspired me to study the Constitution, socialism, and to pay more attention to what’s happening politically.
So when I heard he was brutally murdered, I cried. It was horrific. And then, when I looked online and saw people celebrating his death? Saying he deserved it because he was a white, conservative, Christian man? That was gutting. Not just emotionally but morally.
In fact, let me show you a comment I received. This person told me she couldn’t believe I was mourning the death of a Trump supporter, that he had ‘spewed so much,’ and then announced she was unfollowing and blocking me.
That’s the climate we’re in. Not just disagreement, but outright dehumanization.
That kind of reaction, the dancing-on-the-grave energy, it’s not just tasteless. It’s a reflection of how far moral tribalism has gone. She is a perfect example of what I saw when I was navigating ex-Christian and ex-evangelical spaces. It is the same trend there: conservatives painted as villains, ridiculed, dismissed, treated as less-than.
Folks in my parasocial networks would send me podcasts or Instagram pages that were just openly disrespectful and overgeneralizing, like mocking anyone who leaned right was simply part of the healing process. And I remember sitting there thinking… how are you even friends with me if you despise people like me so much?
It’s like the hatred is so baked into the zeitgeist, people don’t even notice they’re doing it.
I’ve already done an episode on the radical left and why I left the left in 2020. Back then I saw the extremism ramping up with Black Lives Matter, with pandemic policies, and yes, with those shocking poll results in 2022, where a significant portion of Democrats said they believed unvaccinated people should have their kids taken away or even be put into camps.
That was the moment I realized this wasn’t just about public health. It was about authoritarianism cloaked in moral righteousness.
And I want to tie that moment to this moment. Because what we’re seeing with Charlie Kirk’s death is the exact same kind of moral righteousness, just flipped.
This is where Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind comes in and yall know I bring this book up a lot, but today it’s essential.
Haidt’s big idea is that morality isn’t one single thing. It’s made up of six different foundations, like taste buds of the moral sense. Let me walk you through them:
Care vs. Harm – the instinct to protect others from suffering. Progressives tend to emphasize this one the most.
Fairness vs. Cheating – concern for justice, reciprocity, equal treatment. Again, heavily weighted on the left.
Loyalty vs. Betrayal – valuing group solidarity, patriotism, belonging. This resonates more on the right.
Authority vs. Subversion – respect for tradition, leadership, order. Again, more prominent for conservatives.
Sanctity vs. Degradation – ideas of purity, sacredness, things that must not be defiled. Religion is one form, but health and nature can trigger it too. Conservatives score higher here, but you see progressives activate it around food purity or environmentalism.
Liberty vs. Oppression – the drive to resist domination and protect freedom. This one cuts across both sides but is framed differently, the right fears big government, the left fears corporate or systemic oppression.
Now, how does this help us explain what we’re seeing?
Progressives, whose moral taste buds are dominated by Care and Fairness, look at Charlie Kirk and say, ‘He caused harm to marginalized groups, he propped up unfair systems.’ So when he died, they felt justified in celebrating. Their moral taste buds told them: this is justice.
Conservatives, on the other hand, lean more heavily on Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity. Charlie embodied loyalty to the nation, respect for conservative traditions, and yes, defense of the sacred. So his death wasn’t just tragic, it was an attack on everything sacred to them. That’s why you’re seeing these martyrdom narratives, even AI videos of Charlie in heaven with other ‘heroes of the faith.’ It’s moral psychology in action.
I’m aware that this is AI of course — but it has moved me, I can only imagine how Charlie is celebrating 🕊️ pic.twitter.com/b9G4lBGVpZ
👉 And this is also the perfect moment to point out the formula behind Psy-Ops. Because these martyrdom narratives aren’t just spontaneous. They follow a pattern of influence:
That’s the formula. You feed people a stimulus, in this case, AI imagery of Charlie Kirk as a martyr. You attach it to a strong feeling: grief, anger, hope. By doing so, conscious awareness is bypassed, people aren’t stopping to analyze, they’re in raw emotion. And then you repeat it over and over. Before long, it’s not just an image, it’s a belief. This is why these videos are so powerful, they’re not just content, they’re psychological conditioning.
In the book FreeYour Mind, which we discussed in our previous podcast episode, Chapter 9 emphasizes the importance of getting ideas in writing—but it also highlights the unique power of images. As the book notes:
“An image tells a thousand words, and seeing is believing. You tend to be more easily persuaded by images than by words, and video is even more persuasive. On the other hand, reading leaves more breathing room for critical thinking.”
Images can define ideas and stick in our minds in ways words alone often cannot. A single powerful metaphor or visual statement can leave a lasting impression. Take Donald Trump’s political career, for example: it wasn’t only shaped by complex and abstract immigration policies, but also by concrete, visual symbols—a border wall, or the image of him standing with his fist raised, signaling defiance after the attempted assassination. Mental images grab our attention and viscerally anchor themselves in our minds. They’re persuasive tools that can move political movements forward.
Psychologists agree. This phenomenon is known as the picture superiority effect: images are far more memorable than words. In one study, participants were shown a mix of 612 images and words for six seconds each. When asked later which they recognized, 98% of the pictures were remembered, compared to just 90% of the words. Another study of news broadcasts found that only 16% of stories were remembered when heard over the radio, versus 34% when watched on television.
The takeaway? Images are not just memorable-they shape perception.
Seeing really is believing.
And here’s Haidt’s main takeaway: morality binds and blinds. Both sides feel righteous, but both sides are blinded. The left is blinded to the humanity of someone they disagreed with, so they cheer for his death. The right is blinded to pluralism and nuance, so they sanctify him and risk sliding into Christian authoritarianism.
And let’s pause here…because this rise in religious fervor is deeply concerning to me. I used to push back when people warned about Christian nationalism. I thought it was overblown. But watching Gen Z churn out martyr videos of Charlie Kirk, watching this wave of revivalist passion roll in, I can’t deny the potential for backlash anymore.
Go along with Jesus or you are a terrorist is basically the narrative these guys are spinning. pic.twitter.com/kRv2XRXnvp
It’s not just reverence – it’s symbolism, its revivalism, its identity politics wrapped in scripture. And that’s where my alarm starts.
Take the Noahide Laws movement. People often describe it as returning to a universal moral code. On its face, sure, that sounds appealing. But when morality is rooted in a particular scripture or identity, it often becomes a tool to say: ‘these norms are non-negotiable, and dissent or spiritual alternatives are forbidden’ That’s when spirituality crosses into political power-building.
Listen to this clip from Ben Shapero on the Daily Wire.
And we’re already seeing it creep into policy.
The administration just passed an executive order on ‘Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.’ Protecting religious freedom is vital, yes. But there’s a difference between protecting believers from discrimination and making laws where Christian sentiment is immune from critique or satire.
The White House posted a video mourning Charlie Kirk concluding with:
In loving memory of Charlie Kirk, a fearless patriot & man of unwavering faith who dedicated his life to America.
"It's bigger than you, I want you to remember that… It's bigger than me – you are here to make somebody else's life better, the pursuit of liberty & freedom."❤️ pic.twitter.com/3Xrf5dcFlP
“1 Corinthians 5 and 15 provide compelling evidence (not only intrabiblical but also extrabiblical) that Jesus Christ was a real historical figure. He lived a perfect life, was crucified, rose on the third day, and is Lord and God.”
If you still don’t see how Christianity and faith in Jesus, a figure who probably never existed—is both holding this country back and enabling Zionism, it’s time to wake up.
We’ve already seen new laws against so-called antisemitism that start to look a lot like blasphemy laws. How long before similar protections are extended to Christian sentiment?
This matters because young people might get swept into this revivalist Christian / Abrahamic framework without realizing it.
It reduces room for spiritual alternatives, for pluralism, for traditions like panpsychism or animism, worldviews that see all of reality as alive, interconnected, and worthy of respect. That feels more universal to me. Less tied to tribal texts, less prone to turning spirituality into a weapon of the state.
History has shown us that religious revivalism mixed with nationalism and state power is a dangerous cocktail. It binds, but it also blinds. And that’s why I can’t jump on board with this new wave of Abrahamic revivalism being fueled by Charlie’s death. My skepticism sharpens right here.
So here’s where I land: I grieve. I grieve for a man who influenced me. I grieve the way his life was taken. But I also grieve the way his death is being used by some to celebrate evil, by others to canonize him into sainthood. Both sides reveal how morality binds and blinds. And if we don’t wake up to that, we’ll keep swinging between authoritarian extremes.
And I want to close with a reminder from Jonathan Haidt himself. He wrote:
“Social scientists have identified at least 3 major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. We are now at the greatest level of political polarization since the 1860s. It’s more necessary than ever to return to these 3 forces in every way we can, individually and as a society.”
That’s where I want us to go. Beyond tribal stories of vengeance or martyrdom, back toward trust, strong institutions, and stories that unite rather than divide.
So, maintain your curiosity, embrace skepticism, and keep tuning in.
Further Reading & Sources
The Righteous Mind– Why Good People are Divided on Religion and Politics by Jonathon Haidt
Charlie Kirk’s Death Exposed the Biggest Scam in History This video exposes how suppression, radicalization, and division are weaponized not by ideology, but by systems designed to keep you outraged, divided, and distracted.
The Bible Isn’t History and Trump Isn’t Your Savior
It’s Been a Minute… Let’s Get Real
Hey Hey, welcome back to Taste of Truth Tuesdays! it’s been over a month since my last episode, and wow—a lot has happened. Honestly, I’ve been doing some serious soul-searching and education, especially around some political events that shook me up.
I was firmly against Trump’s strikes on Iran. And the more I dug in, the more I realized how blind I’d been completely uneducated and ignorant about the massive political power Zionism holds in this country. And it’s clear now: Trump is practically bent over the Oval Office for Netanyahu. The Epstein files cover-up only confirms that blackmail and shadow control are the real puppet strings pulling at the highest levels of power. Our nation has been quietly occupied since Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency and that’s a whole other episode I’ll get into later.
Once I saw that, the religious right’s worship of him stopped looking like misguided patriotism and started looking like mass delusion. Or complicity. Either way, I couldn’t unsee it.
And that’s when I started asking the bigger questions: What else have we mistaken for holy? What else have we accepted as truth without scrutiny?
For now, I want to cut to the heart of the matter: the major problem at the root of so much chaos: the fact that millions of Christians still believe the Bible is a literal historical document.
This belief doesn’t just distort faith-it fuels political agendas, end-times obsession, and yes, even foreign policy disasters. So, let’s dig into where this all began, how it’s evolved, and why it’s time we rethink everything we thought we knew about Scripture.
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For most Christians, the Bible is more than a book-it’s the blueprint of reality, the inspired Word of God, infallible and untouchable. But what if that belief wasn’t original to Christianity? What if it was a reaction…. a strategic response to modern doubt, historical criticism, and the crumbling authority of the Church?
In this episode, we’re pulling back the veil on the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, the rise of dispensationalism, and the strange marriage of American politics and prophetic obsession. From the Scofield Bible to the belief that modern-day Israel is a fulfillment of God’s plan, we’re asking hard questions about the origins of these ideas.
As Dr. Mark Gregory Karris said when he joined us on a previous episode: “Can you imagine two different families? One, the Bible is the absolute inerrant word of God every.Word, every jot and title, so to speak, is meant to be in there due to the inspiration of God. And so every story you read, you know, God killing Egyptian babies and God flooding the entire planet and thinking, well yeah, there’s gonna be babies gasping for air and drowning grandmothers and all these animals. And that is seen as absolute objective truth. But then in another family, oh, these are, these are myths. These are sacred myths that people can learn from. No, that wasn’t like God speaking and smiting them and burning them alive because they touch this particular arc or now that this is how they thought given their minds at the time, given their understandings of and then like you talked about oh look at that aspect of humanity interesting that they portrayed god and not like it becomes like wow that’s cool instead of like oh my gosh i need 3-4 years of therapy because I was taught the bible in a particular way.”
Once you trace these doctrines back to their roots, it’s not divine revelation you find: it’s human agendas.
Let’s get uncomfortable. Was your faith formed by sacred truth… or centuries of strategic storytelling?
How Literalism Took Over
In the 19th century, biblical literalism became a kind of ideological panic room. As science, archaeology, and critical scholarship began to chip away at traditional interpretations, conservative Christians doubled down. Instead of exploring the Bible as a complex, layered anthology full of metaphor, moral instruction, and mythology, they started treating it like a divine press release. Every word had to be accurate. Every timeline had to match. Every contradiction had to be “harmonized” away.
The Myth of Inerrancy
One of the most destructive byproducts of this era was the invention of biblical inerrancy. Yes, invention. The idea that the Bible is “without error in all that it affirms” isn’t ancient…. it’s theological propaganda, most notably pushed by B.B. Warfield and his peers at Princeton. Rogers and McKim wrote extensively about how this doctrine was manufactured and not handed down from the apostles as many assume. We dive deeper into all that—here.
Inerrancy teaches that the Bible is flawless, even in its historical, scientific, and moral claims. But this belief falls apart under even basic scrutiny. Manuscripts don’t agree. Archaeological timelines conflict with biblical ones. The Gospels contradict each other. And yet this doctrine persists, warping believers’ understanding and demanding blind loyalty to texts written by fallible people in vastly different cultures.
That’s the danger of biblical inerrancy: it treats every verse as historical journalism rather than layered myth, metaphor, or moral instruction. But what happens when you apply that literalist lens to ancient origin stories?
📖 “Read as mythology, the various stories of the great deluge have considerable cultural value, but taken as history, they are asinine and absurd.” — John G. Jackson, Christianity Before Christ
And yet, this is the foundation of belief for millions who think Noah’s Ark was a literal boat and not a borrowed flood myth passed down and reshaped across Mesopotamian cultures. This flattening of myth into fact doesn’t just ruin the poetry-it fuels bad politics, end-times obsession, and yes… Zionism.
And just to be clear, early Christians didn’t read the Bible this way. That kind of rigid literalism didn’t emerge until centuries later…long after the apostles were gone. We’ll get to that.
When we cling to inerrancy, we’re not preserving truth. We’re missing it entirely.
Enter: Premillennial Dispensationalism
If biblical inerrancy was the fuel, C.I. Scofield’s 1909 annotated Bible was the match. His work made premillennial dispensationalism a household belief in evangelical churches. For those unfamiliar with the term, here’s a quick breakdown:
Premillennialism: Jesus will return before a literal thousand-year reign of peace.
Dispensationalism: History is divided into distinct eras (or “dispensations”) in which God interacts with humanity differently.
When merged, this theology suggests we’re living in the “Church Age,” which will end with the rapture. Then comes a seven-year tribulation, the rise of the Antichrist, and finally, Jesus returns for the ultimate battle after which He’ll rule Earth for a millennium. Sounds like the plot of a dystopian film, right? And yet, this became the dominant lens through which American evangelicals interpret reality.
The result? A strange alliance between American evangelicals and Zionist nationalism. You get politicians quoting Revelation like it’s foreign policy, pastors fundraising for military aid, and millions of Christians cheering on war in the Middle East because they think it’ll speed up Jesus’ return.
But here’s what I want you to take away from this episode today: none of this works unless you believe the Bible is literal, infallible, and historically airtight.
How This Shaped Evangelical Culture and Politics
The Scofield Bible didn’t just change theology. It changed culture. Dispensationalist doctrine seeped into seminaries like Dallas Theological Seminary and Moody Bible Institute, influencing generations of pastors. It also exploded into popular culture through Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series. Fiction, prophecy, and fear blurred into one big spiritual panic attack.
But perhaps the most alarming shift came in the political realm. Dispensationalist belief heavily influences evangelical support for the modern state of Israel. Why? Because many believe Israel’s 1948 founding was a prophetic event. Figures like Jerry Falwell turned theology into foreign policy. His organization, the Moral Majority, was built on an unwavering belief that supporting Israel was part of God’s plan. Falwell didn’t just preach this, he traveled to Israel, funded by its government, and made pro-Israel advocacy a cornerstone of evangelical identity.
This alignment between theology and geopolitics hasn’t faded. In the 2024 election cycle, evangelical leaders ranked support for Israel on par with anti-abortion stances. Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, explicitly said as much. Donald Trump even quipped that “Christians love Israel more than Jews.” Whether that’s true or not, it reveals just how deep this belief system runs.
And the propaganda doesn’t stop there…currently Israel’s Foreign Ministry is funding a week-long visit for 16 prominent young influencers aligned with Donald Trump’s MAGA and America First movements, part of an ambitious campaign to reshape Israel’s image among American youth.
But Let’s Talk About the Red Flags
This isn’t just about belief-it’s about control. Dispensationalist theology offers a simple, cosmic narrative: you’re on God’s winning team, the world is evil, and the end is near. There’s no room for nuance, no time for doubt. Just stay loyal, and you’ll be saved.
This thinking pattern isn’t exclusive to Christianity. You’ll find it in MLMs, and some conspiracy theory communities. The recipe is the same: create an in-group with secret knowledge, dangle promises of salvation or success, and paint outsiders as corrupt or deceived. It’s classic manipulation-emotional coercion wrapped in spiritual language.
And let’s not forget the date-setting obsession. Hal Lindsey made a career out of it. People still point to blood moons, earthquakes, and global politics as “proof” that prophecy is unfolding. If you’ve ever been trapped in that mindset, you know how addictive and anxiety-inducing it can be.
BY THE WAY, it’s not just dispensationalism or the Scofield Bible that fuels modern Zionism. The deeper issue is, if you believe the Bible is historically accurate and divinely orchestrated, you’re still feeding the ideological engine of Zionism. Because at its core, Christianity reveres Jewish texts, upholds Jewish chosenness, and worships a Jewish messiah. That’s not neutrality it’s alignment.
If this idea intrigued you, you’re not alone. There’s a growing body of work unpacking how Christianity’s very framework serves Jewish supremacy, whether intentionally or not. For deeper dives, check out Adam Green’s work over at Know More News on Rumble, and consider reading The Jesus Hoax: How St. Paul’s Cabal Fooled the World for Two Thousand Years. You don’t have to agree with everything to realize: the story you were handed might not be sacred it might be strategic.
Why This Matters for Deconstruction
For me, one of the most painful parts of deconstruction was realizing I’d been sold a false bill of goods. I was told the Bible was the infallible word of God. That it held all the answers. That doubt was dangerous. But when I began asking real questions, the entire system started to crack.
The doctrine of inerrancy didn’t deepen my faith… it limited it. It kept me from exploring the Bible’s human elements: its contradictions, its cultural baggage, and its genuine beauty. The truth is that these texts were written by people trying to make sense of their world and their experiences with the divine. They are not divine themselves.
Modern Scholarship Breaks the Spell
Modern biblical scholarship has long since moved away from the idea of inerrancy. When you put aside faith-based apologetics and look honestly at the evidence, the traditional claims unravel quickly:
Moses didn’t write the Torah. Instead, the Pentateuch was compiled over centuries by multiple authors, each with their own theological agendas (see the JEDP theory).
King David is likely a mythic figure. Outside of the Bible, there’s no solid evidence he actually existed, much less ruled a vast kingdom.
The Gospels weren’t written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those names were added later. The original texts are anonymous and they often contradict each other.
John didn’t write Revelation. Not the Apostle John, anyway. The Greek and style are completely different from the Gospel of John. The real author was probably some unknown apocalyptic mystic on Patmos, writing during Roman persecution.
And yet millions still cling to these stories as literal fact, building entire belief systems and foreign policies on myths and fairy tales.
🧠 Intellectual Starvation in Evangelicalism
Here’s the deeper scandal: it’s not just that foundational Christian stories crumble under modern scrutiny. It’s that the church never really wanted you to think critically in the first place.
Mark Noll, a respected evangelical historian, didn’t mince words when he wrote:
“The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”
In The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Noll traces how American evangelicalism lost its intellectual life. It wasn’t shaped by a pursuit of truth, but by populist revivalism, emotionalism, and a hyper-literal obsession with “the end times.” The same movements that embraced dispensationalism and biblical inerrancy also gutted their communities of academic rigor, curiosity, and serious theological reflection.
The result? A spiritually frantic but intellectually hollow faith—one that discourages questions, mistrusts scholarship, and fears nuance like it’s heresy.
Noll shows that instead of grappling with ambiguity or cultural complexity, evangelicals often default to reactionary postures. This isn’t just a relic of the past. It’s why so many modern Christians cling to false authorship claims, deny historical context, and accept prophecy as geopolitical fact. It’s why Revelation gets quoted to justify Zionist foreign policy without ever asking who actually wrote the book or when, or why.
This anti-intellectualism isn’t an accident. It was baked in from the start.
But Noll doesn’t leave us hopeless. He offers a call forward: for a faith that engages the world with both heart and mind. A faith that can live with tension, welcome complexity, and evolve beyond fear-driven literalism.
What Did the Early Church Actually Think About Scripture?
Here’s what gets lost in modern evangelical retellings: the earliest Christians didn’t treat Scripture the way today’s inerrantists do.
For the first few centuries, Christians didn’t even have a finalized Bible. There were letters passed around, oral traditions, a few widely recognized Gospels, and a whole lot of discussion about what counted as authoritative. It wasn’t until the fourth century that anything close to our current canon was even solidified. And even then, it wasn’t set in stone across all branches of Christianity.
Church fathers like Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenaeus viewed Scripture as spiritually inspired but full of metaphor and mystery. They weren’t demanding literal accuracy; they were mining the texts for deeper meanings. Allegory was considered a legitimate, even necessary, interpretive method. Scripture was read devotionally and theologically, not scientifically or historically. In other words, it wasn’t inerrancy that defined early Christian engagement with Scripture, it was curiosity and contemplation.
For a deeper dive, check out The Gnostic Informant’s incredible documentary that uncovers the first hundred years of Christianity, a period that has been systematically lied about and rewritten. It reveals how much of what we take for granted was shaped by political and theological agendas far removed from the original followers of Jesus.
If you’re serious about understanding the roots of your faith or just curious about how history gets reshaped, this documentary is essential viewing. It’s a reminder that truth often hides in plain sight and that digging beneath the surface is how we reclaim our own understanding.
Protestantism: A Heretical Offshoot Disguised as Tradition
The Protestant Reformation shook things up in undeniable ways. Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin challenged the Catholic Church’s abuses and rightly demanded reform. But what’s often missed (or swept under the rug) is how deeply Protestantism broke with the ancient, historic Church.
By insisting on sola scriptura—Scripture alone—as the sole authority, the Reformers rejected centuries of Church tradition, councils, and lived community discernment that shaped orthodox belief. They didn’t invent biblical inerrancy as we know it today, but their elevation of the Bible above all else cracked the door wide open for literalism and fundamentalism to storm in.
What began as a corrective movement turned into a theological minefield. Today, Protestantism isn’t a single coherent tradition; it’s a sprawling forest of over 45,000 different denominations, all claiming exclusive access to “the truth.”
This fragmentation isn’t accidental…. it’s the logical outcome of rejecting historic continuity and embracing personal interpretation as the final authority.
Far from preserving the faith of the ancient Church, Protestantism represents a fractured offshoot: one that often contradicts the early Church’s beliefs and teachings. It trades the richness of lived tradition and community wisdom for a rigid, literalistic, and competitive approach to Scripture.
The 20th century saw this rigid framework perfected into a polished doctrine demanding total conformity and punishing doubt. Protestant fundamentalism turned into an ideological fortress, where questioning is treated as betrayal, and theological nuance is replaced by black-and-white dogma.
If you want to understand where so much of modern evangelical rigidity and end-times obsession comes from, look no further than this fractured legacy. Protestantism’s break with the ancient Church set the stage for the spiritual and intellectual starvation that Mark Noll so powerfully exposes.
Rethinking the Bible
Seeing the Bible as a collection of human writings about God rather than the literal word from God opens up space for critical thinking and compassion. It allows us to:
Study historical context and cultural influences.
Embrace the diversity of perspectives in Scripture.
Let go of rigid interpretations and seek core messages like love, justice, and humility.
Move away from proof-texting and toward spiritual growth.
Reconcile faith with science, reason, and modern ethics.
When we stop demanding that the Bible be perfect, we can finally appreciate what it actually is: a complex, messy, beautiful attempt by humans to understand the sacred.
This shift doesn’t weaken faith…. I believe it strengthens it.
It moves us away from dogma disguised as certainty and into something deeper…. something alive. It opens the door for real relationship, not just with the divine, but with each other. It makes space for growth, for disagreement, for honesty.
And in a world tearing itself apart over whose version of truth gets to rule, that kind of open-hearted spirituality isn’t just refreshing-it’s essential.
Because if your faith can’t stand up to questions, history, or accountability… maybe it was never built on truth to begin with.
Let’s stop worshiping the paper and start seeking the presence.
🔎 Resources Worth Exploring:
“The Jesus Hoax: How St. Paul’s Cabal Fooled the World for Two Thousand Years” by David Skrbina
“Christianity Before Christ” by John G. Jackson
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” by Mark Noll – A scathing but sincere critique from within the evangelical tradition itself. Noll exposes how anti-intellectualism, biblical literalism, and cultural isolationism have gutted American Christianity’s ability to engage the world honestly.
Check out Adam Green’s work at Know More News on Rumble for more on the political and mythological implications of Christian Zionism
And don’t miss my interview with Dr. Mark Gregory Karris, author of The Diabolical Trinity: Wrathful God, Sinful Self, and Eternal Hell, where we dive deep into the psychological damage caused by toxic theology
Forgive and Forget? The Dark Side of Christian Forgiveness Culture
One of the main reasons I left mainstream Christianity is the way forgiveness has been weaponized. It’s used not as a path to healing but as a tool to silence victims, excuse harm, and protect institutions.
Instead of confronting abuse, many churches demand those survivors “forgive as they have been forgiven,” which conveniently shields perpetrators and absolves leadership from responsibility. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)—the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.—which has spent decades covering up abuse while doing the bare minimum to protect children.
What Is the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)?
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., with over 47,000 churches and 13 million members as of 2024. Founded in 1845, the SBC split from northern Baptists over slavery and has since maintained a conservative theological stance.
The SBC holds complementarian beliefs, teaching that men and women have distinct, God-ordained roles with male headship in both the church and the home. This doctrine reinforces strict gender hierarchies, contributing to a culture of silence around abuse, particularly when male leaders are involved.
The SBC’s Persistent Failure to Protect Children
Despite its size and influence, the SBC has long failed to protect children from abuse. Recent reports show that only 58% of SBC-affiliated congregations require background checks for staff and volunteers working with children, and in smaller churches, this number drops to just 35%. A past audit revealed 12.5% of background checks flagged criminal histories that could disqualify individuals from church roles. These numbers underscore the SBC’s ongoing failure to address its own scandals.
Even if some churches struggle financially, it’s grossly irresponsible to assume volunteers are qualified without basic screenings. Churches should at the very least implement strict policies and mandatory training on abuse prevention and reporting—but the data proves otherwise.
SBC’s Hidden Influence: The Non-Denominational Loophole
Many churches that appear to be “non-denominational” are quietly affiliated with the SBC for financial and structural support. This means:
They may not openly use “Southern Baptist” in their name, yet still receive funding, resources, and pastoral training from the SBC.
Their leadership and policies often align with SBC doctrine, even if they market themselves as independent.
Some SBC-affiliated churches hide their connections to avoid association with the denomination’s abuse scandals, while still benefiting from its network.
This hidden network allows the SBC to maintain significant influence over American evangelicalism, even among those who believe they’re attending independent churches. And when scandals emerge, the denomination claims little accountability over individual churches, even as it continues to fund them.
The Guidepost Report (2022) exposed that SBC leadership maintained a secret list of over 700 abusive pastors, shielding them from consequences while survivors were ignored, discredited, or retaliated against.
Jennifer Lyell, an SBC abuse survivor, was vilified by church leadership when she came forward. Instead of support, she was publicly shamed, and her abuser faced no consequences.
Christa Brown, another survivor, spent years advocating for reform after being assaulted by her youth pastor. The SBC’s response? Stonewalling, gaslighting, and further silencing.
This is not an anomaly. It’s a pattern.
The Hillsong Scandal: A Deep Dive into Leadership, Accountability, and Institutional Culture
Hillsong Church, once hailed as a beacon of contemporary Christianity with its celebrity-driven worship services and massive global influence, has been mired in a series of scandals that have sent shockwaves through the church and beyond. The drama surrounding Hillsong reflects much deeper systemic issues within religious institutions, particularly those that prioritize celebrity culture, financial power, and unchecked leadership.
Brian Houston and His Father’s Abuse Scandal
At the heart of the Hillsong scandal is the case of Brian Houston and his handling of sexual abuse allegations against his father, Frank Houston, a founding member of the Assemblies of God in New Zealand. Frank Houston’s abuse of children became widely known, but Brian Houston’s failure to act—despite being aware of the allegations for decades—has raised serious questions about the church’s culture of secrecy and its prioritization of protecting its leaders over seeking justice for victims.
In 2021, Brian Houston was charged with covering up his father’s abuse, but he was acquitted in 2023. While the legal outcomes may be behind him, the moral and ethical questions surrounding his actions remain. His failure to report the abuse to the authorities and the lack of transparency in how Hillsong handled the situation speaks to the larger issue of institutions shielding leaders from accountability, especially when their actions threaten the church’s public image.
Carl Lentz and Leadership Failures
Another key figure in the Hillsong saga is Carl Lentz, the former lead pastor of Hillsong New York. Lentz’s celebrity status, especially his close relationships with figures like Justin Bieber, elevated him to international fame. But in 2020, Lentz was fired from his position after admitting to an extramarital affair. The church’s response to Lentz’s scandal raised more questions than answers. Hillsong failed to address the broader cultural issues at play—namely, a leadership model built on celebrity culture and a lack of accountability.
The church’s focus on its brand, public image, and the reputations of its leaders made it easier to overlook the toxic dynamics that led to Lentz’s behavior. His fall from grace demonstrated the dangers of elevating leaders to superstar status, where moral accountability is secondary to their influence and popularity.
Financial Mismanagement and Lack of Transparency
Financial scandals have also been a hallmark of Hillsong’s decline. Despite its non-profit status, Hillsong has faced accusations of lavish spending by its leaders, including Brian Houston, and financial mismanagement that prioritized the comfort of senior leaders over the needs of the congregation. Hillsong’s lack of financial transparency has led many to question how donations were being spent, particularly when its leaders were living luxurious lifestyles while the church’s financial practices remained opaque.
Reports have shown that church members had little insight into the church’s budgeting or financial decisions, raising alarms about how donations were being used. This financial opacity has created a culture of distrust, with many questioning whether Hillsong truly operated as a faith-based organization or as a business built around its leaders’ financial gain.
Celebrity Culture and Unchecked Leadership
The rise of Hillsong as a “celebrity church” is a clear example of the dangers of celebrity culture within religious organizations. Leaders like Brian Houston and Carl Lentz became more known for their status than their spiritual leadership. This culture created a disconnect between the mission of the church and the behaviors of those at its helm, fostering an environment where moral failings were excused, and accountability was pushed aside in favor of maintaining the church’s celebrity-driven image.
The celebrity culture at Hillsong is not an isolated phenomenon—many mega-churches and influential religious organizations have succumbed to similar dynamics. Leaders are often viewed as untouchable figures whose actions are excused because of their fame and influence. This lack of accountability has led to repeated scandals and a breakdown in trust between church leadership and their congregations.
A Culture of Silence and Protection
Celebrity culture and the culture of silence are both hallmarks of Christian culture, where forgiveness is weaponized to silence victims and maintain the church’s authority. Survivors who seek accountability are often told they are “bitter” or “holding onto unforgiveness,” while abusers are framed as sinners in need of grace.
This forced-reconciliation model doesn’t just silence victims—it actively enables abusers. Over and over, religious institutions have shielded predators while insisting their victims move on.
The Catholic Church sex abuse scandal followed the same pattern—priests were quietly transferred rather than removed.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was exposed in 2022 for covering up hundreds of abuse cases, prioritizing its reputation over protecting the vulnerable.
The Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), made infamous by Shiny Happy People, used its teachings to guilt victims into silence, reinforcing submission as godliness.
The Mormon Church (LDS) has been accused of systematically covering up child sexual abuse, instructing bishops to handle cases internally rather than report them to authorities. The “help line” for abuse victims has been exposed as a legal shield to protect the church from liability.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have a longstanding pattern of protecting sexual predators under their “two-witness rule,” which requires at least two people to witness abuse for it to be considered valid. This impossible standard allows abusers to go unpunished while victims are shunned for speaking out.
This cycle continues because religious institutions prioritize obedience and reputation over accountability. Instead of advocating for justice, they demand submission—a dynamic that ensures abuse thrives in the shadows, disguised as grace.
The Evangelical Rejection of Modern Psychology
Many evangelicals reject modern psychology, fearing it undermines biblical authority and promotes a so-called “victim mentality.” Books like Bad Therapyare used to discredit trauma-informed approaches, mental health care, and gentle parenting—reinforcing the belief that obedience and submission matter more than emotional well-being.
But this isn’t just about dismissing psychology—it’s about control. Evangelical spaces often use forgiveness as a tool to suppress legitimate pain and absolve abusers of accountability. Instead of being a process that centers the victim’s healing, forgiveness is reframed as an obligation, a test of faith that prioritizes reconciliation over justice.
This kind of messaging pressures survivors into “forgiving and forgetting” under the guise of spiritual growth. As Susan Forward explains in Toxic Parents, this demand for immediate forgiveness often leads to “premature reconciliation,” where the victim is pushed to restore relationships without ever addressing the harm done. She describes how toxic family systems—and by extension, religious institutions—weaponize guilt, framing any resistance to reconciliation as bitterness, rebellion, or even sin. Forward emphasizes that true healing requires acknowledging pain, setting boundaries, and understanding that some relationships are too harmful to maintain. Forgiveness, in this sense, should never be about dismissing harm but about reclaiming personal agency.
Similarly, Pete Walker in The Tao of Fully Feeling critiques how many forgiveness frameworks, particularly those influenced by religious teachings, encourage victims to suppress righteous anger rather than process it. He argues that when people are pressured to forgive too soon, they bypass the necessary emotional work of grief and anger, which are essential steps in healing. Walker describes how survivors of abuse are often gaslit into believing that their pain is an obstacle to their spiritual growth rather than a justified response to harm. In contrast, he advocates for harvesting forgiveness out of blame—a process that allows victims to first fully validate their experiences, express their anger, and grieve their losses before even considering forgiveness. This approach reframes forgiveness as something that should serve the survivor’s well-being rather than the comfort of the perpetrator.
This is why modern psychology takes a different approach. Unlike evangelical teachings that frame forgiveness as a duty, trauma-informed perspectives recognize that forgiveness is a choice—one that should empower the survivor, not burden them with more guilt. True healing requires honoring all emotions, including anger, rather than rushing to absolution for the sake of appearances or religious pressure.
ACBC “Biblical Counseling”: When Religion Overrides Psychology
Another significant issue within certain Christian communities is the rise of the Biblical Counseling movement, particularly through the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC) and its Nouthetic Counseling model. This approach starkly rejects psychological expertise and promotes the belief that biblical wisdom alone is sufficient to address mental health struggles, trauma, and even domestic violence. While this may seem like a spiritual response to real-world issues, it often exacerbates the trauma and leads to harmful advice.
One glaring problem with ACBC counseling is its lack of professional psychological training. Many of its so-called counselors do not possess accredited education in mental health fields. Instead, they rely on an outdated and rigid interpretation of scripture that reduces complex psychological issues to mere spiritual shortcomings. This is particularly dangerous in cases of trauma, mental illness, and domestic violence, where the guidance of trained mental health professionals is crucial.
Additionally, ACBC’s approach often results in victim-blaming, particularly for women who are struggling with abuse or neglect. Rather than providing the resources and support these women need, the movement encourages them to endure hardship with a sense of spiritual submission. This can exacerbate feelings of helplessness and self-blame, which are already prevalent among victims of abuse.
My Experience within ACBC Biblical Counseling
I was involved in a biblical counseling program that reinforced a system of patriarchal control, stifling my autonomy and presenting a distorted view of marriage and gender roles.
One of the most telling moments was when I encountered an excerpt from The Excellent Wife by Martha Peace in one of the workbooks. The list of expectations outlined for a wife to “glorify” her husband was staggering and disempowering. It included directives like:
Organizing cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry, and cooking while fulfilling your “God-given responsibility” so that your husband is free to focus on his work.
Saving some of your energy every day for him.
Prioritizing your husband above children, parents, friends, jobs, Bible studies, etc., and rearranging your schedule whenever necessary to meet his needs.
Speaking positively about him to others and never slandering him—even if what you’re saying is true.
Doing whatever you can to make him look good, from running errands to helping accomplish his goals, while never taking offense if he chooses not to use your suggestions.
Considering his work, goals, hobbies, and religious duties more important than your own.
As I’ve explained, these expectations weren’t just fringe ideas—they were central to the teachings of Biblical Counseling, widely embraced within the Southern Baptist Convention and many non-denominational churches. What I experienced wasn’t just about a partnership; it was about submission—unquestioning and absolute. The woman’s role was essentially to serve her husband’s needs and desires, no matter the cost to her own identity or autonomy.
But perhaps one of the most chilling aspects of this program was a statement that underscored the complete denial of personal rights. The workbook stated that humble people have “no rights” in Christ—only responsibilities. It referenced Philippians 2:3-8 to justify this perspective.
Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
The workbook then presented a list of “rights” that were seen as sinful or selfish to claim in this context. Some of the rights included:
The right to control personal belongings
The right to privacy
The right to express personal opinions
The right to earn and use money
The right to plan your own schedule
The right to respect
The right to be married, protected, appreciated, desired, and treated fairly
The right to travel, to have a good education, to be beautiful
There were over thirty items on this list. This wasn’t just a list of personal sacrifices; it was a grooming tool that laid the groundwork for further abuse and manipulation under the guise of spiritual obedience.
These teachings were not about partnership, love, or mutual respect. They were about control, and they left no room for the dignity and rights of individuals, especially women.
A study on women’s anger found that common triggers for anger in women include feelings of helplessness, not being listened to, perceived injustice, and the irresponsibility of others. Instead of addressing these genuine concerns, ACBC’s authoritarian approach often pushes women to submit further, casting aside their voices and their safety in favor of a misguided spiritual ideal. This not only exacerbates their mental health but creates an environment ripe for spiritual abuse.
Corporal Punishment and Legal Definitions of Abuse
A major component of ACBC’s teachings also intersects with the controversial use of corporal punishment, where a thin line between discipline and abuse is often blurred. In some evangelical communities, particularly those influenced by ACBC’s authoritarian doctrines, corporal punishment is defended as a necessary part of biblical discipline, despite overwhelming legal and psychological evidence that physical discipline can have long-term harmful effects.
One of the most enduring arguments for corporal punishment is the misquoted phrase, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” However, this phrase does not originate from the Bible. It comes from a 17th-century satirical poem by Samuel Butler, Hudibras. Despite this, it continues to be used in evangelical circles to justify spanking, whipping, and other forms of physical punishment.
The Bible passages often cited to defend corporal punishment—Proverbs 13:24, 22:15, 23:13-14, 29:15, and Hebrews 12:5-13—are frequently interpreted in a rigid, literal manner by proponents of corporal punishment. However, this literal approach is a key part of what historian Mark Noll refers to as “the scandal of the evangelical mind.” This narrow hermeneutic reflects a resistance to modern biblical criticism, science, and intellectual inquiry. It prioritizes a literal interpretation of scripture without considering the historical, cultural, and literary context of these texts. As a result, the teachings of scripture are applied in ways that disregard the broader ethical and psychological implications of corporal punishment.
Despite the continued justification for corporal punishment in these circles, modern research overwhelmingly shows its harmful effects. Studies indicate that physical discipline can lead to increased aggression, mental health issues, and weakened parent-child relationships. Yet, many evangelicals remain unwilling to reconsider this harmful tradition, which reflects a broader resistance within conservative Christianity to engage with contemporary understandings of psychology, trauma recovery, and legal definitions of abuse.
The infliction of physical injuries such as bruises, burns, welts, cuts, bone and skull fractures, caused by kicking, punching, biting, beating, knifing, strapping, and paddling.
Despite this clear legal definition, corporal punishment remains legal in all 50 states, with 19 states still allowing paddling in schools. This creates a disturbing disconnect: what is considered child abuse in some settings (such as foster care) is still widely accepted in evangelical homes and schools, even when it causes lasting harm to children.
This tension highlights the problematic nature of ACBC’s teachings, which sometimes encourage discipline methods that can be classified as abusive under legal definitions. Rather than fostering healthy relationships between parents and children, these practices often reinforce cycles of harm and emotional neglect, contributing to the very psychological issues ACBC claims to address. The refusal to acknowledge these realities creates a fertile ground for continued spiritual and psychological abuse.
The Case of John MacArthur and Grace Community Church (GCC)
One of the most disturbing examples of ACBC counseling practices, combined with the authoritarian culture it fosters, can be seen in the actions of John MacArthur, the pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and his church’s mishandling of abuse allegations.
MacArthur has long been a proponent of the Nouthetic Counseling model, promoting a brand of counseling that prioritizes submission and forgiveness above all else, even in cases of serious abuse. One such case involves Eileen Gray, a woman who endured severe abuse at the hands of her husband, David Gray, while seeking help from Grace Community Church. Instead of providing support or professional counseling, Eileen was told by church leaders that seeking outside help was “worldly” and wrong.
Eileen’s testimony reveals the disturbing practices within GCC, where she was repeatedly told to forgive her abuser even if he was not repentant. Pastor Carey Hardy, a close associate of MacArthur, allegedly taught Eileen the “threefold promise of forgiveness”—a concept detailed in a booklet by MacArthur himself. According to this model, forgiveness means acting as though the abuse never happened, never bringing it up again, and never sharing it with others. This approach not only trivializes the severity of abuse but also places the onus on the victim to endure suffering for the sake of forgiveness and spiritual purity.
What is perhaps most alarming is the pressure placed on Eileen to allow David back into the home and “model for the children how to suffer for Jesus.” Eileen was told to accept her husband’s abuse and, in a deeply misguided view, to make her children witness this suffering as an example of Christian resilience. When Eileen refused to allow her children to be exposed to further abuse, she was met with resistance and intimidation.
The Revelation of Abuse and MacArthur’s Dismissal
Despite Eileen’s pleas for help, GCC’s response was woefully inadequate. When Eileen eventually sought counsel from Alvin B. Barber, a pastor who had officiated her marriage, Barber corroborated her account of the abusive counseling she had received from Hardy. Barber’s testimony was a damning indictment of both Hardy and the church’s leadership, as he described how Eileen was told to submit to her abuser and accept the abuse as part of her spiritual journey.
Eileen’s refusal to allow her children to remain in an abusive environment ultimately led her to request removal from the church’s membership. However, in a shocking display of disregard for her safety and well-being, Grace Community Church denied her request and continued to maintain her as a member, further compounding the trauma she had already experienced.
In the wake of these revelations, MacArthur’s involvement in the case became a point of contention. While MacArthur publicly denounced David Gray’s actions and supported his conviction, he simultaneously failed to hold his own leadership accountable for their role in enabling the abuse. MacArthur’s contradictory statements and lack of transparency in addressing the failures of his church’s leadership reflect a deeper systemic issue within his ministry: a prioritization of church authority and reputation over the safety and well-being of its members.
The Larger Implications: Spiritual Abuse and Lack of Accountability
The case of Eileen Gray is far from an isolated incident. It highlights a pattern within certain corners of the evangelical church, where women’s voices are silenced, and their suffering is minimized in favor of preserving a theological ideal that values submission and suffering over justice and healing. This pattern can lead to widespread spiritual abuse, where individuals are subjected to harmful advice and counseling that prioritizes conformity over personal well-being.
Furthermore, the lack of accountability for church leaders like John MacArthur, who have enormous influence in evangelical circles, contributes to the perpetuation of this toxic culture. By refusing to acknowledge the harmful consequences of ACBC-style counseling and the dismissive responses to abuse victims, MacArthur and others in positions of power not only fail to protect the vulnerable but also send a message that spiritual authority trumps the dignity and safety of individuals.
In the case of John MacArthur’s response to abuse allegations within his church, we see a chilling example of how religious institutions, under the guise of biblical wisdom, can cause immense harm. Eileen Gray’s story is a reminder of the dangers of theological systems that prioritize submission, forgiveness, and authority without regard for the trauma and suffering of individuals.
As these abuses come to light, it’s essential to continue challenging the status quo and demand greater accountability from religious leaders and organizations that have long been able to operate with impunity. Victims of spiritual abuse must be heard, and their stories must be validated, not dismissed or ignored.
The Bigger Picture: Power, Control, and the Misuse of Forgiveness
Whether we’re talking about institutional abuse, forced forgiveness, corporal punishment, or the rejection of psychology, the common denominator is control.
Evangelicals often claim that therapy “makes people feel like victims”, yet they embrace an even bigger victim narrative—the belief that Christians are under attack, that psychology is a threat, and that questioning church authority is dangerous.
Modern psychology isn’t perfect. Some aspects can promote excessive victimhood narratives. But that doesn’t mean psychology is inherently bad.
What we need is balance:
Healing that acknowledges real harm without trapping people in a victim identity.
Forgiveness as a choice, not a weapon.
Accountability for abusers, not silence for survivors.
Forgiveness should never be used to:
❌ Silence victims
❌ Excuse abuse
❌ Bypass justice
Discipline should never be an excuse for violence. Faith should never be a shield for abusers.
Final Thoughts
Leaving mainstream Christianity wasn’t about rejecting faith—it was about rejecting an abusive system that prioritizes power over people.
If the church truly cared about justice, it would:
✔️ Prioritize abuse prevention over “cheap grace.” ✔️ Hold abusers accountable instead of demanding forced forgiveness. ✔️ Recognize that psychology isn’t a threat—but unchecked religious authority is.
It’s time to stop justifying harm in the name of God.
If you’re questioning a church’s affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), here are a few ways to check:
Ask directly—but be aware that some churches may downplay or obscure their affiliation.
Look for “Great Commission Baptists”—a rebranded term used by some SBC churches to distance themselves from controversy.
Use the SBC church locator tool online.
Investigate whether the church’s pastors were trained at SBC seminaries (e.g., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary).
But here’s the thing: A new approach is emerging—one that focuses on community-driven solutions to address the consequences of institutional failures. Transparency, accountability, and education are now essential for organizations to operate ethically in the 21st century.
As these movements grow, it’s clear that change is happening. If you’re interested in exploring these shifts, especially within religious institutions, check out the upcoming docuseries dropping this Easter Sunday. It will dive deep into the pressing need for institutional reform, highlighting the intersection of religious nonprofits and the modern world. The series will explore the ethical, financial, and leadership issues many faith-based organizations face today. For more information, visit The Religion Business.
Healing After Religious Abuse: A Conversation with Connie A. Baker
Religious abuse can leave deep scars—ones that don’t just fade with time but require intentional healing. In this week’s conversation, I sat down with Connie A. Baker, author of Traumatized by Religious Abuse, for an honest and heartfelt discussion about the journey of healing from spiritual trauma. Connie shares her own experiences, the painful realities of the “second wound,” and how survivors can reclaim their emotional autonomy after years of manipulation and control.
Why Healing Can’t Be Rushed
One of the most profound takeaways from our conversation was the reminder that healing isn’t something to bulldoze through. Connie calls herself a “recovering bulldozer,” always pushing to move forward as quickly as possible. But in trauma recovery, speed can be counterproductive. She embraces the mantra, slow is steady, and steady is fast. For survivors, learning to slow down and allow healing to unfold naturally is essential. Trying to rush past the pain often leads to setbacks, while true recovery requires patience, self-compassion, and time.
The Second Wound: Betrayal After Speaking Out
Connie describes how only 25% of the damage she endured came from the abuse itself—the remaining 75% came from the judgment, rejection, and betrayal she faced when she spoke out. This “second wound” is a devastating reality for many survivors who expect support but instead encounter disbelief, gaslighting, or outright hostility.
I resonated deeply with this. When I began speaking about my own experiences within the church, I was met with accusations of backsliding, manipulation, and spiritual rebellion. Survivors already carry the weight of their trauma, and the added burden of social ostracization can feel insurmountable.
So how do we heal from this betrayal? Connie shares practical steps, including:
Finding safe, validating spaces where your story is heard and honored.
Understanding that others’ disbelief or discomfort does not negate your truth.
Developing strong boundaries to protect yourself from further harm.
Naming Abuse and Embracing Spectrum Thinking
One of the most insidious aspects of religious abuse is the difficulty of naming it. Many survivors downplay their experiences, believing that if they weren’t physically harmed, it “wasn’t that bad.” But Connie emphasizes that minimizing abuse hinders healing.
Abuse exists on a spectrum—from coercive control and emotional manipulation to outright physical harm. Recognizing where an experience falls on that spectrum is crucial for understanding the impact and taking steps toward recovery. This applies beyond religion too—cults, MLMs, and even rigid ideological movements can exhibit the same coercive tactics found in high-control religious environments.
Developing spectrum thinking—moving away from rigid “all or nothing” perspectives—allows survivors to see the full picture. Instead of thinking, “I was never physically hurt, so it wasn’t abuse,” they can acknowledge, “This environment manipulated me, eroded my self-trust, and controlled my emotions. That was harmful.”
Reclaiming Emotional Autonomy
Spiritual abuse often hinges on emotional suppression. Survivors are told that negative emotions—anger, sadness, fear—are sinful or a sign of weak faith. Verses like “Rejoice in the Lord always” and “Be anxious for nothing” are weaponized to shame people into emotional denial.
But emotions provide vital information. Anger tells us when our boundaries have been crossed. Sadness signals loss and the need for healing. Anxiety can be a survival mechanism. Connie reminds us that full wisdom comes from embracing the entire spectrum of human emotions.
Learning to trust yourself again after years of emotional control is no small feat. Some practical steps include:
Allowing yourself to feel emotions without labeling them as good or bad.
Recognizing when religious conditioning is silencing your true feelings.
Using anger constructively—to set boundaries rather than self-destruct.
Wrestling with Worldview: From Spiritual to Materialist and Back Again
Many survivors of religious abuse go through a radical shift in their worldview. Some reject spirituality entirely, embracing a materialist perspective where only the tangible world is real. Others swing to the opposite extreme, seeking comfort in rigid new belief systems.
Connie highlights that this spectrum—from deeply spiritual to strictly materialist—is something many survivors navigate as they attempt to make sense of their experiences. Some turn to hedonism—“Eat, drink, and be merry”—while others find meaning in service, activism, or intellectual pursuits. What matters most isn’t where someone lands on the spectrum but rather the process of wrestling with meaning, truth, and autonomy after religious trauma.
Final Thoughts
Healing from religious abuse is not linear. It’s messy, painful, and often isolating. But as Connie’s journey shows, it’s possible. By embracing the full range of emotions, setting firm boundaries, and recognizing abuse for what it is, survivors can reclaim their autonomy and rebuild a life of freedom and self-trust.
If you’re in the midst of this journey, know that you are not alone. Whether you’re deconstructing, reconstructing, or simply trying to make sense of it all, your experiences are valid. And healing—real, lasting healing—is possible.
What part of this conversation resonated most with you? Drop a comment and let’s keep the discussion going.
And as always: Maintain your curiosity, embrace skepticism, and keep tuning in! 🎙️🔒
For many, the term “deconstruction” has come to represent a deeply personal process of questioning inherited beliefs, especially in the context of religion. While there’s no official “deconstruction community,” it has become a popular buzzword online, flourishing in spaces like Instagram, TikTok, and podcasts. (The New Evangelicals,Dr. Pete Enns (The Bible for Normal People), Eve was framed,Jesus Unfollower, Dr. Laura Anderson just to name a few.) These platforms provide room to question everything and dismantle rigid systems of belief—at least in theory.
But what happens when these communities become echo chambers of their own? Instead of fostering true intellectual freedom, the deconstruction movement often serves as a pipeline into new forms of dogma. Rather than encouraging critical thinking, it frequently replicates the same tribalism and groupthink that so many participants are trying to escape.
This is not growth. It’s trading one set of chains for another.
From Evangelicalism to Progressive Extremism
It’s ironic: people leave far-right evangelical Christianity believing they’ve found freedom, only to stumble into another extreme—progressive leftist ideologies. Why does this happen?
To understand this, we need to step back and look at human nature. Political scientists have found that public opinion is shaped far more by group identity than by self-interest. As Jonathan Haidt explains in The Righteous Mind, politics is deeply tribal. We’re hardwired to align with groups, not necessarily because they offer truth, but because they provide belonging.
This tribal impulse is magnified in the context of deconstruction. Many who leave evangelical Christianity are grappling with disillusionment, loss, and a hunger for community. For some, the progressive left offers a sense of safety and a clear moral framework, mirroring what they once found in their faith. The partisan brain, already trained to see the world in “us versus them” terms, naturally clings to another tribe rather than embracing the discomfort of uncertainty.
Research even suggests that extreme partisanship may be addictive. Our brains are rewarded for performing the mental gymnastics that protect us from beliefs we don’t want to confront. This dynamic—coupled with the fear of being ostracized by a new community—creates an environment where dissenting voices are silenced, and ideological purity becomes the new gospel.
Woke Ideology as a Secular Faith: A Closer Look
John McWhorter argues that wokeism functions like a full-fledged religion. It provides a moral framework that mirrors traditional religious beliefs. Instead of concepts like original sin, wokeism offers “privilege,” positioning those with it as morally compromised. In place of rituals like prayer, adherents perform acts like confessing their biases. And, similar to the salvation promised in traditional religions, salvation in wokeism comes through activism and striving for societal change. For McWhorter, this structure offers a sense of moral clarity and purpose, but the movement’s refusal to tolerate dissent makes it dangerous. He suggests, “What we’re seeing isn’t a quest for justice but a demand for unquestioning orthodoxy.”
Keep your eyes 👀out for that blog post, for it will be coming soon, and it will be called “Oh Woke night, The Sacred Beliefs of the Left”
Fragility and the “Three Great Untruths”
The allure of the deconstruction space isn’t just about leaving religion; it’s about embracing a new narrative. But narratives, like dogmas, can distort reality when they’re based on false premises. Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt explore this in their book The Coddling of the American Mind, identifying three “Great Untruths” that have come to dominate cultural discourse:
“What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.”
“Always trust your feelings.”
“Life is a battle between good people and evil people.”
These untruths encourage fragility, discourage critical thinking, and foster an “us versus them” mentality. They create a world where discomfort is seen as harmful, emotions override evidence, and disagreement is equated with moral failure.
Sound familiar? For anyone who grew up in evangelical circles, these patterns mirror the same rigidity and moral absolutism they left behind. And yet, these same traits are now pervasive in parts of the deconstruction space. This creates an ironic cycle: people flee one form of oppression, only to adopt another, packaged in new language but rooted in the same fear-based thinking.
One of the most seductive ideas in the deconstruction movement is the belief in reason as the ultimate guide to truth. On the surface, this sounds like an antidote to dogma. But here’s the catch: reason isn’t the unbiased tool we like to imagine.
French cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber argue that reasoning didn’t evolve to help us discover truth. Instead, it evolved for argumentation—to persuade others and protect our own beliefs. This explains why confirmation bias isn’t just a quirk of human psychology; it’s a feature of our argumentative minds.
As individuals, we’re not wired to produce open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning—especially when our identity or reputation is on the line. This is why intellectual and ideological diversity is so important in any truth-seeking community. Without it, reasoning becomes a tool for reinforcing tribal loyalty, not uncovering deeper truths.
The philosopher John Stuart Mill captured this in On Liberty, arguing that free speech and open debate are essential for discovering truth. Mill believed that truth isn’t static or simple; it emerges when differing perspectives clash, forcing ideas to be tested, refined, and strengthened. Worshiping reason as an infallible guide is, in itself, a kind of faith—one as flawed and potentially dangerous as religious dogmatism.
The Rise of the Fake Intellectual
2020 and the pandemic didn’t just disrupt our lives; it disrupted how we think about authority and expertise. Franklin O’Kanu, in his Substack UNORTHODOXY, describes the emergence of a new archetype: the “fake intellectual.”
These individuals position themselves as ultimate authorities, wielding data and studies to validate their perspectives. But often, their arguments lack intellectual rigor. They cherry-pick evidence, appeal to emotion, and create the illusion of expertise without true depth.
In the realm of public health and pharmaceuticals, there’s a well-documented phenomenon known as the “revolving door” between regulatory agencies and the pharmaceutical industry. This term refers to the cyclical movement of personnel between roles as regulators or policymakers and positions within the industries they oversee.
What Is the Revolving Door?
The revolving door concept highlights a pattern where high-ranking officials from organizations such as the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) transition into influential roles within pharmaceutical companies, and vice versa. This fluid movement raises critical questions about the integrity and impartiality of regulatory oversight.
The deconstruction space is fertile ground for this phenomenon. Disillusioned individuals, hungry for guidance, are particularly vulnerable to voices that seem authoritative. But the rise of fake intellectuals doesn’t just mislead; it stifles genuine curiosity and critical thinking, replacing one form of blind faith with another.
A Call for Intellectual Diversity
If the goal of deconstruction is freedom, then it must embrace intellectual diversity. True growth happens when we allow our ideas to be challenged—when we resist the urge to label dissenters as enemies and instead engage with them in good faith.
This is why Mill’s defense of free speech is more important than ever. Truth isn’t found in the safety of ideological purity; it’s forged in the discomfort of debate. Communities that discourage dissent are not liberating—they’re suffocating.
Conclusion: Toward True Freedom
Deconstruction should be a crossroads, not a pipeline. It’s an opportunity to question everything—including the ideologies we’re tempted to adopt in place of the ones we’ve left behind.
To truly grow, we must embrace complexity, engage with opposing perspectives, and remain humble in the face of our own limitations. The path to freedom isn’t about finding the “right” tribe—it’s about stepping beyond tribes altogether and seeking truth with courage, curiosity, and an open mind.
Taste0ftruth Tuesdays 