IRITE AND REASON:N HIS Rite and Reason articles last July/August, Prof James Mackey concluded his five- part series, prompted by May's World Atheist Convention in Dublin, with a suggestion that Catholics who are disillusioned with the church should choose to live by the faith of Jesus himself.
Why, other than by accident of birth, should you choose this particular god (small g) out of the many that have been invented? As Homer Simpson said to Marge about attending church: “But what if we’ve picked the wrong religion? Every week we’re just making god madder and madder.”
Prof Mackey’s suggestion also ignores the contradictory nature of Jesus as expressed in different parts of the Bible. To better understand the biblical Jesus, read the books of the New Testament in the sequence in which they were written, instead of the sequence in which they appear in the Bible.
You will see how a human Jewish preacher evolved into part of a newly invented Christian god.
You will also see how his relationship with the main Christian god gradually started earlier and earlier as time went on: from his resurrection in the letters of Paul, to his baptism in the Gospel called Mark, to his conception in the Gospels called Matthew and Luke, to the start of time in the Gospel called John.
Paul wrote his letters first, about 48-62 CE (Common Era) and he wrote almost nothing about the earthly life of Jesus.
The Book of Revelation, with its violent, avenging Jesus, was written in stages between about 60-95 CE. The Gospel called Mark was written about 65-70 CE, and it has no virgin birth and no detail of the resurrection.
At this stage, the Jesus character was still an apocalyptic preacher warning people that the world was coming to an end within the lifetime of those listening to him. The virgin birth and resurrection stories first appear in the Gospels called Matthew and Luke, which were written about 80-85 CE, as was the Book of Acts, some of which contradicts what Paul earlier wrote about himself.
The Gospel called John was written about 90-95 CE and is the first book that suggests Jesus was actually a god (small g), as distinct from a human being who had a special relationship with a god.
By now, people knew the world had not ended within the lifetime of those listening to Jesus, so the message evolved into a more metaphysical long-term one.
The physical resurrection of Jesus is the central tenet of Christianity, but the evidence for this extraordinary claim is nonexistent outside the Bible, and contradictory within it.
In the earliest written biblical reference, Paul says the risen Jesus appeared to more than 500 people at one time. Yet in the earliest written Gospel, called Mark, the allegedly risen Jesus appears to nobody. A different writer later added that part to the Mark story, with the risen Jesus saying that people who believed in him could safely drink poison.
The Gospels called Matthew and Luke, written a decade or more later, were the first to include the risen Jesus physically appearing to people.
But in Matthew, this seems relatively commonplace, with the bodies of many dead people being physically resurrected, coming out of their tombs, and appearing to many people.
None of the other Gospels mentions this incident, or Paul’s remarkable claim that the risen Jesus appeared to more than 500 people at once. Nor is the biblical Jesus exclusively peaceful, or even just.
In the Gospel called Luke, before the Garden of Gethsemane incident, he instructs his disciples to buy swords. In the Book of Revelation, he threatens to kill the children of Jezebel for the sins of their mother.
For a comprehensive analysis of these and similar themes, read the work of Bart Ehrman and other academic textual critics of the New Testament.
Such fantastic and wildly inconsistent stories may have seemed convincing in more primitive times, written as they were as standalone stories in different places for different audiences, many of whom believed the world was coming to an end in their lifetimes.
But the Jesus myth is no basis today on which to build a world view about the nature of reality or how we should live together as sentient beings.
We can best understand the nature of reality by using the scientific method and we can best live together with other sentient beings by empathising with them and seeking to maximise their wellbeing and minimise their suffering.
We can do all of this without believing in Jesus or any other god, as these beliefs distract us from the already complex task of examining truth and morality.
Michael Nugent is chairman of Atheist Ireland