The God Who Wasn't There

[about the Apostle Paul and the gap between Christ's death in circa 33 A.D. and the appearance of the Gospel of Mark, which was written in or after 70 A.D]

Narrator:
Paul wrote lots of letters about Christianity. In fact, he wrote eighty thousand words about the Christian religion. These documents represent almost all we have of the history of Christianity during this decades-long gap. And here's the interesting thing. If Jesus was a human who had recently lived, nobody told Paul. Paul never heard of Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, Herod, John the Baptist. He never heard about any of these miracles. He never quotes anything that Jesus is supposed to have said. He never mentions Jesus having a ministry of any kind at all. He doesn't know about any entrance into Jerusalem, he never mentions Pontius Pilate or a Jewish mob or any trials at all. Paul doesn't know any of what we would call the story of Jesus, except for these last three events. And even these, Paul never places on Earth. Just like the other savior gods of the time, Paul's Christ Jesus died, rose, and ascended all in a mythical realm. Paul doesn't believe that Jesus was ever a human being. He's not even aware of the idea. And he's the link between the time-frame given for the life of Jesus and the appearance of the first Gospel account of that life.

Narrator:
This is why you don't hear many Christian leaders talking about the early days of Christianity. Because once you assemble the facts, the story is that Jesus lived, everyone forgot, and then they remembered. But it gets even shakier than that.

[first lines]

Narrator:
The Earth revolves around the Sun. But it wasn't always that way. The Sun used to revolve around the Earth. It was like that for hundreds of years, until it was discovered to be otherwise, and even for a few hundred years after that. But, ultimately, after much kicking and screaming, the Earth did, in fact, begin to revolve around the Sun. Christianity was wrong about the solar system. What if it's wrong about something else, too? This movie's about what happened when I went looking for Jesus.

[after showing brief interviews of devout, smiling Christians]

Narrator:
Look at how happy Christians are when they're talking about Jesus. How come I'm not this happy? I wanna be this happy. Of course, those aren't the only faces of Christianity.

[Shows photographs of a wild-eyed Charles Manson, a smirking Pat Robertson, the devout Christian Dena Schlosser who cut off her baby's arms for God, authors Reverend Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, and the burning Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas]

Narrator:
So I guess it's kind of a mixed bag.

Narrator:
Meanwhile, back at the manger, the Virgin Mary gave birth without complications.

Narrator:
You ever read that news story about the guy who was found dead and they couldn't figure out how he died, but when they did the autopsy, they found a can of Spam shoved down his throat? Turns out he was a spammer, and that's why he got killed. People like the moral of that story. Which is why I made it up. And when I first posted it on my weblog, I labeled it as fiction.

Robert M. Price:
There are other similar savior figures in the same neighborhood at the same time in history: Mithras, Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz, and so forth, uh, and uh, nobody thinks these characters are anything but mythical. And their stories are so similar, most of them, in fact, having some kind of resurrection or another, um, sometimes even with celebrations after three days and so forth, that it just seems like special pleading to, uh, say, "Oh, well, in this one case, it really happened." The early church fathers understood that this was a problem, because they were already getting the same objections from pagans. They said, "What you say about Jesus, we've been saying about, you know, Dionysus and Hercules all the time, and what's the big deal?" And they didn't believe in them either, any more. And so the Christian apologists, the defenders of the faith, would say, "Well, yeah, but *this* one is true. Satan counterfeited it in advance 'cause he knew this day would come." Boy, I tell you, that tells you two things right there: That even *they* didn't deny that these other Jesus-like characters were before Jesus, or they never would have resorted to something like that. Satan knew it was going to happen and counterfeited it in advance?

Narrator:
[to the film viewers] In case you're wondering: Uh, yes, this remains the explanation to this day.

Narrator:
For thousands of years, humanity has been obsessed with blood sacrifice. Is it an accident that the story of the crucifixion of Jesus gave Christians a suffering hero, whose flesh they could eat and whose blood they could drink? Of course, Christians today aren't obsessed with blood sacrifice any more.

[Shows clips from various movies of a bloody Jesus being tormented]

Narrator:
Oh, well, except that they are.

[about "The Passion of the Christ," "Jesus Christ Superstar," and "The Last Temptation of the Christ]

Narrator:
When it comes to Jesus movies, this movie is far and away the number one choice of Christians. Adjusted for inflation, the singing Jesus made 55 million dollars at the U.S. box office. The horny Jesus made 13 million dollars. But the bloody Jesus? 370 million dollars and still counting.

Narrator:
Mel Gibson could have made his Jesus movie any way he wanted to, and he chose to make it this way. And he was right. Christians said, "Yes, this is the film we want."

James Robison:
I am sick and tired of hearing about all of the radicals and the perverts and the liberals and the leftists and the Communists coming out of the closets! It is time for God's people to come out of the closets, out on the porches, and change America! We must do it!

Jerry Falwell:
We've got to raise up an army!

Narrator:
Let me propose something. Religion does no harm at all. Discuss.

Richard Carrier:
[laughs] Well, of course, you know, evidence of history and even contemporary events refutes that.

Narrator:
Whatever.

Richard Carrier:
Even if we set aside, you know, the obvious - war, conflict, violence that has always plagued society and has gotten particularly worse under the Judeo-Christian religions - um, even if we set that aside, we have ordinary, everyday things that are going wrong. Uh, the sort of dehumanization and mistreatment of homosexuals, for example, is a prominent example, and it's getting worse in this country, actually. It was getting better for a while, but now there's this backlash, and that's, that's bad. That's bad for humanity; and in a religion that encourages that or even allows that, it's wrong.

Narrator:
If certain fundamentalist Christians had their way, we would put gay people to death. And you know what? We should do that. We should strap 'em right to this gurney and lethally inject them, because God does hate fags. The real question is why moderate Christians don't agree with God. Because when it comes to His rules, God is not a moderate.

Narrator:
You ever notice what a bad rap the Inquisition gets? Even some Christians today think it was a bad idea. But how could it be a bad idea? If the Bible is right, aren't the stakes as high as they can be? If a little suffering here on Earth saves more souls for all eternity, isn't that a good thing? The Inquisition was not a perversion of Christian doctrine. The Inquisition was an expression of Christian doctrine.

Narrator:
[ironically] Mel Gibson was right to portray the Jews as evil. These must be the most despicable people on Earth.

[Shows the pages of a Bible]

Narrator:
Unless this book is wrong. And if this book is wrong, what the hell is moderate Christianity? Jesus was only sort of the Son of God? He only somewhat rose from the dead? Your eternal soul is at stake, but you shouldn't make a big deal out of it? Moderate Christianity makes no sense. Is it any wonder that so many people choose the Christian leaders who actually have the courage of their convictions?

Sam Harris:
It really is not an exaggeration to say that there is some significant percentage of the American electorate which, if they turned on their television today and saw that a mushroom cloud had replaced Jerusalem, um, they would see a silver lining in that cloud.

Sam Harris:
Faith really is a conversation-stopper. If somebody says, "It's my faith that life is sacred and God creates life and man should not meddle in it," then that really stops the conversation. There's no - You can't challenge someone further and treat them as though they're drawing their ethics out of The Iliad and The Odyssey, which is really what I think we should be able to do. When the President of the United States says, "I, I plan to appoint common-sense judges who know that our rights are derived from God," I think someone in the White House Press Corps should be able to stand up and say, "How is that different from thinking you're going to appoint common-sense judges who think our rights are derived from Zeus?" And that's clearly an impertinent question, but it's a totally reasonable question.

Narrator:
Yes, I used to be a fundamentalist Christian. I learned the doctrine at my school, Village Christian School in Sun Valley, California. Our school mascot was a Crusader, because our mission was to do battle with the secular world. But not just the secular world. We also knew that Satan worked through other versions of Christianity, and we fought those, too.

[Showing frightening paintings of the damned in Hell]

Narrator:
What is salvation? Well, it's the opposite of damnation. I learned that Hell is a real place where you really do go if you have not been forgiven by Jesus Christ. When the school says that each student will be encouraged to develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, this is what encouragement means: Be forgiven - or be damned. But Jesus was a great guy! He'd forgive you for anything. Lying, murder, Internet pornography, anything. He'd even forgive you for speaking against Jesus himself. But apparently just to make things interesting, Jesus did add one extra rule to the mix. There actually is one unforgivable sin: denial of the Holy Spirit. If you do that, you are eternally damned. It says so right there in the Bible, twice. It's a doubly infallible rule. Deny the Holy Spirit and you can never, ever, go anywhere but Hell. And as luck would have it, the Holy Spirit is the easiest thing in the entire Doctrine to doubt. God is out of your reach, Jesus was two thousand years ago, but the Holy Spirit is with you, right here, right now, so you'd better really actually feel the Holy Spirit. You can't deny it in your thoughts, because Jesus is *in* your thoughts. And if your mind starts to wander to the fact that there's no more evidence for this Holy Spirit than there is for the existence of unicorns? Guess what you may have done. The greatest crime in fundamentalist Christianity is to think. And when I was a Village Christian, I was terrified that I'd accidentally done this.

Narrator:
And I also wonder how the smart, caring, obviously busy people who run Village Christian can teach children these false, terrifying ideas about how the world operates.

Sam Harris:
Our religions are the area in which we tolerate dogma with - completely uncritically. Uh, to deny that the Holocaust ever happened or to assert that you know you're in dialogue with extraterrestrials is pretty much synonymous with, with craziness in our culture. And it is so because we, we challenge people when they believe things strongly without evidence, or in, in contradiction to a mountain of evidence, um, except on matters of faith.

[talking about the Village Christian School's policies]

Narrator:
In the Handbook, there's a statement of faith. Uh, and, uh, it has seven points, and some of them are: "We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God." "We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." "We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation." Tell me, what hard scientific evidence do you have that the world works this way?

Ronald G. Sipus:
[fidgeting] Well, the mistake that a lot of Christians make is trying to convince people that what they believe spiritually... um... can be proven. Now, first of all, there is a lot of historical evidence that Jesus was who he said he was. There's a lot of historical evidence that proves his resurrection. So, if you want, if you're looking for historical and scientific data that proves whether Jesus was and existed and resurrected, there's evidence that, that, that will produce that. But the fact of the matter is, it's, it is a faith issue.

Sam Harris:
If you're trying to get a medical degree, and you have all kinds of ideas about human health that are, that cannot be substantiated by evidence, uh, and you talk about your own strong convictions and yet can't adduce any reasons for them, you are, you know, not only are you not getting a degree, you are just, you are essentially laughed out of the room. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, lives depend on that being the case.

Ronald G. Sipus:
Have I ever seen God? No. Have you? No, no. How do I know He's there? How do I know that what Scripture says is true? Can I prove that with empirical data that says it's true? No. It's a faith issue.

Narrator:
Well, have you thought, then, that maybe teaching eighteen hundred students that the world *does* operate this way and you don't have any evidence that it does - Have you considered that it might be the height of irresponsibility to do that?

Ronald G. Sipus:
No, absolutely not. I think the heighth of irresponsibility is to ignore the reality of God, to, to ignore the reality of the person of Jesus Christ. I mean...

Narrator:
But you're using the word "reality." You just said that there's no empirical evidence.

Ronald G. Sipus:
Oh, there is empirical evidence.

Narrator:
...reality...

Ronald G. Sipus:
Oh, there is.

Narrator:
Oh, now there is?

Ronald G. Sipus:
There is absolutely empirical evidence. No, it's not a matter of *now* there is. I said, a moment ago, there's absolute empirical evidence that Jesus existed. That he was real.

Narrator:
No, I mean about the world working. You said that it's a matter of faith that the world operates, you know, the Holy Spirit that needs to fill you, and that there's going to be a resur- You said, I mean, all of that stuff, you will admit, is not scientifically accurate.

Ronald G. Sipus:
[nodding] Absolutely. Absolutely, that is true.

Narrator:
So since it's *faith*, and since it's *your faith*, I mean, what do you think about teaching a kindergarten child that the world works that way?

Ronald G. Sipus:
I don't have any problem with that at all, because we, it is a matter of saying to young people, "This is what we believe to be true, and every person has to ultimately be accountable for what they believe."

Narrator:
Okay, well, have you thought about maybe adding to this Statement of Faith, here, maybe a Number 8, "Um, by the way, we might be wrong, and you should investigate for yourself"?

Ronald G. Sipus:
No. We, well, well, I, let me tell ya, I wouldn't put that on the Statement of Faith, but we say to all of our kids coming through, "This is something you must believe yourself." Now, there are kids who come to our school who do not believe Christianity. So we're saying, "Okay, that's okay. Make that statement. But now write a position paper that proves that your position is correct."

Narrator:
So the burden of proof is on the student who would say that the world operates according to scientific principles?

Ronald G. Sipus:
[nodding] Mm-hm, mm-hm.

Narrator:
And the rest of the students are basically taught that they must believe that the world operates according to these supernatural principles?

Ronald G. Sipus:
We're not saying that they *must* believe anything. We're saying that here's what the Bible says. Our basis is the Bible. And a person has to decide whether they believe the Bible to be true or whether they believe the Bible to be false.

Narrator:
But this is - The Bible is first century and before symbolic literature. I mean, do you really think it's a good thing to teach children that it's literal?

Ronald G. Sipus:
Well. [Hesitates] Literal interpretation, uh, for example, uh, God created the world in seven days. Does that mean seven 24-hour days? Or does that mean that a day is a million years? [Shaking his head] What does that mean? And there, there are all kinds of arguments that take place within the Christian community about that.

Narrator:
Well, that's true, but I was taught very specific things here. For example, it says here in the Handbook, "The principal emphasis of the school is to encourage and to lead students to accept Jesus Christ -"

Ronald G. Sipus:
Can, can we stop, can we stop for a minute?

Narrator:
"... as their Savior and to commit themselves to Christ as Lord of their lives." I mean...

Ronald G. Sipus:
We need to stop for a minute.

Ronald G. Sipus:
We need to stop for a minute.

Narrator:
Why?

Ronald G. Sipus:
I wanna ask you a question off the, off the camera.

Narrator:
Why off? I mean, I'll answer it. I'm here. You can ask me anything. What I wanted to talk to you about was, I mean, ideas - I was taught at this school that you would be eternally damned if you denied the Holy Spirit.

Ronald G. Sipus:
Brian, you know what you've done? You've been dishonest in setting up this interview.

Narrator:
What, what is dishonest? I wrote you an email and I...

Ronald G. Sipus:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and there's... We've been spending the last five to seven minutes trying to make you feel good about what you feel you were punished about here. Not what you told me we were gonna talk about.

Narrator:
I told you we were gonna talk about the education of children.

[Sipus rises, adjusts his tie, and walks off-screen]

Narrator:
And I'm here to talk about the educa- Oh, now you're ending the interview?

Narrator:
Mm-hm.

Narrator:
Why? Why are you ending the interview? All right.

[last lines]

Narrator:
I was born again at least three times, I think. I gotta hold up the camera myself. [His face comes into view, with the camera apparently perched on his shoulder] Here in this chapel, where I first accepted Jesus as my personal Savior, I just want to say one thing: "I deny the Holy Spirit."

[During the final credits]

Narrator:
All right, let me give you a scenario.

Richard Carrier:
Okay.

Narrator:
You're dead. Uh, I hope of old age.

Richard Carrier:
Right.

Narrator:
I'm not talking about the Holy Jesus Lamb versus the beefsteak war. Let's just say, this is, this time, it's old age.

Richard Carrier:
[laughing] Right, sure, sure.

Narrator:
And you find yourself in Hell, and you're being roasted on a pit, and every hour, on the hour, you have to suck Satan's greasy cock or whatever they make you do down there. I hear it's really bad.

Richard Carrier:
[laughs] Yeah, right.

Narrator:
Don't you wish you would have believed? It would have been so easy, just to believe.

Richard Carrier:
Well, no, because it wouldn't really be any better. If I had to sit in Heaven forever, knowing that there are these people - millions and millions, probably billions of people - suffering these eternal horrible torments, and there was nothing I could ever do for them... that, to me, would be Hell.

[During the final credits]

Alan Dundes:
There are jokes about: The Pope dies, and, uh, goes to Heaven, and Saint Peter greets him, as Saint Peter often does in these stories, and says, you know, "You've led a very holy life on Earth, and, uh, if there's anything you want here in Heaven, we'd be glad to accommodate you. We'd like to reward you for your faithful service on Earth. Is there anything we can do for you?" The Pope says, "Well," he says, "you know, I've never seen the original form of the Bible." Saint Peter says, "Okay, fine." He ushers him into a little room. There on the table is the original version of the Bible, and he leaves him alone in there to browse through it. After a few minutes, he hears the Pope exclaim. "Oh," he says, "Oh, my goodness," he says. "The word is *celebrate*!"

[During the final credits]

Alan Dundes:
When my Jesus paper came out, I got a few nasty letters, saying, basically, that people are trying to pray that I'll try to be saved. But I have not yet been saved.

Narrator:
Any chance?

Alan Dundes:
[shaking his head and grinning] I'm happy the way I am. I'm happy with my life!

[During the final credits]

Sam Harris:
Because it is taboo to criticize religious faith and any convictions born of religious faith, we have the spectacle - really, the travesty - of college-educated politicians endorsing social policies; to take one example, blocking stem cell research. We're impeding it, impeding its funding, at least on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, on the basis of metaphysical dogmas. In this case, the dogma that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception. And this leads people, who should know better, to stand on the floor of the Senate or in the Oval Office and speak, uh, First Century platitudes which are meant to serve as ethical arguments against what is undoubtedly one of the most promising lines of research in biology: to remediate a host of, you know, scores, potentially, of terrible, debilitating diseases.

[During the final credits]

Ronald G. Sipus:
It really is a faith issue. People say, "Well, uh, what's the difference between evolution as a fact and creationism as a fact?" The truth of the matter is, neither one are facts. Because if, if... You can't replicate either one. You, you can see evidence of evolution between species, but you can't see it from species to species, from, from any of that. But, but it is, it is, uh, it is not scientifically without flaw, itself. Uh, creationism has all kinds of evidences, scientific evidence, that more, the more, the more we find about science, the more we see that it is, it is, it is accurate, but my personal belief in Jesus Christ is a faith issue.

Narrator:
So, obviously the United States is going to become a theocracy...

Richard Carrier:
[laughs] Hopefully not.

Narrator:
...you and I are going to be slaughtered; is this going to happen in ten years or twenty years? How long's it going to take before we get killed?

Richard Carrier:
[re theologian Benjamin Wiker] The whole thrust of his argument is that atheists are responsible for all the evils of the world, atheists have taken over government and are conspiring to oppose religion, we have to get rid of these guys. And he slanders atheists with all these ridiculous claims about how immoral they are, and so forth, just as, you know, Hitler did against the Jews.

Narrator:
[deadpan] I hardly ever eat babies. And when I do, they're babies nobody wants.

Richard Carrier:
Or have sex with babies. Or have sex with chickens! That's one of the things that, this guy has this, Benjamin Wiker has this obsession that he thinks, if atheism gets its way, everybody will be buggering sheep.

[From televised footage]

Dean Wycoff:
I, I agree with capital punishment and I believe that homosexuality is one of those that could be, uh, coupled with murder and, and other sins. It would be the government that, um, sits upon this land who would be executing the homosexuals.

Richard Dawkins:
Now, you raised the question of religious people saying that atheists don't have any particular reason to be good and any particular reason to choose morality rather than immorality. If that were true, wouldn't it be a terrible indictment of the, um, weakness of the morality which religious people claim is the only reason they're being moral: is that they're frightened of God. Whereas, atheists who are moral - and there's no evidence whatever that atheists are less moral than religious people - atheists are moral because they think it's a good thing to be moral, they've worked it out or they've thought about the underlying moral philosophy, rather than being scared into being moral by a kind of Great Headmaster in the Sky who is keeping an eye on them.

Narrator:
Yeah, in more than one debate that I'm aware of - in fact, this happens quite a bit - what a theist will say an atheist will be prone to do is raping babies, being completely selfish, killing, murdering, uh, and it does kind of make you wonder if that's how, if that's what *they* would do, if *they* didn't have a god to keep them in line. So, who knows, maybe we're lucky that they do.