Can God Create a Rock too heavy for Him to Lift?

By Brian D. Wilson

Many of us have heard the line about whether or not it is possible for God to make a rock too heavy for Him to lift. It is intended to pose an unsolvable conundrum to the three great monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Monotheism states that God is omnipotent (possessing all power). So if God has the power to do all things, and certainly creating a rock is something, then God should indeed be able to create a rock too heavy for Him to lift. However if He did so He would no longer be omnipotent, for how can God be all powerful and yet be unable to lift the rock He just created. Yet it is only Monotheism that must wrestle with this issue.

Polytheists (those who believe in many gods) don’t have this problem. The Greek gods share power, and no god ever possesses all power. Not even Zeus. In fact Zeus must be careful how he deals with the other gods since the wrong political move may cause a war that spills over onto Man’s tiny Earth. Polytheists say that Zeus cannot make such a rock, not because Zeus has all power but precisely because he does not.

The answer to this conundrum is not profound, but obvious once you reflect upon it. A category fallacy is unknowingly being committed by those who offer it. They are misunderstanding what power is. Power is an ability to do something, but that is not all it is. Power is always expressed by something, and how that power is expressed depends upon the nature of the some-thing expressing it. One way to understand a thing’s nature is through a term the ancient Greeks called Telos, which just means the function for which a thing was made, its design. Consider a toaster.

A toaster is designed to toast. If a toaster could no longer toast we would say that it lost the only ability (power) for which it was designed, and when compared to other toasters, the damaged one would be less powerful because it no longer possessed a power the others did. Likewise living things, and inanimate objects, have abilities that other creatures and objects do not. Brief cases are not designed to toast, and so in a particular way the brief case lacks a power the toaster does. Lions cannot breath under water as fish do, and so lack that particular ability.

Here I think it would be tempting to say, “Yes but aren’t you making my case as you speak. Isn’t God also lacking an ability, namely the ability to create a rock too heavy for Him to lift?”

This brings us back to our category fallacy mentioned at the outset. God is in a category all by Himself. Being in this category God’s existence excludes the possibility of certain other things from existing. The way the philosophers express this is in a law of Logic called the Law of Non-Contradiction. It simply means (A) cannot be (A) and NOT (-A) at the same time, in the same sense, in the same space, or in the same relationship. I cannot be five-foot two and six feet tall at the same time, neither can I be a married-bachelor.

Likewise, God being the sort of creature He is, excludes the possibility of other things existing. God cannot make a rock too heavy for him to lift because there is no such thing as a category labeled Rocks too heavy for God to lift. Think about it. If there were such a rock then God would not exist. His omnipotence (all power) precludes it. On the other hand, if God does not exist then the challenge is meaningless. God’s inability to create such a rock is actually not an inability because no such rocks exist. It is like saying that a hunter is not the greatest hunter in the world because the hunter failed to shoot a unicorn. Since unicorns do not exist the limitation is falsely applied to the hunter.

In fact there are many things that God cannot do. He cannot lie, He cannot destroy Himself, He cannot make square circles, He cannot make 2 + 2 = 7. These are equally foolish challenges. Lying is a deficit, it is a minus in human nature, not an addition to a creatures moral power. In such a case a person would be asking God to be less than morally perfect (Omni-benevolent).

Square-circles are logical contradictions, as are contradictions in mathematical operations. God cannot make 2 + 2= 7 because there is no Universe which God made where such a sum exists. The laws governing Logic, as well as the contradictions that result from them, flow from God’s nature, they are not above Him. Another way to put it would be to say that if God ever did suddenly cease to exist, then the laws of Logic as well as everything else in the world would also cease to exist. Christian Philosophers and Theologians call this dependence of the Universe upon God’s existence Providential Subsistence.

Before anyone asks any questions of power it is imperative first to ask what power is, who or what is expressing that power, and what categories are involved both of the creature manifesting that power and the type of power. Otherwise we run the risk of making much adu about nothing, in this case making an argument about God that does nothing to challenge the logical soundness of his existence.

Was Christianity an impediment to scientific progress?

By Brian D. Wilson

When I began college 20 years ago as an atheist I remember that what bothered me most about Christians were their foolish superstitions. No doubt the Bible was helpful in providing children with a moral foundation to build on, but so did Peter Pan. Christianity was a dreaded hemlock force fed upon Europe. Its leaders elevated superstition to the level of theological truth and plunged Europe into the Dark Ages.

This all fit very well into a theory of History I called The Refining Pot Theory. Just as the metal smith heated the refining pot and purged the iron of its impurities, so humanity purged itself of its superstitions. Beliefs like “The sound of thunder is really the gods bowling” were humanity’s chief impediment to intellectual progress, and it was Man’s insatiable curiosity (apart from His religion) that began chipping away at this superstition.

First Man discarded his beliefs in magic potions, charms, and spells, then of the animistic spirits of the water and air, then finally of the greater gods themselves. For each shedding of superstition Man was rewarded with insights which slowly pulled Him away from His imaginary religious world and into reality. Thus secular Man pushed humanity kicking and screaming into the Modern World in spite of a Church that held it back at every turn.

However as I began my freshman year in college the validity of my theory began falling apart. I wrote an essay entitled Tearing Down The Wall of Ignorance, where I argued that, “Had Christianity’s presence not been so powerful and persistent Europe might have avoided the Dark Ages and continued on with the scientific progress of the Greeks and Romans who gave Europe the gifts of Logic, basic Empiricism, and Geometry.”

Yet as I explored a little deeper I soon discovered that Greco-Roman civilization was at least as superstitious if not more superstitious than Medieval Christian Europe. The Greeks believed the Universe was filled with countless deities, assigning to them power over the cycles of nature. To my horror they even assigned consciousness to the Universe itself.

For example Plato taught that the Demiurge (a god personifying pure reason) created the Universe as a living thing. In the Timeaus he said the world has a soul, and “Although it is solitary it is able by reason of its excellence to bear itself company, needing no other acquaintance or friend but is sufficient to itself.” Many of Greece’s finest intellectuals conceived of the stars as a host of celestial beings. Their greatest mind Aristotle taught that celestial bodies move in circles because of their affection for one another and because of their love of having a purpose.

So how could I say on the one hand that superstition was the bane of human progress, then praise the superstition ridden Greco-Roman culture for all the scientific achievement it bestowed upon us? Hadn’t my observation disproved my very theory about the relationship between religious superstition and progress? How was it that Christian superstition supposedly brought intellectual retardation to Europe, but Greco-Roman superstition had no affect on scientific progress?

I toyed for a time with the notion that Christianity possessed a unique kind of superstition which made it far more dangerous to progress than anything which the Greeks suggested. This turned out to be silly. Some of Greece’s most famous intellectuals believed that every time lightening bolts hit the ground Zeus was throwing them from the sky. Yet I was maintaining somehow that Medieval Christians who believed God created the Earth’s weather systems, set them into motion, then left them to work on their own, independent of a deity, was responsible for the Dark Ages.

Many years earlier the famous atheist Bertrand Russell encountered a similar conundrum. He sat perplexed in his office one morning in 1922 wondering why there was such a lack of science in the China of his day (Bertrand Russell: The Problem of China). After all Christianity made no significant inroads there, plus the religion that Chinese intellectuals produced was remote, impersonal, and did not rely on superstitious concepts. As Princeton sociologist Rodney Stark pointed out, “From the perspective of Russell’s militant atheism, China should have had science long before Europe” (For the Glory of God).

Russell was right that religious beliefs can in principle impede intellectual progress. Yet not all religious beliefs are the same. What Russell failed to consider was how Christian Theology not only assisted, but was a central reason for, Europe’s forward progress. In fact, far from freeing Europe from the Dark Ages, Greece and China actually slowed and at times even impeded scientific advance.

China

In China the common people have always had a huge pantheon of spirits and of lesser gods. Their intellectuals however “Prided themselves on following god-less religions, wherein the supernatural is conceived of as an essence or principle governing life, but which is impersonal, remote, and definitely not a being” (Stark: For the Glory of God). The Tao is an essence, for example, and Yin and Yang are both principles.

The problem with being-less principles and essences to the question of scientific progress is that they cause nothing, do nothing, and explain nothing. The Universe simply is. That’s it. The mysteries of the Cosmos are too subtle and sublime to be penetrated, the Taoist would tell you. In that case why develop science in the first place?

Marxist historian Joseph Needham, a man who devoted most of his life and several volumes to the technological history of China, came to a shocking conclusion after years of attempting to explain why an otherwise literate civilization failed to bring about a culture of science. China’s inability to bring about science was due to its religion, specifically the inability of its intellectuals to believe in a personal and conscious god, which in turn kept the Chinese from positing the existence of Laws of nature.

As a result Needham concluded, “The conception of a divine celestial law giver imposing ordinances on non-human nature never developed. It was not that there was no order to nature for the Chinese, but rather that it was NOT an order ordained by a rational personal being, and hence there was no conviction that rational personal beings would be able to spell out in their lesser earthly languages the divine code of laws which that god had decreed aforetime” (Needham: Science and Civilization in China, 6. Vols. 1954-84).

Greece

As for the Greeks, their gods, like humans, were subject to the whims and tides of the Universe. Plato’s Demiurge god tried to construct a perfectly good and ordered Cosmos but was confined to working with the

Universe’s imperfect matter. Therefore true cosmic order could never be achieved. In an order-less universe why look for scientific laws? Other gods controlled seasonal forces. If gods control seasons why develop Meteorology?

The Greeks also conceived of the Cosmos as existing in endless repeating cycles. In Aristotle’s On the Heavens he said “The same ideas recur to men not once or twice but over and over again.” In the Politics he wrote that the same things in the history of the world have “been invented several times over the course of ages, or rather times without number.” Parmenides believed all perceptions of change are illusions and that the Cosmos was actually in a static state of perfection. In a perfect Universe where cause and change are illusions why look for explanations of phenomena? Science, in other words cannot flourish without a preexisting theory in the possibility of progress.

The Christian Difference

In 1925, three years after Bertrand Russell sat perplexed in his office over China, his friend Alfred North Whitehead had come to a very different conclusion concerning Christianity’s impact on Modern Science. In one of his famous Lowell Lectures at Harvard Whitehead commented, “Science arose in Europe because of the widespread faith in the possibility of science… derivative from medieval theology.”

Princeton’s Rodney Stark commenting upon the matter noted, “Whitehead’s pronouncement shocked not only his distinguished audience but Western intellectuals in general once his lectures were published. How could this great philosopher and mathematician, coauthor with Bertrand Russell of the landmark Principia Mathematica (1910-1913), make such an outlandish claim?” The reason is that Whitehead knew better. He had a far deeper grasp of Christian history and theology which led him to say,

I do not think, however, that I have even yet brought out the greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement. I mean the inexpugnable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with it’s antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles. Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without hope. It is this instinctive conviction, vividly poised before the imagination, which is the motive power of research: that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled. How has this conviction been so vividly implanted in the European mind?

When we compare this tone of thought in Europe with the attitude of the other civilizations when left to themselves, there seems but one source of its origin. It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality. Remember that I am not talking of the explicit beliefs of a few individuals. What I mean is the impress on the European mind arising from the unquestioned faith of centuries. By this I mean the instinctive tone of thought and not a mere creed of words.

Whitehead ended with the remark that the images of gods found in other religions, especially in Asia, are too impersonal or too irrational to have sustained science. Sometimes our extreme focus keeps us from grappling with the obvious. With all of my railings against a supposedly anti-intellectual Church something had never occurred to me; the birth of science occurred at just one time in history, the late 16th Century, and in one place, Western Europe, and only then did it spread to the rest of the nations of the Earth. Science had more than 3 millennia to potentially develop in Mesopotamia, Greece, or China, but it did not. Yet it did develop in the most heavily Christianized place on the planet, Western Europe, where Christian ideals penetrated every aspect of life. How could this have occurred if Christian religion was an impediment to scientific progress?

This was possible because of Christian Theism. God was a conscious and rational soul and therefore Christians contemplated that if God is rational then the world which he created must be rational. The early church searched for the concept of laws of nature precisely because their theology taught them that such Laws existed and these Laws likely governed the Universe as well.

Another factor was the Church’s dualism. Christians have traditionally believed equally in two worlds. One world contained physical matter, and the other world contained immaterial objects like numbers, angels, Laws of logic, ideas, mathematical powers, demons, souls, and God. Furthermore God was a being which stood outside of time and space and brought the Universe into being.

This meant that there must be an apparatus by which God, being separate from the Cosmos, set the Cosmos into motion. Therefore an answer was sought which tried to explain how the Universe could work without God constantly being in the middle of it. This picture of God as on the outside, but intimately concerned with the Cosmos, drove Medieval Christians to seek out Natural Laws, again because of the church’s theology, not in opposition to it. Far from being an impediment, a dualistic Christian belief meant that you could not always appeal to the supernatural to explain the natural, since God created both worlds and each had its mechanisms to be discovered.

What is Science?

What Russell failed to recognize is that not all progress is science. What China and Greece produced in all it's centuries was simple engineering, basic empiricism, or craft. Science on the other hand, is, “A method utilized in organized efforts to formulate explanations of nature, always subject to modifications and corrections through systematic observations.” (Stark; The Victory of Reason).

It is not that the various inventions of these cultures were not ingenious or impressive. On the contrary, societies like Greece and China did make great progress without science even being present. This is because science is NOT a synonym for progress. It is merely one of many types of human progress. Engineering, craft, and economic experimentation, none of which are science, can all better a culture. I think most of us if forced to live either in 5th Century Greece during its Golden Age, or Greece’s Stone Age, we would choose the 5th Century, even though at neither time did Greece actually have science according to most historians of Science.

Since Science is system composed of many elements that must simultaneously be present most philosophers and historians of Science place Science’s birth at the end of the 16th Century. This again explains why you can have so many beneficial advances in a culture, but it would be a mistake to call thsese innovations science.

The historical record bears a certain pattern out. From the birth of Greece and Rome, all the way to the 16th Century you have either one or another element of Science operating, whether it be observations, the systemization of those observations, theorizing, or various systems of logical deduction. All of these parts of Science operating independently certainly had their beneficial effects on culture.

Yet part of the reason why the Scientific Revolution (1543) was called a revolution was that these elements all began to be integrated into a single entity called Science. In this regard you may speak of the world before and after Science without being too inaccurate.

China was the first civilization to record astronomic observations yet for more than 5,000 years it lacked any theorizing that explained either the composition or motion of the stars. Greek mathematicians commented extensively on numbers and their relationships and values, but made no systematic attempts to link them to empirical based conclusions.

Greece had an empirical apparatus, but failed to link it to theoretical models which attempted to explain nature, nor did the Greeks link observations to systematic corrections or think in terms of Laws of Nature. They had logic, yet their world view made their rationalism impotent due to a strong determinism about the fate of matter and Man.

They were also impeded by a picture of a cyclical Universe that made the idea of progress through time impossible, and they had a philosophy that pictured a chaotic world that was subject to the whims of the gods. The Romans had similar cultural impediments which explains why without science they were able to build magnificient aqueducts.

Christianity was not an impediment to human progress. I think the biggest obstacle to understanding this is our short memories and because of an increasing lack of historical education. From the very beginning modern science bore the very architecture of the Christian mind. It was the Christian Rene Descartes in 1596 who was among the first to lay down the principles of the scientific method in his work Discourse on Method.

The brilliant French and Catholic mathematical prodigy Blaise Pascal (1632-62) would follow. He founded modern Probability Theory, advanced Differential Calculus, modern Hydraulics, and was the inventor of one of the first mechanical calculators. Then came George Cuvier (1769-1832), the great French naturalist who founded the modern principles of Comparative Anatomy.

Christian Carolus Linneaus (1707-1778) became the founder of modern Taxonomy. Michael Faraday (1791-1867) would discover electro-magnetic induction. It was the Christian Monk Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) who laid down the foundational tenets of modern genetics. The list could be enlarged, but the point remains, far from being an impediment to progress Christianity has been one of the greatest assets to it.

Answering Michael

By Brian D. Wilson

Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Dennis Prager recently interviewed Michael J. Behe, professor of Biochemistry at Lehi University. His book The Edge of Evolution: the Search for the Limits of Darwinism, has stirred up considerable controversy. Behe is one of a growing number of proponents of a new scientific theory called Intelligent Design.

Intelligent Design (ID) states that an intelligent designer, rather than random mutation, is the best explanation for the universe’s existence when one observes the complex structures it possesses. Behe argues that intelligent agents leave behind evidence of design which can be distinguished from naturally occurring phenomena.

For example, if I came across a rock in the desert I would not think a human being made it. If however I came across a Rolex watch, it would be reasonable to suppose that an intelligent mind made it, and implausible to assume that time, wind, sand, and geological forces could have made it. Behe calls this design factor Irreducible Complexity which he describes in his 1996 book, Darwins’ Black Box as “a single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.” Therefore all the parts are mutually interdependent, and as a result it would be impossible for that object to have come about by gradual incremental changes over time as evolution suggests.

Dr. Behe’s comments were not very compelling, however, to a caller named Michael who insisted that Intelligent Design was not science because it failed to meet the criterion of verification. However, after listening to Michaels exchange with Behe it became clear that he was not really speaking about the idea of verification. Instead he was espousing something called Verificationism, a philosophy of science which denies the existence of things that cannot be verified and says, as famously argued by atheist Antony Flew, that unverifiable statements are equivalent to meaningless statements.

Michael’s objection is false for two reasons. First, ID can be tested. Behe explained on the air that by using the standard tools of observation you can determine if something is a product of nature or is irreducibly complex. There are only two ways a thing can be caused, by an intelligent agent, or by nature. If an object is irreducibly complex it certainly could not have been caused by nature. The only option left is creation by an intelligent mind. Therefore the position is perfectly verifiable, that is unless someone can come up with a category other than being caused by an intelligent mind, or caused by the laws of physics acting on matter.

Secondly, the Verificationism espoused by Michael violates the very logical integrity upon which science depends. There is a difference between verification and Verificationism. Verification is a tool of science. It is what we do when we use our five senses. I hypothesize, “Perhaps there is an elephant in this room.” I use my sight to verify that statement and conclude that there is an elephant in the room.

Verificationism goes much further stating that if you cannot verify something it doesn’t exist. But does that really make sense? If an astronomer hypothesizes that there is a planet somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy I understand that until verification is made, there may or may not be a planet in that vicinity. But it makes no sense to say, “Because you have no evidence for the planet in Andromeda it must not exist.” Clearly this view misrepresents empirical method.

Scientists gave up Verificationism long ago because if accepted the theory would potentially destroy science. Take the Copernican Principal which states that Earth occupies no special place in the universe, or even the idea that the laws of physics we see in our solar system apply everywhere in the Cosmos. Many scientists believe the first idea, and nearly all believe the second. Yet no reputable scientist believes he can verify either of these principals even though they are essential to Astro-Physics.

Antony Flew’s argument fairs no better. Flew contends that when a Christian says, “God exists,” such a statement isn’t merely untrue, it’s meaningless, like the gibberish statement “I floog roft tee rabbal miccan sibyl yest!”

When Flew says God cannot be verified, he means by the five senses. Flew believes that only matter exists, and that the only type of information that exists is sensory information.

Yet I know of no scientist who has proven that only material things exist. I assure you my thought of the color red will be found no where inside my cortex though you search vainly for it. Then does my thought of red not exist? How much does my thought of red weigh? My aunt went to the optometrist not long ago. She complained that the eye chart appeared fuzzy. Though if you cut open my aunt’s brain and eye balls you will find no fuzziness anywhere either.

Since the existence of immaterial things such as thoughts, numbers, or God cannot be ruled out it is even stranger that verificationists attempt to discredit their existence by using the five senses. That is like the man who says there is an invisible rabbit in his room. Then A verificationist shows up one day and tells him, “No invisible rabbit lives in your room! I know because I looked everywhere for him.” None of this, mind you, proves God exists. What it does illustrate is that you do not disprove God’s existence by saying he cannot be sensed.

More importantly even if God did not exist no one in their right mind could argue that the idea “God exists” was meaningless. In fact the atheist’s own objection to the statement proves it has meaning. How is it possible for someone to object to a statement that made no sense? "Rib Snab Gart babble to you sir!!" "How dare you" the other replies "That's not true, I do not believe it for a minute."

Consider Flew’s argument another way. Suppose I said, “Julius Caesar spat in a puddle in Gaul on the 5th of May 55 B.C. at 11 A.M.” No one could verify that statement. However according to Mr. Flew because this statement cannot be verified it is meaningless. Clearly though the statement has meaning.

In conclusion if our caller Michael wants to disqualify Intelligent Design he is going to have to come up with a better argument. In the on-going debate between Materialists and Intelligent Design advocates it is important to keep the doors of communication open. While I appreciate Michael’s effort in the discussion, he seems only to have successfully expressed his own confusion over not only Empiricism and verification, but the idea of I.D itself.

The Blind Men and the Elephant:

Can Christians Learn Anything from this Story?

By Brian D. Wilson

I was a Cultural Relativist in community college when I first heard the Indian folk tale The Blind Men and the Elephant. Some years later I read a devastating critique of the Relativist's interpretation of this story from apologist Greg Koukle. I am indebted to him, because one day I found my self utilizing his masterful argument in defense of Christianity, with a few twists of my own. For those interested in Mr. Koukle’s original article entitled The Trouble With the Elephant go to his website at www.str.org.

I sat in a café near a gentleman who was telling his friend why Christianity was a false religion. “The problem with Christianity is its self righteous assertion of truth. They actually believe that something called truth exists out there and that it can be pulled from a magic tree like fruit or something. They think they have exclusive claim to truth, when in actuality we all have only a piece of it. When we put all the pieces together then we have ultimate truth.”

His animosity toward Christianity came as no surprise. After all Christ’s statement, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through me” is going to have a hard time meshing with Religious Pluralism, a philosophy that by its very nature believes all religions are equally true. I sat sipping my tea as the gentleman then recounted this story to his friend.

“One day a group of blind beggars decided to go to the city, ‘Surely we will make more money there’ one said. So they all agreed and off they went.” For weeks they traveled through the jungle. Finally they arrived in Delhi the capitol and began begging. They were astonished, for in only an hour they had made enough for 3 days of food. Then the youngest blind man hit upon an idea ‘Why don’t we go and find an elephant!’ None of them had encountered one before.

They walked, and eventually found themselves in the center of the city near the grand palace where an imperial elephant was being bathed. “With great anticipation the blind men surrounded him and began to feel him. ‘I know what an elephant is like.’ one said, ‘He is like a great wall of the palace.’ Another, touching the tip of the elephant’s tusk said, ‘No, you have it all wrong. He is like a great spear.’ On and on they went until they began arguing. The shouting became so loud that it woke the Raja from his noon day nap in the palace next door. He came out onto the terrace and said, “Can’t a person get any sleep in this blasted city! What’s the problem?’”

“One man began to explain the situation, but the quarrel, now growing louder, resumed. Finally the Raja said ‘Silence! Gentlemen you all are experiencing just a piece of the elephant. You each have a part of the truth. When you combine your experiences together then you will know what an elephant is like. Now go away and ponder what I have said.’ And the Raja went back to bed. And the Blind men thought about what the Raja had said.”

I understood what our story teller was getting at. The elephant represented the universe, and the blind men were all of us. As for the truth, it is so out of reach. Humanity never gets the big picture.

Leaning over from the next table I said to the story teller, “That was a really cool story. I was curious though, which character represented you? Were you the Raja, or one of the blind men?” He was perplexed so I tried to elaborate. “In your tale the Raja had a perfect view of the elephant. He alone possessed knowledge of the way the elephant truly was. But I couldn’t help over hearing you tell your friend earlier that no one has the complete truth. So which character are you?” “Definately one of the blind men” he replied.

“Fair enough, but I am still confused. You told your friend that Christianity is a false religion. But as you say, if you are not the Raja, how did you come to know with such certainty that you are right and Christians are wrong?”

Again he looked confused, so I offered an illustration, “One 6th of the Earth’s population is either Protestant or Catholic. You disagree with the perspectives of both of these sects of Christianity, right?” “Absolutely” He answered. “So if you are certain that 1 out of 6 people on the planet are wrong, how did you escape the blindness from which the rest of humanity suffers? You’re one of the blind man too, right?”

The light bulb finally went on. He understood that he could not in one breath deny the possibility of humanity reaching religious truth, then in the next declare that all Christians were wrong.

What the story teller failed to consider was that his belief that all religions lead to heaven is itself a claim by one particular individual to actually know what the big picture looks like. You cannot have your religious cake and eat it too.

This made his declaration to me a moment later of Christian arrogance all the more strange. Apparently the light bulb that lit for the story teller wasn't the revelation I initially thought. He hadn't completely realized that in fact he was claiming to be the all knowing Raja, even if he did not want to admit it. He informed me that I was arrogant and oppressive because of the beliefs I held.

So I asked him, "Why do you say that?" His reply, "Because you think you are right and everyone else is wrong." I answered "So basically I am arrogant because I think I possess the truth, and do not think you are right." So I continued, "Tell me then, you disagree with me don't you?" He reluctantly answered, "Yeah." "So why is it that when I think I am right, I am arrogant, but when you think you are right. . . .you are just right?" He didn't answer. The story teller had enough and went on his way.

The irony is that Christians have never made claims to supreme knowledge. We turn to Jesus precisely because we are blind. We are doubtful that we understand ourselves very well let alone the Cosmos. As Paul says, “We see through a glass dimly…”

That is why we need the Raja from the palace to come down and make clear for us those things that are not. Jesus has always been the Raja for us because we do not think we are qualified for the job. Are you?

Can a Train Ride Explain God’s

Eternal Nature?

By Brian D. Wilson

Perhaps the biggest problem that the atheist has with God is that He is eternal. The picture of an alpha and omega standing like Atlas defiantly astride the Universe outside the chain of cause and effect deeply troubles him, and usually elicits that most common of objections, “Who made God?”

The demand appears reasonable at first glance. The believer even seems to be in a logical dilemma; (1) Everything that exists requires a cause, (2) God exists, (3) Therefore God requires a cause. When the believer inevitably refuses to relinquish God’s eternality it merely reaffirms the atheist’s conviction that the believer is being intellectually dishonest.

Yet hasn’t the atheist said all along that the Universe itself is eternal, that there is no need for a God-cause because the Universe never had a beginning. The atheist’s syllogism is after all unyielding. The Universe is something that exists. Therefore, it requires a cause. And if it requires a cause then it could not be eternal.

If the Universe has always existed then the syllogism is false. Consequently, even if God’s existence were false, it could not be so because of the eternal. Neither will saying another Universe created this one solve anything. It only delays the inevitable, for the first premise of the syllogism declares that what ever exists requires a cause.

The real problem is not over the eternal, which even the atheist concedes is, at least in principle, reasonable. The real question is whether God, or the Universe, is the best candidate for being that necessary and eternal object.

I do not think the Universe is that eternal necessary something, a conclusion I came to some years ago while waiting for my train to leave the station in southern California. By now I am sure you are asking what a train ride has to do with Cosmology and the question of origins. To explain let’s look at an uncontested fact of Astronomy.

Neither the theist nor atheist denies that the Universe is expanding since Edwin Hubble made that discovery in 1929. The important thing about this observation is that each particular material thing in the expanding Universe, right down to the smallest atom, is causally dependent upon some cause that preceded it, in order to explain the motion or change that that thing is exhibiting.

No doubt some will get caught up in the debate as to whether or not Hubble’s expanding Universe proves that the Universe was the product of a tiny singular point which exploded into being, or as Fred Hoyle said in 1948, that the Universe has always been expanding, and never exploded into anything.

However we must not miss the force and necessity of the premise being offered. Neither an expanding Cosmos, nor a Cosmos with a definite beginning, is free from the principle that each and every phenomena (growth, expansion, motion, etc.) in the Cosmos is dependent upon some set of material causes which preceded it. This is especially true for someone who supposes that the only real substance underlying the Universe is matter. This fact is important for our next step.

Suppose that our Universe were a pair of train tracks that extend in each direction for eternity. Suppose further that a train sat on these tracks which represented the expanding matter of the Universe. As I waited for my train in San Diego to depart I asked myself a question, “If I were waiting for this train 30 miles down the tracks how long would it take to reach me?” I figured that if the train were going 30 MPH it would take one hour. Obviously no matter what variables you plugged in, if the train were moving at all it would have to traverse a certain distance in a certain amount of time.

Then it suddenly struck me, “Our tracks are eternal, and our train has been traveling forever.” Therefore, “How long would it take the train to reach me if it began its journey infinite time ago, and was an infinite distance away?” It would never reach me, because between the station and the moving train there exists an infinite distance.

An infinite Universe suffers the same logical death. The existence of everything precisely at this moment depends upon a whole set of material causes which preceded them. So if the Universe has been causally expanding at (X) speed for eternity, and began doing so an infinite time ago, it would take an infinite amount of time for those causes to create what exists at this moment.

Nothing can traverse an infinite distance. The very fact that we are here right now proves the Universe could not have begun an infinite time ago. Thus the Universe had to have had both a beginning and a beginner, a fact that rules out the Universe as its own cause. For how could the Universe be the cause of itself before it existed?

No, I think God seems the better candidate for our eternal cause. However we still must escape the logical trap set by the syllogism at the outset. The Christian has never said that the idea of the eternal is irrational. If we did how could we believe in God? There is no governing rule of logic which excludes the possibility of an eternal object. The laws of Identification, Non-Contradiction, and Excluded Middle certainly have nothing to say about the matter.

The Christian’s formulation (called the cosmological argument) even before the Middle Ages said; (1) What ever begins to exist requires a cause, (2) The Universe began to exist, (3) Therefore the Universe requires a cause. Notice the syllogism proceeds from the idea that something may in principle be eternal so long as it does not begin to exist. If however, something can be shown to have begun, as our Universe, then it is logically excluded from the eternal.

We showed that the Universe itself could not be the necessary eternal cause, because it is impossible for there to be an actually infinite series of finite material causes which, when lined up can reach eternity. Yet can the assertion of a God-based cause fare better? Our detractors will say we are dredging up the infamous God of the gaps rational. We are Medievalists using God as a stop gap measure to fill in the voids of ignorance which our superstitious theories cannot explain. That Christian laymen have used such foolish reasoning both in the past and the present is undeniable, though what matters is if this is true in our case.

The fact that something caused the Universe is certainly no baseless assertion, for nothing which begins to exist can do so without a cause. As we already showed the Universe began, so a cause of some kind is necessary. This something’s existence is also logically necessary, because I have never heard of non-existing things causing material things to come into being. Good then, no God of the gaps so far.

We also know that our something is timeless. Albert Einstein proved, and later Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose agreed, that time is literally part of the fabric of the Universe, not a separate entity from it. Time is connected to space as well. Space and time are literally one Space-Time, woven into each detail of the Cosmos. This means that before the Universe came into being there was no time. However, for our something to cause the Universe it had to have existed prior to the Universe. Since time came only when the Universe began, our something had to have been without time or time-less.

Furthermore our something also had to be changeless. Physicists discovered long ago that all matter must remain in a state of motion. The problem is that motion is a kind of change, and change is inseparable from the concept of time. In fact some physicists express time as change marked by duration.

If nothing ever changed we would not recognize time’s passing. Since our something is outside of time it must also, by logical necessity, be changeless. This would have to be the case because if our something ever did change, such a change would reveal that the object were within space-time. Just imagine, if you ever did observe any change in our something, it would demonstrate that a certain increment of time had elapsed between the time you first observed the object changing, and after the change occurred. If time is elapsing around our somehting, how could it be eternal?

This means, if we are to obey any reasonable physics, our something must also be immaterial. As we stated earlier no material thing can be motionless because no object can reach absolute (0). This is known as the Third law of Thermal Dynamics, details of which you do not need in order to get the basic point.

We already stated that our something was both timeless and changeless because by logical necessity it had to be temporally and dimensionally outside the beginning of the Universe. Matter cannot display either timelessness or changelessness since it must remain in motion. Furthermore, our something could not be eternally comprised of matter, for it could not in-itself complete and infinite set of material causes and effects in order to produce the beginning of the Universe.

Lastly our something must be all powerful, or at least unimaginably powerful. This is because any cause of the Universe has to be sufficiently powerful enough to bring about the effect in question. Fire crackers do not produce super-novas.

We have thus far then identified a striking amount of attributes that by all appearances resemble only the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. So with respect to my atheist friends, you must forgive me if I assume that this existing, timeless, changeless, immaterial, unimaginably powerful something is beginning to look an awful lot like God. Neither does it appear that arriving at the existence of such a being is the least bit irrational.

You will note of course that none of these things tell us anything about the character or purpose of this God. It is a theistic God to be sure, one that is alone standing outside of space and time and which brings the universe into being. This certainly eliminates the gods of many religions such as the Taoist and Buddhist conceptions. Yet more would have to be done in order to establish that this were the God of the Jewish or Christian Bible.

Christian Philosopher William Lane Craig in fact says that based on this cosmological argument alone we couldn't know anything about this God's morality or character. He could be a real stinker for all we know. But we are not trying to sell anyone the whole show. The move from polytheism, pantheism, or atheism, to theism is a big enough jump as it is. What we have shown is that theism rather than atheism is the starting point for any discussion about Cosmology and human meaning.

Conquering Christian Crusaders

By Brian D. Wilson

A favorite topic among those who have a bone to pick with Christianity is the Crusades, a series of wars waged between the Christian Kings of Europe and the Muslim East during the Middle-Ages between the years of 1098 and 1250. The new atheists cite the period as the quintessential example of the Church’s uncanny ability for sowing seeds of conflict around the world. While C.A.I.R. (Council on American Islamic Relations), identifies it as the West’s first attempt at imperial conquest of the East.

The common narrative of such groups is that power hungry Christian crusaders began a series of evil and unjustified wars against the unsuspecting and peaceful Muslim world, which set into motion the poor relationship between East and West that still exists today. For example, Amin Maalouf in, The Crusades through Arab Eyes, writes that the Crusades were, “The starting point of Millennial hostility between Islam and the West.”1

Islamic scholar John Esposito takes this interpretation further calling the Crusades Holy wars that interrupted an essentially pluralistic Muslim civilization which gave Christians peace and human rights, “Five centuries of peaceful coexistence elapsed before political events and an imperial-papal power play led to a centuries-long series of so-called holy wars that pitted Christendom against Islam and left an enduring legacy of misunderstanding and distrust.”2

Such interpretations though err in two regards. They depict Christianity during this time in a far more sinister light than it deserves, and ignore the activity of the Muslim East for the several intervening centuries between the rise of Islam and the first Crusade (1098 A.D.).

With all due respect to Mr. Esposito the Islamic world wasn’t just twiddling its thumbs and writing poetry between the death of Muhammad in 632 and its war with Europe 500 years later. The time was spent in almost continuous warfare against not only the West but the rest of the known world on 3 continents.

Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born in 570, and by his death in 632 he had forged an empire that united the Arab peninsula. The new empire had two powerful neighbors; the Christian Kingdoms of Western Europe and the Eastern Roman Empire. Wasting no time an army forged from the will of Muhammad, began a series of military incursions into Egypt and Israel. Islam had reached neither nation at the time, and both nations had been Roman possessions for more than 600 years. The war would soon escalate.

However, it is common about now to hear the objection that long before Mohammad’s campaigns began it was Christians who were invading, conquering, and occupying Muslim lands. Sadly, this particular claim, at least by some, is a deliberate attempt at factual misdirection. The misdirection in acheived by omitting most, if not all of the facts concerning Christianity’s historic presence in the East before Islam arose.

It is entirely true that thousands, perhaps millions, of Christians lived in the Middle-East before Mohammad and his successors marched against the West. These Arab lands were being lived on by Christian-Arabs whose forefathers had been Christian 500 years before the armies of Islam had even arrived. The pre-Islamic Christian evangelizing of the Middle-East is an often neglected aspect of West/East historical interaction.

Christianity had two great advantages when its missionaries first began evangelizing Arab lands. The first advantage, ironically, we have forgotten, that the religion which Jesus of Nazareth started was a Middle-Eastern religion. The Apostles and their disciples were Middle-Eastern people. They spoke an Asiatic language, had Asiatic customs, and worked in occupations that Arabs and Central Asians had been doing for thousands of years.

When the disciples of this Asiatic preacher first came west they seemed quite strange to the Roman, Celtic, and German peoples who encountered them. They had hard to pronounce names that no Europeans had ever heard. There were Johns and Pauls, Stephens and Marys, Elizabeths, Mathews, Naomis, Daniels, Gabriels, and Jeremiahs, to name a few. “Who would be so cruel as to name their child Daniel,” some thought, “such an ugly name.” “No Alric, Rodheim, or Egbert is far lovelier.” They just rolled off the tongue so nicely.

When the disciples of Jesus went east however there was not as great a cultural barrier. The stories of The Samaritan at the Well and The Lord of the Vineyard, as well as the Parable of the Sower, all painted a vivid backdrop to Jesus’ life that Middle-Easterners immediately comprehended. If one really wants to speak of the invasion of a foreign religion from a far off country, Asian-Christianity’s evangelism of the West is a far better candidate than the evangelization of the Near East.

I have a question, how many people call Buddhism's evangelistic efforts in India and China an invasion? There are none. I suspect this is because Buddhism was home-grown in Asia so to speak. Yet invasion is a common term applied to Christianity's presence in the Middle-East centuries prior to the Crusades. why? It too is an Asiatic religion, founded in the Near East. It's first converts were Middle-Eastern. To those who have an agenda driven by a hatred of Christianity facts just get in the way.

The second great advantage Christian missionaries had related to how Roman imperial expansion into the East aided their evangelistic efforts. The Romans laid thousands of miles of roads as far east as Armenia and Iraq. The excellent condition of these roads combined with the Roman Legion provided the protection that made travel and evangelism far safer than in previous times.

The evangelism, not the conquest, of the Middle-East by the descendants of a Middle-Eastern religious teacher named Yeshua Honotsri (Jesus’ full name) was done very slowly and peacefully. So successful were evangelistic efforts that by the birth of Muhammad (570) all of North Africa and the Near-East to the Tigris possessed thousands of Christian centers of art, and learning, and many had Christian majorities. Finally, all the countries of the Middle East up to the borders of the Parthian Empire (Iran) were united under the authority of the Roman government. Just a personal aside, it also seems quite difficult in my estimation for Christians to take Muslim lands away, since the overwhelming majority of the Middle-East was evangelized before Islam existed.

Islam’s march westward is a different story altogether. When Mohammed began his conquest of the West in the mid 7th Century no Christian Kingdom was the aggressor. In fact the West was fighting for its life against a very able Muslim adversary.

By 642 Christian Egypt and the Monophisite Christian kingdom of East Africa would be among Islam’s first conquests. Much of Christian North Africa, a long time center of the Christian arts and sciences, was also brutally overrun.

The African bishopric of Thagaste, once the home of Turtulian, Jurist and one of the greatest Christian theologians of all time, was dismantled. The city of Hippo in present day Tunisia, home of the Roman-North African Augustine, author of City of God and Confessions, too was demolished. Alexandria Egypt was perhaps the saddest loss to many Christians. It became the home of the gospel writer and disciple Mark. Later it was a prosperous bishopric led by the brilliant Clement who sent missionaries into East Africa. It was violently taken by the armies of Islam.

Exactly a century after Muhammad’s death Arab armies had gone even farther West, taking nearly all of Spain and Morocco, both provinces of the Roman Empire. Spain had been slowly converted to Christianity during the 3 centuries following the death of Jesus. Then in the late 5th Century Spain and all of the Western Roman Empire fell to the Visigoths, Vandals, Franks, and Ostrogoths, pagan invaders originally form the northern lands between the Baltic and Black Seas. The Visigoths settled in Spain, eventually accepting Christianity.

Islamic armies overran the Visigoth-Christian Kingdom of Spain early in the 8th Century. Charles Martel, king of the Franks, finally stopped Muslim armies from completely overrunning all of Western Europe at the battle of Tours in France in 732.

Roman Jerusalem fell in the Early 8th Century. Soon after the conquest sixty Christian pilgrims from near by Amorium were crucified. Now firmly established, the Muslim governor of Caesarea seized a group of pilgrims from Iconium and had them all executed. Caesarea was a Christian community near Jerusalem taken by force, just like hundreds of others.

By the later 8th Century Christian pilgrims were constantly harassed, and Arab armies often threatened to pillage the Church of the Resurrection if they weren’t paid extortion money. The Muslim governor of Jerusalem banned displays of the cross, and increased the anti-religious tax (jizya) on Jews and Christians. Laws were also enacted that made it illegal for Christians to religiously instruct others, and forbade Christian parents to teach their own children Christianity.

In the year 772 the Caliph al-Mansur ordered the hands of Christians and Jews in Jerusalem to be stamped with an identifying symbol. In 789 Arab armies plundered the Monastery of St. Theodosius, killing nearly all the monks. By the beginning of the 9th Century the persecutions became so bad that thousands of Christians fled to Constantinople (capitol of the Eastern Roman Emperor) for refuge.

In the year 923 on Palm Sunday Muslim armies went on a rampage in Jerusalem, plundering the Church of Calvary and the Church of the Resurrection.3 Finally, as a result of the constant military incursions, The Roman Emperor moved to the offense. After 330 years of Arab aggression General Nicephorus Phocas launched a series of military campaigns to take back lost Roman domains taken by the East. The very successful military operations took back the Christian lands of Crete, Cilicia, Cyprus, and a part of Syria. In 969 Phocas retook Antioch Syria.4

Faced with a string of losses, in 974 the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad appealed to Islamic theology. There is a principle of Islamic religious law that states if any land has ever belonged to the House of Islam, no matter how short a period of time, it belongs to it forever. The Caliph used this pretext to declare Jihad. Never mind the fact that those lands had been taken by unjustified war in the first place.

What followed were yearly military campaigns to retake lands that Muslim armies had lost. Many Caliphs (Muslim potentates) joined in the war. Saif al-Dawla, ruler of the Shi’ite Hamdanid dynasty in Aleppo Syria, heard the cry of war and joined the cause. The Jihad was so successful that Muslims from as far away as Asia soon joined in the battle.5

However by 1001 religious disunity set in and Roman Emperor Basil II, capitalizing off of Arab in-fighting, concluded a 10 year truce with the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, the biggest of the war leaders. This was only 97 years before the first Crusade.

However the Emperor soon learned that treaties were pointless. In 1004 the Fatimid Caliph Abu ali al-Mansor al-Hakim (985-1021), turned violently against the Eastern Romans. He waged a 10 year war against them, ordering the destruction the seizure of church property and the burning of crosses. Al-Hakim eventually destroyed over 30 thousand churches.

In 1009 came perhaps the worst humiliation to Christendom ever. Al-Hakim enthusiastically ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, believed to be the place of Jesus’ burial, to be burned down. He then commanded Jesus’ tomb within the church to be cut down to the bedrock.

He ordered all Christians to wear heavy crosses around their necks and Jews a wooden calf. Finally, he ordered that all Jews and Christians to accept Islam or be expelled from his kingdom.6

If this were not enough to handle, in 1056, now only 42 years before the first Crusade, a race of fanatical Muslim worriers from Asia called the Seljuks fell upon the Roman East. The Selkuks instituted even more severe laws against Jews and Christians.

Seljuk worriers crushed the entire Roman army at Manzikert in 1071, taking Emperor Romanus Diogenes IV hostage. By 1076 Arab armies retook Syria. In 1077 the Seljuk emir Atiz bin Uwak sacked Jerusalem and murdered 3000 people. Then Seljuk forces entered the very heart of the Christian Roman East (present day Turkey), laying siege to dozens of cities. (Incidentally neither the Turks or the Arabs were peoples Native to Turkey. The Turks infact were invaders from Mongolia).

Emperor Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118) finally accepted the cold truth. All of Eastern Christendom lay open to Muslim attack. Hundreds of Christian cities had been taken. Nearly all of North Africa from Morocco to the Sinai in Egypt, once Christian and Roman, was over run by the invaders.

Entire Christian countries, all of whom paid allegiance to the Emperor, were murdered, converted, or forced into a mass exodus in search of friendlier lands. Just 5 years before the West’s call for the first Crusade, and all out of options, the emperor swallowed his pride and asked Pope Urban II for help, and the first Crusade was born.

The Crusades waged against the East were a reaction to over 500 years of aggression, as well as a necessary act of self preservation. That is a fact. Does this mean that the Crusaders were sinless? Certainly not, the 4th Crusade was notorious for being largely an excuse for Western armies to pillage Constantinople, the capitol of the Christian Roman Emperor of the East. Some Crusaders burned down Jewish villages in Europe on their way to the Holy Land.

Yet this is not the point. We are asking what caused the cross-continental political tensions that led to the Crusades, not trying to determine who is perfect. If the purpose of Christianity’s detractors is to point out that Christians are not perfect, then you are right, though no Christian ever denied that.

Though I do not know what that gets you. Pointing out that Crusaders wrongly pillaged Jewish villages and killed innocents doesn’t tell you about the justness of the Crusades as acts of war, anymore than the bombing of Dresden, or the internment of Japanese Americans at Manzanar, tells you whether or not the U.S. was just in waging war against Germany in 1945. A white washing of the past is not what is sought, but a simple bit of intellectual honesty when recounting the Christian/Muslim past and what percipitated it.

1 Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), xvi.
2 John Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, third edition (Oxford University Press, 1998), 58.
3 Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine 634-1099 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univerity Press, 1992), 473-76.
4 Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951),
30-32.
5 Runciman, 33
6 Gil, 376

Wicked Little Stepchild:

Was Christianity the Offspring of Ancient Mystery Religions?

By Brian D. Wilson

One of the more popular attacks on Christianity today is that its beliefs are not really unique but adapted, borrowed, and stolen from the pagan past. But is that really the case?

That is what authors like Tom Harpur in The Pagan Christ believe. Harpur claims that there is nothing Jesus either said or did, “…that cannot be shown to have originated thousands of years before, in Egyptian Mystery rites and other sacred liturgies.”

What makes these claims seem so convincing is the way they are packaged. The author usually begins with a laudatory introduction of his credentials followed by his solemn purpose to ignore superstition and Theology, instead utilizing the tools of the modern historian, as if the great theologians of the past had no historical training.

Then comes the author’s striking list of comparisons of ancient religions to Christianity. Consider Hugh J. Schonfield’s claim that Christianity is related to the ancient religions of Mithraism (Persia) and the cults of Osiris (Egypt) and Adonis (Greece). In Those Incredible Christians Schonfield says that the god Mithras was born of a virgin in a cave on December 25, was a traveling teacher, had 12 disciples, promised his followers immortality, sacrificed himself for world peace, and was buried in a tomb and rose again 3 days later.

Any honest Christian would find these similarities disturbing, yet there is no need for concern because the scholarship here is almost entirely inaccurate, if not dishonest. Lee Strobel (The Case for the Real Jesus) interviewed Edwin M. Yamauchi, widely held as the world’s leading scholar on Mithraism. Yamauchi holds a doctorate in Mediterranean studies, has studied 22 languages, published nearly 200 scholarly articles, as well as 17 books, and in 1974 he was invited to the Second International Congress of Mithraic Studies in Tehran, hosted by the empress of Iran, to deliver a paper.

Yamauchi’s conclusions paint quite a different picture than Mr. Schonfield’s. He calls the claim by popular writers that Mithras was born of a virgin completely untrue. Actually Mithras was born out of a rock, naked, fully grown, wearing a Phrygian cap.

This of course also dispels the claim that Mithras was born in a cave. While Mithraic sanctuaries were made to look like caves, that Mithras himself was born in a cave came much later in Mithraic tradition. Furthermore, no where in the New Testament does it say Jesus was born in a cave. This detail is mentioned for the first time in the Letter of Barnabas in the 2nd Century. While it is certainly possible Jesus was born in a cave Gary Lease in “Mithraism and Christianity” points out that even the scant tradition that does exist concerning Jesus’ cave birth can in no way be linked to Mithraic rites.

What then about the Date of December 25? Yamauchi says that no Christian has ever said that Jesus was born on December 25. “January 6 in fact is still celebrated by many Churches in the East.” We know that the Roman emperor Constantine worshiped the god Sol Invictus (the unconquerable Sun) before he became a Christian, whose day was celebrated on December 25, a day that he then appropriated on behalf of the Church to draw in more pagans. Before Christianity we also know that Sol Invictus (December 25) became increasingly linked with the day of Mithras by the Roman people as it became more popular. Sometimes both deities are depicted shaking hands. So the dates become related through the course of historical events but are in no way the result of attempts to fuse the religions, especially by 4th Century Christians trying to distance themselves from the pagan religions.

You may also infer from Mithraism that its adherents were promised immortality like Christianity, but such a claim is dispelled by its very vagueness. “That was the hope of most followers of any religion” Yamauchi comments.

The claim that Mithras was a teacher also falls apart upon examination. Yamauchi points out that Mithras was a god, and a distant one at that, not a teacher. That Mithras sacrificed himself for world peace is a complete misread. “He never sacrificed himself, he killed a bull,” says Yamauchi.

Was Mithras buried in a tomb, and was he resurrected on the third day? No. In fact, we have absolutely no evidence by art or written record that Mithras even died. Richard Gordon in, Image and Value in the Greco Roman World says that since “…there is no death there cannot be a resurrection.” Lastly Mithras had no disciples.

Perhaps the most devastating evidence against such claims comes from scholars like T.N.D. Mettinger, Swedish professor at Lund University. In his work, The Riddle of the Ressurection he says that the consensus among modern scholars-nearly universal- is that there were 3, or possibly 5 examples of dying and rising gods that preceded Christianity, and no others. Among this handful of dying and rising gods there exists no parallels to Christianity.

For example, nearly every one of the myths relates to the life and death of the vegetation cycle. Jesus’ death however is not repeated and is not related to changes in the seasons. Neither is there any example of dying and rising gods vicariously suffering for the worlds sins. Mettinger concludes with this stunning statement, “There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world.”

Whether Jesus rose from the dead is not the point. Even if for sake of argument the resurrection was false, merely calling a religious dogma false does not free its critics from proving that such a dogma originated in some pagan myth, which in the case we have examined has not been done.