Bart Ehrman, Christianity, and History

I wanted to address the situation regarding Bart Ehrman and the history of early Christianity. It’s not my desire here to get too involved in extensive religious debates centering on Christianity but it is difficult to entirely avoid them as well. My own believes should be abundantly clear to anyone who has followed my blog for any length of time.

For those interested, I have posted below links to my two-part post on my opinion of Christianity. There is also another relevant link:

My Opinion of Christianity, Part I
My Opinion of Christianity, Part II
Crap Sandwiches

Just to push my point a little, my opinion of Christianity is that it is,

a) not a religion, but a superstition
b) that Christianity is the worst blight visited upon humankind (the Black Death pales in comparison)
c) the scale of violence in the modern world would be drastically curtailed by the disappearance of monotheism, particular the Abrahamic monotheisms.

I say this because I want to be clear, given the fact that I accept Christian advertisement on this blog, that I do not promote Christianity or Christian worldviews (plural used intentionally and emphatically!). I do, however, endorse free speech and open-ended discussion of my opinions and accept well-reasoned objections to them. To the degree time and energy permit, I will even engage in debates on these points.

What I will not do is,

a) offer an apologia for polytheism. It needs none. Polytheism was ancient when Judaism appeared and far more ancient when Christianity arrived on the scene.
b) engage in a lengthy defense of my views. My views are amply put forth in the posts linked above and in other posts. I invite those interested to peruse my blog archives for these arguments.

There will never be an end to debate about the origins of Christianity. There can’t be. No matter how much evidence is piled up by authors like Barth Ehrman, Christians will reject them. They have to, obviously. If they didn’t, they would cease being Christians because if Jesus is not God then the whole rotten edifice comes crashing down, as any apologist will admit. So what we have is a situation in which apologists say “you are free to research the historical Jesus as long as you find that he is exactly what our religion claims he is.” Obviously, we won’t get far going down that particular road!

So there won’t be agreement anywhere, including here. So while I invite those who disagree to make their disagreements known, I reserve the right not to reiterate the contents of two years + posting by yours truly. If you want to know what I think and why I think it, go through my archives. You’ll find plenty. I don’t agree with Bart Ehrman 100% of the time. I think he’s far too kind and politically correct. But I think he’s made a good start. Love him or hate him, he’s willing to do more than simply look for what he already wants to find. Bias can’t be avoided entirely, but if you want an open mind, look to Ehrman rather than an apologist who is required by doctrine to say exactly what doctrine requires.

For me, it’s a no-brainer.

Etc, etc:

I’m still playing catch-up with all my blogging and website activities. I don’t feel like I will ever actually manage to catch up sometimes, but I am trying. Working outside in the yard has taken up a lot of my former spare time but if I’m going to be away from here, I can’t think of a better place to be, out in nature, getting my hands in the dirt.

I discovered that several people who had tried to join Mos Maiorum forums hasn’t actually – apparently – joined. I would have sworn I’d hit “accept” on the membership request but I saw the names still there when I got a new request today. So apologies to everyone who has tried – and failed – to be approved. If you have tried and still do not have access, let me know and I’ll see what I can do to fix it.

As I said, I hope to be more “visible” now than I have been for the past month or so. I’m back to posting here on Heathen’s Day, and have some updates planned for Mos Maiorum. I still haven’t put sub-categories on the forums because I don’t think they have the problem entirely licked. At least, last time I tried, it didn’t work. I may give it another go because I do think that would help the situation there.