Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay
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Jesus said some things that, taken at face value, are pretty outlandish, like being the Son of God. Therefore, goes this argument, he was either the Son of God, as he claimed to be, or a lunatic, or something worse.
Gee, I'm locked in battle with a determined enemy. What to do, what to do? Ooh, ooh, I've got it, I'll take a grenade, pull the pin three quarters of the way out, and hand it to him. I expect a lot of religious writers to say stupid things but I was utterly appalled to find this argument in C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.
The history of religion is filled with people who moved multitudes, preached love, peace, and brotherhood, said profound and wise things, and were completely nuts. Remember Jim Jones? Preached love, brotherhood, the founding of a utopia, led over 900 people to mass suicide in 1978? Or David Koresh? Preached love, brotherhood, the founding of a utopia, got himself and 75 other people killed in a confrontation with the FBI in 1993? Or Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles (Bo and Peep, to the initiated), who preached love, brotherhood, the founding of a utopia (reachable by spaceship behind Comet Hale-Bopp), and persuaded 39 members of the cult to commit suicide in 1997? So if you're trying to sell anyone on the divinity of Christ, this is one road you definitely don't want to go down.
But that road is a walk in the park compared with what might happen with the final alternative, that Christ was something worse. A hint of what could be in store is provided by these very tame comments in Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not A Christian.
I now want to say a few words upon a topic which I often think is not quite sufficiently dealt with by Rationalists, and that is the question whether Christ was the best and the wisest of men. It is generally taken for granted that we should all agree that that was so. I do not myself.
There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person that is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching -- an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence.
I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world, and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him as his chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.
There are other things of less importance. There is the instance of the Gadarene swine, where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down the hill into the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but He chose to send them into the pigs. Then there is the curious story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened about the fig-tree. "He was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when he came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: 'No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever'.... and Peter.... saith unto Him: 'Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away.'" This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to History. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects.
I can't think of anything Christian religious believers say that has more potential for negative blowback than the "God, madman, or demon" argument. Do you really want to instigate a debate on whether Christ was a lunatic or worse? Do you have the slightest doubt that hostile critics won't take you up on the challenge? So far, as Russell pointed out, atheists have had the courtesy to direct their fire against Christians rather than Christ. If believers breach that wall, they'll have nobody but themselves to blame for the results.
We also encounter the argument is that religion must be true because virtually everyone, at least until modern times, has believed in a deity of some sort.
If anything, that's the most potent argument imaginable against religion. The whole history of science is one long litany of replacing wrong intuition with correct intuition:
When it comes to the large-scale structure of reality, our naive intuition has no value at all. It is almost invariably wrong. So appealing to intuition as evidence for the existence of God is just about the worst line of argument imaginable.
So if intuition is so wrong, why do we have it? Why would evolution select a trait so maladapted to the universe? Because evolution doesn't select for understanding of the universe; it selects for everyday survival. When it comes to the question "should I find shelter before the predators come out?" there is no survival value whatever to knowing that the position of the sun is due to the earth's rotation. On the other hand, being able to seek shelter before an approaching storm, having a gut feeling for where the antelope herd disappeared to, sensing that the birds suddenly have become too quiet, or guessing from a taste that something is poisonous very definitely do have survival value. And a bias for seeing patterns, even if they're spurious, has value. As someone once said, "it's better to run from an occasional nonexistent tiger than to fail to spot a real one."
Get into a debate with a large fraction of religious believers, and the first thing they will want to do is explain how they came to believe. They are shocked, hurt, and offended if you tell them their personal testimony is absolutely worthless as evidence.
First, if personal testimony is evidence, then the testimony of people from other religions has to count just as heavily in favor of those religions as your own testimony counts for yours. And the testimony of people who have quit your religion counts just as strongly against your religion as your testimony counts for it. For example, the testimonies by members of Fundamentalists Anonymous counts as much against fundamentalism as testimonies by fundamentalists count for it.
Second, your testimony only counts if you personally are reliable. I won't take the testimony of a total stranger seriously for the simple reason I have no idea how reliable, psychologically balanced, or skilled in reasoning that person is.
Finally, if you say stupid things about the physical world, if you buy into conspiracy theories or scientific creationism, the Bible itself says you cannot be trusted:
Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own? (Luke 16: 10-12)
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