THE FANTASY OF FAITH

By Rogene A. Buchholz

In a nutshell, Christianity is one of the greatest if not the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on people in the history of the universe. It is practically all fantasy of one sort of another that millions of people believe in all over the world and have done so for many centuries since Christianity began. It all could have been made up out of whole cloth. The Old Testament cannot be taken at face value as the creation story was most likely borrowed from other sources and adapted to fit with the author’s purpose of explaining how the world began. The Exodus may be entirely fiction and most certainly did not happen the way it is described in the Bible. As far as the New Testament is concerned, it was written decades after the crucifixion of Jesus by people who were not eyewitnesses to the events they described. There may have been a prophet whose teachings drew many followers, but there was certainly no virgin birth, no miracles, and no resurrection. The purpose of all the apocalyptic writing and second coming of Christ may have been motivated by the oppression of the Roman Empire where the Jewish people felt powerless and needed to believe in something that would provide them with a feeling that in the final analysis justice would be done and they would get their revenge. Thus, Christianity needs to be exposed for the fraud that it is which is what this book attempts to do by looking at the history of Christianity, Biblical scholarship, and other aspects of Christianity along with its alternatives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798823011440

Rogene A. Buchholz

Rogene A. Buchholz is currently the Legendre-Soule Chair in Business Ethics Emeritus at Loyola University New Orleans. He held this endowed chair at Loyola for thirteen years until his retirement in 2002. Prior to this position he taught at various business schools as a full-time faculty or visitor. Dr. Buchholz received a B.S. Degree from North Central College in 1959, a M.S. Degree in Economics from the University of Illinois in 1960, an M.Th. Degree from Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in 1964, and a Ph.D. Degree from the Business School at the University of Pittsburgh in 1974. In 1995 he received the Summer Marcus Award for outstanding contributions to the field of Business and Society and outstanding service to the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management. He is the author or co-author of 15 books that were mostly textbooks while in academia and has had four scholarly books published by Routledge since he retired. Dr. Buchholz currently lives with his wife, a former philosophy professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, in Denver Colorado.

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© 2023 Rogene A. Buchholz. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/16/2023

ISBN: 979-8-8230-1145-7 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-1144-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023913081

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Fantasyland

2 The Christian Worldview

3 Histories Of Christianity

4 Christianity And The Bible

5 The Case For Religion

6 Critiques Of Christianity

7 Alternatives To Faith

8 Secularism

9 Spirituality

10 Toward The Future

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgements

This book was made possible by many people including my wife with whom I have had many conversations over the years about religion in general and Christianity in particular. These were very enlightening discussions that eventually made me be honest with myself and made me realize that I was a thoroughgoing naturalist that did not believe in any supernatural realm. Everything we experience and know anything about comes from the natural world in which we live and there is nothing beyond like a deity that resides in some other place that deserves to be worshiped or looked to for guidance. Since Christianity is only possible unless one believes in a supernatural realm it was obvious I did not have the kind of faith Christianity requires. But I did not want to call myself an atheist so I consider myself to be just a nonbeliever or one of the nones, as we are sometimes called, who became more interested in the natural world in which we live and move and have our being.

When I retired from teaching I audited courses in philosophy, sociology, and political science at the University of Colorado at Denver which broadened my horizons and introduced me to new ways of thinking. Thus I would like to thank all the instructors and students who I interacted with in these courses that gave me new ideas about many things including religion and introduced me to books and articles that were relevant to this book. So I have kept on reading and thinking about Christianity and the role it plays in the world and how so many people came to believe in all the supernatural baggage that goes with it that is beyond what we experience in this world. It is a mystery to me why so many people have to believe in the fantasies that Christianity involves which motivated me to write this book.

Many thanks are due to AuthorHouse, who accepted this book for publication. This is the fifth book I have published with them so I am obviously satisfied with the product they publish. Specifically I would like to thank Eve Ardell who is the Production Manager at AuthorHouse responsible for getting the book published. She has been involved in all my other books published by AuthorHouse and has been a pleasure to work with on all these books. Thanks are also due to Lou Olsen, Publishing Services Associate, and all the other people at AuthorHouse who were involved in the publication of this book. Their work on this book is greatly appreciated.

Introduction

After 90 years of living on this earth after being brought up in an evangelical church that was as fundamentalistic as one could find anywhere, and for the last 20 years reading and writing books on capitalism and on religion, I finally hope I understand what Christianity is about and where it came from. In a nutshell, it is one of the greatest if not the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on people in the history of the universe. It is practically all fantasy of one sort or another that millions of people believe in all over the world and have done so for many centuries since Christianity began. It is a very vengeful and violent religion, particularly in the Old Testament, which is filled with many images of torture and gruesome death of people who were not favored by God and had to be eliminated to make room for the Israelites. The New Testament contains an apocalyptic fervor that looks for the second coming of Christ when the faithful will be rewarded with eternal life and the unfaithful cast into the eternal fires of hell. For many Christians people are born into sin and have to be saved by some magical transformation involving the death of Jesus on the cross. It is truly a venture into fantasyland that apparently serves some purpose for many millions of people.

The worst thing that happened to Christianity was when it was made the official religion of the Roman Empire where the hope was that it would help unite the empire which consisted of many different peoples of various beliefs and practices. After this event, the church became an institution rather than a movement, concerned with wealth and power to the detriment of the Christian message of love and compassion. It split into many different factions over the matter of indulgences which was all about money, with each faction believing in a different theology and having different practices and rituals. Many of these factions claim it alone is the right way to salvation and holds the truth about what the Christian faith is about and how it ought to be practiced. Particularly in the United States where religious liberty was enshrined in the constitution and an established religion was forbidden, people were free to establish their own version of Christianity when enough people believed in a certain way to constitute a new movement that may have eventually evolved into a new denomination.

While Christians in this country were for many years concerned with saving souls and preparing people for entry into enteral life after death, in recent decades Evangelical Christians in particular have become politically involved abandoning their traditional concerns in a quest for political power. They have essentially taken over the Republican Party since Reagan welcomed them into the Republican tent in the 1980 election and have infused the Republican Party with their beliefs, their values, their way of thinking, and their vision for America. The Republican Party is no longer the party of conservative values regarding fiscal responsibility and free market capitalism. It is now the party of reality deniers and fantasy promoters who compared the insurrection of January 6, 2021 with a normal tourist event, conspiracy theorists who believe that some people in Italy used military satellites to change the voting machine outcomes in this country, QAnon people who allege that there is a cabal of Satanic cannibalistic pedophiles that run a global sex-trafficking ring that conspired against Trump during his term in office, and obstructionists who don’t want to do anything constructive for the country and are only good at appealing to people’s basest prejudices and fears about blacks and other minorities taking over the country as they see the demographics stacked against them and want to hold onto to power even if it means destroying democracy in the process.

In a previous book, I focused on the role Evangelical Christianity played in this process, and how it has influenced the decline of the country in general with its contribution to the divisiveness in the country that has emerged in recent years that has made it almost impossible to govern effectively. Our government is hopelessly crippled because of two different worldviews that are operative in the two parties, one a worldview that is inherently racist and exclusionary where evidence doesn’t matter and authoritarianism is the way to truth, and the other that is more inclusive and progressive, where evidence still matters and science is respected, but that doesn’t know how to throw a punch, as some pundits have said, and thus is outmaneuvered and drowned out by the bullies and loudmouths of the most extreme elements of the Republican Party which seem to be the most vocal and most visible.

All of this puts democracy in peril and puts the country in danger because of the fear engendered by the thought of diversity taking away the rights and privileges that whites have enjoyed in this country since its inception. Republicans have been infused with a sense that they have a divine right to rule and see the Democrats as the evil ones trying to keep them from assuming their rightful role as the legitimate rulers of the country. This comes from Evangelical Christianity whose leadership thinks they are the chosen ones to save this nation from secularism and restore it to its rightful place as a Christian nation that has lost its way by banning prayer in public schools and preventing other displays of their brand of religion in public places. They have a mission to take over and rule the country according to so-called Biblical principles as interpreted by them and them only. This has morphed into the Republican attempt to keep minority rule at all costs, even if it means lying to the voters about non-existent voter fraud or being thoroughly hypocritical about appointment of Supreme Court judges. None of this matters if one is on a divinely ordained mission as one can justify doing whatever is necessary to save the country from the evil Democrats where winning at all costs and attaining or keeping power is the primary mission.

Contemporary Evangelical Christianity is about a quest for power. Evangelicals apparently became tired of waiting for the Second Coming of Christ when the Kingdom God will be established, and they will take their rightful place in a new heaven and a new earth and decided to take matters into their own hands and create the kingdom themselves or some semblance thereof. When Reagan allowed them into the Republican tent, they jumped at the chance and subsequently have taken over the Republican Party and infused it with Evangelical values and goals and ways of thinking that have made the party an arm of their war against secularism. Republicans have been enlisted in serving the Evangelical cause and have found it to be consistent with their aims in politics as the white race faces becoming a minority in American society.

Evangelicals cannot leave people alone to live their lives as they wish, but always have to try and change people into their own image of what they should be like and how they should behave. Early on, they took the children of Native Americans and sent them to a school of sorts in Carlisle Pennsylvania to try and make them over into good Christian Americans by rooting out the behaviors and attitudes they had learned from their own culture. They tried to remake gay people into heterosexuals doing a great deal of damage in the process. They have now finally overturned Roe v Wade giving states the power to make it illegal to have an abortion under any circumstances and take away right of women to make that decision themselves. And they want the power to determine the nature of reality itself and dictate what the facts are to win the ongoing battle with science.

There is some dynamic within that movement that drives them to impose their will on the rest of society believing they have some divine command from the God they believe in to convert everyone else to their way of life and thinking. If the power of the love they supposedly believe in proves to be a weak force for change, they then have no hesitancy to use violence if necessary to gain their goals because it is all part of God’s will and plan for his or her people and they are the ones to make this plan a reality. What they do should be a crime, but since religion is so prevalent in our society, it is never called out for the fraud it is and for the damage it does to people and society. It is high time that Evangelical Christianity was tagged for the evil it is and for the perversion of Christianity it perpetuates. It is not a Christian movement but is a movement that wants power to shape society according to its own vision, and when saving souls one at a time proved to be ineffective, it turned to seeking and using political power to accomplish its ends to the detriment of society and democracy.

One author says that as Christianity’s hold on society has weakened, its ideological intensity as risen so that what was once religious belief has been channeled into political belief, and debates over what America is supposed to be like have become theological disputations. Conservatives believe they are defending the American ideal and liberals are betraying it, while liberals believe just the opposite. Each side becomes less intelligible to the other, and there is no common enemy to unify the country as happened in the Cold War for example. And without Christianity as a common belief system that has always been intertwined with America’s self-definition, Americans no longer have a common culture to bring them together. This may mean that the United States will remain torn between the alternative worlds that secular and religious Americans long for and that will continue to fragment and divide the country.¹

For too long, says Katherine Stewart in a book entitled The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, and whose work has appeared in several major news outlets, the religious right has masqueraded as a social movement concerned with cultural issues such as abortion and same sex marriage, while in reality it has become a political movement that seeks to gain ever more political power and impose its vision on all of society. Religious nationalists in America are engaged in more than just a culture war but are waging a political war on democracy itself. Religion has become a tool for domination as a vast network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations have appeared that are united by a shared antidemocratic vision and a common will to power. Christian nationalism in America has a common cause with a global movement that wants to destroy liberal democracy throughout the world and replace it with nationalistic, theocratic, and autocratic forms of government. Its influence extends to every aspect of life in America, and we must wake up to the threat it poses to the American Republic and our democratic freedoms.²

This movement promotes what its leaders claim is absolute truth, but this is not a religious creed, says Stewart, but a political ideology that claims the American republic was founded as a Christian nation. A legitimate government does not come from the consent of the governed, they say, but to adherence to the doctrines of a specific religious, ethnic, and cultural heritage. Laws should be based not on the deliberation of our democratic institutions but on particular or what she calls idiosyncratic interpretations of the Bible. This movement fears the nation has gone astray from the truths that once made it great and looks forward to a future in which its version of the Christian religion will reign supreme. Christian nationalism is a device for mobilizing and manipulating large segments of the population and concentrating power in a new elite.³

Evangelical Christianity is all about power, political power, to shape society according to its values and vision for the country, attempting to make this a Christian nation or return it to its Christian roots, whatever that means. It is not about concern for the poor and marginalized people in our society, it is not about making a better future for all citizens of the country, including people of color. It is about establishing white supremacy and keeping it in place for years to come by excluding other minorities from voting and keeping them in a subordinate position preventing them from exercising their full rights as American citizens. It is about taking over a political party and using it to promote their values through Supreme Court appointments and the promotion of religious liberty and whatever else helps with their cause to take over the country and rule it in God’s name. It is about the establishment of a theocracy that will make people serve a set of rules and regulations that have to do with worship of their God and bending to his will, or rather the will of Evangelical leaders, to make people adhere to their way of thinking and their worldview.

Evangelicals have taken over the Republican Party and infused it with their thinking and Trump emerged as their savior as Republican leaders have to make the trek to Mara-Lago to kiss the ring of the King. Actually, this takeover is one and the same thing as the Republicans were being manipulated by the Evangelicals and Trump for the same thing, to eliminate democracy and establish rule by an autocrat who would eliminate the freedoms of the American people and seek to control everything they do from taking away the freedom of women to have an abortion to preventing LBGTQ people from being who they are, and maybe even mandating that everyone has to join a church and attend religious services on Sunday morning in an effort to combat secularism. Anything and everything is permitted because this is a holy war that is supported by God to establish his Kingdom on earth. The Evangelicals believe they are God’s chosen people to establish their rule over the country and impose what they see as his or her values on everyone else in society.

What the Evangelicals are doing is a perversion of Christianity as is the Christian Nationalist movement. The insurrection of January 6th, 2021 was a religious event fueled by a patriotic mindset that thought it was saving the country by trying to overthrow the election and stopping the so-called steal. The insurrectionists even held a prayer in the Senate chambers. Everything was permissible as this was a righteous cause fueled by a religious zeal to save the country from the evil Democrats, and more specifically, from the Blacks and other minorities that were taking over the country. As Trump said, take back your country and fight like hell or you won’t have a country anymore. Take if back from whom and fight like hell against whom? The Blacks, or course, who gave the election to Biden in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, and even Atlanta, and while I am not one that usually thinks anything can explained by a single cause, in this case all of this was racist to the core, and while Trump claimed to be the least racist person in American, he is, in fact, the most racist person in the entire world.

Christianity is not about violence, it is not about power, it is not about marginalizing people by taking away their right to vote, it is not about tax cuts that make the rich richer, it is not about lying to accomplish one’s goals, it is not about death that Evangelicals spend so much worrying about, it is not about covering up the truth and living in an alternate reality of your own making, it is not about trying to prevent teaching about the systemic racism that perpetuates white supremacy and prevents Blacks and other minorities from ever living the American dream, and if they happen to make progress toward that goal as in Tulsa in the 1920’s it is burned to the ground. God forbid that students should be psychologically upset to learn the truth about this country and what it has done to Blacks, Native Americans, and other minorities in the name of manifest destiny and white supremacy. While this country has allowed many of us a great deal of freedom to pursue our dreams, it has also privileged white people like myself as these dreams were not allowed for minorities who were not like us and came from different backgrounds.

Christianity is about a passion for life, it is about compassion, concern for the poor and marginalized people in society and helping them to realize their full potential. It is taking responsibility rather than dominion over the beautiful earth we have been given that we seem to be hell-bent to destroy, it is about making life better for all people, not just a select few, it is about celebrating diversity rather than retreating into tribalism, it is facing the truth about our motives and the systemic racism built into the political and economic systems we live in every day, it is recognizing the truth about ourselves and our potential for evil, it is about living in the real world rather than some fantasy world of our own making, it is about celebrating our differences and resisting the temptation of making everyone subscribe to one set of values that would make for a rather boring existence, it is about living life to the fullest rather than worrying about an afterlife that doesn’t exist.

Religion will always be a factor in our democracy and in our culture and religious extremists will want to inject their religious beliefs into the public policies that government formulates. One can make a case that religion has poisoned our current political process ever since it became involved in politics and sought to have more and more influence over government decisions and actions. The current impasse in government and its inability to act in many instances because of divisions in Congress that cannot be breached may very well be due at in large part to the religious commitments that many of our lawmakers have made which limits their ability to compromise and work with the opposition to get something done.

Christian nationalism involves the conviction that one is a righteous warrior for God’s cause in carrying out his will for the world. The gives Christians the ability to violate all customs and moral norms in a society because they are doing God’s will and answer to a higher power than mere democratic norms and the laws of a democratic society. They can do anything, even the most inhumane act, and pass it off and justify it on the basis of it being part of God’s plan for the world in which they are his chosen instruments to carry out his purposes. Of course, the claim to be doing God’s will is for the most part nothing but pure self-interest and seeking power over other people’s lives. But this is masked by all the religious language and justifications to make one appear to be a righteous servant.

Trump had all the characteristics Christians usually abhor but they found him perfectly compatible and they used each other while he was in office to implement a common agenda: finally overturn Roe v Wade and get rid of abortion on demand, restrict the voting rights of blacks and other minorities as they are not God’s chosen people, strip science out of policy as much as possible and follow the beliefs of some religious authority, ignore issues such a global warming because Christ is soon to return and it will not matter, and most dangerous of all, get rid of democracy and establish an autocracy from Trump’s perspective, or a theocracy from the Evangelical Right’s perspective, which in reality are both the same thing.

When Trump promised to Make America Great Again what they heard was that he was promising to make White Christian America Great Again by appointing Supreme Court justices that would pursue their goals and make cabinet and other appointments that were consistent with their view of making America a Christian nation and returning it to its Christian roots. Trump proved to be the authoritarian they were looking for, a savior who would deliver them from secular democracy that would carry them to the promised land. Trump and the Evangelicals were using each other to accomplish their goals and do away with a messy democracy based on pluralism and the consent of the people. They believe the country ought to be based on the defining principles of Christianity as portrayed in the Bible and secular laws and regulations ought to be done away with.

But Evangelicals ought to be careful what they wish for, as they got in bed with the devil. Trump demanded loyalty but gave none in return. He could have easily turned on them if he found them no longer useful for his purposes or they offended him in some manner. With Trump it is always what have you done for me today. There is a lesson to be learned in what happened in Germany in the 1930s where the conservatives assisted Hitler’s rise to power and were convinced they could control him and use him for their purposes. We all know how that turned out as once Hitler had the power he brutally suppressed all political opposition banned all other political parties and proceeded to try and take over all of Europe and the former Soviet Union. Now I am not saying the Hitler and Trump are comparable, only that the evangelicals might learn something from these events.

And Christianity as we know it needs to be exposed for what it has become as it is far too corrupted by the Evangelicals to ever be reformed, and mainstream Christianity, which should know better, has stood idly by and let the Evangelicals take over and dominate religious thinking. The country has been turning more and more secular over the years as polls show, and this trend needs to be accelerated, as people need to let the dead bury the dead as it says somewhere in Scripture and live their lives to the fullest without the false security of a God who is pulling the strings and the security of an afterlife for the righteous. In other words, the county needs to grow up and live in the reality of a highly uncertain world where many things happen quite by accident and not because of the will of some divine being. They need to find meaning in this life rather than in some hereafter that doesn’t exist, and not waste their life chasing fantasies.

Thus Christianity needs to be exposed for the fraud that it is which is what this book attempts to do. Americans have been creating their own reality for centuries including a belief in a supreme being called God, an afterlife, angels, the devil, and all the other supernatural stuff that goes with Christianity. There is no proof that such a supernatural realm exists except in the minds of believers. Christianity lumps all this supernatural stuff together and calls it faith, a faith in a reality that has been literally created out of whole cloth what with claims of a creation of the universe out of nothing and a transcendent realm where God supposedly resides and where we will go after our death if we have been faithful and walked the straight and narrow path to salvation.

This fantasy which is called faith exists only in the minds of those who need to believe in the supernatural realm for reasons that have to do with American’s need to believe in fantasy and live in fantasy world. In the first chapter, a book by Kurt Andersen is examined. Andersen is a New York Times Bestselling Author, who has written a book called Fantasyland: How American Went Haywire: A 500-Year History that describes American’s tendency to believe in fantasies and where this need comes from. The complicated phenomenon Andersen is trying to figure out in this book has been centuries in the making, so he needed to go back to the country’s beginnings to understand our weakness for fantasies of all kinds. Americans have let the subjective override objective thinking and act as if opinions and feelings are as true as facts. The Enlightenment belief in intellectual freedom meaning that every individual is free to believe anything they wish has metastasized out of control. The more exciting parts of the Enlightenment ideal have swamped the more rational and empirical parts, claims Andersen, so that during the past half-century Americans have engaged in all kinds of magical thinking, anything goes relativism, and fanciful explanations of things they don’t really understand. More than any other country, Americans really believe in in the supernatural and miraculous, in the existence of Satan, and the story of instantaneous creation several thousand years ago.⁴

By Andersen’s reckoning, maybe a third but certainly less than half of Americans are solidly reality-based making them a minority. But two-thirds of Americans believe that angels and demons are active in the world, at least half are absolutely certain heaven exists ruled over by a personal God, and more than a third believe that global warming is no big deal and is in their opinion a hoax perpetuated by a conspiracy of scientists, government, and journalists. A quarter believe vaccines cause autism and that Donald Trump won the popular vote in the 2016 general election. And I might add the majority of Republicans believe Trump won the 2020 election, the Big Lie as it is called, and far too many refused to get vaccinated against the coronavirus because of some misguided notion of freedom filling up hospital beds in many states during the various surges of the coronavirus. Why we are like this is what Andersen sets out to answer.⁵

There are many different religions in the world, of course, and each of them has a perspective that is different from the others, but it is, of course, the Christian religion that has been the main source of spiritual values for the American people over the years. Every religion has a story to tell that attempts to address some, if not all, of the deepest mysteries of life such as how the earth was created, what is the meaning of life, and where do we go, if anywhere, after death. The Christian religion has a particular story about the origins of life, the end of times, and everything in between spelled out in a book called the Bible. To many Christians, particularly fundamentalists, this book is the ultimate authority and contains the absolute truth about all of life’s questions. It is looked to for answers about all life’s problems and for rules as to how to live one’s life. But even for so-called mainstream Christian religions, some of whom do not necessarily believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, it still serves as the foundation for faith and is where one goes to find the essential elements of the Christian worldview.

In the second chapter, I describe this worldview and its essential elements which stands in stark contrast regarding what science has to say about the origins of the universe and how the world will end. But for a Christian, the Christian worldview takes precedence and science is rejected as being a false understanding of the universe and how it all works. Then I discuss certain characteristics of Christianity that make it what is. The intent of this discussion is not to suggest that every adherent of Christianity displays these characteristics; that one can generalize and find these characteristics in all people who call themselves Christians. Nor is it meant to suggest that non-Christians or even atheists do not have some of these characteristics. Christians do not have a monopoly on these attributes. But it is believed that these characteristics are at the core of Christian belief and are key elements of the worldview that the religion promotes and forms the basis of Christian belief in general. Without these characteristics Christianity as we know it would not exist.

The third chapter deals with the history of Christianity from different perspectives. Bamber Gascoigne has written a what he calls a Brief History of Christianity that serves as an introduction for this chapter. For the first fifty years of Christianity’s existence, Gascoigne says, there are no documents about the life of Jesus and his followers as stories about these events were part of the oral tradition handed down to succeeding generations. But in the next fifty years Christians themselves wrote down most of the books that now comprise the New Testament. Thus, there are many differences in the accounts that show up in the gospels themselves. Only the gospel of Luke, for example, includes the shepherds, only Matthew has the wise men, and Mark and John do not even mention the virgin birth or the infant Jesus. The writers picked and chose from the oral tradition what they deemed important.⁶

Richard Holloway, a former Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church with more than 20 books to his credit, retells the history of religion from the dawn of religious belief to the twenty-first century. In this book entitled A Little History of Religion, Holloway examines where religious belief comes from and the search for meaning throughout history. Religion can be thought of as a projection of the fears and longings that are buried in our subconscious mind onto what Holloway calls the screen of life. While religion seems to be out there somewhere having a life of its own, it actually comes from the depths of our imagination and is an entirely human production.⁷

Matthew Kneale who studied history at Oxford University and is the author of several novels and short stories has written a book about an atheist’s history of belief. In this book the author wanted to know what ordinary people believed and was not concerned with the history of religious institutions. Kneale concentrated on beliefs that he was most curious about and that resembled a story. Beliefs have been a conduit, he says, for creativity in music, literature, art, and architecture and have inspired some of our greatest technological breakthroughs. They have played a key role is shaping the course of history and have instigated many great events in history.⁸

Candida Moss, a Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame and a graduate of Oxford University, challenges the traditional story that early Christians were systematically persecuted by the Roman Empire that was intent on their destruction. She maintains that there was no three-hundred-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians and that stories of persecution were pious exaggerations to inspire the faithful to extend Christian influence throughout the Roman world and establish new churches. The view that Christians by their very nature are at odds with the world has its roots in the way Christians think of themselves as successors of the early church.⁹

According to Philip Jenkins, Professor of History at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, apocalyptic themes in the New Testament come from what he calls the Crucible Era between 250-50 BCE when the Jews were faced with the overwhelming forces of Hellenization and globalization. Out of this struggle came an apocalyptic worldview where the universe was populated by angels and demons and earthly struggles such as the Jews were going through had cosmic significance in the war between good and evil. These ideas emerged in response to a changing world and eventually, claims Jenkins, found their way into Christianity and Islam.¹⁰

Finally, Erin Vearncombe, a professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto, Brandon Scott who is the Darbeth Distinguished Professor of New Testament Emeritus at Phillips Theological Seminary, and Hal Taussig, a retired professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York, representing the Westar Institute, have written a book that proports to examine the first two hundred years after the death of Jesus to answer the question of how Christianity came in being. Recent historical discoveries, they claim, have opened up a two-hundred- year gap between the historical Jesus and Christianity that has gone largely unobserved. They are writing the history of two centuries of what might be called Jesus movements, although they are not satisfied with this term and admit they did not know what to call them or it and ended up with this descriptor.¹¹

Because scripture if considered to be the revealed word of God for Christians whether one believes in a literal interpretation or not it is important to discuss the nature of these texts and how accurate they really are using evidence and reason to make these judgments. The next chapter then will first of all discuss mythology and examine what it is and what role it played in the writing of the scriptures. Then the research of two scholars will be looked at with respect to the Old Testament, the first covering many of the events contained in the Old Testament and the next covering only the story of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt to the promised land of Israel. Next are three views of how the New Testament came into being that will be discussed and how accurate these accounts are about the life of Jesus and his followers. Finally, the process of how the Bible became holy and came to occupy a special place is the lives of Christians is examined.

Scholars, journalists, and various pundits have been proclaiming that the popularity of religion would decline for over a century. The so-called bedrocks of modernity are science, reason, and the separation of church and state, and many expected that religion would just fade away as these aspects of modernity spread throughout the society. But no matter how much our scientific knowledge continues to grow, it still does not provide answers to questions that are important to human beings, such as what is the meaning of life, where did we come from, and what happens after we die. People turn to religion for answers to these questions as science cannot fill the void that remains by leaving these questions unanswered. Religion is central to how people perceive themselves and the world in which they live and is not irrelevant to the problems with which we are faced.

There are many reasons that religion is deemed to be necessary in the world which is the subject of the next chapter. Some argue that without religion they would be without morals and have no guidance to live a moral life as if to say that without religion they would not be good people and would behave as a decrepit soul in the deepest kind of depravity. Others think that they would lose all sense of purpose and meaning if religion were to disappear. Still others point to the good religion as done in the world in helping the poor and destitute to find some way to overcome their condition. There is also a concern with some intellectuals that if religion were to disappear there would be a void in culture that could not be filled by anything else and culture and societies would be worse off than if some form of secularism were to persevere. Thus many authors make a positive case for Christianity and see it as an indispensable part of history and the development of the world. It is claimed that Christianity has been impressive in its cultural creativity and more ennobling in its moral power that any other movement that involved spirit, will, imagination, aspiration, or accomplishment in the history of the West.

But there are many critiques of religion as well including that of Daniele Bolelli writing in a book entitled Create Your Own Religion where he advocates a different approach to incorporating religion into one’s life. The idea of creating your own religion involves searching outside of existing religious dogma to find a way of connecting ourselves and the universe and going through life in a healthy manner. This approach, of course, goes against the claim of many religions that they alone possess the Truth that has been revealed to them by the deity of their choosing. People have been burned at the stake for challenging religious dogma and questioning beliefs of the Christian church. People who claim to speak for God have little or no patience with people who want to figure out for themselves what life is about, says Bolelli, and should listen to what they are told about what is wise and good for them. Thus, the idea of creating your own religion is really quite radical, but the truth is that religious people already create their own religion but hide this fact from themselves.¹²

Burton L. Mack, Professor Emeritus of Early Christianity at Claremont School of Theology, traces what he calls the rise and fall of the Christian myth and its impact on our democracy. Mack starts with Constantine who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and put Christians in charge of piety, welfare, and the instruction of the people in Roman society. He apparently thought these early Christian groups might serve as a social glue to keep the pieces of the Roman Empire together. According to Mack, the installation of faith as the religious institution for an autocratic empire was a major historic event, and while it did not work as a solution to the unification of the Roman Empire, it did change the course of Western history. Christendom eventually came to an end, but the church still exists as the common religious institution of the Western world. However, its spilt into numerous denominations and state churches meant that it could no longer think of itself as the conscience of a medieval kingdom or aristocratic feudalism, much less as the moral authority for a global world. The center of power for both culture and society is no longer located in Christian churches or kingdoms, but rather power now resides in the nation-state.

From the beginning of the country, it was assumed that the United States was a Christian Nation because the majority of the Europeans involved in creating the United States came from Christian countries. However, since the way the county was largely formed from independent pursuits and bootstrap efforts, says Mack, that did not need the church or the Christian myth, not much thought was given to the view of America as a Christian Nation until recently. Religion was understood to be a private matter and not a national myth with a concern for living together constructively in the world of work and enterprise.¹³ But it is in recent years that Christianity has come to play a larger role in American political life even as the nation saw an increase in people from other religions and cultures claiming the United States as their country.¹⁴ Mack is skeptical of this effort to make the Christian myth central to the purpose of the nation and introduce it into all facets of our political life.

The next chapter focuses on alternatives to religions starting with an author who makes a case for agnosticism by focusing on the intersection of religion and politics and who thinks that most people will agree that we don’t all have to be on the same page, that we have nothing to lose but the false consciousness of forced labels, and that it is way past time to approach this complex and often crazed subject of faith, belief, meaning, and existence as not something to be solved, but as an ongoing, open-ended adventure of the mind.¹⁵ Now that the initial charge of the new atheists has passed, what does atheism really mean in the contemporary world. Another author address this and other questions about atheism and shows how the history of atheist thought has developed and offers some fresh ideas about life and its meaning from an atheist perspective. Atheism has been defined as simply someone who doesn’t believe there are any gods.¹⁶ The level of religious belief varies widely throughout the world, but The United States is still a bastion of the Christian faith as belief in a monotheistic god has remained high and remarkably stable. Another author defends atheism by analyzing attempts that have been made throughout history to prove the existence of God. He initially makes the claim that most people who profess belief in God live their lives as if they did not have such a belief and are nominal theists with secular outlooks and lifestyles. Theists can be found on all sides of any particular policy question leading one author to state that there is no distinctively Christian view on anything of practical importance. And whether a person is considerate, courageous, kind, loving, responsible, or trustworthy has nothing to do with belief or disbelief in God.

Atheists throw away the crutches of belief in God and do not accept the idea of immortality. They have walked successfully without these crutches and stand as proud human beings able to deal with their fate without the wishful delusions of faith. They have no need for priests or gods or persistent ghosthood, things that have only hobbled us in our life’s journey.¹⁷ If one is a well-adjusted person and has discarded the unhealthy fictitious relations with a phantasm, one can then look around and notice people who are likewise alone and then realize that we are all alone together. That’s the next step in human progress he says, getting away from the notion of minions living under a trail boss, and moving onward to working as a cooperative community, with no gods and no masters, only autonomous agents free to think and act.¹⁸

As science undermines religion and more people accept its worldview, those who founded their lives on the various precepts of religion, now find themselves adrift with questions about the truth of morality, the absence of any conception of the soul, and questions about the insignificance of all human activity. If we accept science as definitive it can separate us from our vital and spiritual nature. If spirituality is nonsense then where do we find a basis for morality beyond looking out for ourselves? Rather than blanket acceptance or rejection of spirituality, one author would rather focus on those aspects of spirituality that might be real and those that are indeed nonsensical. He believes that wholesale undermining of spirituality by traditional science is not only unhealthy, but scientifically and factually wrong.¹⁹ Another author examines the many paths nonreligious Americans have taken in creating their own traditions and communities in an increasing secular age. Often called the Nones, these are people who have left religion behind and are seeking to find a meaningful life without commitment to any religious tradition. This author is interested in discovering how the nonreligious fill the need for ritual, story, community, and above all, now they find meaning and purpose in their lives without a religious community to support them and provide moral guidance.²⁰

The next chapter deals with secularism. One author claims that secularism as we understand it today is a relatively modern concept. He tells the story of secularism describing the transition of Europe from religious orthodoxy to pluralism, the struggle for human rights and democracy in Western societies, and the origins of modernity and the rise of modern science. Other authors see nature as intelligent and a spirit that helps all of us to live a healthy life. We need to awaken from our ordinary state of consciousness to experience the life force that is normally unseen in our everyday life. Having a deeper connection with nature is healing in itself and can give us a passion and for life and transport us back in time to the magic we knew as children.²¹ Others argue that we are body, mind, and spirit, and when we step away from body and mind we discover that we are luminous beings that are not quite as solid as we are often taught in modern Western culture. We are not simply body and mind and need the strength of spirit to power through our daily life.²²

Philip Kitcher, who is the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, also offers a positive assessment of secularism and the possibility of living a meaningful life without religion where identity and community that is traditionally fostered by religion would instead be based on a broader range of cultural characteristics. While religion was an important factor in past times and provided a framework for understanding the world and coping with life’s trials and tribulations, Kicher believes that it is now essential that we evolve away from religion and learn to live a secular life that will allow us to live a fulfilled life built on ethical truth that comes from a secular humanism. The purpose of his book is to demonstrate how a thoroughly secular perspective can fulfill many of the important functions that religion played in society.²³

Another sociologist is fascinated by the trend toward secularism and seeks to explore what a secular life in America is like, to probe their worldviews and perspectives, and to learn about their experiences, joys, and challenges. His research method was to conduct in-depth interviews of nonreligious people from all over the country and all walks of life representing a variety of races, ethnic groups, ages, occupations, sexualities, and class backgrounds. In general, he found that being nonreligious does not mean that people wander around aimlessly without purpose and meaning. To the contrary, secular people live civil, reasonably rational, and admirably meaningful lives predicated upon sound ethical foundations.²⁴ A life lived without religion is not nothing as this author found.

The next chapter deals with the concept and practice of spirituality as there is something missing from attempts that suggest the only true knowledge is what science discovers and everything else is mere opinion or subjective experience that does not have the status of the objective reality that science discovers. This view of reality is not complete as our experience suggests another dimension that has to do with consciousness and things of the spirit that are part of this consciousness. There is a spiritual reality, I would argue, that science cannot necessarily deal with that informs our behavior and helps makes us who we are. Things of the spirit have to do with what motivates us and cannot be reduced to neurons firing in the brain. There is something more going on here that is not scientific in nature.

The spiritual dimension