The High Vulnerability of Christian Belief

Why do its faithful followers fail to notice?

How many Southern Baptists drive by Catholic Churches on the way their own churches? And vice versa? Does it never cross their minds that there are major differences in their versions of Christianity? They can’t both be right. Yet these believers trust the priests and ministers who have taught them since their earliest years. When we broaden the perspective, it’s obvious that the problem becomes more extreme: there have been thousands of different religions—and all of them teach as absolute truths their own ideas about god(s). Religions push the importance of taking it all on faith. “Please don’t think about it: you must trust that your priest or minister has a firm grasp of the absolute truth.”

 
Christians seem to specialize in ignoring evidence that would disconfirm their faith, especially in terms of real-world events. John Loftus has put major focus on horrendous suffering’s devastating impact on belief in a powerful, good, loving god. The devout prefer to accept banal explanations for horrifying evils, but these fail when we look at specific events. Such as the murder of 452 women and children in a church, 10 June 1944, in rural France—part of a Nazi plan to kill everyone in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane. Please explain, Christians—without resorting to silly excuses—why your all-powerful god didn’t notice or care what was happening? I have mentioned this event quite a few times in recent months, since it happened 80 years ago. When your eternal fate depends on belief, it’s so tempting to turn off thinking. Which means that the implications of the Holocaust during World War II (as least six million people murdered) are ignored—or the even greater American Holocaust following the European invasion of north and south America (by some estimates, more than 100 million native Americans died). See David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World.
 
I suspect that this huge American catastrophe is no more within the horizon of awareness of churchgoers than the 1944 church massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane. 
 
But sometimes devout believers have led the way in thinking their way out of religion. Frank Lerant, in his book, How I Opened My Mind and Let God Out: An Electrician’s Road to Atheism, provides a good example. He mentions horrendous suffering in his chapter 9 titled, God—the Biggest Failure of All Time:
 
“The all-seeing, all-knowing God has gotten a lot of things wrong since day one. He built us a planet with killer earthquakes, storms, volcanoes, and other destructive phenomena…God created deadly bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells that have devastated mankind forever. Billions of people have suffered and died prematurely from disease, including countless children…God gave us bodies with countless weaknesses and poorly designed parts.”  (p.88, Kindle)
 
In the early part of his book, Lerant demonstrates what happens when people carefully read and ponder the Bible. He perfectly illustrates three of my favorite quotes:
 
Andrew L. Seidel, “The road to atheism is littered with Bibles that have been read cover to cover.” 
 
Hector Avalos, “If we were to go verse by verse, I suspect that 99 percent of the Bible would not even be missed.”
 
Mark Twain, “The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible.”
 
This is one of his choice comments:
 
“Entire books, such as Dan Barker’s God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, have been written describing the horrific stories of the Old Testament, and this chapter was certainly influenced by his work. If you are a good person and have not read the Bible, I’m sure you will be as shocked as I was when I began reading it critically.” (p. 36 Kindle) 
 
In this same genre of book is Steve Wells, Drunk with Blood: God’s Killings in the Bible.
 
Lerant asks:
 
“…how can you worship a god who recommends what we now think of as psychopathic homicide? If you do, there is no place for you in the civilized world. The so-called ‘word of God’ is filled with stomach-turning stories, hundreds of contradictions, plagiarism, incest, cannibalism, and ‘facts’ disproven by scientific methods.” (p. 19, Kindle)
 
This is by no means aimed just at the Old Testament. Lerant references New Testament goofiness as well: “…why do we still subject our children to ridiculous rituals like the cannibalistic act of turning crackers and wine into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus? …It should be viewed as a clear support of cannibalism, and quite frankly, disgusting.” (p. 69, Kindle)
 
The ecclesiastical bureaucracy gets away with so much because it has trained the flock to turn off thinking. The world around us, with so much anguish and suffering every day—the ongoing onslaught of horrendous suffering—renders belief in a loving, powerful god highly improbable. Theologians and apologists devote so much energy and cleverness (including drama, ritual, ceremony) to making their god seem real, which apparently convinces those who have turned off thinking. Then there’s the Bible, with such blatantly bad depictions of a tribal deity whose fury and poor judgement emerge in both the Old and New Testaments. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only son…” (John 3:16) is a treasured verse for most of the devout. But gave his son is a reference to the barbarism of human sacrifice. 
 
Christianity is highly vulnerable because it is blind to realities and is firmly grounded in ancient superstitions.    
 
 
 
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available. 
 
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
 
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.