David Fitzgerald’s Toolkit for Dismantling Christianity

Religions Thrive on Fantasy, Deceit, and the Failure of Curiosity 

One of the biggest examples of deceit is this practice of Bible editors: printing the words of Jesus in red. Mainstream Bible scholars know the problem here: none of the Jesus-script in the gospels can be verified. The red print amounts to a claim that is not justified by any evidence. The gospels were written decades after the death of Jesus; their authors do not identify their sources; they never cite contemporaneous documentation (letters, diaries, transcripts) that would give us confidence that we’re reading real words of Jesus. Apparently, Bible editors couldn’t care less. Fundamentalist/evangelical editors insist that the Jesus-script was divinely inspired, so the red print is entirely in order. But then they have to write books, articles, doctoral dissertations to explain away the awful Jesus-script, e.g., the hate-your-family verse (Luke 14:26); I didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34-36); drinking Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood are magic potions for achieving eternal life (John 6:53-57). There are so many of these.
 
 
If the laity took the time to look seriously at these issues—if they took the time to study Christian origins—faith would take a big hit. They would realize that the ecclesiastical bureaucracy is getting away with far too much. But that’s been the plan all along. The clergy know very well how fractured Christianity is: so many different brands, so much disagreement about god and Jesus. That’s why childhood indoctrination—accepted without question—is considered so vital. “We must get our certainties about god embedded in young brains.” 
 
But there are tools available for curious laypeople, for those whose doubts persist and who suspect that the clergy have an agenda (namely, preserving the church). The output of author David Fitzgerald amounts to a full toolkit exposing the deep flaws and fallacies in Jesus beliefs. In 2010 he published Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All. This was followed in 2017 with Jesus; Mything in Action, Vol. 1, Vol. 2, and Vol. 3. This year, three more volumes have appeared, going beyond Christianity: Playing God, An Evolutionary History of World Religions, Vol. 1: The Evolution of God and the Gods of Monotheism; Vol. 2: Judaism and Christianity; Vol. 3: Islam and Eastern Religions. 
 
It would seem very few of the devout ask crucial questions: Where did our belief in one god come from? What was the path of development that culminated in monotheism? In Volume 1 of The Evolution of God and the Gods of Monotheism, Fitzgerald makes it clear that monotheism was a long time coming: there were countless gods that humans imagined and worshipped. For the folks who show up for Sunday worship, to get another dose of assurance that they are on course for eternal life—to sing songs to god and offer earnest prayers—the opening line of Genesis is good enough, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” 
 
Before causation was understood (i.e., lightening and storms, volcanoes and earthquakes, are the result of forces of nature), humans were certain that gods were responsible—hence thousands of gods were imagined. Crops failed? The gods of agriculture were angry. Devastating plagues killed thousands of people? The gods guaranteeing health were furious for some reason. Fitzgerald notes, quoting Daniel Dennett at the end:
 
“Thinking evolutionarily, it’s easy to surmise how our hair-trigger instinct to attribute agency—beliefs and desires and other mental states—to, well, basically anything complicated that moves, could lie at the root of human belief in gods. The false alarms generated by our overactive disposition to go looking for agents wherever the action is are, as Dennett puts it, ‘the irritants around which the pearls of religion grow.’” (Kindle, p. 24; the Dennett quote, p. 114-115, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon)
 
I recommend paying careful attention especially to Fitzgerald’s Chapter Nine: Yahweh and Friends: The Many Gods of Israel. It is clear from the Old Testament itself that the supposed monotheism of Genesis 1 had not won the day. There are many references to other gods who commanded attention, but theologians today have been hard at work to scrub the texts clean, as Fitzgerald notes:
 
“The polytheistic storytellers who gave us the oldest literary fragments embedded in the Hebrew Bible, a.k.a. the Old Testament, had no problem talking about their rich panoply of gods, demons and monsters. But it was a different story for the priestly/ scribal editors who wrote down the Bible’s stories, and the later Christian translators, all of who have tried to hide their embarrassment by subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) tweaking of the text to tone down the elements they found troublesome.” (p. 192, Kindle)
 
Just how did Christianity come to prominence? The very heart of its message was by no means unique. It emerged at a time with mystery faiths—belief in dying-rising savior gods—were popular. Fitzgerald explains: 
 
“But of course, the most famous split came when some groups of Jews (and Jewish-admiring Gentiles) embraced the Hellenistic mystery faiths, and began to creatively blend a Jewish version for themselves. To make a very long story very short, after centuries of languishing in obscurity, one major branch of this trend finally took off when the Roman emperor chose it as his favored faith. We call that movement Christianity.”  (p. 291 Kindle)
 
This brought to mind Richard Carrier’s major 2018 essay, Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. Carrier described nine other such cults that were the context from which Christianity emerged. Virgin Birth was borrowed, changing water into wine was borrowed, so much of the miracle folklore in the gospels was borrowed. 
 
We are also entitled to wonder if the supposed monotheism of Christianity is genuine. After all, its theologians describe god-in-three persons. And Catholics have elevated the Virgin Mary to Queen of Heaven status. Hardly a new idea: see Fitzgerald’s comments about the Queen of Heaven worshipped by much older religions, pp. 189-190, Chapter Nine. 
 
David Fitzgerald is gifted with a highly readable writing style. And he has put it to good use in the books I listed above. These are all part of his massive project, The Complete Heretic’s Guide to Western Religion. Here is homework you can recommend to any of your churchgoing friends who seem to be curious, and are willing to explore and learn. 
 
 
 
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.