The Role of the Bible in Damaging Christian Faith

Maybe that’s why the devout avoid reading it

Mark Twain once stated the dilemma: “It is not the things which I do not understand in the Bible which trouble me, but the things which I do understand.” How many of the laity throughout Christendom have made this same troubling discovery? And Twain was also right when he said that “faith is believing in something you know ain’t true.” How many of the faithful just shut their eyes, close their minds, stifle curiosity—and decide to trust what their clergy teach about god? Very few of the clergy, from the pulpit on a Sunday morning, will give this assignment: “Please, every one of you, read the gospel of Mark—all of it—this week. Read it carefully, critically, and write down the questions about it that occur to you. Be brave, even the toughest questions are welcome.”
 
A few years ago, I posted articles here about every chapter in Mark’s gospel, for the simple reason that it contains so many problems and absurdities. Any person with critical thinking skills can spot them—any devout person with such skills can see how their faith is jeopardized. It was so gratifying to read the long article published this last July by Richard Carrier on his blog, All the Fantastical Things in the Gospel according to Mark. It is mandatory homework, especially for those devout folks whose clergy have urged them to read Mark’s gospel. The conclusion is obvious: How can anyone take this gospel seriously? It fails utterly to qualify as divinely inspired. There are just too many mistakes and plot flaws, too much goofiness; Carrier provides abundant details. Mark—whoever the actual author was—wrote clumsy theology, with no evidence whatever that he possessed the skills of a historian. 
 
Because of the traditional lineup of the gospels, it is common not to realize that Mark was the first gospel to be written—probably at least forty years after the death of Jesus—and that huge chunks of it were copied by both Matthew and Luke, who changed the wording as they saw fit, including the supposed Jesus-script. 
 
Let’s take a look at just a few of the defects. 
 
In Mark 1, we read that John the Baptist proclaimed “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins…” (v. 4). Jesus showed up to be baptized, after which a voice came from heaven: “You are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.” (v.11) A favorite Christian belief is that Jesus was without sin, but this text seems to suggest that god was pleased with him after his sins had been cleansed by baptism. The author of Matthew’s gospel wasn’t happy with this, so added Jesus-script implying that the baptism was just for show: “John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he consented.” (vv.14-15) In John’s gospel, with its highly inflated theology, Jesus isn’t baptized at all. 
 
But critical readers should also be stumped by the claim that god spoke from the sky. This reflects ancient naivete that god resides in a realm above the clouds and below the moon—so he just has to speak up to be heard. In the transfiguration story in chapter 9, we find the same silliness: “Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (v.7) God speaks from water vapor? Mark’s agenda, as propagandist for the Jesus cult, is clear: He wants to anchor the claim that Jesus is god’s son. This kind of bragging was not uncommon for cults of the era. 
 
But skeptical readers can see the major plot flaw here: the Christian god can speak from the sky, from clouds? If so, why hasn’t he put this ability to good use over the centuries? During the Black Plague in the 14^th century—when millions of people died horribly, and the church blamed it on sin—why didn’t god shout from the sky, “No, it’s not sin! It’s the fleas, it’s the rats spreading the flea!” When Adolf Hitler was rantings his hatreds to thousands of people in stadiums, why didn’t god shout from the sky, “Don’t listen to this evil nutjob—get rid of him!”
 
In Mark 4:1-12, Jesus explains to his disciples that the purpose of teaching in parables is to fool people, so that they won’t repent and be forgiven. Devout scholars have agonized over this text for a long time, because it makes no sense whatever. He assures his disciples that the secret (or mystery) of the Kingdom of God has been given to them, not to outsiders. Again, Mark is pitching to the Jesus cult here: they possess the secret to gain the Kingdom.
 
In fact, the coming of the Kingdom is the major focus of Mark’s gospel, hence there is so little ethical teaching in this portrayal of Jesus. Get ready for the arrival of the Kingdom is the primary message here. In fact, one of the worst verses in the gospel is 14:62: Jesus claims that he is indeed the messiah. He promises those at his trial that “…you will see the Son of Man [i.e., himself] seated at the right hand of the power and coming with the clouds of heaven.”Obviously this never happened. 
 
In Mark 5 we find the story of a mentally ill man who lived among the tombs, ranting and abusing himself. Because demons possess him—so Mark assumes—he recognizes Jesus from afar, because Jesus is also from the spiritual realm. The demons convince Jesus to transfer them into a herd of 2,000 pigs. Presumably by uttering a magic spell, Jesus does this trick, and the pigs rush off a cliff and drown in the sea. No surprise, at the end of the story, the people of the region ask Jesus to leave. There is no way, from the perspective of a modern understanding of how the world works, that this story qualifies as anything other than magical folklore. Can we hit the delete button? 
 
In his article on the Fantastical Things in Mark, Richard Carrier states in the Introduction:
 
“There is at least one impossible event narrated in every single chapter of Mark. In fact, the count is well more than one. Mark is therefore wildly more mythological in composition than any genuine history or biography of the time. And Mark resembles only ancient fiction and mythology in this respect. And yet Mark is the first narrative of a historical Jesus, and the core (and only really known) source for every other.”
 
I’ve mentioned only a few of the bizarre things in Mark’s gospel. Please read Carrier’s article in full to grasp just how far out of touch with history and reality this gospel is.
 
Any devout people who divert their attention from these realities—to keep believing—know what Mark Twain was talking about: “Faith is believing in something you know ain’t true.”
 
 
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.