Asymmetry of conversion continued...

Asymmetry of conversion continued...

Jordan says that I contacted him to discuss the resurrection. This is not quite the whole picture. If I just wanted to discuss the resurrection with Christians then I would have done so by contacting apologetics index [1] (as I have about the asymmetry of conversion) which I believe is a reasonably quality Christian site and has been very civilised with me in past discussions. I would also have discussed it on the Xtianity mailing list where I have had some good discussions and debates [ref.] The reason for contacting Jordan was because I was put onto him by another ex-Christian as part of my asymmetry of conversion research. Since I have already found so many well-churched ex-Christians, I want to know if this is balanced by ex-atheists who were well-appraised of the arguments against Christianity before they became Christians. I wish to hear what Jordan has to say and present him with counter arguments to see if he holds any surprises. I did the same with the only other ex-member of a freethought organisation, Dr. Anthony Garrett [ref] but it turned out that he knew nothing about the arguments against Christianity and was only a member of the Australian Skeptics in order to combat creationism (which he still does as a Christian). Despite initially attempting to rebut me, Dr. Garrett soon became quite unable, or unwilling, to answer my questions. So when Jordan taunts me with "Steve has got himself into a bone-fide debate...he had better hold tight because he is in for a rough ride" I can only assume he has not read my feedback [ref] where he will see that he is quite mistaken.
The point about the asymmetry of conversion and why Christians should be worried about such people as the Sea of Faith is that it obviously takes something pretty compelling to deconvert a priest. What is the most parsimonious explanation for why so many priests, theologians, missionaries, apologists etc. deconvert?
Jordan writes as follows:
"Steve seems to be hung up on the mistaken idea that scholarship equals sharing a faith. Islamic scholarship would consist of non-Islamic scholars also. Further, using his line of reasoning (as my Rules of Engagement employ—applying the same rule of measure to both sides), I present that thousands of Jews did, in fact, convert to Christ (after centuries upon centuries of non-conversion to competing religions) as a result of the Resurrection, be it myth or fact. These converts, throughout their numerous centuries of rejecting other religions, abandoned their faith and embraced Christ. Now, if he thinks that an example of hundreds converting should make us "think," then what about a conversion of thousands?"
Firstly I am not "hung up on the mistaken idea that scholarship equals sharing a faith" this is too confused to even be straightforwardly wrong - the point is that scholarship often leads to loss of faith! I have cited plenty of deconversion stories from people who left Christianity as a direct result of their studies [ref]. Indeed this is one of the most common exit stories from Christianity as anyone spending time surfing my collected stories will soon appreciate. It is the very fact that scholarship so often leads to deconversion that indicates Christianity is not on a secure scholarly footing. Hence the analogy that if plenty of Muslim believers became unbelievers when they undertook Islamic studies then Christians would surely be using this to question the scholarly security of supernatural Islam. Jordan's point: "Islamic scholarship would consist of non-Islamic scholars also" is not carefully considered. What I actually said in regard to hypothetical Islamic scholars was "...if many hundreds of their most able scholars deconverted during their studies..." which should have made it obvious I was thinking about scholarly believers (who else would deconvert?) not just scholars in general! There is nothing wrong with this analogy once the point of deconversion through scholarship is appreciated. Indeed Jordan uses it himself in his attempt to find people like C.S. Lewis whom he had incorrectly assumed "knew all the arguments."
Secondly, Jordan again presents unsupported "facts." Where does he get the information that "thousands of Jews did, in fact, convert to Christ (after centuries upon centuries of non-conversion to competing religions) as a result of the Resurrection"? As Wells points out [2] the evidence for wholesale Jewish acquiescence in Christian preaching of the resurrection in Jerusalem in the A.D. 30s comes not from historians but from the early chapters of Acts. (Using the bible to prove the bible!) However these speeches, by Peter and others, cannot be historical because they offer proofs from scripture that rely on the Greek OT, (often where it deviates from the Hebrew) and so were concocted in a Hellenistic community, not spoken persuasively to the Jews in Jerusalem as Acts would have us believe. For instance [2], at Acts 13:34, the "Men of Israel" are regaled with the Septuagint of Isaiah 55, where the Hebrew would not give the desired sense. In Acts 1:19-20, Peter addresses 120 Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, referring to Aramaic as "the language of the inhabitants" and going on to elucidate, in Greek for their benefit, one of its words, before presenting them with a proof from prophesy taken from the Septuagint, the wording of which has been adapted so as to make his points. At Acts 15:13 etc. James appeals to Christian Jews of Jerusalem by quoting a Septuagint distortion of the Hebrew original. And so it goes on. It is not James, the Jewish Jerusalem Christian speaking, but Luke, the hellenistic gentile.
So much for the Jerusalem Jews. At Pentecost, Luke widens his Jewish net of conversions to a largely Diaspora crowd (Acts 2:5-14), but the mass conversions which they are represented as occasioning are also of dubious historicity. If Acts were taken at face value, then Jerusalem would have been seething with reports of Jesus's resurrection a few weeks after the crucifixion. Not only this but Acts 8:1 reports "a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem." In fact, however, the Christian community there will have been unobtrusive and as good as unnoticed given the lack of reporting of early Christianity from interested contemporary historians like Josephus. In trying to convince us of the contrary the author of Acts would have us believe that Peter's Pentecostal sermon converted 3,000 Jews (2:41) and his next sermon another 2,000 (4:4), and that altogether early Christianity was no hole-and-corner affair (26:26), but made a great public show and received attention in high places. It is all part of Luke's message that Christianity is essentially God-driven, and is propelled to success after success by the divine power behind it.
Indeed, Josephus makes no reference to the celebration of Pentecost in Jerusalem when allegedly devote Jews of every nation gathered and all received the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in new tongues. Instead it appears that the story is built upon Ezekiel's tongues of fire and a reversing of the Tower of Babel story. The OT was viewed as full of divine foreshadowing of the story of man, and such mining for historical fact was part of the ancient Jewish psyche when attempting to find out what "must have" happened.
Jordan's "thousands of Jews" and the depiction in Acts also goes against 1 Thessalonians where Paul apparently railed against the obstinacy of the Jews in accepting Jesus: 1 Thessalonians ch. 2:
"14 For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: 15 Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: 16 Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost."
In Romans chapters 9-11 Paul looked forward to a day when there would be a Jewish turning to Jesus, whom they were currently failing to recognise. This was an odd hope if there were thousands of Jewish converts in Jerusalem as depicted in Acts and claimed by Jordan. e.g. Romans ch 10:
"1 Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. 2 For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth."

Those Jews that did accept Christianity (although arguing over exactly what Christianity consisted of from the very beginning [ref]) were from the diaspora, a very different and diverse set of groups than the stalwart Jews Jordan portrays. Not only this, but many Jewish writings of the second century BCE to the second century CE have been discovered in recent decades which indicate that Judaism of the first century was more diverse than had previously been thought. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Nag Hammadi documents have contributed to this change in perspective. Scholars have been able to find a niche within Judaism from which they believe Jesus could have obtained his beliefs and teachings [4]. Indeed resurrection hope was a Jewish idea for at least two centuries before it became a Christian idea. It appeared in situations when a terrible injustice required a resurrection - God's faithful people otherwise not receiving the justice and reward they so clearly deserved. 2 Maccabees 7 recounts the martyrdom of 7 brothers and their hope of resurrection, so sustaining devout Jews who suffered the brutal oppression of the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes in the mid-second century B.C., as does the future hope expressed in Daniel 12. The Wisdom of Solomon (esp. 1:12-3:9) expresses similar hope [3].
Geza Vermes has has this to say on the Jewish mission:
"In the conscious mind of first-century Gentile believers in Jesus - and in the subconscious of the Church throughout the ages - the most alarming element of the Christian story was the incomprehensible fiasco of an essentially Jewish religious movement among the Jewish people themselves. How could the man from Rome, Athens, Ephesus or Alexandra, to whom the Gospel of a Galilean Master was preached by his Jewish disciples in an alien, half-intelligible technical jargon, develop a secure faith in their message when those to whom it was originally given, people familiar with all these moving but outlandish matters, refused en bloc to be impressed. Was there something wrong with the Gospel itself? The Christian controversialist appears to have followed an established pattern. The Gospel was perfect, but something was fundamentally wrong with the Jews. Their obstinacy in rejecting the Messiah, the greatest of God's promises to Israel, was explained as the culmination of age-old wickedness and as the principal reason for the irrevocable transference of their privileges to the Gentiles." [8]
We should also note the special pleading in Jordan's argument. We can see the same thing in conversion of hundreds of thousands of Jews to Shabbatiasm, which using Jordan's numbers logic makes that the true religion, not Christianity. As I transcribed at Shabbetai Zevi
"Throughout Jewish history, there had been many Messianic claimants but none had ever attracted such massive support. It became dangerous for Jews who had their reservations about Shabbetai to speak out. His supporters came from all classes of Jewish society: rich and poor, learned and uneducated. Pamphlets and broadsheets spread the glad tidings in English, Dutch, German and Italian. In Poland and Lithuania there were public processions in his honour. In the Ottoman empire, prophets wandered through the streets describing visions in which they had seen Shabbetai seated upon a throne."
Is it expected that priests should decovert from Christianity? This should be seen as good evidence if Jewish conversions are seen as evidence. Also if one reads the Testimonies of Jews who returned [ref] one will see that Jewish converts to Christianity often return to Judaism, and you will note that these tend to be the most scholarly examples.
I think Jordan has misunderstood my quoting percentages of clergy who do not believe in the physical resurrection. He remarks that despite about a third overall not believing in a physical resurrection still the majority do, which I assume he hopes confirms his contention that the scholarly consensus is on a physical resurrection. However he is both wrong [ref] and has missed the point. Imagine that a third of the members of atheist organisations admitted to believing in the divinity of Christ. Would this be seen as evidence of the security of atheist arguments because the majority still remained non-believers?
A physical resurrection clearly is not the pivotal (or secure) doctrine Jordan takes it for if a third of professional Christians in even a religiously conservative country like the USA do not ascribe to physical resurrection belief. As I said, this is evidence that current scholarship rarely filters through to the Christian laity. Although frequently not "true scholars" by Jordan's standards, clergy will in general be better read on Christian themes than the laity. The massive gap between the beliefs of the clergy and laity in mainline and liberal churches demonstrates both that changes in such fundamental beliefs such as the resurrection does not necessarily prevent people from feeling they are Christians, and that generally as people learn more they tend to believe less. (Also see [6]).
It is even worse than this though. Naively one would expect all clergy to believe in the basic tenants of their religion as it is usually believers who feel they are called to the priesthood, ministry and mission field. However, just as statistics for other educated professionals show [6] the more they learn, the more the percentage of supernatural believers goes down. Jordan uncharitably mocks Christian apologists who deconvert at university after years of study as "a bunch of college drop-outs." Are Michael Goulder, Gerd Lüdermann and Don Cuppitt and their like "a bunch of college drop-outs?" I quoted one particular (very intelligent, studious and serious) aspiring apologist because he did precisely what Jordan claims he himself does not need to do, which is to make a proper study of the Jesus Seminar's historical critical writings. This is such a common story - a committed Christian decides to examine the "other side of the argument" in order to become a deeper Christian and better exponent of the faith but their studies convince them that they were wrong. Jordan's friend, John Richards, has undertaken to study the other side of the argument and has been in discussion with me about reading material and I respect his approach and good manners [7]. Primarily I would recommend a good mainstream respectable encyclopaedia like www.britannica.com which is where I sent John when he asked me for my opinion on reading about evolution. I also tried to read from as neutral as possible sources when I had questions about Christianity - many of those question being raised by theologians, not "skeptics."
The painful fact for the particular student of 10 years intense apologetics training and debate I quoted, who Jordan described as a "college drop-out" was that he felt extremely depressed and even suicidal to learn that he had been so wrong. A number of us on the ex-Christian mailing list tried to give him support and he has gradually come to regain confidence in his thinking abilities and is making a slow and steady recovery. Even he, who took deconversion about as bad as I have seen, was ultimately glad that he found out that he had been mistaken. From the pooled experience of hundreds of ex-Christians, few Christians would listen sympathetically to him, and Jordan is demonstrating that in his immediate denigration without any knowledge about this person. Experience of ex-Christians indicates that most Christians would just wish to point out to him where he has "gone wrong," probably ending with taunts and threats off hell-fire if their apologetics did not work [ref]. I have not ignored Jordan or laughed at him as a "drop-out" from the American Atheists. I have wanted to see and analyse what he has to say. What does he make of the fact that Cambridge University for instance is full of radical theologians? It is not just "college drop-outs" that Jordan needs to check with and neither are they to be so easily dismissed.
People go into the priesthood, ministry etc. because they feel called to do so. They should have high motivation for keeping the faith. Scholars, theoretically, should be more open to persuasion, after all they are purportedly attempting to do research - to find something new out. So naively we should expect very few clergy to radically change beliefs and maybe some Christian theologians to unless the evidence for Christianity really is strong. Instead we find about a third of American clergy change their minds about the resurrection, many theological colleges become completely radical, and even in conservative seminaries people loose faith.
It should take something quite significant to deconvert a priest and yet there are plenty of examples of this and of other losses of supernatural belief as Christians learn more. This is in stark contrast to the magnitude of physical resurrection belief amongst the generally lesser educated lay public. That is my point in quoting these statistics. Highly motivated believers change beliefs in proportion to their level of knowledge. This is not likely if the evidence for Christianity is good. Meanwhile, like the third of US clergy who doubt the resurrection [ref] Christians are often forced to adapt their theology to new discoveries.
Another thing that was misunderstood by Jordan is my mention of my discussion with the principal of a theological college (the father of my girlfriend of the time), whose vice-principal I got to know personally and who left because she came to the conclusion that Christianity was not of God. To this Jordan replied: "Okay, God exists but not in Christianity? Her reasoning is what?" I did not mean she still believed that God exists! I meant, like I wrote in my testimony, that she came to the conclusion that Christianity is human and natural, not divine and supernatural. This is an important distinction because all the important spiritual feelings that Christians have do not disappear when we cease to be Christians. Instead feelings grow and richen as spirituality is ascribed to its real source and reality - human beings and the real universe. It is quite a shocking and enriching discovery to find so much spirituality and feeling for life outside of ones previous heartfelt religion! Also, as I said in my testimony, one no longer has to think spiritually bad things about other people: "I had been taught that you can only love God if you love your neighbour. It is ironic that I found I could only love my neighbour if I didn't love God."
The very heart of the Christian message is to tell you that there is something fundamentally wrong with humanity and the world. It is difficult to truly embrace life when it is seen as spiritually broken in some way, especially when so many of us are maddeningly hard to turn into Christians. I think that Christianity runs against the world and I have noticed the frequency with which ex-Christians report their surprise at the joy of life they discover when they leave Christianity, no matter how good they thought Christianity, their "relationship with Jesus" etc. was whilst Christian.
Nobody really "chooses" to disbelieve in Christianity whilst a Christian - as if they were looking for a reason to reject it - quite the opposite is the case! How we can testify to pouring over books of apologetics and asking in prayer for guidance as our faith was crumbling! It is a gut-wrenching discovery that Christianity is untenable. Current Christians have enormous difficulty understanding this. Most people become ex-Christians because their closer examination of Christian claims show supernatural Christianity to be unwarranted. John Richards and I have discussed this some more in an email exchange [7].

Notes:

Apologetics Index
G.A. Wells - The Jesus Myth (1998) ISBN 0812693922
Roy Hoover, from - Jesus' Resurrection, Fact or Figment? A Debate between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdermann ISBN 0830815694
Robert M. Price: Review of Case Against Christianity
Out in the Open Now, with Faith Jude Bullock, of St. John the Evangelist, Islington, explains his own spiritual journey.
new survey: scientists "more likely than ever" to reject god belief.
see my conversation with John Richards
Geza Vermes, Professor Emeritus of Jewish studies in the University of Oxford - Jesus the Jew ISBN 0334008050.

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