THE SCIENTIFIC EXAMINATION OF RELIGION

I just finished THE SCIENTIFIC EXAMINATION OF RELIGION, which represents the best of Free Inquirer.  I'll analyze chapters over the next few months on Sundays.

The Introduction was written by Tom Flynn, who is editor of Free Inquirer  He wrote The Trouble with Christmas in 1993.  Costs only $1.99.

Flynn says:

• this book is the second in an ongoing series that brings together selected articles that appeared in Free Inquirer magazine between 2000 and 2012
• starting in the late 1700's, scholarly research into the origins of Christianity and The Bible revolutionized the way Christian intellectuals in Europe understood their faith

• by the early 1900's Protestant scholars determined that
• Moses had not written the first five books of the Old Testament
• none of the four Gospels were written by the individuals whose names they bear
• none had been written by an eyewitness to the life of Jesus

• Jesus, if he even existed, had said and done only a fraction of the things the gospels claimed
• His resurrection was almost surely a myth
• there was fear that if those who went to church learned what educated religious leaders knew, many would lose their faith

As an aside, I should underscore that, compared to Europeans, Americans, in particular, kept the faith:

To continue:

• most of the world's Christian clergy embarked on a strategy of silence
• two centuries of cover-up about the origins of Christianity worked...the masses continued to believe
• 800 conferees, representing religious leaders and skeptics, in 1985 met in Ann Arbor, reawakening scholarly interest in Jesus studies

• biblical scholar Robert Funk subsequently founded the Jesus Seminar
• over the next two decades, 50 biblical scholars and 100 laymen participating in the Seminar, used colored beads to arrive at a controversial conclusion that only 20% of the sayings the gospels attributed to Jesus were authentic
• skeptics began to form committees, eventually leading to Skeptical Inquirer in 2006

Next?  Perhaps Richard Dawkins on Who Owns the Argument from Improbability?  It was in 2007 when I first met him, and we had a long chat.  He is currently an emeritus fellow New College, Oxford.  I'm emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.

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