In the Word is a quarterly journal published by Mark McFall, a former biblical inerrantist, who, despite having seen the folly of trying to defend the inerrancy doctrine, continues to believe that the Bible is in some sense "the word of God." McFall has been a long-term member of the ii_errancy internet list, but during his tenure there, he has resisted requests to explain (1) what the purpose of divine inspiration was if it was not to so guide writers that whatever they recorded would be true information and (2) how one can tell truth from error in the Bible when the information involves matters that cannot be verified by science, logic, or extrabiblical records. In issue number 20 of McFall's journal, he published "From Atheism to Christianity," an article by A. S. A. Jones, which as I am writing this has not yet been posted on McFall's website. When the article is posted, I will revise this reply to it to include a link so that readers can see for themselves that I am not exaggerating when I say that Jones gave no verifiable evidence to support her claim of having found Jesus.

Jones is no stranger to members of the ii errancy debate list. She came to this forum touting how she had finally seen the light and converted to Christianity after having been an atheist for 20 years, but she was never able to give us any kind of logical reasons for her conversion, which other skeptics could use as templates to help them see the light too. She would, in fact, get rather miffed at inquiries about this and have some rather sarcastic things to say about those who questioned her along these lines. She wound up in the e-mail filters of many members who tired of her incessant abstract attempts to explain how she had managed to find Jesus, because we suspected that her 20 years of atheism had really been nothing more than 20 years of being "unchurched." However, we could see nothing in her anecdotal posts about her personal experiences with God that could give us any logical reasons to think that she had discovered much of anything except that religious epiphanies give some people "warm fuzzy feelings," but the problem with warm fuzzy feelings is that they always seem to vary from person to person. They give no logical reasons at all for why others should follow in the steps of those who have found personal comfort in finding Jesus or Allah or Vishnu or whatever deity may have been involved in the epiphany. We could never get Jones and those like her in the forum to see that it makes no sense that person A's warm fuzzy feeling would turn her to Christianity, whereas the warm fuzzy feelings experienced by B, C, and D would lead them to accept Mormonism, Islam, and Buddhism respectively. There's no logic to it, and it is strange indeed that personal experiences with deities almost always convert people to whatever religion is prevalent where the personal experiences happened. If these personal experiences always resulted in conversions to the same religion, say, Eastern Orthodox Catholicism, that would be a compelling reason to think that the experiences are real encounters with God, but as long as such experiences lead one person to become a Baptist, another a Pentecostal, another a Mormon, another a Muslim, and so on, that will be equally compelling evidence that the experiences are nothing more than emotional reactions to encounters with local religious influences.

When McFall's journal arrived, on the same day that I began writing this article, I started looking through it out of curiosity, but when I saw Jones's article on the front page, I sat down and read it through to see if she had found anything besides anecdotal "evidence" to offer in support of her conversion to Christianity. She hadn't. It was the same old stuff about her unusually high IQ, her scientific studies in college, her graduation (with honors, of course), and her disillusionment with life until she finally found Jesus. At one point in the article, she claimed that she had reached a stage where she even viewed humans with disgust.

Humanity had become nothing more to me than an organized network of molecules and enzymes. I viewed people as mere organisms going through their daily routines of metabolizing nutrients and expelling wastes, ovulating their eggs and ejaculating their semen. I knew the psychology of humans almost as well as their anatomies. The hidden thing that pulled them this way and that were very evident to me. They were like guinea pigs, only more predictable, and my chief form of entertainment was to see how skillfully I could manipulate them. I knew that I was supposed to care about them, but I didn't. I couldn't. If mankind's goal was to alleviate its own suffering, a bullet to the head was more efficient and made more sense in my thinking than screwing around with medication or disease control.

When I read this, I immediately thought that Jones needed psychological help more than she needed Jesus. Perhaps it isn't too late for her to get the help she needs, and I hope she finds it. At any rate, I also thought of how different her reaction to life had been from mine. She went from atheism (so she claims) to Christianity, where she (so she says) has found inexpressible happiness, and I went from Christianity to atheism, where I have found a much more satisfying happiness than I had ever experienced in Christianity. If her anecdotal evidence is reason enough to follow in her steps, why wouldn't mine be reason enough to follow in my steps? You see, that is the problem with anecdotal evidence. It doesn't prove anything. Believers and nonbelievers are both guilty of using anecdotal evidence to promote their personal viewpoints. Believers will relate stories of those who were wallowing in the degradations of drunkenness, drug addiction, sexual promiscuity, etc., etc., etc. until they found Jesus, who then turned their lives around and brought them personal fulfillment, and nonbelievers will tell stories of ex-Christians and ex-preachers, who saw through the phoniness of religion and found fulfillment in skepticism. Both are examples of anecdotal argumentation that prove nothing. Jones viewed people with contempt before she "found Jesus." I didn't view people with contempt when I was a believer, but I truly believe that I have more interest in people now than I did when I was trying to save the world by preaching Jesus. Before her conversion, Jones saw people as just organisms that metabolized nutrients and expelled wastes, but after my deconversion, I developed a profound awe of the evolutionary processes that brought us from the lower life forms to the species that we now are. I see more reason to wonder at this than at the simplistic notion that some deity just spoke it all into existence, but what I think from my own personal experiences is worth no more than what Jones thinks from hers.

Logic is what makes the difference. I see logic in my view of life, but I see nothing but unbridled emotionalism in Jones's substitution of Jesus for rational thinking. She seems to be a person who was unable to use her own inner resources to find purpose and meaning in life, and so in her frustration she turned to religion. In her entire article, I didn't see a single attempt to show that in converting to Christianity she had followed a logical course of action. To the contrary, everything she said about her conversion indicated that she was looking for a way out of what seemed to have been a self-imposed loneliness in which she had been unable to find purpose in life. She related how one night when she was "alone in her study," she read Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and decided that she should read the Bible in the same way that she read poetry or fiction.

The Bible didn't make sense to me. But why did it make sense to others? What were they seeing that I didn't? Did they so desperately want there to be a God that they had deluded themselves into thinking that there was one?

I think she was on to something at this point but just didn't follow through with about the only logical thought that I found in her entire article. In the first place, she had assumed that the Bible did make sense to others, but my experience has been that no one can really make sense out of those parts of the Bible that have spawned so much theological wrangling. Why, for example, would an omniscient, omnipotent creator want humans to worship him? Is he so insecure that he needs this adulation to bolster his ego? If so, then he can't be very omniscient. Why would an omniscient, omnipotent creator require the sacrifice of his son in order to make "salvation" possible for mankind? When earthly children displease their parents, only those who are psychological misfits abuse their children or kill them, yet we are supposed to think that a "heavenly father" is entirely within his rights to kill his children or punish them eternally in fire. I suppose that Jones has found such conduct as this on the part of an omni-max deity, which would include his omnibenevolence, to be perfectly sensible.

I could continue this line of questioning indefinitely. If Jesus is God, then when "God" sent his son into the world to die for the sins of the world, did he send himself? How could there be just one God but three separate "persons" in this one God? How could Jesus have been "wholly God and wholly man," as most theologians claim? When asked to explain it, many of them will at least be honest and say that it can't be explained, because it is a "mystery." Well, excuse me, but mysteries don't make sense, so was Jones able to make sense of this "mystery"? If so, perhaps she will agree to explain it to us. I taught literature on the college level for thirty years, so I know how to read poetry and fiction. When I read the Bible, I apply to it the same principles of literary interpretation that I would apply if I were reading a novel or a short story or an anthology of poetry, yet I have been unable to find sensible explanations of the many inconsistencies, contradictions, discrepancies, and such like that I see nearly every time I read the Bible for any extended period.

Jones went on to "explain" the enlightment that came to her after she had read Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.

It was New Year's Day, 1998. I made a resolution to read the entire Bible again, only this time I was going to read it as I would poetry or fiction, and not as a proposal of fact.

Well, of course, that was a proper decision on her part, because in reading the Bible she would be reading a lot of poetry and fiction, but apparently Jones failed to recognize that much of what she was reading was fictional, because she seems to believe that everything that the Bible said about God and Jesus was factual, although she claimed that she was no longer reading the Bible "as a proposal of fact." We can determine from what she went on to say that although she had stopped reading the Bible as if it were "a proposal of fact," she nevertheless apparently considered what it said to be factual.

In the months that followed, I kept my resolution and I began noticing a change in my way of interpreting the Bible. I found that my mind could logically accept two very different interpretations of almost everything I was reading. One interpretation of any verse or passage would render the whole story as nonsensical. But the other interpretation allowed the whole story to make sense.

Jones apparently doesn't realize that what she said here could be applied with equal validity to the Qur'an, the Book of Mormon, the Zoroastrian Avesta, the Hindu Vedas, or any other collection of religious writings. Indeed, if she is not willing to apply the same principles of interpretation to all other "holy books," then she is guilty of the fallacy of special pleading. Hence, the amazing experiences that led Jones to see that everything in the Bible makes sense should also enable her to find sensibility in everything that the Book of Mormon or the Qur'an says. If not, why not?

Now let's reconsider a question that Jones asked above. Why does the Bible make sense to others? One could just as well ask why the Qur'an makes sense to others. The answer, of course, is that it makes sense to others because they were reared in cultures that instilled in the general population a belief that the Qur'an was a revelation from Allah, so the people who grow up in Islamic societies develop a deep emotional need to believe that everything that the Qur'an says is necessarily true. When one is indoctrinated to believe this, he will have no difficulty either "making sense" of anything that he reads in the Qur'an or else just accepting it by "faith." If Jones would take the time to visit Islamic websites, she would see that Islamic "apologists" do the same thing that she presumably did after having received enlightment from reading Through the Looking Glass. They apply to the inconsistencies and absurdities in the Qur'an the same kinds of how-it-could-have-been interpretations that Christian apologists use to explain biblical discrepancies. If these same principles were applied to all written documents, the result would be that everything that has ever been written is inerrant. If Jones can find comfort in having found Jesus through such illogical interpretations of the Bible, I suppose that this is her right. There is no law against faulty logic.

That her logic was faulty is evident from the fact that it led her to accept an illogical religion. All religions that I have ever studied are illogical, but the Judeo-Christian religions are so patently illogical that one would think that anyone of even average intelligence should be able to see the absurdities on which these religions were founded. The Hebrews, for example, offered animal sacrifices to their tribal god, but so did all the other tribes and nations around them. The Hebrews built a tabernacle and later a temple, which they called the "house of God," but the tribes and nations around them also built temples to their gods. The Hebrews had a priesthood that officiated at temple ceremonies, but so did all the other tribes that had built temples to their gods. The Hebrews thought that their god had chosen them above all other tribes on earth to be his specially "chosen people" (Deut. 7:6), but the other nations around them thought that they were chosen of their gods. The Hebrews thought that their god Yahweh led them to victory over their enemies, but the nations around them believed the same of their gods. By what rule of logic was Jones able to determine that the tribal nations around the Hebrews were all wrong in beliefs that were parallel to what the Hebrews believed, but the Hebrews just happened to be right? How was Jones able to determine that when king Mesha thought that he was having personal communications with the god Chemosh, he was mistaken, but when Abraham, Moses, or David talked with their god Yahweh, they were having actual experiences with this deity? Jones failed to address any of these problems.

Anyone who reads king Mesha's inscription on the Moabite Stone or the inscription of king Assur-Nasir-Pal at the entrance to the temple of Urta at Nimrud will see that the belief of the Hebrews that they were the chosen people of their god was strikingly parallel to what was believed by the nations around them. Notice how king Mesha claimed that he had many personal experiences with Chemosh, a god who led him to victory but punished the nation of Moab when the people displeased him.

I am Mesha, son of Chemosh... king of Moab, the Dibonite. My father was king over Moab thirty years and I became king after my father. And I made this sanctuary for Chemosh at Qrchh, [a sanctuary] of salvation; for he saved me from all the kings and let me see my desire upon my adversaries. Omri, king of Israel, he oppressed Moab many days, for Chemosh was angry with his land. And his son succeeded him and he too said, "I will oppress Moab." In my days he spoke [thus], and I saw my desire upon him and upon his house, when Israel perished utterly forever. And Omri had taken possession of the land of Medeba and [Israel] dwelt in it his days and half the days of his son, forty years; but Chemosh dwelt in it in my days. And I built Baal-Meon and made it in the reservoir, and I built Qaryaten. And the men of Gad had long dwelt in the land of Ataroth, and the king of Israel had built Ataroth for himself. But I fought against the town and took it and I slew all the people of the town, a spectacle for Chemosh and Moab. And I brought back from there the altar-hearth of David and I dragged it before Chemosh at Qeriyoth. And I settled there the men of Sharon and the men of Mchrt. And Chemosh said to me,"Go take Nebo against Israel." And I went by night and fought against it from the break of dawn till noon; and I took it and slew all: seven thousand men, boys, women, and [girls] and female slaves, for I had consecrated it to Ashat-Chemosh. And I took from there the vessels of Yahweh and dragged them before Chemosh. And the king of Israel had built Jahaz and he dwelt in it while fighting against me. But Chemosh drove him out before me. And I took from Moab two hundred men, all of them leaders, and led them up against Jahaz and took it to annex it to Dibon. I built Qrchh, the walls of the parks and the walls of the mound; and I built its gates and I built its towers; and I built the king's house; and I made both the reservoirs for water inside the town. And there was no cistern inside the town of Qrchh, so I said to all the people, "Make yourselves each one a cistern in his house." And I had ditches dug for Qrchh by prisoners of Israel. I built Aroer and I made the road by the Arnon. I built Beth-bamoth, for it was destroyed; I built Bezer, for it was in ruins, with fifty men of Dibon, for all Dibon is under my authority. And I reigned [over] hundreds of towns which I had annexed to the country. And I built... Medeba and Beth-Diblathen and Beth-Baal-Meon, and I led up there the breeders of the sheep of the land. And as for Hauronen, there dwelt in it.... Chemosh said to me, "Go down, fight against Hauronen." And I went down... [and there dwelt] in it Chemosh in my days... (D. Winton Thomas, Documents From Old Testament Times, Harper & Row, pp. 196-197, emphasis added).

The ellipses represent places where the text had been broken off the stone surface, but even without these parts, if Yahweh were substituted for Chemosh and Israel for Moab and the names of the kings Mesha and Omri were reversed, this would read like a page from the Bible. Indeed, if this passage, with the changes just noted, had been included in the Bible, Jones would know from her personal experiences with God that what the text said had to be unquestionably true, but this is not a text to be found in the Bible. It is an inscription that was written on a monument in a country that bordered Israel by people who believed in the god Chemosh instead of Yahweh. Otherwise, their beliefs were identical to the Israelites'. The text just quoted shows that Mesha believed that his god Chemosh delivered him from his enemies, but the Israelites believed that their god Yahweh delivered them from their enemies.

2 Chronicles 32:22 Thus Yahweh saved Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem from the hand of Sennacherib the king of Assyria, and from the hand of all others, and guided them on every side.

Joshua 10:42 Joshua took all these kings and their land at one time, because Yahweh the God of Israel fought for Israel.

Exodus 14:30 Thus Yahweh saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.

1 Samuel 10:17 Samuel summoned the people to Yahweh at Mizpah 18 and said to them, "Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, "I brought up Israel out of Egypt, and I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you."

Psalm 44:7 But you [Yahweh] have saved us from our foes, and have put to confusion those who hate us.

What is logical about believing that of two ancient tribes living side by side in biblical times both believed that their tribal deities led them to victory over their enemies but only one of the two beliefs was right? What personal experience has Jones had that would provide a rational answer to that question?

The inscription on the Moabite Stone shows that king Mesha believed that the oppression brought upon the land of Moab by the Israelite king Omri was punishment from his god Chemosh, who was "angry with the land," but the Israelites also believed that times of adversity, which they periodically exerienced, were punishments that their god Yahweh had brought upon them for their wrongdoings.

Judges 6:1 The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, and Yahweh gave them into the hand of Midian seven years.

Judges 2:11 Then the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh and worshiped the Baals; 12 and they abandoned Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; they followed other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were all around them, and bowed down to them; and they provoked Yahweh to anger. 13 They abandoned Yahweh, and worshiped Baal and the Astartes. 14 So the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them, and he sold them into the power of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies.

Judges 4:1 The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, after Ehud died. 2 So Yahweh sold them into the hand of King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor; the commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-ha-goiim.

Judges 10:7 So the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of the Philistines and into the hand of the Ammonites, 8 and they crushed and oppressed the Israelites that year. For eighteen years they oppressed all the Israelites that were beyond the Jordan in the land of the Amorites, which is in Gilead.

Like Ms. Jones, Mesha claimed that he had a relationship with his god Chemosh that was so "personal" that Chemosh actually talked to him. "Go take Nebo against Israel," Chemosh said to Mesha, or so Mesha claimed, and, of course, Mesha took Nebo. How could he have failed with Chemosh on his side? On another occasion, Chemosh said to Mesha, "Go down, fight against Hauronen," so Mesha went down, fought against Hauronen, and took it. These parts of the Moabite inscription in particular read like blurbs from the Bible.

Judges 20:27 And the Israelites inquired of Yahweh. (In those days the ark of the covenant of God was there, 28 with Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, ministering before it.) They asked, "Shall we go up again to battle with Benjamin our brother, or not?" Yahweh responded, "Go, for tomorrow I will give them into your hands."

1 Samuel 23:2 David inquired of Yahweh, "Shall I go and attack these Philistines?" Yahweh said to David, "Go and attack the Philistines and save Keilah."

1 Samuel 30:8 David inquired of Yahweh, "Shall I pursue this band? Shall I overtake them?" He answered him, "Pursue; for you shall surely overtake and shall surely rescue."

2 Samuel 2:1 After this David inquired of Yahweh, "Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah?" Yahweh said to him, "Go up." David said, "To which shall I go up?" He said, "To Hebron."

2 Samuel 5:19 David inquired of Yahweh, "Shall I go up against the Philistines? Will you give them into my hand?" Yahweh said to David, "Go up; for I will certainly give the Philistines into your hand."

Mesha talked with his god Chemosh to receive instructions on what battles to fight, and David and other Israelites inquired of their god Yahweh for advice on when to go to battle, yet we are supposed to believe that Mesha was just taking to nothing, whereas the people in a tiny nation that bordered Mesha's country were actually talking to a real, genuine, rootin' tootin' deity when they inquired of their god Yahweh. Is it more sensible to believe that this god Yahweh was real or that the Israelites only thought that he was real, just as the Moabites thought that their god Chemosh was real? The answer to this question is self-evident, but I doubt that it will be self-evident enough for Ms. Jones to see it.

In her article, Jones didn't dare to address directly the problem of Yahwistic massacres that permeate the Old Testament, but she did attempt a backdoor, indirect defense of those atrocities. After she had learned how to interpret (read rationalize) the Bible so that everything in it made "sense" to her, she apparently decided that the blood that oozed from its pages was inconsequential.

If my mind was capable of accepting interpretations that allowed the whole book to make sense, then what was it in me that wanted it not to make sense? This book was reading me as surely as I was reading it. Every time I found fault with its god, I ended up finding a fault of my own. What was I doing when I condemned this god for commanding Moses to kill? Was I arrogantly making my morality superior to that of the being who allegedly authored all of its morality? Was I condemning the actions of an entire nation, which was trapped in a kill or be killed situation?

Well, gee whillikers, was it a kill-or-be-killed situation when Yahweh commanded the Israelites to go into Canaan and "leave nothing alive to breathe" (Deut. 20:17)? At that time, the Canaanite nations were in their own land, so if the Israelites had respected their territorial rights, there would have been no need to kill anyone, because there is no reason to suppose that the Canaanites would have gone into the wilderness of Sinai to kill the Israelites. As this fanciful yarn was spun in the Bible, it was purely and simply a case of land-grabbing. The Canaanites had land that the Israelites wanted, and so in their blitzkrieg through Canaan, the Israelites used this as an excuse to kill everything that breathed. Were the Israelites "trapped" in a kill-or-be-killed situation when Yahweh ordered Saul to go "utterly destroy" the Amalekites, including children and babies, because of an Amalekite attack on Israel 450 years earlier (1 Sam. 15:1-3)? There is no indication that the Israelites were in any imminent danger of being killed unless a preemptive attack was launched to massacre the Amalekites. To carry out Yahweh's orders, Saul had to take his army out of Israel and into Amalekite territory, so this was a simple case of vengeance for an attack on the Israelites by Amalekite ancestors who had lived over four centuries earlier. It seems that Yahweh "remember[ed] that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt" (v:2), and that was the only reason given for the command. Jones can search high and low in this biblical account for some evidence that Yahweh had ordered this massacre in order to save the Israelites from a kill-or-be-killed threat, but she won't find it. The only reason given for the orders is in the statement that I just quoted: Yahweh remembered what Amalek had done to Israel over four centuries prior to his command to massacre every living, breathing Amalekite. That vengeance was the reason for the command was also made evident when Saul granted the Kenites safe passage out of Amalekite territory, because they had "showed kindness to all the children of Israel when they came up out of Egypt" (v:6).

There is no logic at all in believing that genocide can be made morally right just because someone wrote a tale in barbaric times that found its way into a collection of writings that later came to be known among gullible people as "the word of God." A more logical view of such stories as these is that they were simply reflections of barbaric times when most people believed that slaughtering rival tribes was what their gods wanted them to do. King Mesha, for example, took Nebo and massacred "seven thousand men, boys, women, and [girls] and female slaves," and he did so because he had "consecrated it [Nebo] to Ashat-Chemosh." In other words, Mesha thought that when he slaughtered these seven thousand captives in Nebo, he was paying homage to his god.

This was a prevailing view of the time, which can be seen in an inscription attributed to the Assyrian king Assur-Nasir-Pal, which was found in the pavement slabs of the entrance to the temple of Urta at Nimrud.

At that time I received tribute of the land of Isala--cattle, flocks, and wine. To the mountain of Kashiari I crossed, to Kinabu, the fortified city of Hulai, I drew near. With the masses of my troops and by my furious battle onset I stormed, I captured the city; 600 of their warriors I put to the sword; 3,000 captives I burned with fire; I did not leave a single one among them alive to serve as a hostage. Hulai, their governor, I captured alive. Their corpses I formed into pillars; their young men and maidens I burned in the fire. Hulai, their governor, I flayed, his skin I spread upon the wall of the city of Damdamusa; the city I destroyed, I devastated, I wasted with fire....

And now at the command of the great gods my sovereignty, my dominion, my power, are manifesting themselves; I am regal, I am lordly, I am exalted, I am mighty, I am honored, I am glorified, I am preeminent, I am powerful, I am valiant, I am lion-brave, and I am heroic! Assur-Nasir-Pal, the mighty king, the king of Assyria, chosen of Sin, favorite of Anu, beloved of Adad, mighty one among the gods, I am the merciless weapon that strikes down the land of his enemies... (Crane Brinton, A History of Western Morals, Harcourt, Brace, & Co., p. 48, emphasis added).

Sin, Anu, and Adad were Assyrian gods, so Assur-Nasir-Pal believed that he had been chosen by these gods to conquer, pillage, and massacre. There was not an iota of difference in the attiude that Israel and the nations around her had about massacring captives, except that the Israelites evenually came to believe that they were doing the will of just one primary god (Yahweh), whereas nations like Assyria believed that they had been chosen by several gods to plunder the nations around them and massacre those captured in battle. Ms. Jones, however, apparently believes that there really was a god egging on the Israelites to pillage and massacre, whereas nations like Assyria were simply mistaken in their beliefs that gods had chosen them to do the same, but the real tragedy in her thinking, which unfortunately reflects the way that many of her Christian cohorts think, is that she believes that massacres of entire civilian populations was morally right because "God" had commanded that they be done. It just doesn't seem to occur to her that it was far more likely that a barbaric people just thought that the god whom they had created in their own image wanted them to massacre their enemies.

Judaism was not alone in having parallels in other religions. Christianity, which was spawned by Judaism, was also doctrinally similar to the religions around it. Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin, or so the New Testament claimed, but this was a time when just about anyone of any importance at all had been virgin born. This similarity to paganism was so obvious that Justin Martyr felt the need to address it. In an apology addressed to Emperor Hadrian, he actually defended the Christian belief in the virgin birth of Jesus by arguing that it was no more ridiculous than the virgin-birth beliefs of pagans.

By declaring the Logos, the first-begotton of God, our Master, Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin, without any human mixture, we say no more in this than what you [pagans] say of those whom you style the sons of Jove. For you need not be told what a parcel of sons the writers most in vogue among you assign to Jove; there's Mercury, Jove's interpreter, in imitation of the Logos, in worship among you. There's Aedsculapius, the physician, smitten by a thunderbolt, and after that ascending into heaven. There's Bacchus, torn to pieces; and Hercules, burnt to get rid of his pains. There's Pollux and Castor, the sons of Jove by Leda, and Perseus by Danae; and not to mention others, I would fain to know why you always deify the departed emperors and have a fellow at hand to make affidavit that he saw Caesar mount to heaven from the funeral pyre? (Apologia I, chap. 22).

Notice that although Mercury had preceded Jesus of Nazareth, Justin Martyr said that Mercury was an "imitation of the Logos." This early "apologist" was alluding here to his "explanation" of why Christianity had so many aspects that were parallel to pagan mythology. That "explanation" was "the devil did it." In chapter 54 of his first apology, J. M. stated this "explanation" more directly and actually argued that the pagan myths about virgin births were counterfeits that had originated with Satan in order to presabotage faith in the son of God when the real virgin birth would become a reality.

It having reached the Devil's ears that the prophets had foretold the coming of Christ, the Son of God, he set the heathen poets to bring forward a great many who should be called the sons of Jove. The Devil laying his scheme in this, to get men to imagine that the true history of Christ was of the same character as the prodigious fables related of the sons of Jove."

We see, then, that nothing much has changed in apologetics over the past two millennums. Silly explanations were used then, just as they are still being used today. In his Dialogue of Justin and Trypho, Justin Martyr expanded this "explanation" of Christianity's similarity to pagan myths to include more than just the virgin birth.

Be well assured, then, Trypho, that I am established in the knowledge of and faith in the Scriptures by those counterfeits which he who is called the devil is said to have performed among the Greeks; just as some were wrought by the Magi in Egypt, and others by the false prophets in Elijah's days. For when they tell that Bacchus, son of Jupiter, was begotten by [Jupiter's] intercourse with Semele, and that he was the discoverer of the vine; and when they relate, that being torn in pieces, and having died, he rose again, and ascended to heaven; and when they introduce wine into his mysteries, do I not perceive that [the devil] has imitated the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses? And when they tell that Hercules was strong, and travelled over all the world, and was begotten by Jove of Alcmene, and ascended to heaven when he died, do I not perceive that the Scripture which speaks of Christ, "strong as a giant to run his race," has been in like manner imitated? And when he [the devil] brings forward Aesculapius as the raiser of the dead and healer of all diseases, may I not say that in this matter likewise he has imitated the prophecies about Christ...? And when those who record the mysteries of Mithras say that he was begotten of a rock, and call the place where those who believe in him are initiated a cave, do I not perceive here that the utterance of Daniel, that a stone without hands was cut out of a great mountain, has been imitated by them, and that they have attempted likewise to imitate the whole of Isaiah's words?

As Justin Martyr noted here, there were also pagan myths about other aspects of Christianity, i. e., Satan, angels, heaven, hell, resurrected heroes and demigods, ascensions, final judgment, and general resurrection, so there is really nothing unique in the Christian religion, which simply assimilated beliefs that were commonplace at the time. Where, then, is the logic in believing that of various primitive religions that were alike in so many respects, just one of them was the right one? To believe this is just as irrational as the belief of denominations of Christianity like the Church of Christ that of all the hundreds of Christian sects only theirs is the right one. It apparently never occurs to people who think like this that they should seriously examine their beliefs to see if there is any logical basis to their claim of having the only religion that is right.

I saw no indication in Jones's article that she had subjected her newly found belief to anything that even remotely resembled rational examination, but the article is filled with indications that her experiences were purely emotional. After having decided that she was going to join the any-interpretation-will-do crowd, she soon let herself slip past a point of no return.

For weeks, I was on a high, the type of high that comes about by feeling that one is on the edge of making some sort of profound discovery. I wasn't sure what I was discovering but my perception of this world was changing. In July, I read these words of Jesus Christ, understanding them for the first time after having read them for years; "Who do you say I am?"

At this point in her article, I felt that I was on the edge of making a discovery that wasn't a bit profound, because I had discovered the same thing in reading the articles of others who had "found Jesus." That discovery was that Jones was just another person, among countless others, who had had a "personal experience with Jesus" that didn't mean a thing to anyone but her. I have spent decades debunking the popular belief that the Bible is the word of God, but to the credit of those who first preached the "gospel" that resulted in the foundation of Christianity, they did not speak in the nebulous terms of those like Jones who talk abstractly about their conversions. No, the apostles and first preachers of the gospel were quite specific in telling others how they could be "saved." On the day of Pentecost, for example, the apostle Peter preached that the Jesus who had recently been crucified had been raised up to be both Lord and Christ. When Peter's audience heard this, they were emotionally convicted and cried out, "Men and brothers, what shall we do?" Peter didn't say, "Well, open your hearts and let Jesus come in," or anything that even remotely resembled the kind of nebulous crap that we hear from the likes of A. S. A. Jones. Instead, he answered directly and to the point: "Repent and be baptized every one of you for the remission of your sins" (Acts 2:38).

Now compare Peter's very specific answer to what Jones said to try to convince us that she had "found Jesus" after 20 years of groveling in self-deprecation. Notice how she seemed to think that she could substitute exclamation marks for specific, concrete details.

At this moment, I saw it. I saw what the truth of the Bible was! And I was humbled. More than humbled, I was broken. The truth wasn't about cud chewing bunnies or how much precipitation fell during Noah's flood. It was the truth about human nature and our efforts to rise above it! It was the truth about human spirit being led by divine spirit! It was the truth about each of us, imperfect in our love for one another, needing to be made complete by the perfect love of God! The truth was about how one man, without sin, had died for us so that we could live! The truth of the Bible was and is JESUS CHRIST!

Gee, whiz, she saw all of that in a simple question: "Who do you say I am"? If so, she succeeded marvelously in her goal to subject the Bible to various interpretations, but she said nothing that would give a logical explanation for why writers inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity would have made scientifically inaccurate claims about bunnies chewing the cud and enough precipitation falling to cover the highest mountains on earth under 20+ feet of water. If we can't trust what inspired writers said in matters like these, how can we be sure that we can trust them when they said that Jesus was the Christ, the son of the living God, and that he died for the sins of the world? I suppose questions like these never occur to Jones anymore, because she is reading the Bible the same way that she reads poetry and fiction. I wonder, however, if she thinks that scientific mistakes and downright absurdities are true when she reads them in fiction?

We will lay such problems as these aside for now, because what we want to do here is compare what Jones said about her discovery of "salvation" to Peter's answer to those who asked what they should do. Peter's answer was specific, "Repent and be baptized every one of you for the remission of your sins," but Jones's answer would apparently be something like, "Read Matthew 16:14 and then let your minds run wild about cud-chewing bunnies, the amount of precipitation that fell during Noah's flood, human nature, the human spirit, and a maze of other thoughts not even implied in the question." This kind of tommyrot about "salvation" is taught nowhere in the New Testament, and the specificity of Acts 2:38 is by no means an isolated example. If Jones would lay aside her emotionalism and read the New Testament with a view to seeing what it actually says and not what she imagines that it says, she would see that the first gospel preachers always gave specific instructions on what people should do to be "saved." Saul of Taurus, for example, asked the apparition of Jesus what he should do, and Jesus said, "Go into the city [Demascus], and there it will be told you what you must do" (Acts 9:6). Saul went into the city, and the disciple Ananias came to him and said, "Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name" (Acts 22:16). None of this nebulous nonsense about "personal experiences with Jesus" or letting Jesus into one's heart was taught in the New Testament. The preachers of that time were very specific in the instructions that they gave on how to be "saved."

I am pointing this out not because I think there is even an iota of truth to the New Testament's nonsense about "salvation" but to point out just how far removed those who extol their personal experiences with Jesus are from what the Bible teaches about the so-called "plan of salvation." Jones, for example, apparently wants us to believe that the Bible is God's truth, but she doesn't want to practice herself what it says about how to be "saved." If she doesn't think that she needs to respect what the Bible says about "salvation," then why should she expect us to respect what Peter said in response to Jesus's question, "Who do you say that I am"? Peter's answer was, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God," but why was Peter's answer necessarily true? If Jones had read this question and answer in another "holy book" about another alleged savior-god, would her emotions have rocketed to the moon as they apparently did when she read this in the Bible? If not, why not, and if not, why should the question and answer be any more significant just because Jones read it in a collection of books that has Holy Bible embossed on the cover? I'm asking these questions only to try to get her to examine logically a situation that she has so far looked at with only her emotions.

In a moment, we will see Jones saying that Christianity is not what is wrong with the world, but a real tragedy of Christianity is that it probably more than any other religion instills in its converts a profound sense of self-denigration. Jones made it clear in her article that this happened to her as soon as she made her profound discovery that Jesus was the Christ, the son of the living God. As I quote her own testimony to this effect of Christianity on her life, notice the parts that I emphasize in bold print.

The moment I was made aware of my despicable nature, I realized that Jesus had died for me. I never had recognized sin and, therefore, thought that Christ had died for nothing. But this man was able to see the horrible nature present in all of humanity and yet he has sacrificed himself to save us from ourselves. In a very real sense, my sinful nature had caused the death of an innocent man. I never believed in hell prior to this, but one of my first thoughts, after seeing how hellish a person that I was, was that I deserved to be in it.

I had been a fool. I had paraded around, thinking myself to be the sophisticate, oblivious to the trail of toilet paper clinging to my shoe. For the first time in my life, I became aware of my soul and how dirty it was when the light of Christ fell upon it. I sucked! Christianity wasn't what was wrong with the world. I was what was wrong with the world. A lack of education wasn't what was wrong with the world. I was what was wrong with the world.

Throughout the rest of her article, which ran three more paragraphs, Jones continued to wallow in self-denigration, so there is no need to quote any more of what she said about her profound discovery that Jesus was all in all, whereas she was a despicable, worthless creature. I will conclude by noting that I am deliriously happy that I managed to escape from the shackles of a religion that seeks to destroy one's self-esteem. I don't see myself as a fool or a "hellish person" or someone with a "dirty soul." I see no reason to think that I even have a soul. I certainly don't think that I am what is wrong with the world. In fact, I have many reasons to believe that the world would be a much better place if more people were like me. I won't go into details here, because I would wind up sounding immodest, but I will remind readers that my personal experiences with atheism have been the opposite of Jones's. I have concerns for others, and, contrary to Jones's experience, my "atheistic philosophy" actually increased my compassion for others. I have to wonder why someone with the exceptional IQ that she brags about was unable to look at life more rationally and see the illogical aspects of the religion that she espoused.

I continue to suspect that her "atheism" was really just a state or condition of being "unchurched," but if she really was an atheist, her conversion was no great loss. The last thing that atheism needs is someone who can't think critically.  Go to the next article in this series.