In his much touted Impossible Faith, Robert Turkel or James Patrick Holding, whatever his real name may be, argued that the early success of Christianity was so unlikely that its foundation doctrines, especially the resurrection claim, must have been true. Since the self-published booklet that RT/JPH expanded his article into has already been thoroughly debunked by such detailed articles as Richard Carrier's "Was Christianity Too Improbable to Be False?" I will follow a different approach to debunking RT/JPH's impossible-faith thesis by presenting examples of other fantastic claims so cherished by millions of faithful believers that, according to RT/JPH's, logic, they must be true. In this first article, I will focus on the Hindu belief that an army of monkeys once built a bridge from mainland India to the island of Sri Lanka so that Lord Rama could go rescue his wife Sita, who had been abducted by the demon king Rakshasha and taken to the island fortress of king Ravana.
This tale is recorded in Sarga 22 of the Ramayana, which is a 24,000-verse epic volume in the Hindu canon. To assist Rama in the rescue of his wife, a warrior monkey named Hanuman enlisted the aid of an army of monkeys to build a bridge from the island now known as Sri Lanka. Nala and Neela, two monkey architects planned the bridge, which was then built by the monkey army, which was in turn assisted by the sea god Sagara, who intervened to cause rocks, boulders, and trees thrown into the ocean to float and form a bridge over which Rama's army passed to rescue his wife from the demon king.
As fanciful as this tale is, it has more to support it than the Christian myth about the resurrection of Jesus. NASA satellite photos show a narrow land bridge between India and Sri Lanka, which lies three to thirty feet below the surface of the sea. Faithful Hindus, of course, see this as remnants of the monkey bridge that was built to assist King Rama in the rescue of his wife, but scientific examination of the "bridge" has shown that it is a chain of limestone shoals that once formed an isthmus between the island and the Asian subcontinent, which has since sunk beneath the sea. Hindus, then, have at least some tangible evidence to support this myth about a bridge built by monkeys, whereas Christians have nothing but anonymously written claims of biased believers to support their myth of a man who returned to life after having been dead for two days.
The foundation premise of RT/JPH's "Impossible Faith" is essentially that the Christian resurrection claim is so improbable that it has to be true, but is this claim that a man died, remain dead for two days, and then returned to life any more improbable than the Hindu claim that an army of monkeys once built a bridge over 500 miles long to connect the Indian subcontinent to the island of Sri Lanka? Both myths are absurdly ridiculous, but if I had to cast a vote on the improbability of the two, I would have to say that I think it is far more improbable that monkeys could have built a bridge across a 500-mile expanse of ocean than that a man could return to life after having been dead for two days. If, then, I apply RT/JPH's foundation premise to the monkey-bridge claim in the Ramayana, I will be required to say that this tale is so improbable that it must be true. Hence, this foundation premise would force me to believe that the limestone shoals between Sri Lanka and India are remanents of a bridge that was built by an army of monkeys.
In his booklet, RT/JPH tried to show that his foundation premise cannot be successfully applied to Mithraism, Mormonism, or Islam, but he was very selective in his discussion of beliefs in these religions that might conceivably pass his test of improbability. In applying his improbability premise to the resurrection, RT/JPH asked three "test" questions:
In the case of Christianity, of course, RT/JPH answered yes to all of these questions so that he could then argue that if Jesus and the founding leaders of Christianity had said and done things there were considered dishonorable or disrespectable at the time and if the Christian movement had had to deal with social prejudices of the time and if it taught things contrary to popular beliefs of the time, then the only way to explain the success of Christianity is that it had to be true. In his application of these questions to Christianity, RT/JPH gave "yes-examples" of each, which I won't discuss here, because Richard Carrier rebutted all of them in detail in his reply to The Impossible Faith. The way that RT/JPH grasped for straws in applying these questions to Christianity can be seen in his claim that "the identity of Jesus as a Jewish prophet was a major impediment to spreading the Gospel beyond the Jews themselves" (p. 23), so to RT/JHP the fact that Jesus was a Jew would have been so socially prejudicial that Christianity could not have succeeded unless the truth of its foundation premises, such as the resurrection, were so obviously true that it was able to overcome this prejudice. In so arguing RT/JPH showed a biblical ignorance that is beyond incredible for someone who so obviously sees himself as an apologist. Even as far back as the time of Isaiah, Judaism made provisions for "foreigners who join themselves to Yahweh" (Isa. 56:6-7), and the NT makes several references to "Greeks," i. e., Gentiles, who were allowed to worship in synagogues with faithful Jews. In Athens, for example, the apostle Paul, as was his custom, went into the synagogue and persuaded both Jews and "devout Greeks" that Jesus was the Messiah (Acts 17:4). Following this success, he "argued in the synagogue with the Jews and devout persons" every day" (v:17) until he left the city and went to Corinth. References to Gentiles, "devout converts to Judaism," were made during Paul's address in the synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13:43). At the beginning of this speech, Paul referred to "you Israelites and others who fear God" (v:16). Those "others who fear[ed] God" were Gentiles who met in the synagogue with the faithful Jews.
That so many references to Gentile converts to Judaism can be found in the NT is clear evidence that RT/JPH's argument is seriously flawed. Judaism was not so obnoxious to Gentiles that they would have been repelled by the mere thought of adhering to a religion whose roots were deeply imbedded in a socially ostrcized ethnic group. Further evidence of RT/JPH's flawed thinking in this respect is evident in the way that NT writers went out of their way to try to make even insignificant, piddling events in the life of Jesus appear to fulfill Jewish prophecies. Various examples of how NT writers, and especially Matthew, misrepresented and quoted out of context various OT statements to make it appear that events in the life of Jesus had fulfilled Jewish prophecies were discussed in "Prophecies: Imaginary and Unfulfilled," so I don't need to rehash them here. The fact that NT writers struggled so hard to try to prove that Christianity had fulfilled many OT prophecies clearly indicates that they did not consider associating this new religion with Judaism was in any sense a detriment to its success. Instead, they obviously thought that linking it to Judaism would aid its spread. We can't know if the intentions of writers like Matthew and Paul who made frequent claims of prophecy fulfillment in the life of Jesus and his teachings were to draw on the success that Judaism itself had had in attracting Gentiles into its synagogues, but such a conclusion would be far more reasonable than RT/JPH's misguided claim that Christianity's association with Judaism was so socially prejudicial that the only way to explain its success is to assume that its foundation events and teachings must be true.
In applying his three test questions to other religions, FT/JPH had to admit that some of these religions did have to be given affirmative answers
Letter from India http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/26/asia/letter.php