Quest for the historical atheist

Unbelievers regularly apply historical criticism and myth criticism to the Jesus tradition in the four gospels.

Some unbelievers (e.g., Richard Carrier, G. A. Wells, Earl Doherty) go so far as to deny that Jesus ever existed.

It has also become a fad for unbelievers to write deconversion stories. This goes back to the Victorian era (e.g., Francis Newman; Edmund Gosse).

Such “inspirational” literature is a parody of evangelical conversion testimonials.

Suppose we apply historical criticism and myth criticism to deconversion stories? What will be the result?

Let’s begin with some preliminary definitions and explications.

I. Historical Criticism

Historical criticism or Tradition criticism is a subdivision of Bible criticism. It proposes certain criteria of authenticity. Two of the most important are:

1. The criterion of dissimilarity, according to which a dominical saying is probably authentic if it is dissimilar to both the early church and Second Temple Judaism.

If we were to adapt this criterion to modern-day deconversion stories, we would deem a saying to be authentic if it is dissimilar to both the contemporary religious subculture and the contemporary irreligious subculture.

2.The criterion of multiple-attestation, according to which a saying is probably authentic if it appears in multiple strands of tradition or multiple (form critical) pericopes.

(2) is applied after (1) is applied. That is to say, (2) is applied to whatever residual remains after (1) is applied.

3.Although it isn’t a formal criterion in historical criticism, another criterion that is popular in the sceptical literature is what we might call the criterion of disinterestedness.

According to this criterion, a saying is probably authentic if the witness or redactor had no vested interest in the outcome.

If, by contrast, he speaks as an advocate, then his testimony can be dismissed as sheer propaganda.

II. Myth Criticism

Myth criticism is an interdisciplinary field which draws its criteria from mythography, ethnography, and folkloristics.

It identifies and classifies mythological or folkloric literary genres by tale-type according to the presence of certain archetypal themes and motifs—mythemes.

Leland Ryken offers a useful summary of this approach:

***QUOTE***

In literature, especially, we continually encounter these same character types, plot motifs, and images. These recurrent images are called “archetypes.” They are the basic building blocks of the literary imagination.

All of the persons, events, and images of literature make up a single composite story. This story is called the “monomyth” because it is the “one story” of literature.

The monomyth is shaped like a circle and has four separate phases. As such, it corresponds to some familiar cycles of human experience. The cycle of the year, for example, consists of the sequence of summer-fall-winter-spring. A day moves through a cycle consisting of sunrise-zenith-sunset-darkness.

1.Romance (which Northrop Frye calls “the story of summer”) pictures idealized human experience and is a wish-fulfillment dream of complete happiness.

2.Its opposite, anti-romance (“the story of winter”), portrays unideal experience and is an anxiety dream of total bondage and frustration.

3.Tragedy (“the story of fall”) narrates a fall downward from bliss to catastrophe.

4.Comedy “(the story of spring”) narrates a rise from bondage to happiness and freedom.

The circular pattern of the monomyth takes a number of specific forms, including the following:

a) The quest, in which the hero leaves the security of his home, undertakes an ordeal that tests his powers and temporarily defeats him, overcomes the obstacles, and either returns home in triumph or achieves a new state of bliss (which still constitutes a return to the initial state).

b) The death-rebirth motif, in which a hero endures death or danger and returns to life or security.

c) The initiation, in which the hero is thrust out of an existing, usually ideal, situation and undergoes a series of ordeals as he or she passes from ignorance and immaturity to social or spiritual adulthood.

d) The journey, in which the hero passes through threats that test him and lead to his character development.

e) Comedy, a U-shaped story that begins in prosperity, descends into tragedy, but rises to a happy ending as obstacles to success are overcome.

f) The temptation motif, in which an innocent person becomes the victim of an evil tempter or temptress.

g) The rescue motif, in which characters undergo dire threat and then are rescued.

1.Archetypes of Ideal Experience:

The hero, the wise man,

The mountaintop or hill; the fertile and secure valley; pastoral settings or farms; the pathway.

The city or palace or castles; the temple or church; the house or home.

Water, a river or stream; tranquil pools.

The spring and summer seasons, the sun, moon and stars; light, sunrise, day.

2.Archetypes of Unideal Experience:

The villain, the temper or temptress; the wicked father or stepmother.

The wilderness or wasteland; a place of ice and intense cold.

The autumn and winter seasons; sunset, darkness, night.

Windows into the World (Zondervan 1985), 42-48.

***END-QUOTE***

Let us now apply historical criticism and myth criticism to some popular deconversion stories.

I. Pseudo-Loftus

Among the deutero-Loftistic writings, the Loftus tradition comes down to us in three different pseudonymous recensions.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/02/my-conversiondeconversion-story.html

http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/view-item?item=11156&90145338-31415aaa

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1412046025/sr=1-1/qid=1145710716/ref=sr_1_1/104-0770077-4083168?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=books

This, of itself, generates an acute version of the synoptic problem. But will pass on that for now.

Let us apply the criteria of authenticity to these memoirs—with special reference to the first.

1.Since all three memoirs are attributed to the same author, they obviously flunk the criterion of multiple-attestation.

We lack any independent confirmation or corroboration for most-all of the autobiographical details.

2.Since the memoirs are written to justify the conversion of the protagonist, they will also flunk the criterion of disinterestedness. They are secular hagiographa.

The autobiographical protagonist as a personal stake in the outcome.

What is more, he has a financial incentive:

“In my book Why I Rejected Christianity: A Former Apologist Explains I’ve written 40 pages about my conversion to Christianity, my deconversion away from Christianity, what I believe now, and why. To read the complete story of my conversion/deconversion and what I believe today you can purchse [sic.] the book here.”

3.Finally, the memoirs also flunk the criterion of dissimilarity, for there are no original or distinctive ideas in his material—no sayings whose intellectual pedigree cannot be traced to the religious background of the protagonist, his formal education, or his secular acculturation.

So, based on historical criticism alone, there is no probative evidence to believe that John Loftus is a real person. He is, rather, just a literary construct.

Let us move on to myth criticism:

“I had a dramatic conversion as an 18 year old. I had dropped out of High School, and was arrested six different times for offenses like running away, theft, and battery. I had also hitchhiked around the country with a friend. I was heavily into drugs, alcohol, sex, fast cars, and the party scene.”

“But one night I gave myself over to this Jesus in repentance and faith in response to what I believed at that time was his substitutionary death on the cross for my sins.”

Notice the stereotypical coming-of-age motif, wherein the hero’s conversion functions as a rite of passage from adolescence to manhood.

“I graduated from Great Lakes Christian (Bible) College, Lansing Michigan, in 1977.”

Notice the mytheme of holy water as a rite of passage.

“Anyway, I have told people time and time again that I could teach philosophy until I was blue in the face so long as I knew I had a loving, caring, and faithful Christian community to fall back on after my class is over. When that fell through the floor, the doubts crept in my life.”

“There are three major things that happened in my life that changed my thinking. They all happened in the space of about five years, from 1991-1996.”

“These are the three things that changed my thinking: 1) A major crisis, 2) plus information, 3) minus a sense of a loving, caring, Christian community. For me it was an assault of major proportions that if I still believed in the devil would say it was orchestrated by the legions of hell.”

Here the hero undergoes the stereotypical trial by ordeal.

“Let me just briefly mention the information that changed my mind. I carried on a correspondence debate with my cousin who was a Lieutenant in the Air Force (now a Colonel) and teaches Biochemistry at a base in Colorado. I handed him a book arguing for creation over evolution and asked him to look at it and let me know what he thought of it. After several months he wrote me a long letter and sent me a box full of articles and books on the subject. Some of them were much too technical for me to understand, but I tried to read them. While he didn’t convince me of much at the time, he did convince me of one solid truth: the universe is as old as scientists say it is, and the consensus is that it is 12-15 billion years old.”

Here the hero encounters the stereotypical sage or wise man who guides him in the way of enlightenment.

Not to mention the initiation motif.

“My doubts were simmering these last few years. I didn't think much about them. But when Mel Gibson's movie “The Passion of the Christ” came out, it made me think about them again, intensely. Plus, while I was describing in class how, with Arthur Peacocke, I believe God could've used chance as a radar beam searching the possibilities for the direction of creation, one of my students laughed at the thought. It was these last two things that have put me on course to finally come out of the closet and tell what I think. I have always had reasons for what I believed. Only recently have I begun sharing my doubts. I want people to know that I have thought through answers for the way I life my life.”

“Today I am pretty much guilt free. That is, I have no guilt in regards to the Christian duties mentioned above. I am free of the need to do most of the things I felt I had to do because I was expressing my gratitude for what God had done. And yet, I am still grateful for my present life, even more so in many ways. I love life. I’m living life to the hilt, pretty much guilt free, primarily because my ethical standards aren’t as high. In fact, I believe the Christian ethical standards are simply impossible for anyone to measure up to. Think about it, according to Jesus I should feel guilty for not just what I do, but for what I think about, lusting, hating, coveting, etc. I’d like every person who reads this book to experience the freedom I have found. It is to you that I dedicate this book.”

Here we observe the convergence of several mythemes: the quest, rescue motif, and comic denouement.

It is clear from myth criticism that “John Loftus” is a mythopoetic fiction. In this deconversion story, the redactor offers us a modernized and transvalued version of the Frog Prince—a type AT 440 folktale.

In the original version, the prince is hexed by a wicked witch, who turns him into a frog. He is restored to manhood when he shares a bed with a princess. The kiss is a euphemism for carnal knowledge.

As Bruno Bettelheim has explained in his classic monograph on The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of fairy tales,

“But what about the frog? It, too, has to mature before union with the princess can become possible. What happens is it shows that a loving, dependent relationship to a mother figure is the precondition to becoming human. Like every child, the frog desires an entirely symbiotic existence. What child has not wished to sit on Mother's lap, eat from her dish, drink with her glass, and has not climbed into Mother's bed, trying to sleep there with her? But after a time the child has to be denied the symbiosis with Mother, since it would prevent him from ever becoming an individual. Much as the child wants to remain in bed with Mother, she has to ‘throw’ him out of it--a painful experience but inescapable if he is to gain independence. Only when forced by his parent to stop living in symbiosis does the child begin to be himself, as the frog, ‘thrown’ out of the bed, becomes freed of bondage to an immature existence.”

“The frog emerges out of life in the water, as the child does at birth. By using the frog as a symbol for sex, an animal that exists in one from when young--as a tadpole--and in an entirely different form when mature, the story speaks to the unconscious of the child and helps him accept the form of sexuality which is correct for his age.”

As you can see, the deconversion of pseudo-Loftus is an allegory of the Oedipal complex.

Loftus is the frog-prince. At first, he must be excommunicated by Mother Church in order for him to pass from puberty to manhood.

His graduation from Great Lakes Bible College represents his rebirth, from tadpole to toad.

The biochem professor represents the princess, through whom he is initiated into the mysteries of manhood.

“Coming out of the closet” (his words) once again represent his sexual emancipation.

II. Pseudo-Till

Among the Tillian pseudepigrapha is a deconversion story entitled: “A long day’s journey into light,” attributed to Farrell Till

http://vanallens.com/exchristian/fartil.htm

Let us apply the criteria of authenticity to this memoir.

1.Since the deconversion story is autobiographical, it will obviously flunk the criterion of multiple-attestation.

We lack any independent confirmation or corroboration for most-all of the autobiographical details.

2.Since the memoir was written to justify the conversion of the protagonist, it also flunks the criterion of disinterestedness. This is secular hagiographon.

The autobiographical protagonist as a personal stake in the outcome.

3.Finally, the memoir further flunks the criterion of dissimilarity, for there are no original or distinctive ideas in his material—no sayings whose intellectual pedigree cannot be traced to the religious background of the protagonist, his formal education, or his secular acculturation.

So, based on historical criticism alone, there is no probative to believe that Farrell Till is a real person. He is, rather, just a literary construct.

Let us move on to myth criticism. The very title contains two mythemes: the journey, and light.

“I was reared in Southeast Missouri in a family with deep roots in the Church of Christ, a sect that is probably as rigid as any in its belie that the Bible is the inspired "word of God." When I went to church I heard both preachers and Bible teachers proclaim the inerrancy of the scriptures.”

Southeast Missouri triggers the mytheme of the Edenic river valley,

“So anxious was I to get involved in worldwide evangelism that I quit college a semester before graduation to work in missionary projects of the Church of Christ in France.”

“Altogether, I spent twelve years preaching for the Churches of Christ, and five of those years involved missionary work in France. My skepticism began while I was there.”

Note the mytheme of the journey. He leaves Southeast Missouri, representing his expulsion from paradise, for France, representing the religion of man (e.g. the French Revolution, &c.).

“Once my faith in inerrancy was shaken, however, I was able to see the folly of stupid attempts like these to justify the despicable conduct of the Hebrew god. When I crossed that line, I had gone too far ever to turn back again.”

There he encounters the mytheme of the tyrannical father-figure, typified by Yahweh.

“When I returned from France in 1961, I knew that I could not continue to preach things that I no longer believed, but the tenacity of a fundamentalist is an almost marvelous thing.”

“These were extremely difficult times for my family, both economically and emotionally. We were a family of five, so, needless to say, it wasn't easy to provide our needs and pay tuition too while I was an unemployed student, to say nothing about the psychological stress from the religious upheaval in my life that I was trying to cope with. Guilt and shame had forced me to be secretive about my plans for the future with everyone but my wife.”

“I was never able to rid myself of a horrible feeling of hypocrisy that I had wrestled with every time I stepped into a pulpit.”

“I think I actually hated myself. I knew that I didn't believe what I was saying, and it seemed to me that when I looked at my wife in the audience, she was unable to look at me.”

Note the stereotypical trial by ordeal.

“My family then left for Gallup, New Mexico, where both my wife and I had contracted to teach. We made the trip in a Peugeot 403 station wagon that we had brought back from France, which for lack of money I had not changed the oil in during the eighteen months we had been students at the Bible college. Fortunately, it held up through the 1200-mile trip.”

Once again we see the journey motif. After having been banished from Paradise, he is cast out into the wilderness.

The 1200-mile trip, a multiple of 40, allegorizes the forty-year wilderness wandering.

“I consider the first two decades of my adult life as a long day's journey into light. Again, Bible fundamentalists will resent the metaphor, but I believe it is valid. Religion is a form of darkness in the individual's life; escape from it is like a journey from darkness to light. My escape was by no means easy.”

Note the multiplied mythemes of light and darkness, the journey, and the comic denouement.

As with Pseudo-Loftus, the deconversion of Pseudo-Till is an atheologumenon—a historicized atheological dogma—dressed up as allegorical journey from darkness to light, paradise lost to paradise regained.

III. Pseudo-Carrier

Among the prolific output of Pseudo-Carrier is a pseudonymous memoir entitled “From Taoist to Infidel”

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/testimonials/carrier.html

Let us apply the criteria of authenticity to this work.

1.As an autobiographical memoir, it will obviously flunk the criterion of multiple-attestation.

We lack any independent confirmation or corroboration for most-all of the autobiographical details.

2.Since it was written to justify the infidelity of the protagonist, it will also flunk the criterion of disinterestedness. This is yet another secular hagiographon.

The autobiographical protagonist as a personal stake in the outcome.

3.Finally, the memoir further flunks the criterion of dissimilarity, for there are no original or distinctive ideas in his material—no sayings whose intellectual pedigree cannot be traced to the religious background of the protagonist, his formal education, or his secular acculturation.

So, based on historical criticism alone, there is no probative evidence to believe that Richard Carrier ever existed. He is just a literary construct.

After describing his upbringing in a liberal church, pseudo-Carrier continues his exposition:

“I wanted to know what the fundamental nature of the universe was, what the fundamentals of a moral life really were, how to achieve happiness in this life. The Bible didn't help. Better moral wisdom came from mortal word of mouth around me, and far more knowledge from other books, and from school, where I majored in science and took and mastered every science course offered.”

Note the mytheme of the quest.

“Then a miracle happened. At least, it was what believers would call a miracle. In a bookstore hunting for a dictionary for school, I had a feeling that told me to turn. I did, and the first thing I saw was a Jane English translation of the Tao Te Ching. I took it up, and, like Augustine, turned to a page at random and read. What it said was so simple, so true, so elegantly and concisely put, and so wise, I knew this was the answer. I bought the book and read it all through, and from that day I declared my faith in Taoism, my first real religion. In contrast, Christianity was never a religion for me--it was simply a fixture in my cultural atmosphere, and I never affirmed any faith in its principles. But I had faith in Taoism. I was a True Believer.”

Note the mytheme of the wise man.

My life was transformed. I acquired a sense of discipline and focus I never had before, an attraction to quiet, simple living, and a strong yet humble moral sense of things. All finally made sense, and I was happier than I ever imagined possible.

On the face of it, this represents the initiation motif. But as we shall see, this is actually a tale combining the dual mythemes of temptation and rescue.

“The most fantastic experience I had was like that times ten. It happened at sea, well past midnight on the flight deck of a cutter, in international waters two hundred miles from the nearest land. I had not slept for over 36 hours…The ship was rocking slowly in a gentle, dark sea, and I was alone beneath the starriest of skies that most people have never seen.”

Note the mythemes of starlight and still waters. In Taoism, water is a type/token of the Yin-factor.

Also, the numerological significance of 36— a multiple of 12—viz., 12 tribes of Israel, 12 stones on ephod, 12 apostles, 144,000 (=the elect), the cubical dimensions of the New Jerusalem.

“I fell so deeply into the clear, total immersion in the real that I left my body and my soul expanded to the size of the universe, so that I could at one thought perceive, almost 'feel', everything that existed in perfect and total clarity. It was like undergoing a Vulcan Mind Meld with God. Naturally, words cannot do justice to something like this. It cannot really be described, only experienced, or hinted at.”

Astral travel is a standard mytheme. Here the redactor is evidently borrowing from the Enochian literature.

In other book, pseudo-Carrier recounts this experience:

“There was a night when I fought with a demon trying to crush my chest—the experience felt absolutely real, and I was certainly awake, probably a hypnagogic state. I could se and feel the demon sitting on me, preventing me from breathing, but when I ‘punched’ it, it vanished,” The Empty Tomb (Prometheus Books 2005), 185).

(Note that this also happens at night.)

The phenomenon is known in parapsychological literature as Old Hag Syndrome. It’s the stuff of succubi and the incubi. You find it all the time in the desert fathers and other hagiographa.

We clearly have another Oedipal allegory in the making, where the hero is seduced by Lao Tzu, impersonating the Yin-dynamic (feminine principle).

“Though called a wise father, there is not a single example in the Old Testament of God sitting down and kindly teaching anyone, and when asked by Job, the best of men, to explain why He went out of His way to hurt a good man by every possible means, including killing his loved ones, this "wise father" spews arrogant rhetorical questions, ultimately implying nothing more than "might makes right" as his only excuse.”

Note the mytheme of the tyrannical father figure, representing the Yang-dynamic (male principle).

“Eventually I stumbled across two old books in a used book store, Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Corliss Lamont's The Philosophy of Humanism, each of which gave me an excellent introduction to the thoughts of like-minded men. In time, a booth at a street-fair introduced me with much excitement to American Atheists, which later, through disappointment with their attitude, I traded for the more human and sensible Freedom From Religion Foundation.”

Here the mythopoetic character of the paternal despot is counterbalanced by the mythopoetic character of the wise man or sage, exemplified by the likes of Bertrand Russell and Corliss Lamont.

So this is just another variant of the Frog Prince, with a lacquer finish of 1 Enoch.

IV. Pseudo-Price

Among the deutero-Pricean literature, the Price tradition comes down to us in two different pseudonymous recensions.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/humanist.html

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/beyond_born_again/index.shtml

This, of itself, generates an acute version of the synoptic problem.

Let us apply the criteria of authenticity to these memoirs.

1.Since both memoirs are attributed to the same author, they obviously flunk the criterion of multiple-attestation.

We lack any independent confirmation or corroboration for most-all of the autobiographical details.

2.Since the memoirs are written to justify the conversion of the protagonist, they will also flunk the criterion of disinterestedness. They are secular hagiographa.

The autobiographical protagonist as a personal stake in the outcome.

3.Finally, the memoirs are going to flunk the criterion of dissimilarity, for there are no original or distinctive ideas in his material—no sayings whose intellectual pedigree cannot be traced to the religious background of the protagonist, his formal education, or his secular acculturation.

So, based on historical criticism alone, there is no probative evidence to believe that Richard Price was ever born. He is just another literary construct.

Moving on to myth criticism:

“Everyone is on a spiritual journey. Most of the time we are glad enough to admit this, but other times we want stability more than anything else, and at those times we are liable to fear religious change lest we fall away from hard-won truth. But I have come to believe that the spiritual journey is a journey of discovery into largely unknown territory. If we hunker down, insisting we've already got enough truth, thank you, we are like the Israelites stubbornly camping out on the threshold of the Promised Land, cheating themselves out of the fulfillment of their hopes.” My own spiritual journey has taken me places I never thought I'd be going. But I'm glad it did! I trod a rocky but fascinating road from fundamentalism to humanism.

Here the general mytheme of the quest, in the special form of a journey, is explicit.

“At the ripe old age of ten (adolescence being the most common time of life for conversion, psychologists tell us), I began to fear the prospect of everlasting hell-fire and heeded the urging of the preacher at a local Baptist church to receive Jesus Christ as my personal savior.”

Likewise the coming-of-age mytheme.

“My enthusiasm for the true faith, and the secret fear that the faith might not be true, were sources of fuel that fed each other. My zeal was great, but it was interrupted by periods of doubt that might last for months. The more terrible the doubt, the more zeal was needed to make up for it. As the zeal grew greater, the stakes became higher, and the fear in turn grew deeper. I encountered personal disappointments.”

Note the mytheme of trial by ordeal.

“You are encouraged, in what I now view as a superstitious fashion, to see the guiding hand of God in every circumstance. Every minor disappointment and major disaster are messages from God to teach you some lesson, and it's your job to learn to figure out the Almighty's charade. It took me till I was out of college to begin to see how immature, even delusional, all this was. You can't grow up, it seems to me, till you learn that you live in a world of impartially random events and that you are responsible for your own actions. But born-againism made life into a giant puppet-show, with God as the puppeteer.”

Note the mytheme of the terrible father-figure.

“But I did find Liberal theology to be quite helpful. Paul Tillich especially answered my questions.”

Stereotypically, the hero’s encounter with a wise man signals his rite of initiation into the rites of passage.

“Around the same time, I found myself in a Cambridge cafe having supper with some friends. We were on our way to a lecture by Harvey Cox, whose books I'd always found fascinating, though I'd filled their margins with vociferous criticisms. I suddenly thought, "Listen, is there really that much difference 'them' and 'us'?" I had always accepted the qualitative difference between the "saved" and the "unsaved." Until that moment, it was as if I and my fellow-seminarians had been sitting in a "no-damnation" section of an otherwise "unsaved" restaurant. Then, in a flash, we were all just people. My feeling about evangelism has never been quite the same.”

The mythic epiphany.

“One cold night in Beverly, Massachusetts, I trudged out with a handful of other seminarians to "witness" to local sinners.”

Note the wintry mythemes of darkness and frigidity.

“In the summer of 1977, I took course work at Princeton Theological Seminary, learning much from Donald Juel and visiting professor Monica Hellwig.”

Note the seasonable mytheme (“summer”).

The next fall, I went to Boston University School of Theology and Harvard Divinity School (members of the Boston area consortium to which I had access as a Gordon-Conwell student). There I had the privilege of taking courses with Howard Clark Kee, Helmut Koester, and Harvey Cox. A new world had opened up to me, both theologically and personally. I felt like a college freshman, thinking through important questions for the first time.

Note the seasonal mytheme (“fall”).

As any mythographer or folklorist can plainly see, the deconversion tale of pseudo-Price, unlike the first three memoirs, which rework the Frog Prince, is an etiological tale of the crop cycle. In particular, the redactor has offered the reader a creative retelling of the abduction of Persephone.

We have now applied historical criticism and myth criticism to four prominent deconversion tales. This analysis could be easily extended to other case-studies in kind. So the quest for the historical atheist continues.