From: perry@apollo.hp.com (Jim Perry)
Subject: Re: Why I am an atheist  (long!)
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 15:28:05 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

Just to focus in on a small area in this voluminous discourse:

>That wasn't the kind of evidence I meant.  Whoever Jesus was, and
>whatever he did, there's ample evidence that he did attract a
>considerable number of followers during his life.  

No; there's not "ample evidence" that he even existed.  There's enough
to make a decent case for it, but not "ample".  Assuming he did, he
seems to have attracted some number of followers during his life, but
there's no particular reason to think it a "considerable number", more
than other messiah-claimants, or figures such as Jim Jones.  

>And among a people
>who probably had little faith in miracles, 

Why would you think that?

>he did some supernatural
>feats that were so noteworthy that at least four individuals wrote
>about them over the course of a dozen or so years (I think there are
>other gospels that have been left out of the Bible), and somehow the
>stories were remarkably similar.

Of course the stories are similar: it's not as if the four gospels
were written in locked rooms without exposure to the others.  However,
the tale definitely grew in the telling -- compare Mark to John.  The
supernatural feats attributed to Jesus are, on the whole, rather lame, as
supernatural feats go.

>  And whoever or whatever he was,
>Jesus preached a message that had never been heard before -- the "love
>thy neighbor as thyself" business

One of the basest canards of popular Christian propaganda.  This is not a
new message, but the central core of Jewish belief, as understood at that
time, as expressed by e.g. Hillel, born 60BC, who said "What is hateful to
you, do not to your fellow men. That is the entire Law, all the rest is
commentary."  In fact, when Jesus quotes that line from Leviticus (19:18)
he is saying that that (along with "love the Lord your God...", Deuteronomy
6:5) is the principle message of the then-existing Bible ("The Law and the
Prophets") In the story as related in Mark 12:28ff we see that in this
oldest version the teacher of the law agrees with this interpretation.
Jesus may have had some new ideas, but "love thy neighbor as thyself"
wasn't among them; he didn't even put a new spin on this standard Jewish
teaching.

> -- and inspired his followers to
>openly defy the government, at the cost of a good deal of suffering,
>and in many cases their own lives.

This is vague; do you mean that Jesus taught rebellion, or that followers
of what came Christianity defied the government?  Which government?  Which
lives?  Jesus himself, from what evidence we have, comes across as a
pacifist and doesn't defy the government (render unto Caesar...).

>Not enough to make me accept Christianity, as I've said before, but
>enough to make me interested enough to learn a lot more about the
>religion.

Here I really can't fault you.  On the whole I'm more on your side here
than otherwise.  It's rather pointless to consider the vast current and
historical body of Christians, Muslims, and so forth to be mentally
incompetent or deluded.  However, in studying the religion you have to be
careful to avoid wearing blinders and taking the historical propaganda too
seriously.  I find this is particularly so in the area of evidence.  It is
worth differentiating the "does it work" aspect of religion from the "is it
true" aspect.  If, for the sake of argument (since this seems your
position) it is ultimately untrue, then there are inevitably going to be
points of interaction with "the real world" where it just doesn't make
sense, and of course questions of evidence would naturally be such a point
of interaction, as one wouldn't expect much good evidence for something
that was, after all, false.  
-- 
Jim Perry   	    	    	    Distributed Object Computing Program
perry@apollo.hp.com	    	    Hewlett-Packard Co., Chelmsford MA
This is the way the breakfast ends, not with a wimp but a banger.