The guys over at A Matter of Doubt had me in as a guest on their show, and I had the opportunity to share the story of my deconversion, including the backstory. This is detailed in an older blog entry, but you can listen to the podcast to hear for yourself.
The fact that all the gospels are not first hand, but they slapped the names, Matthew, Mark Luke and John on… to give them credibility. And everybody today knows; You go to every seminary in the nation and they know they don’t know who wrote ‘Matthew,’ they don’t know who wrote ‘Mark,’ but they kept the names. And stuff like that offended me. Because here, ‘Here is the book of Matthew. It was written by Matthew;’ No it wasn’t! Everybody knows it wasn’t but here we’re going to continue perpetuating this lie, because it’s more convenient to say that it’s an eyewitness testimony… It’s blatant lying, and there’s no way around it, its lying directly to people through your teeth to say it’s an eyewitness testimony. (@ 42m 07s)
References
In the podcast, I made a reference to Ashley Miller’s discussion of why we should make emotional arguments as well as philosophical ones, as I engaged upon in the podcast.
Secondarily, I reference the fact that the authors of the gospel are unknown to us, and that there are quite a few irreconcilable problems with them.
I also reference my post on the Martyrdom of the Apostles, and the shady evidence for their deaths.
Clarifications
After listening to the podcast with my (extremely intuitive and intelligent) girlfriend, there were a few points she was unclear on, that I figured I should be clear about. In the podcast, I draw the comparision between hunger and lust, stating that both are natural. I mean this analogy to be taken no further; they are feelings that we can choose to act on, one act (eating) ensures our physical bodies’ daily survival, while another (sex) historically served to ensure our genetic survival. I recognize that the two serve different functions, but for the purpose of identifying the insanity of calling one natural and the other a result of one’s evil nature that should be repressed and cause for shame, the analogy stands.
I also said later that there “may or may not be an oversexualization of women,” and in remembering the conversation, I’m certain the statement was intended to be sarcastic. I think that there’s a tremendous imbalance in today’s culture, especially in the United States, with the misogyny that is visited on women by men. I’m struggling through these ideas and expect to write a full blog post about it (about Watsongate etc.) and how scales have been falling from my eyes, but that time is not yet here. Sam Harris makes extremely good points about this fact, and I share his belief that an educated, scientific, evaluation is the key to understanding and fixing this dichotomy.
