To wake up to the smell of academic napalm in the morning it not altogether invigorating, whatever might be thought of the real thing. It doesn’t smell like victory. However, ten minutes after I turned on my computer I was mired in buttals and rebuttals about the Jesus of history v the Jesus of myth — never mind the Christ of faith — and claims and counterclaims about who is competent to discuss this issue, and what particular academic qualifications are necessary in order even to speak upon the subject, let alone charge exorbitant fees to listen in on parts of the discussion. Jerry Coyne points out, with some justice, that if Ehrman chose to respond (sort of) to Richard Carrier’s criticism of his book, he should at least have considered some other aspects of his argument than simply the question whether a penis-headed cock statue resided somewhere in the Vatican archives, especially since this was one of the marginal points that Carrier made in his critique. Meanwhile, R. Joseph Hoffmann attacks P.Z. Myers (amongst others) – Hoffmann, with wonted politeness, calling him the ”atheist blogger and full-time loudmouth P Z Myers” — for his blog post “Carrier cold-cocks Ehrman” (which is, it should be noted, a response to Ehrman’s HuffPo piece touting his new book, and not Carrier’s more comprehensive response to the book itself). Much of the to-and-froing about the historical Jesus seems to come down to academic qualifications and whether those engaged in the discussion have written a book, or are tenured academics, or have the requisite expertise, or not, as the case may be, something that seems to take up as much space as the arguments themselves. And while, of course, one expects people to use critical methods in their study of anything at all, if they want to approach more closely to the truth, this is not comprehensively dealt with by listing a person’s academic credentials.
It’s all a bit bewildering, and I still wonder why the atheist blogosphere takes all this so intensely and with so much gravity. As I have already said, in an earlier post, I have no particular bones to pick either with mythicists or with historicists (if these words pick out actual positions in the dispute, the first for an entirely mythical Jesus, and second for an historical Jesus — though how much of the gospel picture must be true in order to be able to say that Jesus was a figure of history?). It seems to me that we are unlikely, at this distance, to be able to say much that is decisive in either direction. On the one hand, there seems, to use Crossan’s term, to be too much in the gospels that amounts to prophecy historicised to allow us confidently to ascribe any particular deed or saying to an historical Jesus. On the other hand, there may have been a man — it is not impossible that there was a man (or even, as I suggested earlier, several such figures — the interplay of Jesus and John the Baptist indicates a complex messianic movement, and a quest, even then, for “he that should come” [Matthew 11.3]) and possibly even a Galilean apocalyptic preacher, around whom all these mythical stories crystallised, and for which he was the catalyst. But that man, if there was one, seems to be so shrouded now in myth that it is hard to limn the historical person hidden within conflicting and mythicised accounts of his life. Suppose that we can say, at a bare minimum, that the central figure of the gospel named Jesus existed, and that we feel confident, as historians, that there is enough corroborative evidence to justify this claim; what have we then proved? And what difference would it make in either direction? What is this excess of passion all about?
“For those of you not paying attention,” writes Hoffmann knowingly, ”the New Atheism has a new postulate: Not only does God not exist but Jesus didn’t exist either.” Of course, in one sense, this is true by definition, since the new atheists inevitably will deny the transcendent figure of a heavenly visitant to earth, born of a virgin, who performed miracles, and who died and rose again from the dead. If we deny all this, there is little reason to ascribe or refuse to ascribe historical existence to a man who was the focal point for subsequent mythmaking in his name.
Pilate is an entirely different case, although Hoffmann does not seem to notice or care. In his sardonic essay (linked above), he says this about Pilate:
Outside the gospels, Pontius Pilate is virtually unknown except for a reference in Tacitus and mentions in Philo and Josephus, if we discount the so-called Pilate stone.
But this is to have a great deal of independent witness not only to Pilate’s existence, but to the nature of his administration of the Roman province of which he may have been at once Prefect and Procurator. Had we this much independent attestation of the existence of Jesus, then doubts about the existence of Jesus would be pointless.
And it is just here that Stephen Law’s philosophical contribution to the dispute comes in, a contribution which Hoffmann slights with a dismissive: “What could Stephen Law possibly contribute to this subject?” Presumably Hoffmann has not given the philosophy of history much thought, but the questions that Law asks, in his article, “Evidence, Miracles and the Existence of Jesus,” are precisely the kind of question that historians need to settle before confidently affirming that a person such as Jesus actually existed in history and not just in myth — unless, of course, Hoffmann thinks the admixture of myth and history does not pose any problems for the historicity of whatever is caught in its web — a position for which, at the very least, he must argue. He cannot simply take it for granted that the interweaving of myth and history (or supposed history) does not pose any problems for the reliability of the historical claims made for parts of the narrative.
Stephen Law proposes two principles:
P1 Where a claim’s justification derives solely from evidence, extraordinary claims (e.g. concerning supernatural miracles) require extraordinary evidence. In the absence of extraordinary evidence there is good reason to be sceptical about those claims.
and, second, what Law calls the contamination principle:
P2 Where testimony/documents weave together a narrative that combines mundane claims with a significant proportion of extraordinary claims, and there is good reason to be sceptical about those extraordinary claims, then there is good reason to be sceptical about the mundane claims, at least until we possess good independent evidence of their truth.
Now, I haven’t space enough to argue Law’s point here (especially where he considers rejoinders that could be made to his argument), but certainly some such principles will be necessary if we are going to sort out truth from fiction in any account where the plausibility of the claims being made is called into question. If a figure, such as the gospel Jesus, is described in such a way as to demand extraordinary evidence, then other claims made about this figure immediately take on the colouring of those claims, and reliably independent evidence must be available in order to be able to say, with justified conviction, that the person so described was an actual, historical person.
Of course, as Law points out, the question of plausibility is elastic, and depends on our presuppositions. Here’s how Law poses the problem:
Suppose we begin to examine the historical evidence having presupposed that there is no, or is unlikely to be a, God. Then of course Jesus’ miracles will strike us as highly unlikely events requiring exceptionally good evidence before we might reasonably suppose them to have occurred. But what if we approach the Jesus miracles from the point of view of theism? Then that such miraculous events should be a part of history is not, one might argue, particularly surprising. But then we are not justified in raising the evidential bar with respect to such claims.
The problem is, Law argues, that making this “presuppositions move” would also justify belief in the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, etc., the reality or existence of which most reasonable people would find deeply questionable.
This point is brought out by Hector Avalos when discussing William Lane Craig’s use of C.B. McCullagh’s criteria for justifying historical descriptions (in his book Justifying Historical Descriptions, in the Cambridge Studies in Philosophy series). Craig suggests that, according to these criteria, the resurrection of Jesus is plausibly thought to be an historical event. Avalos not only points out that Craig revises the criteria to suit his own purposes, but also that:
As used by McCullagh, the criteria are mostly meant to differentiate between natural explanations, not between natural and supernatural explanations. [The End of Biblical Studies, 188, italics in original]
And then he quotes McCullagh himself regarding the resurrection of Jesus:
One example which illustrates the condition most vividly is discussion of the Christian hypothesis that Jesus rose from the dead. This hypothesis is of greater explanatory scope and power than other hypotheses which try to account for the relevant evidence, but is less plausible and more ad hoc than they are. That is why it is difficult to decide on the evidence whether it should be accepted or rejected. [quoted by Avalos, ibid., 188]
And, of course, in the case of the resurrection, the question arises as to what constitutes evidence that needs to be accounted for, for the empty tomb, the military guard, the stone rolled away, the preparation for burial, as well as many other conflicting features of the story do not obviously constitute evidence, without some kind of impartial attestation by contemporaries without any religious axes to grind (a particularly implausible scenario).
The point, if it needs making again, is that there is no clear basis here for deciding the issue either way. I think it goes without saying that the gospel Jesus, with miracles, resurrection and all, never existed. Whether there was a single historical figure at the centre of the myth-making imagination that catalysed the creation of the figure subsequently known to history as Jesus Christ is, in one sense, irrelevant to the religious issue at the centre of the dispute about the historicity of Jesus, and I’m not quite sure that I see the point of trying to answer that specific question. When a group of Anglican theologians and scholars came out with their book The Myth of God Incarnate – which has, incidentally, just been republished, presumably to take advantage of the renewed flourishing of the issue – there was no question, really, of answering that question, but of asking the larger question about the foundation of Christian faith. It’s a long time since I read the essays in that book, that caused such a stir at the time, reminiscent of Essays and Reviews in the 19th century, but it scarcely made a blip on the screen so far as individual Anglicans and their faith and practice went. To make the non-existence of Jesus a new postulate for the new atheism seems (at least to me) a lost cause. It is entirely possible that there was no such historical figure, but I suspect that, if there is not enough evidence to show that he did not exist, there is not enough evidence to show that he did, either, and, in any case, the issue is of little consequence to Christians, who will go on affirming the existence of Jesus of Nazareth and their confidence that they have met him personally in their religious experience, whether in the bread and wine of the eucharist, or in his personal presence with them in prayer and praise.
So, I conclude, we should get down to specifics. What is the question at issue? Why is it important? Quite aside from the academic qualifications involved, do we have any idea how to distinguish historical figures from mythicised historical figures? When we do have narratives in which fictional (mythical) material is closely interwoven with what may be factual (historical) evidence, what is the relation between the two, and does the fictional taint the historical and to what degree? What is the relationship between religion and history? What, for instance, would make a religion historical? What are the criteria necessary to establish the historicity of religious claims? I have said before that, despite the claim, frequently made, that there is no conflict between religion and science, the failure of theologians and biblical scholars to use critical techniques without restriction by the judicatories of the churches, and without special pleading which assumes that discerning the historical thread that identifies the real Jesus of history is of religious importance, implies a failure of religion to address itself critically — a failed bit of accommodationism. Hume’s problem persists. Most of the stories told about Jesus must be fictions (or myths, if you prefer). His miracles cannot be distinguished from hosts of other claimed marvels by other men, and there is no reason why we should credit them above other claimed miraculous events or occurrences. The supposed trials before the Sanhedrin and Pilate, the supposed appearance of Jesus before Herod: all these are palpable fictions. Since there were many crucifixions during the time of Pilate’s administration of Palestine, the crucifixion of a man who caused a disturbance at a time when Jerusalem would have been thronged with thousands of worshippers would come as no surprise. That his body was ever released for burial, though it happened on very rare occasions, is unlikely. That he died and rose again is undoubtedly a myth. So what is being claimed when it is claimed that Jesus was a figure of history? And why is it important? The authority of Jesus’ sayings and parables cannot be considered of great significance. Like the sayings of any person, real or imagined, they must stand on their own; and some of them, as I have suggested, do not stand up very well for themselves. But after saying all this, I still want to know why anyone thinks this important. Even if biblical scholars like Ehrman do succeed in showing, to the satisfaction of others belonging to the guild, that there is evidence for a very minimalised historical figure at the centre of the Christian myth, what has been accomplished? In my estimation, not very much. We might as well argue about angels dancing on pin heads.
A very pragmatic view Eric. Unfortunately it is the minutiae that scholars squabble over, if only to assert their authority.
Perhaps Jesus is an historical quantum person. Observe him one way, you see a man. Observe him another way you see a myth. It’s the observation that collapses the quantum state, and the method of observation that influences the result.
Frankly, it’s interesting to me that Christians can’t even prove their man’s existence, much less his divinity. It’s a pea under the mattress.
The more doubt you sow, the more doubt you reap. With Christians, I rarely bother with the miraculous anymore. The field of historicity offers a much richer yield at present.
I think “Jesus” is likely a concatenation of many figures — including John the Baptist. What Hollywood calls a “composite character”. I’m highly skeptical of Ehrman’s claims that you can point to a single-figure Jesus in any of the documents available to us. So, does that make him “historical” or “mythical”? I think it depends on your definition of both terms.
What it most certainly doesn’t make him is a god. And the more you get Christians to focus on that issue, the more you move them away from the non-credible claims of the miraculous.
When the Bible Guild cannot provide evidence or logical reasons for their belief in the minimalist Historical Jesus, they resort to Ad Hominem attacks and appeals to Authority. Authority, by definition, are those who have the requisite Bible Guild credentials and most importantly agree with the party line. It’s totally circular but as the default assumption based on nothing more than the traditional bald assertions, I’m afraid it will continue to have a voice for some time to come.
- evan
To the extent that I “care” about whether or not there was a literal, physical guy around whom the stories were written, it’s because folks who want to tell me I’m WRONG (about what church I do or don’t attend, about how I live my life, about my beliefs, etc.) will refer to the thinnest, barest claim that such a man existed and crow that even those ivory-tower evil liberal ACADEMICS have had to admit that he really did exist. It gets old very fast.
I find it spectacular fun cleaning out the really terrible epistemology they put forward. As Carrier documents extensively in his book, from the viewpoint of actual historians, the practice of biblical history is pseudohistory. This is not new – Hector Avalos made the same point – but it’s being hammered home again. When biblical historians put forward frankly ludicrous epistemology that gives ridiculous results applied in any other field (e.g., the criterion of embarrassment), and sceptics go “what on earth is this rubbish”, the biblical historians claim this is how history is practiced. Carrier shows this to be false; the biblical historians are pseudohistorians wearing the colour of historians. They don’t accept this (despite the evidence), because their professors told them they were learning actual historical method, and no-one wants to admit they wasted years learning pseudoacademics. So, popcorn time.
Hoffmann is clearly still smarting over the drubbing he got from Carrier last year.
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.se/2011/05/sources-of-jesus-tradition.html
As for Hoffmann’s claim about new atheists and the historical Jesus, well that is just silly.
There simply isn’t enough evidence either way to be any way certain about whether he existed or didn’t (as a first century apocalyptic preacher – not as a God) and even if some decent evidence turned up (say, something similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls but mentioning Jesus, his preaching and his execution) why would it cause us any more problems than the evidence for the existence of a historical Muhammad, Joseph Smith or Ron L Hubbard?
I don’t debate with believers any more, but when I did, I got the same claim made over and over again, that Jesus was historical fact, and that the evidence was overwhelming. Time and time again, that lie would fly, until I started digging deeper myself, and then after a little research, I realized as Kevin puts it, that it’s a pea under the mattress.
Forced in a sense to correct that lie, one must in a sense side with the mythicists, even if one day, someone digs up Jesus’s toenail and proves he existed once and for all.
Academic napalm indeed!!!!
Thank you Sigmund — for an explanation of why Hoffmann comes across like a cross between a scorpion and a snake, and for the link to Carrier’s criticisms of the conference book on sources of the Jesus tradtition. And, of course, Hoffmann’s claim about the new atheism and its new postulate is just silly. Does he always come out with these rather embarrassinglhy juvenile declarations?
There is a serious problem involved in biblical studies, and that is the religionist presuppositions underlying most of it. In order for this to become a truly academic field, the religionist assumptions must be thrown out at the start, and then an attempt made to assess the evidence without them. Biblical studies is still owned, to an enormous extent, by the churches and the synagogues and their attendant belief priorities. Truly “scientific” (critical-historical) study of the Bible won’t happen until those presuppositions are trashed, and I don’t see this happening. From what I can tell — and I’ve only read a few pages so far — Ehrman’s book is as compromised in this way as work by believing biblical scholars, as Evan suggests it would be by default.
Indeed, the historical Jesus is not very relevant to very much. It is perhaps an interesting historical question, but not much more.
If you give up all the supernatural elements of the Jesus story, too much has been given up to make any religion about him very tenable. What value does the sacrifice of a mortal man to an idea hold if the forgiveness to an almighty god is excluded? Why consider the ideas of a mortal man any more reverently than any of the other ancient philosophers?
I also find myself wondering how far afield the stories can go and still be considered to be based on a historical person. If J.K. Rowling started writing her books after being inspired by a particular person in some way, can we really say there is an “historical” Harry Potter? I don’t think that we can.
Hello Eric;
Please excuse my off-topic comment. On CBC’s radio program C’est la vie:
“A special commission of Quebec’s National Assembly spent two years looking into issues around end of life care, assisted suicide and euthanasia.
The two women who chaired those hearings say that what they heard, changed their lives.
Liberal MNA Maryse Gaudreault and Parti Québécois MNA Véronique Hivon talk about that experience on C’est la vie.”
the podcast is here:
http://www.cbc.ca/cestlavie/episode/2012/04/19/april-22nd-and-24th-2012/editor-content.html?cs=utf-8#
It’s an interesting point whether an historical Jesus makes any sense at all (and therefore how can he be historical?) with all the mythology removed, or whether (as Eric showed previously) he makes any ethical sense historically. I would be rather interested in any literature that explored all those areas, if anyone knows any.
“Indeed, the historical Jesus is not very relevant to very much. It is perhaps an interesting historical question, but not much more.”
The Church disagrees with you. The would have burned Ehrman at the stake not so long ago, as they have so many others who denied the divinity of JC. They have spared no expense to forge documents – even letters from Jesus, destroy documents, add interpolations; even fund two millenia of their own academic institutions to flesh out, and manufacture expert consensus on the historical yet divine JC.
And while most Biblical scholars today , because of the problem of silence, minimize JC to a mere unnoticed Jewish apocalyptic preacher, they never get invited to speak at Sunday services, do they? Nope. The omerta continues – because the people in the pews need a divine agent to give them afterlasting life, not just some guy who had fake legends grow up around him.
Divinity schools are packed to the rafters with scholars who espouse an historically unnoticed Jewish preacher, while at the same time swear their continued employment upon the Nicene creed. No, please move on… nothing to see here.
A commenter at Richard Carrier’s blog links to a German theologian who has recently critiqued Ehrman’s book: http://www.radikalkritik.de/Ehrman.htm
It is in German and I just took a quick glance at it. The author, Hermann Detering, makes fun of Ehrman’s shock at the fact that mythicist exist – who knew?! and also that even after Ehrman’s supposed study of mythicist literature, he totally ignores everything not in English.
He also has a book where he claims that the Pauline letters are fabrications.
I am also curious – giving the pissing contest over academic credential – how Stephanie Fisher (a graduate student with no academic appointment as of yet) is deemed an expert. It would seem that the criterion is – if you agree with me, you are an expert, but if you disagree, you can’t be.
I’ve reminded Hoffman that just over a month ago he said:
“But I have decided to stop writing about atheism.”
I have no idea whether my comment will remain on the site.
For extended brain farts like those of Hoffman and Ehrman, the best explanation I can come up with is that they have lots of theist friends who would be upset if they thought their buddy was siding with the wicked mythicists, and so they feel — consciously? unconsciously? — obliged to manufacture these rants. What they actually believe, if anything, remains a mystery wrapped in a riddle enclosed in an enigma.
It’s one of the manor reasons I gave up on him and removed his blog from my rss feeds. So, yes, that’s his stock in trade.
I assume that it depends upon the person considering the question. What about the non-Christian or very liberal Christian that didn’t even realize there was a question? For Ehrman himself, would admitting that the question can’t be answered one way or the other impact his relationships with the students in his classes (mostly believers), the people in his Department of Reilgious Studies, or even his wife, who has remained a Christian (Ehrman said just over a year ago that her faith has been unshaken by any of the books he had written)? How would that effect his book sales in a country where the majority of people are Christians?
Hermann Detering’s writings are very interesting & worth a good look. He is seemingly considered a little too radical for even the more liberal strains of the Bible Guild. According to his analysis of the evidence, not only was there no Historical Jesus of the Gospels but the Pauline Corpus dates to the Second Century. That he can even seriously put forward such an hypothesis is indicative of the poor evidence we have for the supposedly dynamic church of the First Century and any of its supposedly foundational literature. Not only is there no evidence for the Gospel Jesus in First Century Palestine, there is no evidence of a First Century Church either. The Christian Church as we know it is a second Century creation and even the Pauline letters (admittedly written by a number of pseudepigraphers (i.e. pious frauds)) date to the second Century as well.
-evan
I once did a little commenting on Hoffman’s blog and I found he is an arrogant, pompous, bloviating ass who is completely convinced of his own superiority over everyone else.
My comment has gone, as I expected it would. Hoffman has non-personed me!
Ehrman makes the same silly claims and justifications in chapter 5 of his book Jesus Interrupted, yet he’s completely honest about the complete lack of sources. It is astonishing that he regards parts of the Gospels as ‘eye witness’ accounts, but this is basically how Biblical Scholars build their case for a historical Jesus, there is no other sources that contain biographical material dating before.
Also, need I point out that the New Testament did not exist during the first century.
I’d like to lend my support to the work of Herman Detering. A PDF of one of his books (the Falsified Paul, I think) used to be available online somewhere. Worth a read.
One could say that much Pauline scholarship is based on as similarly shaky foundations as historical Jesus studies. There’s the same lack of reliable external attestation that you find with the gospels. It appears that Marcion was the first to have a corpus of Paul’s letters, and some think he had a part in writing them. And not just the epistles that most scholars think are spurious (Timothies, Ephesians, Colossians, etc.), but the big hitters like Galatians and Romans. Detering makes a strong case on these matters. No doubt he can’t prove it 100%, but it’s certainly a view that worth examining.
Paul could be as much a myth as Jesus. But there’s NO way any scholars will abandon Paul. No one wants to throw the Protestant Messiah to the wolves.
Hi Eric, the answers to these and other related questions are addressed in Dr. Richard Carrier’s newest book. Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus: http://astore.amazon.com/supportcarrier-20/detail/1616145595
These are exactly the questions Carrier hopes to resolve by applying sound statistical reasoning (Bayes’ Theorem) to the problem of such historical questions. His second book, due out very soon, will present specifically his argument about Jesus’ historicity.
I would highly recommend readers check out at least Proving History, which is now available, since it lays a solid groundwork for the whys and hows of answering any historical question of this sort definitively. Carrier is a very cogent writer and presents the material in a way that lay readers can follow and understand without losing interest. Specifically, he ties the idea of Bayesian reasoning to how we *already* think intuitively about such questions.
Thanks Thaumas, for the recommendation. I have ordered the book. I have also been trying — Daryl (with my little German and some help from Google Translate and a dictionary) — to read Hermann Detering’s article on Ehrman. He raises some interesting points, which seem to me to have some weight. I haven’t read all of Ehrman yet, but I’m working on that too. I’m afraid I’ve been spending my day mowing my lawn (for the first time this Spring), and aerating it as well (with an aerator rented by our little community). Heavy work, and my old joints are really creaking! Hope to be up and running with something new in the morning (Atlantic Time). Great discussion.
By the way, Egbert, the NT didn’t get to its present form until at least 380, I think, at a local council, possibly at Rome, though it was recognised (and listed) by St. Athanasius of Alexandria somewhat earlier. The four gospels and Paul’s letters had been collected together sometime in the second century, 120s to 180s or so.
Thanks Eric, and I’m sure Ehrman knows this full well, as he states so in his books. Ehrman has now made a longer and weepier reply to Carrier, http://ehrmanblog.org/fuller-reply-to-richard-carrier/ which certainly had me running to my handkerchiefs.
I have just ordered a copy of atheist bible scholar Robert Price’s book “The Christ-Myth Theory.” In it he argues, as I understand, that all of Jesus’s actions and sayings are retellings of Old Testament stories, that Jesus (the name means Savior– get it?) is just one more in a long line of dying and resurrecting gods and heroes, and that there is no credible non-Christian evidence to suggest that Jesus ever existed. I think he pronounces Jesus’s existence as improbable. And I agree. If we were talking about anyone else but Jesus, I suspect that most people would agree with Price.
Now, why do I care? I do, and here’s why. First, it’s fun to study and to follow the logic and arguments of the mythicists. Also, I’ve always been interested in truth and reality, and I think that it’s pretty obviously important to know whether such a well-known figure was real or just a symbol. And–think about it–we’re talking about a dude here who supposedly is the gigantically important driving force of our so-called Judeo-Christian civilization. What a huge joke if he never existed! What a ridiculous position Christians are placed in, even if they don’t even know it!
How many Hindus choose to enter Biblical studies?
How many Hindus choose to enter astrophysics?
How many Hindus choose to enter biology?
How many Hindus choose to enter sociology?
How many Hindus choose to enter psychology?
I think we can see what the fundamental problem with Biblical studies is that doesn’t seem to apply to any other consensus in academia. Almost no one who isn’t already a committed Christian decides to get involved in Biblical studies, specifically NT studies. It’s not the same for say, biology; there’s nothing inherent to biology that makes only atheists become evolutionary biologists.
This is one of the reasons why I can’t take consensus arguments in Biblical studies too seriously. A majority of NT scholars think that Jesus existed? A majority of NT scholars are also practicing Christians. This is the same consensus that produces the absurdity of the empty tomb. A point that William Lane Craig likes to harp on almost every time he argues for the truth of the resurrection.
Of the NT scholars who are not Christians who have investigated the historicity of Jesus, I think there is much more ambiguity over the issue. And that would be the only consensus that doesn’t suffer from a religionist bias.
I still wonder why the atheist blogosphere takes all this so intensely and with so much gravity.
I don’t. I found Hoffmann’s post and the comments very funny.
Subscribing to comments.