Christianity is a House of Cards





We skeptics (atheists, agnostics, naturalists, etc.) reject the supernatural. It’s not that we have evidence to disprove the supernatural, it is that we choose not to believe in **anything** that can not be examined by the scientific method and reason. For this reason, we do not believe in leprechauns, Santa Claus, fairies, unicorns, goblins, etc. And for this reason, we do not believe in virgin births, water-walking, or walking/talking zombies.

Believers obviously **do** believe in the supernatural. However, I for one wish that Christians would just be honest and concede that, in our daily lives as human beings, even if the supernatural exists, a supernatural explanation for any event is typically the last of all possible explanations. Specifically, a supernatural explanation should be the last explanation considered for an event if there are numerous natural explanations that can fully explain the event.

So will Christians concede that their belief system is built upon the pattern of accepting the least likely explanations for multiple ancient events instead of accepting the most probable natural explanation?

For instance, which is more probable?

1. A virgin was impregnated by a divine ghost or an early Christian made up this detail?
2. Jesus really walked on water, or this story was made up or developed as a legend?
3. Jesus tomb was empty because an ancient Hebrew god had resuscitated him, or someone had moved or stolen the body?
4. The Gospels were written by eyewitnesses who copied Mark, a non-eyewitness, to write their stories, or the Gospels were written by people writing down the version of the story currently circulating in their town/country?
5. The eloquent, highly stylistic Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—Galilean peasants (except Luke)– or were written by anonymous, educated Greek-speaking Christians who were not eyewitnesses but were only repeating a story that they had heard?
6. Early Christians believed in a Resurrection because they had really seen a walking/talking dead body or because superstitious, poor, uneducated, despondent disciples had visions, hallucinations, and false sightings of their beloved leader?

Christians must repeatedly accept the supernatural explanation for one biblical and historical event after another to maintain their belief system. Even if just one of these assumptions is false, the entire house of cards comes crashing down.

Isn’t that a problem?