In the journey to my ultimate deconversion, Bart Ehrman played a pivotal role.  His book, Misquoting Jesus, pointed to some of the scribe’s mysoginy and irreverent treatment of the texts, that translated to some serious misgivings about the integrity of the scriptures as a trustworthy source to know about God.  After all, what sort of God doesn’t have the power to keep his text correct?

I trusted Christianity over Islam and Mormonism specifically because of the nature of the scriptures, but once the blinders on the facts about the Gospels were removed, I realized my position was no longer intellectually teneble.

His presentation at Southeastern Seminary does a great job of pointing out some of the flaws in the Resurrection:

• The earliest gospel, “Mark,” was written around 65-70 AD, up to 40 years removed from the events it describes
• Matthew and Luke were written 15 years on top of that, and severely plagiarize Mark, rendering them unusable as independent corroborating evidence
• The authors of the gospels were not eyewitness accounts; they are anonymous documents whose titles (and disciple associations) were ascribed decades after their writing
• The gospels themselves have incredibly awful contradictions between them, which further implicates them as bad sources for information

On learning these facts, I could not possibly continue believing that the resurrection was true; I realized it was merely the recording of an oral legend.  I was also incredibly offended by the dozens of people who lied to me, with full knowledge of the fact, about the eyewitness nature of the gospels.  Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the New Testament knows this fact, and yet information such as this is that upon which the whole of Christianity is built.

I could not continue believing in a religion that relies on dishonesty, upon which a legend is built that coerces belief on penalty of eternal suffering and torture.  I describe this around 42 minutes in on the podcast I was recently a guest on, “A Matter Of Doubt.”