In the journey to my ultimate deconversion, Bart Ehrman played a pivotal
role. His book, Misquoting Jesus
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.”