The Atheist Blogger

…or so claims the Archbishop of Canterbury. As the Church of England suffers yet another crisis, with the entire system being ripped apart over the issues of homosexuality and women bishops, it seems that Dr Rowan Williams has turned to the infallibility of the completely contradictory Jesus.

As his comments in a recent sermon show, he seems to have lost all sense of logic:

Jesus is going to be with those who feel the waterlessness of their position, with those traditionalists feeling the Church is slipping away from them, the landmarks have shifted….

He will be with those in very different parts of the landscape who feel that things are closing in, that their position is under threat and their liberties are being taken away by those anxious and eager to enforce new ideologies in the name of Christ.

He will be with those who feel that their liberty of questioning is under threat, he will be with gay clergy who wonder what their future is in a Church so anxious and tormented about this issue.

Presenting Jesus Christ, the perfect electoral candidate in any situation! Able to have multiple contradicting opinions on absolutely anything! Homosexuals? Surely an abomination but also a reality. Women clergy? Well, my dad says it’s against the law but I’m fine with it…sort of.

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I’ve read a few of the current “Atheist Thirteen” meme posts that are going around, and that got me thinking. What would a fundamentalist Christian say if they had to answer the questions? Probably something like this:

Q1. How would you define “atheism”?

Satanism, devil-worship, false, Godless, infidels, idiotic, Hell-bound, unethical, evil…there are many words I could use. Atheists are evil wicked people with no morals who deserve Hell more than any murderer or rapist!

Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?

Naturally. I was born a Baptist Christian and still follow our Lord Jesus Christ today. As a child I attended church every Sunday, and as I grew older I was born again and began to participate in church events, regularly attending services mid-week and at the weekends.

Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word?

Truth

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One question that I often wonder about as an atheist is “Did Jesus Christ really exist?”. It’s something that the vast majority of Christians blindly believe without question since Jesus plays such a large part in the Bible. The entire basis of Christianity relies on Jesus being a real person, who was the real son of God, and was really crucified for our sins. As an atheist, I have the freedom to question that belief, and I have done so on many occasions since I became one.

A few decades ago, the idea that Jesus Christ was an exaggerated myth would have been shunned by the community, but in recent years, especially with the rise of atheism and free thought, coupled with books such as “The God Delusion” and films such as “The God Who Wasn’t There”, the so called “Jesus myth hypothesis” is being more widely supported and investigated.

The biblical story of Jesus covers his birth and childhood with great detail (the nativity story especially so), but then a strange thing happens. 18 years of Jesus Christ’s life are inexplicably missed out. After a 12 year old Jesus is found by Mary and Joseph in a temple in Jerusalem, surrounded by scholars and priests, he vanishes from history. The next mention of him is when he is 30, and he gets baptised by John the Baptist. The rest of Jesus’ life (from the baptism to the crucifixion) is pretty much covered completely. However, if Christ’s life was being so well documented throughout his childhood, how come there is absolutely no reference to 18 years of his life? Obviously if Jesus was as popular as he supposedly was, his trial would have been well documented, as would his subsequent crucifixion. Unfortunately, if we follow the Bible’s historical account, that documentation just didn’t exist.
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