The End of Christianity Read Online Free PDF

is real in some fictionalist sense. He does not exist outside the cartoons about his character (except people in costumes, I suppose). We are the nonrealists who believe that the text is neither a window to some divine reality nor a painting of it. It is simply a house of concave and convex mirrors which in a warped manner reflects to us only human ideals, beliefs, desires, fears, and values. For us the text is just human words, period. As Robert Carroll noted, “The biblical God is a character in Hebrew narrative and therefore is, in a very real sense, a figure of fiction.” 3
    The same idea was reiterated by David Clines, ex-president of the Society of Biblical Literature, who realized that a biblical scholar needs to believe as little in Yahweh as a classical scholar in Zeus or an Egyptologist in Ra. In his view, when it comes to the representation of God in the Pentateuch, “God in the Pentateuch is a character in a novel. God in the Pentateuch is not a ‘person’; he is a character in a book. And there are no people in books, no real people, only fictions; for books are made, not procreated.…” 4
    Moreover, even a populist crypto-fundamentalist like the postliberal Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann had no problem admitting this when he wrote in the fashion of what William Harwood rightly implied is nothing but “faculty-of-mythology doubletalk”: “even with reference to God, the imaginative generative power of rhetoric offers to the hearer of this text a God who is not otherwise known or available or even—dare one say—not otherwise ‘there.’” 5
    In general, these Old Testament scholars are reluctant to engage in philosophy of religion. As a result, they have not attempted to spell out why they believe that Yahweh as represented in the biblical texts does not really exist. But the Bible itself offers a mandate for challenging any claim to divinity. Thus we find that the God of the Old Testament could at times rant and rave and even challenge the reality of foreign gods, claiming them to be human-made idols; for example, Isaiah 41:21–24 (NRSV):
    Set forth your case, says the LORD; bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob. Let them bring them, and tell us what is to happen. Tell us the former things, what they are, so that we may consider them, and that we may know their outcome; or declare to us the things to come. Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods; do good, or do harm, that we may be afraid and terrified. You, indeed, are nothing and your work is nothing at all; whoever chooses you is an abomination.
    One would like to put the same request to Yahweh, if only to be fair. If only the writers of this text applied the same criteria to themselves. But let us not tempt this god—we shall let his alleged divine revelation speak for itself. For of all the arguments that show why a claim to divinity is false, none seems as devastating as the argument from the projection of all-too-human qualities onto an alleged superhuman entity. What is ironic is that taking the Old Testament seriously will reveal that using the same line of reasoning against representations of Yahweh in that text has devastating consequences.
    Before we begin, it should be noted that we are not trying to be difficult or blasphemous—there is no pleasure in destroying the beliefs of others. We just want to make known the truth about the Bible, to show why the Bible (which is just a book) is itself the most subtle of idolatrous agents. Our critical approach is demanded by the polemics of many a biblical prophet himself and certainly seems prudent. After all, no god appeared to us to tell us that this book is true. No god will appear to you as you read this chapter to inform you that it is wrong. But humans calling themselves Christians will just keep quoting from the Bible or referring to their religious experience or some philosophical position to convince you it is. But even the character