Brian Flemming introduces himself

Hello all,

I'm Brian Flemming, the director of the movie The God Who Wasn't There and president of Beyond Belief Media. The God Who Wasn't There is a film highly critical of superstition, especially of the Christian variety. Beyond Belief Media is a company with the following mission: "To provoke conversation about the dangers of religious belief."

A few days ago, centuri0n emailed me and asked if I would appear on this blog to debate him. I said sure. I plan to answer any questions that come, to the best of my ability. However, when it comes to specific areas of scholarship, I may refer to experts in those areas, as I do not claim to be an expert in all the areas covered in The God Who Wasn't There. Richard Carrier, Robert M. Price and Earl Doherty have decades more experience than I on the subject of Biblical history. I am persuaded by their arguments that Jesus is fictional, but their arguments are best defended by themselves.

I think the following statement is obvious from my movie, but I'll say it here anyway: I like Jesus. He's a good character. I also like Poseidon, Zeus, Oedipus, Moses, Hamlet and other fictional characters. Myth is powerful and useful, and as both a playwright and filmmaker I have a deep respect for the audience's need for the psychological benefit of strong stories. I need them myself. I also enjoy the music and art that humans have created using religious myths. (I believe that this was the best soundtrack of 2004, and this is the most recent CD I have purchased.)

But I think our world has the best chance of survival if we give up a literal belief in books of mythology. Christianity is a relative newcomer. Before Christianity there were other mythological tales in which millions had a literal belief. Sometimes elements of history were woven into those stories. But today we put the literature of those religions on the shelf labeled "Mythology," and nobody considers that status to be low. Jewish, Muslim and Christian literature also belongs on that shelf. It's the most respectful place, and the safest place, for Poseidon and Yahweh.

It should go without saying that the evidence to support the supernatural stories of ancient Greek myths or ancient Christian myths is extremely poor. The extraordinary claims in the literature have nothing approaching the extraordinary evidence a rational person would require to credit those claims. This should go without saying, as it's obvious. I have a feeling it doesn't go without saying on this blog, however.

I do want to say that I remain open to the appearance of that extraordinary evidence.

Perhaps we'll arrive at the end of this discussion having discovered startling new evidence that a man died, stayed dead three days, rose from the dead and then flew into the air. Perhaps we will discover brand new, extraordinary, testable evidence of an omnipresent but previously undetectable being who watches our actions, hears our thoughts and intervenes in the real world. It might be that persuasive evidence will appear that we should view the tales of the Bible in a radically different light from the tales of previous--and quite similar--mythology.

If so, I will admit that the willful abandonment of reason (i.e., "faith") has become unnecessary, and I will bow down before the god who has suddenly appeared. And if a chance at eternal paradise (with or without the virgins) is part of the deal, I will be a very happy former atheist.