skepticdude

Some apologists write unceasingly against the skeptical idea that people in the first century were gullible, and it was this gullibility that paved the way for them to accept Christianity. So.... :notworthy

I thought it might be fun for everybody to post what they believe is a good example of gullibility in first-century people as recorded in the New Testament. :huh:

My favorites are the calling of the disciples in Matthew 4.

18 As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea--for they were fishermen.
19 And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people."
20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him.
21 As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them.
22 Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

I mean....Jesus says "follow me", and they just drop everything right there and start following. I don't think gullibility gets any worse than that. Perhaps the author of Matthew was trying to imply what a great change must be made in your life if you choose to follow Jesus, but perhaps he never dreamed that this story makes the general people of first-century palestine look grossely gullible.

Get ready for arguments from silence from Christians. How do skeptics know that those who followed Jesus in this passage....DIDN'T make a scientific inquiry before this time, which was left unexpressed in the text?

Another one would be from Acts 14, where Paul does a healing trick, which causes the crowd around them to immediately assume the gods have come down to them in human form.

8 In Lystra there was a man sitting who could not use his feet and had never walked, for he had been crippled from birth.
9 He listened to Paul as he was speaking. And Paul, looking at him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed,
10 said in a loud voice, "Stand upright on your feet." And the man[3][Gk "he"] sprang up and began to walk.
11 When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, "The gods have come down to us in human form!" 12 Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes, because he was the chief speaker.
13 The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city,[4][Or "The priest of Zeus-Outside-the-City"] brought oxen and garlands to the gates; he and the crowds wanted to offer sacrifice. 14 When the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting,
15 "Friends,[5][Gk "Men"] why are you doing this? We are mortals just like you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.
16 In past generations he allowed all the nations to follow their own ways;
17 yet he has not left himself without a witness in doing good--giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy."
18 Even with these words, they scarcely restrained the crowds from offering sacrifice to them.

Even if a Christian saw this performed by a Christian healer today....would she just automatically assume the healing was genuine and start praising god incessantly.....or.....would it excite her curiosity to go investigate and make sure the person was really crippled, and that the healing was in fact genuine, before they started getting all emotional about the power of god? I could keep going....where does Acts imply that these people worshipped Paul only after doing an investigation to make sure the healing was genuine? But you get the point.

There's lots more I know of, but I thought we could all contribute. This would be profitable for new skeptics who know intuitively that gullibility is what helped Christianity get off the ground originally, but who may not know where all these nuggets are found in the New Testament. These verses are essential memory material; you'll always be running into Christians who think accepting Jesus into your heart is the most intelligent thing you ever did, and dropping everything in your life, including family if necessary, the very second after you accept Jesus, is a sign of a smart person making an informed decision :devil3:

Alf

I think the example with Paul is better than the first. The first only works for people who insist the bible should be understood literally. A non-literalist will simply say that the "immediately" here doesn't literally mean immediately or some such. He might say that they have probably seen Jesus before and talked with him and was considering to follow him and now he asked them, they did so. Yet, Mark for whatever reason didn't bother to tell about those earlier times that they had met Jesus etc.

The Paul example clinches it though.

If you look outside of the bible there was no question that people in those days were gullible - especially the uneducated ones which made up the majority of the population.

It is also good evidence that people in europe too were gullible in the dark ages when the bible was the only book that people learned to read if they at all did learn to read. The uneducated people in first and second century which made up the bulk of the christians in the early phase was certainly as gullible as the uneducated masses during the dark ages when superstition in europe ran high. The christians was generally not considered seriously by the educated elite precisely because they mainly consisted of uneducated people and it took some time before educated people joined the christian cult.

Christians who dispute these facts are just ignorant about history.

Alf

atechnie

Off to BH&C you go.

-atechnie

skepticdude

nt

CX

I'm not entirely certain "gullible" is a fair characterization of 1st century Palestinians. It's important not to view the people, places and stories from the 1st (and 2nd) centuries through the lens of 21st century post-enlightenment rationalist thought. Were people in Jesus' time wrong about a lot of things, particularly those thing related to modern science? Certainly. In the period in question, miracle working and wandering philosophers with bold new ideas were relatively common place. If we look at rouhgly contemporaneous objections to Xianity (which are difficult to find thanks to the hegemony of the later Xian church), none of them view Jesus' purported deeds with any skepticism. Celsus, perhaps the earliest pagan critic of Xianity for whom we have any significant surviving texts. He clearly presupposes that miracle work etc. is a part of the natural world. In fact he points to just this as a reason not to place such significance on Jesus' deeds as proof of his divinity.

CX

What timeframe are we talking about? There is considerable evidence that Xianity had many of the wealthy elite among its converts at the earliest periods for which there is any evidence one way or the other. Furthermore, paganism was pretty accomodating of multiple social strata within one context. Some of the mystery religions in fact made a point of repudiating earthly divisions between classes. Another point which would tend to invert your conclusion is a quick perusal of Church Fathers during the ante-nicene period. Many were highly educated and/or wealthy.

Really the largest objection to Xianity from the pagan perspective was that it was "new". In the Roman Empire during the first centuries of the common era many religions competed in the market place of philosophical ideas. A key factor in success was that a religion had the marks of antiquity. As an example, if we consider a religion which developed roughly concurrently with, but independent of Xianity, like the Roman Cult of Mithras, we see that adherents to the cult appropriated terminology from Perso-Iranian mythology despite the fact that modern scholars have concluded that there is no genetic relationship between the Roman Mithras and the Persian minor deity Mitra. A key indicator of this tension is AMt's reference to Magi from the east in his infancy narrative. This is supposed to show that even the wisest practioners of the ancient eastern religions recognized Jesus' importance.

A Second major problem Xianity faced in the pagan world was the fact that it insisted on monotheism. As a result of that tenet most pagans viewed Xians as "atheists" and reviled them for undermining the prosperity of the Roman empire and the civilized social order etc. by angering the traditional gods of the Roman pantheon. In order become a Xian one necessarily had to reject the obligations of Roman paganism and thus shirk one's reponsibility to the state cult thereby inviting retribution on the part of the gods of that cult.

Alf

The earliest days - before intellectuals started to get an interest in christianity.

The romans in general around late first century had mostly contempt towards the christians. Also, the time around the martyrs and when christians were used to feed the lions in colliseum etc was a period when the elite in particular and the general population in general didn't care much for the christians.

Also, around the time of the fire in rome I think the christians got blamed for that fire partly because it was a group that "everybody" disliked and so "nobody" objected. Of course, I guess the christians themselves objected but nobody in control listened to them.

It is worth noting that it wasn't a very long time period, as you say, relatively early did people in power join the cult also and already in 3rd or 4th century were christianity one of the significant movements - also outside of their own ranks. They were a political group with influence.

When you came near the nicene period christianity was already an influential movement. Wasn't it constantin who called in for that meeting? If so, the christian religion was already the religion of the empire at that time and in the period close to that meeting and before it, although not official religion it was still a religion which had followers from all layers of society. So, I am talking about a time considerably before the meeting in Nicea.

It is worth noting that the roman empire actually had high religious tolerance. Within the empire you had people who believed in Greek gods, Serapis, Ra cult, Mithras cult etc etc and they were all tolerated even though the roman religion was the official. In fact, christianity was one special cult in that it was prosecuted more so than most other cults. The reason for this was actually quite obvious as seen from a roman point of view.

A person's religion was his personal issue. Who he prayed to in his own home was his own business. However, officially everyone was supposed to pay respect towards the roman gods and godesses. The reasoning was that if you didn't respect the roman gods, then 1) You didn't respect the emperor - many emperors at that time decreed themselves to be gods, so disrespecting roman gods was equivalent to disrespecing the roman emperor and 2) you didn't respect roman law and authority.

The latter point was important since it was what kept the roman empire together as one empire. Law and order. All over the empire people had one law to follow - the law decided in rome. Christians recognized only one king - Jesus - and did not recognize the emperor as a god and hardly as an emperor. Thus, unlike most other religions that was tolerated there were some prosecution of some christians. It is also worth noting that christianity itself wasn't really prosecuted. We have evidence that christians were not thrown into the lions simply because they were christians - they obviously had to do something beyond simply believing in christian dogma in order to make themselves eligible for lion food. For example publicly denouncing the roman emperor or some such. This was something that many christians did though, so I guess the lions in rome was well fed.

Alf