Christianity is a Myth

History is full of mother-child messiah cults, trinity godheads, and the like. Thus the Christian story is a myth like the rest.” [Objection #8]

We now move to the eighth objection to Christianity proffered by Bob Seidensticker over at Patheos, from his blog, Cross Examined. From my perspective, there seems to be very little logical examination taking place in Bob’s writings. This argument is a perfect example and should be a very short post. It seems to me that it would be desirable for a person who is arguing against Christianity, for them to put up their best objections. If that is what Bob as done, we should schedule his catechism and baptism for his arguments and objections are, for the most part, implausible top to bottom.

History is full of mother-child messiah cults that are mere myths.

Christianity claims Jesus was born of a virgin and is the Messiah.

Therefore, Christianity is a myth.

What is wrong with this argument? To put it simply, it is a non-sequitur. The conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises. In order for an argument to be valid, the conclusion must necessarily follow from the premises. In this case, just because there are mother-child messiah cults in history and many or most of them are myths, that does not mean that they are all myths. The fallacy that Bob commits is a fallacy of relevance. Technically, it is called Ignoratia Elenchi, missing the point. Abraham Lincoln once said, “A great, rough non-sequitur was sometimes twice as dangerous as a well-polished fallacy.” And so it is with Bob and his atheist minions at Patheos. The fact that Bob commits one fallacy after another seems completely irrelevant to his followers. The laws of logic are cast aside all in the unified effort to save atheism. The blindness is wildly interesting to observe.

History is full of lies told about ancient kings.

History tells us that Alexander the Great was a great conqueror.

Therefore, the claim that Alexander the Great was a great conqueror is a lie.

See how this works? Bob is an educated man. He is clearly an intelligent man. But his hatred of Christianity and of God has so blinded him that he can hardly use basic logic in his arguments against the Christian worldview. That is what sin does to the noetic structure. I do not need to defend the historicity of the virgin birth of Jesus as the Messiah because I accept the Bible at face value. And nothing could be clearer from the pages of Scripture than that Jesus was born of a virgin and was hailed by his earliest followers as the Messiah.

Bob’s objection #8 can be quickly dispensed to the trash can because it is not valid, let along sound.