by Don Wharton
I had an article on Jesus mythicism printed in the February/March 2026 issue of Free Inquiry. This is the secular humanist magazine published by CFI, the Center for Inquiry. The article includes my assertion that: “The vast majority of the Jesus narrative is within a mythic framework that cannot be real and there are no theoretical chains of causation by which a modestly rigorous historicism can be demonstrated with existing evidence.”
This article was precipitated by a prior article submitted debunking absurd claims made by Bill Cooke in an article titled, Five Challenges to Christ Myth Theorists. That submission is posted here on Secular Perspectives. Please see that post for further on those prior claims.
For me it does not matter if a there was a man named some cognate of “Jesus” that assisted in any way in the founding of Christianity. If we can know nothing about any such person, it is a moot question if he existed or stories about him were made up later. There would be no way to determine which was the case. I am just using epistemology, the science of knowing what we know, to reframe the debate.
I regarded the existing evidence for mythicism to be overwhelming and definitive. The continuing support for the historicism thesis was supported only because of the continuing assertion that Jesus was still possible as a historical figure. This “logical possibility” is then translated by those who want to support historicism as a “consensus” that he somehow is a historical figure despite the evidence that this was highly unlikely. This “possibility” mongering needs to be precluded by a proper framing of the issue. Thus I titled my article A CERN level Proof of Mythicism. CERN regarded evidence that is five standard deviation from chance equivalent to scientific certainty. That translates into 34,000 to 1 odds. That requires a clear logical definition for the criterion of proof and a review of all first century extra-Biblical evidence and a thorough review of New Testament evidence.
All people have a finite number of hours in their lives. We have the right to allocate our hours where we wish. Christianity is claiming to provided reliable historical facts about the ministry of Jesus. There are none, let alone a collection of reliable historical truths from which any interesting narrative can be constructed and shared as reliable history. My article elaborated a bit further on what in my opinion would be adequate to warrant the attention of a secular person: “A historical Jesus about whom we know this one fact at a 50%, coin flip level of certainty, is for me just not worthy of my attention. It is entirely reasonable for a secular supporter of scientific materialism to want modestly more evidence than one possible fact to maybe be true for a person to be accepted as historical.” For this reason I included a criterion in my modestly rigorous historicism to be “Two or more events in this life can be confirmed at a 70% probability or higher.” Frankly, a 70% probability is much less than anything that can be regarded as reliable. It is just modestly greater than a coin flip. Two possible events in our hypothetical historical person would still be radically less than enough to create a narrative that is worthy of our interest. We would just have a minimal level sufficient to suggest that there MAY be enough real history to attract the attention of someone who was avoiding pure mythology.
A poll funded by Episcopalians found that only 38% of non-Christians believed in a historical Jesus. 57% of the religious non-Christians, a majority, likewise rejected a historical Jesus. On average those who identify as atheists, free thinkers, or secular humanists would be more likely to know of the extensive documentation of the reasons to doubt that Jesus was a historical figure. We can expect a substantially lower fraction of us would believe in historicity. We simply do not care that the academic theologians and historians assert a “consensus” that Jesus was historical. They have published nothing in their peer-reviewed literature that could convince an informed non-Christian jury of this presumed historicism. The so called consensus does not have majority support outside of an academic echo chamber that is largely paid to train new ministers. Their dogma is required to work in this field.
Regrettably, Ron Lindsay paid no attention whatsoever to my reframing of the issue. He asserts in his condemnation of my article, “Wharton states that those claiming Jesus was real need to show there are two facts about Jesus that can be confirmed ‘at a 70 percent probability or higher’? Why? Whence this 70 percent figure? Wharton does not explain; it just appears to be his ipse dixit. Moreover, why should the burden of proof be on the person who is asserting what is the most widely held belief by both scholars and laypersons? That’s peculiar.”
He is claiming that I did not explain my reasoning for my claim when my article explicitly does just that. My fourth paragraph above elaborates those reasons more fully for those who did not comprehend what I had in the article. My article continues to conclusively demonstrate that there is no Biblical or first century extra-Biblical evidence that could contravene my CERN level proof. Once that is done, yes the burden rests with the historicists to demonstrate how and where I might be wrong. It is not “peculiar” at all.
To be fair to Lindsay, he does attempt to present some evidence for a reader to question a few of my claims. He asserts, “Josephus discusses how the high priest Ananus was removed from office for improperly ordering the execution of various individuals, including, ‘the brother of Jesus, called Christ, whose name was James’ (Antiquities XX, 197-203).” I reference a peer-reviewed article debunking this in my footnote 11. He goes on to claim, “there is also a reference to James, the brother of Jesus, in the New Testament (Galatians 1:18-19).” Lindsay include is scorn for me declaring that all I do is “deny, deny, deny.” No, I note that there are two peer-reviewed articles showing that this passage does not mean a biological brother. It is a fictive brother in the brotherhood of Christ. Noting peer-reviewed articles is not a simple denying. It is giving substantive reason to respect careful research that has undergone peer review in the literature.
Lindsay, cites nine non-Gospel New Testament passages to legitimately suggest that, “For a supposedly entirely spiritual being, Jesus was pretty fleshy.” This ignores the fact that it is normal for modern churches to say that we will have bodies in heaven. They cite Biblical passages and there are other extra-Biblical stories such as, The Ascension of Isaiah, that include very fleshy stories in heaven. Ascension had Jesus being born of a woman in the seventh heaven and killed by crucifixion on a tree in the first heaven. There is no way to determine that the authors intended the reader to presume an earthly existence and even if they did there is no way to verify that it was anything other than a made up tale.
Lindsay cites “The Epistle of Ignatius to the Trallians, written in the early second century CE—possibly as early as 107 CE”, to suggest that it “confirms Christians regarded Jesus as a real, fleshy human who was crucified under Pilate.” Nothing composed in the second century can confirm the reality on the ground in early first century. The first half of the second century is extremely sparse with anything from Christian leaders suggesting knowledge of or belief in the Gospels. This suggests that the four Gospel books of the New Testament were still evolving and were acknowledge by few.
Much of Lindsay’s article attempts to deal with the fact that Paul does not deal with a historical Jesus and explicitly says of his teachings, “For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught [it,] but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Galatians 1:12.” This ignores the many authors of other books of the New Testament, none of whom cite anything from the four books of the canonical Gospels.
The last issue addressed by Lindsay was my analysis of Richard Carrier’s Rank/Raglan 22 point model of early hero figures who were mostly mythical. Unfortunately, after I wrote my article I became aware of three additional figures that Carrier agreed were likely historical figures. This happened rather recently. Lindsay asserted that my case for mythicism “collapses” with the case of Alexander the Great. Unfortunately, Lindsay was unaware that Carrier allowed for up to four additional historical figured to be added to this class of heroes in his prior analysis. He had suggested that this Rank/Raglan analysis suggested there was only one chance in three that Jesus was historical. He decided that with years of critical analysis the odds from this analysis should be be reduced to only one chance in four that Jesus is historical.
My article contained many other reasons to doubt that the four gospel narratives contained anything that was reliable.
Bill Cooke’s Misleading, Meritless Review | Free Inquiry
