Of Human Credulity

Every age it would appear is the age of credulity.The biggest hoax in human history the Bible and its enduring hold on people is testimony to that.Longevity lends credibility.If something has been believed long enough its power over people is entrenched and no objectivity regarding it is possible or only achieved with tremendous effort as received wisdom is hard to challenge.As the fuhrer of all people once observed the broad mass of a nation are more likely fall prey to a big lie than a small one.

One useful way to counter this bias of longevity is to imagine what sort of response the bible would elicit from the general public were it published for the first time today.Total incredulity would be the almost universal response.The story of Christ would be seen as a fantastic fiction and the product the work of a feverish imagination and diseased mind and anyone taking it at all seriously would be regarded as mentally disturbed and in need of medication.Those who started to congregate in the name of Christ would be dismissed as members of a cult.But because alas the bible was produced millennia ago it has this weight of longevity on its side that more than counters any rational objective criticism.

There is however hope for it emerges that atheism was not born in the 20th century as some people may suppose or even invented by Christopher Hitchens and co.It would seem that it goes right back to the days subsequent to the bible's publication,that there were contemporary atheists and this is a subject well worth exploring.Not everybody was fooled at the time...