Q&Atheist: Questions from believers answered by an Atheist. I don’t speak for all Atheists, nor for Atheism as a whole. Just me. 

Q: How do you explain the emergence of Christianity?

Question from: Pastor David Holt, Living Hope Church, Athens Georgia 

A: I am not a historian by any means. I’m sure an entire doctoral thesis (if not multiple theses) could be written in attempt to answer this question. That being said, I do think that there were a few pivotal themes and moments in documented history that had some large effect on the emergence and spread of the Christian faith.

Christianity’s doctrines of the afterlife are a big factor in my mind. If you believe that leaving or not believing in a specific religion could result in eternal torture in Hell, you have a motivation to stay in, as well as to pass that belief on to people you care about (to save them from that fiery fate as well). This means teaching your children from an early age about the religion. When ideas like this are ingrained into people at a young age, and continually reinforced as they grow up by the authority figures in their lives, it makes those ideas hard to shed. For some, even if they wanted to shed them, it is near impossible.

I also think events like the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition had an effect on spreading the Christianity. If the alternative to professing Christianity was being persecuted or killed by Christians, then converting to Christianity might have seemed appealing. Also, we can’t deny the massive boost that Christianity got when the Roman Emperor Constantine ended the persecution of Christianity (and other religions’)  within the (historically pagan) Roman Empire and purportedly converted to Christianity himself. Holidays and feasts were amalgamated, and the new customs were given more freedom to spread. The history on some of those (like Christmas) is quite fascinating.

But, this is where I have to stop answering the question proper. Like I said, I’m not a historian. Going too much further into those topics would have me trying to fill gaps in the story which are fuzzy in my memory if not completely beyond my own knowledge base. What I find more interesting and to the point is that I get the feeling from the question itself as though there is some sort of inherent credit to be bestowed on Christianity for spreading as far and wide as it has. The question seems to place a burden of proof on the answerer to show how something “not true” could have spread so far. And, I have to reject that concept completely.

One of the best summations of my thoughts on this come from Tim Minchin’s song “White wine in the sun”:

“I don’t believe just ‘cos ideas are tenacious it means they’re worthy.”

At its base, the quote is a reference to a logical fallacy known as argumentum ad populum. This fallacy concludes that a proposition is true based on the fact that many or even most people believe it. This type of argument can be shown demonstrably to be false. For instance, most of the world used to believe that the world was flat, or that the sun revolved around the earth. But no matter how geographically widespread those beliefs were, the percentage of the populous who held the beliefs, nor the strength of their conviction had any bearing on the actual truthfulness of their respective claims. Argumentum ad populum doesn’t prove the claim itself false, only that the line of reasoning which says that it’s true is insufficient evidence by itself.

Such is the case with Christianity. It doesn’t matter how far it has spread. It doesn’t matter how many people believe it to be true. Christianity (like all other religions and literally every other positive claim in existence) still has a burden of proof to demonstrate that it’s true before it can honestly claim to be. But, whether or not Christianity is actually true is neither here nor there. For the purposes of this particular post it only matters that the emergence and spread of Christianity, vast though it is, says absolutely nothing about the validity of Christianity.