Synopsis: 25 reasons Why I Am No Longer a Christian

Most Christians mistakenly believe that the virgin birth, miraculous life, death, and resurrection are original and unique to Jesus Christ. Au contraire. Long before the story of Jesus was scripted, there were myths of dying-resurrecting god-men throughout the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East who were born of virgin human mothers and divine fathers, performed miracles, were killed and buried only to finally resurrect in glory.

What does this mean?

It means that the notion of dying-resurrecting god-men is an archetypal mythic type common to the collective belief systems of the various peoples (cultures) of the Mediterranean and Middle East who each had their own 'local' myth that referenced a god-man (and oftentimes a dying-resurrecting god-man) including Dionysus, Osiris, Tammuz/Dumuzi, Bacchus, Mithras, Attis, Adonis, Pythagoras, Apollonius Of Tyana, Krishna, Murukan, the Corn King, the Green Man, to name a few.

Any rational thinker worth his-or-her intellectual salt can confirm this with a little dedicated research and scholarly elbow-grease. The problem is many Christians really dislike research or dedicating time to study if it nudges them, however slightly, from their presupposed comfort zones. Apparently it's easier to believe than it is to roll-up one's sleeves and do the work necessary to unearth the 'truth' whatever it might lead. I suspect this phobia against honest research is a kind of infantile pathology wishing to (1) avoid acknowledging the inescapable reality of death and (2) avoid putting aside promises of a Magical Happy Place so as not to take responsibility for one's own life right here and right now.

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Tiny children with encephalitis, cancer, cystic fibrosis, progeria, dying prematurely and painfully, suffering needlessly simply because they were born. This alone should be argument enough against the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful, and 'loving' God, but most believers who espouse this view conveniently overlook the obvious contradiction between Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnibenevolence and the Problem of Evil (or Theodicy).

With straight-faces and righteous sincerity, earnest apologists will jump through hoops and juggle concepts, blow smoke and angle mirrors, practice sophistry and philosophical obfuscation to relieve God of the burden of human suffering or to turn suffering around as a kind of 'training exercise ' that God employs to deter us from sin, teach us virtue, promote obedience, submission, and humility (as one apologist claims here). Others will take the problem of evil and twist it up inside theology, invoke Latin phrases and fifty-cent terms like ipsa voluntas, posse pecarre, non posse pecarre, supralapsarianism, then go on to claim that it is either (1) Adam's fault there is evil and suffering in the world and (2) a "fortunate Fall" because it necessitated the need for a Blessed Savior (or as one apologist deadpans here: "Not only is the only logically consistent universe one in which evil exists for God's purposes, but God's people will be far more blessed because of the incarnation and Christ than they could ever have been blessed by an obedient Adam." How lovely! And how wonderful such apologists have the precognitive ability to weigh and determine God's blessings as well as his intentions). Although the average layperson may fall victim to such hocus-pocus and surmise an answer was given somehow to a question built solely on an assumption of divine attributes, thinking men and women will quickly see through the false reasoning and bold-faced paralogisms.

For some inexplicable reason, Christians apologists and theologians like to describe God's attributes even though they have never actually seen God in order to determine these attributes. Only through tradition do they construct this list of attributes and for no other reason. In other words, apologists and theologians will endlessly argue who and what God is based on abstract language alone (i.e., words representing something impossible to determine) and nothing else.

What do I mean by this? You can point to a tree and list its attributes, you can point to a dog, you can point to your neighbor, but in order to list God's attributes you can only point to words, the abstract language of tradition alone, therefore said attributes are inherently meaningless because they are grounded solely on abstraction and artifice.

Again, what does this mean? It means that if the only way you can show God's attributes is by pointing to words in a book or repeating words you heard, then those attributes have been determined solely through the abstraction of language and nothing else. Therefore, the attributes of God are really empty attributes because they might as well be anything. You can say that God is an invisible color-blind jazz singer with a distaste for all things Norwegian and the only proof that you have are the words you use. Think this is wrong? If so, then show me—don't just tell me—any one of God's attributes (and pointing to more words in a book do not amount to 'showing' but only 'telling' twice removed).

If you can only talk about God's attributes (or only talk about angels, or devils, or miracles, or speaking snakes, etc.) then you have fallen into the trap of a reification error. Reification (hypostatization, sometimes a pathetic fallacy) is a language fallacy that involves ascribing existence, substance, attributes, and behavior to mental constructs or concepts, then talking about these constructs and concepts using language that presupposes them to be real. It is similar to a metaphor, but a metaphor that has been extended too far and taken to a spurious extreme. When applied to fantastic entities or gods, it is similar to anthropomorphism. While it is useful to be creative and employ metaphors and abstractions in our language, unless we are mindful of the symbolic properties of words we risk the danger of treating abstract entities as 'real' solely through the attributes we metaphorically use to describe them with words. How we talk about and discuss things has a great influence on what we believe about them, which means our impression of reality is often structured by the very language we use to describe it. Being aware of the reification fallacy can teach us to pay critical attention to the words we use or else we run the risk of projecting our descriptions outside the abstract world of language and into the realm of the concrete world itself.

So what are the supposed attributes of God and what do they have to do with the Problem of Evil? According to tradition, God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), omnipresent (everywhere at once), changeless, eternal, and all-loving (see biblical list here). If God is really all these things, then why is there evil in the world (whether natural evil—earthquakes, hurricanes, disease, etc—or man-made evil—murder, rape, theft, torture, war, etc)? You can ease the question further by acknowledging the need for some evil in order for freewill to work, but ask why there is as much evil? For example, why are some unfortunate children born with progeria (Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome) only to suffer with accelerated premature aging and die by age thirteen? This is a clear demonstration ofthe Problem of Evil. If God really is God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and all-loving then why doesn't God prevent progeria, infant abuse and torture, painful birth defects, etc? If God could prevent it (being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent) but doesn't then God isn't all-loving. If God is all-loving but can't prevent it, then God isn't omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.

Finally, if the knowledge and acceptance of God is essential for the condition of my eternal soul (that's 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ years x 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ years x forever), whether I will be granted an eternal reward (that's 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ years x 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ years x forever) or an eternal punishment (that's 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ years x 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ years x forever), then how come God is hidden? I am a rational human being. I derive knowledge empirically, i.e., through my five senses. If the future state of my eternal soul (that's 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ years x 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ years x forever) is dependent upon my accepting the 'right' doctrine, then don't just point me to abstract words in this book (the Bible) or that book (the Koran), or infer that I am suppose to make a reification error as a matter of faith. Why? Because I am by nature an empirical creature. I learn through reasoned experience. Don't just tell me, show me! If God could show me (being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent) but doesn't then God isn't all-loving. God must be playing cat-and-mouse with me. If I'm empirical and rational, but supposed to behave as if I were metaphysical and irrational, then there's something awfully wrong going on here. I'm suppose to believe in what I cannot see, act irrationally, and feign intellectual ignorance, or else I will be damned for all eternity (that's 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ years x 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ years x forever).

It is evident to me that these two things—the Problem of Evil and the Hiddenness of God—strongly demonstrates that God cannot be the type of God that Christian tradition makes him out to be. He cannot be all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere, changeless, eternal, and all-loving. Given the human condition, the suffering of innocents and helpless babies, this particular flavor of God most certainly does not exist.

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What is naturalism? It is not really a philosophical system so much as a point of view or tendency common to a number of philosophical and religious systems. Rather than a well-defined set of doctrines, it is more an attitude or spirit pervading and influencing many doctrines.

Naturalism is the belief that all objects, events, and even values can be fully explained in terms of factual and/or causal claims about the natural world. Nature is regarded the one original and fundamental source of all that exists. The limits of nature are also the limits of existing reality and knowledge. A more specific form, Materialistic Naturalism, asserts that matter is the only reality and that all the laws of the universe are reducible to mechanical laws.

All forms of naturalism explicitly reject any reference to or reliance upon supernatural powers or authority. And what is supernaturalism? Just the opposite.

Supernaturalism is the belief that events and values require supernatural powers or authority for their explanation. Natural explanations may be reliable on an immediate level, but they in turn must eventually require a supernatural cause. According to supernaturalism, a supernatural order is the original and fundamental source of all that exists. It is this supernatural order which defines the limits of what may be known.

The difference between these two positions is one of the fundamental differences between atheists and theists—it is a difference which tends to cause the most disagreement and most friction. Atheists tend to be naturalists—taking the perspective that this natural world is all there is, all there is to know, and does not require anything "supernatural" to explain it. Theists tend to be supernaturalists—assuming that a supernatural realm exists beyond what we see and is necessary in order to explain our universe. These fundamental assumptions are mutually exclusive and incompatible. If one is true, the other cannot be. But is one more reasonable than the other? Is it more reasonable to be a naturalist, or does the evidence support being a supernaturalist?

I have been studying philosophy and religion for several years now. This activity has led me to investigate some problems of philosophy which discussions always seem to reduce to by simple necessity regardless of the philosophical sophistication of whomever the writer or speaker. The problem is one of the fundamental problems of philosophy: that of epistemology, further refined with philosophical/linguistic analysis of presuppositions. You see, whenever we start to speak of what we "know," a legitimate question is just how it is we know it, why it is we think whatever method we used to arrive at that knowledge is reliable, and whether that knowledge was acquired honestly, rationally, and without overt bias. These are all epistemological problems.

Presuppositions enter when we carefully examine the statements we use in our discussions, including discussions of epistemology. By way of a example, suppose I am in the living room of my house and say to my son "Could you please go get me a soda from the refrigerator?"

That request presupposes (or contextually implies) a number of things. That the child I'm speaking to will understand what I say, that he will follow the request, that he is capable of following the request, that there is a refrigerator, that there are sodas in the refrigerator. Indeed, communication by language would be quite impossible without a myriad of such presuppositions.

These presuppositions affect every statement we make, whether we're talking about evidence for electrons or the existence of historical figures. The problem then is how is it we can arrive at a rational philosophical basis for believing our science, physics, history, our everyday world? And does that basis lead more naturally to a empirical/scientific interpretation of the world, a supernatualistic/faith/language-based interpretation of the world, or something else entirely?

Most theists might argue that our basic presuppositions lead first and foremost to supernaturalism, that our basic presuppositions require that we first accept supernaturalism. It doesn't matter that there is no evidence of anything supernatural, supernaturalism should first and foremost be the primary presupposition, if not by evidence then by faith.

They do not view this as an added "extra" assumption as would naturalistsl. Instead they will argue that belief in their God is logically prior to all other beliefs about nature, history and logic. This means that naturalism, which presupposes just a natural world, is wrong because it does not presuppose the specific God of specific theists.

There are basic irreducible presuppositions that are philosophically necessary in any debate or discussion whether you are a naturalist or a supernaturalist. "Necessary" here means that they cannot be denied without ending up in a self-contradictory loop.

They are:

The validity of logic. Logic is presupposed every time we make an utterance designed to urge acceptance of some proposition, even the acceptance or rejection of logic itself. What this means is that in order to make the statement "logic is not true" be a true statement, the contrary statement "logic is true" must be false. But that is the law of non-contradiction - one of the "laws of logic." Thus for logic to be false, it must be true -a self contradiction. As such logic is a necessary truth.
The existence of other minds. Else who are we trying to convince of anything?
The existence of a common mental/perceptual world. In order for our utterances to convey any meaning or to transfer thoughts and ideas and facts we believe about the world, there must already be some common ground for understanding. We can call this methodological naturalism, although that term may already be preempted with its own definition. But when we speak of gravity or water or clouds to another who seems to speak our own language we would be somewhat surprised if they didn't know what we were talking about. Common English (or French, or Swahili, but here we use English) words convey, where they convey information about the world, sufficiently similar ideas about that world; where they convey grammatical information about the sentence, sufficiently similar cues, etc. Else communication could not happen.
The stability of that common world. It is necessary for any knowledge at all that we normally be able to trust both our memories and our expectations. That the past has always been like the present, or that the future will continue to be like the past cannot be proven, but that assumption is necessary in order to claim to be able to know anything at all. This was explored more in depth in my earlier article describing the contradiction between this necessary assumption and the assumption of historical miracles in Christian theology.

These are the presuppositions we all share whenever we attempt to communicate with anyone, but do they either (1) require a prior god belief or (2) logically necessitate a god belief?

The theist may try to make a god responsible in some part for some or all of the presuppositions discussed above, but to get to the god in the first place, he must have already accepted the above presuppositions to have learned enough language and philosophy or religion to articulate his belief. Thus, these presuppositions actually come before his articulated god belief, rather than the other way around as some argue.

Let's make an example that doesn't rely on specific scientific or involved pure logic demonstrations, but rather draws on daily life. To build our scenario, we'll propose a Chinese man, raised communist in the middle of China, far from any Christian church. He has a solid basic education in math, the sciences etc., but lacks much knowledge of the West at all, and peculiarly, much knowledge of even his own history.

Thus, we'll assume he is at least as ignorant of Western history as the average Westerner is of Chinese history and at least as ignorant of Western philosophy and religion as the average Westerner is of Chinese philosophy and religion. He is also pretty innocent of the very idea of history, the local communist committee not seeing fit to offer history as a subject. The Chinese man has also coincidently been raised an austere Taoist, so he has no idea of God/Gods.

Our Chinese gentleman comes to the United States, to your hometown, indeed into your home. Your job is to teach him about the West, including about Christianity. Despite his education, among the things he doesn't know is how to speak English. He's not sure how to use western style furniture, flush toilets are a novelty, etc. So you have a lot of work to do.

But at least he is bright.

The object of this little experiment is to work through just what you're going to have to do if you wish to teach him about Christianity. Will your perspective have to be naturalistic or supernaturalistic? First, you need to teach him the language. You must presuppose that he can learn English, that his mind works similarly enough to yours that as you try to teach him the vocabulary and grammar of English that it will make sense to him. That's the easy, and obvious part, but it is so obvious that it does bear separate mention simply because this unconscious presupposition does have profound influence and importance. Next, how do you teach him the idea of history? Archeology? What do you presuppose the moment you endeavor to teach about history? At least one assumption must be that there—is—a history.

Being bright, he catches on fairly quickly. Now, how do you teach him about the Bible? Having learned his history and archaeology, one of the first things he asks you is where are the source documents for the Bible, and in what state of preservation and how close the documents are to the time of supposed original composition? So what do you tell him? How do you propose to convince the Taoist, who lacks any belief about the supernatural, or at least supernatural beings, that Christianity is true? How even do you convince him that there is enough evidence to accept the Bible as providing much in the way of history? Without assuming naturalism and the continuity of the observable world—and that you both share much the same experience of that world—how can you possibly succeed? The answer is that you can't. That answer is that you do have to assume naturalism rather than supernaturalism.

In this way we see that naturalism is prior to theism of any kind. When that naturalism becomes self-conscious, then you arrive at "physicalism" or "scientism"—a perspective often derided by some theologians and Christian apologists.

So it should be clear now that the assumption of supernaturalism, the idea of a supernatural world, is an "extra" assumption that simply isn't needed. It certainly isn't needed in order to make use of things like logic and it doesn't appear needed in order to explain things like history or the workings of our world.

In answer to the question of which is more reasonable, naturalism or supernaturalism, it looks like naturalism is the more reasonable perspective to adopt.

Naturalists (scientists, physicalists, empricists, materialists) have made massive progress with their world view and reached a nearly complete agreement on most of the fundamentals of their world view within the last 400 years (approximately) that that view has developed. This is something all the theists in all the world have not managed in the previous 10,000 years up to the present. We have one physics, one biology, one chemistry, etc, while the number of theistic beliefs, despite the loss of some views, is at least as great now as it ever has been and actually increasing (see Adherents for more information).

A decidedly odd position if naturalism is false and supernaturalism is true.

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While it may come as a complete suprise to a majority of the faithful (although this information is clearly stated in most Bibles' own introductions to each of the the four Gospels), it has been known for centuries that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Instead, these are "traditional" names tacked onto anonymously-written works over a hundred years after they were composed. This knowledge is not controversial among biblical scholars, although it is deliberately kept from general church-goers. What is controversial is the dubious attempt to assign actual authorship to these anonymous works, and to insert them into historical, social, cultural, and theological context as testimony. Most believers might be shocked to learn that the Gospels were not eyewitness accounts, or even second-hand accounts ('hearsay'), of Jesus' time. Rather, they are contrived products of a complicated theological advocacy created generations after the time described.

"It's important to acknowledge that strictly speaking, the gospels are anonymous, but..."

—Dr. Craig Blombery to Lee Strobel
The Case For Christ, page 22 [emphasis added]

There is no 'but'; the gospels are either anonymous compositions or they are not, and no amount of apologetic sophistry or argument from tradition is going to turn them into eyewitness accounts or first-person accounts or even 'hearsay' accounts once removed. The PLAIN-AND-SIMPLE TRUTH of the matter (although truth is hardly plain and rarely simple) is that (1) the four Gospels are copies of copies of copies of original documents that (2) no one has actually found, that (3) no one knows who wrote, and (4) were finally 'given names' a hundred years after the fact so as to make them appear authoritative.

Too often Christian apologists use the argument that "by all historical accounts Jesus rose from the dead." Ask them what they mean by "historical accounts" or what they are using for historical records and they will quickly point you to the New Testament, specifically the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But is it at all reasonable and rational to consider the Gospels 'historical accounts' beyond the basic fact that they were created sometime in history? When Christians use the terms 'historical accounts' or 'historical records' what they want to mean is 'eyewitness accounts'.

But are the Gospels 'eyewitness' accounts? Were they composed by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as witnesses to the life of Jesus?

As any true student of the Bible and church history can tell you, the four gospels are not eyewitness accounts: (1) they were written as third-person narratives, and (2) they were originally composed anonymously and the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ascribed to them were actually second century "guesses" in order to give them the appearance of legitimacy and credibility. So what does it mean when someone makes the claim that 'by all historical accounts Jesus rose from the dead'? It actually means that according to an anonymously written third-person narrative a supernatural and/or magical event occurred in which a character called 'Jesus' circumvented the Laws of Physics and Biology and rose from the dead. And what, exactly, is an anonymously written third-person narrative? It is nothing more than hearsay thrice-removed! Not only is there (1) not an eyewitness account, but (2) only a third-person account, without (3) a named or recognized author taking credit for the composition of that third-person account! That is why the Gospels are hearsay three-times removed. No one knows who wrote the Gospels or if any of the events contained therein actually happened. In other words, millions of people may be using as a "testimony" of their faith four documents describing magical and supernatural events that may have been created out of whole cloth and motivated for purely political or religious reasons.

Which explanation is more feasible given what we know about the way the world works? That magical/supernatural/miraculous events occurred two thousand years ago, although such events haven't occurred since, or that these documents were deliberately and anonymously created in order to satisfy a political or religious agenda? Since they were anonymously written and in the third-person, it would be irrational to attribute to them any sense of validity because the events they describe simply do not correspond with the way we know the real world works. Miracles and magical and supernatural hocus-pocus simply do not occur, so the simplest explanation (by way of Occam's Razor) is that these anonymously-written third-person narratives were created solely as a tool for propaganda in order to entice superstitious or magically-inclined people to climb aboard a particular band-wagon.

Please consider the following discussion of First, Second, and Third-Person accounts:

Account	Description and Example
First Person	Eyewitness or autobiographical account: "I saw.." "I heard..." "I witnessed..." NOTES: (1) The use of the first-person does not automatically mean a document is a true or valid rendering of actual events in history. The novel Moby Dick was written in the first person utilizing a narrator called Ishmael, but Ishmael is not real and the events described in Moby Dick were not 'real' historical events although made use of very real scenes, settings, and locations. As far as the story goes, what happened in the book was the invention of its author, Herman Melville. Therefore, when somebody quotes Ishmael, they are not actually quoting Ishmael, but the words that Herman Melville put in Ishmael's mouth. (2) Simply because a recognized author claims to have been an eyewitness to an event, this claim does not automatically mean the claim is legitimate or that the event actually occurred. In his book Communion: A True Story, sci-fi author Whitley Strieber writes in the first-person his supposed eyewitness account of his own abduction by gray-skinned aliens. Are we suppose to take this book at face and consider it undeniably true simply because it (1) has a recognizable author and (2) it was written in the first person? Absolutely not, and while the Gospels have neither of these (no recognizable authorship, no first-person account) they are considered by most conservative Christians to be legitimate 'eyewitness' or 'historical accounts', when, in fact, they are neither.
Second Person	Directional, conversational, or rhetorical account: "You saw.." "You heard..." "You witnessed...".." NOTES: (1) The second-person account is a directional and conversational device in which the author of the book or a character in the book is either addressing the reader directly or another character in the book. It is also a rhetorical device used by the author or narrator to posit a question in which the answer is already assumed. (2) Simply because the author or narrator or a character in the book can posit a rhetorical question in the second-person does not mean the events surrounding that question actually occurred. Simply because I, a recognizable author, can ask you a thetorical question "Were you there when aliens gave me an anal probe? Of course you weren't!" doesn't mean I actually had an up-close-and-personal relationship with aliens.
Third Person	Narrative referential account: "He saw.." "John heard..." "Jesus said..." NOTES: (1) The third-person account is a narrative account. It tells of events, actions, and conversations between characters in a story. Third third person-account is not a first-person 'eyewitness' account. The third-person account does not say "I saw Jesus do such-and-such" but rather They saw Jesus do such-and-such or John said to Jesus or Jesus said to them, "Blessed are the poor..." (2) Simply because a recognizable author writes of events in a book using the third-person account, this does not mean that any of those events occurred. In fact, the use of the third-person is a narrative technique used to remove accountability by one step. An example of this accountability removed by one step is the notion of hearsay in a court of law. If I say on the witness chair that I overheard somebody say something to somebody else, this is hearsay one removed: I didn't say something and somebody didn't say something to me directly, but I 'heard' somebody 'say' something to somebody else. The problem with hearsay and its issue lies in the fact that I might not be telling the truth. Just because I said I overheard such-and-such doesn't mean it ever happened. I could be lying. I could have ulterior motives. I could be trying to indoctrinate or trick you, take advantage of you, or convince myself because there is strength in numbers.

What does it mean that the Gospels are hearsay three-times removed?

(1) Hearsay Once Removed: I overheard somebody say something to somebody else, then repeat what I overheard. My repeating of what I heard is not the original source. It is once-step removed from the original source, and it wasn't even said to me directly. Anything I say could be pure invention, so this is hearsay once removed.

(2) Hearsay Twice Removed: I repeat something that somebody else claims to have seen or overheard or read. I didn't actually see or overhear it, but only repeat what somebody else claims to have seen or heard. The problem with this form of hearsay is that whatever I am told and then repeat might never have happened at all. The person telling me the story may have fabricated the whole thing out of whole cloth. This is hearsay twice-removed.

(3) Hearsay Thrice Removed: Suppose I pick up a notebook written in the third-person claiming all sorts of fantastic things, strange and magical events that simply do not happen in the 'real' world. There is no author's name on the notebook, so I have no way of knowing who wrote it. Not only do I have no idea who wrote it, because it is written in the third-person (because it doesn't claim to be a first-person 'eyewitness' account) I have no way of knowing if any of the events or any of the conversation described therein actually occurred. Since the events it describes are strange and magical, it would be particularly foolish of me to take the events described in the notebook as true and at face value, because (1) I don't know who wrote the notebook, (2) I don't know where it came from, (3) because it is written in the third-person I have no way of knowing if anything the notebook describes ever happened at all, and (4) if strange and magical events don't typically occur in the 'real' world, why would I start believing them only because they were described in an anonymously written third-person narrative? Now, suppose fifty years later somebody slaps an author's name on the notebook simply to make it look more appealing and legitimate; does the fact that it's now been associated with an arbitrary name alter the fact that it is still hearsay, still a third-person narrative account, still reciting strange and magical stories that don't actually occur in the 'real' world? No! However you try to argue around it, the notebook is still hearsay, still a third-person account, still not an 'eyewitness' account or so-called 'historical record'. If I quote from this notebook, what am I actually quoting? Am I quoting the words and deeds of 'real' people or simply made up characters? Because it is a third-person narrative I have absolutely no way of knowing, none of it may never have happened, so in the end all such supernatural claims, accounts, and conversations contained within the notebook are ultimately meaningless.

Just like the Gospels.

Moby Dick as a work of fiction is actually more believable than the Gospels because with Moby Dick not only is there no magic or supernatural hocus-pocus involved, but you can actually say with certainty who wrote the book! What's astounding is that people will recognize that Moby Dick is a work of fiction and then turn around and call anonymous third-person narratives compiled by vote over several hundred years the indisputable 'Word of God'.

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Most Christians are unaware how the canon ('official' books) of the New Testament and the 'divine' character of Jesus (Christology) as well as the notion of the Trinity was argued and decided by council vote over the course of several centuries.

50-130 CE	Early writers declare Jesus of Nazareth is a 'god'.
100-200 CE	Early Church Fathers declare Jesus is a 'second god' to Yahweh.
325 CE	First Ecumenical Council of Nicea was convened by emperor Constantine. It declares that Jesus is equal to god and establishes the Nicene Creed as the fundamental statement of Christian faith. Because Constantine wanted to 'Christianize' the Empire he needed to come up with some kind of consensual agreement because up to that time no two Christian groups agreed on anything. Basically, in the end Constantine said, "You will all believe this way or else."
341 CE	The Council of Antioch declares that Jesus is NOT equal to God, but 'like' God.
364 CE	The Church Council of Laodicea ordered that religious observances were to be conducted on Sunday, not Saturday. Sunday became the new Sabbath: Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday, but shall work on that day.
381 CE	First Council of Constantinople. Convened by Theodosius I, then emperor of the East and a recent convert, to confirm the victory over Arianism, the council drew up a dogmatic statement on the Trinity by adding the Holy Spirit as having the same divinity expressed for Jesus by the Council of Nicaea 56 years earlier.
394 CE	Council of Carthage. First council to uphold doctrines of prayers for the dead and purgatory.
431 CE	Ecumenical Council of Ephesus denounced the teachings of Nestorius (d. 451), who argued that Christ had completely separate human and divine natures.
451 CE	Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon voted that Christ is simultaneously "truly man and truly God." A little known statement of the Council was Canon #15 (1): No woman under 40 years of age is to be ordained a deacon, and then only after close scrutiny. This is appears to have been the last time in church history that the ordination of women was mentioned as a routine practice in any form, and certainly establishes that women did hold, at one time, important church offices.
553 CE	Second Council of Constantinople, convened by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I to settle the dispute known as the Three Chapters. In an attempt to reconcile moderate Monophysite parties to orthodoxy, Justinian had issued (544) a declaration of faith. The last three chapters anathematized the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrus, and Ibas of Edessa for Nestorianism. While the charge was true of their writings to a certain extent, the Council of Chalcedon had cleared those men of any personal heresy. Justinian's edict slighted the council and encouraged Monophysitism; it was deeply resented in the West. Pope Vigilius, resisted at first, but eventually was forced to support the edict. Under pressure from the Western bishops he then reversed himself. In retaliation, Justinian called a council at Constantinople; it was attended by only six Western bishops, boycotted by Vigilius, and dominated by Justinian and the Eastern bishops. The council approved the imperial edict and seems to have censured Vigilius. The pope was forced to ratify the council's work the following year. The West, in general, was slow in recognizing it as an ecumenical council, but ultimately it was accepted - mainly because of the orthodoxy of its pronouncements.
680-81 CE	Third Council of Constantinople. It was convoked by Byzantine Emperor Constantine IV to deal with Monotheletism.
787 CE	The Second Nicean Council met - this was the last of the seven church councils commonly accepted as authoritative by both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The Council voted to allow the veneration but not the worship of icons.
869-70 CE	Fourth Coucil of Constantinople. It has never been accepted by the Orthodox Church, which instead recognizes the council of 880 that supported Photius. The council of 869 was convened at the suggestion of Basil I, the new Byzantine emperor, to confirm the restoration of St. Ignatius of Constantinople to the see that Photius had resigned. Photius had already been condemned, without a hearing, at a Roman synod. At Constantinople his defense was cut short, and when he refused to sign his own condemnation, he was excommunicated. The result of these councils was to intensify the bitterness between East and West.
1085 CE	At the Council of Clermont, the First Crusade (out of a total of eight official crusades) was called by Pope Urban II (c. 1035 - 1099) against Muslims in the Holy Lands.
1123 CE	First Lateran Council. Summoned by Pope Calistus II to signal the end of the investiture controversy by confirming the Concordat of Worms (1122), it was held in the Lateran Palace, Rome, making it the first council to be held in Western Europe. Many of the council's decrees became part of the evolving corpus of canon law.
1139 CE	Second Lateran Council. Convened at the Lateran Palace, Rome, by Pope Innocent II, the council attempted to heal the wounds left by the schism of the antipope Anacletus II (d. 1138) and condemned the theories of Arnold of Brescia.
1179 CE	Third Lateran Council. Convened at the Lateran Palace, Rome, by Pope Alexander III after the Peace of Venice (1178) had reconciled him with Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, it included an envoy from the Orthodox Greeks. The most important legislation was the first canon, which confirmed that the election of the pope was to be in the hands of the cardinals alone, two thirds being necessary for election.
1215 CE	Pope Innocent III organized the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome in order to discuss and define central dogmas of Christianity. It was one of the most important councils ever held, and its canons sum up Innocent's ideas for the church. It recognizes the necessity of the Eucharist and penance as sacraments for salvation.
1408 CE	Council of Oxford prohibited translations of the Scriptures into the vernacular unless and until they were fully approved by Church authority, a decision sparked by the publication of the Wycliffite Bible.
1409 CE	1409 Council of Pisa ended the Great Schism by declaring both rival popes deposed and electing a third: Pope Martin V.
1417 CE	The Council of Constance, largest Church meeting in medieval history, officially ended the Great Schism. It replaced a papal monarchy with a conciliar government, which recognized a council of prelates as the pope's authority and mandated the frequent meeting of councils. This new period was known as the Italian territorial papacy and lasted until 1517 CE. John Hus traveled to the Council of Constance to propose his reforms for the Church. Upon his arrival at the Council, Hus was tried for heresy and burned. His death encouraged futher revolt by his followers.
1545-1563 CE	Council of Trent, Catholic Reformation, or counter-reformation, met Protestant challenge by clearly defining an official theology
1869 -1870 CE	First Vatican Council, 20th ecumenical, affirmed doctrine of papal infallibility (ie. when a pope speaks ex cathedra on faith or morals he does so with the supreme apostolic authority, which no Catholic may question or reject).
1962 -1965 CE	Second Vatican Council, 21st ecumenical, announced by Pope John XXIII in 1959, produced 16 documents which became official after approval by the Pope, purpose to renew "ourselves and the flocks committed to us" (Pope John XXIII).

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June 20, 2006