Were 1st Century Christians Smarter than Everyone Else?

I sometimes run across Christian apologists who deride skeptics for thinking that the supernatural stories in the New Testament were the product of ignorant and superstitious people.  They argue that it is elitist or condescending to suppose that 1st century Jews and pagans were incapable of understanding the events they observed and reporting them accurately.  The modern skeptic is simply being arrogant.

My response to this argument is that I am not skeptical because I think that 1st century Jews and pagans were any more naive or gullible than modern thinkers.  I am skeptical because I don't think that they were any less naive or gullible.  I think that 1st century Christians were probably just as credulous as the 19th century Mormons who were taken in by Joseph Smith's tales of golden plates and magic seer stones.  I think that they were probably just as credulous as 20th century Scientologists who were taken in by L. Ron Hubbard's fantasies.  People have always wanted to believe that their lives have some transcendent meaning and there have always been people willing to accept the most fantastic stories without any evidence whatsoever in the hopes of finding that meaning.

Many of the arguments that Christian apologists make seem to rest on the rather bizarre notion that 1st century Christians were somehow unique among all people throughout recorded history in that they were impervious to supernatural tales where those tales were not supported by convincing empirical proof.  Unlike people at all other times and places, they wouldn't have passed along such stories without carefully determining all the facts and they wouldn't have exaggerated the stories and added details as they retold them.  Moreover, unlike all other people, they would have promptly abandoned their religious beliefs if challenged with contrary evidence.

HItler Cat

How Pathetic is Rick Perry?

It occurred to Rick Perry that if he wanted to be president of the United States, he might need to have a position on taxes. Unfortunately, coherent thought isn't his strong suit. Charles Pierce of Esquire has the skinny in Rick Perry's Tax Plan: A Comical Slow Dance with Confusion:

It is on days like this that I don't envy political economists. They're the ones that are going to have to take this Message from Goobertown seriously. They're going to have to score it. They're going to have to do the math, such as it is, and try to find a coherent formation in this unwieldy parade of hackneyed talking points (Kill the Estate Tax and Save the Family Farm!) and tired applause lines (The Job Creators Are Uncertain!). They're the ones who are going to have to find a way to square the utter abandonment of the progressive income tax, a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, a return to explosively inflationary health-care costs, an unchained and undoubtedly newly amok financial-services industry, and the partial privatization of Social Security, all of which Goodhair has managed to wedge into "Cap, Balance, and Grow (!)."

What I Have Learned from the Cheering at the Republican Debates

Gay? Fuck you!


No job? Fuck you!


No health insurance? Fuck you!

The System is Broken

Since [2006], researchers have found that about 90 percent of major U.S. companies expressly set their executive pay targets at or above the median of their peer group. This creates just the kinds of circumstances that drive pay upward.

The Washington Post.

Shouldn't performance have something to do with it?

Krugman on the Reaction to Occupy Wall Street

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Paul Krugman