The following is a response to the article, Christianity The World’s Most Falsifiable Religion written by Christian apologist C. Michael Patton shared with me by Pastor Joel Settecase of Don’t Forget to Think!.

Borrowing from the lexicon of modern science, Patton asserts that Christianity is the most falsifiable of not only the world’s religions but of all existing worldviews. The use of the term “falsifiable” that modern science has made popular—signifying a sense of trustworthiness—is a stretch in this context since Christianity is not a theory with predictions that can be tested (at least not ones that have yet come to pass); a major difference between religions and scientific theories. His use of the term is an attempt to bring a sort of rigor to modern Christian apologetics comparable to that of modern science. The difference here is the problematic understanding Patton apparently has of this term. For example, continental drift is a theory that, if correct, makes predictions about what we should expect to find (evidence) if it had occurred and the theory was correct. These predictions are what are actually falsifiable. The theory of continental drift predicted many geological findings that have contributed to the overall understanding and acceptance of the theory. Historical events make no falsifiable predictions; rather, they are corroborated from historians’ examination of sources relating to a specific event indicating that the event more than likely occurred.

Relating to Christianity, this type of historical investigation affirms details about the time in which the events that lead to the religion’s beginnings took place and certainly affirms some of the historical tales contained in the Bible; but does not produce evidence that Jesus was divine, nor that he performed any miracles, nor that the belief in him (whichever way one interprets this concept) leads to salvation. It is the eschatological predictions of Christianity that are what would actually be falsifiable. These include events such as Jesus’ return, the judgment of people separating those who will go to hell and others to heaven, the end of the world and the building of the new one, and experiencing eternal life. None have as of yet occurred, so in a sense Christianity is the most unfalsifiable of all claims since none of its predictions can be tested and no evidence can be produced relating to these claims. In fact, the only falsifiable element of Christianity that has had the opportunity to prove itself correct is Jesus’ foretelling that his return would happen during the lifetime of his apostles, which did not occur (Matthew 24:34).

Patton is also misleading in his characterization of the founding of Christianity and how it supposedly differs from that of other religions. First, he uses the stories of Jesus’ miracles having been performed “publicly” as an example of their trustworthiness; the idea here being that witnesses cannot get it wrong. Problematically, this relies upon the accounts within the Gospels. We do know that the gospels in the New Testament were canonized because they contradicted each other the least. Homer Smith’s exhaustive research on the matter, in his seminal work Man and His Gods (1952), makes this point clear:

“Counting these and all later manuscripts of the New Testament, numbering some 4,000 fragments, it has been estimated that the surviving copies present upwards of 15,000 discrepancies; most of these are of course trivial, but not a few are of considerable use to critics in tracing the early history of Christian beliefs before the text became more or less fixed. These differences arose in part from the fact that from the year 65 or thereabouts Christian teachers carried about with them a miscellany of epistles and other documents which were read aloud in the temples in the Jewish manner, and which replaced the fluid oral tradition of the so-called Apostolic Age….as their number grew and the differences between them increased, they came not only to reflect but to engender schisms in beliefs. Of separate gospels, or writings purporting to describe the words and acts of Jesus, there existed in the second century more than fifty which are now known by name, though less than one tenth of them have survived. The four finally incorporated in the New Testament were the result of ecclesiastic selection in the second century,…but from less conscientious interpolations and deletions which were intended to give point to obscure passages or to remove others which proved offensive to the changing creed….New Testament discrepancies, however, are all too frequently intentional and were obviously made by persons who had new matter to insert…Comparisons of stem texts indicate that most of these interpolations were made in the second and third centuries. A single stem, the Byzantine, an elective compilation of various current manuscripts and itself circulating in several forms, served as the root for most of the Greek texts…Because of the continued interpolation, the accepted text of the New Testament cannot be said to date earlier than the year 350….It grew by absorbing competing theological ideas.” (181)

Historians don’t dismiss credible accounts if they contradict others that they are partial to —they reflect upon all of them and make a conclusion based on a reasonable argument about the authenticity of the various accounts. That conclusion, in the case relating to the Gospels, is that they were the retelling of a story that was passed onward with expected variance coming from a culture that relied upon the oral tradition. The early Church canonized the Gospels they liked, removed the ones they didn’t, and the religion went on from there. The trustworthiness that Patton asserts that the events supposedly witnessed possess is highly questionable and unscrupulous in this regard.

Second, Patton is rather glib with his criticism that what founded other religions are dubious and somehow different from those of Christianity because the following makes their claims unreliable: “private dreams, private angelic encounters, private ideas about God, and one person who told everyone what he saw.” All of these occurrences happen within the Bible and within the Gospels that—I’m sure Patton thinks—are reliable, which are as follows:

Dreams and Private Encounters — Specifically within the Gospels, stories of private dreams from God appear 3 times. Joseph converses with the Angel Gabriel who assures him Mary is with divine child (Matthew 1:20 & 2:13). In Luke 1:5 Zacharias is told he will also have an important son. And in Matthew 27 Pilate’s wife has a dream revealing Jesus’ true identity. Private dreams occur throughout the entirety of the Bible whose recipients are Abraham (Genesis 15), Abimelech (Genesis 20), Jacob (Genesis 28), Joseph (Genesis 37), Pharaoh (Genesis 41), Samuel (1 Samuel 3), Solomon (1 Kings 3), Daniel (Daniel 2), Ananias (Acts 9), Cornelius (Acts 10), Peter (Acts 10), and Paul (multiple dreams in Acts and 2 Corinthians). The entirety of the book of Revelation, written by John while imprisoned on Patmos, is a private revelation. Private angelic encounters often accompany the dreams that are told in these stories as well. For Patton to assert that Christianity is exempt from the suspeciousness of individuals’ private encounters with the divine is blatantly wrong.

Private Ideas About God — The books of Acts, Romans, and the epistolary letters are entirely private ideas of God; specifically Paul’s private ideas of God. All of Paul’s private ideas and correspondences were canonized into what is considered to be God’s word. If one then adds all of the works of accepted Christian theologians that have contributed to its creeds and doctrines including St. Augustine, Tertullian, Ptolemy, Origen, Anselm, and Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin (to name only the major ones) we see that all of these thinkers’ contributions are their private ideas about God. The tautology of Christianity is amassed by men’s private ideas about God there is no question.

One Witness Who Told Others — Here Patton claims that Christianity is trustworthy because multiple people observed a supposed event. For example, many people saw Jesus ascend to heaven. When Jesus’ grave was discovered to be empty, he later appeared to multiple people at once. Again, these are stories as told by one writer and for his vested interests. Why is there more mystery to it than that? Multiple people claimed to have witnessed Joseph Smith digging from the ground his golden tablets from God. Many people will testify they watched David Blaine swallow a sword. In fact, any investigator knows that multiple people cannot witness the same thing and relay it reliably.

Within the Gospels, there are no accounts of individuals’ testimonies—there is only the one author saying many people witnessed it. But this isn’t Patton’s point. His point is that Christianity’s claims and stories were not founded on just one person witnessing an event. But what crowd of unbiased people witnessed Jesus walking on water, or demonically-possessed pigs drowning themselves, or the temptations of Christ in the desert? None. Concerning Jesus’ temptations, interestingly, if nobody witnessed them then how were they recorded? We must ask ourselves how likely is it that the writer(s) of the Gospels mythologized these tales after the oral stories had been passed down and expanded upon? The supposed witnesses of Jesus’ more miraculous miracles—the feeding of many, the ascension, the many healings he performed, the apparitions after death, and the resurrection—are the testimonies of people who cannot speak for themselves and who were in this case ventriloquized, likely by Paul and other early writers.

Finally, Patton asserts that “An atheist conference, for example, does nothing but belittle the claims of other religions (primarily Christianity),” and that, “…the only thing available to the atheist is an attempt to overturn the massive amount of evidence that Christianity has.” It’s not surprising here that Patton possesses an inaccurate understanding of atheism. Atheism is the position that no evidence or convincing argument exists relating to specific theistic claims and nothing more. It is a position always in relation to specific religion(s) and never a tautology in itself. It has no creeds, no apologetics—refuting Patton’s point that atheism only possesses negative apologetics. Negative apologetics—an oxymoron in itself—are even a stretch to claim, though there exist generally agreed upon arguments against specific theistic claims that atheists sometimes propose. The straw-man argument proposed by theists that atheism isn’t a coherent worldview misses the point entirely that it cannot, by definition, be a worldview as it makes no claims. Patton equivocates Atheism with Naturalism in this regard which are two separate things.

Patton’s attempt to bring validity to Christianity through supposed falsifiability is a transparently poor one. This is either an example of his non-understanding of the term’s meaning or it’s a conscientious misleading on his part and only something to be taken seriously within apologetic circles.