Improbable Christmas

I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, or should I say, snow on anyone’s parade. The Christmas season can be a terrific opportunity to hear extraordinary music and to catch up with the people we care about.  But there is something I’d like to discuss that perplexes me, especially at this time of the year.

Those who read this blog know that I am a skeptic and that I don’t believe that a divine man named Jesus saved the world.  Nor do I think most people who say they believe these things actually believe them, based upon the fact that most people who say they believe in the divinity of Jesus spend very little time learning about the origin of the Bible. Almost none of them take the time to learn Hebrew or Greek, the language used by the earliest manuscripts of writings

Image by joseareyes at Dreamstime.com (with permission)

that they claim to be the direct word of God. Almost none of them pride themselves on being highly informed about the content of what they claim to be the most important book in the world. In short, the behavior of most Believers suggests that they don’t deeply believe the things they say they believe about the alleged existence and importance of the man they call Jesus.

I don’t want to sound too harsh, because this is the Christmas season, and I am well aware that numerous people find inspiration in their religious beliefs and they are motivated by those beliefs to do impressive acts of kindness.

Nonetheless, I am on the outside looking in with regard to Christian religious beliefs. From my viewpoint, it is difficult to understand how anyone could claim to believe that a man who was actually God was born at all. One reason I have such trouble is that I don’t see the Christmas story as a single belief. Rather, I see “it” as a nested hierarchy of highly improbable events. In order to believe the Christmas story, one must actually believe a long series of events that depend upon each other in order for the entire story to be true.

Let’s start at the beginning. Did the universe always exist (perhaps as a pulsing series of big bangs or as a huge mostly invisible network of multi-dimensional strings that occasionally bud in the form of individual universi)? Or was there a first clause of the universe, a prime mover?  I find the first option to be much more likely, but I’ll admit that it’s possible that there could have been a first cause, some sort of entity that created the universe such that before the creation, there was no universe at all. What are the odds that there was some sort of entity that created the universe? I would think it highly unlikely, about as unlikely as the Norse claim that four dwarves held up Ymir’s skull to create the heavens, or any of the creation myths of any of the other religions of the world. Nonetheless, let’s assume that it’s 60% likely that the universe had a first cause.

We’re still a long way from locking down the entire Christmas story. The next step is considering the likelihood that the creator of the universe is sentient (conscious), as opposed to the insentient “God” of Einstein. It’s highly speculative to put any sort of likelihood on this possibility of sentience. Let’s assume, nonetheless, that it is 60% likely (and 40% unlikely) that “God” is sentient. Then let’s go to the next step.

What is the likelihood that this sentient creator of the universe resembles the God described by the Old Testament? After all, there are many other religions that describe their universe-creating gods in different ways. What is the likelihood that there is a creator of the universe who is sentient and has a personality similar to that described in the Old Testament? Let’s assume it’s 60% likely. Now let’s move to the next step.

What is the likelihood that this Old Testament God actually created Adam and Eve, then banished them from Paradise in the state of sin, making it necessary for a savior to fix things later on?  Let’s assume that this is 60% likely and move to the next step.

What is the likelihood that this universe-creating sentient God impregnated a woman thereby creating a human form of himself called “Jesus.”  I find it very difficult to believe.  Nonetheless, let’s assume it is 60% likely that Jesus was divine and that he was his own father.

The next improbable event is the claim that Jesus died on the cross, then rose from the dead, thereby saving people from their sins?  Let’s assume that this is 60% likely to have occurred.

I could have assembled a much longer string of probabilities, each of them depending upon the truth of the preceding alleged event(s), but this much should give you the idea.  The likelihood of an event happening when it relies upon a prior event can be determined by multiplying the two likelihoods.  If it is 60% likely that it will rain this weekend and it is 60% likely that when it rains my roof will leak, then there is a .60 x .60 = 36% chance that my roof will leak this weekend.

Using this approach, let’s consider the likelihood that Jesus saved us from our sins.  In order to believe that Jesus saved me from my sins based on the traditional Christian account of this, I must also believe each one of a long string of difficult-to-believe claims, including the claims I’ve listed above. We calculate the likelihood of the entire story being correct by multiplying .60 by itself five times.   The resulting likelihood that Jesus was exactly who Christians claim he was is about 5% likely.  This low likelihood is what we should expect from common sense.  Even if each rung of a ladder is only a little wobbly, the whole ladder will nonetheless be dangerously wobbly.  If we are only 5% sure of each of these steps being true, the likelihood of the entire Christian story being true is 0%.

Despite the result of the math, this remains the time of year when many people proudly and confidently belt out numerous songs proclaiming that God created the universe, Jesus was born, Jesus was God, and Jesus saved us from our sins.  They sing these claims without any doubt at all, even though these are extraordinary claims that lack extraordinary proof, and even though the religious claims being sung at this time of year rely upon a long inter-related series of fantastic claims.  It is as though this interrelated set of claims depends upon a mental ratcheting effect. As long as someone barely believes any of the earlier and more basic claims, by the time they move on to the next claim (which depend upon the earlier claim(s)), the earlier claims have become unquestionable gospel, having clicked into place by the mere fact that someone relied upon them in order to substantiate later claims.

A long string of highly questionable assertions cannot possibly make anything other than a wobbly house of cards, even if one assumes that each of the assertions is more likely than not true. But that’s not how religious claims work in the real world. People who sing loudly that Jesus has saved us are not inclined to ever revisit the low-level assumptions upon which they base their conclusion that Jesus has saved us.  Perhaps this is to be expected, given the limited attentional capacities of humans, given that humans are so prone to mental fatigue, given the precariousness of the human condition and given that emotions are the masters of the human intellect.  Further, even though religious believers often claimed to be certain that they are correct, there not necessarily any relationship between being certain and being correct.

Again, I’m not writing this post to disparage those who honor Christmas season (even though I’m cynical regarding the hyper-materialist aspects of the season).  Rather, I’m offering an outsider’s perspective on what I find to be an extraordinary multi-faceted claim that a little baby in a manger actually grew up and saved us from original sin that had been inflicted upon us when our ancestors disobeyed a direct order from a sentient God who created the universe out of nothing at all.

Please do feel free to belt out Christmas songs proclaiming, with certainty, that all of these things occurred.  If I’m in your company, though, it’s likely that I won’t be buying your melodic claims, even though I might be enjoying the the music.

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