Why Christians are Atheists (and don't really know it)

I know Protagoras can be argued to have established the original justification for the idea that each of us can think that we are the center of the universe - but it's a stupid hypothesis. Man (I'm sorry you can't use some politically correct term here when you start a post with Protagoras) and mankind don't amount to anything in the great scheme of things. It's a sad but true fact. We can only hope to imitate or approximate the grand logic of the universe; we don't determine it.

The point then is with this in mind why do humans as individuals and humanity continually suppose that the little speck which represents their experience, their knowledge and their understanding defines the limits of what is possible in the universe as such? It baffles me to no end.

Now you can apply this general observation to any field of study or any aspect of your personal life but in my case I inevitably integrate it to my study of early Christianity. Indeed it is the hallmark of my whole approach to the subject matter and what distinguishes me from almost everyone else out there right now.

They will tell you that the New Testament HAD to have been written in Greek because all our surviving MSS reflect this scenario but inevitably look to the war against the heresies initiated by Irenaeus as offering an alternative possibility (the earlier MSS and any thing which challenged the authority of the Church was systematically destroyed; that's why we don't have Aramaic gospel MSS)

The same is true with their contention that the gospel form was always determined by the division of our current NT canon (ie the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), the history of the Church, the existence of an apostle named specifically named "Paul" and the circumstances of his authorship of the apostolic epistles (and their systematic manipulation of his explicit confirmation in those letters that he wrote the original single, long gospel ie "my gospel"), and the relation of the Marcionite Church to those things that were "already settled a long time ago" by the impartial Fathers of the Catholic Church.

Actually if I could be frank these men rarely ever articulate an explanation for their commonly held assumptions. Their underlying argument is that "it is because it is" or something to this effect.

But call me stupid however I can never see everything in NT scholarship being determined or written in stone as these men would like to think. The Marcion of history was not the Marcion described in the hostile propaganda of the Church Fathers. I don't know who the real Marcion is. No one does but that's not the point.

There is without question a necessary disconnect between the reality of the early Church and the propaganda developed by the apologists for each second century community that claimed to represent that "original community."

Irenaeus and his cohorts at the end of that century made a case for their faithfulness. It is the only argument which happened to survive antiquity. The reason it survived is because Irenaeus had better connections with the Imperial authorities (read Book 3 of his Against the Heresies Chapter 25 for his acknowledgement of the contemporary recognition of this fact).

Now we should begrudge the Catholic Church for happening to gain the favor of a wicked despot like Commodus. Yet this reality shouldn't be cloud our study of the development of Christianity before this anachronism.

These beliefs happen to have become our inherited beliefs but they are not historical truths as such. To project allow our inherited oresuppositions and prejudices to determine how we understand the development of the Church is utterly counter-productive. Yet it also has a strange irony which has been lost on most people.

The logic of the Church has not been determined by God or any inspiration from supernatural source but the most selfish and atheistic of ancient writers - Protagoras ...