Three Myths Atheists Believe

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Megan Lewis (0:30)

Atheists often accuse people of religious faith, of uncritically accepting a bunch of myths. But do atheists do the same? How closely do people actually examine their dearly held views and beliefs regardless of their religious persuasions? Today, we're talking about myths that atheists believe. We also have our bonus segment at the end, which this week is Listener's Questions. I'm going to be asking Bart, among other things, whether Satan is unique to early Christians, or if the concept has roots in Judaism. Welcome to the Misquoting Jesus Podcast with Bart Ehrman.

Now, Bart, this episode flips the usual script, where you're going to be poking a bit at some atheist beliefs.

As an atheist and someone with atheist friends, do you think that atheists can fall into the same overconfidence trap about unanswered scientific questions that many fundamentalists fall into about religion?

Bart Ehrman (1:25)

Yes.

I think many do. I think, you know, I didn't realize this so much until I wrote my book, Did Jesus Exist? Where I got a lot of pushback from mythicists, people who don't believe Jesus exists, and who were almost all the ones who contacted me, I suppose most generally, were atheists. And I just became really interested in kind of the unquestioned assumptions they had when they're attacking Christians' unquestioned assumptions.

It occurred to me, oh, that's pretty interesting. And so, you're right, I mean, I'm an atheist, so I do not believe there's a greater power in the universe of any kind, a supernatural force. And I don't insist other people agree with me at all. And I like to be critical of my views and to kind of question them. And it occurs to me there are myths that I believe depending on how you define myth.

Megan Lewis (2:26)

That is an excellent lead into my next question.

Long-term listeners are going to know the answer to this one, I think. Bart, when we're talking about myth in this context, what does that word actually mean?

Bart Ehrman (2:39)

I bet people don't know.

I was talking with a graduate student about a month ago, about a course they were taking on myth, and I asked them about it. Apparently, the whole course was designed trying to figure out what the word meant. A graduate, it's a graduate level. And so let me tell you what I mean, what I'm meaning by it.

For a long, I've known that people in the modern world use the term myth simply to refer to something that's not true. Oh, that's a myth, meaning it's not true. In the circle of religious studies, the academic study of religious studies, the term myth has a much deeper meaning than it, or multiple meanings. But it doesn't just mean something that's not true. Within New Testament scholarship circles, the term myth became popularized in the early 19th century when David Friedrich Strauss wrote his book on the historical Jesus, where he argued that the stories about Jesus in the Gospels were not historical events. They were myths. And he didn't mean what people think he means by that. He didn't mean they're not true. He actually meant that the myths are true.

But they're true things. They're stories that are trying to convey truth, even though the stories didn't happen. So they're stories that didn't happen that convey truth. And most of my students can't get their minds around that one, but that's what he meant by it. And so it's not a question of truth and falsehood. It's a question of historicity for him. And a lot of people in religious studies do talk about myth as a thing.

But it doesn't have to mean something like a story about a divine being intervening in history. I think many people think of it like that. It's got to involve like God getting involved, and it doesn't have to be that.

Megan Lewis (4:46)

So the term doesn't necessitate any kind of supernatural entity or activity or event?

Bart Ehrman (4:55)

Yeah, it doesn't have to.

So when I'm using the term myth, I'll tell you what I mean by it. I'll give you... And I don't have like a precise definition, but it's something like this. But it's... A myth is a story that we tell ourselves that explains who we are and explains about the world that is something that we cannot empirically verify. It's something that's not empirically verifiable that nonetheless we base our understanding of the world and ourselves on.