u/Spare-Dingo-531

THESIS: The disciples (or 1-2 disciples) stealing the body of Jesus and falsely claiming he rose from the dead, to obtain money and power, is the simplest explanation for how Christianity arose and, when human nature and the biblical evidence is analyzed carefully, it remains compelling in spite of Christian apologetics.

It is a common claim among Christian apologetics that the disciples were sincere in their belief that the Resurrection happened. The disciples claimed that certain events were witnessed by the disciples (the empty tomb + meeting personally with the living Jesus after he was buried). Thus, a group of at least a dozen people would have to knowingly lie in the face of substantial danger and punishment in order to fake the resurrection. Because this sort of mass lying is unusual, we have a substantial reason to believe that the resurrection could have been true. William Lane Craig and CS Lewis, among other apologists, have both developed this argument at length.

To deconstruct this claim, we need 3 elements. 1) An observation that it is common for a small minority of individuals to take enormous risks to tell lies. 2) An examination of the biblical evidence, which shows that the risks the disciples experienced in their first years of spreading Christianity were not large. The disciples did not die for Christianity; they only RISKED their lives for Christianity. This is an important distinction. 3) A consideration of the rewards the disciples could have gained from faking Christianity.

Part 1: It is common for people to risk their lives to tell lies.

Risking death is not something people we know in everyday life would do. But are there individuals who would risk their lives to tell lies? The answer to this question is yes. Like the rarest of creatures, monsters who tell enormous lies do exist.

Take the example of Donald Trump. Donald Trump claimed he won the 2020 election in public. But in private, he personally admitted that he lost. Jack Smith (former Special Counsel) said Trump acknowledged to others that he lost, citing remarks along the lines of “Can you believe I lost to this f’ing guy?”, per testimony released by the House Judiciary Committee. January 6 Committee-related testimony/reporting included aides describing Trump saying things to the effect of not wanting people to know they lost.

Denying the 2020 election results, while it wouldn't literally result in a risk of crucifixition, is such a high risk that it is analogous to the risk the disciples would have taken to testify that the resurrection is false. Trump's attempt to stay in power in 2020 could have resulted in public humiliation and imprisonment, civil war, or assassination. And Trump was almost assassinated four years later, in part because people accused him of treason.

Thus, if one or two of the disciples were like Donald Trump, we can say it is psychologically possible they could have taken an enormous risk to create the lie of the resurrection. What if Peter was a psychopath or sociopath who was willing to shamelessly lie, deceive, and manipulate others?

It's unusual to risk your life for something you personally fabricated.... but people risk their lives for unusual things. Thankfully, modern day conservatives frequently accuse other people of being liars and thus helpfully illustrate that fact. A majority of the current GOP believes COVID leaked from a lab (It didn't ) and the 2020 election was fraudulent. 40% and 35% respectively believe 9/11 was carried out by the US government and NASA faked the moon landing. And apparently the government does lie, as evidenced by the government reaction to the Alex Pretti shootings, or the government's current stance on vaccines. Apparently there was a giant conspiracy of pedophiles, as evidenced by the Epstein scandals.

Now, regardless of what the specific conspiracies are, and which conspiracies are true, we can abstract away a more fundamental truth from these conspiracy theory claim. That truth is that, contrary to William Lane Craig or CS Lewis's worldview, it is normal and common for people to take enormous risks to tell lies. On the right, we regularly have people who risk their entire livelihoods (and for that matter, who have made their entire livelihoods), out of telling big lies to other people. And if they are not lying (if, say, the moon landing was faked or the 2020 election was stolen), it would still be the case that there are monsters out there who would be willing to risk their lives to tell lies.

In fact, if you are Candice Owens or Alex Jones, you have EVEN MORE reason to believe the Christian apostles were liars. This is because in the modern conservative worldview, there are an even greater number of people willing to tell lies. The people who stuffed ballots in the 2020 election are lying to you; the doctors who say vaccines are safe are lying to you; the scientists who say evolution is true are lying to you.

We would be remiss to think that these creatures, people who shamelessly risk everything to deceive others, exist only in the modern age. On the left we have people like Jessie Smollett, who faked a hate crime to gain notoriety. Other historic individuals include Robert Hubbard, who falsely claimed he started the Great Fire of London in 1666 and was executed for his claims; William Chaloner; or William Dodd, conmen who were hanged in 1699. The Book of Mormon is almost certainly a forgery, but it is the foundation text of the religion of Mormonism. So it is common for a certain class of people to risk their lives to deceive others.

The case for the Resurrection rests on an assumption about human nature. That assumption is that people are fundamentally trustworthy when confronted with risk. But this assumption is fundamentally incompatible with human nature. If so many people are willing to stake their entire livelihoods and, indeed, their very lives on things they know are lies, then what license do you have to believe the witnesses to the Resurrection of Jesus were not also liars? The answer is you don't have a license to believe that. Thus, belief in Jesus is just a Nietzschean will-to-power instrument that is meant to aggrandize the self and not reflect anything that happened in history or reality.

Part 2: Christian apologists exaggerate the risks the disciples took in spreading Christianity.

The risks the disciples took upon themselves for spreading Christianity are exaggerated by Christian apologetics. To illustrate, let us examine two instances where the disciples who claimed to have seen the resurrection are confronted by the authorities.

In Acts Chapter 5 the disciples are arrested by the Jewish temple authorities, and in Acts Chapter 12, Peter is arrested by Herod. In both of these instances, the disciples miraculously escape after being released by an angel. After this, however, something very strange happens. The authorities do not pursue the disciples even though they have escaped!

If the disciples were truly in danger from the authorities for spreading Christianity, then they would have been pursued by the authorities even after miraculously escaping prison. Examining why they were not pursued shows us that the idea that "the disciples wouldn't have died for a lie; hence, they were sincere" is false.

In Acts Chapter 5, we see that the disciples were potentially capable of using mob violence to deter the authorities. To quote Acts 5:25-26:

> 25 Then someone came and said, “Look! The men you put in jail are standing in the temple courts teaching the people.” 26 At that, the captain went with his officers and brought the apostles. They did not use force, because they feared that the people would stone them.

And to quote Acts 5:33-37:

> 33 When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. 34 But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. 35 Then he addressed the Sanhedrin: “Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. 36 Some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. 37 After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered.

So we see here that the Jewish authorities are deterred from using force against the early Christians because they fear being stoned. We also see that the Jewish authorities view the disciples as comparable to other armed rebels. So, the reason why the disciples were not rearrested the first time the "angel" broke them out of prison, is because the authorities were afraid of mob violence.

Moving on to the second time an Apostle is arrested, Acts 12 states:

> Now about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church. 2 Then he killed James the brother of John with the sword. 3 And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also.

So we see here that Herod was sympathetic to the Jews who were against the early Christians. This is why Peter is arrested here. But shortly after an "angel" releases Peter, Herod dies. He is replaced by a Roman procurator, Cuspius Fadus. The Romans had far less incentive to indulge the Jewish authorities and were often at odds with them. Roman authorities tried to retain control of Jewish priestly symbols and appointments and also tried to take money from the temple treasury.

These conflicts eventually turned into literal conflicts when the Jews revolted and were ultimately exiled by the Romans. To give us some flavor for who the people were, Josephus records the death of one of the witnesses to the supposed resurrection of Jesus, namely, James the Just. James the Just was killed by Ananus ben Ananus during a gap in Roman authority when a new Roman procurator, Lucceius Albinus, had not yet arrived in Jerusalem. Albinus actually punished Ananus for killing the apostle by removing him from the priesthood, and eventually, Ananus would go on to lead the Great Revolt of Judea against Roman authority.

Thus, in Acts Chapter 12, Peter is not pursued by the authorities after escaping prison because the authorities simply have different motivations. The Jewish authorities want to preserve the Jewish religion, while the Romans don't care about the Jewish religion and, in fact, have a political incentive to subvert, control, and undermine it. But... if the Romans didn't initially care about Christianity, then again, the risks the disciples experienced were not that high.

Finally, any case against the resurrection of Jesus would be remiss if we did not mention the fate of the 12 apostles. The accounts of the martyrdoms of the apostles were often long after the apostles supposedly died. During this time many authors wrote the Gnostic gospels, which were spurious accounts of Jesus's life, so the accounts of the apostles' martyrdoms could also be spurious (again, you need to consider that lies are common). The accounts are also often in conflict with each other.

The accounts for Bartholomew (Nathaniel), Jude (Judas Thaddaeus), Simon the Zealot, and Matthew (Levi) list inconsistent methods and locations for their executions. The acts of Philip and the accounts of Matthias were written centuries after they lived and are almost certainly legend. The very earliest versions of the Acts of Andrew don't record a full death sequence, and accounts written centuries later fictionalize Andrew's death. The accounts for Thomas place the story of his death multiple locations; some say he died in Iran, others say he died in India, and again they were written a century after he died. John, son of Zebedee,again, didn't die according to the earliest sources, but a fourth-century source tried to claim that he died anyway.

So for 75% of the 12 apostles, you can make a case that the martyrdom accounts are as reliable as the Gnostic gospels are for the accounts of Jesus's life. Which means if you want to claim Jesus rose from the dead based on witness testimony, you're really basing your claim on at most three martyrdom accounts. Those martyrdom accounts are Peter; James the Just (recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus); and James the Great (recorded in Acts as having been killed by Herod by the sword). Believing a supernatural event occurred because three people died for what was potentially a lie, after living relatively rich lives in Jerusalem, is relatively weak evidence.

To further illustrate the point, Paul only mentions meeting about 3 of the disciples in his letters, Peter, James, and John. This again gives us a hint that only a couple of the 12 disciples were the originators of the idea of the Resurrection, making a lie more plausible.

Part 3: The disciples could have been motivated to spread Christianity for money and status.

Finally, due to Christianity, the disciples very much gained wealth, power, and comfort relative to their former lot in life.

The early Christians gave the disciples all their possessions, per Acts 4:34-35.

> Nor was there anyone among them who lacked; for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, 35 and laid them at the apostles’ feet; and they distributed to each as anyone had need.

If you did not fully sell all your possessions to the disciples, this was considered a terrible sin, and you were killed (or, if we hope to take the passage non-literally, hopefully ostracized). We see this in Acts 5:1-11:

>Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. 2 With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.

> 3 Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? 4 Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”

> Then Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and breathed his last. So great fear came upon all those who heard these things. 6 And the young men arose and wrapped him up, carried him out, and buried him.

Finally, Judas betrayed Jesus because Jesus received very expensive perfume and used it for himself instead of giving the money to the poor. This passage, in Mark 14, is easy to spiritualize, but when interpreted in the context of how cult leaders act, it tracks how they behave.

> And being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as He sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly flask of perfume. Then she broke the flask and poured it on His head. 4 But there were some who were indignant among themselves, and said, “Why was this fragrant oil wasted? 5 For it might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they criticized her sharply.

> 6But Jesus said, “Leave her alone; why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful deed to Me. 7The poor you will always have with you,d and you can help them whenever you want. But you will not always have Me.

> 10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Him to them. 11 And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money.

So in summary, the disciples went from relatively poor fishermen to rich cult leaders in Jerusalem. This is the motivation for the originators of the lie of the resurrection, to risk death to tell things they knew were lies.

Conclusion

When considering the truth of Christianity, we have two hypotheses. The two hypotheses are "the disciples saw a miracle and sincerely believed" vs "the disciples were a mix of lying sociopaths and emotionally vulnerable cult members". The two hypotheses can both explain our experiences, so we have to rely on our priors (in a Bayesian sense). For the latter hypothesis, we have a strong prior probability of liars. But for the former hypothesis, we would need an even stronger prior probability of a miracle. People's priors for miracles to explain events are low, and this prior would have to be even bigger because it would have to outweigh the prior of fraud.

Therefore, Christianity is an irrational faith. Once priors are correctly calibrated against human nature, and once the biblical evidence is properly examined, the fraud explanation for Christian origins outweighs the divine explanation. Thus no reasonable person would choose Christianity as a path to the divine.

POSTSCRIPT: The Future

The future is vast. By the time New York City is as old as the pyramids (that is, 4000 years from now), 5x as many humans who have ever existed will come into existence. And all these people will be more free, more wise and sophisticated, more free of disease, more knowledgeable, and more powerful and wealthier than any human beings who have previously existed, including ourselves.

Christianity is a beautiful and admirable set of beliefs and practices. Giving up Christianity does not mean you have to give up belief in metaphysics. It does not even mean you have to give up belief in the wisdom of Christianity. People sometimes claim Christianity originated from a hallucination or vision, and in a metaphorical way, it did. But a vision can still inspire us to be our best selves, even if it is not real.

But at this stage of human history, it is unlikely that humanity has discovered the fundamental truth about God and human existence. The tragic truth of Christianity is that by committing yourself to Christianity, you cut yourself off from discovering the ultimate truth about God, existence, and yourself, which likely has yet to be discovered.

The future is vast, and life is getting better for humanity over long timescales. If you can't have faith in Jesus, have faith in the future.

Credit goes to Volonaut and yes, the speeder bike is real.

Volonaut Airbike - May the 4th Special: The "Forest Moon" Trauma - YouTube

I feel like we're approaching a decision point in the first half of 2027.

What do you think the chart says? What do you think it all means?

I hope this question will not be too controversial for this subreddit. But this subreddit seems uniquely open to new technological ideas. There are important similarities between AI and cryptocurrency that ought to be explored.

AI and cryptocurrency are similar in that they are both new social coordination systems. They are technologies that use the ubiquity of computers and the internet to organize and coordinate people at scale.

AI is an information technology, which generates outputs from a given context based on its weights from its training. This allows people to access and organize information very quickly, which allows for greater social coordination. Cryptocurrency is similar in that it creates a global, 24/7 market for capital, where price information can be exchanged among all its participants, thus coordinating economic activity.

Furthermore, both rely on the same physical substrate, data centers. This is obvious for AI, but many bitcoin mining companies such as Core Scientific or Terrawulf, have switched to AI service provision. Crypto is not merely a data service provision. It is unique in that it is a secure data service provision. The fundmental technological innovation behind crypto is a security mechanism, such as proof of work, or proof of stake, that guarantees that computations will execute properly, without any tampering from human intervention.

This video, featuring Lei Yang, an MIT computer PhD, does a great job explaining how cryptocurrency is part of a broader trend. I am not referring to the longer hour long video, just that 5 minute section. But that 5 minute section is the best explanation for cryptocurrencies that I have ever heard, it's worth listening to.

Cryptocurrency and AI are also both similar in that they are decentralized technologies. AI can be run locally. Likewise, cryptocurrency relies on a decentralized group of nodes to validate transactions. These nodes can be easily run in secret or relocated. China banned Bitcoin, but while this temporarily took lots of mining nodes offline, these nodes reconstituted within weeks, and miners continue to mine bitcoin in China in secret.

This decentralization is important because it means these technologies cannot be banned. Unlike nuclear power, which requires state backing, both AI can cryptocurrency can continue to be developed, even by hobbyists in secret. This gives AI and crypto a much greater probability of playing a large role in the future, of coordinating human economic and social activity, simply because both are very resilient technologies.

Finally, both AI and cryptocurrency are similar, because they would both seem to cut against the ideals Leftists would seem to have for humanity.

AI would seem to dramatically concentrate power in the hands of whoever owns compute and capital. Because it can replace workers with capital, the balance of power in the economy is potentially drastically shifted into the favor of capital owners. This concentrates power. AI combined with robotics further concentrates power; a small squad of soldiers using drones and unmanned ground vehicles, can defeat a mass of people revolting against the government. This again, removes power from the people and recreates a balance of power closer to feudalism, where heavily armed and expensive knights, could dominate the peasantry.

Likewise, cryptocurrency is essentially capitalism enshrined in digital form. Cryptocurrency aims to create an entire system of money and capital ownership that is separate from the government. This would seem to give capital owners the ability to exchange their capital with other owners, in a way that is not merely free, but more foundationally, independent and separate from government. Cryptocurrency changes the wold such that the government is no longer as necessary to perform its role in coordinating capital transactions through the creation of stable money. This seems directly antithethetical to leftist ideas.

Now, some leftists have argued that crypto might work with leftist ideals for government. u/thomashearts wrote:

> If a state cannot print money to fund its programs, it will need to raise taxes. Since raising taxes is generally unpopular, the State would need to try extra hard to justify any expenses, hopefully resulting in a broadly popular government policies with the enthusiastic consent of the people. This means spending tax revenue wisely and on broadly popular programs only, not allocating 75% of the budget towards war and corporate subsidies (and embezzlement). Sound money, like the ideal version of crypto, ensures this to a degree. ......... The downside, from a socialist perspective, is that they would lose a powerful policy tool that most nation’s have historically enjoyed and will likely have to limit the scope of some of their utopian nation-building goals.

That is a helpful perspective. Nevertheless, I think government should fund lots of social programs to uplift the general populace. Such programs include basic science research, infrastructure, education and healthcare. Humans need to coordinate on long term, broadly socially beneficial goals, and government would seem to be necessary for that.

Government, like cryptocurrency and AI, is fundamentally a tool to coordinate society and people to achieve long term ends. But it is hard to see how the social coordination tools of Government, Cryptocurrency, and AI can work harmoniously together. Crypto and AI would seem to allow capital owners to coordinate faster and deeper than the broad populace, and democratic governance can be subverted.

So my question is this. What does this subreddit think of cryptocurrency?

How do we use these social coordination tools to uplift humanity and and make the future a better place? Is crypto inherently anti-left because it weakens state control over money and capital? What institutions or constraints would make crypto compatible with left-wing goals?

Thank you for your time and for reading!