If you go looking around you’ll find an endless barrage of Christian media claims that Christianity is exploding in popularity in Asia, and that this proves the power of Christ and the convincing truth of the Christian message. I won’t link to any examples because this mostly shows up on shady propaganda sites that I have no interest in driving traffic to. But it has led several of my readers to ask about it over the years, and in result I have accumulated a lot to say that I think would be useful to distill.
No Prophecy of This
A common claim in all this is that this fulfills prophecy. But there is no such prophecy. Only statements too vague to be miraculous, or taken out of context, or not even being read as written. For example, Revelation 16:12–16 says the Euphrates will dry up allowing “Kings from the East” to invade the West. Apart from the fact that this betrays an ignorance of how bridges and ships and circumnavigation work, it describes a diabolical invasion West, not an acceptance of Christ east (or at all), and “East” of the “Euphrates” does not mean China—it meant Persia. It cannot even include India (as it says Euphrates, not Indus, and in this text’s child-logic armies can’t cross rivers, so the Indus would continue to block those horrid Hindus from invading Judea), much less China (which has those pesky Himalayas God would have to level first, not to mention the Ganges and Karun in the way). Likewise all other prophecies involving “the East.” That simply did not mean China. It meant Persia (and doubtful even India).
In fact no prophecy ever mentions Asia. That God forgot Asians exist is one of those things that tells you the Bible is just a bunch of bullshit written by ignorant barbarian goatherders who thought the smell of burning flesh made their stormgod happy. It will be claimed that the Sinim of Isaiah 49:12 is the Sinae that more informed Greeks and Romans later knew China by (because the Greeks were an advanced scientific civilization and not primitive goatherders). That was derived from Chin, the name of the ruling dynasty that began selling silk west all the way to Greece. But we know Isaiah meant somewhere else.
The Septuagint, the earliest extant Jewish interpretation of this text, translates Sinim as Persia (a synecdoche for “east”), while the earliest Hebrew manuscript (from Qumran, 1QIsaᵃ) doesn’t even say Sinim but Syene (Aswan, southern Egypt), while the Targum Jonathan and the Vulgate Latin say “Land of the South,” so those three sources triangulate to indicate the original Hebrew meant “south.” Which makes sense in context: the verse speaks of exiled Jews returning to Judea, “some from the north, some from the west, and some from the region of [??].” So either “south” or a place of known Jewish exile in the south (and thus poetically representative of that cardinal direction) would be expected here (like Syene). “East” (or “Persia” as representative of that cardinal direction) would also logically fit, as we find in the Greek. But either way, a place was meant that was already then known as a place of Jewish exile either east or south. Which was not China.
Much less any other countries in Asia. Yet these modern claims frequently try to imply any Asian country counts as “China.” Which, its racism aside, is silly. Surely God knew the difference between China, Korea, Japan, and Malaysia, for example. That he can’t get his prophecies to be in any such way precise is how we know they aren’t coming from him. But back to the point…
South Korea
Not China. But whatever. When someone asked me to explain why Christianity is suddenly booming in Korea as prophecy predicted (even though no prophecy mentions even Asia, much less Korea, but I won’t beat that horse further), I did what any critical thinker should do: I checked. And I made sure to check the most reliable sources for any pertinent data available. Lo, Christianity isn’t growing at all in South Korea. Korea has been hovering near thirty percent Christian for thirty years now. A typical growth rate for any evangelical religion in an open market is 8–10% per decade, e.g. the current rate for Mormonism and Islam in America. So Christianity is massively underperforming in Korea.
In fact Christian growth in Korea is stalling out (as The Gospel Coalition itself panic-posted about). In reality it has simply been fluctuating around a baseline of around 29% for decades now. Korea was 19.4% Protestant in 1995 and 20% Protestant in 2024, a largely meaningless difference; it was 10.9% Catholic in 2005 and 11% in 2024, another largely meaningless difference. By contrast, roughly half the Korean population has been atheist across forty years of censuses. Buddhism has likewise fluctuated around a median of 20% across these same periods. Nothing seems to be remarkably growing there. No explosion.
Singapore
Again not China. But whatever. Asked about Singapore, I checked. Christianity’s growth in Singapore, to less than a fifth of the population today, has been almost immeasurably slow. Islam is doing better and in fact the projection is for Christianity to shrink while Islam keeps growing there. But…want to know what religious demographic is currently growing? Atheism. Christianity is currently stagnant (fluctuating around a mean of 18.5% the last twenty years), along with Buddhism (fluctuating around a mean of 31% the last forty years) and Islam (around 15% the last fifty years), while atheism is on a slow rise (of about two percentiles per decade, to now 20%). Hinduism has fluctuated around 5% for twenty years and Taoism around 9% for thirty years. Nothing seems to be remarkably growing there. No explosion.
Nepal
You could pass this off as “sort of” once upon a time maybe almost “China.” But there is hardly any significant Christianity in Nepal at all. Christians make up less than 2% of the population there. And it has only grown to that tiny number recently because of liberation: Nepal now has freedom of religion, so people can choose whatever religion they want; a scant few now choose Christianity. But lo, Islam has had more success, outnumbering Christians by about three to one now. So I guess Islam is the one true religion all prophecies foretold? Even pagans outnumber Christians two to one there now. Christian triumphalists get eaten by their own logic here. But their Muslim counterparts can’t take comfort, either, since Nepal remains overwhelmingly Hindu. Mean of 80% for thirty years now. Buddhism steady at around 8%. Nothing seems to be remarkably growing there. No explosion.
Mongolia
You could pass this off as “sort of” once upon a time maybe almost “China.” And I was told Christianity was exploding there. But it’s the same story as Nepal. Christianity has long been insignificant there, at around 2% for decades, while atheists have been around twenty times that, and Buddhists have long made up half the country. Heck, even shamans outnumber Christians 2:1. While Muslims have basically held at around 3%. Nothing seems to be remarkably growing there. No explosion.
India
Same story. Christianity has hovered around 2% for seventy years (2.44% in 1961 and 2.37% in 2011). No inroads. Sorry, guys. But Islam has grown by 45% in that time. So I guess it’s the one true religion God prophesied. Or not. Though Hinduism has slightly declined, India has still been around 80% Hindu for thirty years. That looks kind of successful to me. The Power of Christ doth not compel them.
Iran and Afghanistan
Persia at least is in the Bible. And the Septuagint even claims prophecy meant Jewish exiles would return from there (not that Iranians would become Christians). But I won’t bother discussing Iran because religious freedom does not exist there, though what data we have don’t show any amazing success for Jesus there. Likewise Afghanistan. If these countries ever become free, I predict their Christian populations will grow, along with atheism and other views, as the free market allows, just like in Nepal. But there won’t be anything amazing about it. And it will never dominate either nation.
Myanmar
Not China. But again, whatever. When someone asked me to explain why Christianity is suddenly booming in Myanmar (also known as Burma), again I checked. Myanmar has always been overwhelmingly Buddhist—near 90% for half a century now. Myanmar has long had a small persecuted Christian minority that has outgrown its equally small persecuted Muslim minority. But its growth rate remains well below even the standard for evangelical worldviews like Islam, so nothing exciting is happening there.
There are also three problems with this data.
First, atheism is suppressed in Myanmar so the numbers here might not reflect anything really compelling about Christianity or Islam (many reporting one religion or another may well in fact be atheists). Second, Burma is now an Orwellian military state; data from and about it is not typically going to be that reliable. The last actual census was in 2014 and it placed Christians around 6% of the population—up from around 5% forty years ago, which is insignificant. Estimates since of Christians “now” being 8% of the population have no real data behind them. Third, the size of Myanmar’s Christian population is largely made up of the disadvantaged Chin region which has been close to 90% Christian for decades (similarly for a few other regions which are minority tribal and unusually Christian). So this “explosion” is already forty years in the past, and was largely driven by British colonialism and local politics. Today, nothing seems to be remarkably growing there. No explosion.
Thailand
So then someone asked me about Thailand. Still not China. But okay. Some sources claim 4% of Thais are Christian today. But when you check their source and read the small print (which is omitted from summaries, so watch out) you discover “these are the results of a 26-country survey conducted by Ipsos on its Global Advisor online survey platform,” which means it was not a census or a randomized poll, but just whoever happened to use the website. Hence the study admits “the samples” in “Thailand” etc. “are more urban, educated, and/or more affluent than the general population,” and only those aged “20-74 in Thailand” could participate. So the percentage is skewed here and cannot be compared to past Thai census data and won’t measure the actual population of Thailand or its actual percentage of Christians.
When you check something better sourced (like this) you get only 1.4%. Though when you check it’s source, it turns out to be only 1.2%. Which would appear to be the correct percentage for Thailand. It has been at or under 1.2% with no meaningful change in the last ten years. So no significant population of Christians is even there. Moreover, Pew found that 98% of people in Thailand report their current religion is the same as they were raised in. Which means, no one’s evangelism there is working. Once again, nothing seems to be remarkably growing there. No explosion.
Vietnam
Still not China. But okay. Is Christianity sweeping Vietnam like a miracle? No. It’s stagnant. It has remained around 8% for decades. Atheism, meanwhile, is at about 30%. You’ll see the claim that Christianity is now at 10%. But track down the source that came from and you’ll see it used a different (and less reliable) methodology than state censuses and so cannot be compared. So you can’t use that to say the number has “suddenly jumped” from 8 to 10%. You would need a past study using the same methodology to compare to assess if growth has occurred; you can’t compare different sources using different methodologies. And a state census is the most reliable source you’re likely to get in a country like Vietnam. Not vexed pollstering.
Case in point: track down the actual study that that source is summarizing and you’ll learn that Vietnam is experiencing something quite the opposite: “rates of disaffiliation – people leaving religion – are among the highest in the world.” So, apparently, atheism is the one true religion prophesied by God. Or whatever. But more importantly, it’s data was incomplete: “an estimated 11% of Vietnam’s population could not be accessed” due to factors suggesting they disproportionately counted urban and educated Vietnamese, just like in Thailand. Plus they relied on a complex “adjusting of numbers” (weighting) scheme that is prone to error (as you may be familiar with in the decline in U.S. polling accuracy; and Vietnam is a lot harder to poll than the U.S.). Notably the census even counts children (so their religious affiliation is just assumed), which already over-estimates the number of “actual” Christians there. So the contrasting poll results seem particularly off.
But here’s the kicker. When you check p. 15 of the actual report you find that the difference between the number of people raised Christian and converting to Christianity is less than 1% (it found 9% and 10% in each category, respectively). So Christianity is not exactly booming there. Buddhists gained five times as many; atheism, seven times. Christianity is not winning here.
Oh … did I forget to mention that website “poll” study’s error margin is +/- 3 (p. 106)? So that 10%? Probably actually closer to the 7 that the census found. But the rate of conversion likely is the same, because that compares apples to apples: less than 1% of people are becoming Christian in Vietnam (in their whole lifetime), compared to 5% becoming Buddhists and 7% becoming atheists in that same period. Once again, nothing seems to be remarkably growing there—unless you count Buddhism and atheism. But no explosion of Christianity.
Sri Lanka
Okay now we’re just getting ridiculous. I have to assume people asking me this don’t know where Sri Lanka is (pro top: not in East Asia—it’s an island, south of India). But is Christianity exploding there? No. It’s been stagnant at around 7% for decades. One study shows 9% but read the fine print and it says that’s within the margin of error and thus “broadly aligns” with the census result of 7. So you can’t claim “But it jumped from 7% to 9% in just a couple of years!” You are being ghosted by sampling error. There is no evidence the number of Christians in Sri Lanka has ever significantly changed in my lifetime. Once again, nothing seems to be remarkably growing there. No explosion.
And So On
You get the same results for Malaysia or Japan or anywhere else in Asia that you want to check. So what about China? You know, the place we were supposed to find a recent miraculous embrace of Christianity even though that’s not what any prophecy said—even if it referred to China, which it didn’t. China is an Orwellian state so we aren’t going to get any trustworthy statistics there. But the most reliable methods available have found the percentage of Christians has long plateaued there at around 2%. Stagnant.
We haven’t found any significant gains for Christianity in Asia for decades. But I should mention that whenever people find growth in anything anywhere (like, say, Islamopanic), your work is not done. Because then you have to work out how much of that is evangelism vs. birth rate vs. emigration. Because these all decline over time (so projections based on current rates will tend to be wildly implausible).
Emigration rates can be complex (e.g. Muslims entering is one thing, but even non-Muslims leaving can make it look like Muslims are growing when they aren’t, so which is it?) and have hard end-points and thus will always decline eventually, both on the supply side (there are only so many Muslims who can move anywhere) and the demand side (every destination country has a limited population capacity and, indeed, immigration caps). Moreover, “Muslims moving around” does not increase the number of Muslims. It’s the same number. Just spreading out. So emigration does not signal actual growth.
Birth rates decline with generation in a developed country, and with rising prosperity in developing countries. Look into the data and you’ll see all the evidence indicates a Three Generation Rule: the first generation is usually what you are measuring (e.g. most Muslims in any Western country are recent immigrants); but they get replaced with their second generation (which starts to look more like the gen pop: their kids start leaving Islam, becoming atheists or Christians or woos or whatever, or liberalize their Islam to look more like the distribution of politics and views among Christians—and in case anyone forgot, conservative Muslims look pretty much identical to Christian conservatives on every issue Islamophobes complain about); and they get replaced with the third generation (which look pretty much exactly like gen pop, with the same distribution of Christians, atheists, liberals, etc.). The effect matches birth rates: immigrants coming from low income countries have high birth rates, but increasing affluence and cost of living pare that down generation by generation, so by third generation, their birth rates are the same as everyone else’s. So sudden immigration waves do not translate into destined conquest (White Genocide is pseudoscience).
And even evangelism has market saturation limits. When legal and social freedom increases allowing more religious choice, more adopters will appear, but eventually all the people who would adopt a new religion will have, and then growth slows or stops. This appears to have happened in Asia. It would happen to any “Muslim evangelism” in the West. Globally, it appears that it already has (Muslim conversion rates equal apostasy rates worldwide resulting in net zero global growth already).
Buddhism exhibits all these results: it rapidly grew in the U.S. in the 1960s, then slowed as all three limits were hit. And yet Buddhism is still growing as fast as Islam in America, with more converts than apostates or immigrants, but it’s still barely 1% of the populace and projected to be 1.4% by 2050 (that same standard 10% per decade). It’s hardly taking over the world. Meanwhile, Christianity is declining in America. While atheism is growing more than any other religious group, indeed even worldwide.
So even if we find “growth” somewhere, you have to assess it in context. It won’t likely be miraculous or prescient of any outcome. This is even more the case when Christians “cook the numbers” by claiming “growth in Protestants” means “growth in Christians” when in fact it just means Catholics becoming Protestants, for no net change in Christianity (or even a net decline, if for example half of apostate Catholics become atheists). But in Asia, we don’t even have to do any of this. There is simply no meaningful growth in Christianity there to assess.
Conclusion
There has been no “explosion” of Christianity in Asia. It has been stagnant for decades, with insignificant growth at best. No miraculous sign of the end times to see here. Move along.
Update on the availability of your next edition on current state of studies regarding historicity of Jesus? Thank you.
It’s in final proofs. So still a couple of months to print. And the audiobook is in recording now. That may take longer to complete. But it’s all on track to be out before Winter.
Review and summary of, “did Jesus really exist”, by Bart Ehrman July 19, 2025
The course consisted of two one hour sessions. Hour one dealt with the evidence for Jesus of Nazareth, the Gospels and some sections in Paul’s letters. Hour two focused on the Mythicist arguments – using Richard Carrier’s, “Jesus from outer space”, as a source for refutation.
Some “hour one” points by Bart Ehrman:
Admitted that some scholars have mythicist opinions that should be taken seriously;
Identified evidence for Jesus historicity is in the gospels as the major historicity source, but did not address indications that the gospels are products of sequential copying and serial modifications;
Conservatively dates the gospels from AD 70-90;
stated Acts as evidence for historicity;
Identifies that Paul knew one of Jesus’ brothers;
Identifies non-Pauline NT letters identifying an historical Jesus;
Mentioned Josephus and Tacitus as writing about an historical Jesus;
Stated that there are no records of non-historicity in the first century;
Disagrees with Mark Goodacre on Q;
Finds evidence for historicity in Paul’s letters: Gal 4,4: “Born of a woman under the Law”; Rom 1,3: “Seed of David”; 1Cor 9,5: “Brothers of the Lord”; 1Gal 19: “James the Lord’s brother”; 1Cor15,5: “the twelve”; 1Cor 7,10: “not I but the Lord”; 1Cor, 9,14: “In the same way, the Lord commanded”; 1Cor 11,23-25: The Lord ate and drank; 1Thess 2, 14-16: “the Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets”;
argues that Jesus’ life was irrelevant to Paul and therefore Paul is (mostly) silent on the historical Jesus;
Some “hour two” points by Bart Ehrman:
-Provided a brief overview of the history of mythicism starting wit the anti-clerical movements of the French revolution;
– Mentioned Bruno Bauer, Albert Schweitzer and identified Richard Carrier as a current leading mythicism representative;
-Provided a summary of mythicism arguments: lack of evidence for the Gospel Jesus, gospels are full of myths, Paul does not refer to an historical Jesus, Jesus Christ was a divine being in the heavens;
-Clams mythicists arguments are of poor quality and excessive quantity and therefore difficult to refute;
`-Focused on Carrier’s “Jesus from outer space” for refutation;
I have a Kindle version of “Outer Space” only and the Kindle page numbers do not correspond to the hard copy. Ehrman identified some pages containing issues, I’ll list those, but cannot provide clear specifics:
-Pg 9 Jesus descent, Pg 25 – Angelic being, Pg 31- Gospels are allegories, Pg 32-33??
-Factual errors: Pg 11: hundred years before..; pg13 crucified – hanged fro a tree, Cor 15, 3-8 describes visions of Jesus after his death;
-Faulty claims: Pg 12 nothing in the letters on dates. Ehrman dates Paul letters as about AD 50;
-Pg 13 Christians were not preaching Christianiy. Ehrman recommends reading Epiphanius (?) Book 26;
-Pg 18: Jesus did not minister on earth. Ehrman counters with Rom15,18 and 1Cor 11,22-24;
-Pg 22: Mathew and Luke copied Mark. Ehrman counters as too simplistic and argues for Q, M and L as independent sources:
-Pg 24: 1Cor 2,7-8 Ehrman identifies “rulers of this age” as demons who do their work on earth – and not in the lower heavens.
-Pg 31 Gal 4,4 Ehrman argues for translating “genomai” as “born” only – and not the generally accepted “to become” or “to come into being”;
-Hebrews: Ehrman identifies Hebrews 1:6, 2:14, 2:17 and 5:7 as evidence for an historical Jesus.
Summary.
The presentation was respectful and focused more on evidence and less on opinions. Ehrman sees the historical Jesus grounded in the Gospels and tends to read, and interpret, other information accordingly.
Excellent. Thank you. I’m getting more detailed reviews from other sources too. But it’s useful to have this one here. For readers not caught up, this regards a live lecture (and slide show) Ehrman presented just this weekend on whether Jesus existed, the first time he has directly addressed this in over ten years.
Note that that is disrespectful and unprofessional. A scholar should be addressing the peer reviewed study, not a colloquial summary of it.
Note that he didn’t mention hardly any of them. Most particularly, he completely omitted Raphael Lataster’s study (published by Brill), despite that being a peer reviewed critique of Ehrman’s own book on this. He also gave the impression the list is short (it’s in fact at seventeen qualified doubters and 45 in all who agree it’s at least plausible, and not the “99.9%” Ehrman claimed). So his concession was itself deceptive.
This is the consensus I’m getting: that he simply made assertions contrary to ours but presented no evidence for them, nor addressed our evidence against them.
This includes all his claims to factual error: his claims are in fact factually in error.
Anyone need only read his every claim as already addressed in the formal study On the Historicity of Jesus (and its corroborating formal study, Questioning the Historicity of Jesus) to see everything he says has already been refuted for a decade now. He thus is not actually engaging with the peer reviewed literature of his own field.
Are you sure he said 26? It’s supposed to be 29.
Argued for or just claimed? As in, did he present any evidence for these sources existing, or did he just handwave and insist they existed?
As the study he is supposed to be responding to proves (e.g. OHJ, Ch. 5, elements 36–39), the sky is part of the “inhabited world” and therefore Heb. 1:6 (which does not say Earth but only “the inhabited”) does not specify where Jesus went beyond that (hence fully addressed in OHJ 546). For Ehrman to not mention what we already said about these verses, and thus not even try to recover them from our rebuttals, is unprofessional and borders on dishonest.
Likewise Heb. 2:17 and 2:14, which just say he became briefly human, which is part of our hypothesis, and thus cannot contradict it. Likewise 5:7 never says where that happened or how it was known (OHJ 549, 561). This indicates that Ehrman doesn’t even know what our theory is so as to competently challenge it. He consistently seems not to know that ours is a theory of the incarnation, not a denial of it. This is so extensively explained in out studies, and even in my popmarket summary, I cannot explain how he still does not know what our theory even is.
Congratulations on being the focal point for Ehrman’s attention!
Responding to your questions:
Are you sure he said 26? It’s supposed to be 29.
Not sure. I took notes on the fly and cannot replay the material.
Argued for or just claimed?
Good point. Stated, claimed or mentioned would be better. This was not an in-depth presentation. Judging by the comments and questions, (there was a Q&A), the audience appeared to be mostly fawning Ehrman followers.
The presentation was not a study, but more in the nature of of an ongoing argument.
Yeah, I am reading the transcript and it’s heavy on claims and light of argument and even lighter on evidence for those arguments.
It also has some weird asymmetries.
He goes wayyy too long on the low chronology / Epiphanius thing than makes any sense, since I don’t argue any of the things he ascribes to me, and even what I do argue from that is really a trivial component of my case (barely eight pages in OHJ, most of that just source analysis, and all scored ultimately as weak evidence).
By contrast, it’s pretty crucial to resolve our dispute over whether the Gospels had sources or are literary creators (I have over a hundred pages on that in OHJ and the literature on that debate is extensive), and there is a ton of evidence and good scholarship on the literary side by major names in the field that he should be engaging with yet he pretty much just handwaves past all that.
Overall, it looks like he has no new arguments, so he isn’t even doing “ongoing argument.” He’s just ignoring all the argument and simply re-stating the stuff we refuted ten years ago, as if we never argued anything.
I have to also say, I am finding a lot of really serious errors in his presentation that are kind of pissing me off. Like basic, factual mistakes, and ascribing things to me I never said or claiming I didn’t say things I did. My blog article is not going to be kind.
It strikes me that Ehrman considers, “the brother of Jesus”, as his “trump card”. He repeats it several times during his presentation.
I’m not aware of any prior scholarly work that identifies Paul’s, “brother of the Lord”, as the result of Gods’ adoption of the cult members as sons. Besides explaining the “brother” issue this also identifies an important aspect of the earliest forms of Christianity.
I have neither academic qualifications or associations to pursue this.
However, you are a published academic and I would urge you to incorporate this hypothesis as you see fit. it appears well supported by the evidence.
Literally every study in the last ten years (at least ten in all) conclude this. It’s one of the most solidly established facts in this debate.
But also, Paul literally explicitly says this, multiple times. So it isn’t a theory. It’s a plain, first-level fact.
The data is presented in OHJ and JFOS. All the studies now confirming it are listed and surveyed in the forthcoming Obsolete Paradigm.
Are you the James Preston who wrote a valuable essay on the Khazars?
This actually brings up an interesting aspects of miracle claims I don’t see people mention too often. Normally when we debunk historical miracle claims we might look at the more fantastical such as a saint raising someone from the dead and point out how stuff like that doesn’t happen these days. But there are also many stories of what you might call “rhetorical” miracles where some preacher walks into a synagogue, pagan temple, etc, gives a rousing speech, and everyone converts to Christianity on the spot. But of course we don’t see itinerant preachers traveling Asia and converting a lot of people. Which would be the only real circumstance where the growth of a religion would be somewhat compelling evidence.
That’s a good observation.
On the particular point:
Those claims exist. If you go cruising the crazy Christian segments of the internet you will find literally those kinds of claims, tales of extraordinary mass conversions, Christianity impossibly sweeping across entire regions, and the like. In other words, they are told in a way that would make them genuinely miraculous in some sense. But when you check the facts on the ground, they dissolve into urban legends or nonsequiturs.
On the general point:
I remedied that oversight a little in All the Fantastical Things in the Gospel according to Mark, where I have a whole intro on that point: that we ought to include so-called “mundane” miracles, which are not “physically” impossible, but are so unrealistic and improbable they are just as fantastical, and thus likewise fail a smell test (and typically fail genuine investigation, when enough evidence remains for them to be investigable). This also comes up in my old article Everything You Need to Know about Coincidences.
In a way, prophecy itself is an example, since “futurism” and “forecasting” (successfully speculating what will happen in the future) are ordinary, real things, not miracles. But they can be trumped up as miraculous when their prescience is exaggerated, which is usually done the same way dimestore pyschics and TV mediums do it. So this is an instance of mundane behaviors (forecasting, guessing, wishing, goading, grifting, selling) that become “miracles” in this or that telling. I have a very old article on that: Newman on Prophecy as Miracle.
Its true that you still will get many miraculous claims among Christians, but the prevalence of miracle claims, and certainly the provenance of more fantastical claims is way less today and especially way less among the intellectuals and apologists. Even just looking at the kinds of miracles the Catholic Church recognizes today, miracles sure ain’t what they used to be.
This is a point I explore the epistemic effect of in Proving History: that there is a consistent inverse correlation between the frequency and fantasticality of miracle claims and the available means to properly investigate them is evidence that miracle claims are false (it tanks their prior probability), because that correlation is only expected for false claims, not true ones.
The same held for UFO claims. Indeed, as almost a lawlike relation: generally as investigability increased, claims and their extraordinariness decreased; likewise specifically—so, even later, the most fantastical claims were consistently the least investigable. This is why the latest UFO craze is a dud: its claims are no longer that fantastical or are too easy to debunk (see UFOs Are Not That Remarkable).
Thanks for the survey Richard! I am a proud Theravada Buddhist. Good to read about Burma and Thailand.
Burma is unfortunately a nightmare right now given its ongoing civil war and growing military totalitarianism. But hopefully positive change is coming.
Great post Richard, as always. Any events you have coming up?
Thank you. I generally don’t do IRL events anymore (too expensive, and meeting too little demand, since, post-covid, IRL events and communities are in decline). I do online shows occasionally (which I announce on my social media: see Guide to My Social Media).
That said, I do have an event developing for New York City in early November. It’s about 80% sure. I won’t say more until it’s a lock. That (as with all IRL events) will also be announced here on my blog (so you can subscribe to my blog in the right margin to catch that).
And anyone who wants to fund an IRL event (the only way I can afford it) can get in touch. My requirements are on my Booking Page.
Christianity is not growing, but splintering further and further. Each splinter is a different religion, since these christains can’t agree on what their imaginary friend wants or does, etc. Thanks to this, there is no one christianity, and none of them are majority religions anymore. Even the catholics can’t keep it together.
Apologists caught lying.
Yet again!
What a surprise.
Slightly off topic sir, but have you seen T.C. Schmitd’s article published in Oxford titled “Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ”. It’s a free book where he argued that the TF is authentic, I’d like to see your take on his work. Thanks.
It’s mere apologetics. It uses disinformation and possibiliter fallacies quite extensively.
Vridar is running an ongoing series on it that is catching this out in different ways. I will write on it myself eventually when I find the time, as I have caught several egregious errors in it already.
The bottom line is that almost everything he says against the overwhelming cases already made is in some way false. And his alternatives are built on massive (and thus hyper-improbable) epicycles, i.e. repeated fallacies of “possibly, therefore probably.”
He doesn’t even mention (much less address) Hopper. He fudges Olson. And he misses the errors in Goldberg. So everything documented in Josephus on Jesus? Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014 still stands.
One less proof of the end of times, and that has an advantage. Dr. Sagan wrote that fundamentalist Bible-literal Christians in the high echelons, even in the presidency, might believe that nuclear war would be a fulfillment of ancient prophecy, the final battle, Armageddon. As such they might not try to avoid it as strenuously as they otherwise would.
How does an ‘Orwellian state’ like China manage to be overwhelmingly popular among its citizens, as found by studies done by Harvard and others?
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/
Even negative responses that claim that the 90+% approval rating is over-estimated by 20 to 30%, that would still mean Chinese approval of their govt is far higher than in the US, for example.
Not to mention that the response is written by associates of the Hoover Institute, a right-wing, libertarian, pro-capitalist etc. think tank.
https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/chinese-communist-party-support-lower-when-surveys-anonymous/
Lol.
You think people in a police state trust anything they say won’t be heard by state spies?
Even Putin has an 85% approval rating. And his police state is a Pinto to the Chinese corvette.
We get more trustworthy results out of Iran. But that’s because their police state is a rusty bicycle.
To be fair to Putin, we actually can see his approval rating going up and down, and his approval rating has been maintained by him holding the line on Soviet-era pensions. When those start to be threatened, he immediately becomes much less secure, even in their distorted polls.
Yeah, so the Dornsife article provides you a floor. Anyone who studies surveys knows that people can be influenced by internalized fear as well as shame, the panopticon effect. The fact that anonymous surveys get numbers as high as 28.5 fucking percentage points lower shows that even just basic, consciously held fear contributes something like a third of their approval . And that’s in addition to the fact that their assent cannot be viewed as sincere and informed because they are also in a closed media ecosystem. Yes, Carter is associated with the Hoover Institution, but her CV and publications are extensive.
So here’s al-Jazeera, pointing out how warped their dialog is, so you can see that this isn’t just a Hoover Institution thing.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/7/4/hong-kong-protesters-use-hidden-language-to-dodge-security-law
Then there’s the well-known phenomenon of even deeply tangential issues leading to people getting punished. The Chinese MMA fighter debunking traditional woo bullshit got targeted because it hurt nationalism. (Very “Communist”, by the way. Definitely something any actual socialist would care about, siding with woo merchants for national mythology over truth). https://www.scmp.com/sport/mixed-martial-arts/article/3011784/china-censoring-xu-xiaodong-exposing-kung-fu-frauds-and . Xu has done nothing to indicate he’s not a patriot. So nothing that comes from Chinese sources can be taken as free of coercion. They literally have a government system denying them access to public benefits if they misbehave in any way, let alone dissent .
They even target people who live abroad. https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-targets/china-transnational-repression-dissent-around-world/
People will often rationalize what is happening to them. It’s no more a sign of assent in a state than it is in an abusive relationship.
The reason why the global population is converging way below 10 billion is that even in the developing world, the factors that drive down population growth are beginning . (And we could accelerate it even faster if we didn’t let fascist idiots ruin our foreign policy). White genocide is pseudoscience twice.
Not only Asia – the Church eldest daughter witnesses “spiritual awakening”. The Economist: “France’s improbable baptism boom. A secular country returns to the church”. There were a lot of similar articles around Easter, mainly in catholic sources, but happily copy-pasted elsewhere: “Record number of adult baptisms in France shows surge among youth (…) 45% increase from 2024 figures (…) highest numbers ever recorded”. Sounds impressive.
But wait. “The survey began over 20 years ago”. HIGHEST NUMBERS EVER RECORDED. Ok.
And the numbers? 45% increase?
“10 384 adult catechumens”
Yearly? xD
Good luck guys, but long way to go lol.
I’m in Bangkok and there is a surprising number of people who are Jesus curious, but they want to keep their Buddhism as well. Think it’s the cross making if through American pop culture.
Of course this isn’t new at all, and Christians are really bad at understanding this sometimes.
Japan has been obsessed with Christian imagery and symbolism since at least the 1980s. Shin Megami Tensei, Neon Genesis Evangelion, etc. There’s even a hyper-violent Fist of the North Star-like black comedy manga about the Antichrist called “Ryu, Strongest Man on the Face of the Planet” where Jesus reanimates Bruce Lee and Musashi to fight Ryu. And, of course, there’s the great Saint Young Men, where Jesus and Buddha hang out. But that doesn’t mean they believe it any more than the fact that Americans constantly tell stories about Greek and Nordic (and increasingly other) pantheons means that we’re becoming Greek or Nordic neo-pagans (though that will happen very occasionally). It’s just that, in a globalist world, people will encounter wildly different iconography and perspectives that looks and sounds cool to them.
I’m a (secular philosophical) Buddhist and in the Buddhist community, and a very common idea is to say that Jesus was clearly a bodhisattva. (I have to admit that this made mythicism a little less pleasant a pill to swallow because I wanted to still have my cool hippie Jesus sometime in the past, but it’s of course not meaningful: If these people made an angel story that has bodhisattva elements in it, that too is perfectly reasonable). Buddhism at its core does not need to be a complete worldview at all, and it can happily borrow from any other religion that an individual adherent likes, especially in terms of perspectives and ideas that they like. I personally like using Jesus’ point that what comes out of your mouth is more important than what goes in because, putting nonsense aside about devils and possession, it’s actually quite true to say that you should be morally much more concerned about your speech than about arbitrary food rituals. (Of course you should also wash your hands and be careful about how you serve and prepare food etc. etc., but the underlying point is still a good one).
Just an aside on the topic of mass conversions discussed further up in the comments. . There used to a fundie baptist minister in Hammond Indiana named Jack Hyles. He would run full-page ads in “The Sword of the Lord”, a weekly fundie newspaper published from the 60s through the 80s, always bragging about how that they had 500 or more conversions at the last week’s Sunday service. Someone finally pointed out to John Rice, the publisher, that Hyles’ reputed claim of 500 souls saved per week, or 25,000+ per year, across multiple decades, can’t really make sense in a town of maybe 50,000 people at the time.
Nice.
Is Christianity really different from other religions of the ancient Near East? Did you know that Judeo-Christianity teaches the existence of half-human, half animal creatures? It does! The Bible claims that cherubims and seraphims are real creatures, created by the Hebrew God to serve as his guardians. According to the Bible, these creatures are part-human, part-animal. Seraphims have the torso of a human but have SIX wings. Cherubims have four wings and four faces, one human and three animal. They have human hands and calf feet.
Why would an omniscient being create his guardians/enforcers with wings? Winged flight is rather slow. How long does it take a winged creature to fly from one planet to another let alone from “heaven” down to earth? Wouldn’t an omniscient being at least give his “guardians of the universe” a hypersonic jet pack??
The fact that the Hebrew god, Yahweh, gave his guardians wings to navigate the cosmos is evidence that he and all the stories about him are fiction. He is a fictional character invented by scientifically-ignorant, superstitious, ancient peoples. He is a myth. His fantastical, tall-tale adventures belong in the same section of the bookstore as those of Zeus.
Yes. It’s the mainstream consensus that Judaism is just a tweak on surrounding Ancient Near Eastern religions, with no single component of it being new, and only its arrangement and adaptations of elements unique. And the same is well known to be the case for Christianity, too.