I agree about the case of deliberate fraud. For example it seems likely to me that Joseph Smith knew that he was inventing the Book of Mormon, and the fact that he knew that is not a defense of Mormonism; if anything it makes things worse.
Genesis and similar things seem a bit different to me, in at least two ways: 1) having no access to the origin in that case, I don’t have any particular reason to suppose dishonest motives, and 2) there are many aspects of the accounts that look idealized, in a way that isn’t terribly reasonable for someone who is trying to delude people. In other words, I suspect something like this: the author thinks, “Of course no one knows what really happened. But I’m guessing it was something like this. And of course everyone else knows that no one knows, so they’ll know that this is a guess.”
But if that’s the case, historically those authors were mistaken. People didn’t just know they didn’t know, but assumed the accounts were accurate even in a detailed way, for the most part, even if there were exceptions to that kind of interpretation even e.g. in the early church.
I agree with the last point, that these facts are highly relevant. As I said e.g. about the resurrection, Christians definitely distinguished all along between beliefs about the interpretation of Genesis and actual creedal beliefs. But that doesn’t change the fact that they were very certain about the Genesis story, for the most part, nor the fact that their certainty was religiously motivated. And that is prima facie a pretty good argument that the whole religion is false. I didn’t say that there aren’t arguments like that, just that this does not account for everything.
I agree about the case of deliberate fraud. For example it seems likely to me that Joseph Smith knew that he was inventing the Book of Mormon, and the fact that he knew that is not a defense of Mormonism; if anything it makes things worse.
Genesis and similar things seem a bit different to me, in at least two ways: 1) having no access to the origin in that case, I don’t have any particular reason to suppose dishonest motives, and 2) there are many aspects of the accounts that look idealized, in a way that isn’t terribly reasonable for someone who is trying to delude people. In other words, I suspect something like this: the author thinks, “Of course no one knows what really happened. But I’m guessing it was something like this. And of course everyone else knows that no one knows, so they’ll know that this is a guess.”
But if that’s the case, historically those authors were mistaken. People didn’t just know they didn’t know, but assumed the accounts were accurate even in a detailed way, for the most part, even if there were exceptions to that kind of interpretation even e.g. in the early church.
I agree with the last point, that these facts are highly relevant. As I said e.g. about the resurrection, Christians definitely distinguished all along between beliefs about the interpretation of Genesis and actual creedal beliefs. But that doesn’t change the fact that they were very certain about the Genesis story, for the most part, nor the fact that their certainty was religiously motivated. And that is prima facie a pretty good argument that the whole religion is false. I didn’t say that there aren’t arguments like that, just that this does not account for everything.