The Devil Beats John Loftus to the Punch, Again.

(Taking a short break from our Shroud series, to be continued.) 

Our friend John Loftus recently posted the following "novel argument" against Christianity on his web site:

1) If Christianity is true then the Christian faith will probably not die out if Christians stop proselytizing.

(2) The Christian faith will probably die out if Christians stop proselytizing.

(3) Therefore Christianity is [probably] false.

I hate to pop your bubble, John -- and I knew you would pride yourself on its supposed originality -- but this argument actually is at least 2,000 years old, possibly several billion years in formulation:

Then the devil took Him to the holy city and had Him stand on the highest point of the temple. ”If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

‘He will commend His angels concerning you and they shall lift you up in their hands, So that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

In other words, If Christianity is true, then Jesus would not get hurt if he threw himself down. But Jesus (John, and maybe the devil, suppose) would die. Therefore Christianity is falsified, in John's mind (and maybe that of the devil, too).

Nice try, John, but the fallen angels beat you to it, again. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to get the inside track on Scratch, when it comes to bad ideas.  (If science is defined as "thinking God's thoughts after him," what is this?)

And, of course, Jesus did not throw himself down, but did rise from the dead, achieving his own goals in his own way.