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While doing a mid-month stats check I was surprised to find that "The Impossible Faith" had received over 10,000 hits in a very short period of time. This turned out to be due to someone, somewhere posting the link on some lowbrow and/or community discussion sites.

After further digging I found the link from the main site which was apparently the original posting place, though it is difficult to say for sure. One original posting place was an "are you bored at work" site called "fark.com" and someone had posted the URL as an "Interesting" article. Over 100 comments followed, most of which were not even about the article but were apparently bored people exchanging bleahs. Here are the few substantive comments to address. The first, in entirety, from a "DannySpaz":

this is crap. this isn't even written well. i have read many documents on the crucifixion and the history of Christianity.

in the end, by faith and God's will you can know the Bible is true, Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Salvation comes by no other then Jesus Christ.

Well, that was a thorough refutation. DannySpaz sure don't have the definition of faith down too well. Neither did a commenter called "And_then":

Is it just me or is every single Biblical quote in this writing saying "bad things happened but have faith" and the writer is like "see, bad things happened! don't have faith!" Maybe I'm just retarded.

Maybe so. On the plus side, someone called Ziml summed up the article well:

Many other made-up religions did a decent job of not violating these rules, and yet they died out. The fact that Christianity broke all of these guidelines and yet is still around is probably because it's the real deal.

The largest comment came from a beer and peanuts denizen named "Skail" who wrote:

It's my opinion (and I didn't read the entire article, because it bored me something fierce) that religion(s) is(are) all based upon some modicum of truth, at least to the extent that religious history is based upon factual events. However, given that the authors of the Bible didn't actually know Jesus of Nazareth, personally, I can't help but imagine he was significantly glorified and the stories blown way, way out of proportion, to where he became the "son of God" and all that jazz (I can't really say much about the histories of Islam, Hindu, or any others because I 1. don't know and 2. don't care).

Well, now, apathy and ignorance will certainly get you places, won't it? The road of good intentions, someone called it; and where does Skail get the idea (not all correct anyway) that you had to know a person personally to write accurately about them? So much for 95% of the bios now on the market. And never mind giving a sociological explanation for that "blown out of proportion". Skail then changed the subject to religion in general for a bit, closing out that he'd "be more inclined to believe that Christianity survived because it happened to arise and gain popularity in a well-armed, technologically-advanced, and low-on-morals population of medieval and Renaissance Europe." How that explains anything in the FIRST century, I cannot say. He later added: "My point was that the persistence of Christianity doesn't exclusively imply that it is, to paraphrase, the one true faith. Its ability to spread and persist can be explained in other, more plausible and definitive ways." And later yet: "Really, you can take what I typed and replace any variant of 'Christianity' with its respective variant of your favorite religion, and still have a valid couple of paragraphs." Actually, no, you can't, and he doesn't even try. Later one styled "BenMurphy" suggested one:

I think if you'll look at the origin of Islam, you'll find that it had odd and illogical beginnings as well. But it's still around so I put forth that it must be true! Same thing with all the other major religions. A lot of things beat all odds, but that doesn't make them right or better or in any way beneficial. This seems like another variation of the "Liar, Lunatic, blah blah" thing that Christians use when they think it will appeal to someone's weak sense of logic. He couldn't have lied cause he really died for it, he couldn't have been a lunatic because people died for him, so he must have been the real thing! Same thing with David Koresh, right?

BenMurphy apparently missed the link at the bottom of the article applying the social factors to Islam -- so much for reading things in context. (He also appealed to the alleged failed return of Jesus, which we address here.) "A lot of things beat all odds..." Well, vague generalization carries the day. Same thing with David Koresh? No, his movement died. Christianity didn't. Later one "Bloodnok" piped in:

People should really stop trying to prove their religion with rational arguments, because it opens up the floor for disproving the religion with rational arguments. Just stare us crooked in the eye and shout "BELIEVE!". It's the only way to make this gibberish work.

Pass Bloodnok a Ben Witherington book he can color, eh? Last relevant comment from a "Weezbo" chimed in:

Weezbo has that same drudgery definition of faith the others do, and that same penchant for vague generalization. I doubt if we need to say more. Thus from fark.com, the repository of scholarship and wisdom.

Maybe following fark.com -- or maybe before it, it is hard to say (update: I was told by "agentfresh" that the fark.com posting was later) -- the URL for the article was left on another discussion site called Metafilter which seems to be a discussion board. Someone under the moniker of "agentfresh" introduced it thusly:

How NOT to Start an Ancient Religion Not so much a DIY guide for time-travellers as "a list of 16 factors to be considered -- places where Christianity 'did the wrong thing' in order to be a successful religion." Hopefully thought provoking...

In what follows there are a few interesting comments showing, if I may say, just how low intelligence seems to have gone in the public at large. Let's have a look at those that offer some specifics. From a guy named (hmm) Guy Smiley (the guy with the hinge jaws and bad hair on Sesame Street, yep) we have:

Here's the first nit that steps forward for me to pick, regarding Factor #7 -- Stepping Into History, which boils down to "If claim #1 is proven false, that opens the way to doubt others -- all the way up the line to the resurrection."

It took him til 7 to get a nit to pick, and no answers for the rest. Hmm.

Very fine and good, if people are completely rational creatures. But they're not. Now, the Jehovah's Witnesses have claimed, many times, that Big Things would happen during thus-and-such a year. I think most of us will agree that the world has not, as of late 2002, ended. Therefore, there must be no Jehovah's Witnesses around any more, because some of their claims have proved false. But then who's that knocking on my door?

And the JWs have, in line with this, modified their position time and time again, and keep most of their flock, as well as the public at large, in the dark about their history. Wouldn't work in a collectivist society where such false predictions would have brought down harsh consequences tied in with Deut. 18:22 for the Jews, and would have brought shame and disgrace on the faith as a whole (as opposed to the tolerant "let 'em believe it anyway" attitude prevailing today). It's another bad case of Anachronism from an obviously no-depth student of history. The JWs don't mention these failures in their teachings these days; it has to be exposed by their opponents. Christianity couldn't hide things like the Crucifixion. And that's all Guy Smiley could offer to Cookie Monster that day. (Another reader moreover added the good point: "...reporting the past and predicting the future aren't exactly in the same boat, are they?")

Moving on, we had some vague and generalized scoop from one "dhartung":

To be sure, this is a frustrating piece despite a cute premise. Its conclusions are often merely sarcastic restatements of the question; there isn't a great deal of historical scholarship here, only Biblical scholarship, and there isn't much logical argument. Nevertheless it manages to raise some interesting points. The Q&A format is more of a straight-line setup for the intended-as-ironic punchlines than a successful framing device. If this had been written as an introspective essay it would have been much more interesting.

Hear that one? "Here isn't a great deal of historical scholarship here, only Biblical scholarship." Fascinating dichotomy. dhartung goes on for a bit about "tract literature devices" and such, never specifying why there isn't any "logical" argument, but in terms of actually answering the piece, forget details being gone over, all we have is the pretend ability to judge from a distance and not have time to do more, plus this:

I would have found much more interesting an approach that saw things that were done wrong not so much as obstacles to overcome by miraculous success-in-spite-of-itself, but as moral quandaries. What of the era before Christ became widely accepted as the Messiah? What of the early schisms, as with the Gnostics, to which the author alludes but does not elaborate? What of conversions by the sword, Constantine, papal politicking, the Inquisition?

What of -- to what relevance? The latter three points have zero to do with the crucial formative years of the faith (which is the whole subject!) and no relevance is stated for schisms and Gnostics. This non-targeted missile seems to be the best answer out there from the crowd. No, excuse me: These comments by a certain "mischief" was far more scholarly, far more relevant, and absolutely refuted every point:

Still nothing here that refutes my theory that christianity was the brainchild of a bunch of drunk Roman fratboys out to prove that the unwashed masses would believe anything. Forget proving the existence of god, christians would go a long way if they would just prove that JC was an actual person.

Wow. Is mischief by chance a Piso theorist? Gosh, and you need to ask why people like this earn condemnation? I'd provide a link to my piece on secular refs to Jesus that utterly prove "JC existed" but I'm afraid mischief will have another stunning repartee to offer.

We had this one which was quite nearly as specific...by one "Eustacescrubb" (ah, from Narnia fame):

Apologetics. Bah. The arguments you linked all require that one believe the Bible is historically accurate or that the nature of its truths are propositional, two things most atheists or nonChristian folks won't agree on. Hell, a good many Christians don't agree on those points.

Bah. That's all we need to refute the whole danged thing. Right? I wonder if there are any more jobs open at the sewage treatment plant... Next, by "languagehat"...

There's nothing new about this line of argument. It's been around for at least 1,800 years, since Tertullian said "Certum est, quia impossibile est" ('It has to be true because it's impossible' -- usually misquoted as "Credo quia impossibile"; fuller context here). But I guess it's as good a hook as any for a Christian apologetics thread.

Tertullian, however, said nothing about honor and shame, nothing about collectivist social pressure, and nothing at all like what TIF said. It's just so telling when they can't seem to bother with details, isn't it? Lower the brow further, mateys!

Ah. Now here's an attempt at an answer by a "Mr. Balihai". Pay attention now --

Wow, there are so many bizarre conclusions in this article that I hardly know where to start, but it seems to me that the most fundamental error here is his assumption that the beliefs of the Roman aristocracy had any relevance at all to the hundreds of thousands of largely common folk that embraced Christianity in the centuries after the crucifixion. What would it matter to them whether or not Jesus died a "shameful" death in the eyes of their Roman masters?

It would matter every bit as much from Caesar down to the lowest garbage collector. Yep, this is the sort of rambunctious "Huh?" argumentation that comes about from the people without recourse "Hey, how does he know that the average Romans didn't actually act like Care Bears?" News flash: It's backed up by decades of social science and anthropological research. It requires no assumptions at all. You're positing that the lower classes didn't care about shame, and only the aristocracy did? Funny, that's not how it seems to work in modern honor-shame cultures. (Besides, we already noted that the lower classes, by the evidence, recognized the shame of the crucifixion just as well -- both the NT and that bit of Roman graffiti about Alexamenos tells us that.)

Also, even a cursory examination of Christianity should've revealed to Mr. Holding that its early success was in large part due to its rejection of obedience to suffocating dogma (at least before the Catholic church got ahold of it) and law as a basis of salvation, along with the willingness to accept anyone into the church no matter what their background. Even today, this forms a large part of Christianity's appeal.

Say what? The mystery religions didn't offer suffocating dogma, just a quickie initiation ceremony, and with none of the negative social factors. Plus, there's that modern man at the 7-11 again, assuming modern notions of convenience and ease applied all over the past. Nope, these people didn't cringe from such things. The Jews loved keeping their "dogma" (law) as a social identifier. It was also never a matter, to an ancient, of whether you kept a law and were under an authority, but which law and authority you obeyed. Plus did Mr. B forget the part about how "willingness to accept anyone into the church no matter what their background" was actually a negative in the ancient world? Darn. This is the sort of informed opposition I just can't handle.

Eustace offered this intelligent comment next:

Christianity's appeal comes from the fact that you get to drink wine at the end of service. Unless you're a Protestant in the South or Midwest, that is.

Um, yeah. Wine that was zero proof. And was used as a communal drink in nearly ALL ancient faiths. Next up, one "thomas j wise" who shared this wisdom:

This apologist's chain of reasoning depends on Christianity being, as he terms it, an "impossible" religion--but his description of its impossibility doesn't altogether seem to jibe with recent (by which I mean 20th century!) scholarship on its origins. That's before one touches on his definition of proof, etc. I'd hardly term the link a "tirade," but as far as the tradition of Christian apologetic is concerned, this is pretty weak stuff.

And that's all it needs. If it doesn't "jibe" with what this guy read at Barnes and Noble, it's no good; it's "weak stuff" and, uh, I have no specific answers. Did Tom leave his nerve on the hat-rack? Next up, someone named "delmoi" cut and pasted from another site's comments:

What a ridiculous article. They are basically saying since they don't think Christianity would 'take off'... based souly on their own opinion, if it wasn't true, then it MUST be true!!

"Souly" -- whoo hoo. All opinion. I can tell this one will be informed...and didn't read all the way down:

How stupid can you get? Seriously, Look at the history of Mormonism. Why would anyone, anyone believe in a religion started by that Joseph Smith guy. Historically, he's an Obvious phony who just wanted to get **** by a bunch of women.

Apologies to my LDS acquaintances for this scholar's crude language, which I have edited. But I did, after all, look at Mormonism as an alternative in light of the social factors in question here -- in a link at the bottom of the article.

Or look at Scientology! Just 50 years old, a religion created by a money grubbing, sucky-sci-fi writer.

50 years old, and with, um, how many testable historical claims? How many actual members? Oh. Try applying the social factors to that bunch and get back to me.

The only religions I can think of that had 'legitimate' founders are Islam and Buddhism, after all, Muhammad was a King and Buddha was, supposedly, a pretty cool guy. But I don't really know about all the religions out there.

That's, um, obvious. We did work out the factors on Islam here; he missed that, too. Buddhism makes central claims that are philosophical in nature, not reliant on historical events. One last try at a logical syllogism from the peanut gallery:

Finally, I'd like to point out a huge flaw in logic that is present in this article. Basically what they claim is this:

But, if they are wrong about #1, then #3 is not proven. In fact, the authors of this page give no evidence that #1 is true other then their own opinions! Well farking amazing! Why not just give their opinions first and skip all the intermediate steps? It would have made just as much sense.

Gack, pfft -- well, there's your ultimate answer. All I offered was opinions. Not social data, not footnotes from scholarly resources. I just made it all up. It seems modern people think saying "that's just your opinion" constitutes an actual answer to arguments. Don't even ask them to prove that honor and shame were actually NOT relevant, etc. But wait, the ultimate rebuttal is still ahead:

I'll leave this as an exercise to the reader.

1) What do you think has a greater chance of being true, that Christianity has been proven, without question absolutely true, or that some morons on the web are simply wrong about what it takes to start a religion?

What do we think has the greater chance of happening, that this one here will be able to provide a rational reply to the data and arguments, or that he'll be content deciding we're just morons? Bingo.

2) does this also prove that scientology, a religion with an equally stupid beginning must also be true? I mean, who would believe in space ships and xenu and the like? That's just retarded. And how can both scientology and Christianity be true? Or is there something wrong with this method of proof.

There is -- Scientology arose in a modern, individualist nation with no shame attached, no verifiable or testable historical claims, and an appeal to individual needs in an age that was looking for alternatives to standard religion -- the more way out, the more individualistic, the better. Don't expect these guys to actually run down the factors and apply them to Scientology, though. That would be too difficult. Plus as agentfresh added: "the key difference is that Scientology doesn't open up with galactic Federations, Xenu and Theatans in volcanos. It opens up with the completely rational notion of improved mental health. The Xenu card doesn't get played until you've invested good chunks of time, money and emotion into the Technology. The ol' bait and switch. Christianity pretty much starts with impossible bit: some carpenter from the middle of nowhere was God in the flesh, died and rose again for your salvation." What a way to introduce yourself, huh?

One thing is sure -- the comments here show that actual answers to this material will be rarer than hen's teeth. This, then, is what the beer and peanuts crowd has to say about sophisticated scholarship. Is it any wonder we're in trouble?