When I was asked about this book with the smug title How to Prove That Christianity is Not True, it was enough to set me salivating. I ordered it via interlibrary loan right away.

When it arrived at my doorstep, and I saw it was only slightly larger than a paperback, and contained only 59 pages, I knew that I was going to be disappointed.

Finally, when I saw that it's author, Paige Turner, was a mere medical doctor (not to mention an apostate, after having supposedly been a Christian for 22 years), I knew I was in for some laughs!

And sure enough I was! Following the librarian's instinct, I first checked the bibliography. 59 pages, only 11 books. 3 of them Bibles. 1 of them, the Encyclopedia Britannica (you can already tell we're in for some in-depth research). Thayer's lexicon and an interlinear Bible. Thomas Paine's Age of Reason. 2 medical books....2 medical books? (We'll see the significance of this shortly. Both are standard reference works in that field, one for diagnosis procedures, the other for pharmaceutical drugs and their effects.) 1 on bad popes and 1 volume for the Anti-Nicene Fathers. And finally, Asimov's Guide to the Bible. Why consult Biblical scholars who are thoroughly familiar with the languages, customs, social contexts, etc. when you can pick up this volume by a dead biochemist who wrote a book every time his ego burped?

The Foreword takes the usual stance of the proud ex-believer who says, "I'm grown up now and you're not" -- a psychological trip that plays well in Peoria, here but has the air of an ant stepping to the elephant and saying the same thing. Turner tells us [ix]:

It would be naive and pointless to ask for any objectivity from Christian believers reading this book. They are incapable of any calm, analytical assessment of the New Testament. They are comfortable believing what they have been taught to believe, and it is easier for them to bury their heads in the Bible than to actually study it.

Such absurdly vague generalizations speak for themselves, but credit where credit is due. In the next paragraph Turner goes on to admit that this statement is basically autobiographical. It is her own past experience she is describing, she tells us, a past in which she accepted her beliefs uncritically, learned all she knew about the Bible from Sunday School (and was so ignorant that she could not even name the Twelve Tribes of Israel), and went to church mainly for the company. Such candor is commendable where it is too often that apostates and "ex-Christians" simply throw the accusations out without admitting their genesis. But the bad news for Dr. Turner is that she hasn't made any progress at all; rather she has leapt from one bottomless pit of ignorance into another. She names three books that opened her eyes, so to speak; one of them was Paine's Age of Reason. A second was a book about corrupt popes, and something that really caught her eye was a statement by Pope Leo X referring to Christian belief as a "fable" -- a real clincher for her, apparently, as if a pope living in 1521 could make such an assertion and be accepted as erasing 1950 years of Christian and secular scholarship otherwise. (More on this quote here.) The third was Ireneaus' Against Heresies, which we will get to later on. The bottom line is that (as usual -- sigh) we have yet another skeptic here who hasn't done their homework.

Now, to the 59 pages -- filled with nine "proofs" against Christian belief. A few of these are some of the same old same olds that we have been accustomed to; we'll deal with those briefly. Proof 1, taking up a single page, hikes up all the usual complaints about Matthew and Luke and their birth narratives, with specific focus on the census question; the chapter has 4 footnotes, all from Britannica. (See also here.) Proof 4 harps on differences between the Gospels, with focus on the genealogies of Jesus, and as examples the sign above Jesus' head on the cross, who was at the tomb, etc. Proof 5 complains that the "signs of Christian belief" in Mark 16:17-18 are not seen today, which is a strange argument, since Turner elsewhere seems to be aware that the latter part of Mark 16 is not part of the original text. Proofs 6 and 7 deal with eschatology, mimicking the standard line (refuted here) that the return of Jesus was undoubtedly expected in the lifetime of the Apostles and showing no appreciation at all for the boundaries of eschatological literature. (This chapter also contains some humorous notes: That Col. 4:18 ["I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you."] suggests that Paul was partially paralyzed and unable to write letters -- Turner of course is entirely ignorant of the use of scribes in the ancient world; that Luke 1:4 is intended to say that Luke is writing a "true" version of events where others were false -- he is actually saying that he is writing a more orderly, that is, historiographically-oriented version of events, as opposed to less-organized, more didactic versions like Matthew and Mark; a bald dismissal of the 70 weeks prophecy of Daniel as corrupted by a copyist.)

Proof 8 is a 4-page treatise of typical naivete on the subject "How We Got the New Testament" -- complaining of no original manuscripts (that's no different for ANY ancient document), hints of conspiracy (documents could be changed by conspiratorial copyists and "no one would be the wiser" -- has Turner not heard of textual criticism?), a citation of the equally-oblivious Asimov (one of only three footnotes in the chapter; the other two come from Paine), subsidized with a primitive restatement of the Bauer hypothesis and a mere listing of heretical groups without critical evaluation of them, to prove that there was wide disagreement in the early church; an evaluation of the canonization process even more primitive and uninformed than Shmuel Golding's "managed as they pleased" thesis; uncritical acceptance of words written by one "Fauste", a contemporary of Augustine who wrote that worthy complaining of fabrications and errors in the NT (Aren't we going to ask about this guy? How do we know that he is reliable? In accepting his words at face value, hasn't Turner traded one bale of ignorance for another? I found no references to a "Fauste" in several works about Augustine; if perhaps this is meant to refer to Faustus, he was a Manichean priest who was more sparkle than heat, an eloquent speaker who was utterly unable to answer many of Augustine's inquiries.); and finally, a hint that Jesus picked up his magical powers in Egypt, with the assertion that "there are individuals today who can multiply food, levitate themselves (walking on water), and heal people by touch." (! - Do we get the name of even one of these? Phone numbers, too - I could use some help moving the furniture next week.) Proof 9 is the largest section of the book (nearly 20 pages) but is nothing more than a rehash of Paine's overwhelming ignorance of typology and ancient literary practices.

What about unique material? Turner has a little of it, and that earned her this Rogue spot rather than a critical book review.

Proof 2 is the central laugh riot of the book, and it is where the medical aspect comes in. The title of the chapter: "A Living Body Was Taken Down from the Cross". Oh yes: It's another of those conspiracy theories! Turner's proof for this outlandish assertion? It comes in these parts, over two pages: