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The most detestable wickedness, the
most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that
have afflicted the human race have had their origin
in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.
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Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason,
Part II, Conclusion
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Over the centuries the Church has adopted a number of arguments
to support its claims to divine provenance. These arguments
have changed from time to time, as existing ones have become
untenable, and as new ones have become more attractive. The
best argument of early Christians was founded on the wide and
rapid diffusion of the faith, which was taken to be evidence
of divine favour. This argument lost much of its appeal when
most of Christendom subsequently converted to Islam. The early
Church Father Tertullian had a second argument that is still
sometimes used. He purported to believe in Christianity precisely
because its claims were impossible*.
Such arguments do not seem to have impressed everyone. Celsus
noted in the second century that Christianity was a religion
for old women, yokels and little children. Much later Edward
Gibbon summed up the position, saying that early Christians
had been unable to produce a single argument that could engage
the attention of men of sense and learning*.
By the Middle Ages Christian scholars had formulated arguments
that filled this gap. They purported to prove the existence
of God in several different ways. Although flawed, they were
genuine intellectual arguments. As
we have shown elsewhere , they could be refuted because,
being rational arguments, it was possible to identify the fallacies
that they contained. Ironically, when these arguments were believed
to be valid, they were not really needed, since the world was
(supposedly) teeming with more practical proofs of God's existence. Logical arguments were simply academic corroboration
of everyday spectacular and unquestioned proofs — and chief
amongst these proofs were miracles.
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