Reason #7: The GULLIBILITY of the low-class uneducated unwashed masses
(7) Early Christians were uneducated and superstitious
No matter what Christianity has evolved into after 2000 years, it is instructive and illuminating to consider the types of people who became its first followers. This gives a clue as to the degree of credibility it possessed at a time when the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the chronological contemporaries of Jesus were still alive -- that is, while the original history of the church was still fresh in peoples’ minds. It would be similar as looking today at the history of World War II through the lens of what people had heard from their deceased ancestors.
Unfortunately for Christianity, the early followers of the faith were almost exclusively from the lower classes, mostly uneducated, unskilled, and illiterate.
There's a lot of conjecture here. But if there's some truth to this, why is it "unfortunate" that these followers were mostly from the bottom 99% of the population?
Is this going to be anything other than a crass ad hominem argument? i.e., "Christianity" should be rejected because its early followers were uneducated lower-class illiterate unwashed rabble, and so therefore Christianity must be wrong or false or something unclean that the higher classes must snub their nose at?
Hopefully the argument will rise to a higher plane than this.
The follow excerpt is taken from:
http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/earlyxtian.html
The character of the early Christians would probably be most surprising to modern lay Christians. The bulk of the early converts were from the lower classes in the cities. As the great historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) summarized in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1788):
“the new sect of the Christians was almost entirely composed of the dregs of the populace, of peasants and mechanists, of boys and women, of beggars and slaves, the last of whom might sometimes introduce the missionaries into the rich and noble families to whom they belonged. These obscure teachers … are as mute in public as they are loquacious and dogmatical in private. Whilst they cautiously avoid the dangerous encounter of philosophers, they mingle with the rude and illiterate crowd, and insinuate themselves into these minds whom their age, their sex, or their best education had the best disposed to receive the impression of superstitious errors.”
Assuming this is mostly accurate, where are the other sects that such dregs as these got involved in? This was 99% of the population, so there was plenty of demand for this product, and we should see some other cults, similar to the Christian cult, which insinuated themselves into these minds and published reports about their mythic savior heroes and became popular with the lower-class masses. So where are they? Where are their "gospel" accounts about their mythic heroes served up to the gullible mobs of peasants and dregs and beggars and women and slaves who were disposed to receive these superstitions?
So where are all the other new sects which should have competed well with this one and should be evident in similar numbers and written documents on a similar level with those of the new Christian sect? Name another such sect. Who was their mythic savior figure? Where are the "gospel" accounts they published attesting to their mythic hero's powers?
There were no others? Only one? How can that be?
Where there's a demand there's a supply! -- how can there not have been others? dozens of them? How can there be ONLY ONE product offered to such a vast rabble population demanding the "superstitious errors"? That makes no sense.
. . . for now it is enough to note that by and large the early Christians were mainly illiterate, uncultured and incapable of critical thinking. Hence Christianity competed for these people, not with the Roman thinkers, but with the mystery religions.
Nevermind the "mystery religions" which had no evidence to offer for their mythic hero folklore. Where is another successful mythic hero cult, similar to the new Christ cult, competing for the same market served by the Christ cult, which promoted an historical person as their mythic hero who performed miracle acts for which we have written documents attesting to his miracle acts?
Why can't you name such a cult if there was this huge demand for it and if the gullible masses would slurp up anything claiming to meet this demand even if it was all fake? Why is there ONLY ONE such fraudulent cult and not many of them going after this demand and spreading their "gospels" about their equally credible mythic hero?
Both Christianity and the mystery religions have irrational elements which were of much appeal to such a group of people.
Except for the subjective knee-jerk impulsive judgmental term "irrational," the point stated here is actually an argument IN FAVOR of Christianity. If Christ was a powerful figure as he is depicted in the gospel accounts, and one offering his power to benefit people, and came from somewhere on some mission to "save" humans (whatever is meant by "save"), then why should his appeal NOT be to the greatest number of humans possible, which would not be the intellectual elites but to the masses at the lower strata of humanity?
So this appeal to the broad masses is a verification that Christ was such a person from such a source bringing an offer to help humans, showing his power in a simple way they would understand and be able to recognize him and the power he offered. Whereas the mystery religions had no evidence for their claims and lost favor from the skeptical masses who wanted substance rather than empty symbols.
The skeptic J.M. Robertson (1856-1933) summarizes their character such:
“Taken individually … an average Christian of the second century was likely to be unlettered townsman of the “lower middle” or poorer classes; . . . utterly credulous as to demons and miracles;
It is not true that the lower classes or less educated had no ability to distinguish between genuine miracle acts and acts of charlatanry. Even if they are generally more open or accepting toward claims of the miraculous or the supernatural, it does not mean that the less educated cannot distinguish fact from fiction. They do know and recognize the difference. Despite their nominal acceptance of such beliefs or claims in a superficial sense, their reaction is different in cases of someone appearing who actually does have such power.
And they are capable of being skeptical and disbelieving someone making such claims but having little or no verification. They do not give the same credibility to such false or unverfiable claims as to claims that are verifiable or documented.
The elitist snobbery that says the lower classes are incapable of any such scepticism or distinction between superstition and legitimate evidence of superhuman power is based on the primary dogma that all miracle acts or miracle claims are absolutely fictional, no matter what, regardless of any evidence. This is pure dogma and prejudice, not science or reason or historical scholarship.
There is a difference between that for which there is evidence and that for which there is no evidence. And the less educated and lower classes do know this difference and respond differently to the fraudulent than to that which is genuine, even though they may also give more credence to the supernatural than those who are more educated.
This higher propensity to believe or to yield to wishful thinking does not change the fact that they can distinguish the more credible from the less credible and will choose that which is more credible or has more evidence to support it.
The ones who responded favorably to Jesus did not give the same response to all the charlatans who were available to them. We do not have any other figure in this period who received this kind of response. We do not have others for whom there is evidence in the form of written accounts appearing a few decades later. Their unusually favorable reaction to Jesus is due to the fact that there was real evidence in his case.
The dogmatic premise expressed above, the snob dogma that the uneducated cannot think intelligently, is no basis for drawing the conclusion that it had to be their gullibility that explains their response and the spread of the Christ belief. This does not explain it. All your bashing of the uneducated and declaring your intellectual superiority is not acceptable as a logical argument or a premise for dismissing the evidence that Christ did show his power and that ordinary people did respond to it intelligently.
If the Jesus cult can be explained as due to the gullibility of an uneducated population or lower class, why don't we have multiple Jesus-like figures appearing and finding similar acceptance in the 1st and 2nd centuries? Why didn't the other charlatans receive the same acceptance?
You claim there were others, and Jesus was only one of many such charlatans? Who? Name them. The most often-cited case is Apollonius of Tyana, for whom there is no evidence until 150 years later, and for whom there is only one source. This is not an example of someone who had the same impact or was received or accepted similarly. Why don't we have at least one "gospel" of Apollonius appearing within 50 years like we do in the case of Jesus?
So the explanation that people were gullible and uneducated and illiterate and would believe any charlatan who came along does not explain how Jesus was made into a god within 30-50 years and had multiple accounts written about him. No, the gullible illiterate masses argument is just an ad hominem attack based on snobbery and nothing more.
incapable of criticism as to sacred books; readily emotional towards the crucified God and the sacred mystery in which were given the “body and blood”; devoid alike of aesthetic and of philosophic faculty; much given to his ritual; capable of fanatical hatred.”
Repeating this dogmatic intellectual snobbery does not make it so. Just because Jesus had an appeal among the unwashed lower classes does not disprove the clear evidence that he did have power and that large numbers of them responded by believing what this evidence was telling them.
It is also important to note that the great thinkers of the time rejected Christianity out of hand. From the same website:
It is therefore not surprising that the greatest thinkers of that age: philosophers such as Seneca (c5BC-AD65), Epictetus (c1st cent) and Marcus Aurelius (c121-180); statesmen such as Pliny the Elder (AD23-79), his adopted son Pliny the Younger (c62-114) ; historians such as Plutarch (c46-120) and Tacitus (c55-c117) and prominent physicians such as Galen (c2nd cent); who through their work and contemplation had “purified their mind from the prejudices of popular superstition”, either rejected outright or did not consider the nascent religion of Christianity.
So the new Christ cult at this time was spreading among the poor lower classes and got little or no attention from the wealthy elites such as those named here. Which proves what?
This is logically the same as the earlier ad hominem argument. Only this time the reasoning is that whatever these elitists believe must be the truth, and it is only reasonable to follow whatever they believed, because only those of status could know any truth, and everyone else is a superstitious idiot with no ability to think or make intelligent choices.
Judging the truth of a belief by the social status of those who hold it -- condemning it as false because those believing it are "low class peasants" and because it's sneered at by the privileged upper-class elites. It's astounding that any thinking person would offer this kind of argument as a reason to reject or accept a belief.
It is purely subjective to pronounce these elitists as "the greatest thinkers of that age" -- they were the ones privileged enough to be published. They were the ones born into wealth and privilege and the luxury of being able to get educated and having privileged access to some libraries and the opportunity to learn reading and writing. Why is a thinking person today required to submit to the bias of this selected privileged class and adopt their prejudices?
Let's accept the presupposition here that these educated elites were "purified" from all superstition (which is more an exaggeration than a fact), which means they dismissed most of the supernatural claims of pagan mythology. Why did they dismiss such claims? Because there was no evidence for them. Unlike the Christ of the gospel accounts, for whom there is credible evidence, there is no such evidence for the miracles of the classic mythic heroes, like Perseus and Apollo and Hercules and Asclepius and Osiris etc.
These privileged elites knew nothing of the accounts of Jesus, or, whatever they might have heard was dismissed by them as no different from the earlier pagan myths and mystery cults, because they did not have the gospel accounts before them and were unaware that there were multiple accounts attesting to the acts of Jesus, and that these were circulating close after the time that he performed these acts. Which was not the case with the superstitious tales of the earlier pagan gods and mystery cults.
The fallacies and deceptions surrounding Christianity were plainly evident in the first hundred years of its existence, . . .
No, nothing was evident to those who did not have adequate information about the Christ person and his acts. All they knew, at most, is that there was another cult claiming some miracles took place, but not that there were reliable written accounts of these miracle events performed by an actual historical person, witnessed by particular persons at a definite place and time.
. . . allowing the learned class to summarily dismiss it as a fraudulent enterprise.
No, they can't "dismiss" what they don't know about. There is no indication that any of the above-named elitist writers or philosophers investigated the accounts of Jesus and made any evaluation of them. What little they knew ignored completely the accounts we now have and which were beginning to circulate at that time but were not yet widely available.
The "learned class" spoken of here was a tiny elite group, probably much less than 1% of the population, those at the very highest level of the social strata and also those most educated in the classics, and the most favored and least afflicted members of society, and thus the least likely to respond to a "savior" or hero having come to offer hope to humans who are suffering.
The fact that those responding first were those suffering the most and the most desirous for a better world does not suggest that the accounts of the miracles must be fictitious. And that these were of the lower-class and unprivileged masses does not lead to the conclusion that they could not think and discriminate between fiction and reality, as intellectual snobbery pretends in its impulse to project its class dominance and privilege and superiority.
A power source or "savior" or other-dimensional entity (or God) entering history in order to bring hope to those seeking a better world or better life does not first need endorsement or clearance from the elitists or higher classes or privileged few who dominate the social and intellectual system as the most famous or the most established or the most recognized authority figures having power to bind and to loose.
Those at the lower end of the social hierarchy are also capable of judging and discriminating truth from error and thinking intelligently and logically and identifying what is true and what is fraudulent. And they do distinguish and make intelligent judgment; and in the 1st century they witnessed something different, which was a power source presenting itself to them which was clearly different from that of the pagan myths and mystery cults, because this time there were verifiable witnessed events, reported orally at first, and soon put into writing, and being spread further so that more recipients could learn this "good news" or "euangelion" being announced by the first Christ believers.
There is only one mythic hero or miracle-worker who meets this description (not just in the 1st century). In this one case, finally, there was real evidence and a real reason to believe, unlike the earlier myths which were only wishful thinking and were unable to take hold, even among the uneducated, and gained only superficial acceptance and died out or remained obscure or in some cases were popularized as the best that could be found to give symbolism to people's need for festive occasions -- sort of like Mother Goose or St. Patrick or Bacchus or the Goddess Kali have given symbolism to those needing a focus for their rituals and celebrating and partying.
The Christ figure was different, for in this case there was a real basis for believing, based on historical evidence, which could be recognized at the rational level, and was more than just a needed symbol for celebrating or ritual exercises or aesthetic expression (though it became that too, for those seeking it).
It was only after a few centuries passed followed by the adoption of Christianity as the Roman state religion that it began to attract members of the landed and ruling class. However, even then it was often more for political purposes than an expression of genuine faith.
Why did Constantine adopt Christianity as the state religion? Because the uneducated poor lower classes forced this upon him, because so many of them saw the truth that the upper-class elites had missed in their preoccupation with their status, and so this new cult was becoming too widespread and too strong to be ignored any longer.
So the evidence that Christ had shown became more formalized and published and made more available. The real force behind this political change was the ever-increasing numbers from the broad population who encountered the basic historic events or truths from the gospel accounts and believed in Christ because of this evidence, which clearly showed the Christ person as someone who uniquely had real power instead of being only a fictional or mythic hero such as the earlier pagan gods were. And since this person stood out so uniquely as one having authentic real power, with no other comparable figure or "deity" or "mythic hero" as a competing entity, the new Roman emperor found himself forced to recognize this new Christ cult as the basis for unifying his realm.
It was not Constantine who gave Christianity a boost, but the new spreading Christianity cult that gave Constantine the boost he needed in order to secure political power. He was the greatest beneficiary of the new compact between Church and State. (It could even be argued that Christianity suffered some loss from the new Church-State arrangement.)
The recent history of Christianity, exhibited by the decline in the mainstream liberal churches and the rise of the conservative fundamentalist Pentecostal ones is, in effect, a return to early Christianity. Currently, most of the truly exuberant followers of the faith are poorly educated, scientifically illiterate people with poor critical thinking skills.
Let's assume there's some truth to this (though it's mostly prejudice and stereotyping). What's wrong with this is that it ignores the evidence that Christ had power, and instead falls back, as always, on the dogmatic premise that there can never be any such thing as a miracle event. This is the basic definition of "science" and "education" and "critical thinking" among the elitists who preach this prejudice and scorn those who believe based on the evidence from the gospel accounts. Instead of looking at the facts, they dogmatically reject absolutely all claims of anything that involves an element of miracle or superhuman power as part of it.
This dogma of no miracle possible is taken without question, without any scientific consideration or reasoning or logic, but as a virtual religious doctrine to be imposed on us regardless of any reasoning or questioning or doubting. Everything in the above description of the unwashed uneducated illiterate masses, as a herd of unthinking cattle incapable of figuring out anything, is all based on this one premise that there can never be any such thing as a miracle event.
This prejudice and dogmatism is extended to such an extreme that even any doubt or questioning of it is banned from consideration, so that any possible effort to justify a claim of a miracle event having happened is rejected absolutely,
a priori, without leaving any possibility that there may have been some events in history which show otherwise.
Thus, if this trend continues, Christianity may well end up in a few centuries being perceived in a similar way as it was 2000 years ago.
This may be somewhat true, because the evidence that Christ had power will be suppressed and rejected, without being considered, and even believers are intimidated into avoiding this reasoning from evidence, and instead are herded more and more into appeals to mysticism and private feelings and subjectivity and away from the historic evidence which clearly sets Christ apart from all the superstitions and mystical and mystery cults which rely only on feelings and subjectivity.
And so believers, who really know their faith is based on reason and evidence, are driven into
irrational paths to express their belief, like mystical psycho-babble, and as this fails and they resemble more and more the mystery cult devotees, they have to resign themselves to their subjective feelings and away from reason, and so will be perceived as superstitious and ignorant and incapable of critical thinking.
Really, so there is something real to Joseph Smith's god fiction, due to the 15,000,000 Mormon believers today (starting less than 300 years ago)? No, there doesn't have to be anything for a myth to begin. And even if you repeat your mantra 3,238,236,982,382,439,293 times, it won't make it any truer. Either way, a potential rabble rousing street preacher has already been acknowledged as a possibility. But certainly no miracle are a necessity for this fiction to start.
