I'm surprised there's not more debunking counter-Gospel documents around since, according to skeptics, Jesus never did the things claimed. Where is all the contemporary Roman or Jewish propaganda against the fact claims of Christianity?
Imagine how many fewer Christian martyrs there would have been if the biblical accounts of Jesus' miracles could have been properly debunked by the authorities - who had all the money and power.
Well, let's not forget that starting with the 4th century, it was Christians who had money and power. Very easy for them to destroy any debunking works under the name of "eliminating heresy".
Also, in the time of the Gospels and Epistles, Christianity was a minor splinter of a small movement. Why would those with money and power bother debunking Christianity when none of them could have known that in three centuries it would become a world power?
It would be comparable to the Heaven's Gate cult. If, say, in three hundred years, Heaven's Gate becomes strong, then its apologists will ask, "Why didn't NASA launch a probe to inspect the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet?? They could have proved there wasn't an alien spacecraft there and decisively DEBUNKED the early claims." Of course, we know why NASA didn't do that--they have better things to do with their time and money.
And suppose someone did uncover that the miracles of Jesus (written down
decades after they supposedly happened) likely didn't happen? How would they let the world at large know? Hold a press conference? Write a blog? Film a documentary? No, other than bother their friends into annoyance, about all they can do is write a book.
And what does
that mean? In first-century Palestine, writing a book was expensive, costing hundreds or thousands of today's dollars. First you have to find someone who knows how to write (literacy was abysmally low), you have to find suitable materials to write on (they didn't have reams of college-ruled paper for sale,) then you have to dictate your ideas to them while they slowly write it down word by word. But assuming you get the book written, now you need to publish it for a mass audience.
And what does
that mean? Millions of copies sold in all major bookstores? Getting the New York Times to review it? Author tours around the country? Of course not. Spreading books far and wide wasn't easy as it is today. "Write a book" and you might hold the only copy in existence for years, until you can go through the expensive process of making a
single copy.
And to what end? Do people who hold beliefs about the fantastic
enjoy having their beliefs debunked? Do they love learning that what they've been raised to believe is an exaggerated lie? Do people
appreciate it when all the amazing stories they've told and retold each other probably never happened? A quick check of my Twitter feed suggest the opposite.
Debunking the miraculous is rarely a crowd pleaser. Just look at the vitriol thrown at the kind folks behind Snopes.com. All they do is get to the bottom of the nonsense that people enjoy--that people LOVE--to share with each other. And for their efforts, they are accused of being paid corporate shills, of being anti-American, of being Communists. It's no wonder to me that when one person promises eternal life accompanied by amazing magic tricks, and another person says "Can you prove that?", it's usually the first person that gains the most market share.
