Dear professor
Ehrman,
My guess is that you get a lot of
correspondence. My apologies for adding to this pile,
I just want to congratulate you on
your work and on your honesty. I just read Misquoting Jesus and God’s Problem, and intend to read Jesus Interrupted through this holiday
vacation. I have enjoyed the first two immensely. I will
confess that I am a full blown, “dead-again” atheist. I have read the
works of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkings, Christopher Hitchens, Dan Dennet, George
Smith, Carl Sagan, and so on. I am, in fact, President of the Atheist
Humanist Society of CT and RI - you can be sure we will be talking about your
work, recommending it to others and we’ll be placing them in our library.
So the topic you write is very important to me on an intellectual
level.
What I like most about they way you
present your work and conclusions is that it seems to me you are keenly and
particularly attentive to Christian sensitivities of what you are presenting.
This sensitivity (and respect) is mostly lacking in the other
authors I quoted above, and it is greatly appreciated. Hitchens
particularly (though I agree with a lot of what he says) seems to go out of his
way to be provocative (insulting?) This obviously does not help in
actually enhancing the public discussion of these ideas, nor to put
non-believers in the best light. I don’t think his approach to the
subject is helpful at all.
On a final note, I’d like to
comment on something you wrote in God’s Problem regarding atheists (and I would
be surprised if this is the first time someone has written to you about this,
but just in case): …”to declare
affirmatively that there is no God (the declaration of atheists) takes far more
knowledge (and chutzpah) than I have (pg 125)”.
I don’t know about
this. Being an atheist myself, I can tell you that for me there is
very little extrapolation from understanding that humans have believed in all
sorts of gods since the beginning of time, gods that we have abandoned for all
sorts of reasons, to the conclusion that the concept of “god” is a human
invention. The only reason we are still debating this is because we
have still so many questions about the universe and because the concept
resonates with our psyche. But in fact, humans are great at creating
stories, stories about unicorns, mermaids, vampires, super warriors, gods of the
volcano, of rain, of everlasting love, extraterrestrials, you name it.
Moreover, if we can agree that if there is some creature out there that
created a huge and complex universe at some point (one in which we tantamount to
bacteria growing on some distant tiny pond somewhere) but that does not
interfere in our affairs, what difference does it make, in real terms, that this
creature actually exists? His existence is actually inconsequential
to what happens on this planet, and almost certainly to what happens after we
die. So the difference between existing and not is pretty much
semantics.
I think the most likely explanation
for our presence on this planet is serendipity and biochemistry. If
we find life of any sort out there in the universal expanse, then we can
probably assume that given the right conditions life will spring naturally.
Maybe I can declare myself an agnostic until then, though I feel
that I don’t need to wait.
Again, a real pleasure to read you
work. Please write again soon.
Thanks,
Carlos A.
Mojica
East