Excerpt #82 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
In 1990, I began my studies at Yale Divinity School.
After a year at Yale, I would transfer to Harvard.
At Yale, I was 46 years old.
I went there to study ethics and issues associated with global environmental problems.
At the time, I held an undergraduate degree in business (Penn State) and a Master’s degree in architecture (University of
Colorado).
I had also had rich experiences in diverse fields (military officer, professional athlete, businessman/entrepreneur, architect, author, congressional candidate).
I was in a two-year master’s program at Yale.
New Testament studies was mandatory.
What was my personal religion at the time?
None, really.
I was raised as a Catholic.
I served more than my share of masses as an altar boy.
When I went from high school (and home) to college, I said goodbye to Christianity, Catholicism, and organized religion.
Illogical, none of it had ever made any sense to me.
Away from home, I could begin to live my own life.
Yet, I never really studied religion.
At Yale, I was prepared to give it a chance.
I wanted to see if there was anything to Christianity.
What I found was worse than I imagined.
I went to New Testament class with an open mind.
Next to me sat John (not his real name), former president of a major university.
He was writing a book and just sat in on this class.
He was not a full-time graduate student and about fifteen years older than me.
My wife and I socialized with John and his wife.
We sometimes discussed theology.
The more I heard in our New Testament class, the less any of it rang true.
The story was a fabrication.
A product of its time.
A product of the infancy of our intelligence.
Just a Story
Every once in a while, I would say something to John about how absurd the whole story was.
John, the consummate gentleman and diplomat, extraordinarily intelligent and exceptionally kind, would smile with no response.
Yet, by his expression he communicated agreement.
But he never actually said anything blatantly critical of the New Testament story.
Until one day.
We were about halfway through the course, fall semester 1990.
We heard yet another lecture by the professor that indirectly (as it was not her intention) made it clear the New Testament writers were writing fiction.
After that class, John shook his head and said, “Why don’t they just get it over with and tell everyone (the public at large) that it’s just a story?”
In other words, why don’t learned theologians, who know better, tell the people in the pews that these ancient stories are simply human fabrications and have nothing to do with “divine revelation”, a concept which itself is a fabrication.