Lord, Liar, Lunatic

I know that this topic has been covered extensively in many places, I but thought I might as well pitch in my ideas, because this particular argument really annoys me.

 In my (unwilling) years at the local Catholic youth group, the youth leaders used this QUITE frequently. This was basically their only counter to issue of atheism. Now they still don’t know I’m an atheist, so I never had the chance to directly argue about this with them. However, it is strewn with logical fallacies.

" If we take Jesus seriously, then we must take Jesus’ claims about himself seriously. We cannot say that Jesus was a great teacher whom we admire and look up to, but that the most fundamental element of his teachings was a monumental error. Jesus was not a great, but merely human, teacher; he was either much less than this, or much more."

- http://www.existence-of-god.com/lord-liar-lunatic.html

 First off, the issue of the false dilemma. We are presented with three choices, and told that these are the only conceivable choices. This is obviously untrue. Firstly, this theory contains an automatic assumption of the existence of Jesus. Now I’m not a scholar, so I can’t claim any expert opinion on this topic, but I have read multiple accounts of people who dispute the very existence of a historical Jesus. *prepares for angry Christians*. I personally think that this school of thought has some very good points. But the mere existence of this option nullifies the “Lord, Liar, Lunatic” theory. If Jesus didn’t even exist, the triad wouldn’t even be applicable.

 Even if Jesus DID exist, there would still be plenty of other methods of explaining Christianity that do not require him to be “Lord”.

" Under this infallible reading, it is impossible for there to be a case where, if Jesus knows something, that thing can be false. For the rest of us mere mortals, this is simply not possible. We all hold beliefs that we think are certain and yet our certainty does not guarantee the truth of those beliefs. The trilemma gets a lot of mileage out of the narrow-scope reading because the believer already assumes that anything Jesus knows is certain and true; however, it begs the question for Jesus’ divinity through infallibility."

-         http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/james_still/trilemma.html

 Begging the question. What if Jesus was simply mistaken, or had convinced himself of his divinity? Or, what if in the 40 or so years between the alleged death and resurrection of Jesus and the writing of Mark, the first gospel, Jesus’ teachings were exaggerated or misinterpreted by his followers? (I would like to note that even my textbook for Morality admits that Mark has very little to say about the divinity of Jesus, and instead stresses his humanity. Perhaps a shift in thought was taking place as the gospel was written?)

 Now some Christians may cringe at this as well, but…Jesus couldn’t have been insane or lying? Have cult leaders lied? Yes. Have politicians lied? Yes. Have they still said nice-sounding things about peace and harmony? Yes. For example, Jim Jones once said of equality and integration, “Integration is a more personal thing with me now. It's a question of my son's future.” Sounds nice enough. But we all know how that turned out.

 Whether or not Jesus was “Lord,” or even existed, its time for the Christians to admit the error of C.S Lewis and accept that this trilemma is simply logically flawed. It isn’t convincing anyone who isn’t already convinced. And considering that I was Catholic when I started going to youth group, and an atheist when I finished, they might want to even rethink its effectiveness on believers.

 Plus, as I know from experience, it can get REALLY annoying.