Catholics assume that there is a direct line of authority from Peter to the popes even though Christian scholars acknowledge that we do not actually know who the first half dozen popes were or whether they had any connection to Peter. We act as though we know what happened to Paul and Peter even though the gospels do not tell us. We pretend that we know the names of the gospel writers while the four books and Acts of the Apostles are all written anonymously. We still pretend that there is a gospel truth while scholars know that even the first of these accounts was written 35 to 40 years after the events (the other gospels not written until 50 and 60 years after); none of the four authors were present at the crucifixion; and nowhere in the gospels does anyone describe the moment of resurrection. We still pretend that the first gospel includes witnesses of a risen Jesus (Yoshua) when the earliest extant editions of the one we now call "Mark" do not. We still pretend that the writers that have come to be called "Luke" and "Matthew" have authentic genealogies of Jesus when any scholar can easily give you the reasons to know they are fake; and we still pretend that all the gospel writers are telling literal truth when the details of their accounts are all different. 

We pretend that Jews like (Yoshua) Jesus, all his family, and all his disciples were not already unaware of the rather deceptive process in which their holy scriptures, the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible), had been written. So we still pretend the Pentateuch is one seamless document while Christian and Jewish scholars over the last several centuries have shown that the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is written by at least four different authors at different places, at different times, and for very different reasons, and then at about 450 B.C.E., too long ago for Jews such as John the Baptist or Jesus (Yoshua) to know about, these various versions were edited and woven together into one document. We pretend that these editors could have known about conversations between Moses and God that would have taken place 800 years before their time and 250-650 years before the times of the original authors. Likewise we pretend these authors could have known of Abraham's conversations with God as much as 1,OOO years before their time.

Muslim's pretend that nearly all the elements of their religion are not taken from the Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians near whom Muhammad lived. Christians pretend that we have not learned that every element of Christianity comes from the pagan religions of the Greco-Roman world; or from the Greek philosophers who were either polytheists or atheists; from the Zoroastrians; or from the Jews. These elements include taking the body and the blood, the logos, concepts of trinity, mothers of gods, resurrected, suffering, atoning gods; communal meals, heaven. hell, purgatory, baptism, gods and prophets born on December 25 (the perceived winter solstice), divine and virgin births in mangers or with shepherds present. Jews are often unaware that even the elements of their ancient religion are mostly acquired from the more dominant surrounding cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Phoenicia from which they adopt temples, holy-of-holy inner sanctums, priesthoods, tithes, robes, circumcision, animal sacrifice, holy days of rest, harvest festivals, stories of creation and flood, legal codes, judgments by moral conduct, and even monotheism, at least in the henotheistic form(one supreme god of many) of the original ancient Hebrews.

Yet with such clarity that the scriptures are written by mortals fashioning their own accounts to suit their own intentions, we still choose to ignore that there is no shred of evidence outside the Bible that there were an Abraham or any of his family; there is no archeological evidence of the exodus; archeological evidence clearly shows that the next story, that of Joshua. definitely did not happen as described in the Bible; we know with certainty that the creation did not happen as described and the world's best geologists attest that that flood did not happen; archeology disproves even that sociopolitical conditions as recently as the time of David were not as the Bible reports. Those who persist in trying to show otherwise because the Bible says it is so are now merely engaged in a game of mental twister.

There are absolutes, there certainly may be a God, and even skeptics act as though they have faith—going to bed at night expecting to wake with the sun up and shining; but all of our sources of the Bible are equally as human and subjective. We long ago chose to live in self-deception about who wrote the Old and New Testaments, about how Jewish they almost all were, about how very human they were, and about what their intentions were. Biblical scholars have uncovered some of their biases too although the process was not simple.