Dying for a Lie

Is it True Nobody Dies for a Lie?

Crusaders FIghting, anonymus, Public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

This article is one of a series of articles introduced by Flawed Reasons to Believe in God. If you're new to the series, you should read the Introduction before (or after) reading the material below.

Early Christians were willing to die for their belief in the resurrection rather than recant their faith. People don't die for a lie. So goes a very popular Christian apologetic. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Humans have died in religious wars since men invented religions. Since all of our major religions claim to be the mutually exclusive truth, only one in all of history could be right. Thus, everyone who died fighting for a religion based on false premises died for a lie. Of course, it was a lie they probably believed, but a lie nonetheless.

And while one of these mutually exclusive religions might be based on the truth, it's also possible none are. I'm sharing here in Flawed Reasons to Believe in God the evidence that there are no personal gods and humans have no soul that survives death. This evidence says that everyone who died in a religious war died for a lie. Everyone executed for heresy, blasphemy, satanism, or witchcraft died for a lie.

The 19 men who killed themselves on 9/11 died for a lie. All the people they killed died for that…