What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? Book

This could have been an interesting book, about the good things that came out of Christianity. But instead of being an honest examination of history, the book distorts and misrepresents reality.

Kennedy has written a long list of things that are allegedly a result of Jesus Christ, including hospitals, science, education, justice, representative government, benevolence and charity. While some of the things have been practiced by Christians, that doesn't mean that those things would not have existed if Jesus hadn't been born. There's no way to know how world history would have turned out if Christianity hadn't been in power. One thing from the list no doubt comes from Christianity: The condemnation of homosexuals, which Kennedy lists as something good.

In Chapter 5, it becomes clear that Kennedy wants an American Christian theocracy. He completely misrepresents what secularism means, saying that a secular state, being neutral to religion, is in fact "hostile" to religion. This is an absurd statement. A secular state is neutral, allowing all religious beliefs. In a theocracy on the other hand - which seems to be Kennedy's utopia - alternative religions are at the mercy of the dominating religion.

Apparently, America was founded as a free country because it was founded by Christians, although Kennedy does not explain how come the countries, such as England, where these people came from, were not free, although they were also Christian. Towards the end of the book Kennedy tries to explain away all the crimes of the church, such as the Inquisition, by saying that the people responsible weren't true Christians. It's a very convenient explanation, but despite this, Kennedy seems to hold all atheists guilty by association with a handful of atheists who did bad things, and the best example he comes up with is Hitler, who, according to himself, was a Christian. The same type of double reasoning goes for the rest of the book; apparently all good things that happened during the last 2000 years were thanks to Christians, and all bad things were caused by others, atheists or false Christians.

Kennedy is also opposed to all science that is not compatible with the Bible, most notably the theory of evolution, which in his opinion is wrong, because the bible doesn't say it's true.

No doubt christians have done good in caring for the poor and sick, etcetera, but Kenendy doesn't even try to give a balanced and truthful look at the facts. After reading the book, it's clear that Kennedy is one of two things; either he is a bad researcher (and if you look at the footnotes, most of them are secondary sources, and as I mentioned, some outrageous claims aren't backed up by sources at all) who believes what he's writing, or he's a liar, lying on purpose and twisting the facts to argue his case. Instead of an honest account of Church history, this is a book full of distorted facts and lies, preaching to the choir, and a means for Kennedy to voice his personal political opinions.