Part one. If Jesus was nothing more than a myth, then the faith of two billion people is sustained by an illusion. But it is not an empty statement, it is not a gratuitous provocation; it is a direct blow to the heart of what many believe to be untouchable.
And what if I told you that a seventeenth-century philosopher, with just three arguments, was able to leave the Bible trembling for air, exposed as just another human construct, not with hatred, not with mockery, but with pure logic, with such brutal clarity that even his enemies had to remain silent? And if that philosopher was Spinoza, the man whom the Church cursed, whom his community expelled, and who today returns through his ideas to destroy what billions still consider sacred, look at your Bible. If you have one nearby, open it at random, read any page.
Do you really believe that what you hold in your hands was dictated by a perfect being? Do you really think that an all-powerful, eternal, wise, and just God would have chosen to write his word through contradictions, historical errors, tribal worldviews, mandates of violence, primitive rituals, and accounts of holy wars? Seriously, because if you take a minute to put your emotions aside, if you dare to look straight ahead without fear, what you will see is not divinity; it is politics, it is manipulation, it is power disguised as sanctity.
And Spinoza saw it before anyone else. The question is not whether Jesus existed or not. The question is, why?
If he was real, the only thing we know about him comes from a few religious texts written decades after his death, riddled with omissions, contradictions, and suspicious silences. There is not a single contemporary writing of Jesus, not one, no letter, no object, no witness who lived at the same time as him and who left a direct record. And yet, the story of the supposed son of God is repeated as if it were unquestionable, as if it were obvious, as if it had no cracks, but it does have them and Spinoza did not forgive them.
In this video, we are not going to pay homage to anyone, we are not going to cover up the truth with sentimentality or blind faith. We will destroy the myth with facts, ideas, and arguments. We will use reason as a sword.
Because if there’s one thing religions fear, it’s precisely that: reason, free thought, questioning, doubt. That was Spinoza’s crime. Do not kill, do not steal, do not betray, just think, just dare to ask what no one wanted to hear.
And if the Bible is not the word of God, but the word of men hungry for control, imagine someone telling you they have a book written by God. Sounds impressive, right? The problem is that when you open it, you find things like kill all men, women, children, and even animals.
Leave not a single soul alive. Or if a man gathers wood on the Sabbath, he must be stoned to death. Or if a woman was raped in the countryside but did not scream, then she too must die.
That sounds divine to you; that sounds like eternal justice. Spinoza didn’t think so. He considered it savagery, archaism, superstition, but he did not stop at moral criticism.
It went much further. He took the scalpel of logic and began to cut page by page until he showed that the entire sacred edifice had no real foundations. The first thing Spinoza understood is that you cannot read the Bible as a divine text if you are not willing to read it like any other book.
Because if it has errors, if it has contradictions, if it depends on the historical context in which it was written, then it cannot be perfect. And if it is not perfect, it cannot be from God. It’s as simple as that.
But the catch is that nobody lets you read it freely. They teach you to read it with fear, with reverence. They tell you what it means, not what it says; they explain it to you, they translate it for you, they filter it for you, they teach you to kneel before questioning.
And for Spinoza, that was the worst poison: not letting reason be free. For Spinoza, Jesus was neither God nor the son of God. He was probably a wise man, probably a just man, but not a divine man.
And it didn’t need to be, because what was important wasn’t him, but what they did with his image, what they fabricated around him, the myth they created. Because if someone can die on the cross and then come back to life, then everything they say is beyond question. If he can perform miracles, then his command is absolute.
And that’s where faith becomes power, domination, dogma. History doesn’t work that way. History demands evidence, documents, consistency, and independent sources.
And history, when it analyzes Jesus with the same standards with which it analyzes Socrates or Caesar or Buddha, finds nothing solid. Only accounts written by anonymous believers, decades later, full of symbolism, self-referential prophecies, and theological agendas. Spinoza did not write to demolish people’s faith.
He wasn’t a provocateur for pleasure, but he knew that the ground had to be cleared in order to build something new. You cannot build a rational ethic on a text that justifies genocide, slavery, misogyny, and superstitions. And you can’t say you love the truth if you’re not willing to see that maybe your truth is a lie.
That’s why this video isn’t just about Jesus; it’s about what it means to believe without proof, about what happens when millions of people take as sacred the words of pastors, priests, rabbis, or imams who don’t even fully understand the text they preach. It’s about the difference between faith and knowledge, between repeating and understanding, between believing and thinking. Some will say this is an attack, that it is disrespectful, that it is unnecessary, but what is truly violent is not questioning religion.
The violent thing is being told that you will be born a sinner, that you need to be saved, that if you do not obey you will suffer eternally. What is violent is living with guilt because of human desires. What is violent is being afraid to doubt.
And Spinoza, with fierce clarity, said enough. He said: “No more dogmas, no more superstitions, no more religions that impose instead of inspire.”
In the following parts, we will explore the three proofs with which Spinoza demolishes the idea that the Bible is the word of God. Three ideas that once you hear them, you can’t forget, you can’t ignore; they change you, they shake you up. But before that, I want you to think about the following.
If truth has nothing to fear, why have you been taught to fear those who seek it? If God exists and is just, why would he punish you for asking sincere questions? And if the greatest proof that Jesus was a myth is that you desperately need him not to be.
The first crack in the Bible that Spinoza pointed out was not its moral content, nor its impossible miracles, nor even its divine threats. It was something much simpler and more devastating: its internal contradictions. Spinoza did not need to resort to science, archaeology, or comparative history to begin dismantling the sacred edifice.
He only did what very few believers dare to do. He read the Bible like any other text, without fear, without reverence, without assuming that it must be right because it was sacred. And what he found was a fragmented text, full of different voices, repetitions, narrative errors and, most importantly, insurmountable contradictions.
That, he said, was enough to prove that it could not be the word of a perfect God. Let’s get to the point. If there were even a single error in the Bible, just one, it would be enough to call into question its divine origin.
Because a God who makes mistakes is not God. A perfect being does not contradict himself, does not forget, does not repeat himself as if he did not remember what he said a few pages back. And yet, that is what abounds in the Bible.
For example, in the book of Genesis, chapter 1, it says that God first created light, then the sky, the earth, the plants, then the sun and the moon, then the animals, and finally man and woman, both at the same time. But in chapter 2 the order changes completely. First man, then plants, then animals, and finally woman, taken from a rib.
Which version is the true one? How can God be wrong in his own account of creation? How can it inspire two writers to tell such different versions if it is one God with one message?
Spinoza understood that this was not an accidental error; it was a sign that the Bible was written by different authors at different times with different intentions, and that what we call the Bible is not a single book, but a compilation of ancient texts gathered, edited, and retouched by priests for religious and political purposes. Where does God fit into all of this? Nowhere.
Because if the text was manipulated by men, if it was modified, if it was adjusted, then its origin is no longer divine. And if the foundation of your faith is built on something so unstable, how firm can it be? Let’s continue.
In 2 Samuel 24:1 it says that God prompted David to take a census of the people, but in 1 Chronicles 21:1 it says that it was Satan who prompted him to take that same census. So, was it God or was it Satan? It cannot be both.
And if it was a human error in writing it, then we already have proof that it was not written by God. Spinoza took note of these contradictions and said: “This cannot be revelation; this is editing, conflict between traditions, copyist errors, influence of the political context. In short, this is human, all too human.”
Another example. How many animals did Noah take on the ark? Genesis 6:19 clearly states that you shall take two of every living creature, male and female.
But in Genesis 7:2, God tells Noah: “Take seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean animals.” How is it possible that God changes his mind from one chapter to the next?
Wasn’t it the same God with a single, perfect, and unchanging plan? Or perhaps the text was written by different authors who couldn’t agree, and someone centuries later pasted them together as if they were part of the same story. These are not minor flaws; they are structural flaws, fundamental contradictions that affect the entire biblical narrative.
Spinoza understood that it was not a book dictated from heaven, but a collection of legends, oral traditions, edited chronicles, and theological texts put at the service of a political project to consolidate the power of the Hebrew priestly caste. Therefore, it did not surprise him that many supposedly divine laws had to do with tithing, with sacrifices in the temple, with the privileges of the Levites. God commands that, or the priests claim to be God’s voice to maintain their power, and here comes Spinoza’s most audacious point.
He said the mistake was not only trusting the Bible as a divine text, but also interpreting it out of context. He stated that any text, even the simplest, can be misinterpreted if its origin, original language, era, and culture are not understood. Now imagine what can happen to a text that is over 3,000 years old, translated dozens of times, copied by hand for centuries, adapted for political interests, and read by people who know neither biblical Hebrew, nor ancient history, nor the customs of the Middle East.
Seriously, can someone claim to have the true interpretation of the Bible? It’s not just about technical errors; it’s about the very principle of authority. If the Bible is human, then its authority is relative.
Therefore, it cannot be used to impose moral, political, or spiritual norms. It cannot be used as an argument in debates about rights, science, history, or ethics. And that is what Spinoza wanted to show, that behind the supposed biblical authority there is a chain of human decisions riddled with interests, prejudices, and errors, that there is no word of God, but the word of men who claim to speak in his name.
And to close this first test, Spinoza posed something even more devastating: that even if God existed, he would never communicate with humanity through a book full of contradictions. If God wanted to convey a clear message, he would do so in a universal, understandable, and direct way. He would not hide behind symbolism, obscure metaphors, and narrative contradictions.
He would not leave his supposed word in the hands of translators, editors, politicians, kings, popes, copyists, and inquisitors; he would not allow his message to be fragmented into thousands of conflicting interpretations. That’s not divinity; that’s human chaos. So, if there are obvious contradictions, if there are errors in logic, coherence, history, if there are several versions of the same event, how can we maintain that all of that was dictated by a perfect being?
It cannot be done, not honestly, not rationally. And here Spinoza was clear: reason must prevail over blind faith. Because if faith contradicts reason, then it is not true faith, but superstition.
And if a text contradicts itself, then its origin cannot be divine. And if it is not divine, then everything that depends on it, including the myth of Jesus as a messianic figure, begins to falter. This was just the first test, the first crack, and the building is already starting to crumble, but it doesn’t end here.
In the next part, we will go even deeper, more raw, more irrefutable, because Spinoza not only dismantled the Bible from within, he also demonstrated that its structure, its organization, and its authors are human and that the idea of divine inspiration does not withstand the slightest textual analysis. Get ready because the second test will shake even the most skeptical reader. Part two.
Spinoza not only pointed out the internal contradictions of the Bible, he went further, much further. His second piece of evidence was so devastating that even today it continues to be silenced or ignored by those who are not ready to accept the truth. What he proposed was simple and brutal.
The Bible is not the word of God, but the product of a political construct designed by men with human objectives to maintain control over the people. It is an instrument of power, and what we consider sacred today was not born of spirituality, but of strategy, manipulation, and the need of an elite to consolidate its dominance through fear, obedience, and the illusion of the divine. This second test begins with a direct question.
Who really wrote the Bible? Because if it was God, then there should be no doubt. There shouldn’t be any debate, but the truth is that there isn’t just one author, or two, or even ten.
There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, and their names, their true intentions, and their level of access to the facts they describe are unknown. Many of them wrote centuries after the events they describe. Some were priests, others scribes, others simply transmitters of oral traditions that had already been distorted for generations.
And in that process, the divine is diluted and the real appears, the human hand, interested, editing, controlling. Spinoza explains with surgical precision that the Old Testament in particular was organized by the scribes of the priestly elite after the Babylonian exile, at a time when the people of Israel needed a common identity, a history, a unifying narrative. It was then that ancient traditions, legends, and laws were compiled, republished, and canonized, not to reveal divine truth, but to establish a new power.
A theocracy, a society ruled by those who claimed to speak in the name of God. This is not a theory; it’s history. The texts were written during times of national crisis, during wars, during invasions, during exiles.
At each key moment, the biblical authors adapted the story, adjusted the narrative, and accommodated God’s will to the needs of the time. When they needed war, God was an avenger. When they needed submission, God was the judge.
When they needed hope, God was their savior. Political coincidence or design? Spinoza had no doubts.
The Bible was not written to inspire, but to dominate. And that is reflected in their laws. Laws that do not promote freedom, but rather submission.
Laws that do not stem from a universal ethic, but from a need for absolute control. You shall not work on Saturday under penalty of death. You shall not wear clothing made of two fabrics.
You will not eat certain foods. You will not mix with other peoples. You shall not question the priest.
Is that spirituality or is it a code of social control disguised as a divine mandate? Spinoza showed that sacred texts reflect the political tensions of the time. The books of kings and judges, for example, justify wars and killings in the name of God, not because God demanded it, but because the leaders of the people needed legitimacy.
What better way to justify conquest, death, and domination than to say that everything was ordered by the creator of the universe himself? Who would dare disobey if the punishment came from above? Even the prophets were manipulated.
Many of their writings were re-edited, cut, and combined. Some foretold punishments for Israel, others foretold salvation. Why so much contradiction?
Because power moves, changes, adapts. And with it, religious speeches. Spinoza said that the prophets were not spokespeople for God, but sensitive men, poets of the spirit, who spoke from their experience and their context.
But when their words became doctrine, they lost their essence and were transformed into law, into dogma, into an instrument of fear. And what about the New Testament? Spinoza did not study it as thoroughly as the ancient one, but he made it clear that the same mechanisms were at play.
The gospels were written decades after the death of Jesus by unknown authors under very different political contexts, each with a different intention. Mark wanted to present a suffering Messiah. Matthew wanted to connect Jesus with Jewish prophecies.
Luke sought to convince the Romans. John opted for a more mystical, more philosophical vision. Are those the voices of God, or are they narrative strategies to construct a figure that adapts to each audience?
Spinoza made it clear. If the Bible were a direct revelation, it would not have multiple versions of the same events. It would not have awkward silences, like the lost years of Jesus, nor suspicious omissions like the lack of verifiable historical details.
I wouldn’t have accounts of the same event told in different ways. I wouldn’t have such marked ideological agendas. And yet, all of that is there in plain sight.
The problem is that most people don’t see it because they’ve been taught not to look, not to ask, to accept. And here comes one of Spinoza’s strongest blows: true religion, he said, does not need sacred books, it does not need intermediaries, it does not need empty rituals or irrational laws. True religion is reason, it is the honest search for truth, it is freedom of thought.
Everything else is organized superstition, and the more organized, the more dangerous. Because superstition, when mixed with political power, becomes tyranny. The second proof, then, is not only that the Bible has errors, but that it was constructed as an apparatus of power, that its authors were ordinary men with political and social motivations, that its laws reflect the interests of a ruling class, that its prophets were domesticated, that its stories were adapted, that its messages were filtered, and that everything we have been told about its divine origin is actually part of a machine designed to prevent questioning.
Nothing to keep the power of religion intact. Spinoza did not hate religion, but he wanted it to be free, rational, ethical, not based on absurd dogmas, manipulated stories, or corrupt institutions. I wanted a spirituality without chains, without golden temples, without intermediary priests.
I wanted each person to think for themselves, to dare to read, to interpret, to doubt. And that is why they excommunicated him, that is why they called him a heretic, not because he lied, but because he spoke the truth too clearly. In the next part, we will enter into the third and final test, the most radical, the most philosophical, but also the most revealing.
Because if the contradictions expose the Bible as a human text and if its structure reveals a power project, then the final piece is understanding why, despite all that, so many people continue to believe. Spinoza not only answers that question, he turns it into a mirror, a mirror in which every believer and every skeptic will have to look at themselves without excuses, without escape. Part three.
Spinoza’s third test is the most uncomfortable. Not because it’s the most aggressive, but because it leaves no escape. It is the one that disarms even those who have already accepted that the Bible has contradictions and that it was written for human purposes.
Because up to that point, many might say, “Yes, but there’s still something divine behind it.” Oh, God manifested Himself through imperfection. This third test begins at that last refuge.
What Spinoza essentially says is this. If something contradicts reason, then it cannot come from God. And since the Bible is full of things that contradict reason and the laws of nature, it cannot be from God.
That simple, that lethal. Spinoza did not need archaeological evidence; he did not need to find hidden manuscripts or carry out excavations. He simply applied pure logic.
If there is a God, he said, then that God is rational. He cannot act against the laws he himself has established. He cannot violate his own creation.
And if nature is constant, if the universe operates under unbreakable laws, then anything you claim to suspend those laws as a miracle cannot be the work of that rational God. Moreover, it doesn’t even make sense for God to intervene in his own system as if he had done something wrong from the beginning. Spinoza rejects miracles, but not out of whim or lack of faith.
He rejects them because they violate the fundamental principle of universal coherence. A miracle in the biblical sense is an interruption of natural laws. Something that shouldn’t happen, but happens because God decides it should.
There are thousands of examples: the sea parting for Moses, the sun standing still in the sky so Joshua can win a battle, a burning bush that is not consumed, water turning into wine, the dead returning to life. All of that, according to Spinoza, does not prove the existence of God. On the contrary, it proves that those who wrote those texts didn’t understand how the universe works.
And here comes a subtle but relentless blow. If we accept miracles as real, then we are saying that God acts capriciously, like a magician who breaks his own rules. But if God is perfect, then he doesn’t need to correct his creation, he doesn’t need to intervene.
A perfect universe doesn’t require adjustments. Natural laws don’t contradict each other. Rain falls because of gravity, not because someone prays.
Fire burns because there is combustion, not because someone commands it. And if we believe in a God who acts outside of that order, then we are believing in magic, not in divinity. Spinoza says that what is truly divine is not the inexplicable, but the constant, the universal, that which can be understood by reason.
Because if God manifests himself, he will do so through what is common to all human beings: reason, not through private visions, voices in the head, apparitions that only one person sees. For Spinoza, those revelations are either illusions or manipulations. Because if only one person sees God, if only one person hears his voice, then there is no way to distinguish whether that was truly a revelation or simply a hallucination, a lie, a delusion.
Reason, on the other hand, is universal. If two people reason correctly, they will arrive at the same conclusion, without the need for miracles. God, says Spinoza, does not write books, does not send angels, does not appear in bushes; he reveals himself in the perfect order of nature, in the harmony of physical laws, in the implacable logic of mathematics.
And that is why any text that contradicts reason cannot be considered divine revelation. It may be literature, it may be myth, it may be symbol, but not objective truth. This breaks the backbone of all religions that base their authority on supernatural experiences.
Spinoza does not deny that people feel things, he does not deny that they have visions, dreams, ecstasies. What he denies is that this is proof of something beyond their own minds. Because these experiences are not shareable, they are not verifiable, they are not universal, and therefore, they cannot be the basis of any truth.
He also rejects the idea that faith is above reason. For him, true faith does not contradict reason. Faith is trust in the order of the universe, it is respect for intelligence.
It is not accepting absurd things simply because a text says so. If a book claims that a virgin became pregnant without sexual contact, or that someone walked on water, or that a body resurrected after three days, then that book should be read with skepticism, because nature doesn’t work that way. And if we believe that God made an exception, we are saying that the universe is imperfect.
And that contradicts the idea of a perfect God. Here, Spinoza not only dismantles the Bible, but also the entire idea of religion based on the supernatural. He says that true knowledge of God does not come from reading ancient texts or repeating rituals.
It comes from understanding the world as it is, from studying, from thinking, from observing reality honestly. Because nature is God. God is not a bearded man in the sky.
He is not a character who intervenes from time to time. He is the totality of being. He is substance, infinite.
It is the cause of all that exists, and anything that contradicts it, anything that breaks that coherence, is false. It is superstition. Spinoza says that human beings are afraid.
Afraid of what they don’t understand, afraid of suffering, afraid of death. And to calm that fear, they invent gods, rituals, rules, scriptures. But if that fear disappears, if human beings learn to accept reality as it is, without illusions, without white lies, then they no longer need miracles, they no longer need private revelations, they only need reason, ethics, and freedom.
The third proof is the most philosophical because it doesn’t attack the content of the Bible, but its very possibility. Spinoza says: “If God exists, he doesn’t need to say anything that contradicts reason. And since the Bible contradicts reason, then it cannot come from God.”
No matter how many millions believe in it, no matter how many churches repeat it, truth is decided not by majority vote, it is decided by evidence. And the evidence is on the side of reason. So why do so many people continue to believe?
Because it is easier to believe than to think. Because it is more comfortable to accept a miraculous story than to confront the void. Because it is more comforting to imagine a divine plan than to accept that we are in a universe that does not revolve around us.
But Spinoza did not want comfort, he wanted truth, even if it hurts, even if it makes him uncomfortable, even if it destroys everything we have inherited. And in the end, that is the hardest test. If you are willing to see the world without miracles, without divine voices, without eternal punishments and still find beauty, meaning, ethics, then you will have understood Spinoza and you will have understood why the Bible, read honestly, is not the word of God, it is the word of fearful, powerful, sometimes wise, sometimes cruel men, but always human.
In the next part, we’ll delve into even more uncomfortable territory, not the Bible as a text, nor God as a concept, but Jesus as a central figure. We’re going to enter into the big question: Did he really exist, or was he also part of the myth, the symbol, the narrative constructed to give meaning to what couldn’t be understood? Spinoza doesn’t say it directly, but his ideas point to something many prefer not to confront, and we’re going to look at it without fear.
Part four. The figure of Jesus is repeated millions of times a day in churches, prayers, songs, and speeches. He’s represented as a real, historical man who lived in a specific region, at a specific time, surrounded by disciples, witnesses, and enemies.
However, when one sets aside faith and begins to look for solid, historical, verifiable data, what one finds is a disturbing silence, a void, an echo without a source. And it’s in this emptiness that the uncomfortable question arises. What if Jesus didn’t exist as a historical figure, and what we know of him is actually a literary, symbolic, religious construction, a myth?
Spinoza didn’t explicitly claim that Jesus was a fictional character, but his ideas push us directly toward that possibility. Because by dismantling the Bible as revelation, by denying miracles, by rejecting the idea of a personal God acting in the world, everything that remains of the Christian narrative begins to be seen in a different light. And that light reveals inconsistencies, absences, silences too great to ignore.
Consider this: If Jesus was a real, historical figure who performed miracles, drew crowds, and challenged religious and Roman power, why is there not a single contemporary source that mentions him? No eyewitness letter, no official document, no inscription, nothing written during his lifetime. All the Gospels were written several decades after his supposed death by anonymous authors who never met him directly.
And not only that, the accounts contradict each other, correct one another, and adapt the story to theological needs rather than historical facts. Take the case of the census of Quirinius, which is mentioned in the Gospel of Luke as the reason why Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem, the place where Jesus was supposedly born, to fulfill Micah’s prophecy. But that census took place in 6 AD, and Herod, the king under whose reign Jesus is said to have been born, died in 4 BC.
In other words, the account mixes two historical moments that did not occur at the same time: error, ignorance, or a narrative construction to fit ancient prophecies. Now, if Jesus wrote nothing, if he left no text in his own hand, if nothing was recorded by those who knew him directly, what are we left with? Four Gospels written by believers with clearly religious intentions that mix history, myth, and theology, without distinguishing the boundaries.
And furthermore, each Gospel presents a different Jesus. In Mark, he is more human, more tragic, even desperate. In John, he is almost a walking god, aware of everything from the beginning.
These are not biographical accounts; they are theological constructions. Spinoza knew that narratives are not valid on their own. He knew that historical truth is constructed with independent sources, with cross-referenced testimonies, with tangible evidence.
And when that doesn’t exist, what remains is a mythical narrative. Jesus, as we know him today, seems more like a symbolic than a historical figure, a projection of what the Christian community wanted: a savior, a martyr, a teacher. But the image was adjusted so many times, with so many interests at play, that it’s impossible to know if there was a real human being behind the myth.
Let’s look at another key point. If Jesus was so influential, why do n’t contemporary historians mention him? Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who lived during the same period and wrote extensively about religious movements and important Jewish figures, never mentions him.
Pliny the Elder, Seneca, Justus of Tiberias—they all wrote about Palestine during that time, but they don’t make a single mention of a man named Jesus who performed miracles or preached to crowds. What we do find are later mentions, such as those by Tacitus and Josephus, but even these have been questioned by scholars themselves due to Christian interpolations added centuries later. And here comes another problem that Spinoza already intuited.
When a narrative is full of symbolic, miraculous, allegorical elements, and cannot be historically verified, we must treat it as religious literature, not as biography. Jesus walks on water, multiplies loaves, raises the dead, turns water into wine, is transfigured on a mountain. All of that belongs to the language of myth.
There is no historical figure who accumulates so many supernatural acts without leaving a documentary trace. It is as if an ideal figure had been constructed, a kind of moral and spiritual archetype to which stories were added to make it the central axis of a new religion. Spinoza did not need to dismantle Jesus directly; he did so indirectly by stating that reason must be our primary guide.
And if we apply reason to historical analysis, then the figure of Jesus falters. Not because there weren’t Jewish preachers in the first century—there were many, some were even crucified by the Romans—but none left an immediate impact or conclusive proof of their existence. Christianity didn’t grow around a historical figure, but around a powerful narrative.
A narrative that offered salvation, hope, and meaning amidst the chaos of the Roman Empire. And like any good story, it needed a hero, a martyr, a redeemer. And there appeared Jesus, or rather the Christ, the anointed one, the awaited one, the one who fulfills the prophecies, the one who suffers and triumphs.
But the leap from Jewish preacher to incarnate son of God isn’t natural; it’s theological, constructed, developed through decades of reinterpretation. Paul, the true architect of Christianity, didn’t even know Jesus. He never saw him, never heard his words in person.
Everything he says about him he received through revelation. How can an entire religion be built on private visions? How can one claim that someone existed historically if everything we know about him comes from believers who never met him?
Spinoza didn’t attack Jesus. What he did was take him down from the altar of idolatry and return him to the realm of humanity. And in doing so, he opened the door for us to ask ourselves if poetry has been confused with history, necessity with reality, symbol with fact.
Because even if Jesus existed, what has been said about him has turned him into something else. It has transformed him into a myth. A myth that served to unify, to control, to save, yes, but also to indoctrinate, to impose, to exclude.
Jesus as a myth is no less powerful. Quite the contrary. A myth doesn’t need proof; it only needs to be believed.
And when something is believed strongly enough, it can shape empires. Spinoza wanted something else. He wanted us to stop believing out of necessity, to start thinking, to dare to let go of even our deepest beliefs if they weren’t supported by reason.
And this is where everything converges. If the Bible isn’t the word of God, if its miracles can’t be real, and if the central figure of that narrative is more myth than history, then what is left for us? We are left with the possibility of starting again, of building an ethic without superstition, of seeking meaning without the need for dogma, of looking to Jesus, if He existed, not as God, but as just another man, perhaps wise, perhaps inspiring, but not supernatural.
And if he didn’t exist, if he was a collective creation, a symbol of human suffering, of the yearning for justice, of the power of forgiveness, then he also has value, but not as absolute truth, rather as a reflection of what human beings can imagine when they need hope. In the next part, we’ll delve deeper into the consequences of all this. What happens when the myth collapses?
What remains when God, the Bible, and Jesus are called into question? Is there anything we can build upon these ruins? Spinoza believed so, that the destruction of dogma is not the end, but the beginning.
And that’s where we’ll go to build this new structure. But first, we must stare into the abyss without blinking. Part five.
Once the myth begins to crumble, an even more difficult question arises than all the previous ones. What now? Because when you can no longer trust the text, when miracles lose their meaning, when the figure of Jesus becomes symbolic and not historical, a void is created.
It’s not just theological, it’s existential. For millions of people, their entire sense of identity, morality, and purpose is anchored to a story they believe to be unquestionable. What happens when that story is revealed as myth?
What remains when the veil falls? Spinoza knew this. He knew that destruction isn’t enough; one must also offer a way out.
But before that, one must understand how deeply religion anchors the human mind. Because it’s not just about beliefs; it’s about structures, a way of life. Organized religion, especially Judeo-Christianity, is not just a collection of texts.
It’s an architecture of thought, a way of interpreting the world, death, good, evil, and suffering. And when you dismantle that foundation, everything that rested upon it begins to crumble: guilt, fear, hope, identity, even the idea of the sacred. Spinoza understood that this collapse could be liberating, but also terrifying.
Not everyone is ready to live without certainties imposed. There are those who need an invisible paternal figure to tell them what is right, what is wrong, how to act, how to think. That is why, even though the rational evidence against the Bible and its dogmas is overwhelming, many people will continue to believe, not out of ignorance, but out of emotional need.
Because letting go of a belief is not just changing your mind, it is ceasing to be who you have been your whole life. The real problem then is not whether Jesus existed or not, whether the Bible has errors or not. The real problem is how the myth has become a structure of power, a cultural weapon, a mandatory mold.
Because what begins as a story of faith ends up being imposed as a universal morality. And here lies one of the most dangerous effects. When a story becomes dogma, it ceases to be a narrative and is transformed into a commandment, a law, an obligation.
And for Spinoza, that is the beginning of mental slavery. Think about it. Millions of people have been educated not to question, to obey, to repeat.
From childhood, they are told that there is a God who watches over them, that God sees everything and judges everything, that there is a heaven for the good and an eternal hell for those who doubt. Not only for those who kill or steal, but also for those who think differently. That level of control is absolute.
You don’t need a police force if your conscience is trained by fear. You don’t need physical punishment if you already live with guilt. Organized religion then becomes the most efficient control mechanism that has ever existed.
A prison without bars where the guard is your own mind. Spinoza denounced this with a clarity that cost him expulsion, intellectual exile, the hatred of his time, but he didn’t stop because he knew there is something more serious than living under a myth. Living believing that this myth cannot be touched, that you cannot think outside of it, that doubting is treason.
And if the true treason is never doubting, the consequence of continuing to believe in fictions as if they were facts is that the entire social system is distorted, education is affected, human rights are traded for dogma, and science is confronted by religious prejudice. Women see their freedoms curtailed because an ancient text says they must obey men. Sexual diversity is condemned because an ambiguous passage calls it an abomination.
All this doesn’t happen because God said so, but because the myth became the norm. And when a fiction governs the behavior of millions, the harm is real, even if the story itself isn’t. Spinoza was one of the first to say it bluntly.
Religion must be separated from power, not only political power, but also moral power. It must cease to be the obligatory basis of ethics. Because a morality based on eternal rewards and punishments is not ethics; it is obedience born of fear.
And fear does not produce free human beings; it produces submissive slaves, incapable of thinking for themselves. And without thought, there is no humanity, only herds. This is where Spinoza begins to build something new.
His proposal was not to replace one myth with another. He didn’t invent a new faith, nor did he write a new gospel. What he did was something much more radical.
He proposed an ethics based on reason, a spirituality without superstitions, a sense of life that didn’t need miracles, divine punishment, or prophecies, a way of living guided by understanding, genuine compassion, and intellectual freedom. Because when a person acts rightly, not out of fear of hell, but because they understand that the action is good in itself, that’s where true morality begins. This aspect of Spinoza’s thought has been ignored or softened for centuries because it’s dangerous for any power that feeds on blind faith.
What happens when a human being no longer needs a priest, a pastor, a rabbi, or a sacred text to know how to live? Power becomes decentralized, authority breaks down, churches lose their control, and historically, this has been seen as a threat. But Spinoza wasn’t proposing chaos; he was proposing true order, the order of the free mind.
A mind that questions, that makes mistakes, yes, but that learns; that doesn’t need miracles, but understanding; that doesn’t need imposed truths, but its own discoveries. Because a thoughtful life is more difficult, but it is also more authentic. And that is what organized religion cannot offer.
Authenticity only offers repetition. So, what is the danger of continuing to believe that Jesus was a God, that the Bible is the divine word, that miracles are real? The danger is that one comes to believe that everything else, everything different, is wrong, that only one path is true, that whoever does not believe deserves hell, that whoever doubts deserves condemnation.
And so love becomes exclusion. Hope becomes a threat, faith becomes tyranny. Spinoza saw this clearly.
That is why his proposal was not to destroy for revenge, but for liberation. He did not want humanity to be left empty. He wanted it to be filled with something better, something of its own, not inherited, not imposed.
He wanted each person to be able to look at the world without fear, without intermediaries, without guilt, with only reason and experience as guides. And that message is more radical than any miracle. In the next part, we will address what comes after the collapse: the new spirituality without personal gods, the religion of freedom, and how philosophy can replace myth without losing the soul.
Because it’s not just about denying, it’s about rebuilding. And that is precisely what Spinoza left us as a legacy: a new beginning. But this time, without blinders.
Part six. After the collapse, after the relentless criticism, after dismantling the Bible, the miracles, the revelations, and the myth of Jesus, there is no void. On the contrary, what emerges is something new, clearer, cleaner, more powerful.
Because what Spinoza did was not only destroy, he rebuilt. And what he proposed as an alternative to traditional religion is, to this day, one of the most radical and beautiful ideas ever put forward. A spirituality without superstitions, an experience of the divine without churches, without sacred texts, without priests.
A God who bears no resemblance to the one taught by religions, but who is everywhere, in everything, in each thing, in every free thought. Spinoza was not an atheist, although many accused him of being one. He did not deny God.
What he did was redefine it. He broke with the idea of a personified God, a being who thinks, decides, punishes, and rewards. For him, it was childish, primitive, and too similar to human beings to be real.
God is not a king, he said. He has no emotions, he doesn’t love, he doesn’t hate, he doesn’t change. God is nature itself, he is the whole, he is the infinite substance that manifests itself in all things that exist.
And therein lies the key. Spinoza didn’t kill God; he brought him down from heaven and back into the world. This vision completely changes the meaning of spirituality.
It’s no longer about praying, obeying, or waiting for supernatural signs. It’s about understanding, about observing reality attentively, about living in harmony with natural laws. For Spinoza, to know reality is to know God.
To understand how the universe works, how causes and effects operate, how life is organized. It is a profoundly spiritual act, because the more you understand, the freer you are, and the freer you are, the closer you get to the divine. There are no miracles, no sacred mysteries, only clarity.
In this new framework, the Bible is no longer necessary, not because it is bad, but simply because it does not offer universal truth. It is a human work with literary, historical, and cultural value, but not a mandatory moral guide. True ethics, according to Spinoza, arises from reason; it is not imposed, but discovered.
And this ethics does not require threats of eternal punishment. It is enough to understand that actions have consequences, that good is what strengthens life and evil is what weakens it. A celestial judge is not needed.
Intelligence and empathy are needed. And here something fundamental occurs. Spinoza transforms freedom of thought into the highest spiritual act.
There is nothing more sacred than thinking for oneself. There is no deeper prayer than the contemplation of the universe as it is. There is no purer temple than a mind free from superstition.
This is not an empty spirituality; it is a mature spirituality, not childish, not dependent, not subjected. A spirituality that does not force you to kneel, but to stand up, to look straight ahead, to understand that there is no hidden plan or predetermined destiny. There are natural causes, there are physical realities, there are human relationships, and that is more than enough to live with meaning.
Spinoza also understood something that many religious people still ignore: that fear and hope cannot be the basis of a good life, because fear paralyzes and passive hope makes you wait instead of acting. Therefore, for him, true freedom consists of acting guided by reason, not by blind faith or the desire for reward. A free human being is not one who does what he wants, but one who understands why he wants it, one who knows his emotions, one who controls his passions, one who chooses not out of obligation, but out of understanding.
This rational ethic does not need a heaven, it does not need to imagine an afterlife to justify correct behavior here and now. It is enough to understand that we live in an interconnected system where everything affects everything, that we are not islands, but part of a larger whole, and for Spinoza that whole is God. Not a God who listens to you, who answers you, who gets angry or blesses you, but a God who is the universe itself, infinite, eternal, necessary, a totality without will, but not without order.
An order you can understand if you stop expecting miracles and dare to think. And what about the soul, life after death, the promise of paradise? Spinoza did not offer cheap consolation.
He said there is no proof that the soul survives after the body, but he did believe that there is a part of the soul, the rational part, that participates in the eternal to the extent that it unites with the knowledge of God, that is, of reality. Immortality is not a prize, it is a way of living here, now, with full awareness, with real freedom, with deep understanding. Those who live like this no longer need future promises; they live fully in the present.
Part seven. Now that everything has been said, when there is no myth left to defend or dogma left to respect, the inevitable reaction appears: rejection, outcry, denial. Because everything we have dismantled so far—the Bible as the word of God, Jesus as a divine historical figure, the need for religion as a moral structure—does not disintegrate without making a sound.
There are those who will listen to these ideas with fury, with contempt, even with fear. And it’s not because they are bad people; it’s because free thought, when it arrives, uproots what seemed eternal, what seemed sacred. And it is not easy for anyone to look at their own cultural, moral, or spiritual heritage and accept that perhaps it was built on illusions.
Spinoza experienced it firsthand. He was excommunicated, expelled, silenced. Not for committing a crime, not for lying, just for thinking, for writing ideas that shook the foundations of institutionalized religion.
Because telling the truth has a price, and the highest price is not external punishment, it is isolation, the loneliness felt by those who dare to see the world without filters, without amulets, without eternal promises, because what power fears is not error, it is doubt. Power can tolerate sin, it can forgive weakness, but it does not forgive the question, because a true question has the force of a bomb. It opens cracks, breaks down structures, shakes empires.
Why is it so upsetting to say that Jesus may not have existed? Why is it so uncomfortable to say that the Bible is full of errors and manipulations? Why is it considered offensive to doubt miracles, the immortal soul, or eternal punishment?
Because at its core, every structure based on faith needs silence, it needs not to think too much, to believe without questioning, to accept without reasoning. And when someone dares to break that pact of obedience, the system reacts violently because it knows that the truth doesn’t need temples, it only needs time, and if it is allowed to enter, it changes everything. The resistance to thinking is the greatest obstacle to freedom.
And it doesn’t just stem from ignorance, it stems from fear. Because thinking means assuming that no one is going to come and save you, that there is no secret plan for your life, that there is no judge in heaven who punishes the bad and rewards the good. Thinking means accepting that the universe does not revolve around you, that you can die without a transcendent destiny, that the meaning of your existence is not written in an ancient book, but depends on what you do with your time.
And that’s dizzying because it forces us to be responsible, totally responsible. But that same idea, which at first may seem unbearable, is also the most liberating. Because if you are not bound by any dogma, if you are not subject to any revealed truth, then you can build, you can create, you can truly think, you can live without fear, without guilt, without owing your life to a religious structure.
You can own your mind, and that, although the powerful deny it, is the most dangerous thing for them. A humanity that does not need to be herded like cattle. A humanity that thinks, that doubts, that decides.
Spinoza said it with brutal clarity. Political power has always needed religion to maintain itself, because religion organizes fear, structures it, and gives it form. Power needs people to be afraid of the afterlife so that they don’t rebel here.
He needs them to believe that suffering is part of a divine plan so that they will not question earthly injustices. They need people to see leaders as chosen, dogmas as unquestionable, and tradition as truth. And when someone comes along who dismantles all of that with arguments, not with hatred, not with weapons, but with thought, that someone becomes an enemy of the system.
That is why Spinoza was treated as a criminal of the spirit, because he not only said that the Bible was not the word of God, he said that governments have no right to impose beliefs, that freedom of thought should be above any religious institution, that each person should be free to seek their truth without fear, without threats. At the time, that was a silent revolution. It is still true today, because although centuries have passed, there are still millions who live bound by fear.
There are still children raised not to think, there are still banned books, censored ideas, and punished doubts. But there is also a new generation that is beginning to awaken, that no longer swallows things whole, that wants proof, arguments, clarity, that dares to look at the myth and say, “What if it wasn’t like that?” And that’s what truly changes the world.
Not a war, not a miracle; a question, a burning mind, a human being who decides to use his reason as a sword, not to wound, but to cut through the darkness. This view may seem cold to those who have been raised in the religion of miracles, mystery, sin, and redemption. But it is actually warmer than it seems because it liberates, because you don’t need mediators, because you don’t need to feel guilty for being human, you don’t need to deny your desires, your body, your intelligence, you don’t have to fear eternal punishment or wait for someone else’s salvation.
You can save yourself, not in the religious sense, but in the deepest sense. You can understand who you are, how you function, what you want, and act accordingly. That is what Spinoza called virtue.
Spinoza’s spirituality does not divide people into the chosen and the condemned. There is no special people, there is no true religion, there are no heretics; there are only human beings with more or less understanding. And the more you understand, the more love you feel.
Not a sentimental or mystical love, but a rational, necessary, absolute love for reality as it is. That intellectual love of God, as he called it, is the highest state a person can reach. It is the joy of being one with the universe, not dominating it, not fearing it, but understanding it.
And here we arrive at a radical conclusion. According to Spinoza, true religion does not need churches, hierarchies, tithes, rituals, or uniforms; it only needs free minds, thinking citizens, individuals who respect each other, and a society founded not on imposed faith, but on shared knowledge. This is not utopia; it is a real possibility if fear is abandoned and reason is embraced.
So, after everything we’ve seen, the big question is no longer whether Jesus was a myth, whether the Bible was manipulated, whether miracles are fake; we already know all that. The big question is, what are you going to do with your freedom? Are you going to continue obeying out of fear?
Are you going to keep waiting for someone to tell you what to think, what to believe, what to do? Or are you going to start looking at the world with your own eyes, with your own mind, with your own strength? Spinoza doesn’t promise you heaven; he promises you clarity.
And sometimes that hurts because thinking hurts, but it also liberates. And what lies on the other side of fear is not hell, it is the truth, the only thing worthy of being loved. In the next and final part, we’re going to close this journey by addressing the most common reaction to everything we’ve said.
Rejection, denial, attempts to silence. Why so much resistance to thinking freely? What does power gain from ignorance?
And what can a society achieve if, instead of kneeling, it begins to question? Get ready because the end is not a conclusion, it’s a beginning. Today, thanks to Spinoza and so many others who thought like him, we have a real option.
We can live without fear of hell. We can love without feeling like sinners. We can seek the truth without asking permission.
We can leave behind inherited guilt and build a morality based on respect, compassion, and intelligence. We don’t need religion to be good. We don’t need a God watching over us to act justly.
It is enough to understand that we are part of a whole, that our actions matter here, now, not for an eternal reward, but because they affect others and ourselves. And if someone still wants to believe, they can do so, but from freedom, not from imposition, not from punishment. Spinoza never forbade faith.
What he prohibited was mandatory dogma, because free faith, the one that is born from the thinking soul, can coexist with reason. But imposed faith, the kind demanded by submission, always ends in violence, inquisitions, wars, and exclusion. And we’ve already experienced that.
So, after all, was Jesus a myth? Maybe. But the truth is that the myth was used to build an empire of obedience.
Spinoza destroyed the Bible with three proofs. Without a doubt, it showed her for what she is. A human collection, contradictory, useful for its time, but not untouchable.
He left us with an alternative. Yes, an ethics without fear, a spirituality without superstitions, a freedom that does not depend on divine revelations, but on the power of thinking. And now the closure is not a conclusion, it’s a beginning.
Because if you’ve made it this far, if you’ve borne the weight of doubt, if you’ve endured the noise of collapse, then you’re ready. Ready to think for yourself, ready not to accept without understanding, ready to live without knees. Because thinking in the end is not a privilege, it’s an act of courage.
And history is always changed by those who dare to think. You don’t need a sacred book to have principles. You don’t need a prophet to act justly.
You don’t need to fear hell to do good. All you need to do is look at the world with your own eyes and think with your own mind. Spinoza taught us that the deepest freedom is not external, but internal.
It is the freedom to think without fear, to live without superstitions, to seek the truth, not because someone orders it, but because understanding is truly living. If the Bible falls apart, if Jesus is revealed as a myth, if miracles dissolve in the face of reason, you don’t lose anything essential. On the contrary, you free yourself.
You no longer walk on paths marked by others. You build yours with awareness, with responsibility, with intelligence. And that path, although more difficult, is also more human, more real, more dignified.
Free thinking is not an attack, it is an invitation. It does not destroy your faith, it transforms it, purifies it, elevates it, because only a faith that survives the fire of reason deserves to remain. And if in the end, after all, you still believe, let it be because you chose to believe, not because it was imposed on you.
That is the real revolution. Yeah.
