He has never claimed to be certain that God doesn’t exist. In fact, he’s stated quite explicitly that he is an agnostic. There’s a HUGE difference there, sir. In fact, agnosticism is pretty much the opposite of what you characterized his attitude as.

“many of Christianity’s fundamental stories and doctrines don’t actually exist within its pages-they were later inventions by people trying to make sense of a disconnected collection of texts.”

and this one:

“The Nicene Creed and the Trinity were constructs of the later church and are not found in the Bible.”

are absolutely correct. I’ve been frustrated by the depth of extrabiblical doctrine in commonly-taught Christianity, and Ehrman’s right to point it out.

I heard him debate N.T. Wright on the problem of evil a couple years back, and at the time he made the same claim about the divergent pictures of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. I think he’s off base here, if for no other reason than different people report different observations, even if they both observe an event. . .and in Luke’s case he did NOT observe; he probably interviewed a bunch of other primary sources (my guess is Mary and Peter) and compiled his work from their personal accounts.

But Ehrman is playing the same game my verbal-inspiration pastor plays, just on the other side. . .if it’s not all 100% accurate, you can’t trust any of it. For Ehrman that means it’s all hogwash; for my pastor it means I’m on thin ice if I don’t take it all as divinely dictated. They’re both guilty of the identical logical fallacy.

Plus, I noticed when he spoke, that Bart Ehrman is awfully indignant or angry at that God he’s convinced doesn’t exist…