The tragedy at Columbine High School in Colorado has spawned a new urban legend that seems destined to dwarf all of the others. Internet sites are now discussing daily the case of Cassie Bernall, a student who was killed during the shooting incident there. According to stories that circulated about Ms. Bernall after the massacre at Columbine High, one of the gunmen at the school put a gun to her head and asked her if she believed in God, and when she answered yes, the gunman killed her. The story spread quickly, especially on Christian internet sites, and almost overnight Ms. Bernall became a modern-day Christian martyr. The young lady's mother has since written a book She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall, which has become a popular seller.
After the story had spread, literally around the world, rumors began to circulate that Ms. Bernall may not have been the person who was asked if she believed in God. On Tuesday, September 28, 1999, the *Denver Post* ran a story in which Val Schnurr, an 18-year-old student who survived the tragedy, claimed that she was the one who had been asked by the gunman if she believed in God. According to Ms. Schnurr, a shotgun blast had struck her while she was hiding under a library table. Bleeding from nearly three dozen wounds she had received from the blast, Ms. Schnurr said that she then pled for her life, "Oh, my God, oh, my God, don't let me die." She said that one of the gunmen then asked her if she believed in God, and she said yes. While the gunman was reloading, she managed to crawl away, but a friend who had been hiding with her was killed along with Cassie Bernall and ten others.
Investigators have since acknowledged that there is doubt about who the student was who said yes when asked if she believed in God. "We have conflicting witness statements from several kids who were in the library," Sheriff's spokesman Steve Davis said, "but this is not something we're out to prove or disprove. It's not really a part of the investigation we're doing." He said that determining who the real person was in this incident is not a "priority for investigators."
Val Schnurr is now attending college, and she has said that she has no way of knowing if a gunman asked Cassie Bernall the same question. "I don't want to be famous or deemed anything," she said. "I said I believed in God out of respect for myself and respect for God. That's it."
This article is by no means an attempt to minimize the tragedy of what happened to Cassie Bernall or the other students at Columbine High School. It was a tragedy that brought inexpressible grief to the families of the victims, but this was a tragedy that just happened to produce a story that relates directly to the issues that are addressed in The Skeptical Review. The tragedy at Columbine High School happened just a few months ago, and within hours reporters from news media all over the world were on the scene. Evidence has been examined by professional investigators and witnesses who were on the inside have been questioned and requestioned, but it has apparently been impossible to determine with certitude exactly what happened. In particular, the investigation has not been able to determine if a gunman asked a student if she believed in God and if the incident did occur, who the student was, yet despite the conflicting evidence, the story of a modern-day martyr continues to circulate as if it were unquestionably true.
The connection between Cassie and Jesus should now be obvious. In what is presently called the "information age," we can't even determine the facts about an incident that happened in our midst just a few months ago, and the facts in that case will probably never be known, yet most people in our society would probably say that they believe everything that the New Testament says about a man named Jesus, who lived almost two thousand years ago when there were no newspapers, radio or TV stations, book publishers, public libraries, or national archives to record the events of the time. Everything claimed about Cassie Bernall could have easily happened. None of it involved the supernatural. A gunman could easily have shoved a gun in her face and asked her if she believed in God, and she could easily have said yes, but some are now recognizing that this may not have happened.
Jesus, on the other hand, allegedly spent much of his time involved in the supernatural. His life even began supernaturally when he was born of a virgin--according to the only record of his life--and from then on it was one supernatural event after the other. He changed water into wine, he walked on water, he healed the blind and the lame, he fed multitudes of people with just scraps of food, he calmed storms, he raised the dead and was finally resurrected from the dead himself. No news reporters were present to record any of these events, and no professional investigators were on the scene to question witnesses, yet it is all supposed to be true in every detail, and relatively few people today question the truth of these claims.
In an age where urban legends have
become commonplace, we should know better than this. We should
understand that if we cannot determine with reasonable certitude the
facts about events that happened right in our midst after they have
been recorded and investigated by professionals using methods that
simply didn't exist in ancient times, and if we personally witness the
embellishment and romanticizing of events that happen in our time, then
we should realize that it was highly probable that such embellishment
and exaggeration occurred in ancient times when people like Abraham,
Moses, David, and Jesus presumably walked the earth. The person who
says that he just knows that everything the Bible says about
these characters is the unembellished truth is someone whose sense of
critical thinking has been hopelessly impaired by religious
indoctrination.
