Holland’s final chapters explore the paradox that, in the west at least, we live in a post-Christian world but one that is so permeated by the ideas and principles that he traces over the course of his history of Christianity that we are like fish swimming in the water of Christian thinking – so used to it that we do not notice it is there. Objecting to Holland noting that Christianity, uniquely, gave us the idea of a God who was “closer to the weak than to the mighty, to the poor than to the rich” Carrier declares (citing himself, yet again) “humiliated, humbled, crippled, castrated, crucified, and defiled gods and heroes already abounded in paganism”.