2301-2350 | 4999 Reasons Christianity is False

(2301) Income versus religious group

The following lists the average income of followers of various religious groups. A general negative correlation exists between income level and the more extreme sects or denominations.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Income_Ranking_by_Religious_Group_-_2000.png

It could be inferred from this data that more fervent forms of religion (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentecostals, and Assemblies of God) appeal more to people of lower economic status because frustration with their current situation makes for a more intense desire for a better afterlife. Whereas, the more moderate forms of religion (Jewish, Unitarian, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Methodist) tend to be populated more with middle or upper income classes.

This correlation has exceptions (Church of God, Evangelical-Again) but it generally holds. What it suggests is that religions such as Christianity that offer the promise of an opulent afterlife are preying on people’s emotions, delivering its most zealous manifestations to those who are under that greatest economic stress. But considering a 75-year lifespan versus eternity, this difference shouldn’t exist. If truly believed, a poor and a rich person should be equally enthralled with the hope for heaven and therefore be just as zealous in their mode of worship.

(2302) Growth of false religions

The following chart is evidence that there is no religion that is true. That is, if one religion was true, it should be growing at the expense of the false ones. Instead, what is observed, all of the major religions experienced significant growth over the past century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_religion#Data_collection

World religious beliefs / Non-beliefs by adherents, 1910–2010
Religion / Irreligion	1910		2010		Rate*
Religion / Irreligion	Adherents	%	Adherents	%	1910–2010	2000–2010
Christianity	611,810,000	34.8	2,260,440,000	32.8	1.32	1.31
Islam	221,749,000	12.6	1,553,773,000	22.5	1.97	1.86
Hinduism	223,383,000	12.7	948,575,000	13.8	1.46	1.41
Agnosticism	3,369,000	0.2	676,944,000	9.8	5.45	0.32
Chinese folk religion	390,504,000	22.2	436,258,000	6.3	0.11	0.16
Buddhism	138,064,000	7.9	494,881,000	7.2	1.28	0.99
Ethnoreligion	135,074,000	7.7	242,516,000	3.5	0.59	1.06
Atheism	243,000	0.0	136,652,000	2.0	6.54	0.05
New religion	6,865,000	0.4	63,004,000	0.9	2.24	0.29
Sikhism	3,232,000	0.2	23,927,000	0.3	2.02	1.54
Judaism	13,193,000	0.8	17,064,000	0.2	0.11	1.02
Spiritualism	324,000	0.0	13,700,000	0.2	3.82	0.94
Daoism	437,000	0.0	8,429,000	0.1	3.00	1.73
Bahá’í Faith	225,000	0.0	7,306,000	0.1	3.54	1.72
Confucianism	760,000	0.0	6,449,000	0.1	2.16	0.36
Jainism	1,446,000	0.1	5,316,000	0.1	1.31	1.53
Shinto	7,613,000	0.4	2,761,000	0.0	−1.01	0.09
Zoroastrianism	98,000	0.0	192,000	0.0	0.51	0.74
Total Population:	1,758,412,000	100.0	6,895,889,000	100.0	1.38	1.20
*Rate = average annual growth rate, percent per year indicated Source: Todd M. Johnson and Brian J. Grim^[300]

An analogy would be to consider the following thought experiment. A magician comes onto the scene who can perform real magic. He doesn’t need smoke, mirrors, or false facades. He can simply perform magic out of thin air without any semblance of subterfuge. What would happen over time? The fake magicians would soon be seen to be pedestrian in comparison and they would fall by the wayside. Only the real magician would achieve lasting success- peoples’ view of magic would change such that only his show would be seen as being entertaining. The same is true of religions- only the one supported by a supernatural being would be viewed as being worth following.

(2303) The Noah plot hole

Although the Book of Genesis is obviously pure fiction, it still should make some sense in the real world. In the first chapter God made animals and two humans to begin his experiment of life on this planet. In Chapter 6, God becomes upset because everything is going wrong and decides to start over by unleashing a worldwide flood to murder all animals and humans except Noah and his family and a pair or seven of each kind of animal. There are two ways God could have accomplished his goal more humanely and more efficiently.

First, instead of over-burdening Noah with the task of gathering animals onto the boat and having to care for them for nearly one year, God could have simply had Noah and his family by themselves ride out the flood, and then, once the waters receded, simply do what he did initially- make all of the animals again out of thin air. This would have taken care of the problem of getting the kangaroos back to Australia, for example.

Second, and MUCH MORE HUMANELY, since the animals were NOT the problem, God could have just killed all humans except Noah and his family. No need for a flood, no need to kill animals, no need to swamp the vegetation, and no need to subject humans and animals to the awful anguish of drowning. This would have achieved the same goal that God had in mind at a fraction of the cost.

But Bible fiction is not geared for logic or efficiency. It is designed to create a pageantry of spectacularly vivid scenes to enthrall the masses. And, in so doing, it has succeeded in deceiving a majority of Christians into believing that it represents true history. As such, believers in the Flood should contemplate why the two scenarios listed above were not used by God, and especially why his chosen method was the cruelest option that he could have chosen.

(2304) Modern-day pseudepigraphy

A recently published book purportedly co-authored by retired Pope Benedict XVI has been revealed to not contain any of the pope’s writings. The similar fraudulent practice of attributing writings to famous people (pseudepigraphy) has continued to plague the authenticity of the New Testament, which is replete with such forgeries. The following was taken from:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-not-just-benedict-christian-history-is-full-of-forgeries?ref=scroll

This past week the Catholic Church has been abuzz with the announcement of the publication of a new book—From the Depths of Our Hearts—co-authored by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea. The book made a splash not just because Benedict, one of the most theologically and intellectually gifted Popes of the modern era, had published a book, but also because of its subject matter: clerical celibacy. In the book, Benedict and Sarah launch an impassioned defense of priestly celibacy. The timing is suggestive given that Pope Francis (the actual Pope, you’ll remember) has recently proposed that some married men be allowed to join the priesthood. The release of the book smacked of division and disagreement in the upper echelons of the Catholic Church. So much for the mutual respect of Netflix’s The Two Popes.

The intrigue only deepened when it emerged that Benedict, who by all reports is growing increasingly frail, did not author the book at all. Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the retired pope’s personal secretary, told the press corps that Benedict had asked Cardinal Sarah to remove his name from the book and signature from the introduction and conclusion. According to Gänswein, “The emeritus pope in fact knew that the cardinal was preparing a book and had sent a brief text on the priesthood authorizing him to make whatever use he wanted of it. But he did not approve any project for a book under the two names, nor had he seen or authorized the cover.” Gänswein’s summary of the situation was that this was all a big misunderstanding. Cardinal Sarah, for his part, defended himself against accusations of deception.

This wouldn’t be the first time that someone has published something under the name of an important religious figure. In the ancient world people would regularly compose letters, divine revelations, or entire Gospels, in the name of more important and illustrious church leaders. The practice is often known as “pseudepigraphy”—literally, “false writing”—and there are even examples of this kind of thing in the Bible. Benedict wouldn’t be the first Pope to have someone use his name to publicize their ideas. 1 and 2 Peter, the New Testament letters attributed to the Apostle Peter, are believed by the majority of scholars to have been written by someone else entirely.

It’s not only Popes who are vulnerable to this sort of thing. Of the twenty-one letters included in the New Testament, as many as thirteen of them were written by someone other than the named author.

Well-known New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman has argued in his work Forgery and Counter-Forgery that literary deceit is a hallmark of the early Christian movement. Though this much is widely acknowledged, scholars are divided about the extent to which this kind of ancient forgery was acceptable in ancient world. The prevalence of pseudepigraphical writing among ancient Jews and Christians led many to argue that this kind of writing was a socially acceptable ancient literary convention. Those who wrote pseudepigrapha were trying to get attention and commandeered the names of those religious figures they admired and wanted to emulate. It was a kind of ancient fan fiction. In his work, however, Bart Ehrman gathered together all of the ancient Greek and Roman evidence to show that ancient people were aware and disproved of this kind of writing. Ehrman writes that Christians, and Christian scholars in particular, need to drop the vague term “pseudepigraphy” and call the phenomenon exactly what it is: lying.

It can be deduced that if someone can forge the name of a famous person as being the author of a book in modern times, it must have been much easier to do so in biblical times. The question for Christian followers is how did these forgeries escape the detection of prayerful Fourth Century ecclesiastical authorities as well as what should have been the veto power of God itself?

(2305) Shoehorning evolution into Christianity

The emergence of evolutionary theory was an imminent attack on Christian theology that reverberates to modern times. In the following it is expressed that an attempt to merge the two concepts into a coherent whole is wildly improbabable:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/ettjt2/what_is_your_best_argument_against_religion/

The oldest known single-celled fossils on Earth are 3.5 billion years old. Mammals first appeared about 200 million years ago. The last common ancestor for all modern apes (including humans) existed about 13 million years ago with anatomically modern man emerging within the last 300,000 years.

Another 298,000 years would pass before a small, local blood-cult would co-opt the culturally predominant deity of the region, itself an aggregate of the older patron gods that came before. 350 years later, an empirical government would declare that all people within a specific geo-political territory must believe in the same god or be exiled – at best. And now a billion people wake up early every Sunday morning to prepare, with giddy anticipation, for an ever-imminent, planet destroying apocalypse that they are helping to create – but hoping to avoid.

At what point in our evolution and by what mutation, mechanism or environmental pressure did we develop an immaterial and eternal “soul,” presumably excluded from all other living organisms that have ever existed?

Was it when now-extinct Homo erectus began cooking with fire 1,000,000 years ago or hunting with spears 500,000 years ago? Is it when now-extinct Neanderthal began making jewelry or burying their dead 100,000 years ago? Is it when we began expressing ourselves with art 60,000 years ago or music 40,000 years ago? Or maybe it was when we started making pottery 18,000 years ago, or when we began planting grain or building temples to long-forgotten pagan gods 10,000 years ago.

Some might even suggest that we finally started to emerge from the stone age when written language was introduced just 5,600 years ago. While others would suggest that identifying a “rational” human being in our era may be the hardest thing of all, especially when we consider the comment sections of many popular websites.

Or perhaps that unique “spark” of human consciousness that has us believing we are special enough to outlast the physical Universe may, in part, be due to a mutation of our mandible that would have weakened our jaw (compared to that of other primates) but increased the size of our cranium, allowing for a larger prefrontal cortex.

Our weakened bite encouraged us to cook our meat making it easier to digest, thus providing the energy required for powering bigger brains and triggering a feed-back loop from which human consciousness, as if on a dimmer-switch, emerged over time.

This culminated relatively recently with the ability to attach abstract symbols to ideas with enough permanence and detail (language) to effectively be transferred to, and improved upon, by subsequent generations.

After all this, it is proclaimed that all humanity is born in disgrace and deserving of eternal torture by way of an ancient curse. But believing in the significance of a vicarious blood sacrifice and conceding our lives to mysterious forces guarantees pain-free, conspicuously opulent immortality.

Personally, I would rather not be talked to that way.

If a cryptozoological creature – seemingly confabulated from a persistent mythology that is enforced through child indoctrination – actually exists, and it’s of the sort that promises an eternal torture of its own design for those of us not easily taken in by extraordinary claims, perhaps for the good of humanity, instead of worshiping it, we should be seeking to destroy it.

There are many Christians who accept the fact of biological evolution, though it seems likely that few of them have applied critical thinking to this type of ‘compromise’ theology. In actuality, creationists have a more consistent world view. Embarrassingly deluded, but more consistent overall. Merging evolution with Christianity is like applying the law of conservation of mass and energy to Harry Potter.

(2306) Jesus is responsible for OT abominations

Christians who claim that Jesus is God (or at least 1/3 of God) while at the same time dismissing the atrocities of the Old Testament (Oh, but that’s in the Old Testament and I’m a New Testament Christian) are playing tennis without the net. This is explained below:

https://www.richarddawkins.net/2015/04/christianity-isnt-a-relationship-its-still-a-religion/

While some Biblical passages seem to show Jesus as merely the son of god (John 10:36, John 11:4, etc.), others portray him as God incarnate (John 10:30, I Timothy 3:16, etc.). Most Christians, however, accept the doctrine of the Trinity–making Jesus both man and God. In that context, Jesus and Yahweh can be seen as different representations of the same omnipotent Creator, with the former becoming the latter’s physical form while on earth.

This means that, according to Christian doctrine and the vast majority of modern Christian denominations, Jesus is God. Jesus is the same jealous and angry God that abhorred homosexuals and condemned them as “an abomination.” He is the same deity that gave instructions on how to beat slaves and the same divine Creator that recommended the stoning of non-believers and disobedient children. With deities and with people, you have to accept the good along with the bad. After all, Jesus said he came not to abolish the Hebrew laws, but to fulfill them.

You either have to accept that Jesus is a separate being from the Father (not part of the Trinity) and that he is in opposition to the Father’s track record or you have to accept that the Old Testament, with its horrendous record of oppressing women, promoting slavery and rape, prescribing death for trivial offenses, etc., is also the work of Jesus. Most Christians overlook this point along with hundreds of other non sequiturs. Pick one or the other, you can’t have it both ways.

(2307) The real end times

The authors of the Bible had no concept of the mechanics of the universe, embarrassingly believing it to be of a young age and certain that it would end in a likewise short time by way of an apocalyptic drama orchestrated by God. Science has eclipsed this shortsighted view and has delivered a more realistic forecast of what lies ahead- a story that dwarfs the pedestrian view that percolated throughout biblical times:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

Estimated timeframe (years)	Claimant(s)	Description	Ref.
300,000	Peter Tuthill	In approximately 300,000 years, WR 104, a triple star, is expected to explode in a supernova. It has been suggested that it may produce a gamma ray burst that could pose a threat to life on Earth should its poles be aligned 12° or lower towards Earth. However, spectroscopic observations now strongly suggest that it is tilted at an angle of 30°-40° and so any gamma ray burst should not hit Earth.	^[194] ^[195]
500,000	Nick Bostrom	According to a journal article by Bostrom, an asteroid impacting with Earth would need to be about 1 km in diameter to render humans extinct. It is estimated that such an asteroid hits Earth about every 500,000 years.	^[196]
1 million	The Geological Society	Within the next 1 million years, Earth will likely have undergone a supervolcanic eruption large enough to erupt 3,200 km³ of magma, an event comparable to the Toba supereruption 75,000 years ago.	^[197]
100 million	Stephen A. Nelson	It is estimated that every 100 million years, Earth is hit by an asteroid about 10–15 km in diameter, comparable in size to the one that triggered the K–Pg extinction which killed non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago.	^[198]
500–600 million	Anne Minard	A gamma ray burst or a massive, hyperenergetic supernova, would have occurred within 6,500 light-years of Earth, close enough for its rays to affect Earth’s ozone layer and potentially trigger a mass extinction, assuming that the hypothesis of a previous such explosion triggering the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event is correct. However, the supernova would have to be precisely oriented relative to Earth to have any negative effect.	^[199]
600–800 million	Various	The Sun‘s increasing brightness causes the rate of weathering of the planet’s crust to increase. This will cause the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to drop dramatically, making photosynthesis in plants impossible. This will very likely cause a mega mass extinction of the Earth’s vegetation. The lack of oxygen-producing plants will cause oxygen in the atmosphere to disappear as well as the ozone layer, making animal life impossible. Even if photosynthesis were still possible, rising surface temperatures from the brighter sun will make complex life (plants and animals) impossible.	^[200] ^[201]
1–5 billion	Various	The estimated end of the Sun‘s current phase of development, after which it will swell into a red giant, either scorching or swallowing Earth, will occur around five billion years from now. However, as the Sun grows gradually hotter (over millions of years), Earth may become too hot for life as early as one billion years from now.	^[202] ^[203] ^[204]
1.6 billion	Various	It is estimated that all eukaryotic life will die out due to carbon dioxide starvation, with only prokaryotes remaining.	^[200]
7.59 billion	David Powell	The Earth and the Moon will most likely be destroyed by falling into the Sun, just before the Sun reaches the largest of its red giant phase when it will be 256 times larger than its current size. Before the final collision, the Moon will possibly spiral below Earth’s Roche limit, breaking into a ring of debris, most of which would fall to Earth’s surface.	^[205]
22 billion	Various	This is the end of the Universe in the Big Rip scenario, assuming a model of dark energy with w = −1.5. Observations of galaxy cluster speeds by the Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest that the true value of w is approximately −0.991, indicating the Big Rip would not occur.	^[206]
10¹⁰⁰	Various	The time estimated for the heat death of the universe, a hypothetical event in which the universe would diminish to a state of no thermodynamic free energy, becoming no longer able to sustain directed motion or life.	^[207]

What this signifies is that Christianity is just a flash in the pan, an insignificant footnote to the entire expanse of universal history. It did not exist for the first 13.8 billion years and will soon fade away and be gone for the next 22 billion and beyond. If we compare its reign to the distance between New York and Los Angeles (2444 miles), and assume that Christianity will last another 2000 years (4000 total), compared to the effective life span of the universe (approx. 36 billion years), Christian history would be represented as being 17 inches long.

(2308) Jesus the asshole

Although the ministry of Jesus, assuming he was an actual person, was documented by devoted followers who had every incentive to paint him in a positive light, the gospels nevertheless reveal a person who meets the definition of the vulgar term: asshole. Yes, even his fans could not contain the boorish elements of his personality. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/eup70a/can_someone_recall_any_examples_of_hatred/

He gloats over millions being horribly tortured for billions of years at his command (Mk. 9:43-49, Mt. 13:40-42, Mt. 13:49-50, Mt. 18:7-9, Mt. 24:51, Mt. 25:40-46, Mt. 5:22, Lk. 13:23-34, Jn. 15:6, etc.) and to whom he shall never ever show even the minutest mercy (Lk. 16:22-29); who calls racial minorities dogs (Mk. 7:24-29); who murders thousands of pigs (Mk. 5:12-13), and doesn’t even say he’s sorry to the town that in result just lost its livelihood and the better part of their food supply; a guy who is so horrifically disgusted by sex he tells people to cut off their own limbs, eyes, and genitals before even so much as thinking a sexual thought (Mt. 5:27-30, Mt. 18:7-9, Mk. 9:43-49, Mt. 19:10-12); who endorses the legal execution of anyone who divorces and remarries (Mt. 5:31-32, Mt. 19:3-10), even of children who talk back to their parents (Mk. 7:7-13), and, let’s be honest (Mt. 5:17-20), even gay men and raped women (and countless others; Jesus loved killing, and was in fact convicted of the very death penalty offense he himself supported—an irony lost on pretty much every Christian then or since); who not only never condemns slavery but actually endorses it as a moral model God should be admired for following (e.g. Mt. 18:23-35, Mt. 24:44-51, Mt. 25:14-30, Lk. 17:7-9, Lk. 12:36-48); who has scary paranoid rage issues even with his closest friends (Mt. 16:21-23, Mk. 8:31-33)—even to the point of committing mass public violence (yes, Jesus is literally a criminal; and not because he was falsely convicted, but because he actually committed felony assault: Jn. 2:13-16, Mk. 11:15–16, Mt. 21:12, Lk. 19:45); and who arrogantly commands you to abandon and hate your family in order to follow him instead (Lk. 14:26, Mt. 10:34-37, Mt. 8:21-22, Lk. 9:59-60)—literally boasting that he shall tear families apart (Lk. 12:51-53, Mk. 10:29-30, Mt. 19:29). He never unites or reconciles any family. Not a single intact family ever follows or befriends him. He even tells his own family to fuck off (Mk. 3:32-35)

Christians often promote the meme ‘What would Jesus do?’ as if we should attempt to emulate the Jesus character presented in the gospels. But, as seen above, this is not good advice. If their own obviously biased book reveals their hero to be morally inferior to the average contemporary adult, what does that say about what this man, if real, was really like?

(2309) Superficial Christianity

In the real world, being a Christian and still leading a normal, productive life requires that your faith remains at a superficial level. Going deeper and following its doctrines in a literate sense can lead to financial ruin, disease, and sometimes death, amid other problems. This fact underscores the likely reason- there is no supernatural force underpinning the dogma. The following was taken from

https://new.exchristian.net/2020/01/how-shallow-they-are.html#more

Superficial Christianity works best. The deeper you go – the more damaging and destructive it becomes – and the more mentally unstable a person gets. And the Bible implores us to go deeper and even chastises us if we are only superficial Christians.

Take the case of the parents that opt to withhold medical help from their child. The child dies. This happens frequently. In virtually all cases you can’t fault their theology. They took the bible at its word – doing what it implores. Living by faith – and it destroyed them as well as their offspring. Were they more theologically superficial and secretly took their kid to a doctor – they could still be going to church with their child – praising the Lord – laying guilt on non-believers and believers alike to have more faith.

Christianity’s endless mind loops are the problem. You do what it says. Things go wrong because you did what it said. The loop starts. Things get real complicated – real fast. More loops start. And if you don’t do what the bible says – because your intellect tells you something is wrong – the loops start in a different but equally destructive direction.

If you have deep personal struggles – Christianity just gave you a few more to deal with. The guilt, the sadness, the questioning, the confusion and especially your fellow believers – all work in concert to destroy you for Jesus’ sake.

To be a superficial Christian is to express your faith verbally but then act in all other ways as if you really don’t believe- just like non-believers, you take precautions, buy insurance, use all means of medical science, etc. In other words, there is no tangible difference between the life of a superficial Christian and a non-believer other than verbal statements of faith, prayers, and church attendance.

Where tangible differences are seen, that’s where the trouble begins. This is seen in children dying because of parents who believe in faith-healing, accidents where precautions aren’t taken (Jesus, take the wheel), bankruptcy (give us your money and you will prosper), legal problems (for example, refusing to pay taxes, some of which goes to Planned Parenthood), teenage motherhood (refusing abortion), and self-mutilation (as some gospel scriptures recommend).

So what this means is that where Christian belief causes a disinterested third-party observer to detect a difference in behavior, it is almost always in a detrimental direction. Superficial Christianity works best precisely because it sends people down the most efficient, safest, and scientifically sound path in life- the same path that non-believers take. And that wouldn’t be true if Christianity was true.

(2310) Hands versus wrists

In the Gospel of John, the resurrected Jesus is presented showing off the wounds in his hands as a means to validate that he is the same Jesus that they knew and who was crucified and therefore returned to life after being dead:

John 20: 24-27:

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

The problem is that nails were not hammered through hands during crucifixion- they were positioned on the wrists. The following was taken from:

https://ehrmanblog.org/how-were-people-crucified/

Still, I’ve been long fascinated by issues of anatomy, and so when Bill Bryson’s new book came out, I jumped all over it. All his books are amazing (and some hilarious: Walk in the Woods!). But this one is right up my alley: The Body: A Guide for Occupants. Fantastic.

And out of the blue I learned something. About crucifixion.

In talking about the skeleton and the various skeletal parts, Bryson, as is his wont, breaks into an anecdote. A lot about what modern folk know about the comparative strength of the hand and the wrist is because of some strange work done in the 1930s by a French physician named Pierre Barbet, who became obsessed with the question of how crucifixion worked.

As a scientist, he knew it would take some actual experiments to figure out how the process is done But he couldn’t very well crucify people to find out. So he did the next best thing. As a surgeon he had access to cadavers. And so he nailed a number of them in various ways to wooden crosses, to see what “worked.” If nails went through the hands, the weight of the body would be too much, and, in Bryson’s words “the hands would literally tear apart.” Doesn’t work. But if through the wrist? Yup that works fine.

So they must have done it that way. Jesus and many thousands of others were nailed through the wrists (unless they were tied, which is also widely considered to have been one of the options.)

Although this might seem like a trivial matter, and to some extent it is, it nevertheless suggests that the author of this gospel was unaware of the particulars of crucifixion practices and therefore somewhat detached from the history that he was allegedly documenting.

(2311) Chosen people/promised land

The ultimate clincher that lets us know that Judeo-Christianity is a human creation is the doctrine of a chosen people occupying a promised land. It is simply the quintessential formula of a tribe of humans creating a mythical religion to bolster their sense of superiority. The following was taken from:

http://www.debunking-christianity.com/2020/01/what-belongs-in-bible-and-what-doesnt.html#more

Perhaps the most dangerous ideas to emerge from overwrought theological imaginations are chosen people and promised land. Note, v. 34: “ I have surely seen the mistreatment of my people” and vv. 4 & 5, “this country in which you are now living,” God “promised to give it to [Abraham] as his possession and to his descendants after him…”

Choosing a people, promising a land. This is behavior expected of a tribal god, who demands allegiance of the tribe that he owns, and can pick out a land for them to possess, even at the cost of genocide for those who occupy the land, v. 45 “when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our ancestors.” These ideas, when transplanted into our modern world—and attributed to a supreme being (as opposed to a petty tribal deity)—are especially dangerous. No: We have no sound basis for believing that a universal god who runs the Cosmos favors one ethic group over others—or has picked out a scrap of land that he/she/it promised to that ethic group.

Western history has falsified the chosen people concept, especially as Christians have sought relentlessly to take revenge on the chosen people. The horrible history of the Crusades demonstrates the poison that promised land represents. And now we have the volatile situation represented by the claims that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam make on Jerusalem; this religious insanity could get us all killed.

The idea that God would choose a certain tribe of people and then enable them to slaughter others so that they could inherit a ‘promised’ land, that itself turns out to be one of the worst plots of land on the planet, is far beneath the dignity one would imagine an omnipotent deity to possess. Right there, if Christianity is true, we are dealing with a disgracefully demented god.

(2312) Religious fantasy literature

The Bible is filled with epic scenes filled with lurid and vivid imagery. This plays well in art and film, but it represents a serious departure from reality, or, in other words, how the world actually works. One of the best examples of this type of sensational fantasy literature is as follows:

http://www.debunking-christianity.com/2020/01/what-belongs-in-bible-and-what-doesnt.html#more

And at the end of Acts 7 we find the biggest tipoff that we’re dealing with religious fantasy literature (vv. 55-56):

“…filled with the Holy Spirit, Stephen gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’”

Acts 1 had reported Jesus ascending through the clouds, and now Stephen sees him sitting right there, next to God. So here we have a clutter of those motifs that have appealed to the pious for centuries.

But this is bad theology too. Priests and preacher love it because it looks so good in stained glass—and because the devout have become so emotionally invested in it. It’s easier to sell religion with all these special effects. Will there ever come a day when religious bureaucrats will encourage the faithful to give up on the occult (“filled with the holy spirit”), and put most of the Bible through the shredder?

It is difficult to believe that the author wrote this passage with the intent to convince his readers that this event happened exactly as depicted, but rather as a use of literary license to present a theological message. But what it tells a skeptical reader is that the Bible is not a history lesson, rather it is a road map aimed at guiding the faithful to the land of faith and myth.

(2313) The Gospel of James

The Gospel of James (AKA Proto-Gospel of James) is a good example of how the stories of Jesus evolved over time. This gospel was rejected for addition to the Bible because it was determined to be fraudulent, but it exhibits the exact same kind of embellishment of previously-written gospels as do the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John. These canonical gospels all take material from the original gospel (Mark) and add on additional details. The Gospel of James, written about 50 years after the Gospel of John, does exactly that. The following was taken from:

http://www.debunking-christianity.com/2020/02/an-analysis-of-my-recent-debate-on.html#more

One of the most significant points made by my opponent was based on an early Christian forgery called the Proto-Gospel of James (Dated 140-170 AD) which was falsely claimed to be written by James the brother of Jesus. This Gospel was rejected as authentic by the early church. It’s supposed to provide the objective evidence that Jesus was born of a virgin named Mary, my opponent said. I didn’t respond too well, but I did respond adequately. I had said such an account is irrelevant to the case for the virginity of Mary.

The Proto-Gospel of James follows a lot of what we read in the canonical gospel accounts, which is significant, since it repeats some of the fraudulent claims in the gospels, such as the world-wide census under Augustus Caesar, the sign of the Star, the slaughter of the innocents, and Bethlehem being the birthplace of Jesus, which my opening statement debunks. It also repeats the claim that Joseph was initially convinced by a dream that Mary was impregnated by God. *cough*

In the Proto-Gospel of James both Joseph and Mary participated in a barbaric trial by ordeal (based on passages like Numbers 5 quoted below). After drinking contaminated water they did not show evidence of “sin”, that is, adultery or fornication. Exonerated, right? No, not at all. Trial by ordeals do not work. They’re barbaric and unbecoming of a God to require it. One might as well use it on people convicted of a capital crime to determine if juries were correct to find them guilty. If they pass the ordeal then free them, despite what juries had just determined. Why not? If the one in the Proto-Gospel of James is good, so is the other.

In the Proto-Gospel of James there was a midwife for Mary named Salome. She testified Mary was still a virgin after she gave birth to Jesus, and by doing so, provided testimony that Mary was also perpetual virgin! Reminiscent of the tale of Doubting Thomas, who refused to believe Jesus was resurrected until he saw Jesus and touched his wounds, Salome refused to believe Mary was a virgin until she checked Mary’s hymen after the birth of Jesus! Upon testing Mary for an intact hymen her hand began to burn as if it caught on fire. Salome prays for forgiveness for questioning, and her hand was subsequently healed. [In the tale of Doubting Thomas we’re told to believe without seeing, whereas here we’re told God is displeased when we question–even though in this case it supposedly produced a good result!] You can read a summary of Salome’s bizarre story right here.

A late dated forgery containing an additional miracle such as Salome’s supposed healed hand doesn’t provide support for the original miracle claim of the virgin birth. It isn’t considered objective evidence nor is it considered good testimonial evidence. In fact, if it takes an additional miracle claim to support the original miracle claim of the virgin birth, then this compounds the problem of verification. That’s because Salome’s unevidenced miracle is not evidence for another unevidenced miracle of the virgin birth!

This forged gospel contains known historical falsehoods as it’s based on what we read in the gospels. It is late, untrustworthy and inauthentic. It doesn’t provide the needed objective evidence or testimonial evidence to support a miracle claim, as I mentioned in my opening statement. It is therefore irrelevant!

The Gospel of James also includes a previously undocumented story of the virginal birth of Jesus’ mother, Mary. What should be seen is that there is a steady progression of myth-making from Mark to Matthew to Luke to John and on to James. Each gospel author took what was previously documented and then added new material. The church authorities arbitrarily made a cutoff at John, essentially saying that it was the last authentic gospel, but they could just as well have said this about Luke (in which case John would have been labeled unauthentic) or, conversely, gone in the other direction and considered James to be authentic, in which case there would be five gospels. This is not the way history works. Detailed facts usually appear in the first accounts, while later ones tend to massage and present those details in a fuller context. The later ones don’t continue to add important critical details which could not have reasonably escaped inclusion in the original.

(2314) Jesus let others speak for him

If we assume that Jesus was a real person who was a rabbi with a cohort of followers, then we must criticize his ‘decision’ to let others, decades later, to document his teachings. None of the great philosophers of his time or later allowed other people to define their ideology. The following was taken from:

https://new.exchristian.net/2020/02/good-news-or-fake-news.html#more

Every December, clergy take center-stage. Every time they preach of Jesus, I’m reminded of a fact: any man who does not write down his own thoughts and words gives up control of what is attributed to him after he has died. In the case of Jesus, this seems to be puzzling, since, as a rabbi, he was literate, and had at least more than 20 years available in which to write before he began his mission. There are various gospels, all by unknown authors, written decades after he died. From them, early Church bishops chose merely four. We are presented with only what those men allege Jesus said and did. Some people claim their words are fake news of the times, and there is no way to deny this. What we’re told to take on faith means to believe and trust hearsay, handed down by those writers and their echoers. This tradition has created terrible problems for mankind; any faith of exclusion is unworkable on a universal scale.

Who was Jesus? Did he create a cult? Jewish, Greek and Roman historians at the time he allegedly lived, make no mention of him. This is enigmatic. Surely, a rumor of a man feeding five thousand men with only five loaves and two fishes, with leftovers, would have spread like wildfire throughout the empire. That alone would have gotten everyone’s attention!

Their words are fake news of the times Jesus must have been an enigma to all those gospel writers, both “authorized” and not. According to them, he said he had come, not to destroy, but to absolutely fulfill the laws of God written in the O.T., but then he preached, “you have heard it said…. but I say…” He comes as the Jewish messiah, but not the one Yahweh promised in scriptures, one bringing a kingdom of Israel on Earth. Instead, Jesus promises an otherworldly one. He tells them the meek will inherit the world, but – also says the world will be ending “soon.” He says, “blessed are the peacemakers,” yet he himself has come not to bring peace, but a sword, dividing family members against one another. He openly rebukes and rejects his mother, contrary to the commandment to honor her. These are not family values. Jesus asks, “Why do you call me good, when no one is good but God?”

According to these gospel writers, Jesus was criticized for choosing the company of “sinners.” He would have been found among those who fundamentalists consider flaunters of God’s will, such as LGBT individuals. He said in order to be forgiven, we must forgive as his father forgives us, yet insists his father will not forgive us unconditionally. He tells us to be “perfect” even as his father is perfect, but that’s impossible for humans. He preaches with parables, and when his chosen disciples can’t figure them out, he calls them dolts. He prays to his father for all who follow him, that “they be as one, even as we are one.” That prayer still hasn’t been answered; there are thousands of Christian sects.

It’s obvious when reading these four gospels: the writers did not proof-read what they wrote. Add to this the writings of a St. Paul, who prior to them, preached a savior Christ, and not a later, gospel Jesus, of miracles, teachings, or example, and we are left with even more enigmas.

Each December brings a birthday celebration of one who brought the message of a New Testament of mercy, compassion, and non-judgementalism to replace the Old. Unfortunately, it has been set aside by some who call themselves Christians, who still use the Old Testament guidelines of judgement and punishment to make their decisions. It’s an enigma that a virtuous man would allow others to speak for him, thus leaving a legacy of confusion, causing so many conflicts in human relationships, in his name. Personally, I prefer celebrating the birthday of Mr. Fred Rogers.

To be honest, we really don’t know what Jesus said. He might be miserably misrepresented in the gospels to an extent that if the truth were known, it would be a hard pill for Christians to swallow. People must understand that this is not the method a god would use to send a message to humankind. But this is the way we would expect humans to send a message to themselves.

(2315) Gospel authors/eyewitnesses disconnect

Many Christian apologists reluctantly agree that the authors of the gospels were probably not eyewitnesses to Jesus’ ministry, but otherwise assert that they were able to hear directly from the eyewitnesses to develop their narratives. That is, they did not have to rely on hearsay of what some people said they had heard from others. Based on the best historical information available this claim in unfounded. The following was taken from:

https://ehrmanblog.org/eyewitnesses-and-the-gospels-a-blast-from-the-past/

My view is this: when Mark was writing his Gospel (the first to be written) in say 65 or 70 CE, there probably were indeed people still living who were familiar with Jesus. At least I would assume that Mark himself thought so. Otherwise it is hard to explain why he included what is now Mark 9:1, where Jesus tells his disciples “Truly I tell you, some of you standing here will not taste death before they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power.” If everyone from the first generation had already died, then it seems implausible that Mark would leave a saying of Jesus indicating that the End would come before they all died. (I do not, by the way, think that Mark’s Jesus was referring to the day of Pentecost, to the coming of the church, or even to his own Transfiguration, as some interpreters claim, in order to get around the fact that Jesus declared that the end would come before all the disciples died when, in fact, it did not).

But onto my point. Even though there may well have been eyewitnesses alive some 35-40 years after Jesus’ death, there is no guarantee – or, I would argue, no reason to think – that any of them were consulted by the authors of the Gospels when writing their accounts. The eyewitnesses would have been Aramaic speaking peasants almost entirely from rural Galilee. Mark was a highly educated, Greek speaking Christian living in an urban area outside of Palestine (Rome?), who never traveled, probably, to Galilee. So the existence of eyewitnesses would not have much if any effect on his Gospel.

The same is true, even more so, with the later Gospels. Luke begins his Gospel by saying that eyewitnesses started passing along the oral traditions he had heard (Luke 1:1-4), but he never indicates that he had ever talked to one. He has simply heard stories that had been around from the days of the eyewitnesses. And if the standard dating of his Gospel – and Matthew’s – is correct, they were writing about 50 years or more after Jesus’ death. John’s Gospel was even later.

My sense is that most of the eyewitnesses (and who knows how many there were?! Hundreds? Probably not. Dozens?) had died before the Gospels were written; those that survived were carrying on their lives in rural Galilee or Jerusalem. And the Gospel writers, who never say they consulted any of them, probably never did consult with any of them. The Gospels are based on oral traditions that had been in circulation – and changed as a result – for decades before the Gospel writers had even heard them.

And as anyone knows who has been subject to oral traditions – this would include all of us – the stories told about a person can change absolutely overnight! It happens all the time. What happens, then, to stories in circulation for 40 or 50 years, in different countries, told in different languages, among people who never laid an eye on an eyewitness or on anyone else who had? My sense is that the stories get changed, often a lot; and many of the stories simply get made up. It’s just the way it happens And it can be shown to have happened with the Gospels, since the same story is often told in very different ways. Every historian will tell you: evidence matters!

The geographical and cultural separation between the gospel authors and the people who witnessed the alleged ministry of Jesus casts a long shadow of doubt on the accuracy of their writings. This, added to the fact that they were written at least 40 years after the fact, reduces the historical value of the gospels and places them squarely in the category of dubious speculation.

(2316) Reconstructing Jesus after the fact

If we assume Jesus was a real person, then it is likely that what the disciples thought of him before the crucifixion compared to how they came to see him after his alleged resurrection were two completely different things. Whereas Jesus, assumed for now to have been a mortal man, had only one concept of himself, and would likely have been baffled and dismayed at how he was ‘reconstructed’ after his death. The following was taken from:

https://ehrmanblog.org/the-radical-implications-of-the-resurrection/

The most important result of the disciples’ belief that God had raised Jesus from the dead was that it radically changed their understanding of what it meant to say Jesus was the messiah. As I have explained before that in my view, Jesus did believe he was the messiah (in a certain sense), and his followers believed it. Given everything we know about Jewish beliefs at the time, that almost certainly mean that they thought that he was (or would become) the king of the Jewish people. That’s certainly how the Roman governor Pontius Pilate took it. It was because Jesus made such a claim that Pilate ordered him crucified.

The crucifixion would have proved beyond any doubt — to anyone paying attention — that Jesus was not the messiah after all. Rather than overcoming the enemy to establish a new kingdom, he was squashed by the enemy, publicly humiliated and tortured to death. That was the opposite of what would happen with the messiah.

But then something equally dramatic happened. The disciples came to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. They started working out the implications of that belief for understanding Jesus, and it led, over a long series of reflections among a number of Jesus growing band of followers, to rather amazing conclusions. It in fact is the beginning of the idea of a trinity.

For Jesus’ first followers, the resurrection that God really had showered his special favor on Jesus (though in a complete unexpected way). That meant that, contrary to what they initially thought, he was not cursed by God (as one hanging on a tree) but was the one specially blessed by God. And that is absolutely the key to the disciples’ subsequent train of thought.

They had previously thought, during Jesus’ life, that he was the one anointed by God to perform his task on earth, his future king. They now came to think he really was the one anointed by God. In fact, he had been taken by God up to heaven – and as I pointed out before, ancient people, whether Jews or Gentiles, who came to think that someone was taken to heaven came to believe that he had been made a divine being, the Son of God, or a god himself.

That’s what the followers of Jesus (those who came to believe in the resurrection) came to think of Jesus. For most Jews, the messiah was indeed to be the son of God – but only in the way that David had been the son of God, or that Solomon had been the son of God (see 2 Sam 7:11-14). That did not (for most Jews) make David or Solomon *God*. They were, instead, sons of God because they were the ones who mediated God’s will on earth. But with Jesus it was different. He was not only the messiah/son of God (a human called by God to mediate his will). He actually had been made a divine being. He was THE Son of God!

And that means that he was a “messiah” in a different sense from what they disciples had originally thought, during his lifetime. At that time, the disciples thought that the future scenario was to be this: sometime during their, and Jesus’, lifetime a cosmic divine figure called the Son of Man would arrive in judgment from heaven to destroy the forces of evil and set up God’s kingdom on earth, with Jesus at the helm. But once the disciples came to believe in the resurrection they “knew” that he was himself a cosmic divine figure. And it was he himself who was coming *back* from heaven in judgment. Jesus himself was the Son of Man.

The implication of this line of reasoning is that Jesus most likely did not portray himself in the same mold that he was later formulated. If he had, this process of re-imagining his blueprint would not have been necessary- the disciples would have anticipated the crucifixion and resurrection beforehand and understood the underlying doctrine in the same way that Christians do today. The gospels were written after the time that these new considerations had formed and thus pay lip service to them, though often in an enigmatic fashion. But what is well known is that if Jesus had believed and proclaimed that he was a divine figure he would never have found any traction as a rabbi, much less a person who could escape persecution from his own people. It was only after he had died that Gentiles, and not Jews, could turn him into a god, because the Gentiles were not preconditioned as the Jews were to be strict monotheists.

(2317) Fatima miracle of the sun

Religious people often cite miracles witnessed by many people as evidence for their faith, and the ‘miracle of the sun’ in Fatima Portugal in 1917 is one of the most prominent examples, though it is also one of the easiest to debunk because it was a phenomenon that should have been witnessed worldwide. But even other localized miracles have one thing going against them- they only happen to those who already believe. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/f05kym/were_there_witnesses_at_the_miracle_of_the_sun/

Oh, please. I was raised in a Portuguese catholic family. So, naturally, I’ve heard about Fatima my entire life. It is really very simple. Once the 3 kids made up their story, crazy devout Catholics from all over Portugal (and other parts of Europe) flocked to Fatima. You had an entire town that was absolutely convinced that a miracle was going to happen. So, of course, that’s exactly what they saw. No one wanted to be left out of the miracle.

But tell me – if this was a “miracle of the sun”, why wasn’t it reported to have been seen from other parts of the world? Why was it only seen in this one little backwater village in the middle of Portugal?

And, why does an omnipotent god ALWAYS choose some little primitive spot that just happens to have many devout followers for his revelations? Why not the middle of a big city where thousands of different people from different faiths could all be convinced?

Finally, why do catholic miracles always occur in catholic towns, and Muslim miracles always occur in Muslim towns, and Hindu miracles always occur in Hindu towns? Seems a bit convenient, dontcha think?

It takes little analysis to conclude that none of these proclaimed occurrences were actual miracles. But the fact that they persist as contemporary belief traditions reveals much about how humans process the legitimacy of claims of sensational events- they tend to believe only those stories that confirm their pre-held beliefs, and this process of continually reinforcing their faith while dismissing all others is one of the major drivers of dogmatic and discriminatory religious conviction.

(2318) Very few Christians are following Jesus

Almost all Christians are what you might term CINOs (Christians in name only). They pay lip service to Jesus while living a life completely opposite of what Jesus commanded (at least as far as the gospels portray him). The mismatch is so stark that their assertion of being followers of Jesus can be dismissed as absurd. The following was taken from:

http://contradictionsinthebible.com/following-jesus-a-defense/

Some of the first words Jesus speaks in the gospels to his disciples are “Follow me!” (Mk 1:16, 2:14; Matt 4:19, 8:22, 9:9; Lk 5:11, 5:27, 9:59-62; Jn 1:43).

At heart these words express an imminent socioeconomic imperative: immediately stop what you’re doing, leave your job, your livelihood, and even your family, and “follow me!” And indeed, this is what the disciples are depicted doing in every account—immediately leaving behind jobs, possessions, social status, family, and even social and familial obligations.

Luke is more emphatic in representing this as a complete abandonment through his additions of the word panta (“all,” “everything”) to the textual tradition.

They immediately abandoned their nets and followed him (Mk 1:18; Matt 4:20).

He rose up and followed him (Mk 2:14; Matt 9:9).

They abandoned everything and followed him (Lk 5:11).

He forsook everything, rose up, and followed him (Lk 5:28).

On a larger note, Luke’s emphasis on abandoning everything to follow Jesus goes hand-and-hand with his Jesus’ emphasis on the fact that those on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder—the poor, the hungry, the despised, the socially exploited and outcast, i.e., “the last”—will inherit the kingdom. Indeed, these individuals become “the first” in the redefined value system that Jesus is advocating, contrary to that of the current socioeconomic worldview. (Discussed in more detail below.)

In any case, these “Follow me!” passages express an immediate urgency. Indeed, several of these “Follow me!” imperatives anticipate objections, that is requests to delay following Jesus in order to fulfill prior or immediate social and/or familial obligations, by relaying the point that this too is not permissible (Matt 8:22; Lk 9:59-62). The message is clear: Following Jesus means to immediately “forsake all” and “leave everything behind.”

Analogously, in modern terms it is to, without any preparation, without any hesitation, without any insurance policy—this is what ‘having faith’ truly means in these ancient texts—abandon one’s job, bank account(s), future plans, social stability and status, familial and social obligations, entitlements, etc. It is at heart a call to leave behind the socioeconomic trappings of the world. More specifically, it is a calling to abandon the value system created by our, or any, socioeconomic worldview! And there are historical reasons why this message arose in the Judaism of the 1st century.

First century Judaism, its beliefs and messages, including those of Jesus and the early Jesus movement, was shaped by the socioeconomic injustices, exploitation, and heavy taxation brought under the Roman empire, which created stark class inequalities between wealthy Jewish landowners and the aristocracy on the one hand and the people on the other. Jesus’ teachings and message were shaped by this socioeconomic background and, as we shall see, sought to counter it by delivering a completely opposite message.

As a counter-cultural movement one of the things that the early church engaged in, reflected in Jesus’ own teachings, was the reassessment of value, particularly as it was defined by the socioeconomic world in which they found themselves living. For Jesus and his real followers what is of value was no longer to be defined by this socioeconomic worldview. Indeed, the very concept of value, social status, success, individual worth, and other socioeconomic markers such as ownership, material possessions, money, and financial security were all challenged and ultimately overturned in Jesus’ message.

In other words, Jesus’ sayings were designed to overturn and reject value as defined by the exploitative and self-serving socioeconomic worldview of his day.

Value as defined by the Socioeconomic
1. Treasures on earth
2. Material possessions & earthly inheritances
3. Money = Security
4. Trust/Faith in Money
5. Social status & being first = success

Value as redefined by Jesus
1. “Treasures in Heaven”
2. “Selling what you have” & heavenly inheritance
3. God = Security
4. Trust/Faith in God
5. “Being last” in socioeconomic terms is being first

Money is the king of any socioeconomic system and how it defines value—the more you have the more value you have! Thus, the goal in any socioeconomic system is increased wealth, increased material possessions, increased financial independence, which ultimately translates to increased privileges, social status, and security. But these socioeconomic markers and the value system they inherently endorse are exactly what Jesus questions. Following Jesus means abandoning a life driven by this value system.

Contemporary Christians have attached a label to themselves and pantomimed a few actions to delude themselves into thinking they are faithfully following in the footsteps of 1st Century Jesus followers. If Jesus was as he is portrayed in the gospels, he would spit these people out as being counterfeit hucksters. Perhaps this is what was implied in the following verse:

Matthew 7:21-23

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

It is pretty clear that Christianity set a standard that is virtually unachievable in the modern world. As such, it should not be seen as a faith designed by a super-intelligent deity, but rather by hyper-idealistic men who couldn’t predict the future limits of their theology.

(2319) Denominations that discourage medical care

The very existence of Christian denominations that prohibit or discourage the use of conventional medical care, each of which results in worse patient outcomes on average than those that don’t, suggests that the Christian god, if it exists, is negligent. Either answer the prayers or discourage the deleterious practice of eschewing medical treatments. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/f0wml8/religions_that_oppose_medical_care_should_be_a/

Religious organizations such as Followers of Christ, Faith Assembly, Christian Science, Jehovah’s Witness, Church of God and Christ Assembly have religious beliefs against some or most forms of medical care.

The Church of Christ, Scientist, for example, is a denomination that promotes healing of physical and mental illnesses and disorders through prayer. They do compromise somewhat in the case of broken bones. There are many cases of apparently preventable deaths due to reliance on faith healing by Christian Scientist such as parents that chose prayer over medicine to cure Robyn Twitchell who died at the age of two of an intestinal blockage which could have been removed by conventional surgery and Amy Hermanson, aged 7, died from childhood diabetes. Her Christian Scientist parents were aware of her illness but did not seek medical attention for her.

Religious exemption laws in the US should be unconscionable because they deprive a group of children of the basic rights and protections of life and health guaranteed by law to all other children. In effect religious exemption to medical care constitutes an apparent state sanction of child abuse/neglect. Children suffer because a religion claims that only prayer will heal the sick.

Religions that claim prayer must be substituted for medical care should be required to prove the claim. Religions that oppose medical care should be a strong indicator that religions know nothing about God or what God wants or needs, if anything.

Only humans could devise a philosophy of medical care that results in worse outcomes and call it a success. It is unlikely that a god would fail to discourage this practice while at the same time withholding the cures that are being prayed for. A real god would do one or the other.

(2320) The Lord’s Prayer is offensive

The Lord’s Prayer is revered by most Christians as the template that Jesus taught for how to address the Father. But there are two problems. First, it inexplicably does not appear in the gospels of Mark and John. Second, it raises some issues that are offensive. The following was taken from:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-lords-prayer-is-so-offensive/

The Lord’s Prayer is not mild, inoffensive, vanilla, listless, nominal, wishy-washy, or wallpapery. If you don’t worship the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is deeply subversive, upsetting, and offensive—from the first phrase to the last.

‘Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed Be Your Name’

Not Allah’s, or anyone else’s: the Father’s. There is only one who is holy, and he is our heavenly Father. May your name be recognized as great by all the nations, including those (like ours) who dismiss, blaspheme, patronize, or ignore it.

‘May Your Kingdom Come’

One day, all the kingdoms of the earth will become the kingdom of God and his Messiah. In the meantime, as we wait for you to gather up all your enemies and turn them into your footstool, we cry to you: Let your reign be shown here as well. Dethrone the powers. Overturn empires. Destroy everything that opposes you. Rule everywhere.

‘Let Your Will Be Done, on Earth as It Is in Heaven’

May the content shown on our screens, and the civilization they represent, be subjected to your will, so only things that honor you are done—just like currently happens in heaven.

‘Give Us Today Our Daily Bread’

We depend on you—not the markets, the government, our security services, or our own ingenuity and talent—for every good gift. Please keep providing them all, because if you don’t, we’re in big trouble.

‘Forgive Us Our Sins’

We have all sinned against you, offended you, transgressed your law, and trespassed against our fellow humans. We desperately need forgiveness. None of us is righteous. Please, in your mercy, wipe out our sins.

‘As We Forgive Those Who Sin Against Us’

Including abusers, manipulators, jihadists, and the rest, since we deserve judgment just as they do.

‘Lead Us Not into Temptation, But Deliver Us from Evil’

There is evil in the world, and it’s both out there (deliver us from evil) and in here (lead us not into temptation). Save us, O Lord! We can’t do it without you. Rescue us from everything that opposes you, and help us not to contribute to the problem in our own twisted fallenness.

‘For Yours Is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory’

Nobody else’s. No other God but you. No king but God. No Lord except Christ. Your glory shall not belong to another. Amen.

Anyone who thinks that isn’t offensive simply hasn’t been paying attention.

If the author of Mark had been inspired by the Holy Spirit, and if Jesus actually spoke this prayer and intended it as an important doctrinal guideline for his faithful to follow, then it would have appeared in the Gospel of Mark. Also, there would seem to be no reason for John to exclude it from his gospel. It seems likely that Matthew created the prayer, and Luke copied it with some amendments. Its sketchy credentials along with its offensive themes makes it appear to be of other than divine origin.

(2321) Aaronid Yahweh vs. Levite Yahweh

One of the ways that we know that the Torah, or first five books of the Bible, were written by men and not by a divine source is the contradictions in the way Yahweh (who evolved to become the sole universal god) is portrayed. Yahweh can be one way or another but not two ways that are in conflict. The following was taken from:

http://contradictionsinthebible.com/studying-the-bible-scientifically-or-objectively/

In other words, when in the composite text that we now call the Bible we find: Yahweh declaring that only Aaronids can officiate as his priests and Yahweh declaring that all Levites can officiate as high priest; Yahweh declaring that sin is atoned through confession and Yahweh declaring that sin is only expiated through the sacrificial cult, no exceptions; Yahweh declaring that he gave laws and commandments at Sinai and Yahweh declaring that he only gave the Ten Commandments at Sinai; Yahweh commanding to exterminate all the Canaanites without pity and Yahweh declaring to tolerate them and live in their midst; Yahweh declaring that the wilderness generation were disloyal and rebellious and Yahweh declaring that they were a paradigm of loyalty and faith; Yahweh declaring that he may be offered sacrifices at any altar and Yahweh declaring that there is only one altar where sacrifices are to be offered up; Yahweh declaring that the people saw him at Sinai and Yahweh declaring that they only heard his voice; Yahweh declaring that circumcision is an eternal covenant and keeping the land depends on observing this very commandment and Yahweh declaring the Mosaic laws as the covenant and keeping the land is dependent on keeping these laws; Yahweh declaring that he dwells in the midst of the people and Yahweh declaring that he only resides in heaven; Yahweh commanding Passover to be celebrated by all at Jerusalem and Yahweh commanding it to be celebrated at each person’s home; Yahweh commanding that animals for consumption must be ritually sacrificed and Yahweh commanding that they don’t have to be sacrificed ritually, etc. one must conclude that Yahweh is being used by these authors, each with their own contrary views and beliefs as a spokesperson for each of these authors’ agendas. These are all the personal, and competing, views, theological beliefs, and religious systems of our biblical authors. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

The Bible fails to speak with a single voice about the character of its god and therefore appears to be simply the result of competing human ideas. None of this would be true if Yahweh himself or his agent had set in motion a plan to create a textual work for the ages.

(2322) Made-up stories to send a warning

The Old Testament is full of phantasmagorical stories that are insanely improbable or cite numbers of people killed well beyond any measure of believability, letting us know that they are not historical. As a custom of the time, these fictional accounts were documented as way to send a message or, better yet, a warning to anyone who considered crossing the line referenced in the story. The following was taken from:

http://contradictionsinthebible.com/how-do-we-know-that-the-biblical-writers-were-not-writing-history/

Yahweh’s killing of Uzzah, a commoner, who actually saves the ark of the covenant from crashing to the ground (2 Sam 6:7) is another offensive story that was “interpreted away” allegorically. Or, consider the 50,070 innocent non-Levites whom Yahweh smote just “because they gazed upon the ark of Yahweh” (1 Sam 6:19). These and similar stories were not written as allegory, but indeed were allegorically interpreted away to remove what had become offensive, and not understandable, to later readers. On the other hand, these are not historical either, and that should bring a sigh of relief.

In this case, these texts are none other than stories created by Levite priests to show that under no circumstance are non-Levites to touch, even gaze upon, Yahweh’s ark! Only the Levites can do this. These are powerful narratives that reinforce Levite ideology by presenting their deity as a spokesperson for their own agendas. The same priestly lesson is to be found in Yahweh’s slaughtering of Korah, his family, and all those associated with him who dared challenge the authority of Moses and the Aaronid priesthood in Numbers 16. There are numerous examples like this throughout the Bible. If we know a little bit about who penned these texts and ask if the story was used to legitimate these authors’ authority or belief system, then in many cases we can surmise that they were written for that purpose, and not as a record of historical fact.

The custom of creating fictional narratives intended to send a factual message extends also into the New Testament. One example is the story of the prostitute in John Chapter 8 (he who is without sin, cast the first stone) which was added to the Gospel of John in the 5^th Century CE to discourage the practice of stoning. In fact, the entire Bible can be seen as following this playbook-“I don’t think people should be doing this, so I’ll write a story where people do this and then the Lord smites them.”

(2323) Religion itself doesn’t make people live longer

Christian apologists have long touted the fact that religious people live longer lives as an argument for the truth of their belief system. But, once again, science has destroyed their claim. A recent study has shown that religiosity and longevity are correlated only in United States counties where religion is significantly valued and where presumably non-religion is frowned upon. In secular counties, there is no difference in longevity between religious and non-religious people. The following was taken from:

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-09224-001

Religious people live longer than nonreligious people, according to a staple of social science research. Yet, are those longevity benefits an inherent feature of religiosity? To find out, we coded gravestone inscriptions and imagery to assess the religiosity and longevity of 6,400 deceased people from religious and nonreligious U.S. counties. We show that in religious cultural contexts, religious people lived 2.2 years longer than did nonreligious people. In nonreligious cultural contexts, however, religiosity conferred no such longevity benefits. Evidently, a longer life is not an inherent feature of religiosity. Instead, religious people only live longer in religious cultural contexts where religiosity is valued. Our study answers a fundamental question on the nature of religiosity and showcases the scientific potential of gravestone analyses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

It should also be noted that the countries with the highest longevity tend to be more secular than average:

https://www.infoplease.com/world/health-and-social-statistics/life-expectancy-countries-0

Rank	Country	(years)
1	Monaco	89.52
2	Japan	84.74
3	Singapore	84.68
4	Macau	84.51
5	San Marino	83.24
6	Iceland	82.97
7	Hong Kong	82.86
8	Andorra	82.72
9	Switzerland	82.50
10	Guernsey	82.47
11	Israel	82.27
12	Luxembourg	82.17
13	Australia	82.15
14	Italy	82.12
15	Sweden	81.98
16	Liechtenstein	81.77
17	Jersey	81.76
18	Canada	81.76
19	France	81.75
20	Norway	81.70

This data indicates that religion does not make people live longer unless they are supported in their beliefs by a sectarian support system. This implies that prayers and such are not effective in helping people live healthier or longer lives. A lack of prayer effectiveness suggests a vacant godship.

(2324) Jesus is an enigma

One thing that you would expect of a book ‘authored’ by the Christian god is that Jesus would be presented in a consistent easy-to-understand fashion. The opposite is true. Jesus is an enigma and if he actually existed as a person there is too much distracting, contradicting information to accurately define who he was and what he preached. The following was taken from:

https://new.exchristian.net/2020/02/good-news-or-fake-news.html#more

The divergent portrayals of Jesus had the deleterious effect of promoting the splintering of the church into numerous factions or denominations, some of which are significantly different from others. Is it possible that the Holy Spirit in its ‘guidance’ of the gospel writers was so inept as to allow this to happen? Shouldn’t it have presented a more cohesive portrayal of Christianity’s seminal figure?

(2325) Timeframe of God’s revelation to mankind

One has to imagine God looking down on the earth as humans slowly evolved and migrated to inhabit most of the planet’s land surface. He then decided to intervene and one of his initial efforts was to choose a certain isolated tribe as his favorite. But, beyond that, being omniscient, he realized that eventually he would become the god of the entire world. So, that being the case, he knew that he needed to create a written record that could be used by future humans to understand who he is and what he expects.

This is where the story gets murkier. The expanse of time between the first book of the Bible being written until the last was over 600 years, from about 500 BCE to about 125 CE, or about 25 generations. It wasn’t until approximately the 23^nd generation in this timeline that God finally got around to telling us in writing the ultimate revelation, the pivotal truth of his scheme- that he had constructed a glorious heaven and an excruciating hell where he will selectively send people according to whether they accepted his son’s ‘sacrifice’ to absolve their ‘sins.’ Why did he waste so much time to deliver this culminating message?

Well, a real god would not have done it this way- wasting all of this verbiage telling the history of less than one percent of the earth’s population as if that was the only thing that mattered and then at the end after centuries and centuries letting us know what was REALLY important all along. No, a real god would have delivered a succinct message to the entire world in a book ‘dictated’ and distributed in short order to every person. A bumbling, rambling, contradictory skein of texts written over six centuries, cobbled together by popular vote, and not delivered worldwide for an additional fifteen centuries is most clearly the work of mortal humans, not a god.

(2326) Missing verses in the NIV translation

It probably escapes the attention of most readers of the New International Version of the Bible there are 16 verses left out of this translation that were included in the King James Version. The following is a list of these deletions:

http://kjv.landmarkbiblebaptist.net/missing-verses.html

Matthew 17:21: “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”
Matthew 18:11: “For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.”
Matthew 23:14: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.”
Mark 7:16: “If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.”
Mark 9:44: “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
Mark 9:46: “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
Mark 11:26: “But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
Mark 15:28: “And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, And he was numbered with the transgressors.”
Luke 17:36: “Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.”
John 5:4: “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.”
Acts 8:37: “And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
Acts 15:34: “Notwithstanding it pleased Silas to abide there still.”
Acts 24:7: “But the chief captain Lysias came upon us, and with great violence took him away out of our hands,”
Acts 28:29: “And when he had said these words, the Jews departed, and had great reasoning among themselves.”
Romans 16:24: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”
I John 5:7: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”

The following explains why this discrepancy exists:

https://www.biblica.com/resources/bible-faqs/why-does-the-niv-bible-omit-or-have-missing-verses/

The Committee on Bible Translation (CBT), the team of translators responsible for the New International Version (NIV) Bible, is composed of world-class scholars and leaders in their respective fields. Their goal is to accurately translate the Word of God in a way that enables readers and listeners to hear the Bible as it was originally written, and understand the Bible as it was originally intended.

From the beginning, the translators have been committed to getting the words right. That means being true to the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic of the Bible while at the same time capturing the Bible’s original meaning in natural, everyday English. Each NIV translator believes that the Bible is God’s inspired Word. That conviction, along with their years of studying biblical languages, has helped them capture the depth of meaning in the Bible in a way that is accurate, clear, and trustworthy.

When comparing the NIV with the King James Version (KJV), it would seem that there are some verses “missing” in the NIV (and other trusted translations such as the CEV, CSB, ESV, GNB, HCSB, NET, NLT, etc.). Actually, that is not the case. In 1611, the translators of the KJV used the best resources available to them at that time. For their day, the King James translation was a monumental achievement. However, one of its shortcomings is that the KJV translation committee of 50 scholars drew heavily on William Tyndale’s New Testament. As much as 80% of Tyndale’s translation is reused in the King James version. Tyndale used several sources in his translation of the Old and New Testaments. For the New Testament, he referred to the third edition (1522) of Desiderius Erasmus’s Greek New Testament, often referred to as the Textus Receptus (“Received Text”).

In the years since 1611, many older manuscripts have been discovered and carefully evaluated by scholars. Their conclusion is that the older manuscripts are more reliable. This has given modern translators unprecedented access to manuscripts much closer in time to the original documents. Therefore, translations such as the NIV actually reflect better Bible scholarship than was available in 1611 when the KJV was published.

The verses or phrases that appeared in the KJV, but have been “omitted” in most trusted translations today, are not found in the oldest and most reliable manuscripts. Modern translators include or reference them in footnotes. These footnotes are intended to help the reader understand that certain perceived differences in the text are due to improved biblical scholarship. The treatment of these verses has not changed recently and reflects a consensus among the majority of Bible scholars.

Although credit is due for translators correcting mistakes that were made in the King James Bible, eliminating verses that were not the original work of the author, it also sheds light on the corruptible process upon which the Bible was constructed. Given that we don’t have access to the earliest manuscripts, it is certain that there are other verses in the NIV Bible that should be removed as well. This is not a trajectory that would be expected to occur if the Holy Spirit was in control of the textual fidelity, as most Christians assert. But it fits nicely within the theory that the Bible is the work of human minds and that mistakes, edits, additions, and deletions are unavoidable. It also illuminates the embarrassing folly that many Protestant denominations consider the King James Version to be the inerrant word of God.

(2327) Christian forgiveness scheme is inferior to Islam and Judaism

It is notable that Islam and Judaism do not require that innocent life must be sacrificed in order to forgive sins. This makes Christianity unique among the Abrahamic faiths and places it in a darker light. Not only was a man brutally killed, but this‘sacrifice was not conducted as a voluntary act on the part of the victim- Jesus did not arrange his own crucifixion- he was punished as a criminal under Roman law. This makes the Christian salvation scheme very strange- a man was involuntarily killed by sinful people so other sinful people could be saved. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/f39l4s/the_christian_view_on_salvation_is_weak_compared/

In Christianity, Jesus had to die for the sins of humanity and on the surface this seems nice but really, was it that big of a sacrifice? I think most people would be crucified if it meant getting eternity in heaven full of pleasure and your family also gets salvation. I would take that offer in an instant. It’s also not really a huge sacrifice if you are resurrected three days later. So essentially, he died for a few days after a few hours on a cross and this means he died for our sins.

Another point is, God seems to have created the universe with the idea that he would have to send his son who is part of himself in order to die for others? It seems odd to think this was the only way.

Surely God could just forgive all sins. This is how it is in Judaism and Islam. God asks you to turn to him and repent and he will forgive your sins. This is straightforward, simple, and just.

In Christianity there’s no real personal responsibility because ultimately an innocent person took the blame for humanity and it wasn’t necessarily intentional, he did not crucify himself, others did and so an innocent man was killed by the guilty in order to die for the sins of other guilty people and God is okay with this?

It’s much simpler from the Islamic and Judaic viewpoint that all you have to do is worship God, serve him and follow his commands and repent with sincerity and you will be forgiven.

The way sins are forgiven in Islam and Judaism makes more sense and seems more likely to be the way that an actual god would deliver absolution. The macabre death cult of Christianity is more in line with what we might expect pre-modern humans to devise.

(2328) Embarrassment criterion

One of the ways that Christian apologists try to defend the historicity of the gospels is to point out stories in the text that are embarrassing to the faith, that supposedly would not appear in fan fiction literature where you are trying to paint your hero in the best possible light. What is missing in this logic is that what is embarrassing today might not have been so back then. The following was taken from:

http://www.debunking-christianity.com/2020/02/christianity-10-knockout-punches-number.html#more

One of the most famous of these ploys is the embarrassment criterion, i.e., if we find something in the gospels that is embarrassing, then it must be there because it’s authentic. One of the obvious flaws here is that something that is embarrassing to us may not have been embarrassing at all to the gospel author. One example is Luke 14:26, the text in which Jesus says that hatred of family is required for those who want to be his disciples.

This text has tested the ingenuity of countless apologists who try to explain why Jesus couldn’t have meant that—although the Greek word for hate, miseo, is right there and unmistakable. Did Jesus actually say such a thing? We have no way of knowing, but there’s no doubt whatever that Luke wrote it. Why would he do that? Part of his agenda was protecting the early Jesus cult: he didn’t want followers who had divided loyalties, and he wasn’t embarrassed at all to put this strident requirement in writing.

There is a huge difference in the beliefs of today’s and 1^st Century Christians. Back then, it was a point of certainty that the world was to end very soon, before all who had heard Jesus preach had died. When Luke penned his gospel, those people would have been at least 60 years old. This means that they must have believed that Jesus would be returning within 10 years or so. Given that mindset, hating your family if that meant being able to meet Jesus in heavenly glory was a winning trade-off. Today, with Christianity’s emphasis on ‘family values’ the idea of hating your family is repugnant, and therefore this statement by Jesus is indeed embarrassing. But to use it as evidence for gospel fidelity is disingenuous.

(2329) Pascal’s Wager dissected

Pascal’s wager is based on the assumption that either (1) Yahweh exists as the sole god or that (2) there are no gods whatsoever. This is a critically flawed premise because these are not the only possibilities. There are in fact three more:

3) There is only one god, but this god is not Yahweh.

4) There are multiple gods and Yahweh is one of them.

5) There are multiple gods and Yahweh is not one of them.

The following discusses the effect of worshiping Yahweh across all of the possibilities:

	Effect of worshiping Yahweh	Outcome
1	Eternal life	Positive
2	Loss of time, money, effort, potentially missing out of many life experiences	Negative
3	Probably worse outcome than being an atheist due to deity jealousy	Negative
4	Marginally favorable outcome if Yahweh is highly ranked among the deities	Positive^a
5	Most likely a negative outcome, worse than being an atheist	Negative

^a This is only a positive outcome if gods other than Yahweh are not predominant or not jealous of other gods

Of course, there are other considerations. These five possibilities are not equal in probability. It can be conjectured that (2) is most likely based on all that we know about science and the evolution of the universe and life. Also, even if (1) is true, an omniscient god would likely know if a person was simply pretending to believe based on a wager and would therefore not reward said individual. All in all, the wager is not productive. It is better to base such a decision strictly on the evidence.

(2330) Anachronisms pollute the Bible

There are many places in biblical text where references are made to people, places, or events that did not exist in the time frame for which the author was writing. That is, the author was writing about events in the past but mistakenly added elements that existed at a later time or even in the present time of his authorship. These anachronism are a clue that the biblical writers were not developing strictly historical accounts. The following was taken from:

http://contradictionsinthebible.com/how-the-bible-was-discovered-to-be-a-collection-of-contradictory-texts/

Not only was the account of Moses’ death to continuously resurface, implying, as the text itself does, that it was written by a later author—”no man has knowledge of his burial place to this day” (Deut 34:6)—but as early as the eleventh century, educated readers of the Bible, Jewish rabbis, and Christian clergy alike, began to notice and comment upon other textual peculiarities and anomalies which the Pentateuch revealed when one assumed the traditional, and then authoritative, designation of its authorship as Moses. The Jewish court physician Isaac ibn Yashush, for example, observed in the later half of the eleventh century that the Edomite kings list in Genesis 36:31-39 could not possibly have been written by Moses; the list recalls names of Edomite kings who were active in the times of David and Solomon. Furthermore, Gen 36:31 strongly implies that its author was writing after the monarchy was established in Israel, since he possesses knowledge of a monarchal period in Israelite history: “These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before any king reigned over the Israelites.” This passage must have been written by someone living in the 9th century BC at the earliest.

The particular textual anomaly here is what is commonly referred to as an anachronism: something in the time-frame of the narrative actually occurs or transpires much later, outside the time-frame implied by the narrative, and in fact this something often belongs to the historical time-frame of the actual author of the text. This is one means by which scholars are able to date a text. If, for example, a narrative which presents itself in the historical context of the 1920s has its characters use cell phones we would be skeptical about the narrative’s historical veracity.

Rather, this would be an anachronism, revealing the narrative’s late twentieth century date of composition and its historical environment. Centuries after Isaac ibn Yashush’s find, biblical scholars will add to Genesis 36’s anachronism by pointing out several other anachronism in the Pentateuchal narratives, such as the mention of the Philistines in the time of the patriarchs (Gen 26), who, we know from archaeological and extra-biblical records, did not actually occupy the land prior to the 12th century BC; thus, their mention in the time of Abraham is an anachronism and most likely represents the geo-political world of the 10th and 9th centuries BC when the Philistines played a major role in the politics of Israel.

Another commonly mentioned anachronism in Genesis are references to domesticated camels (e.g., Gen 24). Camels were not domesticated until much later and, therefore, reflect the historical reality of a later author’s time period. Indeed, the mention of the caravan of camels in the Joseph story carrying “gum, balm, and myrrh” (Gen 37:25) highlights products that were part of the Arabian trade that flourished in the 8th and 7th centuries BC. There are additionally numerous political and religious institutions, and even city names throughout the Hexateuch (the books of Genesis through Joshua) which did not exist in the time of the patriarchs, the wilderness narratives, or the conquest narratives. They are anachronisms and reflect the geo-political world of a much later time period. The 9th-8th century BC border between the Israelites and the Philistines, for example, is anachronistically portrayed as a treaty made between Abraham/Isaac and the Philistine king Abimelek in Genesis 21:30-32 and 26:32-33 (#28). Likewise Israel and Aram’s 9th-8th century BC political border is portrayed through the covenant made between Jacob and Laban. As is visible from these two examples, tribal or kin relationships depicted in the book of Genesis often recall the political realities of a much later time period, that is of the author of the text’s own time period.

The relationship between Jacob and Esau in Genesis 25 and 27, which our narrative informs us are eponyms for Israel and Edom respectively, reflects the political relationship between Israel and Edom in the 9th and 8th centuries BC—the time in which this narrative was most likely written, and thus it aims at explaining the origins of its own historico-political circumstances. There are many more anachronisms throughout the Hexateuch and they have served later generations of biblical scholars and readers as clues to the dates of composition of the texts and traditions that make up its books.

Timing errors are not expected in a book developed by an almighty god. They give us all of the evidence needed to show that the Bible was written by fallible men.

(2331) Oral history

Christian defenders pin a lot of their hopes on the accuracy of oral tradition, that over the approximately 40 year period after Jesus died and before the gospels were written stories about him were precisely transmitted from person to person, such that the gospel authors were able to construct a reliable portrait of the Lord. This is a highly problematic assumption. The following was taken from:

http://www.debunking-christianity.com/2020/02/christianity-10-knockout-punches-number.html#more

Here’s a thought experiment to illustrate the point. Abraham Lincoln died in 1865, but what if no biography about him had been written for forty years? Then, in 1915, a Lincoln enthusiast announces he’s going to write the Lincoln story.

An Interviewer: What a great idea! That will take a lot of research, won’t it? Looking through archives for letters, diaries, and newspaper articles.

Lincoln Enthusiast: No, not really. In fact, as far as I know, there aren’t any letters or diaries that say anything about Lincoln. I don’t think he ever ended up in the newspapers.

Interviewer: So I guess you’ll have to track down as many people as you can who knew Lincoln and talk to them.

Lincoln Enthusiast: No, they’re all dead by now. I’ve heard stories that have been making the rounds for forty years, but mainly I’m going to use my imagination. I’ve prayed for God’s help, and I know for sure that he’ll inspire my thoughts to write the true story.

This guy’s approach is precisely that used by the gospel writers, who had no choice, actually. For Lincoln, of course, there are mountains of documents for any researcher to use; for Jesus there are none. And the gospel authors certainly used their imaginations, as even a casual reading of their writings makes abundantly clear.

Moreover, we can question one of his claims, i.e., that he would use “stories that have been making the rounds for forty years.” New Testament scholars have pinned a lot of hope on oral tradition, supposedly reliable oral tradition—stories about Jesus that can be trusted. Other than “divine inspiration”—which is recognized as special pleading—what else do they have to go on? Reliable oral tradition must be how it happened, right?

If only there were evidence.

The New Testament epistles, written before the gospels, are notoriously devoid of information about the teaching and deeds of Jesus. The apostle Paul especially, who travelled so extensively in the early Christian world—what better way to be exposed to the oral tradition supposedly in circulation?—fails to say anything in this letters about the miracles and preaching of Jesus. And, embarrassingly, Mark’s account of the Eucharist seems to be based on Paul’s words in I Corinthian 11! Paul wasn’t at the Last Supper, and claims that he hallucinated Jesus speaking to him: “…for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.” Paul trusted his own inspired imagination!

The theory of reliable oral tradition breaks down on several levels, but it is undermined even by the gospel writers themselves. Mark, for example, doesn’t portray the disciples as the brightest bunch, prompting David Fitzgerald to observe:

“In much of Mark’s gospel, Jesus scolds his disciples for being clueless, missing the point of his teachings, being slothful and even disobedient. Yet these dim, lazy disciples are supposed to be the same ones who carefully memorized all these stories about how incompetent they were? You can’t have your dutifully-memorized cake and cluelessly eat it too.” (David Fitzgerald, Jesus: Mything in Action, Vol. II, pp. 22-23, emphasis added).

And if Jesus had been predicting that the Kingdom of God would arrive soon, what would have been the point of “carefully memorizing all these stories”? To hand them down to whom? Moreover—think about it—if you came home from church and were asked what the preacher said, could you repeat exactly, without error, verbatim, even a few sentences from the sermon? And would your report remain unchanged, intact, if repeated endlessly for decades?

Calvin Coolidge was once asked by his wife, when he got home from church, “What did the preacher talk about?” “Sin,” Coolidge said. “Well, what did he say about it?” “He’s against it.” Cal left it at that.

It would seem that outside of pure magic the gospels are but a whisper of what really happened. They cannot be taken at face value. What this means is that the truth of Christianity hangs precariously on contemporary evidence- that there are measurable effects, such as prayer effectiveness, supporting the truth of the faith. Absent this, and given that none has appeared, Christianity sits on two eroding pillars- a suspect written record and a world that doesn’t align with its claims.

(2332) Abrahamic covenant was about nationhood

Christianity hijacked the Jewish faith in a way that took it in an entirely different direction. Whereas the Abrahamic covenant offered by God had nothing to do with the issues of eternal salvation, but rather the earthly success of the Jewish nation. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/f503w2/the_abrahamic_covenant_has_to_do_with_nationhood/

I will surely bless you, and I will multiply your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies. And through your seed all nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.

Genesis 22:17-18

Context: Many Christians understand the promises that God makes to Abraham, particularly the one found in Genesis 22:17-18, as a foreshadowing of the universal spread of the Christian gospel of eternal salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus. According to this reasoning, the nations are blessed through Abraham’s “seed” (i.e. Christ and his followers) in the sense that through them the offer of forgiveness for sins will extend over the whole of the earth. Abraham is thus given a taste of the gospel message that is to come.

Thesis: The aforementioned understanding of the promises to Abraham has little to nothing to do with the covenantal texts in the Genesis narrative. Rather, Abraham is promised fatherhood over a great and powerful nation, one through which God will bless and curse nations. Through Abraham’s nation as a nation, not as a theological message or religious group, the nations will find blessing.

God makes promises to Abraham on a number of other occasions.

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Genesis 12:2-3

Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him

Genesis 18:18

God makes identical or similar promises to Abraham’s sons, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. The blessing passed from Jacob to Judah is instructive:

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the nations.

Genesis 49:10, cf. 27:27-29

The point I’d like to stress is that these promises and expectations await an earthly nation, one with real political clout, military strength, and prosperous land. This “great and powerful” nation will “possess the gates of its enemies” and receive the “obedience of the nations.”

The idea that Abraham’s offspring will bless the nations by means of a religious message about afterlife-salvation is absent. We are instead told that God will bless (materially) nations that bless Abraham’s people and curse (materially) nations that curse Abraham’s people. This blessing for some nations will come on account of their voluntary socio-political subordination to Abraham.

To make an analogy, this would be like taking an automobile and outfitting it with a rocket engine for traveling in space. It makes no sense to use a car as a base for developing your rocket. Christianity likes to claim that it is the rightful descendant of the Jewish faith, but in reality it is a wholly different religion that has no legitimate ties to the Abrahamic tradition.

(2333) Christians massacre god’s chosen people over the plague

With God allegedly watching and being capable of intervening, Christians blamed Jews for the Black Plague of the mid-14^th Century and massacred them relentlessly. This reveals that God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit was negligent in failing to prevent an atrocity that was ironically targeted at God’s ‘chosen people.’ The following was taken from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_persecutions_during_the_Black_Death

The official church policy at the time was to protect Jews because Jesus was born into the Jewish race, but in reality Jews were often targets of Christian loathing.[1] As the plague swept across Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating nearly half the population, people had little scientific understanding of the disease and were looking for an explanation.

Jews were often taken as scapegoats and accusations spread that Jews had caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells.[2][3] This is likely because they were affected less than other people,[4][5] since many Jews chose not to use the common wells of towns and cities[1] and because Jews confessed to poisoning wells under torture.[1]

The first massacres directly related to the plague took place in April 1348 in Toulon, Provence where the Jewish quarter was sacked, and forty Jews were murdered in their homes; the next occurred in Barcelona.[6] In 1349, massacres and persecution spread across Europe, including the Erfurt massacre, the Basel massacre, massacres in Aragon, and Flanders.[7][8] 2,000 Jews were burnt alive on 14 February 1349 in the “Valentine’s Day” Strasbourg massacre, where the plague had not yet affected the city. While the ashes smouldered, Christian residents of Strasbourg sifted through and collected the valuable possessions of Jews not burnt by the fires.[9][10] Many hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed in this period. Within the 510 Jewish communities destroyed in this period, some members killed themselves to avoid the persecutions.[11] In the spring of 1349 the Jewish community in Frankfurt am Main was annihilated. This was followed by the destruction of Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne. The 3,000 strong Jewish population of Mainz initially defended themselves and managed to hold off the Christian attackers. But the Christians managed to overwhelm the Jewish ghetto in the end and killed all of its Jews.[9]

The Christian apologetic angle in response is embarrassingly weak and usually shifts the blame over to Satan or nebulous demonic forces. This tactic is typically used when events occur that are not consistent with Christian beliefs. and it inexplicably equate’s Satan’s power to God’s. The same trouble explaining the Holocaust exists for the Black Plague massacres. They indicate that the Christian god is not just mysterious, he is non-existent.

(2334) The Bible vs. the Geneva Convention

A book written by tapping into the wisdom of God should be more prodigiously eloquent than anything created by the minds of mortal men. Should, that is. But when we look at the following comparison, it leaves us wondering how humans could so majestically outmaneuver the force that created the universe:

The Bible (Numbers 31:17-18): “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

1949 Geneva Convention: ‘Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth, or wealth, or any other similar criteria.’

Theists should question why this passage from the Geneva Convention, or something similar, does not appear in any of the Bible’s 66 books and further, why, many of these same books include instructions that directly contravene what post World War II luminaries thought would bring about a more humane planet for humans to inhabit. Is God behind the times, or was it just that, understandably, the people living back then were behind the times?

(2335) God is responsible for all evil

Christians use the assumption that humans have free will to absolve God of the existence of evil in the world. Yet, at the same time, they insist that he possesses the properties of omnipotence and omniscience. The intersection of these two avenues of thought creates a collision. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/f6m7io/the_argument_that_god_is_not_responsible_for_evil/

Imagine an inventor who builds a robot that does the following: It first flips a coin, then, if the coin came up heads, it goes into the world and helps anyone it encounters. If instead the coin came up tails, the robot kills everybody in its path.

It’s obvious that in case the second possibility happens, the inventor is responsible for the evil caused by their creation. The fact that it could have gone differently, that the inventor had no control over the result of the coin flip, and that their intentions may not have been evil, is entirely irrelevant for that assessment. By knowing that this outcome might happen, and choosing to release the robot into the world anyway, the creator bears negligent responsibility for the evil they could have prevented. And if somehow they were able to actually foresee how the coin would land, they bear direct responsibility – they might as well be doing the killing themselves.

Yet if you replace “inventor” with “God” and “coin flip” with “free will”, Christians seriously claim that God somehow holds no responsibility whatsoever. This is illogical: The combination of the power to create anything and the complete foresight of the creation’s future behavior implies that the outcome necessarily matches the creator’s intention. The idea that God could have made humans in any way, and knew exactly what evil they were going to do if He made them the way He did, still decided to make them, but then somehow is not responsible for any of it, is an insult to common sense. And of course, Christians understand that as well – in every analogous situation, except this one. That makes this line of argument not just absurd but hypocritically dishonest.

Intellectual honesty would demand that Christians acknowledge the theological problem of evil or else concede some degree of limitation on God’s power. To do otherwise is like playing tennis without the net.

(2336) Philip and the eunuch

The story of Philip and the eunuch illustrates how biblical authors used fantasy literature to embellish their narratives. It would be difficult to believe that the author in this case intended for this story to be taken literally:

Acts 8:26-40

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”

Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.

“How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:

“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth.”

The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.

The fantasy elements of this story are numerous, beginning with an angel instructing Philip to travel to a specific road. There he encounters a eunuch (not sure how that was evident) who happens to be reading a certain biblical passage. The eunuch then becomes a one-hour Christian. In the desert they magically find water and he is baptized. Then after the ceremony, Philip immediately disappears and reappears 30 miles away in Axotus.

Many Christians will respond by saying that these types of events happened only in biblical times but no longer. In other words, they will concede that angels no longer speak directly to humans and that people no longer get teleported to distant locations, but that it happened in this instance. This is very disingenuous. It is equivalent to saying that beanstalks no longer grow up to the giant’s residence but it did so back then for Jack. Any fantasy can be explained away in a similar fashion. But what should be understood is that if angels actually spoke and people really vanished and reappeared somewhere else as claimed in the Bible, we would still be witnessing that today…if Christianity was true.

(2337) Mark ignited the gospels

Mark was the first to write a story about a flesh and blood Jesus who went about doing things. He was apparently inspired by reading some of Paul’s epistles and more than likely he made up a narrative that dovetailed with what Paul had written. This was done in approximately 70 CE, after Paul had died. There appears to have been no source materials available to Mark or even oral traditions that predated his treatise. In all likelihood, Mark’s gospel is a fictional account incarnating a man that Paul thought was a spirit being. The following was taken from:

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/15934

Many studies have argued the Gospel that came to be labeled “according to Mark” based some of its content on the Epistles of Paul. Here I’ll discuss this scholarship and its evidence. “Mark” is of course the earliest Gospel we have any surviving text or even any real evidence of. It was then used as a source by all the other Gospels now in the New Testament. So it’s particularly important to know if Mark (and we’ll continue to call him that, not otherwise knowing the author’s actual name) was writing independently of Pauline tradition, or actually mythologizing it.

It would be more accurate to say that the Gospels that came to be labeled “according to Matthew” and “according to Luke” are redactions of Mark, clearly intended originally to replace Mark—within the communities that produced, preferred, or promoted them. Only the Gospel that came to be labeled “according to John” actually used Mark the way other ancient authors used sources: writing his text in his own words, and simply following or altering what Mark said when it suited his purposes, or deliberately contradicting it to combat its message. John likewise used Luke this way, but even more to deliberately contradict and thus combat its message. Matthew similarly tried to combat and thus “fix” Mark by extensively adding material that would permit “reinterpreting” Mark as advancing a Torah-observant gospel—the exact opposite of what Mark originally intended.

Most of what Jesus is “known” for today comes from these later fabrications intended to override the original version of Jesus found in Mark. Mark gets mostly ignored. And yet his myth started it all, a lifetime after the fact, decades after Paul wrote his Epistles, which in turn were written decades after Jesus would supposedly have lived. And other than revelatory or theological data, and material not actually from or about Jesus, we actually can trace nothing in Mark to any sources prior. He appears to have created the whole thing. This is not a popular opinion in Biblical scholarship, which is still hung up on a desperate certainty that Mark must have been working from some collection of oral traditions; but that certainty is actually based on no evidence. And nothing based on no evidence should ever be treated as “certain.”

It should worry Christians that the ultimate truth of every gospel depends on the writings of one man who evidently had no reliable sources for what he documented other than the nebulous and evanescent references to Jesus penned by the Apostle Paul. It is beyond incredible that a person would immerse their entire life bathed in a myth that was the creation of a source-less single human who was chronologically and geographically detached from the events about which he wrote.

(2338) Resurrection vs. crossing the Rubicon

Christian apologists have often asserted that the resurrection of Jesus is strongly evidenced in comparison to other events that took place during the same time frame. This is not true. One good example is Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon River in 49 BCE. The following was taken from:

https://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/lecture.html

Nevertheless, Christian apologist Douglas Geivett has declared that the evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus meets, and I quote, “the highest standards of historical inquiry” and “if one takes the historian’s own criteria for assessing the historicity of ancient events, the resurrection passes muster as a historically well-attested event of the ancient world,” as well-attested, he says, as Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 B.C. Well, it is common in Christian apologetics, throughout history, to make absurdly exaggerated claims, and this is no exception. Let’s look at Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon for a minute:

First of all, we have Caesar’s own word on the subject. Indeed, The Civil War has been a Latin classic for two thousand years, written by Caesar himself and by one of his generals and closest of friends. In contrast, we do not have anything written by Jesus, and we do not know for certain the name of any author of any of the accounts of his earthly resurrection.

Second, we have many of Caesar’s enemies, including Cicero, a contemporary of the event, reporting the crossing of the Rubicon, whereas we have no hostile or even neutral records of the resurrection until over a hundred years after the event, which is fifty years after the Christians’ own claims had been widely spread around.

Third, we have a number of inscriptions and coins produced soon after the Republican Civil War related to the Rubicon crossing, including mentions of battles and conscriptions and judgments, which provide evidence for Caesar’s march. On the other hand, we have absolutely no physical evidence of any kind in the case of the resurrection.

Fourth, we have the story of the “Rubicon Crossing” in almost every historian of the period, including the most prominent scholars of the age: Suetonius, Appian, Cassius Dio, Plutarch. Moreover, these scholars have a measure of proven reliability, since a great many of their reports on other matters have been confirmed in material evidence and in other sources. In addition, they often quote and name many different sources, showing a wide reading of the witnesses and documents, and they show a desire to critically examine claims for which there is any dispute. If that wasn’t enough, all of them cite or quote sources written by witnesses, hostile and friendly, of the Rubicon crossing and its repercussions.

Compare this with the resurrection: we have not even a single established historian mentioning the event until the 3rd and 4th centuries, and then only by Christian historians. And of those few others who do mention it within a century of the event, none of them show any wide reading, never cite any other sources, show no sign of a skilled or critical examination of conflicting claims, have no other literature or scholarship to their credit that we can test for their skill and accuracy, are completely unknown, and have an overtly declared bias towards persuasion and conversion.

Fifth, the history of Rome could not have proceeded as it did had Caesar not physically moved an army into Italy. Even if Caesar could have somehow cultivated the mere belief that he had done this, he could not have captured Rome or conscripted Italian men against Pompey’s forces in Greece. On the other hand, all that is needed to explain the rise of Christianity is a belief–a belief that the resurrection happened. There is nothing that an actual resurrection would have caused that could not have been caused by a mere belief in that resurrection. Thus, an actual resurrection is not necessary to explain all subsequent history, unlike Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon.

It should be clear that we have many reasons to believe that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, all of which are lacking in the case of the resurrection. In fact, when we compare all five points, we see that in four of the five proofs of an event’s historicity, the resurrection has no evidence at all, and in the one proof that it does have, it has not the best, but the very worst kind of evidence–a handful of biased, uncritical, unscholarly, unknown, second-hand witnesses. Indeed, you really have to look hard to find another event that is in a worse condition than this as far as evidence goes. So Geivett is guilty of a rather extreme exaggeration. This is not a historically well-attested event, and it does not meet the highest standards of evidence.

It should be questioned why the most important event in the history of the universe is evidenced much more poorly than a mere terrestrial event from the same time. This is what would be expected of a myth but not an actual occurrence of such significance. The comparison with Caesar’s feat leaves Christianity on very unstable historical ground.

(2339) Editor’s fatigue

It is well established that the authors of the gospels of Matthew and Luke used the Gospel of Mark as a template for their work. Looking further into the way that this transpired, it becomes clear that in the process of copying/editing Mark, Matthew and Luke got a bit sloppy and made mistakes later in their work that can best be ascribed to their becoming fatigued. The following was taken from:

https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2015/03/10/how-editorial-fatigue-shows-that-matthew-and-luke-copied-mark/

Some years ago, Michael Goulder (see bibliography below) noted that certain inconsistencies in Luke and Matthew were best explained as a result of what he called “editor’s fatigue”. The idea is that Matthew (or Luke) has Mark in front of him and is copying from it as he composes his own Gospel, making changes and additions as necessary. However, fatigue sets in the longer he’s at it, and he starts missing things. Words and phrases he would have changed had he been more alert get copied without alteration from Mark, producing inconsistencies in the final work we know as Matthew (or Luke).

A simple example given by Goulder (p. 35) can be found in Matthew 14, which is based on Mark 6. It is the pericope about John the Baptist’s death.

Mark 6

14 King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known.

22 When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.”

25 Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”

26 The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.

Matthew 14

1 At that time Herod the tetrarch heard reports about Jesus;

6–7 But when Herod’s birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company, and she pleased Herod so much that he promised on oath to grant her whatever she might ask.

8 Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.”

9 The king was grieved, yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he commanded it to be given.

The “Herod” in this story is Antipas, a son of Herod the Great who ruled Galilee and Perea as a client of Rome. He was not a king, but a prince of lower status known as a tetrarch. Technically speaking, the only Herod to have the title of king was Herod the Great, who ruled all of Judea and died some 40 years before this story takes place.

Matthew, being somewhat more knowledgeable about such things, changes “king” to “tetrarch” at the beginning of the pericope and omits some of Mark’s further uses of the word “king”. However, at verse 9, he lapses into calling Herod a “king” as in Mark.

(We may also note that the best manuscripts of Mark name Herodias as Herod’s [Antipas’s] daughter in 6:22. This is factually incorrect, and Matthew corrects this, calling her the “daughter of Herodias”. This is further evidence for Marcan priority but not an example of fatigue.)

This provides further evidence that the gospels are a human rather than divine effort. Mistakes of this nature would not be expected of a work that is being supported by a supernatural force. This informs a skeptic to be wary of the content, similar to any other document of this time frame.

(2440) A gendered god is a red flag

The Bible makes it positively certain that God is male and is most certainly not female. This gender assignment is a red flag, for there is no rhyme or reason why God would be of any given sex, given that male and female animals did not evolve on Earth until about one billion years ago, or almost 13 billion years after the Big Bang. There would be no need for being a male god unless there was a counterpart female, but there is no female god in Christianity. On the other hand, a gendered god is a decisive clue that he was created by humans. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/f9feub/the_fact_that_god_is_gendered_is_a_big_red_flag/

Since becoming an atheist, it’s been fun finding all of the holes in Christianity that I completely overlooked when I was religious. So the last couple of days I’ve been thinking about how ridiculous it is that a formless, omnipotent being that exists beyond our definitions of time and space is male. The more I think about it, the more bizarre it seems. A male is simply any organism that produces sperm. So why would a being that doesn’t even have a physical body be classified as one? Did he somehow feel like he identified to masculine stereotypes that didn’t even exist yet? It literally makes no sense. To me, it’s a clear indication that people created him. Especially given the patriarchal society of the past, they would of course make him a male. It’s a somewhat small detail, but I find it kind of funny how I never even thought twice about this.

A real god would equally embody the essence of male, female, and asexual life forms, or in other words transcend the terrestrial assignment of sexual identities. A made-up god would take on the dominant cultural gender of the people who created it. Indeed, there were nations that devised female gods indicating that theirs was a more egalitarian society than the Jews.

(2341) John out of order

Although it is beyond the notice of most Christians, the Gospel of John suffers from a good number of geographical and chronological mistakes that makes it appear that it was heavily edited subsequent to its original authorship. This renders its historical value in question. The following was taken from:

https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/is-john-out-of-order-the-strange-geography-and-chronology-of-the-fourth-gospel/

Geographical Aporias

Scholars often refer to the discontinuities in John as “aporias”, or paradoxes that cannot be resolved within the narrative. Some of these are geographical in nature. Jesus’ movements throughout the Gospel are frequently described in detail. Jesus went here, and the next day he went here, and then a few days later he went somewhere else, and so on. The author clearly intends to portray a coherent and meaningful sequence of destinations around Palestine where Jesus preaches and performs miracles. If you pay close attention, however, the geography of Jesus’ travels is often confusing, if not downright contradictory.

John 6.1: One small step for a man…

In John 5, Jesus is in Jerusalem for a festival. From verse 14 onward, Jesus is in the temple giving a sermon. And then, suddenly, in the very next verse (6.1), Jesus goes “to the other side of the Sea of Galilee”, implying he had been by the lakeside instead of in faraway Jerusalem. For this reason, Bultmann and others have suspected that chapter 6 originally followed 4, with chapter 5 misplaced in between. Other scholars see this as an indication of later editing or revision.

John 6.3, 15: Jesus and the mountain(s)

In John 6:3, Jesus goes up a mountain with his disciples and performs the miracle of the loaves and fishes. When the exuberant crowd decides to make Jesus king, he again withdraws to the mountain. The story seems to be missing something, since no departure from the mountain is mentioned in the meantime.

John 6.59: Synagogue scene change

After the miracle of the loaves and fishes, Jesus goes across the sea. The crowd follows him there, and when they find him at the sea, he gives a sermon. At the end of the sermon, we are told that Jesus has been speaking in a synagogue, though none was previously mentioned.

John 7.1: Judea or Galilee?

Another minor discontinuity takes place in John 7.1, which suggests that Jesus has left Judea and gone to Galilee. However, he was already in Galilee in the preceding chapter. Bultmann proposed that ch. 7 originally followed ch. 5, in which Jesus is is in Judea; and that both followed chs. 4 and 6, in which Jesus is in Galilee.

Chronological Aporias

Similarly, the timing of events in John is often confusing, despite (or perhaps because of) the frequent use of time markers.

John 2.1: How many days?

John’s story begins with John the Baptist at Bethany beyond the Jordan being questioned by priests and Levites. “The next day,” John sees Jesus (1.24). “The next day” again, two of John’s disciples leave him to follow Jesus (1.35–42). “The next day” after that, Jesus decides to go to Galilee (1.43). Then, “on the third day”, a wedding takes place in Cana of Galilee (2.1). (Read the entire passage here.) If the third day of the narrative is meant, we are already on the fifth day. If the third day of Jesus’ trip to Galilee meant, the geography is problematic; that’s a journey of about 110 kilometres (70 miles), which cannot realistically be accomplished in three days (see Brodie, p. 164). If Jesus and his disciples are travelling by donkey, one can expect a speed of about 10–12 miles per day.

John 10.22: Where does the time go?

In 7.10, Jesus goes in secret to Judea for the festival of Booths. Jesus spends the festival preaching, as well as healing a man blind from birth, with no change in time or place suggested. Yet suddenly in 10.22, it is two months later, and the feast of the Dedication is taking place.

We may also note that the transition from Jesus’ arguments with the Pharisees at the end of ch. 9 to his discourse on the Good Shepherd in 10.1–18 is very abrupt (read it online here), with no clear logical connection. This section is followed by a controversy about Jesus being demon-possessed in 10.19–21, which contextually belongs with the healing of the blind man at the beginning of ch. 9. (Similarly, all three Synoptics use Jesus’ healing of the blind/mute man to introduce a controversy on demon-possession.)

Furthermore, Ashton notes that chapters 9 and 10 presuppose different historical situations for the Johannine community. Ch. 9 implies that the Christians are still part of the Jewish synagogue but are in danger of being expelled for professing their beliefs in Christ. In chapter 10, and in the Good Shepherd discourse particularly, the Christian community is portrayed as a self-sufficient group that is threatened by outsiders. (Ashton 2007, 48–49)

It is easy to see why many take the passage to have been composed in stages and possibly out of order.

John 11.2: There’s something about Mary

In chapter 11, we learn that Lazarus of Bethany, brother of Mary and Martha, has fallen ill. The narrator explains that this is the same Mary “who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair.” The odd thing about this explanation is that Mary’s anointing of Jesus hasn’t happened yet at this point in the story. (It takes place in chapter 12.)

John 12.44: Hiding in plain sight

John 12 has Jesus preaching to the crowd (12.27–36), and then leaving and hiding from them because of their unbelief. However, his public preaching inexplicably resumes in v. 44.

John 14.31: The Sermon in the Alley

In chapter 12, Jesus pays his final visit to Jerusalem and spends the Last Supper with his disciples. After spending two chapters preaching the Farewell Discourse to them, Jesus apparently decides to leave, saying, “Rise, let us be on our way” (14.31). He then continues his speech (15.1) for another three chapters as if nothing had changed until he and his disciples actually leave in 18.1. Some scholars think the Farewell Discourse originally ended at 14.31, and that chs. 15 and 16 are an addition reflecting a later situation in the Johannine community (Ashton 2007, 137).

John 13:36, 16:5: Quo vadis?

In John 16:5, Jesus declares, “But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’” However, Simon Peter just recently asked in 13:36, “Lord, where are you going?” Paul N. Anderson asks,

Was the text disordered and reordered wrongly, was Jesus not paying attention, or does this perplexity reflect a diachronic relationship between the material in John 13 and 16, alleviated by seeing one passage or the other as part of another source or edition? (2009, p. 248)

The issues that are listed above are generally understood by most divinity students, but when they graduate and begin to address congregants they keep them secret. This is part of a not-so-clandestine effort to feed the faithful with milk, and not meat, to keep them from questioning the truth of the Christian faith.

(2342) Deliberate biblical mistranslations

The following lists examples of how the evangelical Christians who developed the New International Version (NIV Bible) made deliberate changes to the original Greek text to fashion the message to be more compliant to their beliefs. This is a modern day example of what must have also happened in the hundreds of years before the oldest manuscripts had survived for use in modern translation.

https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/articles-and-resources/deliberate-mistranslation-in-the-new-international-version-niv/

❦ Matthew 1:4 — The NRSV correctly reads “Aram the father of Aminadab”. This appears to be a mistake on Matthew’s part, because Ram was the father of Aminadab according to 1 Chron. 2:10 (MT). The NIV corrects this verse to say “Ram” without so much as a footnote. (Note: The LXX says Ram and Aram were brothers, and that Aram was the father of Aminadab contra the MT, giving the NIV even less right to alter Matthew.)

Matthew 1:7 — The NRSV correctly reads “Abijah the father of Asaph”, which is what the oldest Greek manuscripts say. This appears to be a mistake on Matthew’s part, because Abijah was the father of Asa (1 Kings 15:8), not Asaph (a famous psalmist). The NIV corrects the verse to say “Asa” without so much as a footnote.

Matthew 1:10 — The NRSV correctly reads “Manasseh the father of Amos”, which is what the oldest Greek manuscripts say. This appears to be a mistake on Matthew’s part, because Manasseh was the father of Amon (2 Kings 21:18), not Amos, the famous prophet. The NIV corrects the verse to say “Amon” without so much as a footnote. (In fact, Matthew probably got his reading from an LXX variant. See my article on Matthew’s genealogy for more details.)

Matthew 2:11 — The NRSV correctly reads “and they knelt down and paid him homage.” The NIV has the magi worship Jesus instead of merely paying homage, most likely reflecting the piety of the translators and their audience: “and they bowed down and worshipped him.” The NIV does, however, correctly translate the same word (proskuneō) as “pay homage” in Mark 15:19, where the soldiers pay mock homage to Jesus as king. [See BeDuhn, Truth in Translation, pp. 44–45.]

Matthew 4:13, 4:18, 8:24, 8:26, 8:27, 8:32, 13:1, 13:47, 14:25, 14:26, 17:27 — Matthew refers to the “sea” in all these verses, usually meaning the Sea of Galilee. Like English, Greek distinguishes between freshwater lakes (limne) and saltwater seas (thalassa). To avoid the geographical mistake of calling this body of water, which is technically a small lake, a sea, the NIV translators replaced “sea” with “lake” or, on two occasions (8:26 and 8:27), with “waves”. The translators made similar changes to Mark and John (see entries for Mark 1:16 and John 6:16). (This change was brought to my attention by jps on his blog Idle Musings. For the reasons why the sea is an important part of Gospel theology, see my article, “Did Mark Invent the Sea of Galilee?”.)

Matthew 5:2 — The NIV takes surprising liberties here, omitting the phrase “he opened his mouth and…” found in all Greek manuscripts.

❦ Matthew 13:32 — To avoid giving the impression that Jesus could make a botanical mistake, the NIV (1984 version) has added the word “your”: “Though it [the mustard seed] is the smallest of your seeds”. The NRSV correctly reads “it is the smallest of all the seeds”. (Note: This mistranslation was fixed in the 2011 revision of the NIV.)

Matthew 21:7 — It is clear in the Greek that Jesus’ disciples bring a donkey and a colt, and after they put their cloaks on them, Jesus sits on both animals. (When the Greek text says Jesus sat on them, the masculine αὐτῶν must refer to the animals, and not to the neuter cloaks.) Scholars recognize that this departure from Mark’s text was made in order to adhere more literally to the “prophecy” of Zechariah 9:9. The 1984 NIV translated this verse correctly, but the 2005 TNIV and 2011 NIV have altered it so Jesus sits on the cloaks rather than the two animals: “They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on.” At best, this is a misleading paraphrase. (Suggested by John Kesler in the comments.)

Matthew 26:6 — Both here and in Mark 14:3, the Greek says that Jesus visited the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany. However, the NIV adds the phrase “a man known as”, which is not found in the original text: “While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper…” This seems like an innocuous change until one realizes the likely reason it was made: to harmonize Matt. 26:6 and Mark 14:3 with John 12, in which the same events (the anointing of Jesus with expensive ointment) take place at the home of Lazarus in Bethany. The NIV’s addition provides a way out of the contradiction by suggesting that Lazarus was also “known as” Simon the Leper, though the text itself says no such thing. (Note: This mistranslation was fixed in the 2011 revision of the NIV.)

❦ Matthew 27:11 — In the Greek text, Jesus prevaricates when asked by Pilate if he is the king of the Jews, answering “you say so.” The NIV (up until the 2005 TNIV edition) replaced this with a boldly affirmative response: “Yes, it is as you say.” (Likewise in Luke 23:3 — see below.) The 2011 revision has mostly fixed this error, but for some reason puts Jesus’ answer in the perfect tense: “You have said so.”

Matthew 28:9, 17 — Here again, although the Greek text intends to convey homage and obeisance paid to Jesus by the disciples, the NIV cannot resist making the passage reflect the translators’ own piety and modern theology by having the disciples worship Jesus: “They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him” (verse 9). The YLT correctly reads “they did bow to him”.

Mark 1:10 — The Greek unmistakably says that the Spirit descended “into him” (Jesus), and critical exegesis of the text by scholars supports this meaning. However, due to the christological problems with this wording, the NIV and most other translations change it to “on him”. (cf. Edward P. Dixon’s discussion of the phrase in ‘Descending Spirit and Descending Gods: A “Greek” Interpretation of the Spirit’s “Descent as a Dove” in Mark 1:10’, JBL Vol. 128/4, 771–772.)

Mark 1:16, 4:1, 4:39, 4:41, 5:13, 5:21, 6:47, 6:48, 6:49 — The NIV eliminates almost all Mark’s references to the “sea” in the interests of geographical correctness, as the Sea of Galilee is actually a small lake. However, Greek does distinguish between lakes and seas, and the meaning of “sea” is clearly intended by the author. In its place, the NIV writes “lake” or, on occasion (4:49 and 4:41), “waves”. In 5:13, the NIV omits one mention of the sea altogether, and in 5:21, it adds a second reference to “the lake” that has no equivalent in the Greek text. These changes eliminate the important symbolism Mark has established regarding the sea of Galilee. See the entries on Matt. 4:13 and John 6:16 for similar changes. (Brought to my attention by jps. See my article on the Sea of Galilee for related information.)

❦ Mark 4:31 — To avoid giving the impression that Jesus could make a botanical mistake, the NIV (1984 version) has him say that the mustard seed is “is the smallest seed you plant in the ground”, whereas the text actually says it is “the smallest of all seeds on earth”. This mistranslation was fixed in the 2005 TNIV. See also the entry for Matt. 13:32.

Mark 6:10 — In the Greek text, Jesus instructs his disciples: “Whenever you enter a house, remain there until you go out from there.” The NIV translators either found this too vague or wanted to harmonize it with the parallel in Luke 9:5, so they added the word town not found in the Greek: “stay there until you leave that town.” Although this is not the worst of changes, it does restrict the potential interpretations. (Cf. Matt. 10:14.) This entry was suggested by Pithom in the comments below, where you can find an interesting discussion of it.

Mark 10:1 — The Greek actually says that Jesus went to the “region of Judaea beyond the Jordan”. This is a fairly obvious geographical error, since crossing the Jordan would put Jesus outside of Judaea. The NIV translates away the problem by saying that Jesus first went to Judaea and then crossed the Jordan. (Note: Most other English translations do something similar.)

Mark 14:3 — See note about Matthew 26:6 above.

Mark 14:12 — The NRSV correctly reads “On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed…” The NIV has, for reasons that are not clear, inserted the phrase “when it was customary” without textual warrant: “On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb…” It must be noted that the author of Mark is in error here, as the Passover lamb is actually sacrificed the day before the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Matthew is aware of this mistake and omits the mention of the Passover sacrifice in Mt. 26:17. Perhaps the translators of the NIV thought they could spin this passage by implying a custom at odds with standard Jewish practice. (If anyone else can think of another reason, please let me know.)

Mark 15:42 — The NRSV correctly reads “When evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath….” This is an error, because the Jewish day starts in the evening, so it would already have been Sabbath. The NIV masks this error by altering the translation to read “So as evening approached….”

Luke 1:17 — In this loose quote by Luke of Malachi 4:6, the NIV authors unnecessarily change “fathers” to “parents” for the sake of gender inclusivity.

❦ Luke 2:2 note [a] — The NIV offers an alternate reading in a footnote: “this census took place before Quirinius was governor of Syria.” Grammatically speaking, “before” is not a possible reading of the Greek text. However, the notion of an earlier, historically unattested census is sometimes proposed by apologists in order to harmonize the date of Jesus’ birth in Luke (6-7 CE under Quirinius) with Matthew’s account (under King Herod prior to 4 BCE). The mistranslation offered by the NIV as an alternate reading is almost certainly intended to support such a view. (For a discussion of the Greek, see Carrier, “The Date of the Nativity”.)

Luke 2:22 — The 1984 NIV translated this verse correctly: “When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem….” However, the Torah only stipulated purification for the mother (see Lev. 12:1-7), and Luke appears to have misunderstood the Mosaic law on several points. The TNIV and 2011 NIV have altered the text, omitting the word “their” (Greek: αὐτῶν autōn) to hide the problem: “When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses…” (See Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, pp. 447–449, and my own article on Luke’s nativity. Credit to John Kesler in the comments below for suggesting this entry.)

Luke 2:25, 11:13 — The Greek text here quite clearly says “a holy spirit” (pneuma [ēn] hagion) in both these verses. However, the NIV (and nearly all other English translations) forces a trinitarian interpretation by translating it as “the Holy Spirit” with the definite article and capitalization.

Luke 3:33 — The NIV alters Luke’s genealogy here to match 1 Chron. 2:10 (MT) and the NIV’s alteration of Matt. 1:4 (see above). Our earliest Greek texts read “…Amminadab, son of Admin, son of Arni”, but the NIV says “…Amminadab, the son of Ram”. No Greek NT manuscript reads this way, although a small number of manuscripts read “Aram” as a harmonization with Matthew.

Luke 20:35 — The Greek text says that those who are worthy of resurrection “neither marry nor are given in marriage”, using the present tense. The NIV changes the verbs to the future tense to make it appear that Jesus is talking about marriage after the resurrection: “But those who are considered worthy of taking part…in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage.” For a thorough analysis of this verse, see Stewart Felker’s article, “The Most Embarrassing Verse(s) in the Bible”, as well as David E. Aune, ‘Luke 20:34-36: A “Gnosticized” Logion of Jesus?’, WUNT.1 303, 2013.

Luke 23:3 — In the Greek text, Jesus prevaricates when asked by Pilate if he is the king of the Jews, answering “you say so.” The NIV (up until the 2005 TNIV edition) replaced this with a boldly affirmative response: “Yes, it is as you say.” The 2011 revision has mostly fixed this error, but for some reason puts Jesus’ answer in the perfect tense: “You have said so.”

John 1:19 — The NRSV correctly reads ‘This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”’ The NIV here and throughout John changes “Jews” (Greek ioudaioi) to “Jewish leaders” to tone down the wording of these passages, which might be construed as antisemitic by some. (See “Which Jews Opposed Jesus?” by Joel Hoffman on the topic.)

John 6:17, 6:18, 6:19, 6:22, 6:25 — The NIV eliminates almost all John’s references to the “sea” in the interests of geographical correctness, as the Sea of Galilee is actually a small lake. The translators have replaced “sea” with ”lake” (6:17, 6:22, and 6:25), “waters” (6:18), and “water” (6:19). However, Greek does distinguish between lakes and seas, and the Sea of Galilee is deliberately referred to as a sea in the Gospels for important symbolic reasons. See the entries on Matt. 4:13 and Mark 1:16 for similar changes. (Brought to my attention by jps. See my article on the Sea of Galilee for more on the sea’s symbolism.)

John 6:63 — The NRSV correctly reads “it is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” The Greek word for spirit, pneuma, also means “breath” or “wind” and refers simply to the animating essence of living bodies. However, the NIV capitalizes “Spirit” and adds the definite article “the” in order to import trinitarian doctrine into the verse, which changes its meaning in a way not justified by the Greek: “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.” [See BeDuhn, Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, pp. 145–146.]

John 10:34 — The NIV puts quotation marks around the word “gods” to imply that the word should not be understood in the normal sense. This also happens to be a quotation of Psalm 82:6, where the NIV does the same thing, without any textual justification.

❦ John 18:40 — Barabbas is described in Mark and Luke as a murderer who took part in an uprising. John 18:40, however, describes him as a robber (λῃστής, lestes) — the NRSV reads “Now Barabbas was a bandit.” The NIV has rewritten this verse, however, to reflect what is said in Mark and Luke: “Now Barabbas had taken part in an uprising.”

John 20:22 — Again, the NIV translates “a holy spirit” as “the Holy Spirit”, imposing a trinitarian interpretation on the text.

John 21:1 — The NIV changes the “Sea of Tiberias” to “Sea of Galilee” to harmonize John with the Synoptic Gospels. It provides the correct text in a footnote.

❦ John 21:5 — In this resurrection appearance, Jesus calls out to his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, calling them “little children” (παιδία, paidia) and asking if they have any fish. For some reason, the NIV translates this as “friends” instead, but according to Greek lexicons, this word refers only to young children or, in some cases, young slaves. It always means “children” where it appears in the Bible. Judy Stack-Nelson suggests that the NIV is trying to harmonize this verse with John 15:15, in which Jesus tells the disciples he will from now on call them “friends”, for which he uses an entirely different Greek word (φίλους, philous).

Acts 1:4 — The resurrected Jesus is described as commanding the disciples not to leave Jerusalem. However, this would contradict Mark and Matthew, in which the disciples are told to wait for him in Galilee. The NIV weakens the implications of Jesus’ command by adding the phrase “on one occasion” to the text: “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command.” This phrase is not in the Greek text.

Acts 2:13 — In this story of the outpouring of tongues, some of the crowd sneer at the preaching of the apostles, accusing them of being drunk on gleukous, that is “new wine,” or wine that is freshly fermented and has not turned sour. This is an unlikely accusation to make at Pentecost, which comes before wine harvest at a time when there is no new wine available. Accordingly, the NIV changes the text to read simply “wine”. None of the other translations I have consulted do this. (See Barrett, Acts 1–14, p. 125.)

❦ Acts 4:33-34 — The NIV has tampered with these verses in several ways. (1) The text says that “great favour [Greek: χάρις] was upon them all”, referring to the apostles who were preaching the resurrection. Scholars differ on whether this favour is that of the people or that of God. The NIV eliminates the former interpretation by adding “God’s” and uses paraphrastic wording with quite a different nuance: “And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all…” [See Barrett, Acts 1-14, p. 254.] (2) The Greek in v. 34 says that “everyone who possessed property or houses sold [it] and brought the value of what was sold” to the apostles. The NIV significantly tempers this reference to the sharing of wealth by adding the phrase “from time to time” not found in the Greek. (3) The NIV changes the location of the sentence breaks from the Greek, altering the relationships between the statements in this passage. Instead of favour resulting from the apostles’ preaching and property sharing eliminating poverty, the NIV’s new sentence division implies “God’s grace” being mainly responsible for lack of poverty (rather than communal sharing). [Credit to Julie Shreves for suggesting point (2) in the comments.]

Acts 5:32 — Here and in several other New Testament verses (John 14:26, Ephesians 4:30 and 1 Corinthians 6:19), the NIV has translated the neuter relative pronoun ho as “who/whom”, even though “which” is the only grammatically valid translation, in order to emphasize the personhood of the Holy Spirit. Regardless of whether the NIV translators’ theology is correct, this is a biased and linguistically unjustifiable translation. [See BeDuhn, pp. 139–143.]

Acts 7:6 — See the entry on Genesis 15:13.

Acts 7:53 — The NRSV correctly reads “You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels”, but the NIV alters the verse slightly to obscure this strange view of angels: “you who have received the law that was given through angels”.

Acts 8:27 — The KJV correctly reads “Candace queen of the Ethiopians”. In the Greek, Luke gives “Candace” as the queen’s personal name. However, the word was actually the dynastic title of the Ethiopian queen mother. The NIV has altered this verse for the sake of historical accuracy, changing “Candace, queen of the Ethiopians” to “the Kandake (which means ‘queen of the Ethiopians’)”. This explanatory gloss is not in the biblical text and misrepresents what it does say.

Acts 13:50, 17:5, 18:12, 18:28, 20:3, 20:19, 21:11, 21:27, 23:12, 23:20, 26:21 — The phrase “the Jews” (ho Ioudaios) appears frequently in Acts. Although it should not be taken to mean all Jews, it is often used to identify Paul’s opponents. However, the NIV has altered this phrase wherever it has negative implications. In most such instances, the NIV adds the word “some”, making the text read “some Jews” or “some of the Jews”. In 18:12, the words “of Corinth”, which are not in the Greek text, have been added. In 18:28 and 20:19, “the Jews” has been changed to “Jewish opponents” (the Greek does not say “opponents”). In 13:50 and 21:11, the phrase has been changed to “Jewish leaders” (the Greek does not say “leaders”).

Acts 22:9 — The NRSV correctly says that Paul’s companions “did not hear the voice” of the one speaking to Paul, but the NIV has changed this to “did not understand the voice” to hide the contradiction with the account in chapter 9.

Romans 2:6 — The NIV translates ergon (ἔργον) inconsistently throughout the epistles, using the direct translation “works” when the connotation is negative but other phrases when it is positive. The ESV here reads “He will render each one according to his works,” but the NIV says “…according to what they have done”. See the entries on James below for a fuller explanation.

❦ Romans 3:21–26 — The NIV engages in some theological trickery here. It changes “righteousness of God” to “righteousness from God” in v. 21, eliminates the mention of God from v. 22, and changes “righteousness” in vv. 25 and 26 (the same Greek word as in vv. 21 and 22) to “justice” in order to imply that this passage is talking about the righteousness of believers rather than the righteousness of God. (Note: the error in v. 21 was fixed in the 2005 TNIV, and vv. 25 and 26 were fixed in the 2011 revision of the NIV. The omission in v. 22 remains.)

Romans 7:18 — The NIV here translates σάρξ (sarx) as “sinful nature” even though this implies later Augustinian doctrine on original sin that is not intended by the original writer. In contrast, the NRSV correctly chooses to translate this tricky Pauline term more literally as “flesh”. (See this article by Jason Staples on the subject.)

Romans 7:25 — The opening line correctly reads in the NRSV as “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” For some reason, the NIV adds the phrase “who delivers me”, even though this is not found in the Greek text: “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” The rest of this verse is also suspect: the NIV translates “in the flesh” (τῇ σαρκὶ) as “in my sinful nature” even though this makes a theological statement about the meaning of “the flesh” not warranted by the Greek text. “So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” (Note: Prior to the 2011 revision of the NIV, “flesh” [σάρξ] was translated as “sinful nature” dozens of times throughout the epistles. The translators have since acknowledged and corrected this error in most places, but this verse remains the same.)

Romans 16:7 (updated) — The NIV (1984 version) changes the female apostle Junia into a man, “Junias”, due to a bias against women being counted as apostles of early Christianity. (Note: This translation was fixed in the 2011 revision of the NIV.) Contributor AH, in the comments, has pointed out two further issues: (1) Paul says Andronicus and Junia are his syngeneis, his “relatives” or “kinsfolk”. The NIV translates this as “fellow Jews” which is not the only possible, or even most likely, meaning. (2) Paul calls the same duo his synaichmalotous or “fellow prisoners”, which could have any of several metaphorical and literal meanings. The NIV replaces this noun with a relative clause that goes well beyond what the Greek says: “[fellow Jews] who have been in prison with me”.

1 Corinthians 4:9 — The NIV adds a great deal of elaboration not found in the Greek text: “For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena.” The NIV’s additions are in italics. (See Bruce Metzger, The Bible in Translation, p. 80.)

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 — Paul here refers to the “body” (singular) of believers as the “temple” (singular) of the Holy Spirit — a topic he touches on elsewhere, for example in 1 Cor. 3:16-17. He uses this language, in part, to emphasize the unity and oneness of the Christian community (see Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, pp. 202-203). Unfortunately, the NIV changes “temple” and both occurrences of “body” in these verses to the plural form, which completely alters Paul’s theological message. These changes first appeared in the 2005 TNIV. (Suggested by Michael in the comments below.)

1 Corinthians 7:20–21 — The Greek of verse 21 by itself is ambiguous, but in context with v. 20 probably intends to say that slaves should remain slaves. (See John Chrysostom, Homily 19.) The NIV (and most other English translations) prefers to translate it with the opposite meaning—that Paul encourages slaves to gain their freedom.

1 Corinthians 7:36 — In this passage, Paul says that if a man feels strong sexual attraction to “his virgin” (Greek: parthenos), he may marry her, though it is better if he does not. The ancient Christian practice of unmarried men living in ascetic cohabitation with virgin girls and widows is probably the background to this teaching. [See Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, p. 324; and Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians.] The NIV, however, adds words not found in the Greek text to make the teaching be about betrothal: “If anyone is worried that he might not be acting honorably toward the virgin he is engaged to…”.

❦ 1 Corinthians 11:4–7a — The NIV offers a long footnote with an alternate translation of these verses, replacing multiple instances of “head covering” with “long hair”, which has no support in the Greek text. This appears to be an attempt to accommodate churches that do not require head coverings for women but want to think their practices are strictly in accordance with Scripture. (See Bible Researcher for a discussion of this passage.)

1 Corinthians 11:27 — The Greek text sternly warns that those who eat and drink in an unworthy manner will be “guilty [or liable] for the body and blood of the Lord.” The NIV changes the meaning of this statement and lessens its severity by making the transgressor merely “guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.” The words “sinning against” are not in the Greek. (See Fee, First Epistle to the Corinthians p. 559–561, who states “to be ‘guilty of his body and blood’ means to be ‘liable for his death’.” The NIV’s alteration makes that interpretation impossible.)

1 Corinthians 11:29 — For reasons that are unclear, the NIV adds the words “of Christ”, which are not found in any manuscript: “For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ….”

1 Corinthians 14:12 — The Greek text literally reads “since you strive zealously for spirits” (πνευμάτων, pneumatōn), but the NIV changes “spirits” to “spiritual gifts”, which fits the theology of many Protestant denominations but is not what the verse actually says. (See Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, p. 515.)

1 Corinthians 16:13 — The Greek text literally exhorts readers to “be men”. The NASB, for example, reads, “be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” To avoid any gender specificity, the NIV has changed this to “be courageous”, but this takes significant liberties regarding how “act like men” ought to be understood.

❦ Galatians 1:8 — The Greek says “let him be accursed”, but the NIV reads “let him be eternally condemned!”, a theological interpretation that is not justified by the text. (Note: The 2011 version has changed this verse to say “let them be under God’s curse”, which is only somewhat better. The Greek does not say “God’s curse”, and this phrase is grammatically poor, lacking agreement between “them” and its antecedents. This might be an example of the 2011 NIV’s clumsy attempts at gender-neutral translation.)

❦ Galatians 1:16b — In the Greek, Paul says “I did not confer with any human being” at the beginning of his ministry. The NIV changes this to “my immediate response was not to consult any human being.” Nothing in the original text corresponds to “my immediate response”; rather, the NIV appears to be reinterpreting the text to harmonize it with the rather different account of Paul’s conversion in Acts.

Galatians 3:5 — This enigmatic verse literally reads “He, therefore, who is supplying to you the Spirit, and working mighty acts among you — [is it] by works of law or by the hearing of faith?” (YLT) The NIV gives a Protestant interpretation of this passage that obscures the actual wording and other potential interpretations: “does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?” (Note: Most other English translations have the same problem.)

Galatians 3:19 — The NRSV correctly reads “[the law] was ordained through angels by a mediator.” The NIV has changed this to say “the law was given to angels and entrusted to a mediator”, adding the word “entrust” and reversing the role of the mediator in Paul’s statement.

❦ Ephesians 2:3 — The NRSV correctly reads “we were by nature children of wrath”. The NIV has taken considerable liberties in its translation, echoing Protestant theories of sin and atonement in doing so: “we were by nature deserving of wrath.” The genitive could be translated as “destined for wrath”, but no equivalent to “deserving” can be found in the Greek, and “children” has been omitted. (Source: Larkin, Ephesians: A Handbook on the Greek Text, p. 30)

Ephesians 2:20–22 — The Greek says “you are being constructed into a habitation of God in spirit (en pneumati)”, but the NIV interprets this as “in the Spirit” (i.e. the Holy Spirit) without textual warrant. [See BeDuhn, p. 151.] Throughout the epistles, the NIV shows a theological bias to translate “in spirit” as “in the (Holy) Spirit” wherever possible.

Ephesians 5:33 — The Greek says that wives should “fear” (φοβῆται, phobetai) their husbands. However, the NIV and many other English translations change this to “respect”. None of the major Greek lexicons give “respect” as a possible definition for phobetai. The verb φοβέω usually indicates a relationship of authority and submission, not admiration, when used in the context of interpersonal relationships. (See Jean-Sébastien Rey, “Family Relationships in 4QInstruction and in Eph 5:21–6:4”, Echoes from the Caves: Qumran and the New Testament, p. 251)

Ephesians 6:18 — The Greek says to pray “in spirit” (en pneumati), perhaps meaning silently rather than out loud. However, the NIV interprets this as “in the Spirit” (i.e. the Holy Spirit). [See BeDuhn, p. 148.]

Philippians 2:6 — The NIV changes the Greek, which is correctly translated by the NRSV as “though he was in the form of God”, to say “being in very nature God”, a speculative interpretation of “form of God” that is unwarranted by the original text.

Colossians 1:15 — The NRSV correctly reads “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation”. The NIV has replaced “of” with “over”, even though this is not at a valid meaning of the Greek preposition pasēs. The obvious reason is to hide the problematic theology of Jesus being described as a created being.

Colossians 1:19 — The NIV has added “his” in front of “fullness”, to shape the interpretation of this verse in a certain way not indicated by the text: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.” The Greek simply says “the fullness”.

❦ 2 Thessalonians 2:15, 3:6 — The NIV engages in some vocabulary trickery here. The word paradosis, meaning “tradition”, gets translated inconsistently in order to de-Catholicize the Bible’s theology. When the context is negative, as in the “human traditions” of Colossians 2:8 or the traditions of the Pharisees in Matthew 15:1–6, “tradition” is used. When the context is positive, as in these two instances — which read “the teachings we passed on to you” and “the teachings you received from us”, respectively — the NIV uses the word “teachings”. The NRSV, by contrast, consistently and correctly translates this word as “tradition”. (See this article at Shameless Popery for a discussion of the topic.)

1 Timothy 3:2 — The RSV correctly reads “Now a bishop must be above reproach, the husband of one wife.” For some reason, the NIV has obscured the possibility of polygamy by changing it to “Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife”.

1 Timothy 3:16 — The NIV again mistranslates “in spirit” (en pneumati) as “in the Spirit” (i.e. the Holy Spirit), which is not warranted by the Greek text.

Titus 1:6 — As with 1 Tim. 3:2 above, the Greek text calls for elders to be “married to one wife”. The NIV has instead rendered it as “faithful to his wife”, which is not the same thing.

Titus 2:11 — The Greek literally says that “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people”, and reads as such in most translations (including the NRSV, ESV, NET, CEB, NLT, and NASB). Various Greek lexicons agree that σωτήριος (sōterios) should be understood as meaning “bringing salvation”. However, the NIV says the grace of God “offers salvation to all people”, which prevents the verse from being used in support of universal salvation. The qualifying verb “offers” is not in the Greek.

Hebrews 1:5 — The NRSV correctly reads “You are my Son; today I have begotten you”. The NIV has changed it slightly to read “You are my Son; today I have become your father”, perhaps to avoid the implication that Jesus was a created being. (See also Col. 1:15.)

Hebrews 4:14 — According to the Greek text, Jesus has “passed through the heavens”, which reflects typical first-century conceptions of multiple layered heavens through which one must pass to reach God’s throne room. The NIV, however, says Jesus “ascended into heaven”, obscuring the cosmology of Hebrews and making the text conform to modern, more acceptable views of heaven. Note: this error was introduced in the 2005 TNIV. [See To the Hebrews (Anchor Yale Bible) p. 80.]

Hebrews 6:1 — The NIV for some reason changes “dead works” to “acts that lead to death”, forcing a narrow and probably incorrect interpretation on the text.

Hebrews 11:4 — According to the Greek text, Abel brought God “a better sacrifice” than Cain. However, the NIV has changed “sacrifice” to “offering” to harmonize it with the story told in Genesis 4, which mentions no sacrifices. This change was introduced with the 2005 TNIV.

Hebrews 11:7 — The Greek text says that “by this [the act of building the ark and saving his household],” Noah “condemned the world”. The NIV changes the effect of this verse somewhat by adding words that do not appear in the Greek: “by his faith he condemned the world….”

James 2:14 — The NRSV correctly reads “What good is it … if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?” The NIV harmonizes this verse with Protestant theology by adding the word “such” without textual justification: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?” (Note: most other English translations also alter the passage.) The NIV also deceptively translates ergon as “deeds” here, even though it translates the same word as “works” when the connotation is negative, in order to tone down passages that appear to promote works in addition to faith. (See also the entry on James 2:17–18 below.)

❦ James 2:17-18, 20, 22, 24-26 — The NIV translates ergon, meaning “works”, inconsistently throughout the epistles in order to push the Bible’s theology on faith and works in a Protestant direction. In negative contexts (e.g. Romans 3:27), the NIV translates it as “works” almost without exception. However, it avoids any positive association with the word “works” in verses like James 2:24, which has been translated, “You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone”, and James 2:26, “so faith without deeds is dead.” The NRSV is more consistent and theologically neutral, translating it as “works” in all these passages. James 2:25 is a particularly egregious example: while the Greek text literally says Rahab was “justified (dikaioō) by works (ergon)”, the NIV translation says Rahab was “considered righteous for what she did”, even though the NIV is happy to translate dikaioo and ergon as “justified” and “works” in passages like Romans 3:28 (“For we maintain that a person is justified (dikaioō) by faith apart from the works (ergon) of the law.”) Theology aside, the NIV’s translation of ergon as the phrase “what they do” in v. 24 is also a clumsy attempt at avoiding gender-specific pronouns.

James 2:25 — The Greek mentions the visit of ἀγγέλους (angelous), or “messengers”, to Rahab the prostitute. The NIV changes this word to “spies”, although that is not a valid translation of angelous. The only obvious reason for the change is to make this verse adhere more closely to the story in Joshua 2. (See the entry above for other problems with the NIV’s translation of this verse.)

1 Peter 1:17 — The NRSV correctly reads “If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds…” Because this verse suggests that people are judged by God according to their works, contra Protestant theology, the NIV changes the wording to mean something slightly different: “Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially…”

1 Peter 3:18–19 — The NIV again mistranslates “in spirit” (en pneumati) as “in the Spirit” (i.e. the Holy Spirit), which is not warranted by the Greek text.

1 Peter 3:21 — The NRSV correctly reads “And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”. Because this conflicts with Protestant theology on baptism, the NIV has changed “appeal to God for a good conscience” to “pledge of a clear conscience toward God”, which has a very different meaning.

❦ 1 Peter 4:6 — This enigmatic passage correctly reads in the NRSV as “For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead”. The possibility of salvation after death obviously conflicts with Evangelical theology, so the NIV has changed it to read “For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead.”

2 Peter 2:15 — Although our best and oldest manuscripts read “Balaam son of Bosor”, the 1984 NIV read “Balaam son of Beor” to harmonize it with Jude 11 and various Old Testament references to Balaam. For some reason, the TNIV and 2011 NIV have revised this verse to say “Balaam son of Bezer”, which is hardly an improvement, since no New Testament manuscript reads Bezer, and it’s not clear that an allusion to the Transjordan city of Bezer is intended.

Jude 7 (Updated) — The Greek states that Sodom, Gomorrah and the surrounding cities “serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” In other words, the fiery destruction of those cities serves as a warning for immoral behaviour. However, the NIV has subtly altered the verse to suggest it is individuals who suffer eternal fiery torment: “They serve an example to those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.” This provides an explicit proof-text for a doctrine of eternal hellfire that is otherwise lacking in the epistles. Additionally, the Greek text describes their crime as “going after flesh of another kind”, which almost certainly means angels given the context, but the NIV has changed this to read simply “perversions”. This obscures the point of Jude’s argument and makes it easy to misapply the text to homosexuality, which is quite the opposite of lusting after “flesh of another kind”.

Jude 8 — The NIV has taken remarkable liberties with the text, changing “dreamers” (an allusion to Deut. 13) to “ungodly people” who act “on the strength of their dreams”. None of these words appear in the Greek.

Quotation by N.T. Wright:

When the New International Version was published in 1980, I was one of those who hailed it with delight. I believed its own claim about itself, that it was determined to translate exactly what was there, and inject no extra paraphrasing or interpretative glosses…. Disillusionment set in over the next two years, as I lectured verse by verse through several of Paul’s letters, not least Galatians and Romans. Again and again, with the Greek text in front of me and the NIV beside it, I discovered that the translators had another principle, considerably higher than the stated one: to make sure that Paul should say what the broadly Protestant and evangelical tradition said he said…. [I]f a church only, or mainly, relies on the NIV it will, quite simply, never understand what Paul was talking about. [Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, 2009, pp. 51-52]

There are many Christians who take their NIV Bible to be the inerrant word of God, completely oblivious of the translation shenanigans that took place. This is not the trajectory of a divine message being sent to humankind, but rather has human hands written all over it.

(2343) Many Yahwehs

There is evidence that ancient Jews believed that there were many gods named Yahweh that were overseeing specific cities or regions. At some point, an effort was made to consolidate these gods into a unique deity. The following was taken from:

https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/and-then-there-was-one-yahweh-and-the-shema/

One of the most famous phrases in all the Old Testament is certainly the declaration in Deuteronomy 6:4, referred to as the Shema after its initial word.

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יהוה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יהוה אֶחָד
šᵉma’ yiśrāêl yahweh ’ělōhênū yahweh ‘eḥāḏ

The best nuance with which to translate this statement has been debated. The NRSV and its footnotes offer no fewer than four options, for example. I used to frequently hear it in sermons expressed as “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one God!” and there is a popular church song that uses this translation as its main lyric. Hearing it this way, people naturally assume the Shema to be a simple expression of monotheism.

However, what it really says is somewhat more interesting, and a more faithful translation would be the following:

Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our god is one Yahweh!

We read a similar statement by the prophet Zachariah (14.9):

And Yahweh will become king over all the earth; on that day Yahweh will be one and his name one.

What, exactly, is meant by “one Yahweh”, and why would such a declaration be necessary? Archaeological finds of the past few decades have shed some light on that.

Deities in the ancient Near East were not conceptualized as universal, omnipresent beings like today’s monotheistic religions do. The Canaanite god Baal-Hadad, for example, was worshipped in a variety of different, often local, manifestations. Baal-Shamem (Baal of the Sky), Baal of Lebanon, and Baal of Sidon are some of the variants of Baal attested to in inscriptions. The Old Testament also refers to various places named after local versions of Baal: Baal-peor, Baal-hermon, Baal-meon, and so on.¹ The reference to a Beth-baal-meon in Joshua 13:17 implies a temple or shrine dedicated to the local Baal.²

It appears, from the archaeological and textual evidence, that the same was true of Yahweh. At Kuntillet Ajrud, a Hebrew religious site in the northeastern Sinai dating to the eighth century, inscriptions have been found giving blessings in the name of “Yahweh of Samaria” and “Yahweh of Teman”, as well as Yahweh’s consort Asherah. Less obvious examples can be found in the Bible itself: in 2 Samuel 15:7, Absalom asks the king for permission to fulfill a vow he made to Yahweh běḥebrôn, which can be translated “Yahweh of Hebron”; and Psalm 99:2 gives praise to Yahweh běsiyyôn, “Yahweh of Zion”.³ It is also increasingly thought that Qos, the patron deity of Edom, was a local variant of Yahweh.⁴ Additionally, the Old Testament implies in places that the worship of Yahweh was geographically restricted (e.g. 1 Sam 26:19 and 2 Kgs 5:17). We may also note that the chief Syro-Canaanite deity El, who in time became equated with Yahweh, also appears in the Bible under diverse manifestations: Elyon, Shadday, and others.

In the earlier Hebrew texts, we find evidence for numerous sanctuaries and temples where local Yahweh veneration took place, including Samaria, Dan, Bethel, Shiloh, and Jerusalem. Archaeology has discovered additional Judaean/Israelite shrines, such as those at Kuntillet Ajrud and Arad.

These local sanctuaries and diverse Yahweh cults were not to last, however. A major historical shift in the religion occurred when, at some point, a concerted attempt was made to centralize Yahwist sacrifices and worship at Jerusalem (or at Mt. Gerizim, in the case of the Samaritans). This effort, along with the “discovery” of the Law scroll in Jerusalem, has been retrojected by the Deuteronomic authors into the time of pious King Josiah, whose religious reforms included the destruction of bamot (local shrines) to Yahweh and the slaughtering of their priests (2 Kgs 23:20).⁵ We see a depiction of this reform again in the stories of Ezra and Nehemiah, returnees from Babylon who introduce the people of Judah to the Law of Moses and the correct means of worshipping Yahweh.

The importance of the Shema is seen more clearly in this context. It documents and imposes a fundamental change in the understanding and worship of Yahweh. From now on, the book of Deuteronomy declares, Israel’s god is to be Yahweh, and there shall be only one Yahweh.

This opens a window to understanding the evolution of Yahweh worship, that it was a work in progress over many years and not the result of a singular revelation, much less from an actual supernatural being. It lets us know that the central figure of Christian worship is a long-term, evolved concept of Jewish theology.

(2344) Luke invents story to minimize John the Baptist

There is plenty of evidence that, during the First Century, there was a separate following of John the Baptist that directly competed with ‘The Way,’ or the followers of Jesus. One of the clues is the following passage in Acts:

Acts 19: 1-7

While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”

They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?”

“John’s baptism,” they replied.

Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. There were about twelve men in all.

It is likely that the author of Luke (who also wrote Acts sometime later) was aware of the schism between the followers of the two figureheads. So he concocted a story that Jesus and John were in fact cousins and that Jesus was in the position of superiority. This had the effect of making John the Baptist a secondary figure to Jesus and a reason for all followers of John to change their allegiance. The following was taken from:

https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2016/01/03/lukes-nativity-story-critically-examined/

“And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.” (Luke 1:36)

Here, Luke makes the astonishing claim that Jesus and John were closely related. As Brown notes, “this latter detail is never suggested anywhere else in the four Gospels, and is very difficult to reconcile with John 1:33 where [John the Baptist] says that he did not even know Jesus” (p. 285). And Strauss declares that the relation between the two mothers and the intimacy between their families “cannot be affirmed on the testimony of Luke, unsupported by other authorities” (p. 144).

Brown believes the purpose of this invention by Luke was to explain the close relationship between the similar, but separate, religious movements associated with Jesus and John the Baptist. Strauss says it was needed “to magnify Jesus by connecting the Baptist with him from the earliest possible point in a relation of inferiority” (p. 143).

We know that Luke was fond of inventing stories to push a certain purpose, such as making up a census to place Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. This looks to be another in this line of effort, this time to discredit the followers of John the Baptist.

(2345) Christianity requires a massive support structure

Have you ever wondered why scientists do not have to meet every weekend to profess their belief in evolution, hold hands, sing songs, and give testimony (‘I know evolution is true, I have prayed and received confirmation’)? It’s because the theory of evolution stands independently on its own considerable body of evidence. Christianity, on the other hand, does not operate in the same way. It requires a massive support structure- indoctrination of the young, weekly services, devotional songs, apologists, books, movies, testimonies, rituals, retreats, etc. Without these props it would die a quick death. The following was taken from:

http://www.debunking-christianity.com/2020/02/what-would-happen-if-christians-went-on_28.html#more

I suppose we could fantasize about Christians walking off the job, going on strike. If the enormous Christian bureaucracy were suddenly to disappear; if the intensive efforts to indoctrinate the young faded way; if the multi-billion-dollar marketing campaign for Jesus ceased; if missionaries came home and found better careers; if the Gideons found a better book to give away (Christianity in the Light of Science would be a good one); if apologists could escape their emotional investment—actually, entrapment—in the ancient Jesus mystery cult (and also found better careers), it’s a good bet Christianity would no longer be considered such a good thing. It takes a lot of props to keep it alive, and we can be sure the Holy Spirit wouldn’t step in to carry the load.

If Christianity was true it would be supported by evidence in the same manner as evolution and would not need an army of apologists or the repetitive reinforcement of its followers with sermons, songs, and testimonials. It too, would stand on its own, self-evident, a simple fact of life. If evolution was not taught to grade school children, would they easily assimilate it at university? Yes. But what about Christianity? Would the same be true? No.

(2346) Conflicting stories about Moses

Unknown to virtually every Christian, the Bible does not present a single account of their patron prophet Moses, but rather two, and they are irreconcilably different. This presents a problem for establishing the historicity of this biblical icon. The following was taken from:

https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/moses-the-mostly-untold-story/

The two competing traditions begin with Moses’ birth. In one tradition, the Israelites have spent 400 years in Egypt and grown so numerous, that Pharaoh commands all Egyptians to throw baby Israelite males into the Nile. Baby Moses is hidden from them and grows up to lead two million Israelites out of Egypt into the Wilderness for forty years. After Moses’ death, Joshua leads them to conquer the Promised Land, and then a long period of rule by judges commences.

The other tradition is much humbler in scale. It begins with a smaller group of Jacob’s descendants in Egypt. Amram, the father of Aaron, Moses and Miriam, is the grandson of the patriarch Levi, and his wife Jochebed is the daughter of Levi. (See Exodus 2:1, Exodus 6:16–20, and Numbers 26:57–59. Due to the blatant contradiction with the 400-year Egyptian sojourn, many English translations obscure or alter these passages — the NIV in particular.)

Pharaoh fears a future increase in their number, so he commands the two midwives who attend to them (Shiphrah and Puah, Exodus 1:15) to kill the Hebrews’ male babies. The midwives disobey his order, however, and Moses is born.

In this tradition, Moses leads the descendants of Jacob (just two generations’ worth) out of Egypt. He is capable of addressing the entire group at once and managing their affairs as a single individual. All the protagonists of the story are related to one another.

Moses and Aaron do not die in the wilderness, but settle the children of Israel in the Promised Land (1 Sam 12.8). At the end of the book of Judges, Moses’ grandson Jonathan becomes the priest to the Danites (Jg 18:30), and Aaron’s grandson Pinehas becomes a priest of Bethel (Jg 20:28). When all the events now portrayed in Exodus through Judges from the “large-scale tradition” are taken into account, there is no way this period of time could be just a generation or two removed from the events of the Exodus.

This represents an embarrassment for anyone taking the Bible at face value. We are left with two possibilities, either both of the Moses stories are fictional or else one is true and other somehow found its way into the holy scriptures. Either scenario is a crisis for those who promote biblical inerrancy.

(2357) Jesus defines adultery

We know that adultery is the subject of one of the Ten Commandments, as in Exodus 20:14:

“You shall not commit adultery.”

In the following scripture, Jesus defines two kinds of actions that constitute adultery:

Luke 16:18

“Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

So, according to Jesus, if a man divorces his wife and marries another woman, he commits adultery, and if a man, who has never previously married, marries a woman who has been divorced, then he commits adultery as well. So a type of double adultery would be when a man divorces is wife and then marries a divorced woman.

All of these situations proliferate in Christian circles and this scripture is actively ignored by most of the faithful. The Catholic Church has a ridiculous work-around of these injunctions by the use of annulments, which sometimes are used to say, for example, that a couple married for 20 years with two children was never really married in the first place.

It is especially poignant when a man who has divorced and remarried campaigns for the erection of a Ten Commandments monument on public ground while he is ACTIVELY violating the SIXTH COMMANDMENT.

Religious and non-religious people generally can agree that what Jesus said about adultery is not workable in our daily lives, any more than looking with lust at a woman is an act of adultery (though that is a slightly different case since it is a singular act that can be repented versus the ongoing marital practice of adultery). The fact that Jesus made this judgment, or even if it was just made up by Luke, indicates that it was not anything that came from the mind of a universal god, who certainly would have understood the human condition, the sometimes necessity of divorce, and the reasons why divorced people would be happier and more fulfilled and that society could function more efficiently if they could remarry. This scripture is an ongoing embarrassment for the Christian religion.

(2348) Cutting off a woman’s hand

The Bible contains a lot of questionable material that would seem to be beneath the integrity of an immeasurably intelligent and powerful deity. One of best counter-examples is how it places more importance on a man’s genitals than a woman’s hand. The following was taken from:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/godzooks/2019/03/bible-deuteronomy-misogyny-atheism/

Should anyone doubt the inherent misogyny in the Bible, all one need do is check out the New International Version of Deuteronomy 25: 11-12, which makes it clear that women are expendable.

If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.

Here’s the similar King James Bible version for comparison.

Aside from the permissive brutality prescribed against women in this biblical verse, it is also patently illogical and immoral. It allows, if a man is attacked by the wife of a man he is assaulting, and she grabs the assailant by “his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show no pity.”

First off, it would be entirely appropriate as self-defense in proxy to her husband, an act that, at least in any 21st century American court, would likely be considered legal. And second, the divinely prescribed response is wildly disproportionate, particularly given that the aggressor had it coming and the woman was within her rights, indeed had a moral duty to intervene on her husband’s behalf.

I had never heard of this biblical passage before I saw it today posted by Adrian Gonzales on the atheist Facebook page titled Atheists, Agnostics & Antitheists vs. All Others. But it reaffirms for me the anti-women brutality so common in the Old Testament portions of the Bible, and reminds me of how unfathomable it is that many, many people still view this book as the inerrant “word of God.”

Some biblical scholars, like here, contend that the passage should not be taken so literally, that “cut off her hand” should probably be viewed as an indirect way of saying “make her pay a fine.” Or probably not. But, if one accepts the notion of an omnimerciful deity, the metaphorical understanding would certainly be the only serviceable one.

That said, what should we teach our kids: (1) do virtually anything you can to rescue a victim from violence or, (2) if a woman is the rescuer, cut her hand off if she touches you in the wrong place?

That’s a hard one, right?

One thing’s clear, whatever Eve did in the Garden of Eden must have been much worse than we thought.

There is not a single Christian who would endorse this form of punishment, but many of them will claim that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. A clear thinking person will realize that this absurdity originated in the mind of a man, free from any inspiration from the supernatural.

(2349) Science trumps faith healing

The 2020 COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) pandemic is providing real-life, real-time proof of the failure of Christianity to live up to its claims. The gospels are jam packed with promises of the power of prayer and the ability of prayer to heal the sick. Yet, in the wake of the pandemic, the faithful have apparently lost their faith in these divine assurances. The following is one good example:

https://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/religion/article241044316.html

A prominent Northern California mega-church whose members believe their prayers heal the sick and raise the dead is advising the faithful to wash their hands, urging those who feel sick to stay home, canceling missionary trips and advising its faith healers to stay away from local hospitals.

Bethel Church leaders say they’re in close contact with local health officials, but they’re not yet canceling services for the 6,300 people who attend services each week in Redding, one of the largest regular gatherings in far Northern California.

“Through email communications, signage, and church announcements, we are actively encouraging health practices and precautions to our whole community,” Aaron Tesauro, a church spokesman, said in an email. “We believe that wisdom, modern medicine, and faith are meant to work together, and express the value for each in the pursuit of continued health and healing.”

In the end, what people do is a better barometer of what they believe than what they say. And in this case we can see that they are inadvertently acknowledging the impotence of their god, and are resorting to secular science as a refuge.

(2350) Complicated natural processes

Christians often retreat when challenged to the argument that there is no explanation for the existence of the universe and that the logical conclusion is that it must have been created by a supernatural being, or a god. They conveniently then assume that this god is Yahweh. What is missing in this line of thought is that historically there have been a series of similar arguments for a myriad of natural phenomena, all of which eventually succumbed to scientific explanations. The same will likely be true of universal existence. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/fggurr/im_an_atheist_that_needs_arguments_against/

“Who created the Universe?” argument. One of the most common theist arguments I’ve heard is “the universe must have a cause, and this cause must be a sentient, thinking, conscious agent.” Well, firstly, I don’t see why we couldn’t assume the Universe always existed. But even if I concede the first part (something caused the universe), I don’t see how you can conclude the second part (sentient superbeing did it). Humans used to believe the same thing about hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. Who caused the volcano? Obviously the Volcano God. Well, then we learned that the causes of these things are complicated natural processes. It seems obvious to me that the Universe, too, if it was “caused”, those causes would be complicated natural processes.

Science has increasingly reduced the role of a god when it comes to everything we observe. Therefore, it seems likely that the ‘god-did-it’ arguments for the existence of the universe have a short remaining lifetime.

Follow this link to #2351

Effect of worshiping Yahweh

Outcome

1

Eternal life

Positive

2

Loss of time, money, effort, potentially missing out of many life experiences

Negative

3

Probably worse outcome than being an atheist due to deity jealousy

Negative

4

Marginally favorable outcome if Yahweh is highly ranked among the deities

Positivea

5

Most likely a negative outcome, worse than being an atheist

Negative

a This is only a positive outcome if gods other than Yahweh are not predominant or not jealous of other gods

Geographical Aporias

Chronological Aporias

It is not true, just a myth

Positive^a

^a This is only a positive outcome if gods other than Yahweh are not predominant or not jealous of other gods