(5051) Bible’s creation suggests it is a human effort

The way the Bible was compiled and not finalized until centuries later, replete with false information and contradictions strongly suggest it was a human, not divine, creation. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1hz6f4o/the_way_the_bible_was_compiled_and_finalized_has/

The way the bible was compiled and finalized has all the hallmarks of a human creation, rather than a divine one.

A divinely-created bible would have a vastly different make-up, history, and pedigree. If God actually exists and intended for the Bible to be his message to humanity, he did a miserable job of having it compiled.

(5052) Christianity minus afterlife equals zero

The major selling point of Christianity is that it allegedly offers the experience of a wonderful afterlife. But if it didn’t hawk this benefit, and was only touted as a means for a better life in this world, its support would evaporate to virtually nothing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1hvaf82/hoping_to_get_an_answer_to_this_question_about/

Christians often talk about all of the (what we might call) benefits of being a Christian. Peace and joy, a sense of purpose, a sense of certainty, love, guidance, and so on. They say it’s not just about “getting to heaven” or “avoiding hell.” But I doubt this. And I think the responses to this post will reveal why.

Simple question that I have never received an answer to in other groups: if your understanding of Christianity were completely accurate minus the existence of an afterlife, would you still be a Christian? Would it still be “worth it”? Are the worldly benefits of Christianity enough to keep being a Christian if it all ended after you die?

My opinion is no. There are so many ways to live a fulfilling life with or without religion (not saying it’s easy but still), that if the afterlife option were taken off the table, religion would lose most if not all of its appeal.

Christianity offers nothing of a benefit in this life other than a placebo effect. If there was some statistical advantage of Christians such as answered prayer, this would be a different conversation.

(5053) Apologetics are missing from the Bible

When non-Christians critique the Bible and core Christian doctrines, it is telling the responses to this criticism are generally all external to the Bible. That is, the Bible fails to defend itself on almost every controversial topic. Why would an omni-god leave the defense of his message to humanity in such fallible hands? The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1hzv4m9/the_authors_of_the_bible_clearly_had_no_idea_what/

The authors of the Bible clearly had no idea what arguments the Bible would be subject to in the future.

The Bible should contain text explaining why slavery was okay in its time but should nevertheless eventually be eliminated, or explain why God made Satan and allowed him to pester people, or why eternal suffering in hell was an appropriate punishment. None of this is there. The people who wrote the Bible didn’t understand that the problems they were creating would challenge the faith two thousand years later.

(5054) Yahweh qualifies as being non-existent

The following lists 8 traits of things that don’t exist. Yahweh meets all 8:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1hvw6bl/you_cant_prove_gawd_doesnt_exist/

What qualifies something as being non-existent?

1. 1. Lack of physical presence or manifestation in reality. Non-existent things do not have a concrete, material presence in the actual world.
   2. Inability to causally interact with existing things. Something that is non-existent cannot affect or be affected by objects and events in reality.
   3. Absence from the set of all existing things. If we could enumerate everything that exists, non-existent things would not be on that list.
   4. Purely conceptual or imaginary nature. Non-existent things may exist as ideas or fictional concepts, but have no corresponding entity in the real world.
   5. Lack of spatiotemporal location. Non-existent things are not located anywhere in space or time in our universe.
   6. Impossibility of direct observation or measurement. We cannot empirically detect or measure non-existent things using any scientific instruments or methods.
   7. Logical incoherence or impossibility. Some philosophers argue that certain logically impossible concepts, like square circles, qualify as non-existent.
   8. Negation of existence. Non-existence is often defined simply as the absence or negation of existence.

There is a 99+ percent probability that if Yahweh was the actual god of the universe, there would be nothing on this list that would suggest that he isn’t real. He would have a concrete presence, would be seen to interact with people and things, would have a specific location, and would produce measurable effects. And now, because we know about the speed of light, we know that no conscious being can be aware of everything happening in the universe in real time- that is, a god as imagined by Christians is impossible. Yahweh does not exist.

(5055) The illogic of Satan

Christianity created the fictional character of Satan, likely as a foil for God, to explain why bad things happen, and as a way to scare people into joining the faith. All it takes, though, is a modicum of reasoning to understand the inherent logical problems. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1i298il/satan_in_the_gospels_doesnt_make_sense/

According to the gospels Satan entered Judas to cause him to betray Jesus which led to his crucifixion.

Why would Satan want to kill Jesus when by doing so, then Jesus could die for humanity’s sins and save us. Shouldn’t have Satan done everything he can to prevent the crucifixion so Jesus cannot die for humanity’s sins and thus we would all end up in hell?

The whole idea of Satan is silly. He apparently ISN’T as powerful as God, and I guess God lets him tempt people and then run hell. But god is the one that created hell, set up the rules for who goes there, and is apparently fine with torturing people unendingly for sins such as not worshiping him.

The devil might be evil, but so is the god that oversees it all.

We no longer live in a world where belief in Satan should be a real thing. He is clearly fictional, has no basis in reality whatsoever. He survives only in a fantasy world created by a two-millennium old fairy tale. It is time to admit this fact- Satan does not exist. And without Satan, Christianity cannot be true.

(5056) Religion- ‘we meant to do that.’

Every time a religion has to retreat and admit a previous fallacy, it tries to re-image the situation in a way that makes it seem like it was all planned out in advance. Never admit failure. The following was taken from:

https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2025/01/daniel-mocsny-on-how-religions-re.html

There is an amusing video on YouTube (https://youtu.be/TpeSH6ngsgIin) which a gentleman makes physical-comedy type of error – he trips on a treadmill at the gym and gets thrown off – and then quickly recovers and carries on nonchalantly, as if to wordlessly declare, “Yeah, I meant to do that.”

Religions work like that. The old religions began in the pre-scientific world, in which even many educated people freely commingled empirical claims with fantastical ones.* Most likely, ancient thinkers thought this way because their lived experience showed them the sorts of things that usually happen, and they reasoned in commonsense ways, but they lacked the modern scientific knowledge that we live in a universe governed by physical laws, so they did not appropriately constrain their notions of what could happen.

Fast forward to the modern world, and religions are like the guy who falls off the treadmill while checking out the hot girl in the gym, then tries to cover his error by breaking into a set of pushups, now that he’s on the floor. “Yeah, I meant to do that.” Religions are festooned with cognitive fossils – embarrassing markers of erroneous pre-scientific thinking – and struggling to paint them as all part of some master plan.

A true religion would never encounter any need to make an obvious error as part of a plan. Christianity has had to make admissions on numbers of occasions (most notably creation/evolution), and yet still suffers from multiple logical disconnects with reality.

(5057) Electrician’s road to atheism

The following discusses the theological journey of Frank Lerant, who started out as a Christian but then become disturbed and curious when he was confronted by an evangelical co-worker, spurring him to take the matter seriously and to investigate to find the truth:

https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2025/01/its-not-hard-to-figure-out-whats-wrong.html#more

I recently finished reading Frank Lerant’s 2021 book, How I Opened My Mind and Let God Out: An Electrician’s Road to Atheism (Kindle, 172 pages). It also is a welcome addition to this publishing boom.

Lerant points out that it was his encounter with a fundamentalist co-worker that gave a major boost to his close study/probing of Christianity, which resulted eventually in the writing of his book. He describes it as “…a culmination of my thoughts based on years of study, argument, and contemplation. I feel a compelling urge to do my part in helping to make religion a thing of the past. It may take generations, but I am confident that if we don’t kill each other off in the name of ‘God,’ it will happen” (p. 8, Kindle).

Study, argument, and contemplation. Surveys have shown how little churchgoers read the Bible, let alone study it. Serious contemplation also is lacking, especially if that includes critical thinking applied to the Bible. Debate and argument are avoided as well. The devout are okay believing that their clergy know what they’re talking about—after all these ordained keepers of the truth have been to seminary: how can they not be god-experts? Hence the brainwashing of children has worked pretty well. Lerant includes a chapter titled, Brainwashing 101, and is precise in detailing the reasons for that churches indulge in this practice: “…the brainwashing must be completed before children develop their logical and critical thinking skills, because these would give them the ability to analyze what they see and hear in a skeptical manner” (p. 14, Kindle).

I cheered especially when I read his chapter, God—the Biggest Failure of All Time. Just look at the world around us, with so much suffering. Take it all in, but please resist the urge to make god look good. “The all-seeing, all-knowing God has gotten a lot of things wrong since day one. He built us a planet with killer earthquakes, storms, volcanoes, and other destructive phenomena” (p. 88, Kindle).

“God created deadly bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells that have devastated mankind forever. Billions of people have suffered and died prematurely from disease, including countless children” (p. 88, Kindle)

This is indeed the Christianity-crushing problem of horrendous suffering, discussed at length in John Loftus’ 2021 anthology, God and Horrendous Suffering (504 pages). This includes 22 essays covering a wide range of issues that render theology helpless (full-disclosure, I contributed two of them). It would certainly help advance the cause of “making religion a thing of the past” —in Lerant’s words—if churchgoers brothered to read it. But since even Bible reading is not on their agenda…

Lerant sums up the implications of horrendous suffering: “If there is a god, he is a failure and chooses not to use his powers to make any corrections. Therefore, he should not be worshiped as a god, or perhaps should be ignored completely. In the meantime, men and women can stop wasting their time worshiping this sham…” (p. 90, Kindle).

In his chapter 12, Side Effects, Lerant briefly mentions patriotism, and makes a very important point:

“Worshiping and blindly following the orders of a secular leader is just as dangerous as doing so for a religious one. Once you are primed as a child to follow the doctrine of religion without facts or proof, you can more easily be brainwashed to do the same with a nation, a political party, or leader of any kind” (p. 105, Kindle)

So is it any surprise that the Trump cult is so closely associated with fanatical Christianity? But I have long regarded patriotism with deep distrust. At the time of World War I, the supposedly Christian nations of Europe, e.g. Germany, France, England, engaged in the most brutal fighting imaginable against each other. These nations got the young fighting men pumped up for battle by an appeal to patriotism: nothing was more important than fanatical loyalty to country. During World War II, Pope Pius XII was deeply distressed that so many Catholics in the various countries at war were killing each other. Yes, patriotism can be just as destructive as unthinking religious devotion.

The ecclesiastical bureaucracy gets away with so much because Bible reading is pushed aside by so many of the devout. Lerant provides brilliant analysis of what’s wrong with Christianity, especially in his chapters titled,

Holy Scriptures—What Good Are They Now?
Plagiarized Paganism
Morality—Is This What the Bible Teaches Us?
Is the New Testament Any Better?

There is so much in the Bible that is disastrously bad, but it goes undiscovered by the lazy devout who prefer to trust their spiritual leaders. For those who decide to read the Bible cover-to-cover, they soon discover that it’s a chore; it’s not a labor of love. It should spark alarm and rebellion; it should be a wake-up call. Lerant states the truth bluntly:

“…the New Testament is cherry-picked by church leaders and educators for its warm and fuzzy parts. The desire to believe and worship can be so powerful that any rational challenge falls on deaf ears and blind eyes. I ask you, should the wish to believe in something be more important than the authenticity and reality of what you believe in? If you do not read the entire book that you claim guides your life, you are misleading yourself. If you read the book and refuse to acknowledge the inaccuracies, malevolence, contradictions, and controlling agenda, then you have your head in the sand. If you do not question tales of supernatural events in your own holy books but reject other religions’ myths, you are a hypocrite” (p. 55, Kindle).

Above all, his chapter, Plagiarized Paganism, can help the devout snap out of it. He shows the many ways in which the Bible authors borrowed extensively from ancient miracle folklore, superstitions, and magical thinking. As Richard Carrier has pointed out in his 2018 essay, Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan Guys. Get Over It, there were many other cults that sold the idea of getting to live forever: just follow our god.

Lerant was raised in a Catholic environment, but even at an early age he began to figure out that church teachings didn’t make sense. When he fell into conversations with a fundamentalist co-worker—as mentioned above—his curiosity went into over-drive. What a pity this response is all too rare. He figured out the truth:

“Theology is a powerful tool used for demarcation and is, in many ways, superfluous to the advancement of mankind. Religious divisions have helped to maintain a perpetual state of turmoil worldwide. It has outstayed its welcome. The world would simply be a better place without it. Faith over reason will be the end of us” (p.94, Kindle).

Lerant’s road to atheism is a testament to the likely outcome of any individual who is able to overcome the injury of brainwashing and to evaluate the facts objectively. In almost every case of such an endeavor, it will result in a rejection of belief in Christianity.

(5058) Tracking scriptural slavery ethics proves men created god

The scriptural trajectory of slavery provides a convincing argument that god was created by men in the image of their own thoughts and morals of their time. The changes that occurred subsequently were changes in humans, not god- who obviously doesn’t exist. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1i49rql/tracking_the_course_of_slavery_proves_men_create/

Tracking the course of slavery proves men create god, not the other way around.

All discussion about the truth of Christianity should stop when it is positively shown, according to the scriptures, that the Christian god endorsed slavery,. This is a game-ender. No apologetics can compensate for a god being less enlightened spiritually or morally than regular human beings.

(5059) Old Testament is deeply immoral

It is impossible to scrutinize the Old Testament and claim that the god imagined by Christians is the same god as depicted there. There is a serious disconnect. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1i55wq8/the_old_testament_is_deeply_immoral_and_is_not//

The Old Testament is deeply immoral and is not the work of a moral, just and loving God.

The Old Testament destroys any theological claim that Yahweh is an admirable god, or even a realistic one. If anyone starts reading the Bible to figure out if Christianity is true, they can confidently stop well before they reach the New Testament and determine beyond a doubt that this is a fictional religion.

(5060) God doesn’t care about free will

Christian apologetics touts the concept that every human possesses free will, allowing them to fairly compete for a heavenly afterlife. But the scriptures tell a different story- God has no problem interfering with free will. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1i5z6ih/the_god_of_the_old_testament_doesnt_care_about/

The god of the Old Testament doesn’t care about “free will.”

The Bible delivers mixed messages about the subject of free will, and that is no surprise. It was created by various human authors, each acting on their own. There was no god to ensure a consistent product.

(5061) Followers of Jesus stayed in Jerusalem

There is evidence that the followers of Jesus did not return to their homes in Galilee, but remained in Jerusalem, because they believed that Jesus would return very shortly, as in a few weeks or at most, months. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1i6jeou/time_statements_in_bible/

Many scholars also argue that Jesus himself probably had a strong apocalyptic emphasis in his discourses/preaching —which then, after Jesus’s death, would have sparked the conviction that he would return.

Elaine Pagels briefly summarises here:

Everything we know about Jesus was written about thirty or forty or fifty years after He died; but as far as you can tell from that, He looks like a Jewish prophet who thought that the end of the world was coming very soon, as John the Baptist said it was, and other Jews at the time, had that expectation.

I mean, we call it apocalyptic because it’s about revelation of what happens at the end time. And, the first thing that the Gospel of Mark, which is the earliest account says, is that Jesus said, you know, good news, the Kingdom of God is coming soon and thought it would come within the lifetime of his disciples, which would have been, say, thirty years. So, if there’s accuracy in that, we think he probably was somebody who thought the end time was coming right away.

On expectations after Jesus’s death, Dale Allison writes in Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination and History (pp50-51):

The point is fortified by the fact that, to judge from the joint testimony of Paul and Acts, Christianity was, from the beginning, and at least for the first two or three decades, centered in Jerusalem. […]

Jesus was executed in Jerusalem, which means that Judea must have held some hostility for those associated with him, maybe even danger. So again, why did these people settle in the capital? Why did they not instead go back to their native Galilee, as we might well expect them to have done?

Although the extant sources fail to answer the question directly, the proposition that apocalyptic eschatology was part and parcel of the ideology of the earliest Christians provides the best answer. Many of them, to state the obvious, believed that Jesus would return quickly. If we then ask, Where did they think he was headed? the answer is equally evident: Jerusalem. The religious center of Judea was, in the eschatological imagination, the center of the endtime scenario. […]

It is only natural, then, that some followers of Jesus who were natives of Galilee took up residence in the capital. This is one more sign of their heightened eschatological expectation, of their sincere conviction that they were living in the “last” or “latter days,” at “the end of the age.” They were like the Montanists in the next century, who encouraged people to gather to the cities of Pepouza and Tymion in Phrygia, where their movement was headquartered and where they expected the new Jerusalem to descend from heaven.

Apologists have attempted to water down the implications of scripture and the expectations of early Christian followers that Jesus would return ‘shortly.’ They have attempted to claim that the short time frame would come only after certain conditions were met, which are still in the process of forming. This denies the simple and direct reality of scripture and our knowledge of the expectations of First Century Christians.

(5062) Why ‘his ways are not our ways’ doesn’t work

When confronted with difficult questions, Christian apologists often punt with the concession that God’s ways are not our ways, and therefore we cannot expect to understand or explain the situation (but nevertheless trust that God is doing the right thing). The following discusses why this apologetic tactic is flawed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1i7hki2/we_have_no_choice_but_to_judge_god_from_the_human/

We have no choice but to judge “God” from the human perspective

There are several possibilities to consider about God or higher beings:

• • There’s no God.
  • A deist God exists who doesn’t intervene or communicate.
  • Higher beings exist, but they aren’t all-powerful, all-knowing, or all-good; they could be primarily benevolent, malevolent, or be indifferent.
  • An omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent (all-good) God exists.
  • An omnipotent, omniscient, omnimalevolent (all-evil) God exists.
  • An omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient God exists who is morally flawed—neither all-good nor all-evil.

To determine which possibility is most likely, we must rely on our flawed human perspective. For example, if critics point out the immorality of parts of the Old Testament or Quran, dismissing it with “God’s ways are not our ways” avoids engaging with the actual issue. Instead, we must critically judge whether these scriptures align with the idea of an all-loving God.

Even if you believe in a God or higher power, you must still assess its nature—whether it’s all-powerful, morally perfect, or something else—using human reasoning. Ultimately, “God’s ways are not our ways” is a cop-out because, flawed or not, human judgment is all we have.

As we  have only human judgment to assess the claims of various deities, an objective and reasonable conclusion is that the existence of such a god or gods that directly interact with us is very improbable, and if such deities do affect us, it is in very subtle ways, that are undetectable, and that this reality is in direct conflict with the claims of Christianity.

(5063) Christian god cannot exist

God as defined by Christians cannot logically exist given the pain, suffering, and evil that permeates the world. Something in the standard definition of this god would have to be changed to resolve this contradiction. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1i89xcn/god_as_described_in_the_christian_bible_can_not/

God as described in the Christian bible can not logically exist.

A diminished god is all that remains possible, but that is something that most Christians are loathe to concede. But the logic above is solid, and Christians should be continually challenged to understand the problem.

(5064) Argument against the existence of souls

The truth of Christianity is dependent on the existence of a non-material soul that transcends death and can be transported to either heaven or hell after death. The following presents a compelling argument that souls don’t exist and that consciousness is strictly a physical phenomenon:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1i96bh2/souls_most_likely_dont_exist_and_consciousness_is/

Souls most likely don’t exist and consciousness is probably an illusion.

It should be obvious if humans are nothing more than physical beings that the claims of Christianity cannot be true. Yet, the evidence points strongly in this direction. The alternative seems very unlikely- that somehow God regenerates the physical structure of every dead person’s brain to somehow resurrect that person’s consciousness and reignite their earthly memories. Death as being final seems incredibly more likely.

(5065) Origin of gospel parables

It is clear from inspection that the parables presented in the gospels were specific to the individual authors, and do not represent a coherent theme from an individual Jesus. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1i8mlj3/where_did_jesuss_teachings_and_parables_come_from/

It’s the kind of question that you really have to take one pericope at a time. You also have to consider that Luke and Matthew add parables not found in Mark, and John presents a very different depiction of Jesus with almost no parables at all. There probably isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to where all this material originates. Peter Kirby (u/peter_kirby) has already noted in his comment the pioneering work Michael Goulder did on this question. Goulder writes in his book Five Stones and a Sling:

Mark’s parables were mostly agricultural: the Sower, the Seed Growing Secretly, and Mustard Seed. This was rather in line with Old Testament parables, which are said often to be about trees, “from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall.” Matthew’s parables are about people, mostly kings or wealthy merchants. Luke’s parables, on the other hand, are about more down-to-earth characters: a prodigal son, an unjust steward, a widow, a beggar, a Samaritan… I therefore had a theme ready made for my Oxford seminar: the parables in the Gospels were not the parables of Jesus, as was assumed by almost everyone… rather they were the creation of the evangelists, each of whom has produced instances in his own style. (pp. 58–59).

I then picked up John Drury’s excellent book on parables. He demonstrates that there was a progression in the use of parables in Jewish texts that began in the prophets and reached its full culmination in late apocalyptic works like Daniel and 2 Esdras. Mark, with its apocalyptic overtones, is drawing from those same traditions.

Intrigued by these ideas, I recently did a deep dive on the parable of the sower, which I view as the cornerstone of Mark’s Gospel, to see what a variety of scholars said about it. My conclusions about this particular parable are summarized as follows:

• • Mark probably composed the parable himself, drawing on a rich tradition of agricultural parables both in the Jewish scriptures and in contemporary Greco-Roman pedagogy.
  • The text that contributed the most influence was the parable of sowing and harvesting in 2 Esdras 4:26-32 and its follow-up in 2 Esdras 8:41 and 9:31, but there are also influences from Isaiah 37:30–31 and Jeremiah 4:3, and perhaps the Pauline epistles, which frequently use sowing and reaping as allegories for evangelism without attribution to Jesus.
  • Similar agricultural parables can be found in a variety of Greco-Roman writings, including those by Seneca, Hippocrates, and Antiphon, so this was probably a common motif for Greek writers of that era to draw upon.
  • The parable itself offers an encouraging message about evangelism and Christian doctrine that was composed by Mark for later members of established Christ groups. Because its message is focused on the different outcomes of evangelism efforts, it makes little sense as something the historical Jesus would have taught to a random crowd in Galilee.

Similarly, the parable of the mustard seed is easily derived from Ezekiel’s two parables of the cedar tree in chapters 17 and 31 and from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 4. Thus, it is likely an original creation by the author like the parable of the sower.

My main sources for this study:

• • Michael Goulder, Five Stones and a Sling: Memoirs of a Biblical Scholar, 2009.
  • John Drury, The Parables in the Gospels, 1985.
  • Burton Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins, 1988.
  • Barry Henaut, Oral Tradition and the Gospels: The Problem of Mark 4, 1993.
  • Tom Dykstra, Mark, Canonizer of Paul: A New Look at Intertextuality in Mark’s Gospel, 2012.
  • Heikki Räisänen, The Messianic Secret in Marks Gospel, 1990.
  • Joel Marcus, “Blanks and Gaps in the Markan Parable of the Sower”, Biblical Interpretation 5(3), 1997.
  • Herman Hendrickx, The Parables of Jesus, 1987.

Jesus was not four persons in one, so we can assume that only one, at most, of the gospels accurately depicts the thematic framework of whatever parables he might have uttered. Instead, we have a strong basis for concluding that each author invented parables that met their individual sensibilities.

(5066) Endosymbiosis and the origin of complex life

Although many Christians acknowledge the fact of biological evolution, many others do not. Often, they employ a compromise to say that God guided the evolutionary process to eventually produce humans. Included in this assumption is that God performed some supernatural steps to ‘get the ball rolling.’ Specifically, it is often assumed that God had to do something in order for complex forms of life to evolve. The research discussed below indicates that complex life can evolve easily without the assistance of a divine creator:

https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-recreate-the-conditions-that-sparked-complex-life/

Far from being solo operators, most single-celled microbes are in complex relationships. In the ocean, the soil, and your gut, they might battle and eat each other, exchange DNA, compete for nutrients, or feed on one another’s by-products. Sometimes they get even more intimate: One cell might slip inside another and make itself comfortable. If the conditions are just right, it might stay and be welcomed, sparking a relationship that could last for generations—or billions of years. This phenomenon of one cell living inside another, called endosymbiosis, has fueled the evolution of complex life.

Examples of endosymbiosis are everywhere. Mitochondria, the energy factories in your cells, were once free-living bacteria. Photosynthetic plants owe their sun-spun sugars to the chloroplast, which was also originally an independent organism. Many insects get essential nutrients from bacteria that live inside them. And last year researchers discovered the “nitroplast,” an endosymbiont that helps some algae process nitrogen.

So much of life relies on endosymbiotic relationships, but scientists have struggled to understand how they happen. How does an internalized cell evade digestion? How does it learn to reproduce inside its host? What makes a random merger of two independent organisms into a stable, lasting partnership?

Now, for the first time, researchers have watched the opening choreography of this microscopic dance by inducing endosymbiosis in the lab. After injecting bacteria into a fungus—a process that required creative problem-solving (and a bicycle pump)—the researchers managed to spark cooperation without killing the bacteria or the host. Their observations offer a glimpse into the conditions that make it possible for the same thing to happen in the microbial wild.

The cells even adjusted to each other faster than anticipated. “To me, this means that organisms want to actually live together, and symbiosis is the norm,” said Vasilis Kokkoris, a mycologist who studies the cell biology of symbiosis at VU University in Amsterdam and wasn’t involved in the new study. “So that’s big, big news for me and for this world.”

Early attempts that fell short reveal that most cellular love affairs are unsuccessful. But by understanding how, why, and when organisms accept endosymbionts, researchers can better understand key moments in evolution, and also potentially develop synthetic cells engineered with superpowered endosymbionts.

The Cell Wall Breakthrough

Julia Vorholt, a microbiologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in Switzerland, has long puzzled over the circumstances of endosymbiosis. Researchers in the field theorized that once a bacterium sneaks into a host cell, the relationship teeters between infection and harmony. If the bacterium reproduces too quickly, it risks depleting the host’s resources and triggering an immune response, resulting in the death of the guest, the host, or both. If it reproduces too slowly, it won’t establish itself in the cell. Only in rare cases, they thought, does the bacterium achieve a Goldilocks reproductive rate. Then, to become a true endosymbiont, it must infiltrate its host’s reproductive cycle to hitch a ride to the next generation. Finally, the host’s genome must eventually mutate to accommodate the bacterium—allowing the two to evolve as a unit.

“They become addicted to each other,” Vorholt said.

These ideas made logical sense, but no one had ever witnessed the early steps of microbial endosymbiosis. So Vorholt decided to try to make it happen in the lab. Rather than reinventing the endosymbiotic wheel, she thought her team would have its best shot if it re-created a partnership that had already occurred in nature.

Rice seedling blight is a disease caused by the toxic by-product of a wild, endosymbiotic affair. At some point in its evolutionary history, the fungus Rhizopus microsporus adopted the bacterium Mycetohabitans rhizoxinica. The bacterial resident produces poison, which the fungus uses to infect rice plants; both partners benefit by absorbing nutrients from the dead and dying plant cells. Over generations, the pair have become so intertwined that now the fungus can’t reproduce without its endosymbiont.

However, there is a strain of the fungus that lives without the endosymbiont. Vorholt thought she could use it to re-create the poisonous partnership. Before she got to the harder steps of cellular matchmaking, though, her team had to overcome a basic physical constraint: How do you physically squeeze a bacterium through a fungus’s rigid cell wall?

Gabriel Giger, lead author on the paper and Vorholt’s graduate student, started by cooking up a cocktail of enzymes to soften the wall. Then he used an atomic force microscope equipped with a technology known as FluidFM, repurposed to serve as a tiny syringe. When Giger punctured the fungal cell with the microneedle, cytoplasm came rushing out like water from a burst dam.

“We had so much backflush,” Giger said. “[The cell fluid] just comes shooting right at you.”

He needed something with more oomph to resist the intracellular pressure and push the bacteria in. Giger jury-rigged a connection between his bike pump and the microscope. It worked: The bike pump boosted the pressure and forced the bacteria through the cell wall and into the cytoplasm.

After tinkering with different amounts of pressure, they refined the system. “The way they adapted technology to inject the bacteria into fungus is really, really cool,” said Thomas Richards, an evolutionary biologist who studies endosymbiosis at the University of Oxford and wasn’t involved in the study. “They had to use special sharpened needles and then three times the tire pressure of car tires to push that bacteria inside. That represents a big technological step forward.”

Giger and Vorholt first injected the fungus with Escherichia coli, a standard bacterial lab organism. Once inside, E. coli reproduced quickly as it fed on nutrients within the cell. The bacteria grew so fast that the fungal immune system noticed them—and handily locked them away for disposal.

Then the researchers moved on to M. rhizoxinica, the bacteria already established within other R. microsporus strains. Once inside, it divided at an agreeable rate and evaded the immune response. Most importantly, neither partner died. “It was already super exciting to see that both the fungus and the bacteria grew after injection,” Giger said

The pair had initially accepted each other, but that was only the first step. Giger patiently waited, and then he saw what he was looking for under the microscope: The bacteria had wiggled their way into the fungal spores to hitchhike to the next generation.

“I had to make sure the signal was the real deal, and you don’t sleep soundly until you know,” he said. “The excitement lasted for quite a while.”

Giger and the team hand-selected spores and germinated 10 successive generations of fungi. More bacteria survived in each reproductive round, and the spores got healthier and more efficient. For the first time, researchers watched endosymbiotic and host microbes adapt to each other. “Neither of these organisms is poisoning each other, and their growth rates roughly match this spectrum of viability for both,” Giger recalled. The bacteria survived, protected and fed by the fungus—and the fungus scored a poisonous partner.

To confirm the microbial partnership, the lab isolated both parties to analyze their genomes. Already, the fungus genome had gained mutations to accommodate the bacteria. Clearly, these relationships can stabilize quickly, the researchers saw. Soon the two species couldn’t live without each other.

Striking the Right Balance

By re-creating a natural relationship, Vorholt and Giger have “rerun that tape of evolution,” Richards said, to learn lessons about how endosymbiosis happens. They concluded that the process can’t happen if there is a mismatch between host and endosymbiont at any point in the adaptation process. “That’s probably what happens in nature a lot,” Vorholt said. “Maybe their starting points are successful, but somehow the selection is not there, or there is a cost rather than a benefit. And then you just lose the system, and it doesn’t get stabilized.”

They also learned that in pairings that work, both partners adapt to each other—a phenomenon that has been largely overlooked. It wasn’t just the bacteria adapting to a new environment; the host changed too, even in the early stages. “That is a fundamentally important question that people have ignored,” Richards said. “This opens the doors for real advances.”

While illuminating, this bacterium-fungus pairing is only one example of a process that may have a number of mechanisms or conditions. “I can imagine that in protists and other groups that have not been well studied, we will find many new patterns of how symbiosis is supported,” said Laila Partida Martínez, who discovered the rice seedling–blight endosymbiosis and is now director of Cinvestav Irapuato, a plant science research institute in Mexico.

More research in a variety of endosymbiotic systems will reveal which conditions apply generally and which are specific to certain pairs. Further down the line, those findings could lead to a new kind of synthetic biology, featuring lab-grown endosymbiotic relationships, which could be a “fascinating avenue to explore biological innovation,” Vorholt said.

Instead of editing organisms’ genes to create new traits, labs could engineer bacteria to perform specific functions and then slip them into hosts. “Many new features could be brought together in a symbiotic system by doing this and making them evolve together,” Partida Martínez said. By inducing endosymbiosis, researchers could potentially engineer plants to metabolize pollutants or manufacture medicines. “It will take time to design and to really tune the systems,” she added. “I think our imagination would be actually the limit.”

Does that mean we could one day gain chloroplasts and become photosynthetic? Giger thinks it would be difficult for a chloroplast to stabilize inside a mammalian cell. Even if it did work, photosynthesis alone wouldn’t fuel us—our energy demands are too high. “You might get fancy green skin and run a little bit on your own photovoltaics, but the energy gain that you could get from the sun would be minimal,” he said. “You’d go hungry a lot and need to supplement with other staples, such as pizza.”

Science continues to intrude on both creationism and God-guided evolution, neither theory of which is necessary or even useful to explain anything. What we are continuing to understand is that life evolved on this planet on its own. No supernatural creator-supervisor was needed.

(50pp) God belief is centered in ego-centric brain area

A recent study has shown that when people consider the beliefs of God, the area of the brain that focuses on their own beliefs is activated. But when they consider the beliefs of others, a different area lights up. This indicates that belief in God is internal rather than referential, meaning that one’s own beliefs contaminate what they believe about God’s beliefs. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1iaullt/neurological_study_using_fmri_indicate_god_maybe/

In FMRI study, researchers found out that When participants were asked what they think about a moral issue, the medial prefrontal cortex lit up which is linked to self-referential thought.

When asked what their friend might think about the same issue, a different brain area, the temporo-parietal junction linked to understanding others perspectives lit up.

when asked what God thinks, the brain area for self-referential thought (medial prefrontal cortex) lit up again, rather than the area used for thinking about others.

Additional studies have shown that when people are asked what God would approve or disapprove, their answers are usually what they think is moral or immoral.

This strengthens the idea that individuals create God’s perspective based on their own internal beliefs rather than accessing an independent divine will.

If God were an objective reality, one would expect the neural processes involved in understanding God’s perspective to more closely resemble those used for understanding others, not oneself.
This indicates that is very likely man created god in his own image and not the other way around.

Here is the abstract of the study:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0908374106?utm_source=

People often reason egocentrically about others’ beliefs, using their own beliefs as an inductive guide. Correlational, experimental, and neuroimaging evidence suggests that people may be even more egocentric when reasoning about a religious agent’s beliefs (e.g., God). In both nationally representative and more local samples, people’s own beliefs on important social and ethical issues were consistently correlated more strongly with estimates of God’s beliefs than with estimates of other people’s beliefs (Studies 1–4).

Manipulating people’s beliefs similarly influenced estimates of God’s beliefs but did not as consistently influence estimates of other people’s beliefs (Studies 5 and 6). A final neuroimaging study demonstrated a clear convergence in neural activity when reasoning about one’s own beliefs and God’s beliefs, but clear divergences when reasoning about another person’s beliefs (Study 7). In particular, reasoning about God’s beliefs activated areas associated with self-referential thinking more so than did reasoning about another person’s beliefs. Believers commonly use inferences about God’s beliefs as a moral compass, but that compass appears especially dependent on one’s own existing beliefs.

Belief in God would be more credible if it was associated with the referential brain area that focuses on the beliefs of others. As it is, it seems that God is an exertion of one’s own ego and therefore aligns perfectly with their pre-existing beliefs.

(5068) The way Christianity unfolded

There exists enough evidence in the gospels and in the writings of Paul and others, as well as several historical markers, to navigate the route that Christianity took from a very small group of followers to the worldwide religion it would eventually become. The following discusses one such possibility:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exchristian/comments/1ibv2c9/what_do_you_guys_think/

I think there was an itinerant preacher (or probably more than one) who was a good speaker and talked about rebellion, and gave people hope. Groups of people coalesced around him/them and it became a small movement. There was maybe a belief that the guy was talking to god or had some supernatural power, perhaps some things he said or did led them to believe that. He said that he would return and bring god with him and all the problems of the world would be solved. At first the story was passed on oraly, in the pub and around campfires.

Flash forward twenty, thirty years and the myths had expanded because people exaggerate and misremember. Stories in the pub turned more exaggerated (as they do!) and the movement had grown. Educated people took note and wanted to keep a record so they started to write the stories down. This fits in with the type of writing at the time (mythological storytelling that isn’t accurate biography as we know it). We see the gospels claiming more and more miraculous events over time, the evolution of the story.

Mark – the earliest gospel – Jesus is portrayed as a charismatic teacher and healer who proclaims the coming Kingdom of God. He is the “Son of Man” but does not explicitly claim divinity. There are miracles, but they are relatively understated compared to later gospels. Ending of Mark was a later addition so Mark didn’t include a resurrection.

Matthew – emphasizes Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, presenting him as the “new Moses”. The miracles are more dramatic and numerous, and Jesus’s authority over nature and spirits is emphasized. Matthew includes the resurrection.

Luke – Jesus is presented as a compassionate savior for all people, including Gentiles, the poor, and the marginalized. Miracles are more detailed and serve to demonstrate Jesus’s divine power and compassion. The resurrection appearances are even more detailed, including Jesus appearing to disciples on the road to Emmaus and eating fish with them.

John – Jesus is explicitly identified as divine from the very beginning (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”). Now referred to as “signs,” the miracles are highly symbolic and serve to prove Jesus’s divinity – turning water into wine, raising Lazarus etc. The resurrection is central, and Jesus appears multiple times post-resurrection, including the famous “Doubting Thomas” scene.

We can see it progress and grow over time. The other people in the movement started to panic as Jesus wasn’t returning in their lifetime (as Jesus had predicted) and realized they needed to convince the next generations, hence the letters and books and ultimately Paul’s writings. In fact Paul didn’t agree with Jesus on many things which is why there are con traditions and Christians with different beliefs.

Non biblical sources were all written much later too and they tend to record what people believed, not actual events. Rome can’t be ruled out as a huge influence too. Constantine saw the unifying potential of Christianity for an empire fractured by competing religions and political instability. Lots of pagan practices were absorbed into Christianity so it was easier for pagans to join (things like the mid winter festival became Christmas, saints replaces pagan gods – pick the one you like the best!) Early Christianity was rebellious and focused on communal living, but under Rome it became hierarchical and tied to Rome’s power.

A religion that evolves over time is one that was invented by humans, not a god. Christianity contains all of the markers of a belief system that not only changed over time, but splintered into thousands of sects, some of which were diametrically opposed to others. This is not what would be expected of a religion created and managed by a god.

(5069) Jesus fulfills only part of the prophecy

The author of the Gospel of Matthew tried to promote the idea that Jesus had fulfilled a prophecy from the Book of Zechariah, but only took a small detail from it, missing the big picture. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exchristian/comments/1icvs9x/what_makes_you_confident_christianity_isnt_true/

In Matthew 21:4-5, the author claims that Jesus fulfilled a prophecy from Zechariah 9:9. The passage reads: Matthew 21:4-5 “This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: ‘Say to Daughter Zion, See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’” Sure, fine, the messiah will ride a donkey, but anyone can ride a donkey. What is the source text in Zechariah really prophesying about?

Christians will unashamedly say Jesus fulfilled this messianic prophecy but usually have no clue what the verse that follows says. Zechariah 9:9-10 “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.” You have to admit, that is an awesome prophecy! However, Matthew’s claim that Jesus fulfilled this prophecy by riding a donkey falls apart when the full context of Zechariah is considered.

The king described in Zechariah is not only humble and riding on a donkey but is also victorious and brings an end to all war. The prophecy speaks of the removal of chariots and warhorses, the breaking of battle bows, and the proclamation of peace to all nations. This king’s rule extended over the whole world, “from sea to sea.” That is the real thesis of the prophecy, not riding on a donkey, as anyone could do. Can just anyone rule over the whole earth? No, that takes a special person, and is a nearly unfalsifiable claim. None of these things occurred during Jesus’ time. Israel remained under Roman occupation, war continued, and Jesus did not establish a global reign of peace. The only part of the prophecy that Jesus fulfilled was riding a jackass.

Fulfilling one superficial detail while failing to accomplish the core elements of the prophecy, victory, the end of war, and universal peace, cannot reasonably be called fulfillment. The context of Zechariah 9:9-10 makes it clear that the prophecy is about a victorious, peace-bringing king whose reign transforms the world. Jesus did not fit this description. While Zechariah 9:9-10 is messianic in nature, Jesus’ actions do not fulfill its requirements. Riding a donkey is not sufficient to claim fulfillment when the surrounding context of the prophecy remains unmet.

Matthew focuses on one minor detail of the prophecy (riding a donkey), which is insignificant in comparison to the larger, world-changing aspects of the prophecy. This creates a misleading impression that has fooled many, I was one of them until I looked at the source text of the prophecy. If Zechariah 9:10, which speaks of the Messiah proclaiming peace to the nations and having a dominion that extends from sea to sea, was fulfilled by Jesus, then why do we still see so much conflict and division in the world, rather than universal peace which Zechariah says will occur when the messiah arrives?

Did Jesus actually fulfill anything in this messianic passage besides the riding of a jackass? It’s awfully revealing that the author of Matthew only emphasizes an unfalsifiable part of the prophecy, the claim of riding a jackass, rather than something that would be undeniable, like bringing about world peace and worldwide rule over the earth, or at least over that region.

The gospel authors were desperate to legitimize Jesus as the promised Jewish savior. Their attempts to do so were not credible. Any objective observer would conclude that Jesus in no way met the requirements of the Jewish savior.

(5070) Prayers versus insulin

The following chronicles how a religious family killed their daughter because they thought prayers alone could cure her diabetes:

https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/after-faith-healing-death-of-8-year

All 14 members of an extremist Christian sect in Australia have been found guilty of manslaughter after denying insulin to a little girl who needed it.

The backstory is horrifying:

On January 7, 2022, eight-year-old Elizabeth Struhs was found dead in her Queensland home. She had type 1 diabetes and needed daily insulin shots… but the people closest to her, including her own parents, refused to give her that medication.

Instead, they all prayed for her to get better. (It never crossed their mind that they could just attribute the discovery of insulin meds to God.)

For six agonizing days, members of the group chose “faith-healing” over proven medicine, believing that’s what God truly wanted, and the little girl eventually paid the price for their religious negligence.

Even more damning? It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

In 2019, her parents also withheld insulin from her. Elizabeth fell into a coma and had to be taken to a hospital. When she was admitted, she weighed only 29 pounds. She spent a month recovering.

Jason Richard Struhs and Kerrie Elizabeth Struhs were eventually sentenced to six months and 18 months in prison, respectively, for that incident. Jason, who expressed remorse, served no actual time behind bars. Kerrie was released after only five months but remained on parole.

A few weeks after Kerrie returned home, Elizabeth was dead.

Last summer marked the beginning of the trial for the 14 people involved in the decision to withhold life-saving medication from Elizabeth. All of them, including Elizabeth’s parents, were the adult members of a religious group known as The Saints—a tight-knit group that only has 23 members in total, spread over three families.

Jason and the group’s alleged leader Brendan Stevens were charged with murder because they allegedly withheld the insulin despite knowing how dangerous that would be. The others, including Kerrie, were charged with manslaughter because the prosecution said they didn’t give Elizabeth insulin or at least told Kerrie not to give it to her.

Crown Prosecutor Caroline Marco said it was alleged the group adhered to a belief “that God heals and that medication is to be rejected unless it is in the nature of no more than first aid, such as applying a bandaid”.

Not a single one of the 14 suspects wanted any legal representation. They offered no evidence in their defense. There was no jury. It was just them against the government, with a judge making the final decision. On the other side, the prosecution called 60 witnesses to seek justice for Elizabeth.

And now the verdict is in.

The judge decided all 14 members were guilty of manslaughter. (Jason Struhs and Brendan Stevens were not found guilty of murder but they were found guilty of manslaughter.)

All of them will be sentenced next month, though it’s not clear from the reporting what punishments they might face.

In his 469-page ruling, Justice Martin Burns had very little sympathy for the way these people allowed a child to die on account of their faith. Just look at how he discussed Elizabeth’s mother:

As with her husband, the complete abdication on Mrs Struhs’ part of the legal duty she owed to her daughter constituted such an egregious departure from the standard of care a reasonable member of the community would observe in the same circumstances as to amount to a crime against the State that is deserving of punishment. Again, like her husband, when her conduct was viewed objectively, it must be seen as having involved grave moral guilt and disregard for human life.

He’s absolutely right about all of that. It’s a relief, really, to see a judge state the obvious instead of giving deference to the group’s religious beliefs.

What about the argument that the father and leader knew their actions would result in the daughter’s death? Burns said there was at least some reason to believe that was not the case, which is why the murder charges didn’t stick. This is what he wrote about Elizabeth’s father:

On the evidence before me, there remained a reasonable possibility that, in the cloistered atmosphere of the Church which enveloped Mr Struhs, and which only intensified once he made the decision to cease the administration of insulin, he was so consumed by a particular belief promoted without pause by all its members, that he never came to the full realisation Elizabeth would probably die, believing instead God would not allow that to happen.

I don’t personally believe he or Stevens were that oblivious to the consequences of their actions, but that’s irrelevant. They were absolutely complicit.

A lot of the details in this story are remarkably similar to a different faith-healing cult from Oregon: the Followers of Christ Church. Its members killed several of their children over the past two decades, by neglecting their treatable diseases, leading the Oregon legislature to eventually remove faith-healing as an exemption to homicide charges.

The simple fact is that children shouldn’t be sentenced to death because their parents are brainwashed by Jesus.

“Faith-healing” is nothing more than a myth promoted by certain kinds of Christians. It’s one thing if people pray to heal themselves—which would be useless but legal. But when they deprive a baby or child of medical treatment because of their own delusions, and their ignorance leads to the child’s death, they deserve to be branded as killers.

If there’s one silver lining to this story, it’s that Jayde Struhs, the older sister of Elizabeth, has been a force of sanity in the midst of all this chaos, even speaking against her family during the trial.

Jayde left the cult at 16, after coming out as a lesbian, and has been sharing her story with the media ever since.

After the verdicts were announced, she expressed some relief… and some criticism:

She said while it was a “good outcome”, the “system failed to protect Elizabeth in the first place”.

“We are only here today because more wasn’t done sooner to protect her or remove her from an incredibly unsafe situation in her own home,” Jayde said.

Elizabeth would have been much safer with her than the adults who decided prayer trumped medicine.

According to standard Christian theology, God was aware of this little girl’s health situation, and was aware that her guardians were withholding the standard (and effective) treatment for the same, instead relying on prayers. God had the power to answer the prayers (or convince them to use insulin), but decided not to. How is that explainable? There are only three possibilities- God is not loving, God is not omnipotent, or God does not exist. “God works in mysterious ways” is not a viable option.

(5071) Anti-wealth Jesus statements ignored

The quite plain warning of Jesus that wealthy people will not enter heaven is conveniently ignored by most Christians. They have tried to squirm out of the predicament by inventing excuses. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1id2oey/according_to_jesus_rich_people_must_give_up_their/

To atheists, this argument is if we assume the Bible’s depiction of Jesus is meaningful. I know that’s not a given but if it is then my argument works.

I’m sure y’all know the verses.

Mark 10:17-27:

17 As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not defraud. Honor your father and mother.’ ” 20 He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” 21 Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 22 When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. 23 Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” 27 Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

So there we go, open and shut. It wasn’t enough for the rich guy to follow the commandments, he had to give his money away. Then we’re told exactly how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom: as difficult as it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Which is impossible. Therefore it’s impossible.

A lot of people cling to that last line: “for mortals it is impossible but not for God.” And they claim rich people can enter the kingdom with God’s help without giving up their money.

But that argument doesn’t work. By that logic, satan-worshippers could enter the kingdom with God’s help. Serial killers could enter the kingdom with God’s help. Presumably they could, but they’d have to give up satan-worshipping and serial killing and repent. Same with rich people; they can enter the kingdom if they give up being rich and repent.

Some will claim that “eye of a needle” actually refers to a gate, but there’s no evidence for that at all, and the metaphor wouldn’t make much sense. Plus if it were possible to keep his money and still get into the kingdom, Jesus would have said that instead of saying he had to give it all up.

This is all much clearer than the anti-gay stuff btw. But it’s convenient for powerful people to ignore the anti-rich stuff. Isn’t it odd that the thing most inconvenient for rich powerful men is the thing we ignore?

Cherry-picking scriptures is a time-honored tradition. It might make Christians more comfortable, but to others it is signal of insincerity.

(5072) Crucifixion makes no sense

Trying to justify or make sense of the crucifixion of Jesus has been a perennial problem for Christian apologists. The following discusses three points that suggest that this bloody event was unnecessary:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ibv2f7/the_crucifixion_of_christ_makes_no_sense/

The crucifixion really makes no sense on any level.

Point 1: An all-powerful and logical god wouldn’t need blood sacrifice in order to forgive and save people and to establish a relationship with them (or whatever else believers imagine the crucifixion was necessary for). If someone wants to argue that their god is literally incapable of accomplishing a goal without blood sacrifice, let me know. I personally know how to forgive people without blood sacrifice. I’ve also established 100% of my relationships without blood sacrifice.

Point 2: if the crucifixion wasn’t necessary to accomplish Yahweh’s goals, then that means the crucifixion was unnecessary. But then believers have to explain why Yahweh would have someone brutally tortured if it was completely unnecessary. Keep in mind, if a god can just will the universe and life into existence just by thinking it, it can accomplish other goals just as easily.

Point 3: even using internal biblical logic, it didn’t accomplish anything. Before the crucifixion, some people went to hell and some people went to heaven. After the crucifixion, some people go to hell and some people go to heaven. One notable difference is that Yahweh stopped forcing people to kill innocent animals in order to be forgiven, something that was bizarre and unnecessary and barbaric in the first place.

Other points include Jesus being god makes the crucifixion even more nonsensical, that the crucifixion is “solving” a problem that Yahweh created, that original sin makes no sense and would be the fault of Yahweh if it were real, and so on.

It seems much more plausible that crucifixion theology was an adjunct explanation for the unexpected and inglorious death of Jesus. The followers made up a way to make sense of what otherwise should have caused the end of their movement.

(5073) Christianity and Constantine

It is highly probable that Christianity would not be a major world religion today without the influence of the Emperor Constantine during the 4^th Century. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1igbabc/how_accurate_is_this_summary_of_judaism_and/

Christianity was developed and institutionalized by the Emperor Constantine as a manipulative political tool to control and unite a fragmented Roman Empire.

Before Constantine’s reign, Christianity existed as a marginalized sect within the vast Roman Empire, often facing persecution due to its refusal to adhere to traditional polytheism and the social norms it disturbed. The early Christians were seen as a threat to the Pax Romana, as their beliefs challenged the religious status quo and posed ideological opposition to the emperor’s divinity. However, by the early 4th century, the Roman Empire was experiencing significant strife—political instability, economic turmoil, and rampant social division threatened its cohesion. In this context, a unifying ideology became crucial for the emperor to maintain control and unify the empire.

Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, traditionally dated to his vision before the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 CE, marked the beginning of a profound transformation. Claiming a divine endorsement for his rule, he utilized this newfound faith as both a personal conviction and a political instrument. By 313 CE, Constantine, alongside Licinius, enacted the Edict of Milan, which granted religious tolerance and recognized Christianity as a legitimate religion within the empire. This edict achieved several political objectives: it not only placated the Christian population that had previously endured persecution but also positioned Constantine as a leader who favored a religion growing in influence and followers.

By offering protection to Christians and elevating the status of their faith, Constantine effectively aligned himself with a rising political force, signaling to both his subjects and rivals that he was not merely a secular leader but one ordained by the Christian God. This strategic shift towards Christianity garnered him invaluable support among the Christian populace while also providing a foundation for strengthening his political legitimacy.

Beyond mere toleration, Constantine actively sought to shape Christianity into a cohesive and universal faith that could unite the Roman Empire’s sprawling and diverse populations. He convened the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, where he sought to resolve theological disputes, particularly the Arian controversy that threatened to fracture the Church and, by extension, the empire. By presiding over this council, Constantine positioned himself as a mediator of theological disputes, establishing a precedent for imperial involvement in ecclesiastical matters. The decisions made at Nicaea not only aimed to create a unified doctrine but also allowed Constantine to exert control over the growing Christian institution.

This development fostered a centralized ecclesiastical authority that mirrored the administrative framework of the Roman Empire. In establishing orthodoxy, Constantine effectively created a unifying religious identity that could transcend regional allegiances, thereby solidifying the cohesion of his empire in a time of fragmentation and unrest. The church, in turn, became a powerful ally of the emperor, helping to propagate his authority and legitimizing his rule through religious endorsement.

Constantine’s strategic use of Christianity extended beyond institutional support; he also manipulated the narratives surrounding the faith to reinforce his rule. By adopting Christian symbols and rhetoric, he portrayed himself as a divinely appointed ruler, akin to the biblical kings. The construction of significant churches, including the monumental Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, not only demonstrated his commitment to the faith but also cultivated a physical manifestation of his power as a protector of Christianity.

Moreover, the incorporation of Christian values into the fabric of law and public life further exemplified how Constantine leveraged the faith to promote social order. Policies inspired by Christian ethics, such as charity for the poor and protection of the vulnerable, were framed within the moral imperatives of the faith, allowing Constantine to position himself as a benevolent ruler capable of addressing the empire’s needs while drawing support from the increasingly powerful Christian community.

While Constantine is often celebrated for his role in the rise of Christianity, a closer examination reveals a multifaceted approach that served both the aspirations of a growing faith and the political realities of his rule. By creating an environment in which Christianity could flourish, Constantine aimed to unify a fractious empire and stabilize his reign. He utilized this emerging religious movement not merely as a spiritual institution but as a strategic tool for social control and political legitimacy. Thus, the establishment of Christianity within the Roman Empire under Constantine illustrates the intricate relationship between faith and power, revealing how religious transformation can be driven by political necessity as much as spiritual devotion.

It is possible if not likely that Christianity would have remained a minor Middle-Eastern religion without a boost from Constantine or another Roman emperor. The restrained geography combined with Jesus’ continued failure to return would have represented significant headwinds for the faith.

(5074) Summary of Judaism and Christianity

It is instructive to condense the history of Judaism and Christianity into a short piece, as was accomplished as follows:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1igbabc/how_accurate_is_this_summary_of_judaism_and/

“Around 1300-1201 BCE the Hebrews in Judah and Israel began to form a distinct culture away from the Cannanites. There is no archaeological evidence suggesting the Hebrews conquered the Cannanties. Instead, sporadic skirmishes likely occurred. The Hebrews worshiped the Canaanite pantheon of gods: El (Chief God), Baal, Asherah, Marduk, Maloch. Eventually the Hebrews started to believe in El’s son and a storm God based on Ba’al.

The Egyptians, during the rule of Akhenaten (1353-1336 BCE), solely worshiped their sun god Aten. There might have been other civilizations that also practiced some form of monotheism. This may have influenced the Hebrews to eventually consolidate to one god as well. Some believe the Hebrews added sun god properties to Ba’al, and made a new god named Yahweh. Later on, the Hebrews had some theological conflict occur between Yahweh and Ba’al worshippers, where Yahweh was made the supreme god. Interestingly, the early Hebrew religion did not believe in heaven and hell.

In 721 BCE the northern kingdom (Israel) was conquered by the Assyrians. Many of the Israelis fled to the southern kingdom (Judah). In 568 BCE the Babylonians conquered both kingdoms from the Assyrians. The Babylonian influence on the Hebrew religion is evident with the Mosaic Law being similar to Hammurabi’s code. Additionally, Noah’s Ark is a copy of the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh.

In 538 BCE the Persian leader Cyrus the Great freed the Hebrews from Babylonian rule. During this time Zoorastrian mythology was also introduced to the Hebrews. For instance, the Zoorastrian context of Anahita and Jahi likely inspired the story of Adam and Eve. Afterwards in 333 BCE Alexander the Great would conquer the Levant. This caused Hellenistic ideas to also be incorporated into the Hebrew religion. The Garden of Eden forbidden fruit narrative is very similar to the Greek Pandora’s box myth.

The Maccabee revolt (167-160 BCE) was a rebellion against Seleucid rule and Hellenistic influence on Judaism. The Book of Daniel is a pious fraud from this time. It has anachronisms and incorrect historical details. It is only accurate in the “present” of when it was “discovered”, but wrong about the distant past and completely wrong about what happened later. It was purportedly a prophetic scroll from the time of the captivity, describing a war against the oppressors, and how at the last battle Yahweh would help them win.

The Maccabees eventually won, but their victory was short-lived, and the Hebrews were not independent for long. The Book of Daniel was later reinterpreted to develop the Messianic ideas of Judaism, of a savior who would rescue Judea from its enemies.

Savior gods existed before Hellenistic mythology. For example Osiris and Isis cults from Egypt and Mithra from Persia. The Greeks simply had more savior gods. For example Adonis, Attis, Zagreus and Dionysus. Previously, the gods were seen as remote, and the priests were the intermediaries between them and mortals. Savior deities/demigods were described as the sons of gods, sent to earth to save those who accepted their teachings, and who would live on in an afterlife.

Some of these gods suffered through a passion, died and rose, and offered their followers salvation. Paul and the followers of Yeshua (Jesus) were influenced by these Hellenistic savior gods and Messianic rhetoric when inventing his divinity.

The majority of information we have about Jesus comes from Paul’s letters and the Gospels. Paul’s letters were written approximately 20-30 years after Jesus died. Paul likely never met Jesus, and he was a suspect narrator, who could have had epilepsy. The Gospel Mark was written approximately 40 years after Jesus died. In Mark Jesus never claimed to be God or the son of God. Mark and the subsequent Gospels were anonymously written by various authors. They seem to contradict one another and offer a wide variety of accounts of Jesus as a person.

Paul and the Gospel authors deliberately recast Jesus’s life to connect him to Moses, Elijah and David for the Jewish people, and to make him fit unrelated parts of the Old Testament. Of course they also added fictional tales about him performing miracles. Hence, essentially everything we have been told about Jesus is deliberate fiction.

What we factually know about Jesus is that he was an apocalyptic Jew, who thought Yahweh was going to come and destroy the Romans. The Romans saw him as a political dissident and promptly executed him. Jesus was not the first historical figure to falsely predict the end of the world during their time, and he certainly won’t be the last. “

When the theology of Judeo-Christianity in set within its historical milieu it becomes easy to see it as nothing more than a product of an evolving mythology. It can be certain that a religion created and directed by an omnipotent god would have a different form of development- being consistent from the very start.

(5075) Too many problems

If Christianity is the true religion of an omnipotent deity, there would be no way possible to compile a list of problems anywhere near the size of what is presented here. The conclusion of an objective analysis is that, beyond a reasonable doubt, Christianity is untrue.

One major lesson to be learned about determining what to believe and what not to believe can be summed up in a few words- the things that are real can be observed, measured, or reliably demonstrated. To that end, we can confidently state that ghosts, goblins, poltergeists, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, mermaids, hobbits, leprechauns, alien abductions, wizards, witches, angels, demons, dragons, satyrs, nymphs, banshees, vampires, fairies, zombies, and unicorns are not real. And one more we can add to this list: The god of Christianity.