(4951) Behemoth and Leviathan
The Book of Job describes two monsters, Behemoth and Leviathan, both of which are confirmed to be mythical. The inclusion of mythical creatures into what is supposed to be a religious history book is damning, suggesting that even the realistic elements are also non-factual. The following was taken from John Day’s book Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan: (pp.102-103):
Job 40.15-1.26 (ET 34) contains a description of two beasts, Behemoth and Leviathan. It has often been claimed that these are the names of two actually existing creatures rather than mythical beasts. The most commonly held view…is that Behemoth is the hippopotamus and Leviathan the crocodile. Such views are, however, seriously open to question. It is clearly implied that Job and, by implication, humans generally, are unable to overcome these creatures and that only Yahweh has control over them. This alone tends to rule out the various natural creatures suggested for Behemoth and Leviathan such as the hippopotamus and crocodile, since these were certainly captured in the ancient Near East. Moreover, the particular details given in the descriptions do not fit actual known creatures. Thus, Leviathan is said to breathe out fire and smoke (Job 40.10-13, ET 1-21), a clear indication that a dragon is in mind. Leviathan is elsewhere in the Old Testament (including Job, cf. 3.8) as well as in Ugaritic no natural creature but a mythical sea serpent or dragon, and it is most natural to suppose that this is also the case here, though from the description it appears that he now has only one head rather than seven.
There are good grounds for seeing Behemoth too as a mythical monster. Certainly the description of its tail as high and lifted up like a cedar (Job 40.19) is odd if the allusion is to the hippopotamus or other natural creatures that have been suggested. As with Leviathan, it is implied that it cannot be captured and that God alone can master it (Job 40.9-14, 24). The name Behemoth means ‘great ox’, and interestingly the Ugaritic texts twice mention a mythical ox-like creature alongside Leviathan known as Arsh or El’s calf Atik (KTU2 1.3.III.40-44; 1.6.VI.51-53), and this must surely be the ultimate source of the figure of Behemoth. Moreover, in the second Ugaritic allusion Arsh is represented as being in the sea, just as Behemoth is depicted as dwelling in a river in Job 40.23. Granted that Leviathan and Behemoth are mythical creatures, it seems natural to suppose that the presupposition is that Yahweh had overcome them in connection with the creation of the world. Leviathan’s defeat by Yahweh is clearly associated with the time of creation in Ps. 74.14. Nothing in the text suggests that Leviathan and Behemoth are here symbolic of foreign nations. Rather the implication seems to be that, just as Job cannot overcome the chaos monsters Behemoth and Leviathan, which Yahweh defeated at creation, how much less can he (Job) overcome the God who vanquished them. His only appropriate response is therefore humble submission to God (Job 42.1-6). The point being made here is very similar to that found in Job 9.13-14.
If God intended for humans to take the Bible at face value and to have confidence in the history that it documents, then he would have ensured that mythical creatures would not have been included. On the other hand, if humans were making up fictional tales commensurate to their imaginations, then you would expect the same.
(4952) Christianity relies on stupidity for its survival
There are two types of minds that tend to gravitate toward a belief in Christianity- (1) people of low intelligence or who have been deprived of educational opportunities, and (2) otherwise intelligent, well-educated people who have been brainwashed as children. Christianity has a very hard time convincing those in a third category – intelligent people who are raised in an environment that is indifferent to religion. In the following, David Madison describes why stupidity is fuel for Christianity:
https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2024/10/the-stupidity-factor-in-survival-of.html#more
Mike Pence has declared that he doesn’t believe in evolution, but has also said that, when he dies, he’ll asked god if evolution is fact or fiction. This represents a special brand of stupidity, fortified by colossal ignorance. The literature on evolution is vast—is Pence just unaware of it, and can’t be bothered by curiosity? And does he really imagine that a creator deity with billions of galaxies under supervision will take the time to sit down for a chat with him about stuff he should have learned about before he died? Of course, when such a prominent Christian voices his rejection of evolution, this gives permission to the devout to embrace the stupidity and ignorance. I personally witnessed another special brand of stupidity a few years ago—I’ve told this story before, but it’s worth repeating: ten days after the Sandy Hook school massacre in December 2012 (20 kids and 6 adults murdered), a devout Catholic woman offered this explanation: “God must have wanted more angels.” Not even the pope is stupid enough to say such a thing—although the stupidity level at the Vatican is incredibly high.
I’ve known a man for many years, who—just a few sentences into any conversation—will ramble on and on: his analysis of other people based on his certainties about astrology. I’ve always let it pass, but I’m sure that if I asked him to explain his epistemology, he would give me a blank stare. He operates with total confidence in the reliability of confirmation bias. We’ve all run into, or heard about, people who claim that the earth is flat, that the Moon landings were faked, that chemtrails are evil realities, that the Holocaust never happened. All of these ideas are blends of stupidity and ignorance.
Carlo M. Cipolla began the Introduction of his 1976 little book, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity with this observation:
“Human affairs are admittedly in a deplorable state. This, however, is no novelty. As far back as we can see, human affairs have always been in a deplorable state. The heavy load of troubles and miseries that human beings have to bear as individuals as well as members of organized societies is basically a by-product of the most improbable—and I would dare say, stupid—way in which life was set up at its very inception” (p. 15).
Cipolla notes that stupidity can be found at all levels of society—those of whom we would expect it (the earth is flat, the Moon landings were faked)—but he also maintains that it can be detected even among Nobel laureates. That is, all humans are subject to biases and bizarre ideas we might have been raised with—and that persist despite advanced education.
How can Christian apologists not come to mind? It is their business to defend the blend of ancient superstition and magical thinking that the first century Jesus cult advocated. They probably feel this intense need because of the desperate desire to escape death: they cling to the hope of eternal life. The ancient superstition and magical thinking must be made to look respectable. But what an uphill battle it is!
One of the fundamentals—actually the crucial one—is the resurrection of Jesus. But it’s a borrowed idea! There were quite a few other resurrected savior gods worshiped well before Jesus came along. And the New Testament itself dilutes the idea. It includes the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead by voice command (John 11), and there is nothing whatever in that story to indicate that Lazarus didn’t die again. In Matthew 27 we find the bizarre account of many people coming alive in their tombs at the moment Jesus died on the cross; this is found only in Matthew—and again there’s no hint as to their fate after they toured Jerusalem on the morning that Jesus resurrected. And what to do with Jesus once he was resurrected? We are told in Acts 1 that he ascended to heaven, but that is possible only in naïve first-century cosmology. There is no heaven—in the sense of a realm where a god resides above the clouds and below the moon. So the Acts 1 ascension story is fantasy, mythology. The New Testament authors are guilty of a cover-up: they didn’t report what happened to Jesus in the end.
Moreover, the gospel accounts of the events on Easter morning are a mess: so much confusion and disagreement. Robert Conner has pointed out too that no one saw Jesus resurrect—despite his supposed prediction that it would happen. Conner makes the case that the gospel resurrection accounts seem to draw on ghost folklore at the time; see his Apparitions of Jesus: The Resurrection as Ghost Story.
Yet Christian apologists have gone to such great lengths to demonstrate that Jesus rose from the dead, despite the abundantly clear qualification of this belief as superstition. The apostle Paul, who never met Jesus, apparently knew almost nothing about him, and bragged that he received no information about Jesus from the disciples who knew him, added magical thinking to this shallow theology: “…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” That amounts to a magic spell. In John 6:53-58 we read that the blood and flesh of Jesus, when eaten by his followers, are magic potions guaranteeing eternal life. My suggestion earlier that the stupidity level at the Vatican is high is based in part on its claim that transubstantiation guarantees the reality of these magic potions.
It’s also grotesque that the Jesus had to serve as a human sacrifice, an ugly aspect of religion found in other cults as well. How could a loving god require a human sacrifice in order to enable him to forgive human sins? “Christ died for you” is such a common refrain in Christian piety. But how does this additional fragment of magic possibly make sense?
Devout churchgoers, who have been carefully groomed by Sunday School and Catechism, tend to accept all these concepts; they embrace them, never bothering to learn the context from which these ideas arose. Critical thinking skills, skepticism, are not virtues. Especially when eternal life, escape from death, getting to live with Jesus forever, are the rewards of trusting what the clergy claim are unassailable truths, and what Christian apologists have been defending for such a long time.
But we can suspect that doubt is just below the surface with so many of the folks who show up for church. In fact, that may be one of the reasons that mainstream churches have been losing ground in recent decades. There is no much that just doesn’t seem to compute, especially for those who make the effort to read the gospels carefully, and who thus note the flaws, contradictions and absurdities. They may not actually challenge their clergy: “Please show us where to find the reliable, verifiable, objective evidence that will enable us to believe what otherwise seems to qualify as superstition and magical thinking.” What devout Christians—including the apologists—feel in their hearts fails to qualify as a sound foundation for believing.
Sam Harris got it right in his 2004 book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason: “Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings.”
There are two scenarios that bode poorly for Christianity:
(1) A person raised in isolation from other humans would have zero evidence of anything that was supernatural, absent a false sense of such in various natural phenomena.
(2) A person raised in a secular household, despite being exposed to religious people, very rarely comes to any secure belief in religion.
But the next group is vulnerable:
(3) People of limited intelligence, lacking critical thinking skills, and those who were raised in fundamentalist households.
Group (3) is Christianity’s bread and butter.
(4953) Failure of original sin doctrine
The doctrine of original sin runs into extreme headwinds when even casual thought is put on it. The following was taken from:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1fvk9jy/original_sin_obfuscates_a_deeper_truth/
Firstly the concept of “original sin” is a purely theological concept and not one that was espoused by the Hebrew (old testament) Bible and not even preached by Jesus himself.
Secondly no one can truly say how the early Hebrews interpreted the story of the first two humans doing something in contradiction to their creator’s commandment.
Not even the current Jewish Rabbis can know what went through the minds of those early Hebrews when they heard that story told orally to them around their campfire.
At best all that anyone can do (including myself) is give it their best guess.
So what deeper truth do I wish to claim that the concept of original sin obfuscates?
Well, it is well established in the Bible that the Abrahamic faith is based on the belief that there is one and only one deity creating all that is.
That deity created both the first two humans and the serpent that tempted them into doing something in contradiction to their creator’s commandment.
This susceptibility to do something in contradiction to what they have been told arises from the creator creating the first two humans with insufficient intelligence to detect the falsehood that the serpent espoused.
The falsehood that was espoused by the serpent arises from the creator creating a serpent with sufficient intelligence to fabricated such a falsehood.
Therefore the truth that the concept of original sin obfuscates is of a creator that is said by some to be an intelligent designer had designed humans with insufficient intelligence to detect the falsehood of a serpent that it designed with sufficient intelligence to fabricate a falsehood.
Free will does not even get the creator off the hook because providing a creature with free will but not giving that creature sufficient intelligence on how to use that free will intelligently is actually an act of irresponsibility on the part of the creator.
Also keep in mind that the first two humans did not know the difference between good and evil until after they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
The true fault (or original sin) rests solely on the creator for creating a serpent with sufficient intelligence to fabricate falsehoods and putting it in the same garden as the humans that it created with insufficient intelligence to detect falsehoods.
Personally I feel that this little bit of Christian theology called “original sin” that was not espoused by the Hebrew (old testament) Bible and not even preached by Jesus himself has done a gross injustice to all humans.
Didn’t Jesus himself command his followers to “judge not lest you be judged“?
Original sin was the idea that Paul espoused to explain the meaning of Jesus’s death and resurrection. But prior to Paul, it wasn’t even on the radar. Change is not the hallmark of a theology managed by an omnipotent deity.
(4954) Folly of faith
Christianity depends on its followers accepting the idea that faith is a means to truth. This is required because there is insufficient evidence to prove its claims, or even to provide some assurance of its veracity. Thus, faith is touted as a (gratuitous) virtue. The following was taken from:
https://medium.com/@kvkbcb/the-folly-of-faith-98497aa5a7da
Faith has been variously defined as a “firm belief in something for which there is no proof” and “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11.1). Faith is a fundamental virtue in Christianity. Christians are taught, starting in Bible school, the importance of being faithful. I had attended services years ago at “Faith Bible Church.” A good Christian is expected to take the Bible as the inerrant word of God. There is no place for questioning or doubt. A Christian who questions anything in the religion is considered wayward or, worse, a heretic.
There is irrationality associated with faith as one accepts something as being true despite there being no evidence for it. Faith is the complete opposite of rational thought. As I scientist, I accept a theory as being in all likelihood (but never absolutely) true if it is consistent with all the available data, both existing and newly collected, and there is no viable alternative explanation. There is no question that the Earth is billions of years old, humans are the product of evolution, and plate tectonics is true because of the enormous volume of data supporting them.
Faith forces one to ignore facts contrary to one’s beliefs or make up new “data”. For example, when my kids were young, I heard a youth minister explain to them how dinosaurs and man lived together and dinosaurs became extinct because they did not get on Noah’s ark. We had some jokes about “The Flintstones” cartoons on the way home.
I am certainly not an atheist as there is much that cannot be explained by science. One is forced to ultimately fall back on “things just happened to be that way.” It required an extraordinary set of favorable circumstances starting with the Big Bang for sentient life to evolve. Our knowledge of the universe does not exclude God.
Faithful Christians claim they know in their heart that the Bible is factual. However, an obvious problem is that they were taught to believe that. These same people if they grew up in Saudi Arabia would likely claim that they believe in their heart that the Koran is factual. Primitive tribesmen have strong faith in their religious beliefs.
The Bible was also written about two thousand years by people with a primitive understanding of the universe and life.
Part of the problem is that few Christians understand the origin of the Bible. It was not documents written in stone or on gold plates that were recovered by early believers and accurately translated into English. There is little question that Jesus was an historical person and I accept that the “red letter” parts of the New Testament are a reasonable record of his teachings. However, it is a matter of faith that the latter parts of the New Testament were divinely inspired and not matters of opinion by the authors. There is no rational reason to accept that the letters of Paul, for example, of being more the word of God then letters written by the late Jerry Falwell. It was a human decision to include them in the Bible.
Faith does have value. My grandparents faith gave them courage to get through some very difficult times. In some poor regions faith is almost all that some people have.
However, faith-based religion is destined to become an anachronism in modern society, like the great cathedrals of Europe have now become mainly tourist attractions.
Deconstructionism, the questioning and challenging of the traditional interpretations and meanings of the Bible and Christian church, is critical for saving and revitalizing Christianity. If one’s religious beliefs cannot withstand scrutiny, then one should accept that they might be wrong.
There is one thing that everyone should understand – Faith is the selling point of a fraudulent product. Now, some Christians will say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But this is not quite correct. For example, if I say that there is a teapot orbiting the earth and you just need faith to believe it, as preposterous as it is, it would nevertheless be easy to conclude that there is no specific dis-confirming evidence. But if I say that Christianity is true, then there is a problem- there is evidence missing that should be there, for example, a young earth, statistically-evidenced answered prayers, or secular historical accounts of Jesus contemporaneous to his time. This means, in some respects, that faith in Christianity is a greater leap than for the teapot- since, for the teapot, no one can point to evidence missing that should otherwise exist.
(4955) Gospel of Mark as reactionary allegory
There is a theory that the Gospel of Mark was written as a reaction to the fall of Judea to the Roman armies, and that the author constructed a fictional tale to explain why this happened. The following is the introduction to the article The Gospel of Mark as Reactionary and Allegory by R.G. Price.
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/gospel_mark.htm
For most of Christian history the Gospel of Mark has been the least appreciated Gospel and viewed as the least significant. This is partly because the Gospel of Mark is the shortest Gospel, was not viewed as an eyewitness account, contains the least significant theological constructs, lacks any mention of the birth or origin of Jesus, paints the least flattering image of the disciples, and was believed to have been written after the Gospel of Matthew. This all changed, however, in the 18th century when the theory of Markan priority was first proposed. Since that time there has been a growing interest in the Gospel of Mark and its status has changed from being viewed as the least significant Gospel to far and away the most significant Gospel, if not the most significant Christian writing period.
The importance of the Gospel of Mark is elevated all the more not simply because it was certainly written before the others, but indeed because all of the other canonical Gospels are based on it. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are directly based on the Gospel of Mark, and this is now widely accepted among Biblical scholars. Because of this, these three Gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke, are collectively known as the Synoptic Gospels.
There is debate, however, as to whether or not the Gospel of John was influenced by the Synoptic Gospels. It was long accepted that it was, even before the Synoptic Problem was outlined, but some apologists have tried to argue that John is a fully independent work, which was not influenced by the Synoptics. This argument has gained favor among Christian apologists in an attempt to strengthen the Gospel tradition by asserting that the Gospels do still contain independent accounts of the life of Jesus, as was believed prior to the outlining of the Synoptic Problem, which showed that, unlike the traditional belief, at least the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were not independent accounts, and thus not eyewitness accounts. I will argue here, however, that the Gospel of John was also influenced by the Synoptic works as well.
Another significant realization of modern scholarship about the Gospel of Mark is that it was written during or shortly after the conquering of Judea and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. That the Gospel of Mark was written during or shortly after the war between the Jews and Romans that spanned from 67 to 73 CE is widely accepted by modern scholars and supported by internal evidence from within the work, based partly on the descriptions of the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Mark 13.
What most Biblical scholars have failed to do, however, is fully recognize the significance of the destruction of Jerusalem in relation to the Gospel of Mark. Most Biblical scholars simply view the destruction of Jerusalem as a reference point in time in relation to which the Gospel of Mark can be dated, simply an event on a timeline, but few actually put the Gospel of Mark in the context of the Jewish War. This is because most Biblical scholars view all of the Gospels as being “about Jesus”. For them Jesus is the subject, Jesus is the impetus, Jesus is the driving factor behind the writing of the Gospels. If you were to ask most Biblical scholars why the Gospels were written the answer would invariably be, “In order to record the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.” The Gospel of Mark is viewed no differently than the other Gospels in this regard. Why was the Gospel of Mark written according to Christians? In order to record the life and teaching of Jesus of course…
Well, not so. At least, what I propose and hope to demonstrate is that this is not so. I will demonstrate that the Gospel of Mark was written in reaction to the destruction of Jerusalem, and that the destruction of Jerusalem is not simply an event which can be used to date the writing, but that the destruction of Jerusalem was the impetus for the writing of the Gospel of Mark, that it is central to understanding the Gospel of Mark, and that the narrative of the Gospel of Mark is rooted in symbolism about the destruction of Jerusalem. I will here argue that the author of the Gospel of Mark was writing a fictional story and that the author himself knew that Jesus was not a real person, but rather the author was using Jesus as a fictional character in an intentionally fictional and allegorical narrative.
I hope to demonstrate the following key points:
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- The Gospel of Mark was written in reaction to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE
- The Gospel of Mark was written as an allegorical fiction
- The author of Mark was a Christian follower of a Pauline sect
- The author of Mark was familiar with the letters of Paul
- The Gospel of Mark is not based on any prior narratives about Jesus
- Almost all the scenes in the Gospel of Mark are symbolic and/or literary allusions to the Hebrew scriptures
- The author of Mark regarded the earlier Jewish oriented Christ movement as a failure
Throughout history many scholars have considered the Gospel of Mark a puzzling, and at times incoherent, work. This is yet another reason why this Gospel was so little regarded for so long, but what I hope to demonstrate here is that confusion over the Gospel of Mark stems from supposing that it is something which it is not, and that once you realize that the Gospel of Mark was not written as a foundational religious document at all, but that it was written as an allegorical story to portray the Judean Jews and the early Christian apostles as fools who brought destruction upon themselves, then the work makes perfect sense.
As a story that was written in reaction to the destruction of Jerusalem the Gospel of Mark is a story of absurdity and despair. This story of loss, despair, and destruction, was only later transformed into a story of hope and resurrection by the later Gospel writers, and by those who edited the Gospel of Mark and added the portions after Mark 16:8. Indeed, the Gospel of Mark may have been written by a disaffected ex-Christian who viewed the Christian movement in general as a failure. That such a bizarre and disaffected story would have become the basis for the other narratives which portray a life of Jesus (the other Gospels) can only indicate the sheer lack of other biographical material.
There are many mysteries surrounding the Gospel of Mark, and the idea that it was strictly a work of fiction is gaining academic credence. If this is true, then the entire edifice of Christianity comes into question.
(4956) Making sense of Paul’s conversion
There are good reasons to conclude that Paul invented his vision of Jesus and conversion to Christianity for personal reasons. The following was taken from:
So, Jesus dies and his followers are convinced that he’s risen from the dead. Apparently, Jesus spends time with them which I don’t really understand either. How does that look like? Do they eat together, do they go for a walk? How long are they together? Hours, days? How many witnesses are there?
Paul gets wind of this and persecutes his followers (how many?). Then, on the road to Damascus, he has a vision and also becomes convinced that Jesus has risen. He then actively lowers his social status and puts himself at risk by promoting a belief he does not benefit from.
People usually do not change their beliefs unless they benefit from said shift of opinion. Did Paul in some shape or form benefit from his change of heart?
I’ve recently came across an interesting opinion that stated that Paul may have invented his vision because he wanted to be influential in a community he respects. Supposedly, Paul as a Hellenized (Diaspora) Jew from Tarsus(Not a Jerusalem or Judean Jew like the disciples) finds himself in a bind between his non-Judean Jewish conceptions about the Messiah, and the very Judean Jewish conceptions taught by Jesus’ own disciples. So, in order to become a voice within that community, he needed a claim that could not only rival the one of Jesus’ followers but trump it. The vision as well his “Pharisee who persecutes Christians” story strategically served as powerful arguments for his legitimacy. The plan proved to be successful.
This theory is plausible and it makes more sense than a resurrected Jesus picking a rogue Roman official whom he had never met to be the principal architect of Christian theology.
(4957) God has too many human traits
The Bible makes God look so human that it seems possible that a time-traveling human into the future is playing a trick on humanity. The following was taken from:
God has way too many human traits to be a cosmic being
- God has emotions. he feels love and anger. Why? Now, I’m not an expert on human psychology or biology, but I’m pretty sure the reason for humans having more emotion than other animals is because we’re social animals. god is alone. There is only 1 of him (which is questionable), and in fact, I expected him to act more like the watcher from marvel. If there are multiple gods, then god’s “I don’t lie” is proved wrong and everything in the bible is now questionable, as that was the single thing holding it together.
- God has a human form? He made us in his image, apparently. but why does he look like a human? Did he share a common ancestor with apes like we did? And why does he have a d*ck if he doesn’t breed, sweat glands if he doesn’t need to cool down (space is cold), and a mouth if he doesn’t need to eat? And if god just looks like us without any of those, why not specify that? And there are so many things a human body has, both inside and outside, that god wouldn’t need. And finally, why this form? There’s tons of other forms I can think of that are better than this one.
- Why is the concept of morality a thing for him? Things like rape. this is frowned upon by almost all of humanity (the other part being rapers). However, if you look at it from a different perspective, its actually a good option for…pretty much every single species on earth but us. (I don’t support rape, so please don’t accuse me of it). also, some “sins” only apply towards humans as well, like lust (if you don’t want us to be horny, then maybe you shouldn’t have made us produce 300 million sperm per day, god), and other stuff as well. The point is, his “morals” are too human focused, almost as if the bible is a book used to keep people in line with stuff like hell…
- He desires worship. you know, not everyone desires worship. for example, there’s Santa who delivers gifts out of the goodness of his heart, and doesn’t even show himself. He doesn’t want worship, at least as far as I know. so why does god, the baseline for a kind person desires this much worship? And you can’t deny his worship addiction, he requires you to pray to him instead of automatically helping you, Sunday is dedicated to him and you get stoned if you don’t rest that day whether you’re starving or not, and he sends you to hell if you don’t believe in his existence.
Conclusion: God is an attention-seeking human from the future who decided to pose as an omnipotent being so he can get worshiped. This is really likely if you think about it, as we don’t know how the universe started so we can’t disprove his claim, and most stuff in the bible can’t be proved either and was only debunked recently when science advanced enough.
It should be really easy to trick people back then because they knew nothing about how the world worked, so he can just say he created the world and show some magic tricks and people would believe him. The bible is centered around humans, and has stuff like “an afterlife exists” and “humans are special and different from other creatures” to lure people in.
This is much more likely than the claim the bible makes.
It seems likely that the reason why God has so many human traits is because he was invented by humans.
(4958) Selective revelation
The following describes why Christian theology doesn’t work concerning who is and who is not saved from going to hell:
Selective Revelation is inconsistent with a Just God
In this argument I will be arguing specifically against the Christian god, but this argument goes for any god who requires belief from humans and punishes/rewards them due to this belief.
Just: behaving according to what is morally right and fair
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- There are consequences for believing or not believing in god. (heaven/hell or relationship/separation)
- A just god would reveal themselves in a way that humanity as a whole has access to that revelation/evidence.
- God did not reveal themselves to large portions of humanity.
Conclusion: God is not just.
Support for premises:
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- A large portion of Christians believe in a literal heaven or hell. For those who do not, they generally still believe god wants to have a relationship with all of us and that it is positive to have that relationship and negative to not. The magnitude of the consequences don’t really matter for this argument, only that there are consequences.
- Fairness is a core part of being just. If two different people are given vastly different amounts of evidence, it is not just to judge them the same way. Romans 2:11-16 states that god shows no partiality, we are all judged equally.
- Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. Even if you exclude others from the genus Homo, we have evidence of anatomically modern humans going back 300,000 years. What evidence do we have that the god of the bible revealed himself to any of these humans? If you deny that our ancestry goes back this far, we still have massive amounts of the human population that weren’t exposed to Christianity or Judaism until relatively recently, if at all. Look at the Americas.
Possible issues:
Perhaps those ignorant of Christianity are not subject to the same punishment due to that ignorance. I would say this violates Romans 2:11-16. But even if it doesn’t, this then makes evangelizing to anyone an incredibly hostile endeavor as you are now exposing them to the risks of hell.
Perhaps god did visit the Americas, revealed himself to pre-historic humans. I’d wonder what the theological basis of this idea would be, and any evidence showing actual Christian beliefs from these humans.
There is no realistic way to portray the Christian dogma for assigning people to heaven or hell as being fair. An omnipotent god intent on rewarding or punishing humans post-life would make the critical information clear and accessible to everyone.
(4959) Jesus’ metamorphosis
Not only was Jesus’ life, deeds, words, and resurrection mythologized, but also his appearance. Starting as an ugly duckling and ending up as a matinee idol. The following was taken from:
You can find many passages from the early fathers of the church describing the physical appearance of Jesus in unflattering terms, such as this passage from Tertullian:
Let us compare with Scripture the rest of His dispensation. Whatever that poor despised body may be, because it was an object of touch and sight, it shall be my Christ, be He inglorious, be He ignoble, be He dishonoured; for such was it announced that He should be, both in bodily condition and aspect. Isaiah comes to our help again: “We have announced (His way) before Him,” says he; “He is like a servant, like a root in a dry ground; He hath no form nor comeliness; we saw Him, and He had neither form nor beauty; but His form was despised, marred above all men.” […] According to the same prophet, however, He is in bodily condition “a very worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and an outcast of the people.”
– The Five Books Against Marcion
Or this passage from the apocryphal Acts of Peter:
Him [Christ] who is great and quite small, comely and ugly: small for the ignorant, great to those who know him, comely to the understanding and ugly to the ignorant, youthful and aged […] glorious but amongst us appearing lowly and ill-favoured.
Then once we get to the 5th century, we have Augustine saying:
Beautiful is God, the Word with God. He is beautiful in Heaven, beautiful on earth; beautiful in the womb; beautiful in His parents’ arms, beautiful in His miracles, beautiful in His sufferings; beautiful in inviting life, beautiful in not worrying about death, beautiful in giving His life, beautiful in taking it up again; He is beautiful on the cross, beautiful in the tomb, beautiful in Heaven.
Then we have medieval art and literature which I believe always portrays Jesus as beautiful, never as the short, ugly and deformed creature the church once thought he was.
What happened theologically, ideologically and historically that compelled the church to abandon its belief in the ugliness and deformity of Jesus and embrace the belief that Jesus was beautiful?
As long as Christians were aggrandizing the exploits of their hero, they might as well embellish his appearance as well. Jesus, however real he might have been in the flesh, was nothing even remotely similar to how Christians view him today.
(4960) Free will verses prayers for protection
Christian apologists often explain the existence of evil as a consequence of God granting free will to everyone, including those who would harm us. However, these same apologists encourage Christians to pray for their personal protection. But if God is granting free will to bad people, how could such a prayer have any benefit- that is, without violating their free will? The following was taken from:
Also along with my Title, I also like to point out the reliability or the track record of God is not that good. Let me start with an example. You are a celebrity looking for a bodyguard. When you look for companies, you are gonna check their track record. You most likely will select a bodyguard that has a perfect track record. Even if there one case where the bodyguard failed protect someone, he would not be selected.
We know God most of the time doesn’t do anything when someone is in danger. Lets take his own followers. We have many cases where nuns (who spent day and night in prayer) getting raped and even killed. His apostles many times or all the time pray to protect them from enemies. We know how well that went. All of the apostles except John died a horrible death.
Now I get that God needs to do this to protect free will. OK. That’s great. Then why waste time praying for protection in the first place? We know any evil done to us, he is just gonna let it happen. So why pray for protection? Also there is the problem of track record. God’s track record is not all good. Nuns get raped and killed, even though they pray 16 hrs a day. So why trust such a guy.
The free will argument for evil offers God no excuse. Christians must acknowledge that God, if he exists, prioritizes the free will of evil people over the will of their innocent victims to be protected. And by some measure of inference, God must also be granting ‘free will’ to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. So it seems that free will trumps prayers… so why pray?
(4961) Brain damage and religious experience
A person’s perception of reality must pass through the filter of their brain’s competence to objective assess the truth of their existence. Many defects can affect the ability of the mind to competently make this assessment. As discussed below, it is well established that brain trauma can induce visions and audio signals that are often mistaken for divine or mystical experiences:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1g2p2hr/brain_damage_and_the_science_of_auditory/
Brain damage and the science of auditory hallucinations undermine religious claims
The association between brain damage and claimed divine experience greatly undermines the arguments made by religious proponents.
Within the past several decades, there is a growing amount of evidence that ties hyper-religiousity and divine conversations, with that of a damaged brain.
A 60-year-old woman who had rarely been interested in religion began to experience mystical experiences seemingly out of nowhere, which was later shown to have been a tumor in the right temporal lobe. In 2015, a 48-year-old woman sought emergency services after harming herself, from what she said were directives from God; similarly, she was found to have a tumor that impacted where her brain processed audio-responses.
These are not just one-off cases. Repeated stories involving multiple patients with brain injuries show hyper-fundamentalism are tied to brain damage.
This does not just occur with brain-damaged individuals, but prayer itself is linked to parts of the brain that correlate to daily conversations or intimate conversations with friends.
Many major religions of the world base their evidence on or cite their divine commands through the mediation of prophets or teachers. They speak to hearing voices, they speak of seeing dead and divine holy figures. And nearly every single one shares common attributes with any number of traumatic brain injuries or illnesses. They can all be explained by simple yet heartbreaking biological functions.
There is no reason to believe that these prophets, teachers, or apostles are any less victim to the same biological functions and mental roadblocks as the rest of humanity.
It is quite possible that many of the most ardent religious figures in history, Christianity or any other religion, were influenced by defects in their brains. It is often considered that Paul may have suffered something similar to this, as well as Jesus himself. Lacking objective evidence for the truth of Christianity, it is tenuous for anyone to base their faith on the testimonies of ancient people who possibly were experiencing brain-defect-related hallucinations.
(4962) God is a criminal
If Christianity is true, then it is also undeniably true that Yahweh, the Omnipotent, is not using all of his powers to convince people of his existence. It is also undeniably true that this failure will result in a greater number of humans who will not believe in him, or follow Christianity, and thereby be sent to hell. If Yahweh revealed himself more convincingly, many of these hell-bound people would believe and be saved. So, Yahweh is responsible, because of hiding his existence, for sending a massive number of good people to hell.
As an analogy, imagine if you discovered that eating artichokes is a direct cause of cancer. The correlation is convincing and very much outside the bounds of a statistical anomaly. The data is so strong that it has a 5-sigma confidence level. But instead of making this information immediately available to the entire world, you decide to share it only with family and friends. Outside of your coterie, people continue to eat artichokes, get cancer, and die. Now, who is responsible for these deaths- yes, it is YOU. You are a criminal by any measure of justice.
Likewise, anyone going to hell because they don’t believe in Jesus, based on what they perceive as being insufficient evidence, is the responsibility of God.
God is guilty. God is a criminal.
(4963) Mistake by author of John
The person who wrote the Gospel of John did not research the Old Testament sufficiently to avoid making Jesus speak an untruth (or Jesus himself made a mistake). The following was taken from:
Jesus in John chapter 3 verse 13 contradicts Second Kings chapter two verse 11, and demonstrates that the authors of the Bible couldn’t agree on basic theology. This demonstrates the unlikelihood of the Bible being true revelations from God.
John 3:13 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)
(Jesus speaking) “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”
2 Kings 2:11 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)
As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.
Now either Jesus didn’t pay attention when he was reading the Hebrew scriptures, or the author of John made a mistake because they were unaware of this story. Both of these scenarios undermine the idea that the Bible is God-inspired, since the book cannot even agree on its own theology.
This is the type of error that would have been avoided if the Bible was a work of cosmic intelligence, but it’s fully understandable if it’s the work of man.
(4964) Amount of suffering problem
Theologians have conjectured that a good god would allow some evil to exist in order to maximize the overall good. Kind of like illness can make later health more satisfying. However, the argument presented below suggests that the amount of evil that exists is too much to legitimize this theory:
The amount of evil/suffering that exists in the world must be the precise amount necessary to maximize good for a maximally good God to exist, no more, no less.
A common response to the problem of evil is that God doesn’t interfere with our free will, or the environment because it maximizes the good the can exist. And to a certain extent I agree. I believe that a certain amount of suffering does give life more meaning. However, I also believe there is a tipping point at which any added suffering just becomes gratuitous and no amount of good that comes about would justify the added suffering.
Because God is all good, then God would certainly not allow there to be any gratuitous or unnecessary suffering. Allowing extra suffering to exist than is necessary to maximize good would make God not maximally good. God would also not allow too little suffering because that would not be maximizing the good that could exist. If God is not maximizing the good the in world, then God cannot be maximally good.
That would mean if God is maximally good, then the amount of suffering that exists would have to be the exact precise amount of suffering necessary to maximize the good. If any more or any less suffering/evil existed in the world, then the good would not be maximized, and God could not be maximally good.
Now my long winded question I guess is, does all the suffering/evil that exist in this world seem 100% necessary? If it is, that would mean every extra second of pain a child dying of cancer experiences is 100% necessary to maximize the good. How could it be then that reducing the amount of suffering of a child dying of cancer by even one second make the world any less good?
I just can’t fathom a scenario in which ALL of the suffering/evil that exists in this world is necessary to maximize the good. But I also can’t imagine a maximally good God being able to allow any more or any less suffering/ evil to exist. So I’m left with two options. Either all the seemingly gratuitous suffering is not gratuitous and in fact necessary, or a maximally good God doesn’t exist. It feels like the latter.
The problem of evil has dogged Christianity for twenty centuries and it will do the same for twenty more centuries. All efforts to explain it away have failed. Yahweh, if he exists, must be significantly different from what most Christians imagine.
(4965) Jesus mythicism set to go mainstream
The contention that Jesus was a mythical figure has always been a minority view, but lately it has become more mainstream. The following explains why this is happening:
https://merionwest.com/2022/01/14/jesus-mythicism-is-about-to-go-mainstream/
The consensus is that Jesus was a real person. Maybe he was not the Son of God born of a virgin, but he was, at the very least, a person who lived in the Middle East at some point in the early first century. Skeptics of this view are called Jesus mythicists. To date, they have not only been outnumbered among scholars and historians but also widely ignored by the general public. I believe this is about to change.
There are a number of reasons why Jesus mythicism is about to go mainstream—or, at the very least, become gradually more widely-held. The first reason simply has to do with a demographic shift: Most Western countries are becoming less Christian every year. Meanwhile, by all accounts, less religious Christian countries are less inclined to believe in the historicity of Jesus. For example, 93% of Americans believe Jesus was a real person while, according to a Church of England poll, only 60% of the English hold that view.
It stands to reason that as the United States becomes less Christian, it will become less tied to the historicity of Jesus. And the United States is becoming less Christian—fast. According to Pew, between 2009 and 2019, American adults who identified as Protestants dropped from 51% to 43%, while Catholics dropped from 23% to 20%. And even for those who still identify as Christian, fewer and fewer of them are attending church. In 2020, a Gallup poll found that only 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque. In the eight decades Gallup has conducted this poll, 2020 was the first year the number dipped below 50%.
While Christians need Jesus to be historical, non-Christians do not have any particular reason to care either way. Notably, for people who have not had much exposure to Christian history, Jesus seems like a fictional character. For example, I have a friend who has never once gone to church and more or less lives her life entirely oblivious to the existence of any world religion. I told her recently that I am starting to come around to the idea that Jesus was entirely fictional. “No kidding!” she responded. “I could have told you that!”
To her point, Jesus was born to a woman who had never had sex. He walked on water. He died and came back to life. Then, he rose up into the sky and conveniently never came back down. Meanwhile, his story (we often hear) parallels those of other mythical figures who offer salvation after dying and coming back, such as Osiris, Adonis, Romulus, and Inanna. So, yes—my friend has a point: To someone who has never given a moment’s thought to whether Jesus was a real person or not, he does seem like an entirely fictional character. This point is important because more and more people are growing up like my friend, with next-to-no exposure to the Jesus story beyond the mythical bits. To these people, the mythicist view will be the default view.
But let us forget about statistics and anecdotes. Do the mythicists actually have a valid argument that Jesus was fictional? Or are they just (as is often claimed) bitter atheists and conspiracy theorists who don’t understand the history?
While there are sloppy mythicist arguments being passed around on the Internet, there are also many serious scholars who present a compelling case for mythicism. Over the past few years, a number of in-depth, well-researched books have come out arguing for mythicism. These include: On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt by Richard Carrier, Jesus: Mything in Action by David Fitzgerald, and The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems by Robert M. Price. The list of legitimate scholars who openly doubt the historicity of Jesus has grown rapidly during the past decade.
Here is Richard Carrier’s case for mythicism, as he presented it in three simple points on a recent episode of the MythVision Podcast:
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- The earliest Christian literature—in particular the letters of Paul—never places Jesus in history; instead, he is only ever seen from revelation. For example, Paul has no knowledge of Jesus picking disciples; he only knows about apostles who received a revelation of Jesus. In Romans 16, Paul straight up says that the teachings of Jesus were known only from scripture and revelation.
- Jesus only appears as a real person in texts that are highly mythological, i.e., the Gospels. This basically means we only have one book that talks about Jesus as a real person, which is the book of Mark. The other gospels were written after Mark by authors who embellished the story while clearly lifting significant portions directly from Mark. And Mark is written by an unknown author who cites no sources for his information. Notably, a lot of ancient mythical characters were also given elaborate biographies that placed them in history with parents, siblings, birth-places, etc. This includes characters like Moses, Romulus, and Dionysus. In contrast, figures in history who are known to be real people either did not begin as revelatory beings, or we have clear evidence of their historicity.
- Attempts to get around these two points do not hold up. For example, there is an argument that Jesus must have really come from Nazareth because there is no other reason to attribute such an unlikely origin to him (Christopher Hitchens, for instance, finds this argument convincing). But the premise of this argument is false because there are many good reasons why that specific town would have been contrived for a mythical messiah. Also, many mythical figures were given obscure towns as their origin. For example, Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome, were given the birthplace of Alba Longa, an ancient city in Central Italy.
This case could be expounded upon in numerous ways. Slate, for instance, provides five reasons for questioning the historicity of Jesus. A more in-depth case from Carrier can be found in his 700-page book on the subject or in his talk “Why Invent Jesus.” But even as a quick, three-point argument, the case against Jesus’s historicity seems eminently reasonable. And yet it has not been given a proper hearing by either religious scholars or the public.
As mythicist author Earl Doherty shows in a survey, historians rely on the consensus view to brush aside the mythicist theory rather than to examine it. Carrier has also observed that most scholars who study Jesus are biased against the mythicist view because they are essentially trained to presuppose that Jesus existed as a real person. In a 2017 talk, Carrier explained, “Even secular experts in this field have been trained with a body of Christian faith assumptions that are this lens through which you look at this evidence and select which evidence to look at.” As a result, the consensus that Jesus was a real person is based on this framework of Christian faith assumptions. And those assumptions, he argues, do not hold up to scrutiny.
When called out for their bias, religious scholars are quick to point out that even most secular scholars find mythicism unconvincing. Popular author Bart Ehrman is often referenced in this regard. It is true Erhman—who has made a career out of debunking the Bible as a divinely-inspired text—is a vocal advocate for historicity, but I also find his motives questionable. On a recent podcast with Michael Shermer, Ehrman explained his frustration with the mythicists: “As admirable as some of the intention is, I think mythicists are shooting themselves in the foot because they convince those who want to be convinced, and the people they really ought to be trying to convince just laugh at them.” In other words, Ehrman thinks arguing for mythicism is the wrong tactic for deconverting Christians. Although I find Ehrman genuine in his views, it is possible that he is motivated against taking the mythicists seriously because he does not want to be laughed at by the very people he is trying to reach. Ideally, deconverting Christians should be an entirely separate project.
But let us assume the mythicists do not have a strong case against the historicity of Jesus. Even so—to return to my original point—it seems likely their numbers are on the verge of growing rapidly.
Given the demographic shift away from Christianity, as noted above, there are bound to be people (like my friend) who grow up simply assuming Jesus was a fictional character—regardless of whether the academic mythicists have a strong argument or not. Meanwhile, a growing number of mythicists authors—such as Carrier, Fitzgerald, and Price—are writing books and regularly appearing on podcasts and YouTube channels. Again, regardless of whether or not their arguments are any good, they sound good to anyone who cares to listen.
When Carrier recently debated Dennis R. MacDonald on the question of mythicism, no one in the comments section was laughing at Carrier (as Ehrman might have worried). Rather, I am seeing highly engaged comments that lean skeptically against historicity. For instance, a commentator named Doston Jones writes:
“So, Dr. MacDonald concedes that our earliest extant Gospel (gMark) is so heavily mythologized that it’s completely lacking of veracious historical information concerning Jesus. Yet, he pins his entire historicist argument on a hypothetical and contested source text (Q) to establish the historical basis for Jesus? That’s not very persuasive.”
It only makes sense that Jesus mythicism would find a growing audience online: The Internet loves a good contrarian view! And unlike many contrarian views that are potentially harmful to society (such as anti-vax conspiracies), I do not see any practical harm from speculating about whether or not a character from the first century was a real person or not. Christians will disagree with this, but, again, the historicity of Jesus is the least of their concerns in terms of losing their numbers. For the rest of us, Jesus mythicism is a harmless YouTube rabbit hole to venture down. This point is validated by the fact that many outlets discussing Jesus mythicism—such as the MythVision Podcast and the David C. Smalley Podcast—are responsible channels that do not feed off conspiracy theory hype.
None of this is to say that Jesus definitely did not exist as a real person. He very well might have. Carrier puts the odds at a one in three chance that he existed. As someone who knows less about the topic than these experts, I am happy to grant historical Jesus even better odds. But when it comes to the consensus, I do not see any way for historical Jesus to maintain such a strong advantage. From this moment on, it seems highly probably that the mythicist view will continue to become more well-subscribed to, and the new mainstream view—correct or otherwise—might become that Jesus is nothing more than a fictional character.
This question will never be answered definitively, but there is one point that is definitely valid- if God intended for Jesus to travel to the earth and perform a suicide mission to save humanity, he would have assured that the historicity of this event would have been rigorously and reliably documented. In other words, there would be exactly zero mythicists walking around.
(4966) Jews expected a powerful messiah
One of the reasons why the Jews rejected Jesus is that they were expecting a messiah who would overcome the opposition and be victorious, rather than suffer a humiliating defeat. The fact that Jesus failed to meet this expectation is why Jesus followers formed a new religion. The following was taken from:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1g6cqe8/a_suffering_messiah/
As far as I’ve read, there was no expectation of a suffering messiah. The expected messiah for Israel would be somebody with great power, a king, a leader, somebody with mighty strength.
That’s why you’ll find some remnants of this concept in the gospel according to Mathew, Chapter 16, too:
21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. 22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” 23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.
The statements put on Jesus’s lips and Peter’s response to it seems like even Peter was expecting the Jewish messiah who would be so powerful that he would crush the enemies of Israel not somebody who would die a criminals death.
This term messiah was understood in different ways by different Jews in the first century, but one thing that all Jews appear to have had in common when thinking about the messiah was that he was to be a figure of grandeur and power, who in some way—for example, through raising a Jewish army or by leading the heavenly angels—would overcome Israel’s enemies and establish Israel as a sovereign state that could be ruled by God himself (possibly through human agency).
Misquoting Jesus – Bart Ehrman
The ties between the Old and New Testament were broken by this failed expectation. Essentially, the Christians took defeat and tried to dress it up as a success, but scripturally-literate Jews were having nothing of it. The gospel authors tried desperately to find anything in the Old Testament scriptures that foretold of a suffering messiah, but managed to find only a few unconvincing examples.
(4967) Opening the mind to let God out
In the following, it is discussed how author Frank Lerant found his way out of a belief in God by opening his mind to view reality in an objective manner:
https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2024/10/the-high-vulnerability-of-christian.html#more
But sometimes devout believers have led the way in thinking their way out of religion. Frank Lerant, in his book, How I Opened My Mind and Let God Out: An Electrician’s Road to Atheism, provides a good example. He mentions horrendous suffering in his chapter 9 titled, God—the Biggest Failure of All Time:
“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…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…God gave us bodies with countless weaknesses and poorly designed parts.” (p.88, Kindle)
In the early part of his book, Lerant demonstrates what happens when people carefully read and ponder the Bible. He perfectly illustrates three of my favorite quotes:
Andrew L. Seidel, “The road to atheism is littered with Bibles that have been read cover to cover.”
Hector Avalos, “If we were to go verse by verse, I suspect that 99 percent of the Bible would not even be missed.”
Mark Twain, “The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible.”
This is one of his choice comments:
“Entire books, such as Dan Barker’s God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, have been written describing the horrific stories of the Old Testament, and this chapter was certainly influenced by his work. If you are a good person and have not read the Bible, I’m sure you will be as shocked as I was when I began reading it critically.” (p. 36 Kindle)
In this same genre of book is Steve Wells, Drunk with Blood: God’s Killings in the Bible.
Lerant asks:
“…how can you worship a god who recommends what we now think of as psychopathic homicide? If you do, there is no place for you in the civilized world. The so-called ‘word of God’ is filled with stomach-turning stories, hundreds of contradictions, plagiarism, incest, cannibalism, and ‘facts’ disproven by scientific methods.” (p. 19, Kindle)
This is by no means aimed just at the Old Testament. Lerant references New Testament goofiness as well: “…why do we still subject our children to ridiculous rituals like the cannibalistic act of turning crackers and wine into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus? …It should be viewed as a clear support of cannibalism, and quite frankly, disgusting.” (p. 69, Kindle)
The ecclesiastical bureaucracy gets away with so much because it has trained the flock to turn off thinking. The world around us, with so much anguish and suffering every day—the ongoing onslaught of horrendous suffering—renders belief in a loving, powerful god highly improbable. Theologians and apologists devote so much energy and cleverness (including drama, ritual, ceremony) to making their god seem real, which apparently convinces those who have turned off thinking. Then there’s the Bible, with such blatantly bad depictions of a tribal deity whose fury and poor judgement emerge in both the Old and New Testaments. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only son…” (John 3:16) is a treasured verse for most of the devout. But gave his son is a reference to the barbarism of human sacrifice.
Christianity is highly vulnerable because it is blind to realities and is firmly grounded in ancient superstitions.
There are two mechanisms that keep people believing in the fantasy of Christianity- (1) brainwashing and (2) a reluctance to give up hope for one’s ‘survival’ after death. Other than these two, there is virtually nothing that can be said for anyone to believe in a conceived-without-sex, miracle-working, god-man zombie and self-propelled astronaut referenced in an ancient, highly-contradictory, politically-compiled book bereft of any original manuscripts that was authored in foreign lands and in foreign languages decades after the fact by unknown non-eyewitnesses, and interpolated and edited for centuries by error-prone, agenda-laden scribes, then manipulatively translated by ardent believers and preached by cherry-picking pastors, in a present-day reality where prayers don’t work and miracles don’t happen.
(4968) Christians and the military
Although Christians claim that they are in contact with an omnipotent god who bends to their prayers, they are among the most vocal proponents of gun ownership and the military- both of which would not be needed if God (1) existed and (2) was on their side. The following was taken from:
https://www.reddit.com/r/exchristian/comments/1g7ks73/when_their_nation_is_under_military_attack/
When their nation is under military attack, Christians always count on military force to defeat an enemy, rather than expecting God to step in supernaturally.
Disclaimer: I have never served in any military. I did, however, major in military studies in graduate school and have written military articles for publications before.
Whenever a nation is under attack, Christians will make the usual prayers for help, but they always ultimately put their faith in actual, traditional military forces. When asked, “Why do you think Nation A will defeat Nation B?”, Christians will always cite things like airpower, artillery, manpower advantage, logistics, training, terrain and resources – the exact same thing that an atheist would say.
You never hear Christians say, “We know that Ukraine will defeat Russia because God is going to send down hundred-pound hailstones to crush the Russian army” – even though that’s what God was said to have done in the Bible. You never hear Christians say, “The Allies are going to defeat the Axis because God will send the Angel of Death to kill 186,000 Nazis in one night” – even though that’s what God was said to have done in the Bible.
This silent, unspoken, acknowledgment that God cannot be counted on to intervene in a situation where the chips are down is why even a “Christian” nation like the United States spends $850 billion on defense every year and American Christians insist their nation must have the best military force in the world. Deep down, Christians know prayers are useless in wartime. When 9/11 happened, American Christians didn’t pray for God to get bin Laden; they demanded that their government launch a global manhunt.
If Christians themselves telegraph that their god is impotent, what are non-Christians supposed to assume? When it comes to war or self-defense, there is no difference between a Christian and an atheist.
(4969) Scriptures Christians ignore
To be a Christian and still a respectable member of society, it is necessary to ignore many biblical passages. The following discusses some of the most flagrant ones:
https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1g8j431/which_specific_parts_of_the_bible_do_most/
Leviticus 20:13: If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
I hope people ignore this. But, I know that not enough people do.
Numbers 31 — Not posting whole chapters
This entire chapter is seriously disturbing. In it, Moses commands his followers to slaughter prisoners of war. But, they keep the virgin women and underage girls, presumably as sex slaves. They are accounted for as the spoils of war. A tax is paid in the form of 32 of the virgins. It is not clear how you pay a tax in human beings.
Deut 20:16-17: 16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.
That’s six God-ordered racist genocides right there.
1 Sam 15:3: 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
Here’s a seventh God-ordered racist genocide, this one is bizarrely specific about killing children and infants.
Exodus 21:20-21: 20 When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. 21 But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property.
Slavery is unconscionable. “Survives a day or two” is a pretty weak protection for the slave. The slave could still die on day 3. The slave could be left crippled by the encounter. Survival is a pretty weak standard of protection.
Elsewhere I think it says that a slave who loses an eye or a tooth may go free. But, not for merely an arm or a leg.
Gen 19:30-38: 30 Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. 31 One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. 32 Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.” 33 That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. 34 The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” 35 So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. 36 So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. 37 The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab[a]; he is the father of the Moabites of today. 38 The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi[b]; he is the father of the Ammonites[c] of today.
I think if someone made a porn flick with a father impregnating his two virgin daughters, it would probably be banned from reputable porn sites. I don’t know this. I’m definitely not going to do that search!
Also keep in mind, Ruth was a Moabite and the great grandmother of King David. But, what’s a little father-daughter incest in the genetic line of kings?
Deut 22:28-29: 28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels[a] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
Perhaps I’m just cynical. But, this reads as instructions for an incel to get married.
2 Kings 2:23-24: 23 He went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!” 24 When he turned around and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.
Some Christians claim these were teenage thugs. But, note that they are called small boys. A native Hebrew speaker once got involved in a discussion to aid my case that the Hebrew is definitely referring to small children here.
Ezekiel 23 (not posting a whole chapter)
This would probably be banned from most reputable porn sites if anyone were psychotic enough to make a gangbang snuff porn flick based on it. Again, I am definitely not going to do that search to find out.
Verse 20 of this chapter is particularly amusing, don’t skip that one.
Judges 19 (again, not posting a whole chapter)
This is another example of gangbang snuff porn. Maybe gangbangs are fine as long as the woman is killed at the end. I don’t know.
Matt 10:34-36: 34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36 and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
Apparently, Jesus was a warmonger, not the peace-bringing messiah foretold in Isaiah 2:4.
Luke 22:36: He said to them, “But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one.
Luke 19:27: But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.
Admittedly, the above is from a parable.
But, the meaning of the parable is not that he will actually merely kill people, instead, he will torture them for eternity for the simple crime of not believing in him. The meaning of the parable is worse than the literal text on this one, not better.
Eph 6:5: Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.
Jesus reaffirming that slavery is OK.
Colossians 4:1: Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
This last one states explicitly that Jesus/God owns all Christians as slaves.
We can also look statistically at the numbers.
The Bible contains (The bullet points below are links; feel free to click any or all):
If you click through to any of these links, you can see all of the verses that meet the criteria. Just as a numbers game, the Bible is mostly horrific.
This exposes the irony and obtuseness of Christians who claim that the Bible is the greatest book of all. Or say mindlessly for people to ‘follow the Bible’ and use it as a guide for living. It is a disgusting piece of trash diluted only minimally by some good advice.
(4970) Separating Acts from Paul’s writings
The conflicts between Paul’s authentic letters and the person who wrote about Paul in the Book of Acts are examined by James Tabor below:
Though scholars differ as to what historical use one might properly make of tiers 2, 3, or 4, there is almost universal agreement that a proper historical study of Paul should begin with the seven genuine letters, restricting one’s analysis to what is most certainly coming from Paul’s own hand. This approach might sound restrictive but it is really the only proper way to begin. The Deutero-Pauline letters, and the Pastorals reflect a vocabulary, a development of ideas, and a social setting that belong to a later time.[v] We are not getting Paul as he was, but Paul’s name used to lend authority to the ideas of later authors who intend for readers to believe they come from Paul. In modern parlance we call such writings forgeries, but a more polite academic term is pseudonymous, meaning “falsely named.”
The book of Acts, tier 4, presents a special problem in that it offers fascinating biographical background on Paul not found in his genuine letters as well as complete itineraries of his travels. The problem, as I mentioned in the Introduction, is with its harmonizing theological agenda that stresses the cozy relationship Paul had with the Jerusalem leaders of the church and its over-idealized heroic portrait of Paul. Many historians are agreed that it merits the label “Use Sparingly with Extreme Caution.” As a general working method I have adopted the following three principles:
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- Never accept anything in Acts over Paul’s own account in his seven genuine letters.
- Cautiously consider Acts if it agrees with Paul and one can detect no obvious biases.
- Consider the independent data Acts provides of interest but not of interpretive historical use
This latter principle would include biographical information, the three accounts of Paul’s conversion that the author provides, the various speeches of Paul, his itinerary, and other such details.[vii]
In this particular case, we have a contradiction in the itinerary of Paul and his followers. An apologist will try to reconcile this contradiction, for example by saying that Timothy could’ve joined him in Athens and then left and then come back in Corinth. But that simply is not the story that Luke is telling, nor is it what Paul is saying in his letter. It’s a new narrative that doesn’t happen in either text and is disrespecting the very different purposes of the two texts.
Meanwhile, a serious historical critical scholar will recognize that 1 Thessalonians, as a genuine primary source, contains as accurate information to Paul’s actual travels as we can get. Meanwhile, details such as itineraries and chronologies in Acts, like most ancient Greco-Roman histories, are simply fictionalized accounts that serve the author’s narrative and ideological interests. They can be studied in those contexts but when it comes to the historical Paul they should be safely ignored.
It is telling that a prominent biblical scholar would advise readers not only to ignore the pastoral epistles (everything except the seven authentic ones), but also the entire Book of Acts. That leaves a major hole in the New Testament that is historically unreliable. The conflicts among the four gospels and the complete craziness of the Book of Revelation round out a New Testament that is (1) inconsistent with itself and (2) contains very little information that meets common-day historical standards. Could this really be the inspired product of an omnipotent deity who plans to judge people on the basis of whether or not they believe in this garbled mess of a story?
(4971) Critical analysis of Christianity’s inconsistencies
It should be expected that a religion orchestrated by an omnipotent being would remain consistent over time. Christianity, instead, has fragmented into many conflicting dogmas. The following investigates where the problems lie:
I have been reading into Christianity for quite a while (Catholcism is the denomination I am further investigating/reading into). All Bible verses reference are from the ESV and the links are to: https://www.biblegateway.com. I have been drafting this for a while and so please forgive typos/formast issues. Please notify me and I shall try to correct them.
After looking into the Christian faith from an external, analytical viewpoint (meaning not bringing my personal faith to answer questions for me), I have come across some critical issues that challenge the claim that it is a divinely revealed and unified religion.
The first issue pertains to the internal inconsistencies within the Bible itself. If the Bible, as Christians assert, is the inspired word of God, such inconsistencies would be difficult to reconcile with the notion of divine authorship.
The second issue is the sharp fragmentation of Christianity into various denominations, many of which hold irreconcilable theological positions. These two problems, taken together, cast doubt on the idea that Christianity represents a coherent, divine revelation.
1. Internal Biblical Inconsistencies
The Bible contains several notable contradictions that have been subject to scholarly debate for centuries. These contradictions raise serious questions about the reliability of its content as the inerrant word of God. I will highlight four key examples that illustrate this point:
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- The Repentance of God:
In Numbers 23:19, it is stated that
God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it?
This verse is often given to support the view that God is unchanging and does not need to reconsider His actions. However, in Exodus 32:14, we find a direct contradiction:
And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.
If God is omniscient and perfect, as Christian doctrine holds, the idea that He would need to “repent” raises theological and philosophical concerns. The tension between these two verses remains unresolved and therefore leads me to question the consistency of the Biblical portrayal of God’s nature.
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- The Doctrine of Salvation:
The New Testament presents conflicting views on how a person attains salvation. Romans 3:28 informs us that
For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
which can be read as promoting/pushing a doctrine of salvation by faith alone (sola fide), which is a cornerstone of Protestant theology. However in James 2:24, we read
You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
and therefore that actions are also necessary for salvation. These two positions are incompatible, and leads to/lead to significant theological divisions within Christianity. Attempts to reconcile these passages often require complex theological explanations that are not immediately apparent from the text itself. There are still heated debates over which path to salvation is the truest.
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- The Genealogies of Jesus:
One of the central claims of Christianity is that Jesus is the Messiah, descended from King David. However, the genealogies presented in the Gospels of Matthew (1:1-16) and Luke (3:23-38) differ substantially.
Matthew traces Jesus’ lineage through David’s son Solomon, while Luke traces it through David’s son Nathan. Additionally, the number of generations between key figures varies between the two accounts. These discrepancies raise questions about the historical reliability of the Gospels and the legitimacy of Jesus’ messianic claim according to Jewish expectations.
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- The Timing of the Crucifixion:
The Gospels of Mark and John present conflicting accounts of the timing of Jesus’ crucifixion. Mark 15:25 states that Jesus was crucified at the third hour (around 9 a.m.), while John 19:14 places Jesus before Pilate at the sixth hour (noon), meaning the crucifixion would have occurred later in the day. These accounts are not easily reconciled from my research and raise doubts about the accuracy of the Gospel narratives which are foundational to the Christian faith.
These examples of internal inconsistencies challenge the claim that the Bible is the infallible word of God. If the scriptures themselves cannot present a coherent narrative, how can someone be expected to view them as divinely inspired?
2. The Fragmentation of Christianity
In addition to the textual inconsistencies within the Bible, the existence of numerous Christian denominations with radically divergent beliefs further undermines the claim that Christianity is a unified divine revelation. If Christianity were truly the one, true religion revealed by God, one would expect a much higher degree of doctrinal unity. Instead, what we observe is a religion fractured into competing sects, many of which hold mutually exclusive beliefs on core theological issues. A few examples highlight the severity of this fragmentation:
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- The Doctrine of Predestination vs. Free Will:
One of the most divisive issues within Christianity is the question of predestination versus free will. Calvinist theology, based on the writings of John Calvin, teaches that God has predestined certain individuals for salvation, and that this choice is not dependent on human actions. This doctrine is at odds with the beliefs of Arminians, who hold that human free will plays a role in accepting or rejecting salvation. These views are not merely different perspectives but represent fundamentally opposing understandings of God’s relationship to humanity and salvation.
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- The Eucharist:
The nature of the Eucharist, or Communion, is another major point of contention. Roman Catholicism teaches the doctrine of transubstantiation, in which the bread and wine become the literal body and blood of Christ. This belief is rejected by many Protestant denominations, such as Baptists, who see the Eucharist as purely symbolic. These differences are so significant that Catholics and many Protestants are unable to participate in one another’s communion services, reflecting a deep division in their understanding of a central Christian sacrament.
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- The Role of Church Authority:
The authority structure of the Church is another area of major disagreement. The Roman Catholic Church (RCC) holds that the Pope is the supreme earthly authority over all Christians, based on apostolic succession from St. Peter. This belief is rejected by most Protestants who view the papacy as a human institution without divine authority. Eastern Orthodoxy further complicates the picture because it rejects papal supremacy but retains its own hierarchical structure of patriarchs. These differences reflect not only doctrinal disputes but also profound disagreements about the nature of authority within Christianity.
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- Baptism:
Another significant division concerns the practice of baptism. On one hand, Christian groups such as the Baptists and others, insist that baptism should be reserved for individuals who have made a conscious decision to follow Christ; something that is known as a believer’s baptism. On the other hand, Catholics, Anglicans, and others practice infant baptism believing that baptism imparts grace even to those who cannot yet make such a decision. This disagreement is not merely a matter of ritual but reflects different understandings of the nature of grace, salvation, and the role of human agency in receiving God’s gifts.
These examples illustrate the profound divisions within Christianity. If the religion were truly divinely revealed, one would expect a far greater degree of unity on fundamental issues of doctrine and practice. Instead, what we observe is a fragmented religion, with different groups often holding views that are not only incompatible but diametrically opposed.
Conclusion
The internal inconsistencies within the Bible, combined with the extreme fragmentation of Christianity into denominations with opposing doctrines, make it difficult to accept Christianity as a divinely revealed and unified religion. If the Bible was truly the inerrant word of God, it would not contain such contradictions. Similarly, if Christianity were the one true religion, it would not be so deeply divided over fundamental issues. From an outside perspective, these problems suggest that Christianity is the product of human interpretation and institutional development, rather than a coherent revelation from God.
Christianity has all of the earmarks of a human-created theology, and none of what would be expected of a divinely-inspired religion.
(4972) Agency trilemma
The collision between Christianity’s doctrine of free will and its claims regarding heaven result in three scenarios, none of which result in a satisfying conclusion. The following was taken from:
The existence of heaven poses a trilemma about agency.
Typically, Abrahamic theists will excuse the existence of evil on earth by claiming that it’s an inevitable byproduct of free will, which is a higher virtue for god to maintain.
But if these theists believe in heaven, then they’ve fallen victim to some troubling logical entailments. Let’s examine different conceptions of agents in heaven:
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- A person in heaven is forced, or otherwise changed, to become a perfectly moral being who never does evil.
This is just definitionally a violation of free will. And more over, it means that god is both willing and able to violate free will to preserve the good in principle. So there’s no reason he couldn’t do this on earth.
2. A person in heaven still has free will, but never chooses evil
This is a concession that evil is not a requirement for free will to exist, so it can no longer be used as an excuse for god allowing evil on earth.
3. Evil IS possible in heaven
Assuming that the agents are free, and that they haven’t been altered into perfectly moral beings, then this position entails that all agents in heaven will inevitably choose evil. This is a statistical certainty if an agent has a nonzero chance of doing evil and an infinite amount of time.
None of the three hypotheticals make any sense. And when that happens, it is a good clue that the underlying theology is wrong.
(4973) Signs argument is impotent
Many people use the argument that certain signs or fulfilled prophecies validates the veracity of their religion. But the only way that such a line of reasoning could be convincing would be if followers of other religions were unable to make similar claims, as explained below:
A common argument holds that the veracity of a religion can be demonstrated by signs or prophecies that have come to pass. Many religious traditions put forward predictions that have materialized, prompting their followers to believe in their divine nature. However, this situation raises a crucial question: if several religions present signs or prophecies that have proven to be real, does this mean that all these religions are divine at the same time?
The idea that the veracity of a religion rests on verifiable signs is appealing, as it seems to provide an objective basis for evaluating the validity of beliefs. However, the coexistence of multiple religions, each with its own successful prophecies, poses a compatibility problem. For example, if one religion claims that a specific event will occur and another religion offers an opposing prediction, the realization of one of these events calls into question the veracity of the other. Thus, it becomes difficult to maintain that all these religions can be divine simultaneously, as their teachings and assertions may contradict each other.
If we consider that the divinity of a religion is attested by signs and predictions, it follows that contradictory claims cannot all be correct at the same time. The presence of several religions that claim divine truths based on verifiable signs creates a paradox: how can one grant divine legitimacy to beliefs that oppose each other? This question challenges the possibility of an absolute truth in a pluralistic religious context.
Some people have tried to advance the idea that multiple religions could all be true simultaneously, but this seems to be possible only in a polytheistic world, a premise that conflicts fatally with both Christianity and Islam. Signs and prophecies could be used as evidence only in the situation where they supported only one religion- which is clearly not the case.
(4974) Fragility of belief
We would expect that if Christianity was true, believers would be emboldened to examine sources of information that could contradict its claims, confident that such lines of attack would prove fruitless, providing even more assurance that they were on the right path. However, the opposite is true. Most Christian believers deliberately shield themselves from such sources. The following was taken from:
https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2024/10/breaking-grip-of-indoctrination.html#more
It is a common feature of religions that their devout followers are confident that they’ve “got it right.” Because, of course, their leaders have convinced them that they are exclusive custodians of the truth, and there are severe penalties for disagreeing or disbelieving. Since there have been thousands of religions making such claims, we can be sure they’re all pretense and nonsense.
On occasion over the years, I have asked a few devout Christian friends to read/critique various chapters of the books I’ve written: I genuinely wanted their perspectives. But they usually refused, because they didn’t want to read anything that might put their faith in jeopardy (which was a big clue that they have major doubts that they don’t want to think about). One Catholic woman did agree to read one of my chapters on the gospels. Her primary reaction was shock: she didn’t know that Jesus was expected to come back. Another was angry to learn that there is Jesus-script demanding hatred of family—and even life itself—for anyone who wants to be his disciple. Several Catholics have told me they were not encouraged to read the Bible, so I was hardly surprised.
What a fragile thing belief is! And, increasingly, religions are paying the price. That is, disbelief is trending: surveys have shown that many people now identify as “nones.” Religious fanatics in the U.S. are thus pushing for theocracy. There are quite a few nations—especially in western Europe—where majorities have given up on Christianity. This is hardly surprising given the horrendous suffering inflicted during two world wars.
The reason that belief in Christianity is so fragile is because the evidence supporting its truth is minuscule, if not dis-confirming. So the best way to stay deluded is to avoid any information that could undermine belief. If Christianity was true, multiple lines of evidence would converge to provide a rock-solid basis for belief, emboldening its followers to freely open their minds to virtually everything.
(4975) Case against the virgin birth
Christianity is fully ensconced in the idea that Jesus was a divine person and that his birth, therefore, must have been ‘not normal.’ If, instead, somehow it could be proved that Jesus was born in the usual way, it would have the effect of injuring the faith. The following presents a strong argument that Jesus, assuming he was a real person, was indeed born in the usual manner:
The dogma of the virgin birth of Jesus is not historical.
Most varieties of Christianity have this dogma as very essential to their religious doctrines. According to it, based on the biblical texts of the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus of Nazareth had a miraculous birth in Bethlehem born of a virgin named Mary. But for long historians know the historical basis for this is very fragile at best. First off, I think it’s better I put on some of the basic ideas of New Testament scholarship, which are as follows: the oldest texts in the New Testament are the authentic epistles of Paul (for my arguments here though, we don’t have however to worry about the problem of the authorship of the pseudepigraphic or the disputed epistles); of the four canon gospels, three of them, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are what we call synoptic, meaning they can be all read together because they follow the same pattern; and this pattern of the synoptic gospels requires an explanation as to why they were written so similar one to another, and this explanation needs to put one of them serving as model for the others. So far so good. Now, historians almost unanimously consider the gospel of Mark as the first to have been written, because of many reasons which I think it would be unnecessary to treat here for my argument. Even if someone is to pick a minority view of the gospel of Mark not being the first, my arguments would still be strong enough for my conclusion, so I hope I can just take for granted the Marcan priority. To add to that, most scholars also believe in an old hypothetical written source, called Q, so that both the authors of Matthew and Luke based their accounts on the gospel of Mark, and also on Q- Q is posited to explain the similarities between the gospels of Matthew and Luke which are not in the gospel of Mark.
Now, to the virgin birth and its historical problems. As said above already, this story is found only on the gospels of Matthew and Luke in the Bible. In the extrabiblical later sources in which it appears- like famously the gospel of James for example- it’s dependent on these two biblical accounts. So these two are really the only thing we have. Well, then, the first problem becomes obvious: why is it not in the earlier gospel of Mark? And also, it’s supposedly not in Q either, since, as we shall see, the two accounts we do have differ a lot one from another (so that if Q talked about a virgin birth, it was to be expected the accounts of it in Matthew and Luke would be more similar). This means so far that the earliest accounts of Jesus’ life (gospel of Mark and supposedly Q) do not have the virgin birth. It appears for the first time after these accounts were written.
And now, Paul’s epistles also don’t mention it. One could say they mention very little about Jesus’ life, which is true, but a small clue is still a clue, and, moreover, they had perhaps one ideal place they could mention it- in Galatians 4:4 (“God sent his son born of woman, born under the law”)- and yet they failed to do it. The thing is that this also points to the idea that if Paul knew about the virgin birth, he would perhaps have written it there (since God sent a son not only born of any woman, but of a virgin also, this seems worthy of a mention), and not doing so means that he probably didn’t know about a virgin birth. Of course, he may have known it and still just choose not to mention it, but as I said, this a small clue on the whole of my argument, but a clue nonetheless. In concluding, I say Paul didn’t know it, and the reason he didn’t was because it is a later legend not present in the beginning of christianity. But we will get there.
So far, what we have is this: the earliest sources we have on Christianity do not mention the virgin birth. We see it for the first time in two later accounts. Now we have to examine these accounts.
First, the gospel of Matthew. It is attributed to an apostle of Jesus, Matthew, but almost no modern scholar would accept this attribution. The text is too dependent on another source- the gospel of Mark- to be the work of an eyewitness, and the traditional attribution seems to depends in part on a fragment from the church father Papias which is not very credible. In any case, even if it were written by Matthew, this would still change nothing in my argument, since Matthew wasn’t an eyewitness of Jesus’ birth after all. As for the date, since the gospel of Mark is generally thought to have been written around 70 CE, the gospel of Matthew must be after this. Now, the gospel of Luke. It was probably not written by Luke either, but as this Luke was a companion of Paul, not an eyewitness of any aspect of Jesus’ life, it doesn’t matter in the slightest.
So now we can go on to see both accounts. The surprising thing about the infancy narratives of Jesus’ life is that they agree on nothing aside from the general idea: Jesus was born in Bethlehem of a virgin named Mary, who was betrothed to a man named Joseph, in the reign of Herod. Aside, from that, they tell stories surrounding this which differ on everything. On Luke, Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth and will travel to Bethlehem later thanks to the census of Quirinius (which I will speak about later). On Matthew they appear to live in Bethlehem. On Luke, an angel appears to Mary. On Matthew, the angel appears to Joseph. On Luke, shepherds adore the baby Jesus. On Matthew, it’s the Magi who adore him. Then only Matthew has the whole story about the flight into Egypt and the massacre of the innocents.
Some christian apologists try to defend these differences by putting on just one big account of it: so, Matthew does begin with Joseph and Mary already in Bethlehem, but it doesn’t explicitly say they lived there, which is what would contradict Luke; the angel would have appeared more than one time, first to Mary and then to Joseph; Jesus was visited both by shepherds and by magi, etc. The problem with this explanation is that it’s essentially non-historical. You don’t have this big narrative of Jesus’ birth in any text, you are making it up for the manifest purpose of justifying everything. No serious scholar accepts this. Even religious scholars admit some of the things there are legendary, while believing on the central point of the virgin birth. And now we arrive at one more problem.
There is one thing at least in each account which is at odds with the historical context at large too. For Luke, it’s the census of Quirinius. It happened on 6 CE. But the same gospel says Jesus was born during Herod’s reign, and Herod was dead by the time of the census. Worse still, the gospel says Joseph had to come back to Bethlehem for the census because his supposed ancestor, King David one thousand years ago, was from there. This absolutely makes no sense at all, neither from a practical point (imagine if we had to do that today!) nor from historical roman practice in censuses. Some apologists have invented all manners of justifying this, but again, no serious scholar will even consider it.
Now, for Matthew, it’s the massacre of the innocents. We know from the ancient historian Flavius Josephus a good deal about Herod’s reign. In no place he mentions this massacre, and he does mention a lot of terrible things Herod did. Safe to say, if he knew about the massacre, he would have mentioned it. Now, some apologist may say here that the massacre was just localized and small enough that Josephus didn’t come to know it. But, from everything else in my post, I point to the final conclusion that the simplest explanation is that it’s all legend.
And so we can conclude. The virgin birth is legend, not history, and we know that because it appears only in later accounts, which have their own problems and discrepancies, and because there was a clear reason the christian communities of the first century would come up with this legend. It was an interpretation of two texts of the Old Testament: Micah 5:2, interpreted to say the Messiah would come from Bethlehem, and the greek translation of Isaiah 7:14 (which was a faulty translation from the original hebrew meaning), interpreted to say the Messiah would be born from a virgin. There it goes.
Just for one final word, I know some religious scholars who believe in the virgin birth, and can be indeed respected in academy. But they admit to believe in it out of faith, and admit pure historical research does point otherwise. From the top of my head, if I’m not mistaken, these were the positions of Raymond Brown and of John Meier. One may have no problems with this position, but then, why be a Christian at all? If God really exists and revealed Christianity, couldn’t he have done it in a more obvious way, without all these difficulties?
God, if he intended for us to take the virgin birth as true history, did a pathetic job. The evidence points emphatically in the direction of this story being pure myth.
(4976) Evolution of hell
The Christian concept of hell evolved over time, ultimately made more scary in order to retain control of its followers- making them too frightened to leave the fold. The following was taken from:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1gebtle/hell_was_created_as_a_form_of_control_by/
The doctrine of hell as a place of eternal punishment began taking shape in the early centuries of the Christian Church, specifically between the 4th and 6th centuries. Prior to this, notions of the afterlife in early Christianity were varied and less focused on eternal torment. However, after Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire under Emperor Constantine in 313 CE, Church leaders began to unify and solidify doctrines to strengthen their control over the expanding Christian population. By the 5th century, influential figures such as Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) formalized ideas about hell as a place of eternal punishment, emphasizing the terrifying consequences of sin and disobedience.
This doctrine was further institutionalized in the 6th century when Emperor Justinian I (527–565 CE) helped enforce the teachings of eternal hell through Church councils and state power, aligning religious belief with political stability. The fear of hell became a central tenet of Christian doctrine, deterring people from questioning the Church or straying from its teachings. As the Middle Ages progressed, the Church continued to emphasize hell in sermons, art, and literature, creating a vivid, fearsome image of the afterlife to maintain control. By instilling the fear of eternal damnation, the Church effectively used hell as a mechanism to govern behavior, ensuring loyalty and compliance in a largely uneducated population. This tactic reinforced the Church’s authority, securing its influence across Europe for centuries.
Fear is a powerful motivator, and the church figured this out early on- scaring people into compliance by fabricating a punishment so severe that even if someone thought it to be even minimally plausible, they would figure they better toe the line… just in case. What a disgrace for Christianity- to traumatize people for their own greedy gain! Fuck Christianity.
(4977) Bible god is special
The Bible god acts as if he is the grandest of the greats, with a special need to be worshiped, and a hatred for those who don’t bow down before him. In any human, these would be seen as markers of a personality disorder.
https://new.exchristian.net/2024/10/bible-god-is-special.html
People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) display a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, a need for admiration, a lack of empathy, a heightened sense of self-importance, believe they are unique or “special,” and demonstrate an inability to take responsibility for their actions. I have experienced – up close – the abusive behavior these individuals are capable of inflicting on those around them.
The biblical God is the ultimate example of these unhealthy traits. He believes the universe exists solely to worship him, and his vision of heaven revolves around constant adoration.
“You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created.”
Narcissists tend to devalue or attack those who threaten their self-image. The God of the Bible displays this tendency by punishing all who stray from His worship and condemning all unbelievers to eternal damnation.
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Could Bible-God’s obsession with worship be the fear of being unseen? A common fear for narcissists, this motivates them to have a preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, and beauty. Bible-God’s self-proclaimed titles and attributes (omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient) sound eerily narcissistic. Is Bible-God attempting to ensure his own recognition and validation?
Authentic love is foreign to narcissists due to their lack of empathy. While they may initially appear charming and caring, their behavior and actions are driven by self-interest. Bible-God’s claim of “Agape,” unconditional love falls short when leveled against His demands and His willingness to severely punish people for his own purposes.
The conflicting messages of superiority and insufficiency inherent in Christian doctrine perpetuates a cycle of narcissistic injury and recovery in Christians. Followers are encouraged to feel superior (saved) to non-believers (unsaved), but are simultaneously burdened with the impossible task of overcoming their own supposed “sin nature.” This constant striving and inevitable failure can lead to feelings of shame and worthlessness, potentially explaining the anger and intolerance sometimes exhibited by Christians towards those labeled by their churches as “sinful, heretical, under condemnation, etc.”
The God described in the Bible has his own son tortured and sacrificed to atone for sin that surreptitiously entered the world. Sin entered against Bible-God’s will and outside Bible-God’s omnipotent control. It wasn’t his fault! He’s not to blame! Somehow, something went astray in His creation. Whoops! Who’s fault is it? Who is to blame? Could it have been Satan? Are you telling me that If I design something, and that something doesn’t perform up to its design specifications, I, the designer, am not in any way held responsible? I can just say it was the thing that I designed that was at fault?
It is somewhat certain that if there is a god who is omnipotent and who created the universe, that it would act in a way diametrically opposed to the Yahweh character. It would be ‘above the fray,’ practicing non-interference, and with no need for humans to make him feel special.
(4978) Jewish perspective of Christian textual claims
The ‘owners’ of the scriptures that Christians use to validate Jesus as the promised Jewish savior disagree with the assignation. And as owners, their opinion matters. The following was taken from:
From a Jewish perspective, several Old Testament passages and stories are often seen as misinterpreted or “conflated” by Christians to refer to Jesus.
Judaism holds that these texts, within their historical and contextual frameworks, do not support Christian interpretations regarding Jesus.
For example:
- The Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53
• Christian Interpretation: Christians often view the “suffering servant” in Isaiah 53 as a prophecy about Jesus’ suffering, death, and role as a sacrificial savior. • Jewish Contextual Argument: Judaism traditionally interprets the “suffering servant” as the collective people of Israel rather than an individual savior. Historically, Israel endured suffering and exile, yet continued to serve God. Many verses in Isaiah refer to Israel as “my servant” (e.g., Isaiah 41:8, 44:1), suggesting this chapter follows that same pattern. Jewish scholars argue that the context of Isaiah speaks to the Jewish people’s suffering, redemption, and eventual vindication, fitting within the larger message of the Hebrew Bible.
2. Psalm 22 and the Crucifixion
• Christian Interpretation: Psalm 22 is often cited by Christians as foreshadowing Jesus’ crucifixion, especially verses like “They pierce my hands and my feet” (Psalm 22:16). • Jewish Contextual Argument: In the Hebrew text, the phrase translated as “they pierce” is contested; the Hebrew could also mean “like a lion at my hands and feet,” indicating suffering but not a literal piercing. Jewish interpretation holds that Psalm 22 reflects the personal anguish of King David or another psalmist rather than a messianic prophecy. This psalm is understood to be about someone who feels abandoned but ultimately trusts in God’s deliverance, with no link to crucifixion.
Jeremiah 31:31 – The “New Covenant”
• Christian Interpretation: Christians see Jeremiah’s promise of a “new covenant” as a prediction of the New Testament, establishing a new relationship between God and humanity through Jesus. • Jewish Contextual Argument: Judaism understands the “new covenant” in Jeremiah 31:31 as God’s promise to renew the covenant with Israel, leading them back to faithfulness. The “new covenant” is a revitalization of the existing covenant, not a replacement. This covenant, as seen in its context, remains focused on the Jewish people and their relationship with God through the Torah, rather than inaugurating a completely new religious framework.
From a Jewish perspective, these passages each have contextual and historical meanings that do not align with Christian messianic interpretations regarding Jesus.
It is obvious that Christians mined Old Testament verses and distorted their text and meaning to support their theology surrounding Jesus. The disconnect between their interpretation and that of the original followers of Old Testament liturgy (the assumed experts) is sufficient to invalidate Christianity.
(4979) The Craft versus Christianity
A 1996 movie, The Craft, was an eye-opening experience for a young man, when one line of the movie completely and permanently changed his view of Christianity. The following was taken from:
https://medium.com/@danhutmacher/how-a-90s-horror-movie-shattered-my-perfect-faith-37b8e83b69b4
The faith of a child is perfect. Children trust what they’re told by authority figures, and they’re motivated by approval, so they accept everything without question. They’re completely devoid of doubt.
However, for most of us, there comes a point when that absolute faith breaks. You start to question dogma, and you begin evaluating it in terms of your actual experiences. You learn that life is complex, and that being good doesn’t prevent bad things from happening to you.
For me, this happened all at once. When I was 15, I saw The Craft, and it broke my little teenage Catholic mind. My faith never recovered.
The Craft is a 1996 horror movie about a coven of high school witches who accept a new witch into their group. Upon her entry, their magic becomes real, and, while it’s fun at first, it eventually corrupts them, and they turn against each other.
As horror films go, The Craft is ok. It had good special effects for its time, and Fairuza Balk crushes it as the villain. It’s not very scary, but it is entertaining. Most people would probably find it forgettable, but it’s stuck with me, because it shattered my perfect Catholic faith.
When the coven welcomes the new witch, they tell her that they worship Manon. The head witch explains: “If God and the devil were playing football, Manon would be the stadium that they played on.” There it was: one little line, and I was devastated.
Here are two questions that forced upon me:
1) Is Christianity actually monotheistic?
Christians believe there is only one God. That seemed simple to me before I saw The Craft, but not so much after. God exists as a trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. However, there are also angels and saints. These are neither God nor gods, but they are spiritually elevated, supernatural beings who intercede on behalf of the faithful.
There’s kind of a lot going on there. That’s a lot of sacred entities for a religion that believes there’s ultimately only one God. That unsettled me, but it was the image of God and the devil playing as rivals in a game that really messed me up.
The devil is supposed to be a fallen angel that rebels against God by harming us. That makes it not God, but one of those elevated, supernatural beings. However, this one is strong enough that it challenges God as an equal. God and the devil exist as a kind of duality in Christianity. Even though there’s only one God, It has a nemesis that It can’t or won’t destroy.
The conception of God as a stadium struck me. If good and evil are in opposition, then maybe there’s something beyond good and evil. Maybe there’s something so foreign to us that we can only conceive of it as Being itself. It’s an abstract idea, but it’s worthy of consideration.
2) If God is good, why doesn’t It stop evil and suffering?
When I was a kid, I embraced the idea that God is good and loving, and the devil is evil and hateful. The duality didn’t bother me until I pictured the two in a football game. Why is good vs. evil an ongoing battle? Why doesn’t God always win?
I didn’t know the word at the time, but this problem is called theodicy. The Christian God is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent (all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good), but evil and suffering exist. So, God must not be strong enough to stop it, wise enough to know about it, or good enough to care about it.
Volumes have been written about theodicy, but as a simple example, consider The Book of Job. I hate The Book of Job. In it, God makes a wager with the devil. The devil can do whatever it wants to Job, and Job will still remain faithful.
So, the devil wrecks literally every aspect of Job’s life. It destroys his possessions, riddles him with disease, and kills everyone he knows and loves. In the end, Job stays faithful, and God wins the bet. When God rewards Job, Job asks God why It did what It did, and God’s reply is a resounding “Shut up and mind your own business.” The God of Job is an a-hole.
There is no easy solution to the problem of theodicy. Philosophers and theologians have been trying for hundreds of years, but it seems the only way out is to reconceive God Itself, evil itself, or suffering itself. Theodicy is a battleground for faith vs. reason.
Inspiration often comes from unexpected places. I love horror movies, but I watch them to relax, not induce spiritual crises. However, The Craft hit me in the right place at the right time. When I saw it, I was just starting to discern my faith. I was connecting concepts, feeling things out, and asking a lot of questions that didn’t have satisfactory answers.
We use reason to justify our beliefs, but that has limits. Part of maturing your faith is accepting this. You can do your best to rationalize spirituality, but you’ll ultimately fail, because, at its core, faith is an emotional experience. It’s your own personal relationship to God, and it’s up to you to make peace with that, whatever that looks like.
Christianity made a fatal mistake in giving supernatural powers to the figure of Satan, and also by creating the entities of angels, demons, and saints. They overplayed the concept of monotheism. How much more believable this religion would be if they had simply stayed with the Jewish concept of one and only one god, with no other supernatural beings populating the universe.
(4980) God’s anti-feats
God is supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful, but there are a multitude of biblical examples where he appears to be devoid of these properties. The following was taken from:
https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1ggw79w/god_is_omnipotent_then_explain_these_antifeats/
“God is omnipotent” – then explain these anti-feats.
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- Requires 6 days to create the universe and is noticeably tired by the end, despite claims of omnipotence.
- Is seemingly unaware of the Serpent’s plans to seduce Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, despite claims of omniscience.
- Puts Forbidden Fruit in same garden as the world’s only humans. Shows lack of judgement.
- Needs to ask Cain where Abel is, despite claims of omniscience.
- Sends flood to wipe out evil. Evil still present.
- Needs to devise a test in order to know Abraham’s faithfulness, despite claims of omniscience.
- Needs to use Moses and a series of plagues to deliver the Jews to Israel, despite claims of omnipotence.
- Needs to sacrifice his son to absolve world’s sins, despite claims of omnipotence.
- Primary means of communicating with mankind is a series of prophets making unverifiable claims.
- Supposedly perfect being creates universe that has strayed from the original plan after only 6,000 years.
- Incapable of defeating people in iron chariots: “And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” (Judges 1:19)
I don’t take credit for this, I found it in a thread posted in the /disrespectthreads subreddit.
So God had frequently been described as omnipotent despite showing clear limitations to his power and influence throughout the Bible. I believe this is due to people being a lot more easy to impress around the time the Bible was written. What they viewed to be beyond their scope of imagination isn’t too impressive for us modern folks who’ve been exposed to and theorized far higher concepts of “superpowers”.
An alien with an advanced understanding of science might be capable of accomplishing most of these “feats” and present them in a way that would fool the gullible primitives into believing they’re God. That’s more likely to be the case than God being an actual primordial being who created the universe as we know it. I guess “omnipotent” was highly contextual and relative, I can be viewed as “omnipotent” by ants but humans won’t view me that way.
It would have been better if a single person had written the Bible with a consistent theme of God’s omnipotence- or even better- if God himself had written it and gifted the world with millions of authentic copies in every human language- but of course, that could have happened only if this god was actually omnipotent.
(4981) Criterion of embarrassment is invalid
Apologists often cite the fact that women were reported to be the first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection as evidence for the truth of this event because otherwise, if the story had been made up, it would rather have been men, who were assumed to be more trusted as witnesses, to have made the discovery. The following refutes this line of argument.
Women finding the empty tomb was not embarrassing for early Christianity
A common argument for the empty tomb of Jesus is that the story of women finding the tomb would not have been invented, because this would have been embarrassing for the early church since women’s testimony was considered unreliable. However, this is not true. I will give you three quick reasons why and then I will expand on them. First: anointing dead bodies was a normal task for women back then. Second: women’s testimony was trusted in many scenarios, and third: early Christianity was not relying on the testimony of the women to persuade people of the resurrection. There are sources for this things at the end of the post.
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- In jewfish culture, the task of anointing a body was traditionally done by women, not by men. So, if you want to create a realistic narrative about people finding the tomb of Jesus, it would be natural for the women to find it. In addition to this, the apostles had just escaped and were hiding in fear, so it makes more sense, story-wise, for the women to find the body.
- The claim that women’s testimony was considered universally unreliable is an exaggeration. There were plenty of cases where their testimony was used. The Tur omits women from the list of incompetent witnesses. Women are admitted as competent witnesses in matters within their particular knowledge, or in matters outside the realm of strict law, among others.
- Early Christians were not relying on the testimony of women to convince the reader that Jesus resurrected. When we read Paul, it seem clear that the main thing used to support the resurrection claim is the testimony of the people who saw the risen Jesus. Paul tells us about all the people Jesus appeared to, included 500 witnesses, and so do the gospels.
Sources: My source for the first point is Barth Erhman, this argument is in one of his blog posts. The source for the second point is the Jewish virtual library. You can find some material here.
The resurrection gains no additional credence based on women being recorded as the initial observers of the event. Therefore, this line of apologetics is impotent.
(4982) Allegorical Adam and Eve is problematic
Although every scientifically-literate person agrees that the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is fictional, it rarely occurs to Christians that this realization damages the veracity of their religion, as explained below:
Thesis: a purely allegorical interpretation of the Adam and Eve story fails to address the Christian doctrine of original sin and how the fall in Eden makes sense as a literal event in the doctrine.
An allegorical interpretation of the biblical OT text makes more sense in light of the failures of a completely literalist interpretation of the Bible. This is often used to counter anti-biblical arguments on the historicity of the events it describes. While this interpretation is often used for say Noah’s flood there are issues with interpreting the Garden of Eden as purely allegorical. There are already issues with the allegorical doctrine applying to Adam and Eve, as Luke connects Jesus’ lineage directly to Adam and Jesus himself refers to the creation story in his divorce discourse.
Paul also connects Adam and Christ 1 Corinthians 15:22, which connects death to Adam and that Christ brings life. This passage shows a clear inspiration for the original sin doctrine, which is that through the sin of Adam and Eve we are all born with an inclination to sin. This doctrine serves as a central tenet of Christianity and is used to explain why Christ had to die, it explains his intercession for us as sinners, how sin separates us from god, and so on.
But, if Adam and Eve did not actually exist, if the story is purely allegorical, what does that mean for the rest of Christianity? Is original sin therefore a valid doctrine? This raises questions of why then did Christ die if the reason is actually allegorical?
A literalist interpretation answers the problem, but raises other problems in how the literalist interpretation is not supported by actual science or history and is viewed as mythology by scholarship. A literalist interpretation would need to be backed by actual evidence.
Ultimately, Christian doctrine heavily depends upon Adam and Eve actually eating the fruit, it is in many ways one of the most important events in Christianity, because without it, the crucifixion needs to be reworked to make sense in a world where original sin never existed.
Christianity is in trouble whether or not one assumes the historical reality of Adam and Eve- if assumed true, it faces fierce headwinds from science, and if assumed false, it destroys the atonement theology.
(4983) Fifty-four verses of pure evil
In the following scripture, Yahweh lists the punishments he intends to inflict on those who fail to obey his commands. This is the ugliest, most reviling, tirade of evil imaginable. It exceeds the worst of any king, dictator, or criminal in the history of humankind.
Keep in mind, these verses are in the bible that Christians carry gleefully into their churches every Sunday, but, for obvious reasons, they are never recited. And most Christians don’t even know that they exist.
Deuteronomy 28:15-68
However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you:
You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.
Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.
The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.
The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.
The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.
You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. The sights you see will drive you mad. The Lord will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.
The Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where the Lord will drive you.
You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off. You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity. Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land.
The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail.
All these curses will come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever. Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.
The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or olive oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined. They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the Lord your God is giving you.
Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.
If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God— the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the Lord your God. Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.
Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening, “If only it were morning!”—because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see. The Lord will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.
Christians who claim that their god is loving, and forgiving, and fair-minded must answer for what is plainly documented in their bible. If Yahweh exists, and is omnipotent, then the verses listed above must have been approved by him. Thus, it yields only three possibilities- Yahweh is evil, Yahweh is not omnipotent, or Yahweh doesn’t exist.
(4984) Resurrection accounts are too parochial
The accounts of Jesus’ alleged resurrection are restricted in time and territory to the extent that it would seem that God was deliberately hiding the fact to make faith arbitrarily more difficult. A resurrection worth it name would have had Jesus remaining earth-bound for a long period of time and covering the vast expanse of the earth’s inhabited area. The following was taken from:
Resurrection Accounts Should Persist into the Modern Era and Should Have Never Stopped.
After ascertaining that the person did in fact die, the most important question to ask when presented with the admittedly extraordinary claim of a resurrection is: “Can I see ’em?”.
If I were to make the claim that my grandfather rose from the dead and is an immortal being, (conquered death, even) would it not come across as suspicious if, after an arbitrarily short time (let’s say about 50 days), I also claimed that my grandfather had “left” the realm of the living? If you weren’t one of the let’s say, 600 people he visited in his 50 days, you’re just going to have to take my word for it.
If I hear a report of a miracle that happened and then undid itself, I become very suspicious. For instance, did you know I flew across the Atlantic Ocean in 10 seconds? Oh, and then I flew back. I’m not going to do it again.
The fact that Jesus rose from the dead…and then left before anyone except 500 anonymous people could verify that it was him…is suspicious.
I propose that if Jesus were serious about delivering salvation he would have stuck around. If, for the last 2000 years an immortal, sinless preacher wandered the earth (and I do mean the whole earth, not just a small part of the Middle East) performing miracles, I’m not sure if this sub would exist.
It seems that the resurrection account does not correspond to a maximally great being attempting to bring salvation to all mankind, because such a being, given the importance of the task, would go about it in a much more reasonable and responsible manner.
It is too convenient to have the resurrected Jesus stay only a few days in Jerusalem, or perhaps Galilee (gospels conflict on this point) and not venture elsewhere to provide sufficient evidence of the fact. If Jesus stayed around for longer and ventured out more into the world it would have resulted in Christianity being much more believable, with many more saved people. Jesus flying off the earth so quickly seems to indicate that God is not very interested in people going to heaven.
(4985) Evangelical Christians vote for acts of the flesh
Evangelical Christians in the United States, comprising 22 percent of the electorate, voted in excess of 80 percent for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. If they had opened their Bibles to the scriptures below, they should have seen that Donald Trump exhibits the ‘acts of the flesh’ whereas his opponent, Kamala Harris, embodied the ‘fruit of the spirit’:
Galatians 5:19-22
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
This is one more way that we know that the Christian god is not real. Because if he was, he would have guided his flock to abide by biblical scriptures and vote for those people who exhibit the fruit of the spirit.
(4986) The case for universal revelation
The place of birth is out of anyone’s control, as well as birth year, parents, and so on. But if Christian theology is true, and that becoming a Christian believer is essential to personal salvation, then where one is born and to which parents can have a major influence on that situation. This seems to be unfair and begs for a different type of revelation. The following was taken from:
So, I’ve recently been thinking a lot about how our birth place might affect our believes. It seems to me that many people tend to adopt the religious believes of their country. For example, someone born in a predominantly Christian country often becomes Christian, too. Someone born into a Buddhist country often becomes Buddhist as well.
Which means that, in a way, our birthplace can heavily influence our faith.
For those who believe that the Christian God, who’s described as being all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, has control over all aspects of creation, including the place birthplace, this raises a question: Why would he place someone in a Country where they’re more likely to adopt the “wrong” religion and potentially risk not being “saved”?
The easy solution to this problem would have been for God and Jesus to reveal their existence to the entire world, such that there would be only one viable religion, and every person would have an equal opportunity to acquire the necessary beliefs and actions to attain salvation. If God is omnipotent, as most Christians claim, then this accomplishment would have been easy.
Based on that consideration alone, we can surmise that God is either not omnipotent, not fair, or non-existent. Omnipotent + fair doesn’t work.
(4987) What, basically, is Christianity?
When you distill Christianity down to its elemental facts, you can end up with the spectacularly ridiculous, but fully accurate, description below:
https://medium.com/deconstructing-christianity/what-is-christianity-23e92e9ba4de
So — Let me make sure I got this right: What, basically, is Christianity?
It’s the belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie… that came back from the dead…
if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood
and telepathically, constantly tell him that you accept him as your master,
so that He might remove an evil force from your soul that is present in all of humanity
because some rib-woman was convinced… by a talking snake!… to eat from a Magical Tree.
He’ll remove this evil force by first impregnating… a married 12-year-old virgin… which He’s had His eye on…
so she’ll give birth to Himself…
so he could then sacrifice Himself
because it’s only through Himself
you can live forever… for Himself
because he’s now possibly willing to forgive you for His negligence,
several thousands of years ago
for His putting his Favorite Magical Tree where it could be found
which was loaded with His Special Favorite Fruits
and someone picked a single fruit off of it –
but because they did so, this Infinitely Mercifiul god got incredibly angry and said
“What the Hell! You ate a fruit off my Tree?? Fuck this god-damned crap I’d said about Forgiveness and Mercy! I’ll show your goddamned ass what motherfucking Mercy is, you SOB’s!”,
and He immediately decided to, and still intends to, send you to burn in Hell’s Fires for Eternity
because thousands of years ago they ate a single fruit off His precious Tree, so it’s your fault too –
unless you agree to grovel before Him like the cowardly, weak, little liar and cheater you are,
And unless you shamelessly blather over and over
how much you love Him, in front of everybody
because you really, really do so,
and you freely choose to do so
and not because of His firmly repeated threats to you about what He’ll do to you
and to their children, and their children, for several generations to come…
if you don’t Love Him, without reservation.
And, He’s going to know… if your Professed Love for Him is sincere…
Because God loves you SO much, if you don’t love Him back, he will TORTURE you.
Aren’t you glad He gave you a choice to love Him, or not?
Christianity can be accepted as true only by anesthetizing the logical process of the brain. Otherwise, the dogma falls apart in a twisted skein of absurdities. There is no way that an omniscient god would have allowed his message to humans to become so sketchy, disorganized, and harebrained.
(4988) Mythicist argument is under further review
Over the past 50 years, there has been a growing argument that perhaps (if not somewhat likely) the story of Jesus is a myth, that such a person did not exist, or, if he or several analogous figures did, he/they were nothing like what is recounted in the gospels. There exists sufficient evidence to support this position, and it is likely that this question will never be fully put to bed. The following was taken from:
Let’s now turn to Jesus. The next question that I wonder whether Christians are willing to consider is the possibility that no such human ever existed. This is what is known as the mythicist argument. In the exchange with Matthew referred to above, this was the first of the supposedly ‘controversial’ theories I mentioned that he described as “mad”, “speculative”, “ nor anything any scholars take seriously”. However, Tom Harpur, one of the main proponents of the theory, writes: “the mythical or spiritual as opposed to the historical interpretation of the Gospels has been set out repeatedly by such scholars as Dupuis, Drews, Robertson, Smith, Renan, Strauss, Massey, Higgins, Mead, Kuhn and a score of others” (The Pagan Christ, p158–9). One wonders therefore who qualifies as a scholar for Matthew. Presumably only those who agree with him. (Coincidentally, or perhaps synchronistically, while I was preparing this article, even though it was published some time ago, this article by Robert W Ahrens appeared in my Medium Daily Digest, which discusses the mythicist argument. In it he provides a link to an article which lists 44 historians who take mythicism seriously. On the whole, these are in addition to those mentioned above.)
Far from being mad or speculative therefore, this is a suggestion that has to be taken seriously, because it is based on a lot of research. When all this has been taken into account, one can consider whether it can be refuted. I personally believe that there probably was a historical Jesus, although I can understand the powerful arguments of those who think otherwise. However, if a historical Jesus existed, it is unlikely that the gospel accounts are a true record of his life, since much mythological material has been added. See what you think after reading the next few paragraphs.
Some time ago I wrote in an article that Jesus was probably a spiritual teacher, most likely an Essene, but had been turned into a god by the Catholic Church. One reader responded that this was the best definition of Christianity he had come across. That doesn’t mean that he was right, and doesn’t prove anything of course, but it is easy to see why he might think that.
For those unfamiliar with the mythicist theory, its main features are that:
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- a crucified or dying-and-resurrecting saviour god is a familiar theme in the mythologies of the world, is therefore what one might call an archetypal idea or a mythologem. Jesus would therefore be but one more example, and is therefore a pagan god.
- there is nothing, or incredibly little, in the gospel accounts that cannot be found in earlier traditions, notably that of Egypt. If there is nothing new in the story of Jesus, is there any reason to believe he existed?
Thus Harpur writes that the Gospels are “exposed as the old manuscripts of the dramatized ritual of the incarnation and resurrection of the sun god, a ritual that was first Egyptian, later Gnostic and Hellenic, then Hebrew, and finally adopted ignorantly by the Christian movement and distorted into ‘history’ ” (p147). In more detail: “It takes very little imagination indeed to see this entire Gospel as a ritual drama or mystery play. The divine teacher is called, is tested by the ‘adversary’, gathers disciples , heals the sick, preaches the Good News about God’s kingdom, finally runs afoul of his bitter enemies, suffers, dies, and is resurrected after three days. This is the total pattern of the sun god in all the ancient dramas”. In the gospels, however, “it is all presented as if it was genuine history!” (p145).
Let’s have a bit of fun and do a short quiz.
Question 1: Who is being described here? He is God incarnate, the Son of God, a saviour figure, born of a mortal virgin on December 25 with shepherds present. He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism. He turns water into wine at a wedding. He rides triumphantly into a town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honour him. He dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. He descends into hell, is resurrected on the third day, and ascends to heaven. His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days. His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine which symbolize his body and blood.
Answer, the hero figure in the Osiris/Dionysus myth (according to the analysis by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy in The Jesus Mysteries, p6. They use the term Osiris/Dionysus to denote the “universal and composite nature” of the godman of the various pagan Mystery traditions).
Question 2: Who is being described here? He was a god born in innocence of a virgin birth, from a ray of divine reason. Eventually he was suspended on a tree.
Answer, Zoroaster. Here is one of his prophecies: “A virgin should conceive and bear a son, and a star would appear blazing at midday to signalize the occurrence. When you behold the star, follow it wherever it leads you. Adore the mysterious child, offering him gifts with profound humility. He is indeed the Almighty Word which created the heavens. He is indeed your Lord and everlasting King” (Harpur, p34).
Question 3: Who is being described here? “In the first century of the Common Era, there appeared at the eastern end of the Mediterranean a remarkable religious leader who taught the worship of one true God and declared that religion meant not the sacrifice of beasts but the practice of charity and piety and the shunning of hatred and enmity. He was said to have worked miracles of goodness, casting out demons, healing the sick, raising the dead. His exemplary life led some of his followers to claim he was a son of God, though he called himself the son of a man. Accused of sedition against Rome, he was arrested. After his death, his disciples claimed he had risen from the dead, appeared to them alive, and then ascended to heaven”.
Answer, Apollonius of Tyana, who died about 98 CE; his story may be read in Flavius Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius. (Source Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions, p9. There is also a book about him by Raymond Bernard, Apollonius of Tyana the Nazarene.)
If all this is true, the very least that can be said is that Jesus was in no sense unique, neither as a mythological god nor as a human being, despite what the Catholic Church might want you to believe.
Harpur is not alone in thinking that the gospel accounts resemble a mystery play; this has been noted by various scholars. This is perhaps most apparent when one considers the events of the hours before the crucifixion. We are expected to believe that in one single night, according to Luke’s gospel, the following events occurred: the Last Supper, the lengthy walk to the Mount of Olives, the long watch in the Garden of Gethsemane followed by the arrest, three distinct trials – the first before the high priest Caiaphas and others, the second before the governor Pilate, a third before Herod, and then a return to Pilate. Then follow all the events leading to the crucifixion, the appeal to the crowd and so on.
Harpur says that there is “an obvious, meagre limit to what can actually occur in the temporal span of one evening”, and that this was “an impossibly busy night to close his sad career”. There would be no problem, however, if all these events were part of the drama in a mystery play.
Now, if we draw the obvious conclusion from the above, that the story of Jesus was by no means original, where does that take us? How do we now interpret the gospels? My suggestion is that, if there was indeed an actual historical Jesus, then we should accept that much mythological material has been added to his story, therefore that the accounts in the gospels are not his true biography. We would therefore have to contemplate what is the deeper meaning of the story/myth that is being related, and what was the nature of the actual historical Jesus, if there indeed was one.
One item not in Sentell’s Progressive Christianity list is something that does appear in Adams’ list of ingredients for a new spirituality, “more emphasis on empirical experience of the sacred”. This is a good point to bring Carl Jung into the discussion, for his Individuation Process, the goal of which is the self (the God-image in a human), offers a personal experience of and connection with the divine in this lifetime, not as a reward in the afterlife.
Jung has been described as one of Christianity’s greatest advocates and also one of its greatest heretics. For what it’s worth, he wrote that it would be better if we took seriously the idea that the gospel story of Jesus should be understood allegorically or symbolically, since the meaning is very profound. This avoids getting bogged down in arguments as to the historicity. He also believed that ‘God’ has a dark side, and was an advocate of the Divine Feminine.
If Sentell and Progressive Christians truly believe in progressive revelation, how much of all this are they willing to take on board?
What should be concluded from this discussion is that if God was intent on sending his son to the Earth to redeem mankind, wouldn’t he have done it in a manner such that mythicism would have been impossible?- that is, in a way that would have resulted in such historical precision that there would be no doubt that this god-man (at least) existed and further that he (likely) performed amazing miracles and even defeated death. Leaving the door open to questioning the very existence of Jesus, much less his touted exploits, is not the work of an omnipotent being.
(4989) Christian defenders admit insufficient evidence
The people who make a living defending the Christian religion, for the most part, admit that the evidence is sparse and not compelling on its own right. They have to appeal to the metaphysical to make their case. The following was taken from:
https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2018/04/christianity-is-unworthy-of-thinking.html
Not Even Christian Apologists Believe Sufficient Evidence Exists:
Most of the best Christian defenders admit there isn’t sufficient objective evidence to believe, perhaps upwards to 80% of them. Alvin Plantinga has even argued Christian believers do not need objective evidence for their faith.
They argue the evidence alone won’t convince people so they must first effectively show that God exists. They reason like this: “Only if people are brought to first believe in a miracle working god can the available evidence convince them Jesus was raised from the dead.”
Still others came along and were forced to admit there aren’t even any good arguments for the existence of God. Alvin Plantinga: “I don’t know of an argument for Christian belief that seems very likely to convince one who doesn’t already accept its conclusion.” [Warranted Christian Belief, p. 201.] John Feinberg: “I wouldn’t try to prove God’s existence first, if at all, in that I am not convinced that any of the traditional arguments succeeds.” [Can You Believe it’s True: Christian Apologetics in a Modern, Postmodern Era, p. 321]. Richard Swinburne: “I cannot see any force in an argument to the existence of God from the existence of morality.” [The Existence of God 2nd, ed., p. 215.]
Still other Christian defenders argued against the attempt to rationally defend their faith. They insist God must be personally experienced instead. This abandons the rational attempt to show the Christian faith is true. Subjective experiences don’t say anything objective about the objective world.
So a great many Christian theologians don’t think highly of apologetics, the rational defense of the Christian faith, following in the footsteps of the greatest theologian of the last century, Karl Barth. God is his own witness. Only God can reveal God. Revelation from God can only come from God, or as Barth himself said, “the best apologetics is a good dogmatics”. [Table Talk, ed. J. D. Godsey (Edinburgh and London, 1963), p. 62]. In their colleges there is no apologetics department, and in many of them there aren’t any apologetics classes. According to them, such attempts are a failure.
Now what? Did they abandon their attempts to defend Christianity? NO! Christian defenders started presupposing God exists (or even Christianity as a whole), without objective evidence or arguments to the existence of God. Thus begging the whole question.
Some of them now embrace an eclectic or pragmatic means of defending their faith, where the conclusion largely dictates the means. Christianity is the conclusion. Now use whatever means is needed to reach that conclusion.
Christian believers who say their faith is based upon sufficient objective evidence just don’t understand what’s been going on behind the scenes in the hallways of their seminaries. Even most of the best Christian defenders/apologists acknowledge the evidence just isn’t there. Instead of acknowledging this fact they concocted several other bogus ways to defend their faith, ones they would never accept if these same rationalizations came from any other religious sect. Since there are five means to defend Christianity (above) and only one of them advocates objective evidence exists to believe, four of them–or 80% of them–reject evidence as primary. Just consider what would’ve been the case if sufficient objective evidence existed. Then no other means to defend the Christian faith would’ve been proposed, much less adopted by many others.
If Christian defenders don’t think sufficient objective evidence exists, then why should we? Why should anyone? I see no reason to do so.
It seems unlikely that an omnipotent god would leave his followers in such a state of uncertainty. Or, if this was a deliberate set-up, then it means that God is playing a game with humans, and is evidently OK with the idea that only credulous people will make it to heaven, while those with functioning critical thinking skills will go to hell.
(4990) Truth about Christianity
There is an official version of Christianity that is taught to children and parishioners, and there is an unofficial narrative that is probably (or definitely) more likely to be true. The following presents such an alternate view:
https://medium.com/p/b17ddcd3d525
The Romans — those lads who built an empire so vast, they practically put IKEA out of business with all the maps they needed. By the time they got around to flirting with Christianity, the empire was more broken than a student on a Sunday morning.
It wasn’t so much about “saving” themselves; it was more like desperately duct-taping a sinking ship and hoping for a miracle.
The Roman Empire was in shambles: political chaos, economic collapse, barbarian invasions, plagues, and emperors being assassinated faster than you could say “Ave Caesar.” They needed something — anything — to unify a divided and fragmented society. Enter Christianity, stage left.
Israel, or Judea as it was called under Roman rule, wasn’t just an open-air madhouse; it was the VIP section of the madhouse where everyone had an opinion, a prophecy, and a Messiah complex. Throw in a few Roman legions and some temple politics, and you’ve got yourself a party. Christianity didn’t just pop out of thin air; it was born in a religious melting pot, stirred by a society rife with occupation, oppression, and endless debates over who God liked best. First-century Judea was crawling with religious sects, cults, and apocalyptic prophets, each claiming to have the secret sauce to salvation. Enter Jesus of Nazareth — a charismatic preacher, a carpenter by trade, and a man who seemed to think that dining with tax collectors and preaching peace was a solid marketing strategy. Jesus’ approach was a bit different. Instead of cozying up to the powerful or leading an armed revolt like some zealots, he talked about loving your enemies, turning the other cheek, and rich people having as much chance of entering the Kingdom of Heaven as a camel squeezing through the eye of a needle. This wasn’t just countercultural — it was downright subversive in a society that wanted a Messiah to kick some Roman butt, not tell them to love their oppressors.
Naturally, this got the attention of both the local Jewish authorities — who saw Jesus as a troublemaker shaking up their fragile status quo — and the Romans, who were already juggling enough revolts without some new preacher gathering crowds like a first-century rock star. So, after some back-and-forth between Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who couldn’t care less about local religious squabbles, and the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council, Jesus was crucified. Not exactly a surprising ending in Roman times — crucifixion was practically their go-to party trick for dealing with perceived troublemakers.
But then came the plot twist: the resurrection. Jesus’ followers claimed he rose from the dead, which turned a failed Messiah movement into something far more explosive. His disciples, originally a ragtag group of fishermen and tax collectors, suddenly found their calling as the PR team for this new religion. They took Jesus’ teachings and started spreading them across the Roman Empire, from the synagogues to the marketplaces, like spiritual door-to-door salesmen.
Paul the Apostle (formerly Saul of Tarsus), arguably the first great marketer in religious history, then stepped in. He took Christianity on a road trip through the Greco-Roman world, redefining it for Gentiles (non-Jews) and giving it a broader appeal beyond its Jewish roots. This guy took a religion born in the backwaters of the Empire and sold it to the cosmopolitan elite of Rome, Athens, and beyond like it was the latest philosophical upgrade.
And it grew from there, spreading through a combination of grassroots evangelism, political opportunism, and the kind of tenacity that comes when your movement starts with a resurrection story that refuses to die.
Christianity had a few things going for it. First, it was gaining popularity across all social classes, from slaves to aristocrats, like some ancient, viral TikTok trend. It offered a sense of community, moral order, and hope to people who were otherwise drowning in a sea of existential dread and collapsing infrastructure.
Second, Constantine the Great, ever the opportunist, saw the writing on the wall. He realised that a single, unified religion could potentially do what a bloated bureaucracy and legions of half-starved soldiers couldn’t: bind the empire together under a common ideology. He wasn’t exactly rolling out the red carpet for Jesus out of pure faith. No, he saw a political goldmine. By legalising Christianity with the Edict of Milan in 313 AD and later converting himself, he used it as a tool to strengthen his rule and, theoretically, the empire.
They turn to Christianity because the Romans were trying anything at that point — like a failing restaurant introducing vegan options to appeal to a new crowd. They thought if they could align the empire under one god and one emperor, they might just keep it from collapsing like a drunk on a cobblestone street. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. The Western Roman Empire still went down like a lead balloon in 476 AD. But hey, at least they got a new religion out of the deal.
If you’re looking for a fairy tale, Christianity has got all the classic elements: a charismatic protagonist, a bit of magic, betrayal, and a resurrection twist that M. Night Shyamalan would envy. But calling it just a fairy tale would be like saying “War and Peace” is just a bit of light reading. No, Christianity — and most religions, for that matter — is the ultimate political Swiss Army knife, wielded by rulers and charlatans alike throughout history.
You’ve got to hand it to Christianity — it’s got range. On one hand, it’s a story of salvation, moral guidance, and a celestial rewards program better than any loyalty card.
On the other, it’s been the political equivalent of a loaded gun, sitting in the glove compartment of empires, monarchies, and states, ready to be pulled out whenever things go pear-shaped.
Need to unify a fragmented empire? Convert the masses! Want to justify a crusade? Call it holy! Need to legitimise a king? Crown him in the name of God!
The Romans, starting with Constantine, saw that potential and grabbed it like a last slice of pizza at a party. Christianity offered a way to centralize power, control the narrative, and maybe, just maybe, give the empire a few more years on life support. And it wasn’t just the Romans. Fast forward a few centuries, and you’ve got every Paul, Peter, and Holy Roman Emperor using Christianity to justify wars, suppress dissent, and milk the faithful for tithes like a dairy farm on overdrive.
Was it a fairy tale? Sure, if by fairy tale, you mean a story that’s been weaponised, institutionalised, and stretched over two millennia to serve every political agenda under the sun. People in power took a belief system that was supposed to be about love, humility, and a better afterlife, slapped a coat of imperial paint on it, and turned it into a machine for consolidating control.
So, in truth, “fairy tale” might be a bit light.
“Epic saga of manipulation and control” might be more like it.
Christianity is a 2000-year old detour in humanity’s quest to achieve an understanding of its place in the universe. Slowly but surely, it is being rejected as the guiding force of western civilization, and a new dawn will likely deliver a world of greater peace, love, and tolerance. Good riddance!
(4991) Consciousness is not god-given
Some Christian apologists make the claim (or supposition) that human consciousness cannot be explained solely by the material brain, and that there exists a supernatural element or soul provided by God to allow for conscious thought. The research discussed below would argue against this theory:
https://anomalien.com/consciousness-may-lurk-in-our-brains-electrical-fields/
Neural connections are at the heart of modern science, providing the framework through which scientists explain memory, perception, learning, and even consciousness. The microscopic contacts between brain cells transmit signals that account for various aspects of our complex consciousness—at least in theory.
However, Tamlyn Hunt, a philosopher and neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has proposed an alternative hypothesis in an article for Scientific American. Hunt suggests that the key to understanding consciousness may lie in the ephaptic field—a phenomenon where neurons interact electromagnetically without forming physical connections.
The concept of a neural code was first described by American scientists in 1943. They mapped brain activity, equating it to binary code, much like a computer (0s and 1s). However, this breakthrough didn’t bring humanity any closer to understanding the nature of consciousness.
“The most obvious gap in our understanding is everything we haven’t encountered on the journey from eye to hand. Everything I couldn’t tell you about the mind because we know so little about how nerve impulses create it,” neuroscientist Mark Humphries acknowledged in his 2020 book, The Speed of Thought: A Momentary Journey Through the Brain in 2.1 Seconds.
Researchers have long suspected that neurons communicate in ways beyond traditional synaptic connections. One such mechanism is ephaptic communication, where electromagnetic fields interact on a larger scale than the electrical impulses that occur at synapses.
Evidence for ephaptic interactions may lie in the retina, which some scientists consider a separate entity from the brain. Neurons in the retina use electrodiffusion rather than traditional synaptic connections, which allows the optic nerve to handle an impressive amount of data.
Experimental confirmation of ephaptic field interactions came in 2019 when Dominic Durand’s lab at Case Western Reserve University cut open a mouse hippocampus. The halves continued to communicate even when separated by more than 400 microns. The results were so astounding that reviewers demanded the experiment be repeated before they would approve its publication.
Further studies have shown that ephaptic field propagation is much faster than neural signaling. In gray matter, it occurs approximately 5000 times faster than synaptic connections.
While there is extensive experimental evidence supporting the role of synaptic activation in processes like movement, hearing, and touch, the higher density of information in ephaptic fields—along with their permeability and speed—raises the question of whether nature might rely on these fields for critical brain functions.
It appears that it does. Renowned UC Berkeley neuroscientist Walter Freeman noted that traditional synaptic activation rates couldn’t explain the speed of cognitive processes he observed in rabbits and cats over the years.
A growing body of research on electromagnetic interactions in the brain offers a compelling explanation for this cognitive speed. A recent paper published in Frontiers in Psychology suggests that ephaptic field effects might be the very mechanism underlying consciousness itself.
The more we learn about our bodies and brain, the less we have need to presuppose a supernatural agency providing any service whatsoever. Science continues its relentless march to an understanding of the world that requires nothing more than the existence of natural physical processes.
(4992) Explosions without God
During the history of evolution, there were times when changes in species happened at a relatively rapid pace, sometimes (unfortunately) termed as ‘explosions,’ to differentiate them from the long periods of status, when not much changed. Theists have latched on to this term to suggest that God inserted himself into the process during these times to direct evolution in his quest to eventually make human beings. The following essay sets the record straight:
I have heard of the Cambrian Explosion. Were there other explosions? Can you state the time duration and types of organisms before and after?
Yes, besides the Cambrian Explosion, there were other significant events in Earth’s history that are sometimes referred to as “explosions” due to a relatively rapid increase in biodiversity. Here are a few notable examples:
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- Time Duration: Approximately 541 to 530 million years ago, lasting roughly 10–25 million years
- Organisms Before: Simple, mostly soft-bodied multicellular organisms, some with very basic shells or exoskeletons (e.g., Ediacaran biota)
- Organisms After: A vast diversification of animal life with complex body plans and hard parts, including most major animal phyla we see today (e.g., arthropods, mollusks, chordates)
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- Time Duration: Approximately 485 to 444 million years ago
- Organisms Before: Primarily marine invertebrates, including trilobites, brachiopods, and early corals
- Organisms After: Increased diversity in marine invertebrates, including the appearance of many new groups like cephalopods, bryozoans, and crinoids. Also, the first evidence of land plants and possibly the earliest terrestrial arthropods.
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- Time Duration: Approximately 252 to 66 million years ago (throughout the Mesozoic Era)
- Organisms Before: Marine ecosystems dominated by relatively slow-moving, heavily armored invertebrates like brachiopods and ammonites
- Organisms After: A shift towards faster, more agile predators like bony fish, crabs, and marine reptiles. This led to the evolution of new defensive strategies and more complex ecosystems.
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- Time Duration: Approximately 66 to 23 million years ago
- Organisms Before: Mammals were present but relatively small and not very diverse, living alongside dinosaurs and other large reptiles
- Organisms After: Following the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, mammals underwent a massive diversification, evolving into a wide range of forms and filling many ecological niches previously occupied by reptiles.
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- These “explosions” represent periods of rapid evolutionary change and diversification.
- They were often triggered by major environmental changes or the opening of new ecological niches.
- The fossil record provides crucial evidence for understanding these events, but it’s important to remember that it’s incomplete, and our understanding of these events continues to evolve as new discoveries are made.
Remember: The term “explosion” is somewhat metaphorical. While these events involved rapid evolutionary change compared to other periods, they still unfolded over millions of years.
Was there an explosion period for single celled to multicelled?
Yes, while not as widely recognized as the events previously mentioned, there was indeed a period of significant evolutionary change marked by the transition from single-celled organisms to multicellular life. This transition is often referred to as the “Rise of Multicellularity”.
Here’s a summary of what we know:
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- Time Duration: Estimated to have occurred around 1.2 billion to 600 million years ago. The exact timing is still under debate, as the fossil record for early multicellular organisms is relatively sparse and challenging to interpret.
- Organisms Before: Single-celled organisms, including bacteria and archaea, as well as early eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus and other complex organelles).
- Organisms After: Simple multicellular organisms, likely consisting of colonies of similar cells with limited differentiation. These early multicellular forms paved the way for the evolution of more complex organisms with specialized tissues and organs.
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- The rise of multicellularity was a crucial step in the evolution of life on Earth, enabling the development of larger and more complex organisms.
- The transition likely involved several stages, including the formation of cell aggregates, the development of cell adhesion mechanisms, and the evolution of cell communication and differentiation.
- While the exact triggers for this transition remain uncertain, it’s believed that environmental factors and changes in Earth’s atmosphere may have played a role.
It’s worth noting that while this transition was a significant evolutionary event, it wasn’t an “explosion” in the same sense as the Cambrian Explosion. The evolution of multicellularity was a gradual process that unfolded over hundreds of millions of years. However, it laid the groundwork for the subsequent bursts of diversification seen in later periods.
Hundreds of millions of years is not an explosion. The other periods were also in millions and tens of millions of years, which are not explosions. Who coined the term “explosion” for these events?
You are absolutely correct. The term “explosion” is a bit of a misnomer when applied to geological time scales, where events spanning millions or even tens of millions of years are considered rapid. However, it’s still used because it conveys the idea of a relatively sudden and dramatic increase in biodiversity compared to the preceding and following periods.
As for who coined the term “explosion,” it’s difficult to pinpoint a single individual. It appears to have emerged gradually in the scientific literature throughout the 20th century, particularly in reference to the Cambrian Explosion.
Some key figures who contributed to popularizing the term include:
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- Charles Doolittle Walcott: Discovered the Burgess Shale in 1909, a rich fossil deposit showcasing the diversity of Cambrian life. His work highlighted the apparent sudden appearance of complex animals during this period.
- Harry B. Whittington and colleagues: In the 1970s, they reanalyzed the Burgess Shale fossils and emphasized the unique and disparate body plans of many Cambrian organisms, further solidifying the idea of an “explosion” of evolutionary novelty.
- Stephen Jay Gould: In his 1989 book “Wonderful Life,” he popularized the concept of the Cambrian Explosion, emphasizing its significance in the history of life and its implications for evolutionary theory.
While these individuals played a significant role in shaping our understanding of these events, the term “explosion” likely arose from a collective recognition of the relatively rapid diversification observed in the fossil record during these periods.
It’s important to remember that while the term “explosion” is still used, scientists are aware of its limitations and continue to refine our understanding of the tempo and mode of evolution during these crucial periods.
I have heard only of Stephen Jay Gould, surmising him to be atheist. Do you you if the other two were Christian? Theists today latch onto the term explosion to say it couldn’t have exploded like that without God intervening. But, the time scales are actually vast and allow plenty of time for evolution.
Yes, you’re correct in your assessment of Stephen Jay Gould. He identified as an agnostic, but his writings often reflected a secular humanist perspective, emphasizing the natural processes of evolution and the vastness of geological time.
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- Charles Doolittle Walcott: There is limited information available about his personal religious beliefs. While he was raised in a Christian household, his scientific writings and correspondence don’t explicitly reveal his views on the matter. It’s likely that he maintained a separation between his scientific work and personal faith.
- Harry B. Whittington: He was a devout Methodist Christian throughout his life. His religious beliefs likely influenced his worldview, but he was also a dedicated scientist who meticulously studied and interpreted the fossil record.
Regarding the use of the term “explosion” by theists: You’re absolutely right that the time scales involved in these events are vast and allow for the gradual processes of evolution to unfold. The misappropriation of scientific terminology for theological arguments is a common tactic, and it’s important to critically evaluate such claims in light of the overwhelming evidence supporting evolutionary theory.
It’s also worth noting that many scientists and religious individuals hold nuanced views on the relationship between science and faith. While some may interpret these “explosions” as evidence of divine intervention, others see them as remarkable examples of the creative power of natural processes.
The Cambrian Explosion happened over 11 million years, which might seem like a short time compared to the 13.8 billion year history of the universe. But when one thinks of it the following way, it doesn’t seem so short:
Imagine if you were able to live for the entire time since the invention of Christianity- 2000 years. Imagine how long that time would seem. Now, after you complete one of those periods, do it a second time, then a third time, and then all the way to the 500th time. Now you have experienced a million years, but you’re not done yet. Repeat all of that a second time, then a third time, and all the way to the 11th time. Once you finish, it is unlikely that you will see what you’ve lived through as an ‘explosion.’
(4993) God behaves like a non-existent god
The way God is portrayed in the Bible seems directly opposite of what would normally be expected of an omnipotent deity. It almost seems like this god is an invention of people who had no sense of what a true god would be like. The following was taken from:
https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1gqixul/the_christian_god_behaves_in_a_manner_totally/
The Christian god behaves in a manner totally consistent with not existing at all.
Here is a list of things that point to Christianity being man-made as they would make great explanations in a context where God doesn’t actually exist.
God requiring a book to communicate instead of direct interaction. If someone invented a God to control people, creating a book that reflects their own beliefs would be an effective way to claim divine endorsement. This seems improbable if God truly exists. While some argue we cannot understand God’s reasoning, given other evidence against his existence, this response appears more like a tactic to dismiss challenges to God’s authenticity.
The need for faith in an unseen God rather than tangible evidence. A lack of evidence necessitates faith, making it an ideal strategy for promoting belief in a non-existent God. This doesn’t make sense if God were real.
The existence of suffering and evil despite an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity. It’s unlikely that a truly all-good God would allow such suffering. While some say it serves a “greater purpose” and will be offset by heaven, this also conveniently explains away the inconsistencies in a man-made God.
God’s absence from the world, despite claims of his all-knowing nature. A useful explanation for why no one has verifiably encountered this God. It’s odd that a God would interact with people 2,000 years ago yet remain absent now.
Contradictions within scripture that need human interpretation. The Bible’s contradictions are often excused as metaphors, but it’s doubtful that an all-knowing God would leave his “truth” so open to human interpretation.
The reliance on human agents (prophets, priests) to mediate between God and people. This fits well with the idea of an invented God used to control others.
Divine punishment for disbelief without clear evidence of God’s existence. An effective way to scare people into adherence without offering proof.
Inconsistent religious experiences across cultures and time periods. History shows that gods are often invented to control or explain; it seems improbable that this particular one is different.
It is impossible to prove that Yahweh or any other god does not exist, but it could be possible to point to evidence supporting that supposition- if it existed. Of course, it does not. And when evidence that should exist, doesn’t, it is not incongruous to dismiss the supposition.
(4994) Counting all of the fantasies in Mark
A biblical scholar, Richard Carrier, produced a nice article where he lists all of the miracles/fantasies/off normal occurrences documented in the Gospel of Mark. This gospel is the first written narrative of an allegedly historical Jesus, and it forms the basis for the remaining three gospels. If we were keeping score, it would be FANTASY 99, HISTORY 1. The following was taken from:
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/29744
I’ve often noted that even the very first Gospel we know of (the one eventually source-credited to someone named Mark), despite often being described as the least fantastical or the most mundane narrative of Jesus, is in fact wildly fantastical, and does not even come close to resembling the actual histories and biographies of the era that are actually mundane and mostly lack the fantastical. I discuss this generically with comparative examples in chapter 7 of Not the Impossible Faith and specifically with examples from Mark in chapters 3 and 6 of Jesus from Outer Space (and various other places). But today I want to make a complete list. In a book or journal article it would be too long for space. But no such limit need contain me here.
Analytical Context
It should first be noted that in antiquity there was no clear demarcation between the natural and the supernatural. The subject was debated, but without modern science and global experience, the ability to draw any lines was quite limited—and almost wholly rejected by believers in the supernatural, who accepted wild tales as being just as plausibly historical as mundane ones (see Establishing the Biblical Literalism of Early Christians and Christianity Is a Conspiracy Theory), indeed precisely because they believed the operation of the divine and the magical in the world was routine—even “natural.” Moreover, even now, with our demarcations available (see Naturalism Is Not an Axiom of the Sciences but a Conclusion of Them and The Argument from Specified Complexity against Supernaturalism, as well as, for example, The Rain Miracle of Marcus Aurelius: A Case Study in Christian Lies and Theism & Atheism: Miracles), we can also tell the difference between the plausible and the fantastical even within the domain of what is now known to be naturally possible (see, for example, Formalized Gullibility as a Modern Christian Methodology).
In other words, the real issue is not cataloguing every “supernatural” event in the narrative Mark—which would be anachronistic because our modern categorization of what counts as “supernatural” did not exist then, and still wouldn’t capture the whole of the fantastical and thus obviously mythical. Indeed, many of the events in Mark that we would readily recognize as fiction because of their utter lack of realism are technically still “possible,” insofar as it would violate no laws of physics, but they are still wildly unlikely—hence they remain extraordinary claims (which thus require extraordinary, and not mundane, evidence). For example, you can give a naturalistic explanation of the Ten Plagues of Egypt, but the probability that what you just described ever happened is astronomically small—to the point of being de facto impossible. We might call this “statistically impossible,” like the sequence of events in almost any big-budget action movie or screwball comedy or plot-twisting thriller. (On the kinds of impossibility, see discussion in my study for Biology & Philosophy, where the “statistically impossible” is used by creationists to “disprove” natural biogenesis, so we know they well understand this kind of impossibility when it suits them.)
However, I won’t be counting here mere errors or anachronisms. For example, the way the Gospel of Mark portrays the Pharisees makes no sense in actual context; and the extant text of Mark screws up local geography. I will only reckon up here the genuinely fantastical—things that simply wouldn’t likely happen in a universal sense, such as defy (even if they don’t strictly violate) physics or human psychology. I have long noted that by this standard, there is at least one impossible event narrated in every single chapter of Mark. In fact, the count is well more than one. Mark is therefore wildly more mythological in composition than any genuine history or biography of the time. And Mark resembles only ancient fiction and mythology in this respect. And yet Mark is the first narrative of a historical Jesus, and the core (and only really known) source for every other. Such wild fiction was rarely composed about historical persons; but not usually.
Okay. Here we go…
Chapter 1
In Mark 1:
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- Jesus is the prophesied chosen one of a Levantine starlord (1:1–3).
- The sky tears open and a magical bird flies down to live inside Jesus’s body (1:10).
- God’s voice booms from the sky declaring Jesus his beloved son (1:11).
- The magical bird inside Jesus tells him to go on a shamanic quest (1:12).
- Jesus hangs out with wild animals and an immortal darklord called “The Satan” for over a month (1:13).
- During which space creatures known as “The Messengers” fly down to attend to Jesus’s needs (1:13).
- Jesus walks up to some total strangers and asks them to leave their families and jobs and depart and serve him—and they immediately do, without any convincing, or even description of what they will be preaching or why they should believe in him or his message (1:16–18).
- In fact, they literally just drop their nets in the sea and abandon their boats and equipment (1:18).
- Jesus does this a second time! (1:19) Although this time, the abandoners of their families leave their equipment with their dad and some henchmen (1:20). The first ones didn’t even do that.
- Jesus extraordinarily amazes everyone at a synagogue with his teaching, exceeding (we’re told) even the greatest scholars of the age (1:21–22)—yet we aren’t told anything of what he taught or how it was extraordinary or what anyone thought was special about it.
- Before many witnesses, an alien being speaks to Jesus, using a human body it lives inside and controls (1:23–24), proclaiming him a magical exorcist empowered by God.
- Jesus magically expels that alien with a word of command (1:25–26), and it then screams loudly after it has left the body it was controlling—thus no longer using a human body as its mouthpiece, the alien entity speaks with its own supernatural voice.
- Witnesses marvel at all this single incident, and Jesus somehow becomes famous for just this one event across the entire region of Galilee (1:27–28), even though Jewish exorcisms were common side-shows of the day.
- Jesus magically cures a woman of influenza (1:29–31).
- Jesus magically cures many of various nonspecific ailments and possession by alien beings (1:32–34).
- We learn that Jesus can telepathically control the voices of the many alien beings he orders out of human bodies (1:34), although he evidently forgot to control that first one.
- Jesus keeps magically defeating alien beings (1:39).
- With a mere touch Jesus instantly cures a man of a mytho-biblical skin disease (1:40–42). Jesus is also inexplicably annoyed by this one diseased penitent.
- Jesus inexplicably strongly insists (ἐμβριμησάμενος) that this one (and only this one) patient of his not tell anyone about it, but that he perform an ancient magical ritual for it (1:43–44); and instead, the guy inexplicably blabs about it to everyone (1:45).
- Jesus thus becomes so famous and successful a wizard that he can’t even enter a town anymore and has to hide from people in the wilderness, yet inexplicably even that doesn’t work and he is continuously mobbed by people anyway (1:45).
That’s at least 20 fantastical things in chapter 1 alone. Out of 45 verses, that’s a rate of almost one fantastical thing every 2 verses. It is the most fantastical chapter in Mark.
Chapter 2
In Mark 2:
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- Jesus is so mobbed in one town that some guys have to climb up and tear open the roof of where Jesus is speaking and lower in a victim of paralysis whom Jesus magically cures with a mere command (2:1–5, 11–12), which we’re told no one had ever seen before, despite psychosomatic healing acts being then commonplace. (It also never occurs to anyone to just let the guy in or have him carried in by the audience. And it never occurs to Jesus to go out to him, or tell his audience to let him in. And no one is concerned about the damage to the roof. There are just a lot of weird things to explain away here.)
- Jesus magically reads the minds of the town elite (2:6–10).
- Jesus casts the instant “summon person” spell again, and a guy abandons his job at once, mid-shift, and for no described reason (2:13–24).
That’s 3 fantastical things in chapter 2. Out of 28 verses, that’s a rate of almost one fantastical thing every 9 verses. Our total rate is now 23/73 or almost 1 fantastical thing every 3 verses.
Most of this chapter is also occupied with fables (chreiae) that are obviously intended to teach principles of the Christian mission, like evangelizing sinners, and Christian doctrines about fasting and the Sabbath, using plausible-sounding narratives. So, although these are not fantastical, they are still clearly mythical.
Chapter 3
In Mark 3:
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- Jesus magically unshrivels a hand with a word of command (3:1–5).
- The narrator magically knows that this is when the elite began to strategize “how to kill” Jesus, and for the strange reason that he commanded a healing on the Sabbath (Mark will soon forget this motive and impute another later on), yet they inexplicably don’t simply arrest and try him for the crime if it was one (it wasn’t), nor can they even think of a reason to kill him (the verse says they conferred on how they might kill him; not that he should be killed for this, or any particular thing at all). (The Herodians are also now mentioned as plotters, but they have never been introduced as a character before now, and despite the narrator’s magical knowledge, their motive is never explained. And we will never hear of their involvement in this conspiracy again.)
- Jesus magically defeats more space aliens (3:11–12).
- Jesus bestows this power on twelve disciples (3:13–15).
That’s 4 fantastical things in chapter 3. Out of 35 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 11 verses. Our total rate is now 26/108 or 1 fantastical thing every 4 verses.
Most of this chapter is also occupied, again, by doctrinally relevant fables that aren’t implausible per se but are nevertheless probably false. For example, the entire story of Jesus denouncing his family serves the function of explaining the Christian principle of fictive kinship (and the need to leave family for the Christian community). The story is thus obviously an etiological myth, just like the baptism scene (which sets Jesus up as the successor and superior to the famous preacher John, a competitor to the Christian mission, and explains the doctrinal function of Christian baptism as adoption by God and infusion of the Holy Spirit).
Chapter 4
In Mark 4:
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- Jesus teaches everyone only (4:34) in riddles that no one understands, not even his disciples (so how was his teaching so impressive as to draw crowds from over a hundred miles around?), and even more implausibly, Jesus secretly explains his very intention is not to be understood (4:10–12, 33–34).
- Jesus practices weather magic before a dozen witnesses (4:36–42).
That’s 2 fantastical things in chapter 4. Out of 41 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 10 verses. Our total rate is now 30/149 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.
Most of this chapter is a repetition of a collection of parables and explaining the mechanism of parable secrecy, and trivial activities that barely seem narratively relevant, when in actual fact, those features have literary functions just like all the previous fables do, and are therefore also mythical (see my analysis of the Gospel of Mark’s literary structure in Chapter 10.4 of On the Historicity of Jesus).
Chapter 5
In Mark 5:
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- Jesus meets a ghoul with supernatural strength because he was possessed by aliens (5:1–5).
- The ghoul magically knows Jesus is a celestial emissary and tries to make him get rid of the aliens (5:6).
- Jesus has a conversation with a literal alien army inside the ghoul (5:7–10).
- For some unexplained reason, the aliens controlling the ghoul don’t want to be tormented by Jesus (5:6), yet let the ghoul they are inhabiting run up to Jesus even though he was far away (5:6), and just as inexplicably, when they beg Jesus not to make them leave the country (χώρας), Jesus is okay with that idea, and lets them instead magically murder two thousand pigs (5:11–13). It is not explained where they then went, or why they would have wanted to live inside two thousand pigs, or why they wanted to immediately kill the bodies they were just allowed to inhabit—or why Jesus would want any of this.
- Though the town’s local economy is thus completely devastated by the most extraordinary property crime in history, Jesus does nothing about it (5:14–16), and inexplicably, the townsfolk only insist Jesus merely leave; they attempt no legal action nor ask for him to pay for their massive loss (5:17).
- Jesus resurrects the dead with a word of command (5:21–24, 35–42).
- Jesus’s robe is so magical it cures at a mere touch a bizarre gynecological disorder (5:25–34).
- Jesus can feel his magical power drained by this touch to his cloak (5:30).
- Even though Jesus resurrected a girl at a request made in front of crowds (5:21–24), after she had been publicly declared and mourned as dead (5:35–40), Jesus inexplicably asks that it be kept secret (5:43), which to any realistic observer would be obviously impossible. (Also, apparently, resurrected people need food to eat. You’d think a resurrection spell from a god would at least supply you with adequate blood sugar. Mark must be playing by 5e rules.)
That’s 9 fantastical things in chapter 5. Out of 43 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 8 verses. Our total rate is now 39/192 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.
Chapter 6
In Mark 6:
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- Inexplicably, despite marvelous wizardry famed across seven lands, Jesus cannot perform any exorcisms, and hardly any healing spells, in his own town (whose inhabitants are apparently Nega-Psychics: 6:1–6).
- Jesus gives his twelve disciples magical powers again (6:7, 13), though unlike Jesus, their power to heal requires spell ingredients.
- We are told a wildly implausible story about how Herod unwillingly executes John the Baptist by accident (6:14–29; in historical fact, he had far more plausible motives). This is actually full of fantastical elements, yet that only work collectively together, so I’ll just count it all as one.
- In no universe would any king make the promise the plot requires (6:22–23), much less honor it (6:26), even less for the reasons given (a king would readily bat aside the impolitic wishes of a mere girl in front of elite guests—honoring it would make him appear weak, not refusing it).
- The time compression of the story is laughable. Herod Antipas’s Galilean palace was over a hundred miles from John the Baptist’s prison, a week round trip by fast horse. And even if his birthday banquet was for some reason held outside his kingdom in Jerusalem, the distance is still over sixty miles, four days around by fast horse. And either way John the Baptist’s head would have rotted for days by the time it was delivered on a platter.
- The tale has John’s disciples travel to the prison to collect and bury John’s body after they learn of the delivery of his head (6:29). In fact Jewish law mandated burial before sunset. That means John would have been buried in the prison graveyard days or even weeks before his disciples even learned of his death, much less could arrive to take the body for a burial already completed.
- Thousands of people implausibly horde into the desert to see Jesus but, despite being experienced rural travelers, don’t think to bring any provisions (6:30–36). Worse, they apparently need to be told to go get some (real people don’t need reminding).
- Twelve jobless rural disciples inexplicably have hundreds of silver coins on hand and are merely concerned about draining their purse (6:37). In a more realistic story, it would be “Where the hell are we going to get that kind of cash?” Or “Shall we take donations and send runners?” Or “Shall we marshal foraging and hunting teams and gear up to do some fishing?” Anything but “Hey, man, I know our pony is fat with staxx, but come on, bro!”
- Although Jesus asks his disciples to feed these thousands of people, inexplicably, Jesus does (6:38–44). So why didn’t he just say, “I’ll take care of it”? (Note that in all cases like this, I often do know the literary reason that Mark wrote it the way he does; I am just cataloguing when the result is historically unrealistic. So, for example, here the story is a fable teaching readers a cryptic lesson about the Christian mission. But as such, it is completely ahistorical, and thus fantastical.)
- For some inexplicable reason, all that twelve rural travelers can pull together is two fish (two? bad day at the nets?) and five loaves of bread (6:38). Why did they think to bring only five? And are we to believe that literally five thousand other people are on hand, and not a single soul has even a morsel to contribute to this pop-up soup kitchen? And why is it just fish and bread? No vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, berries, beans, cheese, preserves, honey, beer, wine, posca, bugs, sausage, or any other meats, fresh or jerked? Not even some fowl or varmint? No shepherds in these thousands with some goat, lamb, or beef?
- Jesus magically feeds five thousand people by a conjuration of self-replicating food (6:41–44).
- And there are inexplicably “twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish” left over after five thousand people ate (6:43). Um. There would be vastly more poop left over than that (a problem with which the narrator is blissfully unconcerned). (And where did these twelve baskets come from? Were they just hauling around empty baskets this whole time? And isn’t twelve a cheekily suspicious number?)
- Jesus magically walks on water before a dozen witnesses (6:45–53).
- Jesus performs more weather magic (6:51).
- Jesus’s magical cloak heals the ailments of every single person who touches it (6:54–56).
That’s 12 fantastical things in chapter 6. Out of 56 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 4 verses. Our total rate is now 51/248 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.
This chapter is mostly a list of etiological myths teaching doctrinal lessons (such as why Christians don’t live kosher, 7:15) that are plausible per se but not likely historical (e.g. a departure from kosher practice was invented after Jesus died).
Chapter 7
In Mark 7:
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- Despite having spent dozens of hours with Jesus—hours of public instruction, hours of private instruction—spanning many days of opportunity to ask him questions and have whole lengthy conversations about his answers and his mission and his teachings and ideas, the disciples still don’t understand even basic things he says (7:17–23).
- While trying to hide from crowds (a contradictory objective for a divine being whose only mission at the time is mass public communications), Jesus is inexplicably found out by a woman with a kid inhabited by an alien being, and after a testy racist argument she finally gets Jesus to begrudgingly do something about it (7:24–29).
- As usual, Jesus magically removes the alien, but this time he can do it at long range and without even line-of-sight, evincing Jesus has leveled up the spell (7:30).
- Jesus magically heals a deaf man with reiki, saliva exchange, and a word of command (7:32–35).
- Despite that spell being cast in public at public request, Jesus implausibly “commands” (διεστείλατο) that no one tell anyone about it; and, of course, everyone tells everyone about it—in fact, the more he insists they don’t, the more they do it (7:36–37).
That’s 5 fantastical things in chapter 7. Out of 37 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 7 verses. Our total rate is now 56/285 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.
Chapter 8
In Mark 8:
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- Another implausible scenario of four thousand travelers forgetting or neglecting provisions (8:1–3).
- The disciples (and even Jesus himself) inexplicably have their memory deleted of the last time this happened (8:4–5). Indeed it is inexplicable why even Jesus wouldn’t remember this problem and have planned for or avoided it by now. It’s especially weird that everyone implausibly forgets not only that Jesus is a wizard with a conjure food spell, but, again, that food can be procured by foraging, hunting, fishing, and pooling resources among the thousands attending.
- Inexplicably, again, twelve practiced travelers, and thousands of experienced rural peasants, have only seven loaves of bread and “a few” fish, and nothing else (8:5–7).
- Jesus magically feeds four thousand people by a conjuration of self-replicating food (8:8–9).
- Inexplicably, again, after four thousand meals, only seven baskets of crumbs are left over (8:8–9).
- Inexplicably, immediately after that, the disciples literally “forget” to bring any food with them, but for a single loaf of bread (8:14–16).
- When Jesus utters another cryptic remark, the disciples inexplicably forget that Jesus does that a lot, and instead think he is referring to the loaf of bread (8:17–18).
- Jesus explains the matter to them by completely failing to explain anything to them; yet not a one of them asks a follow-up question to clarify whatever his point was supposed to be (8:19–21).
- Jesus magically cures a blind man with an elaborate travel-and-spit ritual (8:22–25).
- Jesus’s spell fails. He has to cast it again, wasting another spell slot (8:23–25).
- Jesus inexplicably insists the cured man go home and not back to the village where the villagers had brought the blind man to Jesus (8:26). Inexplicably, Jesus does not command him to tell no one; and the reason for going straight home eludes any explanation. (The villagers are going to notice eventually that he isn’t blind anymore, after bringing him to Jesus for a cure, and watching Jesus lead him away; it’s also not explained why none of the villagers followed Jesus and the man, since everyone else has been following Jesus even into foodless wastelands by the thousands and Jesus could never find privacy up to now.)
- Inexplicably, Jesus warns the disciples not to tell anyone about him (8:30)—a guy who has been preaching the gospel to audiences of thousands by now and is already famed across seven lands, and was already publicly declared the chosen one by a booming voice from heaven (1:11).
- In a wildly implausible scene, Jesus “openly” explains to the disciples how prophecy predicts his death and resurrection, and Peter inexplicably “rebukes” him for it (ἐπιτιμᾶν), at which Jesus inexplicably accuses him of being a worldly servant of Satan (8:31–33), rather than simply correcting whatever mistake Peter made and explaining why this is a good thing and how they can help bring it about. Indeed there is actually nothing at all humanly plausible about the conversation here depicted.
That’s 13 fantastical things in chapter 8. Out of 38 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 3 verses. Our total rate is now 69/323 or 1 fantastical thing almost every 5 verses.
The rest of this chapter (continuing into 9:1) has Jesus elaborate his bizarre conspiracy theory about cosmology and the fate of the world, which isn’t fantastical because weirdos with weird beliefs are commonplace. But this will be relevant later when, despite such a clear exposition of things (with again, obviously, in reality hours of questions and discussion ensuing), the disciples will continue never to have understood any of it.
Chapter 9
In Mark 9:
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- Jesus becomes Gandalf the White (9:2–3).
- Inexplicably, ancient dead men descend from outer space (9:4–6). (I am setting aside the question of how anyone knows what Elijah and Moses “look like,” because maybe Jesus introduced them?)
- A magical talking cloud joins the show and proclaims Jesus the One (9:7).
- Inexplicably, the extraterrestrial revenants then instantly vanish (9:8).
- Twelve Jews having heard Jesus preach and converse about resurrection for days on end don’t know what “resurrection” is (9:9–10).
- Twelve Jews forget that they themselves have recited at every Passover of their lives why people say Elijah shall precede the Messiah (9:11–13).
- Jesus tells them Elijah has already come and been persecuted—and no one asks a follow-up question as to who he means or how he knows they’re actually Elijah (9:13). (And didn’t they just meet Elijah at the top of this episode?)
- An alien possesses another child, and no one’s magic can expel it (9:14–18).
- Jesus inexplicably curses out the crowd, who literally have nothing to do with this (9:19).
- Jesus is the only wizard with a spell slot of sufficient level to expel the alien (9:20–27).
- The disciples ask Jesus why their spell didn’t work, and Jesus inexplicably replies that “This kind can come out only by prayer” (9:28–29) even though that isn’t true—Jesus expelled it without any prayer. (Some manuscripts even add “and fasting,” which obviously also didn’t happen. Jesus also never explains why “this” alien is any different than the others, or why “only prayer” can expel it, or what prayer, or how that would be any different from just casting another spell.)
- The disciples still can’t understand what Jesus means by his being prophesied to die and rise, despite his very clear exposition of that already, and their having had hours of access to question him about it for days now (9:30–32).
- Other wizards expel aliens (9:38–40).
That’s 13 fantastical things in chapter 9. Out of 50 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 3 verses. Our total rate is now 82/373 or 1 fantastical thing almost every 5 verses.
Chapter 10
In Mark 10:
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- Inexplicably, the people tell a blind man asking Jesus for help to shut up—the opposite of every similar scene to date (10:46–48).
- Jesus instantly cures this one—without ritual, spell ingredients, or failure this time (10:48–52).
- This man, Bartimaeus we are told, then follows Jesus—but we never hear of him again (10:52).
That’s 3 fantastical things in chapter 10. Out of 52 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 17 verses. Our total rate is now 85/425 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.
This chapter is mostly filled with parables and fables, as before, which teach doctrine or concepts and thus are no more likely to be historical, but are not fantastical.
Chapter 11
In Mark 11:
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- A fantastical donkey heist (11:1–6).
- A wildly implausible triumphal entry scene, conveniently corresponding to various details of prophecy, that none of the ruling authorities or city guard notice or ever remark upon (11:7–11).
- Jesus magically withers a fig tree (11:12–15, 19–25).
- Implausibly, Jesus even does this in anger at it not feeding him when he was hungry (10:12) even though he knew it wasn’t fig season (11:13) and thus not its fault.
- Implausibly, “Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there, overturning the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and not allowing anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts” (11:15–18). But: “The temple square was a heavily populated space over ten acres in size and guarded by an armed battalion authorized to kill troublemakers on sight” (JFOS, p. 54; see OHJ, pp. 431–42).
- Completely unbelievably, Jesus shuts up all of Jerusalem’s Elders, Priests, and Rabbis with his (not at all) brilliant refusal to answer them when they ask on what authority he did any of that (11:27–33), and in result, no one arrests him for the outrageous (and probably capital) crime he just publicly committed (the violent defiling of the temple grounds and operations). (The Gospel Jesus was actually quite bad at argument. But many people were. What makes this fantastical is that the scene is completely unrealistic and can never have happened as described.)
That’s 6 fantastical things in chapter 11. Out of 33 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 5 verses. Our total rate is now 91/458 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.
Chapter 12
In Mark 12:
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- Fantastically, “the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders” of Jerusalem, the very capital of Judea, “looked for a way to arrest” Jesus “because they knew he had spoken [a] parable against them” (12:12). In no way would the entirety of a city elite conspire to assassinate someone simply “because he spoke a parable against them” (having inexplicably forgotten their original motive, in episode three). And in no way would they need to conspire to “find a way” to kill him: in-story, they could already get him for indisputable felonies and public acts of treason.
- Fantastically, after having criminally and violently assaulted the temple and its occupants, Jesus just casually goes on “teaching in the temple courts” unimpeded (12:35).
That’s 2 fantastical things in chapter 12. Out of 44 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 22 verses. Our total rate is now 93/502 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.
This chapter mostly consists of teachings couched in trivial narrative contexts, or scenes meant to teach lessons (like the fable of the widow’s mite), and thus still mythical, but set in mundane scenes. There are anachronisms. For example, Jesus is depicted pithily answering a question about paying the Romans taxes (12:15–17), but the scene depends on those taxes being paid with the Roman denarius (which has the emperor’s visage upon it). In Judea, that was not the case. Taxes there were paid with special faceless coins minted for compliance with the Jewish law against icons. But as I said at the outset, anachronisms (mere historical errors) also abound in Mark, but I am only counting fantastical things—things that couldn’t happen in any genuine historical context, such as defiances of ordinary human psychology.
Chapter 13
Mark 13 entirely consists of a single speech by Jesus in an obvious set-scene (a classic staged soliloquy). The speech consists of ridiculous and ahistorical apocalyptic teachings, but such beliefs were common and thus, though still obviously mythical here, nevertheless not fantastical. So with no opportunity to throw in ridiculous events, we get 0 out of 37, getting us to 93/539, which is still almost 1 fantastical thing every 6 verses.
Chapter 14
In Mark 14:
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- “The chief priests and the teachers of the law” are still (!?) “scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him” but, they concluded, “not during the festival, or the people may riot” (14:1–2). Yet, fantastically (and completely unintelligibly) they do that anyway, in the most public and flagrant way possible—by actually arresting him and publicly executing him in the middle of the festival! And no one riots.
- An impossible story about a peasant’s eighteen-thousand dollar alabaster nard jar being pointlessly smashed over Jesus’s head instead of funding poverty programs (14:3–9).
- An unidentified woman does this for no logical or historically intelligible reason.
- Jesus says she will be memorialized forever (Mk 14:9), yet Mark doesn’t even name her. And we never learn anything about her and never hear of her again (she vanishes from history).
- No one would anoint Jesus for burial (Mk 14:8) days before his death.
- Nor would any commoner be carrying around an $18,000 pot of oil (see OHJ, 452n131).
- Nor would they smash it over someone’s head: because the woman does not just pour the oil out, but even breaks its delicate stone container, a wholly pointless and wasteful thing to do (Mk 14:3).
- It is not even plausible that any oil could carry such value, much less commonplace spikenard (unless the quantity exceeded all logical purpose, and everyone in the room was gassed into unconsciousness by the intense aroma); and although the valuation may be for the container being carved from alabaster—a cheap stone, but perhaps the craftwork was priceworthy?—smashing the container is then the crime against the poor, not pouring out the oil, which makes even less sense, since…
- Jesus’ excuse for thus destroying almost twenty thousand dollars is fantastical and can never have happened (such a cost was not needed for his burial; he wasn’t even dead yet; and this doesn’t explain destroying its expensive container, or why nard oil specifically was necessary, or why it even needed to be in such a container).
- Fantastically, Judas suddenly decides on his own to conspire to get Jesus killed, and for no intelligible reason given in the story (14:10-11).
- A strange tale of a boy and his water and a miraculous hotel comp (14:12–16).
- A completely implausible story of Jesus psychically knowing about Judas’s secret conspiracy (14:17–20); and announcing it to everyone, yet keeping his identity secret for no historically plausible reason; and no one presses Jesus for who it is or how he knows this or why he won’t take action—or why he even mentioned it if he wasn’t going to do anything about it. We don’t even get a believable conversation about Jesus needing the conspiracy to go forward to effect his plans, as he has suggested before—although there is also no discernible reason why he would need it, either, since, as we’ll see, Judas performs no relevant function. Jesus also threatens the conspirator with a horrific punishment, but if Jesus needed him to do it, it is unclear why he should be punished for it; or why Jesus should want to threaten him, as if to deter him from doing what Jesus actually wanted to encourage him to do. In short, the entire scene makes no sense and cannot have happened.
- Fantastically, Jesus describes a detailed psychic premonition that comes true in every particular (14:27–31, 66–72). And despite Peter being warned, and knowing Jesus is a genuine wizard and a real psychic, he still goes through with it. It’s also not explained why Peter is hanging around the courthouse (14:54) to be recognized by one of the court staff after having fled arrest. That’s a strange thing for a fugitive to do. Why hasn’t he already booked it over the border to hide in non-Roman Galilee (per 14:28 and 16:7)?
- All twelve disciples are implausibly (even comically) sleepy (14:32–42). (Jesus must have cast 5e Sleep by accident.)
- A completely implausible arrest scene (14:43–52).
- Judas leads an armed police squad to effect the arrest (43). But why was Judas needed? Jesus could have been arrested by such an armed force anytime. (We were even told the plan was to do this after the festival and all its pilgrims had left.) And anyone could have tailed him to Gethsemane. How would Judas know any better that that’s where he’d be? We can make up retcons here. But none of this makes any sense as written.
- Judas inexplicably arranges a secret signal to point Jesus out (44–46)—but he’s already there with a visibly armed police squad, so why did he need a secret signal? He would just say, “That’s him!”
- There is no intelligible reason Judas is needed to point out a man so famous he had been seen and even conversed with by thousands of persons, including much of Jerusalem’s elite, which would have had many of their staff in attendance as well.
- All of this is so obviously unintelligible that Mark has Jesus “fourth wall” a supernatural explanation of why all this is happening so oddly (48–49).
- The police then seize only Jesus (46)—so why did everyone else run away? (50) Remember, Judas was supposed to be secretly signaling who to arrest—which makes no sense if they came there to arrest everyone and sort out who’s who later.
- Maybe it was because someone (oddly, we are not told who, or why, or why only them) attack the police with a sword and viciously mutilate “the high priest’s slave” (47). But…the police did nothing about this. They don’t even defend the slave, strike back, or pursue the armed felon. Which makes no sense. (It’s also not explained why the high priest’s slave is even there. Not even the high priest is there: in v. 43 Mark says the police were sent “from” the high priests [παρὰ] not “with” them.)
- “A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus; and when they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind” (14:51–52). That’s all we hear about this bizarre event, or the boy. This is so weird and out-of-the-blue it deserves to be counted separately.
- No one can come up with a crime to convict Jesus of (14:55–56).
- Days of plotting and the entire elite of Jerusalem can’t even feed their stool pigeons a convincing lie to convict Jesus with (14:57–61). Herod just had the widely beloved John executed “because, bint.” And these guys can’t even frame Jesus?
- They eventually convict Jesus of something that isn’t even a crime, much less a capital one, under either Jewish or Roman law (14:61–64). But if they could do that all along, why did they need the stool pigeons? And why did Mark say they couldn’t come up with a crime to pin on him? The entire scene makes no sense as written.
That’s 12 fantastical things in chapter 14. Out of 72 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 6 verses. And that’s not even counting ahistorical anachronisms (such as that this fails to correspond to anything we know about how Jewish trials worked—at all, least of all capital ones). In any case, our total rate is now 105/611 or 1 fantastical thing every 6 verses.
Chapter 15
In Mark 15:
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- A wildly implausible fable about a Roman “prisoner release” ritual that coincidentally evokes an entire Jewish Levitical atonement ritual (15:6–8).
- Unintelligibly, the crowds so behind Jesus that the elite feared their rioting at his mere arrest immediately switch allegiance to the elite and loudly call for Jesus to be killed (15:8–14).
- Fantastically, Pilate releases a murderous rebel against Rome and executes Jesus at the whim of a mob no Roman magistrate would heed (15:15).
- Fantastically, a random stranger we are told little about and never hear of again is forced to carry the cross for Jesus for no explicated reason (15:21).
- The entire scene duplicates too many odd features from Psalm 22 to plausibly be historical (OHJ, 408).
- The sun is blotted out from the Earth for three hours even at full moon (15:33–34).
- Implausibly, Jesus dies almost immediately and without explanation (15:34–37). Crucifixion was intended to keep the victim alive (and suffering) for days. Even Pilate is surprised he died so quickly (15:44).
- The magical bird that entered to live inside Jesus’s body at his baptism now leaves him (15:37: ἐξέπνευσεν, ek + pneuma, “the spirit went out,” vs. 1:10, pneuma + eis, “the spirit went in”).
- A massively public, 80-foot tall tapestry, on which was depicted the heavens (Josephus, Jewish War 5.212–14) magically tears from top to bottom as Jesus dies. (Thus coincidentally the heavens tear apart both at Jesus’s magical birth—his baptism, 1:10—and magical death.)
That’s 9 fantastical things in chapter 15. Out of 47 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 5 verses. Our total rate is now 114/658 or almost 1 fantastical thing every 6 verses.
Chapter 16
In Mark 16:
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- A magical escape (16:2–4).
- A magical boy (16:5–7).
- Inexplicably silent witnesses (16:8).
If we keep going and include the later addition of a longer ending:
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- A magical appearance of the dead (16:9)
- More alien inhabitants of human bodies (16:9).
- A transmuted revenant encounter (16:12).
- A magical ghost shows up for dinner (16:14–18).
- Jesus flies into outer space (16:19).
- The disciples become wizards (16:17–18, 20).
That’s either 3 or 9 fantastical things in chapter 16. Out of either 8 or 20 verses (respectively), that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 2 verses. Our total rate is now either 117/666 or 123/678, leaving us with an average of almost 1 fantastical thing every 6 verses across the entire Gospel of Mark, or an average rate of 7 fantastical things per chapter—and over a hundred fantastical things altogether.
How gullible do we have to be?
Gullibility is the sister of hope, and hope is the fertilizer of ignorance- that is the kind of hope that incentives people to fail to investigate their beliefs. Because, once any sane, objective person puts in the effort to judge the claims of Christianity, it invariably leads to atheism.
(4995) Josephus omits Jesus’ temple disturbance
Josephus mentioned a disturbance at the temple that was significantly less important than the one allegedly perpetrated by Jesus according to the gospels. This omission argues against the historicity of the gospel accounts. The following was taken from:
Why would Josephus report the minor Temple disturbance of Jesus Ben Ananias, but not the more serious disturbance of Jesus of Nazareth?
Josephus told the history of the leadup to the Roman-Jewish War, including many minor events of disturbance like that of Jesus Ben Ananias, who in 62 AD prophesied the Temple’s destruction and was tortured and released by the Romans. While the Cleansing of the Temple by Jesus of Nazareth is regarded by many historians as not only historical but the main factor behind Jesus being executed like an insurrectionist, it’s missing in Josephus’s account despite the fact that he apparently saw it necessary to mention the deaths of Jesus and his brother James (who is reported in Christian sources to have been executed in the Temple but this detail is also not mentioned by Josephus). Why wouldn’t he mention this evident reason for his death, especially since he was concerned with documenting the unrest that led to the war? Unlike Ben Ananias who was apparently just a raving madman, Christ’s disturbance apparently caused a disturbance akin to a riot which got him killed rather than just flogged.
Is this evidence that either the Cleansing is an invented event (perhaps as a reference to / commentary on Jeremiah 7:11 and / or deliberately or accidentally based on the Jesus Ben Ananias episode due to its recency, his name, and the looming of the now-destroyed Temple in the gospel-writers’ minds), or that it did happen but the Testimonium Flavianum is an inauthentic forgery written by Christians who didn’t see the Cleansing as important? It’s also bizarre that Josephus would make no comment on Jesus’s messianic pretensions (except by referring to him as “called Christ”) and the role this played in his execution as King of the Jews since this would also be relevant to the political situation of Messiah claimants before and during the war that Josephus documents.
Josephus was an exhaustively comprehensive historian, and if he failed to mention an alleged event that would have normally been important to his accounts, while at the same time mentioning less significant analogous events, it suggests that such alleged event likely didn’t take place. The argument from silence, though not convincing, is nevertheless an article of counter-evidence that should be considered. Evidently, the person who forged the Testimonium Flavianum (an awkwardly-positioned mention of Jesus) also failed to forge the temple disturbance despite it being, by that time, prominently documented in many gospel accounts.
(4996) Crucial theology lacks cohesion
Christianity and other Abrahamic religions lack a cohesion of theological beliefs that should exist if an omnipotent god was involved in the process. Very important doctrines, such as the criteria for successfully obtaining heaven, are ‘all over the map’ even, notably, within the confines of any given denomination. This is the hallmark of human-created theology. The following was taken from:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Antitheism/comments/1gt2qg8/no_consensus_of_crucial_aspects_in_abrahamic/
No consensus of crucial aspects in Abrahamic religions. I don’t See this talked about much so I’d like to start a conversation about it.
I think it is very interesting that among Judeo-Christian belief, some of the most important ideas that are fundamental to the religion, have no general consensus.
I’ll starts with soteriology. The study of salvation. This is quite a large concept when determining how our afterlife is going to go. It would seem to me, that something of this magnitude and importance would not be left up to interpretation by god, but despite its immense role in religion it isn’t well defined. So undefined that we have a whole section of study dedicated to trying to understand what salvation is and how to get it. Within this field there are hundreds of views. If you really try too you could narrow it down to maybe 20 that can encompass the majority of the ideas well enough. Even then there is no great way to know which to be true. There is no consensus within a religious context either. If you asked 100 Christians, even within the same denominations, you would get varying answers depending on their subjective interpretation of the information, with some very confident in their knowing it to be true. This does not even try to rectify inconsistency in a multi denominational religion like Christianity. So how are we properly saved? There is no consensus.
How about heaven and hell. Even an older pew research study shows that 72% of Americans believe in heaven and 58% believe in hell. So roughly half the population has some belief in hell and amongst that using a study from Pew we know the split between catholic and Protestant are split fairly evenly. Among those 58% it’s broken down that this belief mechanism is wildly inconsistent. Ranging from more liberal Christian ideas of separation from god, to Mike winger who has an awful justification video for hell which is almost laughable, to William Kane Craig who believes in Divine command theory and thinks the descriptions in the apocalypse of Peter and the apocalypse of John to be accurate. So who is right? Which one figured it out and has an answer? No consensus.
Let’s get very broad for a moment and just talk about the sheer amount of denominations that are part of Christianity. Again, this is very wild that god would allow such a wide range of discrepancy when this religion dictates eternity, however I digress, there are over 2000 denominations that are recognized worldwide and over 200 in the United States. Each one with its own unique stance on one subject or another. Ranging from small things like if Jesus had a physical or spiritual resurrection, to larger aspects like if Jesus was actually the son of god. Even tiny things such as who agrees about which disciple is considered more accurate or credible. Again, no consensus.
At face value, without any deep dissecting, this general lack of consensus on ideas within the religion makes it dubious and untrustworthy. if there isn’t a clear consensus on crucial aspects it’s just left up to our faculties to discern the truth, which we don’t have a good track record of. Especially considering that the general consensus hasn’t improved over 2000 years. This seems to be an incredibly sad internal defeat of Abrahamic religions. Even the Christian Reddit subs have a Christian vs Christian debate day. It seems to me like as a religious group, they should at least have solid ideas before proselytizing.
If an omnipotent being decided to establish a salvation scheme for humans, the ground rules would have been established supernaturally in a precisely-defined manner, with virtually no resulting confusion. This is the opposite of what happened with Christianity; therefore, it is safe to conclude that, at least with this faith, an omnipotent being was not involved.
(4997) Weaponization of sexual guilt
The church shamelessly demonized the natural human desire for sexual pleasure in order to psychologically enslave its followers into a lifetime of guilt and subservience. The following was taken from:
https://medium.com/@rove.monteux/christianitys-sexual-repression-a409b400b858
Christianity and sex — two things that go together like chalk and cheese. Somewhere along the way, the church decided that desire was the devil’s work and that the only holy thing you could do in bed was pray. If the original message was about love and compassion, it somehow took a detour, landing us with centuries of celibate clergy telling everyone else that a few good shags would land you in eternal hellfire. Welcome to the church’s grand tradition of sexual repression, where anything remotely pleasurable got slapped with a “sinful” label.
The Church’s Original Purity Contract
Let’s start with the obsession over virginity, which became the ultimate virtue somewhere around the Middle Ages. Virginity wasn’t just encouraged; it was idolised to the point of sainthood. They turned the Virgin Mary into the ultimate role model, conveniently forgetting that she, you know, had a child. Every medieval sermon was practically a purity lecture, and the church made it clear: any hint of lust, any whisper of desire, and you’d be on a one-way trip to the fiery pit.
They made chastity sound like the highest calling, ignoring the obvious human reality: people like sex. But instead of acknowledging it as a natural part of life, they twisted it into something inherently sinful. Virginity became a purity contract that no one really signed but everyone was bound by, creating a cycle of shame, denial, and confession. Think of it as the church’s ultimate life hack for keeping people obedient — and too guilty to do much else.
And then there’s the whole vow of celibacy, which somehow morphed from a lifestyle choice into a religious mandate. The church decided that priests, monks, and nuns should abstain from sex altogether, as if denying every human urge would make them closer to God. This was less a call to purity and more like institutionalized self-denial. Essentially, they told their clergy, “If you want to work for us, lock away your libido and throw away the key.”
They probably thought it would lead to spiritual enlightenment, but in reality, it just led to some very frustrated clergy. Putting a lid on human desire is like trying to cork a volcano, and we all know what happened next: the infamous scandals, cover-ups, and centuries of hypocrisy where the church preached one thing and quietly did another.
Here’s the church’s greatest trick: turning sex into a duty, not a pleasure. If you were married, you could have sex strictly for procreation. Anything else? Well, you’d better get on your knees (and not in a fun way) and beg for forgiveness. They made sex a holy obligation for making babies, stripping away any possibility of enjoyment. Pleasure was practically a crime, a dirty little secret that no one was supposed to talk about. Heaven forbid you might actually enjoy yourself for five minutes.
And if you dared to explore anything remotely “unconventional”? That was an express ticket to damnation. Masturbation, homosexuality, premarital sex — each one became its own category of mortal sin, like the Ten Commandments got a kinky addendum. The church was practically policing bedroom behaviour before it even had indoor plumbing. They made sure that sex was something to be ashamed of, and as a result, people grew up with so much repression they couldn’t even look at themselves naked without wondering if they’d catch hell for it.
Confession became a kind of revolving door for anyone with even a hint of a libido. Thought something impure? That’s a sin. Got aroused? Another sin. Basically, you’d have to sprint to the confessional booth every time your hormones so much as blinked. It was the church’s way of keeping everyone in a constant cycle of guilt and repentance. Sin, confess, repent, repeat — like an eternal treadmill of shame.
And let’s be honest: confession was also the church’s way of knowing every naughty detail of people’s private lives. They were running a surveillance operation without even needing a spy agency. You’d confess, and they’d hand down penance, ensuring you stayed ashamed of your own body and desires. They made sure you never quite felt good about yourself, which, coincidentally, kept you coming back for more absolution.
The church’s obsession with sexual purity left a mark that’s still around today. For centuries, people were terrified of their own bodies, ashamed of natural urges, and convinced that even thinking about sex would get them smited. Whole societies grew up with the idea that pleasure was wrong, desire was dangerous, and your own body was a betrayal waiting to happen. It created a culture of shame so ingrained that people couldn’t even talk about sex without cringing.
The church effectively created generations of sexually repressed, guilt-ridden followers, too scared to enjoy themselves and too ashamed to admit it. And all the while, the clergy were pretending to be above it all, while secretly indulging in the very things they condemned. They sold a doctrine of purity that was as impossible as it was unrealistic, and they made damn sure everyone knew that their own bodies were the enemy.
Sexual Repression Became The Church’s Favourite Tool
So, what’s the takeaway here? The church turned sex into a weapon of control, a dirty little secret, and a shameful act all rolled into one. They made it clear: if you want to be holy, you have to repress, deny, and feel bad about it for the rest of your life. They preached chastity and celibacy as virtues, while hiding centuries of hypocrisy behind closed doors. In the end, they didn’t just control people’s beliefs — they controlled their bodies, their desires, and even their thoughts.
And here we are, centuries later, still shaking off the effects of a religion that made pleasure a sin and repression a virtue. Blessed are the repressed, for they shall inherit… well, at this point, maybe just a lifetime of therapy bills.
In the grand scheme of things, the church’s obsession with sexual repression wasn’t just about enforcing purity; it was about power, plain and simple. By taking control of the most fundamental human urge, the church ensured it had a hold on every follower’s mind, body, and soul. Repression became a divine weapon, a way to maintain authority over people’s most private lives, even when they weren’t in the pews. The church knew that if it could make you feel ashamed of yourself — ashamed of your own body — it could keep you obedient, guilty, and forever running back for forgiveness.
So, what did it achieve? Generations lived under the shadow of shame, convinced that natural desires were their path to damnation, while the church cashed in on every confession and every tithe. The result is a legacy of guilt and repression that we’re still trying to shake off — a doctrine that turned sex into something dirty and pleasure into a sin. And in a masterstroke of irony, the very institution that preached restraint often failed to practice what it imposed, creating scandals and hypocrisy that echo to this day.
In the end, the church took humanity’s most basic drive and twisted it into a chain, leaving generations bound by fear and guilt. Blessed are the repressed? More like blessed are the liberated, for they’re finally free from the chains of shame that were, let’s face it, a spiritual scam from the start.
It is unlikely that if there was a god who designed humans with an innate need for sexual pleasure would then turn around and make the exercise of it a sin. But humans with a goal of exercising control over other humans would likely use such a strategy. Christianity’s campaign against sexual pleasure is a sure sign that it is a human-created project.
(4998) Death is the end, no question about it
Religion has fooled people into believing that humans (at least) have a (second) life after they die in some fashion, whether physical or as spirits. This has no basis in anything we know about our bodies, how our brains work, or even simple observations of people who lose their sense of identity while still alive because of brain disease or injury. This idea is so infectious that even some atheists and agnostics often hold out hope of some sort of continuation of consciousness. The following presents a compelling counter-argument, stating that we really do know the answer to this question, but we often choose to fool ourselves:
https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1guvy0e/nobody_knows_for_sure_what_happens_when_we_die_is/
Nobody knows for sure what happens when we die is the biggest lie?
“Absolutely nobody – not a single person on this entire planet – knows what happens when we die”. But really? Even many (most?) of us atheists and agnostics who don’t believe in any life other than this one we are currently living, will often say “I don’t believe there is life after death, but ultimately, I don’t know.” People, even many atheists and agnostics, say it is “unknown”.
But it’s not really unknown, is it?
Isn’t saying things like “we cannot know for sure” or “nobody can possibly know until they die” or “only a fool claims to know for certain what happens when we die” , just things we say so as to keep our options open and to comfort ourselves?
I mean, something we say so as to keep the possibility that there might ….there just might be something beyond this life? And that’s why even many atheists and agnostics say “most likely death is the end of all, but we cannot know for certain”……even those atheists want to keep the possibility that just maybe, just maybe, they are wrong and that there is something after death, alive in their mind??
This is probably going to be wildly controversial, but here is my take: we do know what happens when we die (based on first-hand observational evidence). The heart stops beating. The brain shuts down. Consciousness shuts off. The person who has died is dead. The things that kept them alive and made that person who they were, have ceased to function. They’re….well….dead. Right?
There is nothing to suppose about it, or to hypothesize about it. Nothing to add onto it. Nothing to wonder or imagine. We live in a natural world and we do all of our observations and empirical research and science within that natural world. We make conclusions about our natural world, universe, and biological life based on observational evidence. There is nothing to extend beyond that, if you get what I mean. You’re dealing with imagination beyond that.
No. I am sorry, but death is not unknown. We know that when you die, you….well….die. I think saying it is unknown is not true. And atheists who say that do so because they want to hold out on even a 0.001% chance that maybe even they are wrong. No. It is clear that there is life, and there is also death. The two are different. We know that life is existence and death is not. There is no debate to be had and no mystery to wonder about.
By acknowledging this obvious truth we can dismiss the fanciful promises of religions that suggest that our consciousness will survive death in some form or fashion. No one argues whether a mosquito has an after-life, and except for a more extensive biological structure, humans are in the same boat. Death is final, and that fact is the death knell for any religion that disagrees.
(4999) The CEO analogy
Image that there is a multi-national corporation with offices in almost all the major cities of the world. The current CEO is retiring and a new CEO is taking his place. The new CEO wants to make some major changes in how the corporation is run. So he makes plans to visit the office in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. There, he spends a few days discussing the changes, though he doesn’t offer anything in writing. The workers in the St. Louis office try to remember everything he said, but they are not quite sure about a few things.
The CEO then goes back to the main corporate office and doesn’t visit or communicate with any of the other satellite offices. Those other offices only learn of the CEO visit and the new plans for the corporation when workers from St. Louis travel to their city. After a good measure of time, all of the offices have eventually heard about the CEO visit, but they all end up having a slightly (or majorly) different view of the CEO’s new plans for the corporation. They end up arguing with each other and, during disagreements, even resort to acts of violence. The CEO then punishes employees who fail to entertain and believe in his vision for the company.
This CEO is analogous to God, who sent ‘himself’ (as Jesus) to effectively only one city (Judea), staying only a short time (1-3 years for a 2000+ year mission time), not leaving behind anything tangible such as any written material, and expecting that his ‘message’ will be faithfully delivered world-wide. But just as in the CEO case, God’s message is garbled as it makes its way across time and distance, leaving all of his ‘employees’ uncertain of what he finds to be important.
The CEO in this story easily had the means to deliver a distortion-free message to all of the corporation’s world-wide offices. God (the omnipotent) likewise easily had the power to deliver his message distortion-free worldwide.
In this analogy, the CEO is abjectly incompetent. Likewise, in the story of Christianity, God is abjectly incompetent.
(5000) The many deaths of Peter and Paul
The overall history of First Century Christianity is shrouded in uncertainties so replete that it is impossible to ascertain with any assurance what actually happened- starting with Jesus and throughout the century as occurred with his disciples. Actually, it is even uncertain if Jesus was a real person. In the following, it can be seen that traditions about the deaths of two prominent disciples, Peter and Paul, changed over time:
I recently finished reading David Eastman’s The Many Deaths of Peter and Paul. As I read, I added to a timeline through about 400 CE (Eastman goes beyond that in some cases.)
What would you edit or add here? As it is, this is based just on Eastman. But I know there is possible information (if sometimes indirect) on the deaths of Peter or Paul in Acts, 2 Timothy, and the Gospel of John. If people have citations on those (and a cited date range) I could perhaps add those NT texts to the timeline.
Open to any suggestions or just good discussion and elaboration. The timeline is below.
—
All dates CE.
54-68: Reign of the Roman emperor Nero, the range of time encompassing virtually all attempts in tradition to date the deaths of Peter and Paul.
80-130: The letter known as 1 Clement refers to the deaths of Peter and Paul as distinct events. Paul “bore witness before the rulers,” a possible reference to a Roman death. The location of Peter’s death is not alluded to. They are both said to have died “on account of jealousy and strife.”
100-130: The Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah includes what appears to be a passing reference to Peter being executed by Nero. Paul is not referenced.
100-140: Ignatius of Antioch says that Paul’s martyrdom is a model for his own. He does not mention Peter’s death.
100-140: The Apocalypse of Peter foreshadows in its narrative that Peter will die in Rome.
110-150: Polycarp of Smyrna speaks to the value of following in the example of the suffering of Paul and Ignatius among others. He alludes to “other apostles” but does not highlight Peter.
150-200: The Martyrdom of Peter (within the Acts of Peter) describes Peter being crucified in Rome upside-down “as a proclamation on the fallen state of humanity due to Adam.” Paul is only a minor character, is not in Rome at the time, and is alive after Peter’s death. Peter initially comes into conflict with the authorities because his preaching of chastity causes the prefect Agrippa’s wives to stop having sex with him. Nero is actually angry when he finds out about the execution because he wanted to punish Peter more severely.
150-200: The martyrdom section of the Acts of Paul describes Paul coming into conflict with Nero after raising one of his cupbearers from the dead as a Christian. Paul is decapitated. Peter is never mentioned.
160-200: Dionysus of Corinth says Peter and Paul “suffered martyrdom at the same time,” possibly the first time in the record we see their deaths connected so directly.
160-400: The Muratorian fragment, primarily a list of Christian texts, juxtaposes in passing the martyrdom of Peter in Rome with Paul’s departure of Rome to Spain (Rothschild 2022).
170-190: Irenaeus says the gospels of Mark and Luke were written after the “departures” of Peter and Paul, and connects the two of them to Rome.
200-220: Tertullian mentions that Peter was crucified in Rome, though does not say that it was upside-down. He says Nero was responsible for this and invokes imperial records. He also mentions that Paul was decapitated in Rome.
300-310: Peter of Alexandria mentions Peter’s crucifixion in Rome, again without saying that it was upside-down. He says Paul was decapitated in Rome.
310-320: Lactantius mentions Peter’s crucifixion, does not specify it being upside-down. Paul is also said to have been killed. Both deaths are attributed to Nero, though not necessarily as part of the same series of events.
310-330: Eusebius of Caesarea says Peter was crucified upside-down “as he thought it proper for him to suffer,” possibly the first reference to the idea that Peter requested this more for humility than for theological symbolism.
375-400: The Martyrdom of Blessed Peter the Apostle (Pseudo-Linus) explicitly claims Peter wanted to be crucified upside-down so as to not seem equal to Jesus. Content from Paul’s authentic letters is sometimes repurposed for Peter’s speeches in this text.
380-400: Jerome says in a couple of his writings that Peter and Paul were executed on the same exact day. He dates their deaths to the year 67, roughly 25 years after Peter’s arrival in Rome.
380-410: John Chrysostom makes a number of allusions to the martyrdom of Paul but not that of Peter. He actually claims it was Paul who ran into trouble by convincing the mistress of Nero to stop having sex with him.
We should know for certain what happened to Peter and Paul because an omnipotent god would have had incentive to arm his followers with this certain knowledge. But if this was just an invention of humans, this degree of uncertainty is expected.
Follow this link to #5001