(4851) Massaging Numbers 31

Most Christians profess a belief that the Bible relates actual history, with some admitting that the Garden of Eden and the Flood are probably mythical. But once you get past Genesis, into Exodus and beyond, they will usually claim that the Bible is factual. This runs into trouble in the Book of Numbers, most notably so in Chapter 31 where God orders a massacre of the Midianite people. In the following, a Christian attempts to address this issue in a way that protects his faith in a good god. But anyone on the outside can sense the failure of his effort.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1do5ne0/does_numbers_3140_imply_that_god_demanded_the/

Chapter 31 contains a truly difficult, really horrific scene concerning violence against the Midianites. What happens is that God commands Moses to execute God’s vengeance on them for an earlier incident where the Israelites were induced by the Midianites to worship idols (that happens in Chapter 25). So God sends them to go wreak vengeance on them, which means you gotta kill a lot of people. So Moses, he instructs—apparently by God’s blessing, because nowhere do we read any of this that God disapproves of what Moses said, and Moses is God’s mouthpiece, there’s nothing here about, you know, doing the wrong thing or whatever. But you have Moses tells the people to kill the men, women and children—to wipe them out completely, though with the following exception: don’t kill the virgins girls. The women who aren’t virgins, they were the ones who led the Hebrew men astray to worship other idols.

So kill everyone, just not the virgin girls or young women. They are to be “kept alive for yourselves.” That’s the part, right? Think about what that might mean. After the battle, what happens is the Israelites divide the plunder, the livestock and the people, namely the young virgin woman/girls, and this has caused no little amount of consternation among Bible readers. But let me collapse here, as a way of explaining this, not explaining it away, just dealing with the realities of the Bible. Let me collapse here two of the points I make in a book I wrote several years ago, The Bible Tells Me So, about divine violence. And they’re related points.

1)These are ideological, geopolitical stories, not depictions of actual events. I don’t think the God of the infinite cosmos tells men to keep virgin girls for themselves.

2) Secondly, related to the first, we are reading here how an ancient tribal Iron Age people, the Israelites, how they understood God in their context and their world. God is like a warrior, right? So we’re hearing what their understanding of God in their context, I don’t think we’re getting a take on, “this is what God is like forever and always.” Now I know talking this way can upset or maybe worry some people who are concerned about the Bible’s authority and that means being historically accurate, and if it says God said this or did this, then it means God did it, and fine—I get that. But I wanna turn the tables a little bit. It always surprises me how overly concerned some are to protect biblical inerrancy, but to do that at the expense of God’s character. I’m not gonna get into that whole issue here, that’s a big discussion hermeneutically and theologically. But think about what we’re doing there when we sort of protect these sections of the Bible rather than critique them.

Numbers 31 presents a challenge to Christians who revere the Bible as a factual history while also believing that God is worthy of worship. One or the other has to give- that is, unless one is willing to perform wildly-contorted mental gymnastics to fool themselves. The rest of us will see it for what it is- the massacre did not happen and God is not real.

(4852) Yahweh takes over as other goes die out

Yahweh started out as a regional god of the Jews, but because other gods were under-performing, they lost their immortality and eventually died out, leaving Yahweh as the only remaining god, or so it seems when reading through the Bible. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1dobdk7/would_early_jewishchristians_have_easily_accepted/

At the time of the early Christians Yahweh would’ve likely already have been viewed as god of the whole world. Daniel McClellan in his article The Gods-Complaint: Psalm 82 as a Psalm of Complaint argues that this shift likely happened around the time of the Babylonian exile. As you noted, Yahweh was once seen as a regional deity that was only the god of the Israelites (hence why Naaman took Israelite soil with him to worship Yahweh). This would pose an issue for Jews in captivity as they wondered “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps. 137:4). McClellan argues that to amend this issue Psalm 82 is voiced as a Psalm of complaint in the mouth of Yahweh accusing the other gods of not doing their jobs. Because of this they are stripped of their immortality and Yahweh is made god over the whole earth inheriting all nations. As McClellan puts it, it “is a gods-complaint that facilitated the most important turning point in the history of the conceptualization of the God of Israel (851).”

This would make way for the later “proto-monotheism” we find within the book of Deutero-Isaiah where Yahweh is seen as using the Persian king Cyrus for his own purposes and claiming that there is “no other god but him” and that he causes both “good and calamity,” etc. By the time we get to Jesus this is still the view of Yahweh that they carry and as far as I’m aware there are no post-exilic texts that make reference to Yahweh having limited sovereignty anymore.

This is the easiest apologetic explanation for why the Old Testament testifies to other gods, while the New Testament and current-day Jews and Christians claim that Yahweh is the only god in existence. An outsider, though, can see the scam, and summarily dismiss this foolishness.

(4853) Ten Commandments and U.S. law

An effort by fundamentalist Christians to insert the Bible and Christianity into United States institutions has recently included an push to require the posting of the 10 Commandments in public school classrooms. The following discusses why this movement is fallacious:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1dpy1pe/the_10_commandments_are_not_in_keeping_with/

The 10 Commandments are not in Keeping with American Laws or Values

Christians extol the Ten Commandments without even considering how they could be improved, and improved immensely. Posting them in public schools reveals the desperation they sense when their way of belief is fading fast.

(4854) Uncle Jeff

The concept that people will be able to transfer their lives from earth to heaven, and be recognizable in the familiar forms that we are used to seeing them is a fallacy. First of all, your grandson and grandfather would be the same age? How would that play out? But even more unsettling it that the rough edges of each person’s personality would necessarily be transformed in heaven, leaving the person that you knew on earth unrecognizable. The following bio of ‘Uncle Jeff’ is taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1drfcul/you_are_not_you_in_heaven/

Okay so let’s put it all together with an example. Imagine Uncle Jeff. Uncle Jeff was a Christian and made it to Christian Heaven. While on Earth, Uncle Jeff was a hard-edged military veteran who could be a little standoffish. He was grizzled, scarred, and weathered. He would curse from time to time. He liked playing five finger fillet and going to the blackjack tables. He would rant about conspiracies and pedophiles and “the elite”. He wasn’t super well-educated and wasn’t sophisticated when it came to fashion or culture. He was ruggedly macho. I think by now you can basically picture this man.

But now Uncle Jeff is in Heaven. He looks like a model, dresses like a king, is polite and friendly, is gentle and affectionate, doesn’t curse, doesn’t gamble, doesn’t ramble, has no scars, is smooth and elegant, likes to sing, likes to dance, has nothing but good things to say, and literally knows everything.

I ask you… Is this your Uncle Jeff? Is there anything about this… thing that reminds you of him? Or is this a creepy approximation of Uncle Jeff that would unnerve even the most lionhearted horror aficionado? I say to you, dear reader, that “Uncle Jeff” is long gone and has been replaced by an impostor. A very poor impostor at that.

This is just one more element that the inventors of Christianity failed to take into consideration. There is no way that a reconstructed person can be the same person who lived a flesh and blood life here on earth. We are defined by our times, the circumstances of our lives, the age-differential relationships with our family and friends, our good and bad points, our scars, our fears, and our limited knowledge. Whatever ‘person’ we would be in heaven would not be ‘us.’

Imagine there’s no heaven. It’s easy if you try.

(4855) Counting the gods on the sectarian turnpike

James A. Haught (1932-2023) was an author who wrote many books about religion and atheism. The following was one of his screeds against religious authorities who had the dubious inclination to keep inventing more and more supernatural beings. The following was taken from:

https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2024/06/theres-too-much-evil-and-cruelty-in.html#more

There is another dimension of the Catholic intent-to-fool, in addition to the promise of eternal life. Its saint-business is thriving. Protestant are impressed only by its weirdness.  One of Haught’s recurring themes is the capacity of religions to imagine gods and the many beings that surround them in the spiritual realm:

“Counting the number of gods is difficult. Christianity supposedly has three—father, son and Holy Ghost—but what about Satan? Is he a god? What about the Virgin Mary? If she hovers over humanity, miraculously appearing to the faithful, doesn’t that make her a supernatural spirit? What about angels and demons and the ‘heavenly host’? Are they godlets? What about saints, to whom believers pray? If they exist and receive prayers, they must be supernatural personages. The Catholic Church reveres around 11,000 saints, all canonized upon alleged evidence of miracles. If all 11,000 remain today in the spirit world answering prayers, are they 11,000 semi-gods? If you’re mentally honest, you might see a simple answer: The number of gods and invisible spirits is zero. They’re all figments of the imagination.”

With all of these supernatural beings swirling about in our midst, doesn’t it seem likely- no inevitable– that we’d be witnessing strange and miraculous things happening on a near-daily basis? Haught is correct- we should withhold belief in any of these gods or godlets until and if evidence appears sufficient to demonstrate their existence. Until then, we can assume these beings are nothing more than products of human imagination.

(4856) Condensed guide to why Christianity is false

Sometimes, a quick survey of biblical themes is all that’s needed to CONVINCINGLY demonstrate that Christianity is not true, as it’s supported by nothing more than fantasy literature that conflicts with everything we know about the workings of reality. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1dsquku/what_do_you_believe_is_the_strongest_piece_of/

There is a talking snake, a talking bush, a talking donkey, demonic pigs, an invisible trickster, a god who sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself because of a loophole he made himself, zombies wandering the streets, angels floating down from the sky, a ridiculous story about god wiping out humanity with a flood only to save a creepy old man who gets drunk and naked like a frat boy, magical trees, evil trees, slavery, genocide, nudists who doom humanity by eating a piece of forbidden fruit, misogyny, and a flying zombie carpenter who could save humanity by revealing his zombie self to the whole world but instead only reveals himself to his religious fruitcake friends in a minute geographical area at one of the worst times in history for documenting this godman living amongst us and just hangs out on the beach and does some grilling.

Being omniscient and knowing that if people didn’t believe in this zombie godman they would go to eternal suffering he didn’t think to hang out here with us and for some reason had to get back to his dad which was also himself. I guess he knew Yahweh had some anger management issues and he had to get back. He also didn’t think to personally record the story in the matter in which he would have liked it to be documented. For that matter, he didn’t even think to have the people who actually witnessed this miraculous story to record it. Instead he relied on anonymous Greek authors far removed in both time and proximity to tell the greatest story ever told.

All of this got started by an invisible, unproven, supernatural, war god creating everything out of nothing with magic revealed to us by primitive, evangelical, superstitious, violent, genocidal, heterosexual, homophobic, slave owning, male, mostly anonymous, misogynistic, bronze/iron aged goat herders in an ancient book that cannot be corroborated by any outside sources.

One reason we can thank the people who wrote the Bible is that they made it very easy for any thinking person to realize that they were giving us a fictional story. Because of that, we can confidently shelve the entirety of it and base our lives on science and reason.

(4857) Mixed messaging

One of the intents of the author of the Gospel of John was to make the point that Jesus had resurrected bodily and to prove that to the doubting apostle, Thomas, who was missing from an earlier appearance by Jesus. But having Jesus enter the room without a physical entrance destroys the thematic drama- only a spirit can pass through walls! The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1ds1mqf/actual_new_testament_contradictions_that_cant_be/

The oddest contradiction for me isn’t between different gospels but within the Doubting Thomas pericope in John 20.

Jesus physically appears to the apostles, but Thomas is absent (John 20:19) but the physical Jesus just appeared, though the room was locked, like a 19th Century melodrama, and “showed them his hands and side” (John 20:20).

The rest of the apostles tell Thomas but he’s not convinced (John 20:24) but a week later, in the same locked room Jesus appears to Thomas.

The point of the story is to prove a physical, bodily resurrection with wounds and blood but the room is locked and yet Jesus just appears, exactly the way real bodies can’t and don’t, completely screwing the whole point of the story. Real, physical, corporeal bodies don’t just appear in locked rooms but the point of the story is Jesus’ real, physical, corporeal body is what they are seeing.

There is one logical explanation I can think of. Was resurrected Jesus hiding in a cupboard or under the sofa for a week to impress Thomas?

An internal contradiction caused by awful story telling.

The point of John’s doubting Thomas pericope was Jesus’ physical, real body got up out of the grave and his real, normal, everyday human body was standing right in front of them, wounds and all.

If the storyteller had the physically-resurrected Jesus knock on the door they would have had that. Instead, they chose to make the appearance supernatural, rendering the whole point of the story invalid.

The author dropped the ball on this one. If you are making up a story, at least make it logically consistent with the point you are trying to make.

(5858) Biblical math

Recent efforts in the United States to insert the Bible into public schools has necessitated the creation of biblical math. In the following, some of the earliest example problems are displayed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1dulduq/need_a_list_of_bible_sex/

Biblical Math

Hallelujah! Thank you to my creative friends for all these great Biblical math problems. They’ll really help the Oklahoma school superintendent’s goal of inserting biblical content into math and science! I’ve collected a multitude of the problems into one post for ease of reading:

1. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3). If he lay with one wife or concubine every night, but took off one day per week for rest, how many days would it take him to lay with all of his wives and concubines?
2. David captured the foreskins of 200 Philistines (1 Samuel 18:27). If David split those foreskins into baskets of 40 foreskins each, how many baskets would he need?
3. The prophet Elisha summoned two she-bears to kill 42 children after they mocked him for being bald (2 Kings 2:24) One she-bear mauled twice as many children as the other she-bear. How many kids did each she-bear maul? (Use fractions) (Courtesy of Margo Evans )
4. Jael killed General Sisera by driving a tent peg into his skull. (Judges 4:21) If Jael could hammer 1.5 inch per blow and the peg was 9 inches long, how many blows would she need to drive the peg all the way in? (Courtesy of Julie Brady Murdoch )
5. Moses parted the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21). If he moved the water in the Red Sea at 1,000 cubic liters per second, how long would it take him to part the Hudson River? (Courtesy of Lynn Nesmith)
6. There are 8.7 million animal species on Earth. If Noah took two of each of them onto the ark, how many square cubits of space were required to accommodate all 17.4 million passengers? (Courtesy of Todd Kreisman)
7. Elijah killed 450 prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:40). If it took him one minute to kill each pagan prophet, how long would it take him expressed in hours (Courtesy of James Frese )
8.  Adam and Eve had two sons. One killed the other. So where did all the people come from? (Courtesy of Hilary Dumitrescu )
9.  Jezebel was thrown from a window and died (2 Kings 9:33). If the window was 30 feet high, and she fell at a rate of 16 feet per second squared due to gravity, how many seconds did it take for her to reach the ground? (Use the formula ( s = \frac{1}{2}gt2 ), where ( s ) is the distance, ( g ) is the acceleration due to gravity, and ( t ) is the time in seconds). (Courtesy of Dana Kienzle)

One can only hope that public school math students will learn about the Bible’s spectacularly stupid and farcical nonsense while at the same time they are sharpening their math skills.

(4859) Difficulty in verifying persecution and martyrdom

Christian apologists like to use the alleged persecution and martrydom of Jesus’ disciples and early followers as evidence for the truth of their faith. Why would someone sacrifice their life for a lie? But there doesn’t exist sufficient evidence to make this claim. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1due6nn/what_does_everyone_make_of_candida_mosss_the_myth/

The existence of martyrdom and persecution is also really difficult. It is becoming gradually more accepted that the term “Christianos/Christianus” did not actually come about until much later. Even in spite of criticizing Moss and Brent Shaw, Van der Lans and Bremmer both are forced to come to the conclusion that the term did not come into existence until the late first or second century CE after carefully surveying all of the evidence (here).

Even worse is that we have an astonishingly poor amount of evidence to suggest any of the apostles suffered “martyrdom.” Martyrdom, to have any epistemological value at all, requires that someone (A) be particularly targeted for their beliefs; (B) be threatened with the end of their life, unless (C) they renounce their beliefs; and (D) that they refuse to renounce their beliefs, and are therefore executed in some fashion. They need all of these points because if they are not given a chance to renounce their beliefs, then we do not know how closely and truly they held to them. As such C and D are needed, otherwise it is meaningless.

We have no evidence especially of the most important parts C and D except from one single Roman governor, Pliny the Younger, who never condemned any of the apostles. Even if we accepted the (probably fictional) accounts of Stephen and James the son of Zebedee as historical, these do not satisfy C and D, because they are never offered a chance of renunciation. Similarly, it does not apply to the brother of Jesus (Antiquities 20.200), assuming the Josephus reference is authentic which a growing number of scholars dispute (here and here).

Even more recently, the earliest evidence for the deaths of Peter and Paul has been suggested to actually have been the fault of Christians themselves. David Eastman argues that Christian uproar led to their execution at the hands of the Romans, who were wishing to quell civil disobedience. As a result, Peter and Paul were not executed for their faith, but because of the ruckus of their followers (here). I have taken this one step further and pointed out that all the evidence in 1 Clement 4-6 actually is internally consistent with Christians killing their own leaders. This is the thesis of forthcoming paper of mine in the Journal of Early Christian History (entitled “Murder Among Brothers: The Deaths of Peter and Paul Reconsidered”).

The reality of the situation is that we have very little evidence the apostles suffered martyrdom, and I would argue that there is poor evidence that any Christian suffered targeted persecution in the first century CE at all. So, I, along with many others, hold that Moss’ work is highly valuable and problematizes the entire notion of first century persecution in a variety of ways.

A lack of evidence in this case is significant because if the alleged faith-based persecution had taken place, its documentation would likely have been robust. Civil-based executions would have received less press.

(4860) Paul gives different answer than Jesus

There is a story in the synoptic gospels about a rich man asking Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. The answer that Jesus gives is wholly at odds with what Paul would theoretically give. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1dveo0z/how_accepted_is_the_pauline_christianity_thesis/

This is in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This man comes up to Jesus and he says to Jesus “what do I have to do to have eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16-30, Mark 10:17-22, Luke 18:18-25)

And Jesus has an immediate response. He says “keep the Commandments” … “sell everything and give to the poor and then he’ll have Treasures in Heaven….”

This is this exercise I used to give my students… I would say “okay now, the same person who came up to Jesus, he walks away. He can’t do it. He can’t sell everything. He’s rich. He’s got a lot of money. There’s no way he’s gonna sell everything. So he walks away and he’s kind of upset.”

So I say “so suppose 20 years later Jesus has died, and this person comes up to Paul, the same guy, and he says “teacher, what must I do to have eternal life?”

Does Paul say “keep the commandments?”

No.

Paul’s whole point is that following the Jewish law is not going to make you right with God. You can’t be right with God by following the law. Of course you should keep the commandments, but it’s not going to give you salvation. Paul says “believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus died for your sins. Accept him, and believe in the resurrection, and be baptized, and you’ll be saved.”

Nothing about keeping commandments or selling all your goods.

To be consistent, in the three synoptic tellings of this story, Jesus should have answered, “You must believe that I am the son of God and that you accept me as your savior and the one who will eventually take on the punishment for all of your sins and the sins of the world’ -i.e. nothing about the commandments or divulging wealth. The mismatch between Jesus’ salvation plan and Paul’s is a fatal flaw with Christianity. Jesus’ answer would allow Muslims, Hindus, and atheists a pathway to heaven, whereas Paul’s answer would exclude all of these, sending them straight to hell.

(4861) Sensing what isn’t there

A new theory, termed hagioptasia, recognizes the human tendency to view natural phenomena as having supernatural elements. This all by itself is enough to explain human belief in spirituality in all of its forms as well as the development of thousands of religions. The following was taken from:

https://hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2024/06/23/hagioptasia-the-evolutionary-foundation-of-spiritual-experience/

Spirituality, with its themes of transcendence, sacredness, connection, and the search for meaning, has been a universal feature of human cultures throughout history. My theory of ‘hagioptasia’ offers a new explanation for this enduring phenomenon. Hagioptasia is the natural human tendency to perceive an extraordinary sense of ‘specialness’ in certain people, places, or things (Johnson & Laidler, 2020).

The writer and theologian C.S. Lewis captures this sentiment in The Pilgrim’s Regress, describing a distinct but mysterious longing evoked by ordinary experiences:

“That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.”

Lewis proposed that such desires indicate a connection with a spiritual realm, bolstering his Christian beliefs:

“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists… If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Like Lewis, I pondered these feelings, but my observations led me to a naturalistic explanation. I theorized that this mysterious, abstract sense of ‘specialness’ is not a supernatural calling but an evolved motivational drive. This drive compels us to value certain aspects of our environment and shared social constructs, shaping perceptions and guiding the behaviours of our ancestors in ways that promote social cohesion and survival.

Collaborative research with psychologist Dr. John A. Johnson provided strong support for hagioptasia theory and revealed that most individuals experience this elusive sense of specialness from early childhood. Our findings indicate that hagioptasia shapes both personal and collective perceptions. Individually, people develop unique hagioptasic notions, akin to those described by C.S. Lewis. However, this tendency extends beyond personal experiences; it is also socialised into shared cultural values. Celebrities, status symbols, and religious icons all exemplify how hagioptasia is woven into the fabric of communal life.

In these contexts, hagioptasia evokes powerful emotional responses such as desire, awe, nostalgia, reverence, deference, insecurity, and competitive envy. These emotions play crucial roles in establishing and maintaining social hierarchies and cohesion through shared values. By understanding hagioptasia, we gain insights into the underlying psychological mechanisms that drive these collective behaviours.

Hagioptasia translates easily into spiritual and religious constructs as it predisposes us to seek and recognize concepts of ‘sacredness’ and the supernatural, making religious experiences and spiritual practices emotionally resonant. For instance, in a survey of 2,943 participants, when asked to respond to the statement, “Everyday places or things from my childhood can still hold a ‘magical’ quality for me,” 64% agreed, 18.1% neither agreed nor disagreed, and only 17.8% disagreed. These results highlight the natural human inclination towards perceiving the supernatural in ordinary experiences, as well as illustrating the illusory nature of hagioptasia.

By fostering attachments, imbuing experiences with a sense of the supernatural, enhancing memories, and driving the search for meaning, the influence of hagioptasia can account for all the core aspects of spirituality. As we continue to explore the implications of this theory, hagioptasia promises to provide further insights into the intricate relationship between human evolution, psychology, and culture.

Hagioptasia is conceptualized as a tendency to perceive that certain persons and places are preternaturally “special” and as a desire to participate in that otherworldly specialness when, objectively, there is really nothing unearthly about the person or situation. It explains why humans have created thousands of religions, as well as belief in a myriad of un-scientific phenomena such as deja vu, past life, ghosts, auras, etc.

(4862) Jesus of synoptics versus John

The gospels present two principal descriptions of Jesus, and they are irretrievably contradictory. One image is presented in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the other in John. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1dswjhb/the_jesus_of_synoptics_vs_the_jesus_of_john_two/

As I have discussed in a previous post, the Bible cannot be considered an inerrant text. Each book was written for a particular audience and purpose, shaped by the cultural and theological assumptions of its time. A clear example of this can be seen in the depictions of Jesus found in the synoptic gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke versus that in the Gospel of John.

The synoptic gospels present Jesus firmly as the Jewish Messiah, as can be seen in their consistent references to him as the “King of the Jews”. Their Jesus performs miracles not just to showcase divine power, but specifically to prove that he fulfills the role of Messiah promised in Jewish scripture and tradition. Indeed, many Jewish prophets were said to have displayed miraculous deeds. The synoptics also emphasize Jewish teachings and practices like prayer, purity laws and temple worship. This strongly suggests their intended readers were among early Jewish apocalyptic groups who expected an imminent political and military deliverance by their messiah.

In contrast, the Jesus of John could not be further from the militant messiah figure expected by these Jewish sects. John’s gospel contains very little about Jesus’ Jewish identity or teachings, instead focusing on his divine nature and role. With no miracles meant to prove messianic credentials, John presents Jesus’ works solely as demonstrations of supernatural power. More importantly, John’s Jesus is described using the unmistakable language of a Greco-Roman divinity – he is called the “Son of God”. This echoes the way Greek and Roman myths portrayed demigod heroes conceived by relations between gods and mortals, like Perseus or Hercules.

The evidence clearly indicates the synoptic Jesus was crafted for a Jewish audience anticipating a political savior, while John’s divine, miracle-working Jesus was tailored to better suit the religious sensibilities of gentiles in the polytheistic Greco-Roman world, acquainted with stories of supernatural demigods. Rather than presenting one objective historical Jesus, the gospels offer irreconcilably different portraits, shaped by the theological assumptions and intended readers of their individual authors. This speaks to the Bible as an inspired religious document, not an inerrant historical record. The gospels do not provide a singular, definitive picture of who Jesus was, but rather reflections of how Christians in different times and cultures came to understand him.

Most historians will opine that the three synoptic gospels are more historical than the Gospel of John, (assuming Jesus to have been a real person) simply because they were written earlier and make less spectacular claims. Taken as such, it can be confidently stated that including the Gospel of John in the Bible was a mistake.

(4863) Jesus shouldn’t have revealed heaven or hell

Jesus made a mistake when he (allegedly) revealed the existence of heaven and hell, thereby removing the ability of people to do good for goodness sake rather than a hope for reward or fear of punishment. Yahweh did a good job throughout the period of the Old Testament concealing the presence of these post-life locations, but Jesus ‘let the cat out of the bag.’ The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1dwt1wu/god_shouldnt_have_revealed_the_concept_of_heaven/

God shouldn’t have revealed the concept of Heaven and Hell if he wanted the sincerest results of the test. A social experiment where you know you’ll get a reward if you participate, is useless.

It’s undeniable that a large contingent of people are

• • lured by the concept of an infinite, blissful heaven
  • petrified by the concept of an infinite, torturous hell

Therefore, in order to see who is faithful to God purely based on their devotion to him and not because of selfish reasons, God should have hidden these two things from us while we live our mortal lives. They undeniably influence people’s behaviour, and have lead to religion being more pervasive than it would have been had God hidden these things.

What good does it offer to tell people about Heaven/Hell unless you are trying to appeal to their greed or their fear? It’s a test, after all, right? A social experiment wouldn’t be very useful if the people being filmed knew they’d get $1,000 if they helped the homeless man.

A contention I can predict is “Well, God can see who is doing it sincerely and who’s doing it for personal Greed”, but:

• • Isn’t someone who is doing it to avoid God’s wrath still a believer in God, and working to please God? You wouldn’t punish a child who does the chores just because he is doing them to avoid being punished, and because he isn’t doing them out of the good of his own heart.
  • Couldn’t you use this excuse for any level of revelation? Why did God not send more miracles, or show himself, if it doesn’t matter and he will only reward the “sincere” people anyway?

The greatest good is when someone does something nice without expecting credit. Jesus ruined this for all who came after. Now it’s all about greed and fear, at least among those who buy into this fantasy. This is why it is often stated that an atheist who helps someone is displaying a purer form of altruism.

(4864) More rational to dismiss biblical miracles

A Christian has two choices: either the miracles alleged in Bible happened, but that miracles of that sort no longer occur, or else that the Bible miracles were fictional. Neither position bodes well for the authenticity of Christianity. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1dz5qwk/it_is_far_more_rational_to_believe_that/

It is far more rational to believe that Biblical-style miracles never happened than that they used to happen but don’t anymore.

Miracles are so common in the Bible that they are practically a banality. And not just miracles… MIRACLES. Fish appearing out of nowhere. Sticks turning into snakes. Boats with never-ending interiors. A dirt man. A rib woman. A salt woman. Resurrections aplenty. Talking snakes. Talking donkeys. Talking bushes. The Sun “standing still”. Water hanging around for people to cross. Water turning into Cabernet. Christs ascending into the sky. And, lest we forget, flame-proof Abednegos.

Why would any rational person believe that these things used to happen when they don’t happen today? Yesterday’s big, showy, public miracles have been replaced with anecdotes that happen behind closed doors, ambiguous medical outcomes, and demons who are camera-shy. So unless God plans on bringing back the good stuff, the skeptic is in a far more sensible position. “Sticks used to turn into snakes. They don’t anymore… but they used to.” That’s you. That’s what you sound like.

Christianity would be on more solid ground if:

– Biblical miracles did occur and miracles of the same type still occur today, or

– Biblical miracles didn’t occur and any fictional accounts of such are not discussed in the Bible

Neither condition applies, and Christianity’s authenticity is thereby damaged.

(4865) Trinity doctrine is illogical

Christianity is largely based on the assumption that God is composed of three ‘persons’- the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. At the same time, it is claimed that Christianity is a monotheistic religion. The following essay explains why this argument is illogical:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1dzgtd0/christianity_is_not_a_logical_religion/

Christianity, is fundamentally based on the belief in one God in three persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. This doctrine, known as the Trinity, is central to Christian theology. However, the concept of the Trinity presents significant logical challenges. The logical legitimacy of the Trinity creates arguments and contradictions that arise when examining this doctrine from a rational standpoint.

The Trinity is the Christian doctrine that defines God as three distinct persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who are each fully God, yet there is only one God. This concept is encapsulated in the term “Godhead,” which refers to the unity of the divine nature shared by the three persons. However, trying to understand how three distinct persons can constitute one God poses a significant threat to the reliability and logic of the trinity.

The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father; yet, all three are co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial. Is this not confusing?

Argument number one: how can Christianity claim to be a monotheistic religion when there are clearly 3 versions of God?

Let’s break it down:

1. Identity and Distinction:

• • The first logical challenge is the simultaneous identity and distinction of the three persons. In traditional logic, if A equals B and B equals C, then A must equal C. However, in the Trinity, the Father is fully God, the Son is fully God, and the Holy Spirit is fully God, but the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit. This defies the transitive property of equality, suggesting a form of identity that is both one and many simultaneously. The Trinity is intended to uphold monotheism, but it appears to present a form of tritheism (belief in three Gods). Each person of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is fully God, yet Christianity maintains that there is only one God. This claim is not logically consistent with the traditional understanding of singular identity.

2. Unity and Plurality:

• • The concept of one essence shared by three distinct persons introduces a paradox of unity and plurality. Monotheism asserts the existence of one God, while the Trinity seems to imply a form of plurality within that singularity. This raises the question: how can one God exist as three distinct persons without becoming three gods? This contradiction is not aligned with the foundational principle of monotheism, as the distinction between the persons could imply a division in the divine essence.

3. Divine Attributes:

• • Traditional attributes of God include omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. If each person of the Trinity possesses these attributes fully, then each should be omnipresent. However, during the incarnation, Jesus (the Son) was not omnipresent as He was confined to a human body. This creates a limitation that contradicts the divine attribute of omnipresence. How can the Son be fully God, possessing all divine attributes, while simultaneously being limited in His human form? If Jesus limited His divine attributes, during His time on earth, it suggests that He did not fully embody the qualities of God in a conventional sense. This limitation is not logical about the completeness of His divinity during His incarnation as a human. How can Jesus be fully God (according to the hypostatic union) if He is limited?

A key component of the Trinity is the belief that Jesus is both fully God and fully human. This dual nature is known as the hypostatic union. According to Christian theology, Jesus, the Son, limited some of His divine attributes, such as omnipresence, during His incarnation to fully experience human life. This limitation raises questions about whether Jesus retained His divine qualities during His earthly life.

Central to Christianity is the belief in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Christians hold that Jesus’ human body died on the cross, but His divine nature remained intact. The resurrection is viewed as a triumph over death, demonstrating Jesus’ divine power. However, this belief is a big contradiction: if Jesus is fully divine and divine beings cannot die, how could Jesus, as God, experience death?

Argument number two: Jesus cannot be God based on logic

Let’s do another breakdown:

1. Mortality and Immortality:

• • If Jesus is fully divine, He possesses the attribute of immortality. Divine beings, by definition, cannot die. The death of Jesus’ human body suggests a separation or limitation that contradicts His divine nature. If Jesus’ divine nature remained intact while His human body died, this introduces a dualism that complicates the understanding of His unified personhood.

2. Resurrection as proof of divinity:

• • The resurrection is seen as proof of Jesus’ divinity and victory over death. However, the need for resurrection implies a prior state of death, which seems incompatible with the nature of a divine, immortal being. This cycle of death and resurrection challenges the logical coherence of Jesus being fully divine. The resurrection also implies that God willingly called for his own death, which makes no logical sense when you consider the qualities of God, he cannot commit actions which produce paradoxes, because the actions are invalid to his nature.

3. The hypostatic union’s logical contradiction: I’ll recycle my previous post on this- here is my summary:

Is the body of Jesus God? Yes —> then Jesus’ body died, and divine beings cannot die. A logical fallacy/ paradox is reached which disproves the logical legitimacy of the trinitarian theory. Therefore, Jesus was definitely not God based on the laws of logic and rationality.

Is the body of Jesus God? No —> then God did not limit himself to human form. If Jesus claims to be both fully human and fully God (hypostatic union), then its body is divine. Jesus’ body IS divine (Based on Christian belief) and so by claiming it is not, means that you do not think God limited himself into human.

General conclusion (TL:DR)

From a strictly logical standpoint, the doctrine of the Trinity and the associated beliefs about Jesus’ nature and resurrection present significant challenges to logic, by demonstrating numerous contradictions.

These issues arise from attempting to reconcile the divine and human aspects of Jesus, the unity and distinction within the Trinity, and the fundamental attributes of divinity.

While these theological concepts are central to Christian faith, they defy conventional logical categories and require a leap of faith to accept the mysteries they present. For those, who prioritize logical consistency, these contradictions are a barrier to the legitimacy of the Christian faith.

Christianity is not logical, blind faith in something that produces logical fallacy is also not logical, but is not something inherently wrong. All I am arguing is that Christianity is not logical, because the faith’s core belief system in God is flawed. Blind faith may be something to reconsider after you delve into the logical aspects of Christianity.

Any attempt to approach this conundrum in a logical fashion is discouraged by Christian leaders, who instead invite their congregants to surrender to the concept of mysterious ways (God’s ways are above our ways), and thereby end all critical thought. There is no admission to the obvious- the designers of Christianity fumbled badly and invented an unrecoverable contradiction that undermines their theology.

(4866) Evolving Out of Eden

In his book Evolving Out of Eden, author Robert Price discusses the theological chaos that the theory of evolution has caused Christianity. All of the solutions land in trouble. The following was taken from:

https://medium.com/excommunications/science-vs-biblical-theology-3b02476e18a7

Evolving out of Eden is one of many of Robert M. Price’s books. I have read five or six of them, but his book Evolving out of Eden is one I read three times as it is so interesting and clever, full of many details and thoughtful nuance that sets it far apart from others dealing with theological approaches to science in general and evolution in particular.

Dr. Price is a former Baptist minister and Seminary Professor with PhDs in both New Testament and Systematic Theology and is now an atheist. He is a much acclaimed scholar and was a member of the Jesus Project. He co-authored this book with Edwin A. Suominen, an engineer who together bring out keen insights and rebuttals that only their combined fields of expertise could.

Spoiler alert: The book and the article agree on many things, especially that there is a serious problem with reconciling the very foundation of Christianity involving the doctrine of original sin and the fall of man with the scientific evidence of evolution. After all, it is that doctrine that the New Testament, especially Paul in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 uses to declare the need for a savior. While many Christians completely ignore the reality of this, over a dozen different ideas and proposals have been made by Christian Theologians and Apologists in an attempt to find a unified and plausible interpretation of the Genesis creation account to reconcile this dilemma with fact based evolution. The above passages from Paul, along with verses in Matthew, Mark, Luke, 1 Timothy, Acts, and even a quote by Jesus Himself makes this task very difficult. Dr. Price says, maybe impossible.

The book in over 300 pages, analyzes dozens of scriptures, quotes numerous sources, and employs an entertaining use of wit and polite sarcasm for a little humor along the way, but with serious and scholarly discussion being its main theme.

At the same time, the editors at Christianity Today have acknowledged the reality that science has in a multitude of ways made the theory of evolution undeniable and that the vital doctrine of the Christian faith rests upon original sin and the fall of man needing a savior. The New Testament, especially the apostle Paul, makes that clear many times in no uncertain terms.

That belief is hinged and has always been based on the understanding that Adam and Eve were historical individuals and were not only the first humans on earth, but prior to them being created supernaturally, the world had never experienced death or suffering. It even taught that animals and insects never died or ate each other before sin entered the world.

A few key points that Evolving out of Eden makes, with many pages of detail for most, are:

*If any part of the Bible that seems to read as an actual historical account is determined that it now cannot be taken literally, it truly opens up Pandora’s box. The Exodus, Noah’s Flood, the Tower of Babel, are just several of the stories in the Bible with major historical and scientific problems, some being outright debunked. That makes it an impossibility to know what is and what is not true.

*Shows how the New Testament writers clearly believed that the Genesis account was a literal and historical fact, thus raising the obvious question of how a perfect and all-knowing God could have possibly inspired it. If one has to pick and choose what they accept and do not accept regarding what is true, in essence, they are making their own Bible.

*It discusses why in the author views, that most of the rules of hermeneutics are little more than attempts to make problems with the text vanish into thin air. As in any strongly held preconceived idea, there ALWAYS has to be an explanation for any difficulty that may surface.

*It discusses the reality of cognitive dissonance and childhood indoctrination. Simply speaking, they help explain how easy it is for smart and sincere people to hold two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes at the same time.

*Christianity can and will survive, but if it is to be based on truth and have credibility for the educated mass, some traditional and cherished doctrines will need to be revised, especially given the resources available today to fact check things, unlike just several decades ago.

Interspersed with the academic content are personal anecdotes from both authors, sharing their transitions from faith to a more secular worldview. These stories add a human element to the intellectual debate as does the 13-page detailed article in Christianity Today and its editorial entitled “No Adam, No Eve, No Gospel.”

Christianity should have ended when biological evolution became a fact of science. Attempts to keep it alive have been disingenuous. The anti-intellectual counter arguments deserve ridicule rather than respect.

(4867) Seventh Commandment isn’t what Christians think

The Seventh Commandment, Thou Shalt not Commit Adultery, is a staple of evangelical Christians, used as a hammer to force men to be celibate until marriage and then have sex solely with their wives thereafter. However, this commandment doesn’t really do any of that. The following was taken from:

Playboy Magazine, The Playboy Philosophy, Part 24, December 1965, p. 83

In our society, adultery is considered a more serious sin than fornication; this is reflected in our state statues, which tend to treat adultery as a more serious crime. The legal distinction between adultery and fornication is not a clear or precise one, however, and what is defined as adultery in some states is considered fornication in others.[note that this was written almost 60 years ago, when state sex laws were very different from today]

The difficulty in defining adultery goes back to its religious-legal origins. Adultery is the only sexual act seemingly significant enough to be included in the Ten Commandments, but the adultery condemned in the Old Testament was quite different from the meaning we give the word today. The original Hebrew injunction against adultery was not a matter of sex morality- it related to the protection of family property rights, inheritance, and lineage. As Reverend William Graham Cole, Chaplain and Assistant Professor of Biblical Literature and Religion at Smith College, Chairman of the Department of Religion at William’s College, and current president of Lake Forrest College, states in his book Sex in Christianity and Psychoanalysis: “There is a stern prohibition against adultery in the Law, but this springs from the concern about the seed, the family line. That this is not anti-sexual is demonstrated by the glaring absence of any ban on fornication, an omission which embarrassed later Christians of puritanical hue…”

And G. Rattray Taylor writes in Sex in History: “It must be understood that in this period, just as in Rome and Greece, adultery was a property offense and meant infringing the rights of another man. It did not mean that a man should restrict his attentions to his wife; indeed, when a wife proved barren, she would often give one of her handmaidens to her husband that she might bear children for him. Moreover, as the Bible often reminds us, men were free to maintain mistresses…in addition to their wives, and on the number of wives a man might have there was no restriction.”

The Bible’s relevance to today is limited by the fact that societal norms were very different 2000+ years ago. The Seventh Commandment, if taken in its proper context, should be seen as archaic and irrelevant in today’s world. So…God should give an update to his ‘perfect’ message to humankind…(key in Jeopardy! music)…we’re still waiting.

(4868) Interpolation in 2 Corinthians

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians was tampered with. Bolded below is scripture that exists as 2 Corinthians 6:14 -7:1. Note the flow of the text if this section is removed:

2 Corinthians 6:11 – 7:4

We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange—I speak as to my children—open wide your hearts also.

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

“I will live with them

and walk among them,

and I will be their God,

and they will be my people.”

Therefore,

“Come out from them

and be separate,

says the Lord.

Touch no unclean thing,

and I will receive you.”

And,

“I will be a Father to you,

and you will be my sons and daughters,

says the Lord Almighty.”

Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.

Make room for us in your hearts. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have exploited no one. I do not say this to condemn you; I have said before that you have such a place in our hearts that we would live or die with you. I have spoken to you with great frankness; I take great pride in you. I am greatly encouraged; in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds.

The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1e1pplu/is_2_corinthians_61471_an_interpolation/

Many scholars think that 6:14-7:1 is coming from a different source than what’s before or after it, but it may just be a different letter of Paul’s to the Corinthians since many scholars think that 2 Corinthians is a composite of several letters. Here’s Ehrman on why 2 Corinthians is most likely a composite and here he discusses a composite of how many letters and specifically addresses 6:14-7:1.

Does the paragraph found in 6:14–7:1 seem odd in its context? The verse immediately preceding it (6:13) urges the Corinthians to be open to Paul, as does the verse immediately following it (7:2). But the paragraph itself is on an entirely different and unannounced topic: Christians should not associate with nonbelievers. Moreover, there are aspects of this passage that appear unlike anything Paul himself says anywhere else in his writings. Nowhere else, for example, does he call the Devil “Beliar” (v. 15). Has this passage come from some other piece of correspondence (possibly one that Paul didn’t write) and been inserted in the midst of Paul’s warm admonition to the Corinthians to think kindly of him?

Any interpolation of what is purported to be ‘holy scripture,’ allegedly dictated remotely by God himself, lends suspicion to that claim. The case above is yet one of many of this type. Interpolations and translation errors should not occur in a text that represents a message to humanity from an omnipotent god.

(4869) Revisiting the Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments have recently been in the news in the United States as Christians have tried to legislate their posting in public school classrooms. At such a time it is instructive to revisit them and to show how easy it is to make commandments that are vastly more effective. The following was taken from:

https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2024/07/its-time-to-let-go-of-defective.html#more

I was a teenager in 1956 when the film, The Ten Commandments, was released. I saw it at the cinema in my small town in rural Indiana. I was stunned to see the fiery finger of god—looking a lot like lightning—blast the words of the laws onto the stone tablets. “Yes, that’s the way it must have happened.” Many years later, when I was engaged in serious Bible study, my naivete and gullibility had vanished. I realized that these famous ten commandments don’t set the high standard we had supposed.

There is far too much that is missing

For example, these seven commandments would have been good guides for human well-being and progress:

1.     Thou shall not go to war, tribe against tribe, nation against nation. War is an abomination to the Lord Your God.

2.     Thou shall not own slaves. Slavery is an abomination to the Lord Your God. (What an embarrassment, by the way, that the last commandment forbids coveting someone else’s slaves.]

3.    Thou shall not discriminate against women: they must be treated as the equals of men, always being accorded full dignity and respect.

4.    Thou shalt not despise or abuse other human beings because of the color of their skin. Racism is an abomination to the Lord Your God.

5.    The clergy must not molest, rape, or abuse children—and the clergy hierarchy must not cover up such crimes. Abuse of children is an abomination to the Lord Your God.

6.    Some men love men, some women love women. That’s the way they were created. Get over it: don’t hate, despise, or mistreat them. To do so in an abomination to the Lord Your God.

7.    Thou shalt not practice human sacrifice. It is an abomination to the Lord Your God.

Devout believers may strenuously object to some or all of these prohibitions, but secular ethicists have figured out that humanity would be in a better place if these seven items (at the very least) were not missing from this famous law code.

The first three commandments are unnecessary

The commandments at the top of the list are a waste of space. They are about the divine ego: this god is boasting, “Look how great I am.” They do nothing to improve the human condition. It is commonly assumed that the first commandment is based on the belief that other gods don’t exist (“You shall have no other gods before/beside me”), but that was not at all the assumption at the time. Francesca Stavrakopoulou has pointed out, in her book, God: An Anatomy,

“As one of many deities in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Levant, Yahweh was originally a god rooted within a polytheistic world—and remained comfortably so for much of his early career. This was a world in which the gods were imagined as a sprawling heavenly household, broadly reflecting the family bonds and social structures of their human worshipers.” (pp. 18-19, Kindle)

Moreover, there is unjustified bragging here. This god claims to be the one “…who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” But in Genesis 15:13, this god broke some grim news to Abraham: “Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years…” What kind of good, caring god would allow his chosen people to be held in slavery for four centuries?

The second commandment forbids the making of idols or graven images, because these amounted to competitor gods; they were worshiped as real deities—and Yahweh couldn’t  tolerate that. It’s a common assumption in Christian belief that god is invisible, but even the devout want to see visual evidence for their god. Hence the popularity of stained glass, statuary, relics (surviving fragments of saints), and bread and wine that miraculously turn into the real flesh and blood of Jesus. For Catholics, that is; for Protestants, communion is symbolic. Catholics also claim that the Virgin Mary has made countless appearances to the faithful—and they have created larger-than-life idols of her to make her seem very real. The Trinity isn’t good enough for Catholics: they have god-in-four persons, which includes their Queen of Heaven.

Such devices are used to help make god seem real, but they are ways of circumventing the prohibition of idols and graven images. By the way, in public displays of the Ten Commandments, they are usually abbreviated; that is, the long version does not appear. Thus god’s vindictiveness stated in the second commandment goes unnoticed; Yahweh claims that he will punish “the children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me.” Which is truly nasty.

The third commandment also reflects this god’s fragile ego: “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Yahweh your God, for the Yahweh will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.” How many devout believers today even know what their god’s name was—well, aside from members of the Jehovah’s Witness cult? Add different vowels and you get Yahweh. Magical thinking is so obviously present here: god’s name had magical powers, and you’re risking a lot to misuse these powers.

The Commandments get better…sort of

The fourth commandment has something of value. Was this the beginning of the concept of the weekend? This god ordered people to rest one day a week, based on the story that god had wrapped up creation in six days, and had to take it easy on the seventh. But a loving god is missing here. In Numbers 15 we find the story of a man caught picking up sticks on the sabbath, and the verdict was harsh: “Then Yahweh said to Moses, ‘The man must surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.’ So, as Yahweh commanded Moses, all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him with stones, and he died.” (Numbers 15:35-36)

Of course, this commandment is undermined by its fantasy thinking about creation. Aggressive and arrogant ignorance are firmly in place when devout champions of the Ten Commandments ignore what we now know about how our planet, solar system, and galaxy were formed. A six-day creation is the most naïve mythology imaginable.

It’s a good thing that two days off work per week has become a standard. But millions of people who believe in a Sabbath—whether it’s Saturday or Sunday—go to work on those days, e.g., people who keep trains, planes, busses and subways running; police and firefighters, hospital and restaurant employees. We have moved beyond the ancient superstition that they should be stoned to death.

The fifth commandment needs major revision: “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you.” There are many people who have abusive, neglectful parents; hence they shrug off this commandment; it is viewed as an insult. So this commandment should have a different beginning: “Parents: love, nurture, encourage, care infinitely for your children. Surround them with everything they need to become good adults.” And then: “Children: Honor your father and your mother.” The nationalistic motivation can also be dropped, i.e., “…so that your days may be long in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you.” No: be good parents worthy of honor because it’s the right thing to do.

The next four commandments appear in other ancient law codes; that is, it wasn’t hard for societies to figure out that there’s more peace and stability when these standards of conduct are in place:

·      You shall not murder [or kill].
·      You shall not commit adultery.
·      You shall not steal.
·      You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Of course, it’s all too common that these prohibitions are ignored. But it’s good to have them as reminders of ideal behavior. However, beware of cult fanatics who can ruin even good commandments. The author who created Jesus-script in the Sermon on the Mount imagined that Jesus disapproved of sexual arousal: “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28) Why is such stridency necessary or helpful?

The last commandment is not a bad one either:

·      You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Major demerits—as I mentioned earlier—for accepting slavery as normative. Envying your neighbor’s possessions is not good if it leads to theft or resentment. But we have to concede that coveting is the very foundation of the modern consumer economy: we see stuff and we want it. I don’t watch TV very much—and when I do, I have the mute button ready to silence the commercials. These encourage viewers to covet cars, appliances—and hundreds of other gadgets and experiences. Rarely do folks tune in to the fact that coveting is presented as an ideal behavior in a consumer-driven economy. The tenth commandment does not apply!

The Ten Commandments used by Christians are not even the ‘official’ commandments of the Old Testament (See the last paragraph of #9 on this list). Further, they are outdated (example: #4867 on this list). Finally, as shown above, it is beyond easy to make better ones that would be much more effective, inspirational, and empowering. But Christians mindlessly extol an inferior product.

(4870) Not-so-Intelligent Designer

A book authored by Abby Hafer, The Not-So-Intelligent Designer: Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not, should be viewed as the final stake in the death throes of intelligent design. And once that happens, it becomes very difficult to shoehorn Christianity into a reality that includes the messy, mindless, inexorable process of biological evolution. The following presents a review of this book:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28936532-the-not-so-intelligent-designer

Why do men’s testicles hang outside the body? Why does our appendix sometimes explode and kill us? And who does the Designer like better, anyway–us or squid? These and other questions are addressed in The Not-So-Intelligent Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not. Dr. Abby Hafer argues that the human body has many faulty design features that would never have been the choice of an intelligent creator. She also points out that there are other animals that got better body parts, which makes the Designer look a bit strange; discusses the history and politics of Intelligent Design and creationism; reveals animals that shouldn’t exist according to Intelligent Design; and disposes of the idea of irreducible complexity. Her points are illustrated with pictures, wit, and erudition.” Where has this book been all my life? This work by Dr. Hafer systematically overturns the arguments of the intelligent design movement with wit and plain language.

As a pastor, I appreciate Hafer’s contribution to clarity in our public discourse, both scientific and political. Her intention may be to restore science to its rightful place, but she has also done the faith community a favor, liberating it from a silly and unnecessary controversy.”–Julia Tipton Rendon, Crossroads United Church of Christ, Indianola, IA” For an adequate account of the world, we must take a sober look at life as it really is. Hafer shows that things are a whole lot messier and makeshift than what some intelligent design theories would incline us to believe.

This book has the potential not only to alter the political terrain in wars over evolution and creationism but also to prompt believers like me to rethink how we should talk about God as Creator.”–Thomas Jay Oord, author of Divine Grace and Emerging Creation “I’ve been dreaming of a politically edgy treatment of intelligent design and here it is at last. Abby Hafer is acutely intelligent and wonderfully witty. Read this book and laugh your way to clarity and wisdom.”–Wesley J. Wildman, Boston University, Boston, MA” Three cheers for Abby Hafer! She did it and no one thought it could be done! She wrote a devastating critique of intelligent design that is clear, funny, scientifically accurate, and charming. Her book is a marvel of how popular science should be written. Oh, were there more scientific writers like Abby . . . “–Michael Martin, Boston University, Boston, MA”A delightful exploration of the quirks of our bodies that make biology so much fun, evolution so fascinating, life so explicable, and intelligent design creationism so preposterous.”–Steven Pinker, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA” The Not-So-Intelligent Designer is a much-needed work in an America where anti-intellectualism is rampant and, shockingly, even candidates for high office frequently reject evolution.

Abby Hafer has that rare ability to communicate complex scientific ideas in understandable terms for non-scientists, and this book is sure to enlighten many.”–David Niose, author of Fighting Back the Right” Hafer’s book is a valuable contribution to debunking the claims of intelligent design and the notion of one or more gods intervening in the physics and biology of the real world. She writes in an engaging style that entertains as well as informs. I enthusiastically recommend it.”–Ellery Schempp, Brown University, Providence, RI Dr. Abby Hafer has a doctorate in zoology from Oxford University. She is a Senior Lecturer who teaches human anatomy and physiology at Curry College.

It is clearly obvious that humans came about only by chance and not by design. This in its own right implies that Christianity is false (it relies on the idea that humans were the special design of a god).

(4871) Plagiarism in Mark’s long ending

It has been conventional wisdom that the original author of Mark ended his book at what is now Verse 16:8 and that another person or persons added additional verses to the ending. In the following it is conjectured that the additional verses (9-20) were added after the books of Matthew, Luke, and John were written- and that portions of those gospels were retrofitted back into Mark’s gospel:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1e3agz2/lukan_prominence_in_the_longer_ending_of_mark/

I was wondering about the composition of the longer ending of Mark (LE). Specifically, I was curious if any of the other gospels could be identified as a source. After comparing LE to the tomb and post-resurrection appearance accounts in the other gospels, what seems to me is that the LE is drawing mainly from Luke-Acts, with potentially some smaller details from John and Matthew.

Similarities with Luke-Acts:

• • Jesus having cast out seven demons from Mary Magdalene
  • the disciples generally (not some or only one, as in Matthew or Luke) doubt the first resurrection appearance
  • A two sentence summary of what appears to be the road to Emmaus story, found elsewhere only in Luke
  • Jesus admonishing all of the disciples for their unbelief
  • A list of “signs” (casting out demons, speaking in tongues, protection from snakes, protection from poison, healing the sick). All but the fourth appear in Acts, if I’m not mistaken
  • The Ascension, present in Luke and Acts (and mentioned in several epistles, which I haven’t looked closely at)

John:

• • Jesus appearing first to Mary Magdalene only, instead of two or three or an unnumbered group of women
  • John’s forgiveness/retention of sins language seems similar to Mark 16:16

Matthew:

• • A form of the great commission appears in Mark 16:15 (also a loose parallel with Luke 24:47)
  • Mark 16:16 mentions salvation for “the one who believes and is baptized”, similar to the great commission in Matthew 28:19 calling for baptizing the nations

Another small note I’d like to make is on 16:9. The author does a strange thing twice; they re-establish the day on which Jesus was resurrected, and they (re-)establish who Mary Magdalene is in relation to Jesus. This would make me think that the LE wasn’t originally intended to be directly included into the original Mark text where those pieces of information are already present. Instead, I’m envisioning the author writing their own ending using their available sources and that text ended up being preserved alongside and eventually into the original Mark text. Something like that makes it easier for me to see an author’s desire to include those bits of “establishing” material to orient the reader/hearer.

This sort of manipulation by rogue authors devalues the authenticity of the gospels and reveals them to an imperfect effort of fallible humans- exactly what you would not expect in a text purported to convey a message from an omnipotent god.

(4872) Deliberate mistranslation

Christian scholars were deceptive in the manner in which they translated scriptural Greek to English. The following is a good example where they tried to conceal the existence of another god who appears to counter Yahweh:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1e5dzh4/as_a_greek_myself_who_understands_some_degree_of/

As a Greek myself, who understands some degree of the ancient Greek language, some parts of the new testament have been mistranslated on purpose to hide the true words of Jesus even on the existence of a whole new deity you may have never heard before.

For example,

John 8:44 44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

In ancient greek

44 ὑμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ διαβόλου ἐστέ, καὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας τοῦ πατρὸς ὑμῶν θέλετε ποιεῖν. ἐκεῖνος ἀνθρωποκτόνος ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς καὶ ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ οὐχ ἕστηκεν, ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν ἀλήθεια ἐν αὐτῷ· ὅταν λαλῇ τὸ ψεῦδος, ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων λαλεῖ, ὅτι ψεύστης ἐστὶ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ.

I don’t even know from where to start, the mistranslation is so deceitful the it hides the existence of new whole deity, you may never heard. The mistranslation occurs even on bible books written on modern Greek

First “error” You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. (English)

ὑμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ διαβόλου ἐστέ, καὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας τοῦ πατρὸς ὑμῶν θέλετε ποιεῖν. (Andient Greek)

Correct translation – You belong to the father of the devil and you want to carry your father’s desires.

Second “error” for he is a liar and the father of lies. (English)

ὅτι ψεύστης ἐστὶ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ. (Ancient Greek)

Correct translation – for that his father is also a liar

So, Jesus was talking about the father of the devil. But, who is the father of the devil, who was also a murderer from the beginning? (because the devil, as we know, in the beginning he was an angel, not a murdurer).

Why are they trying to hide the existence of the “spiritual” father of the devil?

Is he maybe the true ruler of the Darkness? The ruler of the matrix or the dark universe we are currently trapped in?

Is he the complete opposite of the God (who represents Light)?

Is he the Anti-God?

Is he the Yin? And Yang is the God?

I am giving you some food for thought.

Deceptive translation should cause any Christian great consternation. When biblical texts are massaged and altered to be consistent with a certain theological outlook, it destroys any veneer of authenticity. The Bible is full of such manipulation.

(4873) Unanswered prayer bingo

Prayers don’t work. They have no influence on outcomes other than psychological issues (placebo effect) that might be attached to the person saying them. But Christians shield themselves from this realization by rationalizing why certain prayers go unanswered. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1e59z7g/why_your_prayers_were_not_answered/

Why your prayers were not answered

The last thing that a Christian will think when confronted with an unanswered prayer is that their belief system might be in error. Blind faith in lieu of tested faith is a recipe for delusion. If Christianity is true, it should score well when it is tested. The lack of any discernible efficacy of prayer is perhaps the most salient proof against its veracity.

(4874) Anonymous gospels made them susceptible to tampering

Not only do the gospels lose credibility by failing to identify who wrote them and the sources they used, but their anonymous status made subsequent copiers feel more freely about modifying them. If the author wasn’t identified, then a copier would feel more entitled to make a change to the text, knowing that it would not be challenged by the identified author. This fact lends even greater suspicion on the final gospel texts that have survived. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1e6gx8s/did_the_anonymity_of_the_gospels_mark_them_as/

In Candida Moss’ book God’s Ghostwriters, about the contribution of literate slaves to early Christianity, she asserts that the anonymity of the Gospels would have marked them as low-status literature.

“The anonymous format was itself seen as low-status. In the Principate, authorless texts lacked social status and authority; just as is the case today, any statement without an author was inadmissible in a Roman court…. In the first century, a period when authorship came to be synonymous with elite singular authorship, unattributed texts like the Gospels were the literary equivalent of the invisible workers who coproduced so much elite literature. In the minds of elites, these works lacked status, origins, and authority over themselves, and as such they were especially susceptible to revision and alteration. Notwithstanding the disruptive power of anonymity, the story of Jesus spread in a format that elites called “unmastered” and was seen by them as “slavish.”” (p. 63)

A footnote cites two sources:

Annette Yoshiko Reed, “ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ: Orality, Textuality, and the Christian Truth in Irenaeus’ Adversus haereses,” Vigiliae Christianae 56:1 (January 2002): 11-46;

Tom Geue, Author Unknown: The Power of Anonymity in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019)

This problem could have been easily avoided if the omnipotent god had made sure that the authors of the gospels had identified themselves and if the originals were still in existence.

(4875) Christianity and the art of self-deception

The following essay describes how belief in Christianity involves a large measure of self-deception. Unlike most areas of human knowledge, which encourages being open to all avenues of evidence, Christianity, and religion in general, does the opposite- it forces one to think within the confines of indisputable doctrine.

https://medium.com/deconstructing-christianity/the-worst-parts-of-being-a-christian-1-living-with-a-constrained-worldview-0710b7fe7534

Imagine this for a moment: you’ve become a conservative Protestant as an adult. You’ll naturally want to associate with other conservative Protestants who share your newfound faith. One thing you’ll find is that if you want to fit in, you must suppress some of the things you’ve learned during your life about the world and about history. Because you’ve grown up outside the faith, you can see things that are invisible to those raised within the faith. If you let yourself think about some of those things while you are at church, you might say something that would distress the people around you.

For example, take the news. You may have heard about Jim Jones, ordained in the Disciples of Christ. Or David Koresh’s Seventh-Day Adventist splinter group. Or Christians killing abortion workers in the name of God in the 1990s. Maybe a couple of famous televangelists who made the news committing spectacular crimes, crimes that other Christians then worked hard to cover up. There are news reports of declining church attendance. If you followed events outside the US, you may have heard about abuses by Christian leaders in Africa, Asia, or South America. The global United Methodist denomination has been in the news these last few years — something about homosexuals.

If you see yourself as part of a global community of believers, you will be surprised at how invisible these other believers are to the people around you now. And it’s not just Christians in the news who no longer seem to exist. Even the Christians in the church down the street from your church must now become invisible to you if you want to fit in. Your particular church has become the entire Christian world.

As you spend more time with your new-found brothers and sisters in the Lord, you will find that you need to let go of some of the history you may have picked up before you became a Christian. When Israel is discussed, you will need to forget about Christianity’s 2000-year history of antisemitism, going back to the New Testament. When Jesus’ work on the cross is discussed, you will need to forget that Christianity existed for 1500 years without the doctrine Protestants now teach to explain it. Forget that Protestants once set up nighttime visits to the neighborhood Catholic church to smash religious art. The Christianity you now belong to has no past. The way it is now is the way it always has been.

This can create internal tension for you. There are two easy solutions: (1) let go of your integrity and pretend to go along with this constrained worldview when you are around other Christians, or (2) just give up and stop trying to think coherently at all.

You can see why people who were taught Christianity as children don’t have these problems. When you are completely surrounded by one worldview you don’t really realize there is any other view possible. The first clue that your parents and your church know they haven’t told you the full truth may not come until it’s time to leave home. Suddenly there is a panic that you will “fall away”.

This problem is most serious for those who go into the ministry. As part of their training, they learn at least a little about church history and the Bible. But when they take on leadership roles in the church, they can’t risk letting on what they know. Their followers expect sermons framed in the constrained worldview.

So you’ve just become a conservative Christian. The people in the pews around you don’t see themselves as part of a global body of Christ with a 2000-year history. And you can’t be sure if your pastor actually believes the misleading things he says or if he is just keeping the congregation who pays him happy. Dealing with this tension is one of the worst parts of being a Christian.

Insular thinking is the hallmark of a belief system that is so poorly-evidenced that its survival is dependent on people turning off their normal levels of curiosity. The fact that most Christians know very little about denominations other than their own or about any other religions is a testament to how their minds are corralled by opportunistic church leaders who need their ignorant subservience to feed their lifestyles.

(4876) Bible’s missed opportunity

If the Bible was inspired by God, an infinite intelligence, then it could have delivered impressive details related to science and history. But it didn’t. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1e7z7qs/the_bible_isnt_supposed_to_be_a_science_book_but/

When you point out scientific or historical discrepancies in the Bible, such as the creation story and the Ark & the Flood, often than not, Christians will often say that the Bible is not a scientific book, and it’s okay that it contains so many impossible scenarios and miracles. Not everything has to be interpreted literally, right?

But here’s the thing. Let’s say the Bible described the age of the Earth in accurate detail. Not only that, but it described every step it took for our planet to be the way it is today. It mentioned tectonic plates, weather predictions, you know it. That would be, at the VERY least, phenomenal. Christians from all over the world would use such passages to confirm their faith. I mean, why wouldn’t they? A book so old that accurately got every detail of the history of Earth right? That would give even more strength to Christianity, basically confirming it’s authenticity. No one would dare to say these stories aren’t literal.

Now back to the actual Bible we have. Tell me why a God, who is supposed to know all, would choose to write down so many stories that simply cannot go along with reality. Not only that, most historical and scientific sources put such stories in doubt. “Well, the Bible was written by men commanded by God, but they still had flaws”… Then don’t make them do such job. We’re talking about a book that will influence billions of people, a whole religion. This book needed to be perfect, like God. So part of me doesn’t get that.

This book was written by men, and men only.

Christian apologists skirt around this issue but they should be required to confront it head on. Why would a god fail to deliver any knowledge beyond what humans already possessed while inspiring biblical authors? After all, at the time of authorship, it was clearly meant to be a guide for at least 20 centuries into the future.

(4877) Selective skepticism

Christian apologists regularly attempt to massage difficult biblical passages to make them seem more palatable to modern sensibilities while not entertaining the same process with their ‘bread and butter’ verses. This is hypocritical. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1e95xj2/just_a_rant_about_selective_skepticism/

I know this isn’t intentional for religious people but holy fuck it can come across as disingenuous and annoying when they selectively apply a standard of critical thinking.

• • Jesus is the Son of the God – because it says so in these passages in the Bible
  • He was born of a virgin mother – because it says so in these passage in the Bible
  • He died and came back to life – because it says so in these passages.
  • Gay people should be stoned to death? Yeah, actually that bit is a mistranslation, it probably didn’t really mean that.
  • God ordered the killing of all the Amalekites – well, the language used there is probably hyperbolic. God is all-loving so he wouldn’t really do that.
  • The Bible condones slavery – well, you need to understand it in the cultural context. the term “slave” could also be understood metaphorically, representing total devotion and service to God.

I see this selective skepticism all the time and often I feel like people are not even aware they’re employing it. If you want to suggest that certain elements are exaggerated, hyperbolic, or just outright incorrect due to generations of being mistranslated then you need to apply this standard to all of the Bible (or any Holy Book for that matter) in order to be consistent. Perhaps Jesus came back to life ‘metaphorically’. Perhaps that was all hyperbole. Perhaps the words were mistranslated. Perhaps there was also an agenda to portray Jesus as more divine than he actually was because the Isrealites were extremely religiously repressed and so nothing should be taken as literal. just MAYBE.

From what I’ve seen, this line of critical thinking only rears its head to address parts of the Bible that Christians don’t particularly like or want to be true. Everything else they are happy to take the Bible’s literal word on. It’s also a lot more difficult than it should be to make them understand this. Anyway, just wanted to get that off my chest around people who won’t downvote me into oblivion for speaking common sense.

If you read a book and think automatically that everything that appeals to you is true, while those things that trouble you are somehow not quite what they seem to mean- then you are exercising selective skepticism, and this leads to an artificial sense of certainty that the book is true. This is how virtually all Christians approach the Bible.

(4878) Christological contradiction

The Bible includes verses implying that Jesus co-existed eternally with the Father, and therefore is 1/3 of the Trinity, but there exist other verses that deny this claim, and suggest that Jesus was adopted as God’s son at his conception, birth, or baptism. Either way, this is a major contradiction concerning the theology of Jesus. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1e8nogq/christological_contradictions_in_the_new_testament/

There are verses in the New Testament that undoubtedly imply that Jesus is the eternal Son of God. Hebrews 1:10 identifies Jesus as Yahweh by quoting Psalm 102:24-25, and John 17:5 says that Jesus shared the glory of the Father before the world existed.

Hebrews 1:10; “And: “You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands.”

Psalm 102:24-25; “24 I said, “O my God, Do not take me away in the midst of my days; Your years are throughout all generations. 25 Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands.”

John 17:5; “And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”

However, there are other verses that teach Adoptionism, the doctrine that Jesus became the Son of God at a certain point in his life, either at the resurrection or when he ascended to heaven.

The verses that lead me to this conclusion are the following:

Matthew 28:18; “And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.”

How can Jesus be given “all authority” if he’s an eternal divine person?

John 5:22; “or the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son,”

In the very midst of talking about how he is equal to God, and how everyone should honor him as they honor God, he says that the Father gave all judgement to him. Didn’t he have it from all eternity?

Acts 2:36; “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”

How can Jesus be made “Lord and Christ” if he is already “Christ the Lord” shortly after he was born in Luke 2:11 (For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.)

Acts 10:42; “And He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead.”

Like John 5:22, if Jesus was ordained to be the final Judge, how can he be an eternal divine person? How can he be a fully divine person while missing divine attributes?

Acts 13:33; “God has fulfilled this for us their children, in that He has raised up Jesus. As it is also written in the second Psalm: ‘You are My Son, today I have begotten You.’”

Here’ Paul says that the day of Jesus’ resurrection was the day that Jesus became the Son of God, and that is consistent with what Paul later says in the following verse.

Romans 1:4; “and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.”

The original Greek word (ὁρισθέντος) that is translated as “declared” by most English Bible Translations, is only translated as such once.

When I was a Christian, this verse troubled me because of its theological implication, and I wanted to look into the meaning of this verse, so I looked up the instances of where this word and its variants were used in the New Testament, on the Biblehub website (https://biblehub.com/greek/oristhentos_3724.htm). The word and its other variants are mostly translated as “determined”, and other times they’re translated as “appoint/ordain”.

This means that everytime this word is translated from Greek, it’s translated as “determined” or “appointed / ordained”, except in Romans 1:4.

Then, I looked up a few sites and online dictionaries to read the definition of the original root word, ὁρίζω, and they consistently say that it means: to determine, to designate, to ordain, and to appoint. It is never defined as “declare”, as the ancient Greek word for “declare” is δηλόω (https://biblehub.com/greek/1213.htm).

Philippians 2:9; “Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name,”

How can Jesus be given what is already his, unless he wasn’t always God? If Paul said “God restored to him the name”, it would’ve been theologically better, as it would be consistent with saying that Jesus “emptied himself and took the form of a servant” two verses earlier.

Hebrews 1:2;  “(God) has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;”

What does it means “appointed heir of all things”, if Jesus is eternally divine?

Ch. 1, v. 4; “having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.”

Same question from Philippians 2:9, how can he obtain something he already had?

Ch. 1, v. 5; “For to which of the angels did He ever say: “You are My Son, today I have begotten You”? And again: “I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son”?”

How can the eternal Son of God become the Son of God at a point in time? How can God the Father say that he will become the Father of Jesus if Jesus is already his Son?

Conclusion:

These are all the verses in the New Testament that I know of, that teach the doctrine of Adoptionism. I should say again that there are other verses that teach the traditional Christian doctrine of Jesus’ divinity, that he’s always God, but my point is that the Bible teaches both doctrines, the supposed orthodox doctrine and the heretical one, and as such, it even contradicts itself on Christological issues.

The divine characteristics of Jesus would be well-defined and consistent throughout the Bible if Christianity is true. That is, Yahweh would have made sure of it. On the other hand, since Bible authors disagreed on Jesus’ credentials, it is a sign that they were writing without divine inspiration

(4879) Deconstructing resurrection belief

The following essay demonstrates the weakness of Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus:

https://lutherwasnotbornagaincom.wordpress.com/2024/07/17/best-method-to-defeat-evangelical-apologists/

Apologists claim that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is very strong. Is it? We need look no further than the Christian Scriptures to determine how strong the evidence really was at the time. Saul of Tarsus had access to all the evidence for the Resurrection for three years. He had access to the Empty Tomb (if it existed), the Twelve, the family of Jesus, the Roman guards, the  Temple priests, and the crowd who witnessed three hours of darkness. He even had access to the  “many” dead saints shaken out of their graves and back to life by a great earthquake! As an agent of the Sanhedrin, he had access to all the alleged 500+ eyewitnesses, if he could catch them.  According to the Christian Scriptures, Saul tortured and interrogated many of them.

Yet with all this evidence, Saul did not believe in the Resurrection. Really? Dozens if not hundreds  of dead saints were “raised to life” out of their graves on that first Easter Sunday, but Saul still doubted? Was he an idiot? It took a “heavenly vision” three years later to finally convince him. What about the rest of Jerusalem’s Jews? Thousands greeted Jesus on Palm Sunday as the new King of Israel, but according to the Book of Acts, only 120 of them were still followers of “The  Way” on the morning of Pentecost. So even the Christian Scriptures provide evidence that the overwhelming majority of the people of Jerusalem were not impressed by the evidence for the Resurrection. Why? Were most first century Jews idiots? Many Christian apologists say there is  another, more sinister, reason why most Jews did not believe. They quote Paul in Acts 28: Jews are a calloused, hard-hearted people who have closed their eyes and ears to the truth. That is why most of them did not, and still do not today, believe the Resurrection evidence. (They are evil.) God has therefore turned his back on the Jews and offered salvation to the Gentiles. Gentiles will believe the (strong) evidence.  

Ok… But what about the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims, Hindus, and other non Christian theists do not believe the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus? No public university history textbook on planet earth lists the resurrection of Jesus as an historical fact. Is everyone calloused and hard-hearted against Christianity’s “strong evidence”? Is that why all non Christians, Jews and Gentiles, do not believe in the historicity of the Resurrection?

“Yes! Non-believers are blinded to the evidence by their sin,” declare many online evangelical pastors and apologists. “Unbelievers will never see the overwhelming strength of the evidence for the Resurrection until they first repent and accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior.” Wow. If that is the case, dear evangelicals, why do your apologists spend hours arguing with skeptics about  historical evidence?? Why not just confront the skeptic with his sin and urge him to repent? Why pretend that evidence will ever change the skeptic’s calloused mind?

This is why skeptics should not debate evangelical Christians regarding the historical evidence for the Resurrection. It is a waste of everyone’s time. The real issue everyone should focus on is the evangelical belief: “The Testimony of the Holy Spirit”. All Christians believe that the spirit of Jesus  (“the Holy Spirit”) dwells (lives) inside each true Christian. However, evangelicals take it a step  further. Evangelicals believe that they can perceive Jesus’ presence within them and that Jesus’s spirit, living within them, communicates with them in a non-audible voice, giving them life guidance on a daily basis. Evangelicals believe they can feel the presence of Jesus inside their bodies! So, when debating an evangelical Christian apologist, the first question you should always ask is:

1. Do you perceive the presence of the resurrected Jesus dwelling within you?  

They will not like this question. But the truth is, evangelical Christians love to talk about their perception of the presence of Jesus within them. They love to talk about it because this perception of an inner presence gives them incredible happiness, peace, security, and comfort. They love to talk about it…with fellow believers! Just look at their websites and Facebook pages. However, they do not like to discuss this subject with non-believers. They know it makes them look like complete loons. So, if an evangelical apologist denies perceiving the inner presence of Christ, look up his or her website or Facebook page and verify. If you find that he boasts to fellow believers of the peace  and comfort the presence of Christ gives him, proceed with the following questions:

2. If your answer is yes, please describe how Jesus “testifies to your spirit”. Can you perceive or feel his presence within you? Does he communicate with you in an audible or inaudible voice?  Does he provide you with insight, wisdom, and life guidance? If you say, no, please clarify (Do NOT let them avoid answering this question): You, as an evangelical Christian, publicly deny perceiving the indwelling presence of Jesus Christ within you? I refer to this as “the Simon Peter test”. 

3. If you perceive the spirit of Christ dwelling within you, do you believe that this internal  testimony of the resurrected Jesus within you is strong evidence of his resurrection? Evangelical apologists will not like this question, either. They now see the corner they are backing  into. If their answer is, no, ask them: Are you saying that the inner testimony of the spirit of the  resurrected Jesus is weak and unconvincing? They are betraying their Faith if they say, yes.

4. Now provide evidence that the perception of the inner presence of the resurrected Jesus creates an insurmountable bias regarding the historical evidence for the Resurrection: In their arguments for the historicity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, evangelical apologists often appeal  to consensus expert opinion for claims which support the Resurrection, such as: a.) the historicity  of Jesus of Nazareth, b.) the belief by Jesus’ disciples that he appeared to them postmortem in some fashion, and c.) the conversion of Saul of Tarsus due to an alleged postmortem appearance of Jesus.

These are referred to as “The Minimal Facts”. Most (non-mythicist) skeptics and counter-apologists accept these three claims as fact because they accept consensus expert opinion on all issues.  

Do you, dear evangelical apologist, accept consensus expert opinion on all issues? For instance, do you accept overwhelming consensus expert opinion that Darwinian evolution is a fact; that humans and great apes are descended from the same ape-like ancestor; that the universe is 13.8  billion years old and the earth is 4.5 billion years old? (Most evangelicals do not.) If not, why do you use consensus expert opinion to support the historicity of the Resurrection? Isn’t that hypocritical?  Doesn’t that indicate a bias?

5. More evidence of bias: Evangelical apologists also frequently appeal to majority expert opinion, specifically, regarding the historicity of the Empty Tomb. Do you accept majority expert opinion on all issues? If you do, then you accept that the Gospels were not written by the traditional authors  Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, nor by any eyewitness, nor by the associates of any eyewitness. You agree because this is the majority expert opinion of most Catholic and mainstream Protestant  scholars on the authorship of the Gospels. The minority of scholars, which consists almost entirely of evangelicals and fundamentalist Protestants, believes that eyewitnesses and associates of  eyewitnesses did write the Gospels, making these documents eyewitness accounts, and therefore, historically reliable sources of information. Why do evangelical apologists reject the majority  opinion of the same group of experts on the authorship of the Gospels that they turn around and  quote for the historicity of the Empty Tomb? Doesn’t that indicate a bias?

6. Saul/Paul only believed after experiencing a “heavenly vision” of a talking, blinding, bright  light. Are “visions” of bright lights reliable sources of truth? Should we believe Constantine’s vision  of 324 CE claiming to see a giant bright light in the sky in the form of a cross? He claimed his soldiers also saw it. Really? Alleged sightings of talking bright lights and crosses are not reliable sources of information to most modern, educated people. Hysterical, superstitious people claim to  see bizarre things all the time! And bizarre conversions from one belief system or religion to another  happen all the time too. Paul’s odd conversion proves nothing. And since we cannot confirm that  the Appearance Stories in the Gospels are eyewitness accounts, it is entirely possible that these postmortem sightings too involved bright lights. The Gospel authors added a touchable, broiled fish-eating body to make the story more interesting and convincing. If an educated rabbi and an emperor of Rome (and his troops) can see bright lights and believe them to be an appearance of a divine being or a sign from a divine being, why couldn’t groups of illiterate Galilean fishermen and peasants see bright lights and come to the same conclusion?? The evidence is clear: the “resurrected Jesus sightings” may very well have only involved delusions and/or illusions involving bright lights! 

7. If you believe that you can perceive the presence of the resurrected Jesus within you, and that the inner testimony of his spirit is very strong, no one is going to believe you when you claim that this perception does not influence your view of the evidence for the Resurrection! 

No way. Your selectivity in using consensus and majority expert opinion only when it supports your position on this issue is absolute proof.

Conclusion: Evangelical apologists claim that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is very strong, as strong if not stronger than the evidence for any other major event in Antiquity. But no one who believes that Caesar crossed the Rubicon believes that the spirit of Caesar dwells within him, testifying to him of the historicity of the Rubicon crossing in a still, small voice! For evangelicals to claim that they can objectively evaluate the historical evidence for Jesus’ alleged bodily  resurrection is ludicrous. They are hopelessly biased by the delusion that the ghost of the man in question lives within them.

Belief that a spirit (ghost) lives inside you, dear Christian, is a delusion. It is nothing more than an ancient superstition. Superstitions are for children, not adults.

Evangelicals for the most part are good, kind-hearted people but their delusion of a ghost living  inside them, a ghost who gives them life guidance on every facet of life, including politics and social issues, is dangerous for our society and the world. We must do all we can to help our evangelical friends and neighbors see that their invisible best friend, whom they believe lives inside them and communicates with them, is no more real than the imaginary friend of a lonely child. Jesus is dead, friends. Ghosts are not real.

Dear Evangelical apologist:

1. You believe the ghost of the man whose resurrection is in question lives inside you, communicating with you in a still, small voice.

2. You appeal to consensus expert opinion only when it supports your worldview (e.g., the historicity of Jesus) and reject it when it doesn’t (e.g., Darwinian evolution).

How can you expect us to believe that you are capable of objectively evaluating the historical evidence for the Resurrection when the perceived ghost inside of you is given more credence than consensus expert opinion? Don’t these two facts strongly indicate that you are hopelessly biased?

I am trying to help you see the folly of your superstitions, my friend.  You are indoctrinating little children and gullible adults to believe in capricious ghouls who punish people for what they believe.  Thought crimes!  You threaten children with eternal torture simply for what they believe.  How horrific. Yet, the “evidence” for your belief system is the perceived presence of an invisible, inaudible ghost living inside of you.  You have no objective evidence that the spirit (ghost) of Jesus lives inside of you.  None. A small child who has invented an imaginary friend reports the same subjective feelings of comfort and security.  Please see the light of reason and rational thinking.

Religion and rational thinking rarely combine. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus is a lower-order function of the human brain.

(4880) Inventing spirits to mask ignorance

Human brains evolved to ask questions without having the means to answer them correctly. So they made up things as a placeholder until the right answers could be found. This seems to be the fundamental basis for the existence of religions. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1ebgz3q/i_have_the_feeling_people_made_up_religion_so/

Humans have evolved the ability to solve problems by visualizing the results of our actions and then to alter those actions to optimize the results. We do this better than any other species on the planet. We are so good at creating solutions that we will do this even when there really isn’t enough valid information available to determine the correct answer.

In other words, if we don’t know, we make shit up.

Now contemplate a primitive paleolithic human that is surrounded by a world full of things they do not understand. They don’t know why sometimes the snow falls and sometimes it doesn’t. They don’t know why sometimes the thunder booms and sometimes it doesn’t. They don’t know why sometimes a baby grows and becomes a person and sometimes they die as infants. And, darn near everything in their world is trying to kill them.

It should come as no surprise that the solution the primitive humans came up with involved magical spirits that created and controlled their world. This is why the earliest concepts of religions were typically pagan & animistic, then became more & more complex over thousands of years.

The evolution of religions in the world reflects the evolution of society and the increasing knowledge of humans. Religions became more sophisticated as humans became more sophisticated. If a religion were being created today it would include, for example, care for the environment, no corporal punishment for children, ethical treatment of animals, acceptance of homosexuality, and the fact of biological evolution. Ancient religions missed all of these ideals.

(4881) Jesus’ baptism likely fabricated

The gospels all point to the fact that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, but there are good reasons to conjecture that his event was made up to advance Jesus’ credentials while covering up the truth that both Jesus and John the Baptist were in direct competition, until the Baptist was executed. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1ebd0dk/is_it_possible_that_jesuss_association_with_john/

I would argue that there are plenty of reasons for why an association with John the Baptist (I will call him JTB) would (A) be invented, and (B) even if it wasn’t, we could not know because our sources are defective.

To start with (A):

We have fairly solid evidence that in the post-Temple destruction environment that the early Christians/Jesus movement were in direct competition with the John the Baptist movement in various places. Evidence of this is firstly tacitly found in the Gospel of John which tries to downplay JTB. In gJohn 1:8, there is the outright statement denying that JTB is the “light.” Additionally, they use JTB as a mouthpiece to say that JTB was lesser than Jesus (1:11) and then explicitly have to deny his messianic status (1:19). I think this is probably a tacit acknowledgement that some of the followers of JTB had decided that he was in fact the Messiah and we see this belief reflected later in the Pseudo-Clementine, Recognitiones 1.54.8. Personally, I would argue that if we can use Mandaean sources to reconstruct the Baptist movement, we can definitely use the far earlier Recognitiones. But that is a side issue. Regardless, we seem to have multiple sources that record a belief that JTB was the messiah.

Additionally, another issue is that in Acts 19:1-6, Paul manages to come across followers of JTB who had never heard of Jesus. This seems completely implausible to me if Jesus had been part of the movement, and further had attempted to take it over or usurp it, I am not sure how this is even plausible. Except, that there were people in the times of Luke-Acts’ composition who had not heard of Jesus, pointing to a potential lack of overlap.

Regardless, all of these do paint a very fruitful battleground for early Christians and the JTB movement to be in conflict with each other. If you have two rival movements, both of whom claim that their “founders” were the messiah, then that is also the prime place for polemics and fabricated stories to start popping up. Now what would be an effective way of trying to coopt the JTB movement for Jesus? Well, concocting a story that the messiah must be anointed by Elijah, and that JTB was Elijah, and that the baptism served as a symbolic anointing of Jesus (as we know that it did in the eyes of Christians, see Smith and Lioy). Mark invents the story to with Jesus taking over the movement after John’s death. This does two things. Firstly, it dismantles JTB’s claim to messianic status, and secondly, it establishes that the JTB followers are the real traitors, as they failed to abandon the true messiah, Jesus. Additionally, John was very popular, so Jesus receiving his anointing/baptism would grant street cred. From there, all the other additional elements of the story are just fabrications upon fabrications.

As for (B):

The arguments to validate the baptism as being historical are all logically faulty. The primary argument is the criterion of embarrassment: i.e., Christians wouldn’t invent something embarrassing about Jesus like implying he was sinful and needed baptism for the remission of sins. This is based on multiple unjustified assumptions. Firstly, the only sources that show clear embarrassment are Matthew and Luke. Both of which are embarrassed not at historical tradition, but at Mark’s narrative. Their embarrassment, is therefore, useless unless we can demonstrate they had a clearly independent source for the baptism. Which they did not, they copy Mark’s narrative.

John may show embarrassment, or may not. As Will Arnal notes, if John is independent of the Synoptics he may simply attest to a narrative that never had a baptism. In fact, if independent the only thing he gives multiple attestation for is the obviously unhistorical spirit-dove bit. If John is reliant on the Synoptics, then he is just reacting to them, and so his embarrassment is once again meaningless.

The big problem is that Mark shows no embarrassment. So, the argument only works if we presume no Christian would invent a story of a Jesus needing forgiveness from sin. However, this is based on the faulty and unjustified assumption that all first century Christians believed that Jesus was without sin. Here’s a challenge for you: find me a single passage in gMark that says Jesus was sinless prior to baptism. Hint, there are none. So the argument does not work, there is no actual data to demonstrate Mark held to this belief.

Thus, as far as I can see, there is no methodologically legitimate way to say the baptism was historical, and I have not yet been given any satisfactory answer on this. Again, I’m waiting for Dr. McGrath’s book before making final judgments, but so far Jesus scholars have been uncompelling at justifying this “fact” about Jesus methodologically in my opinion.

The gospels are anything but history, demonstrated over and over again by their implausibilities and contractions with each other. The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist was likely an event invented by the author of Mark to demonstrate Jesus’ superiority to John the Baptist, who at that time was still held in higher esteem by many.

(4882) Christians don’t realize they disagree with Jesus

Modern Christians have evolved an ethos that is highly divergent from the themes expressed by Jesus in the gospels. How this could happen with each of them allegedly being inspired by the Holy Spirit is difficult to explain other than concluding they are chasing a fantasy. The following was taken from:

https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2024/07/christians-dont-realize-how-much-they.html#more

It would be easy to come up with a couple dozen Jesus quotes from the gospels, and run them by devout church-goers, claiming that a crazy street preacher just said them. The devout would agree, “Wow, what a nut job!” If we then admitted that they are all Jesus quotes, most of these believers (but not all) would not give up on their lord and savior. They’d run to their clergy for explanations. Adoration of their idealized Jesus is so deeply embedded that accepting any negatives cannot be tolerated. Thus has the church survived—and, of course, failure to read/study the gospels has helped. There is staggering ignorance of the Jesus story. Don’t believe me? Just ask a Christian friend to describe the difference between the Jesus in Mark’s gospel and the Jesus in John’s gospel.

“Wow, what a nut job!” is indeed an appropriate reaction to so much of the Jesus-script we find in the gospels. Maybe it’s for that very reason that believers aren’t so fond of Bible study. When I was working on my 2021 book, Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught, I reread the gospels thoroughly, carefully—and arrived at a list of 292 Jesus quotes that qualify as bad, mediocre, and alarming. I divided them into four categories: (1) preaching about the end times, (2) scary extremism, (2) bad advice and bad theology, and (4) the unreal Jesus of John’s gospel.

It’s the scary extremism that would most likely give Christians the creeps. This can also be called cult fanaticism. Cult leaders commonly claim to be in direct contact with their gods, they demand total loyalty and sacrifice for their version of the divine. Total loyalty includes abandoning family, hence we find this Jesus saying in Luke 18:29-30: “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not get back very much more in this age and in the age to come eternal life.”

Just ponder that for a while. It’s okay to leave house and family in order to somehow achieve the kingdom of God? —because you’ll gain “very much more” while you’re alive—and you’ll get eternal life as part of the bargain. How does that possibly make sense? Do you know many Christians who would leave their houses and families “for the sake of the kingdom”? And what does it mean to “get back very much more”? Children to replace those you left?

We find more fanaticism about the kingdom of God in Luke 9:59-62:

“To another he said, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’”

Even when I came across this text as a kid, I thought it was rude. But “fitness” for the kingdom of God was a key obsession of the author of Luke’s gospel, whose primary goal was advancing and protecting the early Jesus cult. His fanaticism reached its high point in Luke 14. In this chapter Jesus tells the famous parable of the Great Banquet. All of the invitees back out at the last minute, so the host gave this command to his servant: “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” (Luke 14:21) The message is clear: no matter your social status, you are welcome in our cult. You don’t have to be wealthy or famous. However, divided loyalties will not be tolerated, thus we find the infamous verse, Luke 14:26: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

I was once chatting with a Catholic woman who was raving about her church, and her wonderful lord and savior Jesus. I asked her how she felt about Luke 14:26, and quoted it to her. She flew into a rage for telling such a horrible lie—there could be no such verse. I would give her an F in Bible study, but her priests would be pleased. There are other Christians who will say, “Well, Jesus couldn’t have meant that” —based on what they’ve been taught about Jesus. My reply: If you can assure me that you are an expert in ancient Aramaic, the language of Jesus, and in the Greek of the gospels; and if you can assure me you have a way of getting inside the head of a guy who lived a couple of thousand years ago—then we can discuss your interpretation of this verse. You might also want to read Hector Avalos’ 39-page chapter on this verse in his book, The Bad Jesus: The Ethics of New Testament Ethics. He makes the case that his verse—with the Greek word for hate right there—means exactly what it seems to mean. And, by the way, help us understand why the author of Luke’s gospel reported that Jesus said this. Was he lying? It would seem the Luke’s author was trying to increase the severity of Matthew 10:37: “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” Family takes a hit in the preceding verses, Matthew 10:34-36:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword. 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, and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.”

There is too much brutality elsewhere in quotes attributed to Jesus, e.g., Matthew 12:36, “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter…” Also, Mark 16:16: “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved, but the one who does not believe will be condemned.” Both of these verses are marks of cult fanaticism.

Christians should certainly be distressed at these grim sayings attributed to Jesus, but they are happy to ignore, brush aside, other benign advice that Jesus gave—as in the Sermon on the Mount.

Is this the way most Christians deal with everyday life:

Matthew 7:39-42: “…Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”

And how can Christians approve of pension plans?

Matthew 6:19:20: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

Earlier I quoted Mark 16:16, i.e. those who don’t believe will be condemned. This text is in the long ending of Mark that was tacked on to the gospel later, vv. 9-20: it doesn’t appear in the earliest versions of the gospel. But whoever wrote it was confident he knew what Jesus had said. But he too—as much as the author of the gospel itself—was pushing the agenda of the cult. Hence we get this very strange Jesus-script, Mark 16:17-18: “And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

“Using my name” is a mark of magical thinking: by pronouncing the Jesus name—casting a spell—wonders can be accomplished. How do churchgoers today rate themselves on these items? The Vatican maintains a staff of trained exorcists—no doubt skeptical that ordinary Christians can cast out demons. There are fundamentalist sects that speak in tongues, yelling gibberish while jumping about, and there are snake-handling cults as well; occasionally we hear that one of the preachers has died of snakebite. The power to drink poison and remain unharmed didn’t work all that well for the Jim Jones cult. Nor are there hordes of devout Christians showing up at hospitals to heal the sick by the laying on of hands.

I have been writing for this blog since 2016, and I often come back to the topic of the bad things Jesus taught. It is possible to use a wide variety of philosophical and theological arguments to falsify Christianity; but the great irony is that the gospels, with so much truly dreadful Jesus-script, undermine all efforts to take the Jesus-cult—and the church built upon it—seriously.

Does anybody know a way to get churchgoers to binge read the gospels?

The Holy Spirit is under-performing in its campaign to inspire Christian followers. They have strayed off the path, and not just have they splintered into many different factions, but the BULK of them no longer come even close to following the teachings of Jesus. The concept that there exists an overarching divine authority ‘managing his sheep’ is ludicrous at its heart.

(4883) Six arguments against the trinity

Standard Christian theology claims that God consists of three parts- the father, son, and holy spirit. But the scriptures themselves challenge this view. The following presents six problems with trinity theology:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ec0h9q/the_trinity_is_not_scripturally_or/

I’m a Unitarian – here are 6 arguments against the Trinity, philosophically and scripturally..

Argument 1: Jesus’ claims of divinity in John

Jesus’ claims of divinity in John (8:58, 10:30-33 etc.) aren’t found in the Synoptic Gospels. As John was the latest Gospel to be composed, it seems odd that such a significant claim in Jesus ministry is absent from the Synoptic Gospels. Why would Matthew, Mark and Luke not have mentioned that Jesus made such claims?

Argument 2: Jesus’ explicitly Unitarian claims

Jesus makes several claims that seem to imply Unitarianism. For example, Jesus says “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), he calls the Father the “only true God” (John 17:3) and he claims not to know the hour of his return as the Father does (Mark 13:32). Also, Jesus is frequently called the Son of God by his followers – why isn’t he just called ‘God’?

Argument 3: θεός or θεόν

In Greek, when the term ‘God’ (θεός or θεόν) is used to describe the Father, the term is always preceded by the article (ὁ or τον). But when θεός or θεόν is used to describe Jesus, it is never preceded by the article. The term θεός or θεόν is used without the article when referring also to lesser gods (1 Corinthians 8:5) and men with authority (Acts 12:22). What distinguishes the Father as God from these other beings, linguistically, is the use of the article ὁ or τον. Why would the article not also be used when referring to Jesus as God?

The only place I know of where Jesus is referred to as ‘God’ with the article is when Thomas says “my Lord and my God” (John 20:28). But this is simply a reference to Jesus’ earlier claim that “whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Thomas sees Jesus (his Lord) and therefore also sees the Father (his God).

Argument 4: the Holy Spirit

When we write about the Holy Spirit, we capitalise the ‘H’ and ‘S’ as we would the name of a person. But The New Testament was written in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, and Hebrew and Aramaic do not have capital letters at all. Whilst Greek does have capital letters, the New Testament was written entirely in capitals, so ‘Holy Spirit’ would be written as ‘HOLY SPIRIT’ (“ἍΓΙΟΝ ΠΝΕΥΜΑ”). It seems plausible that the ‘Holy Spirit’ is actually the ‘holy spirit’ of the Father – ‘holy’ being an adjective, not the name of a Person.

Argument 5: ‘Person’ and ‘Being’

The Trinity is usually cashed out as one being – God – who exists as three Persons/hypostases. But what is a ‘person’ if not a kind of being? A person seems to be a kind of being, in which case three distinct persons would just be three distinct beings.

Argument 6: Will

The Trinity is also usually understood as each of the three Persons sharing the same will. But this seems to contradict scripture, where Jesus says that he came to do the will of the Father and not his own (John 6:38). If Jesus and the Father share the same will, then he might still say that he is doing the will of the Father but would not say that came not to do his own will, since those are one and the same.

Christianity cannot defend the doctrine of the trinity without ignoring a good portion of their scriptures. It seems that this concept was an afterthought that was not well vetted, not unlike much of the conventional wisdom surrounding this religion.

(4884) Why Jews couldn’t accept Jesus

The irony of Jesus being a Jew but being rejected by his own people as being either a divine being or a messiah heavily weighs on the authenticity of Christianity. It implies that Jesus himself would reject the way that Christians have portrayed him. The following explains why Jesus was not accepted by his own people:

https://medium.com/@frankbreslin41/why-the-jews-couldnt-accept-jesus-as-the-messiah-or-god-d84de18472d9

One of the most vexed questions for students over the years was why the Jews never accepted Jesus as the Messiah or God. In essence, the reason why the Jews didn’t accept, indeed, couldn’t accept Jesus as a divine Messiah was that accepting him as God would have gone against the entire Jewish tradition. The Jews were monotheists, who believed in only one God. Throughout antiquity they were continually surrounded by peoples who were polytheists, who believed in many gods. It was precisely their monotheism, their belief in only one God, which set them apart from all other peoples in the ancient world.

In the face of centuries of political pressure and religious persecution, the Jews struggled to maintain their belief in one God, thereby preserving what they felt was a special revelation made to them by God. Polytheistic religions were, to the Jews, idolatrous. Accepting Jesus as a divine being would have meant that there were two Gods, not only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, their traditional God, but also Jesus, whom they were now being asked to accept also as God. All the persecution the Jews have undergone over the centuries was because they had the courage to hold on to their most sacred belief and were even willing to die for it.

Jews and Muslims believe that the belief in the Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit), Mary, the angels and saints is simply a thinly disguised form of polytheism. Scholars of religion maintain that the belief in Mary as the mother of Jesus is only a variation on the Earth Mother Goddess worship widespread throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. The angels and saints are minor deities in the Christian pantheon.

Moreover, there was nothing in Jewish religious tradition that suggested that the Messiah would ever be a divine being for, again, that would have gone against the notion of monotheism. Rather, the Jewish Messiah would be a human being, a holy person, to be sure, but a human being nonetheless.

The Old Testament honorific title, the “Son of God,” didn’t mean to the Jews what Christians understand by this phrase. To the Jews, this term simply designated men who were to be accorded reverence because of their unique relationship to God, but not because they were supposed to be divine beings. When Christians read the term “the Son of God” in the Old Testament, they’re simply reading a later Christian understanding of that term back into the Old Testament, which did not have this Christian meaning at all.

To Christian claims that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament messianic prophecies, the Jews responded that, on the contrary, he had fulfilled none of them. The prophecies Christians cite as proving Jesus was the Messiah, the Jews dismissed as either too vague in nature to refer specifically to the Messiah; referring to someone other than the Messiah; as quotations wrenched out of context; as not fulfilled by Jesus at all; or as interpolations inserted later into the New Testament to create the impressions that Jesus had fulfilled certain Old Testament passages when, in fact, he had not.

Furthermore, not only did the Jews not accept Jesus as the Messiah in the Christian sense as a divine being, but they also refused to accept him as the Messiah in the traditional Jewish sense as a political deliverer from centuries of oppression by various foreign powers. According to their messianic prophecies understood in this Jewish sense, Jesus failed to fulfill any of these as well because he died on a cross.

Jesus was not the only Messiah rejected by the Jews. There were other Messiahs as well, both before and after the time of Jesus whom the Jews also rejected, not only in the ancient world but during the intervening centuries as well, perhaps a score of them.

Christianity adopted a man rejected by his own people. They upped the anti by making him into a god- a feat of dubious aggrandizement.

(4885) Jesus’ death makes no sense

Christianity is a death cult, simply because it’s theology revolves around the singular point of Jesus’ death and resurrection. But, as the following (rant) explains, it makes no sense why Jesus (or anybody) had to die for God to enact his grand plan for humanity:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1eg1cix/jesus_deathstill_makes_no_sense/

A while ago I made a post about how unnecessary Jesus’ death is if God is omnipotent. I was told to Research atonement theory. Well I’ve done so and it still doesn’t make sense.

There’s this idea that Jesus had to die. This idea becomes apparently false once you ask 2 questions?

The main question is this: What did Jesus die for?

And once you have your answer the 2nd question is: Could it have been accomplished in a manner slightly more practical than god incarnating in human form so that god can sacrifice god to god so that god can appease god’s sickening sense of justice?

With that out of the way there are only a few things Jesus could have died for, Theologically speaking?

1. 1. Jesus died to forgive our sins
   2. Jesus died so that we can have eternal life
   3. Jesus died to be a good example(this one is most intellectually dubious. Not sure who defends this but I brought it up for the sake of thoroughness)

But none of these purposes require somebody to die. Jesus was going around forgiving people’s sins with the wave of a hand before his death. So quite obviously, nobody needs to die in order for sins to be forgiven.

Set aside how cruel, backwards and man-made it actually is that somebody needs to die for someone else to be forgiven. It’s just not theologically consistent. In Luke 7:44-50 and Matthew 9:2-8 Jesus forgives sins. Now, I don’t know about any of you guys but he seems to be very alive in both of those passages.

If an all-powerful god wants to forgive sins nothing is stopping him, as can be clearly seen in the demonstrated cases

Death also can’t be necessary for Eternal life as there’s a case in the old testament (If you listen closely, you can hear some progressive christians shudder at the mention of the spooky old testament) of somebody being taken to heaven WITHOUT EVEN DYING

Enoch was taken to heaven in Genesis 5:21–24. No death or anything.

What’s funny about this is Jesus says no man has ascended to heaven in John 3:12. I guess he wasn’t as well read on scripture as many people think he is. Just more proof that Jesus is not god.

Again, If god wanted to give people eternal life, he could do that too. No death needed

And lasty, mostly for fun, The idea that god died as example. A way to show how much he cares. He just loves us so much that he ~~Conducted multiple mass genocides in the old testament that resulted in many babies dying~~ sent his only son to die for us.

The problem with this, again, is that it could be achieved much easier without somebody dying. To show that he loves us, why didn’t god give us some useful knowledge? Y’know what would be a great way to prove that Jesus is lord. Teaching people how to cure cancer, How to harness electricity, How to equally and efficiently distribute resources so that no body starves.

Jesus could have taught us how to cure blindness but he’d rather go around spitting on blind people and curing them that way.

If he wanted to show he cares about us why not spend the 33 years he had on this planet giving something other than an outdated moral philosophy?

It seems more plausible that the idea of Jesus’ death commuting eternal life to humans was an adjunct modification made by disillusioned Jesus followers who were not anticipating his death. They made up this theology to assuage their grief and disillusionment. Unfortunately, this ruse took hold and commanded a huge role in the history of the past twenty centuries. To be brutally honest, its effect has been approximately 10 percent positive, and 90 percent negative. Hopefully, it can be flushed down the toilet by the end of this century.

(4886) Monolatry was a break from Israel’s past

The Jews went through three distinct phases. During the first period, they worshiped several gods including El, Asherah, and Baal. During the second period, they practiced monolatry and worshiped only Yahweh, but at the same time accepted the existence of other gods. During the third and final period, they worshiped Yahweh and believed that he was the only god in existence. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1egf56f/if_yahweh_was_alloted_israel_by_el_why_was_their/

According to Mark Smith, El was the original god of Israel, and Yahweh was adopted later on. This Wikipedia article provides a nice summary from his book, The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities in Ancient Israel

From the article:

Smith says that Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in origin, and that deities such as El, Baal and Asherah, far from being alien to the Israelites, formed part of their heritage. He therefore sees Israelite monolatry (the insistence that Israel should worship one god, Yahweh, but without denying the reality of other gods) as a break with Israel’s own past.

Yahweh, he argues, originated in Edom/Midian/Teman as a warrior-god and was subsequently assimilated into the highland pantheon headed by El and his consort, Asherah and populated by Baal and other deities.

Smith sees this process as marked by two major phases, which he describes as “convergence” and “differentiation”. In the period of the Judges and the early monarchy, convergence saw the coalescence of the qualities of other deities, and even the deities themselves, into Yahweh. Thus El became identified as a name of Yahweh, Asherah ceased to be a distinct goddess, and qualities of El, Asherah and Baal (notably, for Baal, his identification as a storm god) were assimilated into Yahweh. In the period from the 9th century BC through to the Babylonian exile certain features of the Israelite religion were differentiated from the Yahweh cult, identified as Canaanite, and rejected: examples include Baal, child sacrifice, the Asherah poles, worship of the sun and moon, and the cults of the “high places”.

In other words, the old name persisted, as it often does when cultures mix and adopt new beliefs.

Most Christians have no idea of this history. If they did, they would realize that there is a problem. If Yahweh is the only god in existence and if Yahweh chose the Jews as his special people, it is inconceivable that Yahweh would not have ensured that they worship him and him only along with the understanding that no other gods exist. It is very difficult to shoehorn Christianity into this set of facts.

(4887) Too much uncertainty with Paul’s letters

If Paul was the emissary chosen by Jesus to flesh out Christian theology, then we would expect to have his writings preserved and authenticated for future generations. The status of his work is none of that. It is a mess. The following is an excerpt from J.V.M Sturdy’s book Redrawing the Boundaries:

I begin by observing that, by general scholarly agreement, not all the texts that the New Testament attributes to Paul were actually written by him. One can hardly accept that Paul really did write Hebrews, the Pastorals, Ephesians, Colossians and 2 Thessalonians. This leaves the central Pauline core of Romans, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon and 1 Thessalonians. Yet even this reduced list is not without problems. We should ask whether such long letters are really possible and whether the corpus as it now stands has been interpolated at various points. There are also inconsistencies within and between the letters. This leaves some “uncertain areas” which it is unlikely will ever be solved to the final satisfaction of the scholarly community.

If none of this had any connection to anything divine or supernatural, then we would expect complete confusion about the source of ancient documents that originated in a time where preservation and copying was a tenuous business. And that is what we observe. On the other hand, if a divine hand was meddling in the process, we would have the original documents, vetted to the extreme, and we would know precisely what Paul had written.

(4888) Hallucination and the Resurrection

The following provides support for the theory that Jesus, rather than bodily arising after his death, was imagined to do so by some of his grieving followers who experienced hallucinations:

https://skepticink.com/humesapprentice/2018/01/06/review-the-case-for-christ-movie-edition/

Given that there were about 120 followers of Jesus after his death (Acts 1:15), and that 14% or more of grieving people have a visual hallucination of their deceased loved one, it is not surprising that a couple dozen of Jesus followers would have seen him alive after his death, even though he was not resurrected [I’ll be posting references aplenty for this and other things in the comments section]. Add to this the scientifically-confirmed fact that new religious movements attract frequently-hallucinating individuals like a magnet, and it is a foregone conclusion that the appearance traditions are worthless for proving the miraculous.

Vaughn Bell, “Ghost Stories: Visits from the Deceased” December 2, 2008, Scientific American [Available Online]. “One study found that over 80 percent of elderly people experience hallucinations associated with their dead partner one month after bereavement.”

W.D. Rees “The Hallucinations of Widowhood” British Medical Journal (1971) 4:37-41. Page 38 shows that 14% of widows and widowers had a visual hallucination of their spouse. Though Jesus was not married, we can assume at least some of his followers would have had a similarly close relationship with him, and as the Scientific American article demonstrates, hallucinations are known from a broad variety of relationships, not just marriages.

S. Day and E. Peters, “The Incidence of Schizotypy in New Religious Movements,” (1999) Journal of Personality and Individual Differences 27 (1), 55–67. Establishes that normally functioning people who hallucinate more often than most people (“schizotypes”) are found in new religious movements at a higher rate than in the general population. When Christianity started it was a new religious movement, therefore we can expect it would have had a disproportionate number of functional but frequently hallucinating members.

This theory cannot be proven, but it is much (infinitely?) more likely than that a man died and came back to life.

(4889) Abuse of children fails to invoke wrath of God

One of the mysteries of Christianity is why God didn’t do something to prevent his representatives from raping children. You would think that a god who wants to save persons from hell would ensure that the priests, pastors, and laypersons who represent him on earth act in a moral manner to all people, but especially to the most vulnerable members of the human race- children. God’s failure to do this suggests his non-existence. The following was taken from:

https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2024/08/why-isnt-membership-in-catholic-church.html#more

Here we go again, from the Associated Press, 25 July 2024: Missouri lawsuits allege abuse by priests, nuns; archdiocese leader in Omaha among those accused. Here are three excerpts:

“Among those named is Omaha Archbishop George Lucas. A lawsuit filed Wednesday in St. Louis County Circuit Court said the unnamed accuser was 16 when he met Lucas at the now-closed St. Louis Preparatory Seminary in the late 1980s, where Lucas was a priest and dean of education. The lawsuit accused Lucas of sexually abusing the boy multiple times and offering better grades for sexual favors.”

“I categorically deny the accusation made by an anonymous person,” Lucas said. “I have never had sexual contact with another person.”

“The investigation in St. Louis followed the release of a 2018 report in Pennsylvania that cited the abuse of more than 1,000 children by hundreds of priests since the 1940s and the efforts of church leaders to cover it up.”

Just how widespread—just how systemic—is this problem in the Catholic Church? I decided to do a Google search, “Catholic Church Sexual Abuses Cases by Country,” and was stunned to see a HUGE Wikipedia article that provides abundant detail in country after country around the world.

Thus Richard Carrier called it correctly in his 10 September 2018 essay, What’s the Harm? Why Religious Belief Is Always Bad:

“…the Catholic Church is an international rape factory. And has been for decades; possibly untold centuries. Religious belief not only allowed that to happen, it is still allowing it to happen, as believers refuse to leave the church, refusing to effect any substantive reform that would prevent it, refusing to find a less deadly and destructive religion to believe in and support.”

Why isn’t the pope holding a news conference every week, bringing the world up-to-date on Vatican efforts to correct this systemic evil? For example:

·      Here’s what we’re doing to screen candidates for the priesthood. We’re especially suspicious of anyone who claims never to have had sexual contact with another person. We sense danger there.
·      This week we have handed over to the police this many priests for their abuse crimes.
·      This is how we’re coming along with training programs to prepare priests for working with children.
·   We have been in intense prayer mode with God the Father, beseeching him to designate the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, as Abuse Monitor. That is, whenever a priest is about to abuse a child, she will appear in the room to give him a few solid punches.

But why would the Holy Father bother to do this, when as Carrier as pointed out, believers refuse to leave the church? Catholicism has certainly lost its tight grip in Italy, Spain, and France—for example—but why make matters worse by calling attention to the church’s systemic evil?

The church has to keep its eye on the prize: the primary gimmick is the promise of eternal life, which was a product sold by other dying-and-rising savior cults in the ancient world. Folks who accept magical thinking to escape death can minimize priests abusing children. The Catholic Church found magic potions celebrated in John 6:53-58, the emphatic promise that eating the flesh of Jesus, and drinking his blood are vital for achieving eternal life. What could be more perfect scripture as the basic for transubstantiation? And every time one goes to Mass, this miracle is there for the taking: “It’s our ticket to heaven!”

And, of course, the Church has turned this into high drama, complete with impressive ceremonies, music, elaborate sets—immense churches with art work, huge sculptures of Mary and Jesus—and spectacular costumes. This is what I mean by mastering show business. It’s a way of diverting attention from the ghoulish idea of eating a god. If people really bothered to think about that too much, precious religious beliefs might take a big hit. For quite a while now on Facebook, I have been seeing brief reels showing Catholic ceremonies—both indoor and outdoor—and they are very impressive indeed. Magical thinking and show business get the job done! So it will be a very long time before membership in the Catholic Church is reduced to zero.

By the way, it’s not just the Catholics who have been plagued by sex abuse scandals. I did a Google search for this systemic problem among Mormons and Southern Baptists as well—they’re got the same problem. The super devout—no matter the denomination—seem determined to show that the apostle Paul’s claim in Galatians 5:24 is nonsense: “And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Paul’s sexual urges seem to have been non-existent, and he was sure that Christ was the source of this release from desires of the flesh. But that’s not how humans are built, and no amount of phony bragging can change that. It is truly one of the mysteries of Christianity that abuse of children doesn’t bring down the wrath of its god.

Anyone paying attention can see that the leaders of Christianity act in ways that belie any connection to the god of Christianity, or any god, or any moral authority. The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is rotten to the core.

(4890) The evolution of Satan

Satan has become an anti-god figure in Christianity, but the reality of this figure is decimated by the fact that his characterization has evolved significantly over the past three millennia. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ejv6x3/debunking_the_myth_of_satan_examining_his/

Satan, the embodiment of evil in Christian Mythology, has undergone a remarkable transformation throughout literary and pop culture history, from his humble beginnings as a minor character in the Book of Job to his modern-day status as a cultural icon. This essay will explore the evolution of Satan, tracing his development from his first appearance in the Bible to his manifestations in literature, art, and popular culture.

In the Book of Job, Satan is introduced as a member of God’s heavenly court, tasked with testing Job’s faith. This Satan is not the embodiment of evil, but rather a servant of God, carrying out his divine will. The Book of Job presents Satan as a curious and somewhat mischievous figure, but not inherently malevolent. This early depiction of Satan laid the groundwork for his subsequent development in the biblical canon.

In the Book of Tobit, Satan takes on a more sinister role, as a malevolent spirit who seeks to destroy humanity. This Satan is a fallen angel, cast out of heaven for his pride and rebellion against God. The Book of Tobit marks a significant shift in the characterization of Satan, as he begins to take on the role of an adversary to God and humanity.

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke further solidify Satan’s status as the embodiment of evil. In these texts, Satan is depicted as a tempter, seeking to lead humanity astray from God’s will. The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, as recounted in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13, cements Satan’s reputation as a deceiver and a seducer.

The Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, marks a significant turning point in the evolution of Satan. Here, Satan is depicted as a dragon, cast out of heaven and engaged in a final battle against God and his followers. The Book of Revelation’s apocalyptic vision of Satan as a monstrous, cosmic force sets the stage for his subsequent manifestations in literature and art.

In Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy (1320-1321), Satan is reimagined as a monumental, three-headed beast, trapped in the frozen lake of Cocytus. This depiction of Satan as a symbol of ultimate evil, punished for his rebellion against God, has had a profound impact on Western literature and art.

The Renaissance and Enlightenment periods saw a resurgence of interest in Satan as a symbol of rebellion and nonconformity. In Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1592-1593), Satan is depicted as a charismatic and seductive figure, tempting Faustus to abandon his faith and pursue knowledge and power. This Faustian Satan, with his cunning and wit, has influenced generations of writers, artists, and musicians.

In John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), Satan is reimagined as a complex, sympathetic character, driven by a sense of pride and ambition. Milton’s Satan is a masterful orator, capable of convincing a third of heaven’s angels to join him in his rebellion against God. This characterization of Satan as a charismatic leader and a symbol of resistance against oppression has had a profound impact on Western literature and culture.

In the Romantic era, Satan’s image underwent another significant transformation. In works such as Lord Byron’s Cain (1821) and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound (1820), Satan is reimagined as a heroic figure, fighting against the tyranny of an oppressive God. This Byronic Satan, with his brooding intensity and rebellious spirit, has influenced generations of artists, writers, and musicians.

In the 20th century, Satan’s image continued to evolve, taking on new forms in popular culture. In horror movies, such as Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973), Satan is depicted as a malevolent force, seeking to destroy humanity through supernatural means. In heavy metal music, Satan is often invoked as a symbol of rebellion and nonconformity, as seen in bands such as Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden.

In contemporary culture, Satan’s image continues to evolve, taking on new forms in literature, art, and popular media. In TV shows such as Supernatural and Lucifer, Satan is reimagined as a complex, multidimensional character, driven by a range of motivations and emotions. In literature, authors such as Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett have reimagined Satan as a sympathetic, even likable character, struggling to find his place in a rapidly changing world.

While Satan has evolved from a minor character in the Book of Job to a cultural icon, his non-existence aside from being a mythical figure cannot be overlooked. Satan remains an essential figure in many cultures, representing evil, betrayal, and rebellion. His image continues to evolve, taking on new forms in literature, art, and popular media. However, despite this cultural significance, it is important to remember that Satan is a fictional character, and his actions and motivations should be viewed through the lens of myth and cultural perception rather than as a real-world figure. As our understanding of humanity and the universe continues to expand, it is vital that we approach these figures with a critical eye, recognizing the impact they have had on our cultural development while also acknowledging their limits as symbolic representations of larger ideas.

If Satan was a real person, he would have been characterized in a manner that would have been consistent over the ages. If he was fictional, his description would change over time based on the whims of people holding various agendas. The changing face of Satan is telling evidence of his non-existence.

(4891) Hate family, love enemies?

The case can be made that biblical scriptures encourage Jesus’ followers to hate their family members while at the same time loving those who hate them. This is incongruous, indicating that there is something seriously wrong. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ejxar2/jesus_in_the_bible_is_obsessed_with_having_his/

Luke 14:26 If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.

Matthew 10:34-36 Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.

These verses clearly show that Jesus likes to have his disciples hate their family. In Luke he explicitly says that you cannot be a disciple of Jesus and not hate your father, mother, wife, children brothers and sisters. In Matthew, he explicitly says that he didn’t come for peace between families, but to turn family members against each other and to make the household members the biggest enemies of a man.

But on the other hand Jesus says love your enemy in Luke 6:27. How does it make sense that somebody hates his own family but he loves his enemies who hate him. You have to hate your own mother who birthed you but you have to love your enemy. This is illogical and it shows that the love of Jesus in the Bible is very odd.

A common objection to this argument is that the context here is Jesus is trying to say that somebody should love Jesus more than his own family members. Similar to a hadith of Islam in Sahih Bukhari 15. However this argument doesn’t make any sense as Jesus says to HATE your family members and that he WANTS to turn family against each other. There is no mention of loving your family here, only to hate them which seems kind of the opposite of loving them. If his intention was to say that, why did he choose the word hate?

The goal of Jesus in these Bible verses is to cause hate and friction between families. Thus, the notion that Christianity is a religion about loving everybody is impossible.

It is virtually certain that scriptures inspired by a celestial god would not contain anything that suggests that one should hate their family members, and it is also uncertain that such a being would encourage love for one’s enemies. But for both of these themes to be presented in the ‘holy’ scriptures indicates that they present nothing more than the confused thoughts of human authors. The encouragement to hate family members was likely a recruitment tool when prospective followers were being met with resistance from their families, who rightfully saw the Jesus movement as a cult.

(4882) Author of John’s major blunder

The author of the Gospel of John made two major mistakes in the span of three verses. First, he pre-dated the Pentecost, the event described in the Book of Acts where the disciples received the Holy Spirit, and second, he destroyed the entire meme of Jesus dying for our sins, by making the disciples solely responsible for who is forgiven or not. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1elh3l4/the_bible_shows_jesus_dying_for_your_sins_is/

John 20:21-23 NIV

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

This passage of the Bible takes place after Jesus was crucified. After his supposed resurrection he came to his disciples and he said to them in verse 23 that if a disciple forgives someone, that their sins are forgiven by God. If the disciples don’t forgive them, then they aren’t forgiven by God.

Why does this matter you might ask? Well, the Christian doctrine says that Jesus died on the cross for the sins of mankind. But this story takes place AFTER the crucifying took place. But somehow the disciples have the ability to choose that a person’s sins aren’t forgiven by God. This nullifies the Christian doctrine as Jesus then didn’t die for those who aren’t forgiven by the disciples.

Jesus dying for your sins is thus completely pointless and he died for nothing. Disciples can nullify him dying for sins for certain people by refusing to forgive someone. The fact that disciples have authority on what God forgives is already worrying. But what really is the point of Jesus dying for the sins if he tells people afterwards that they can choose to forgive or not forgive someone? And he gives people the authority to decide whose sins will be forgiven?

The Bible presents a confused message about what Jesus’ death was all about, and John 20:21-23 is an embarrassment to the extreme.

(4893) Elegant defense of apostasy

Sometime all it takes is a simple, modest, but forcefully honest defense for lacking a belief in Christianity. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1emd3l2/why_i_dont_believe/

Why I don’t believe?

And what can be added to this list (a small sample) are foreskin economies, a 3-hour blackened-out sun, a waterworld planet, re-quickened corpses, hundreds-of-years old humans, a body passing through walls and flying into the sky, a virgin giving birth to a boy, disembodied voices, food magic, and a 3-night stay in a fish hotel.

Not one of these things have any presence in the world in which we live. Why if they all happened before that we see nothing of the sort today? The answer is obvious- THEY NEVER HAPPENED EVER.

(4894) Revelation assumes Satan is stupid and illiterate

Revelation is assumed by Christians to describe events surrounding the ‘end of times.’ It forecasts actions taken by Satan that ultimately leads to his demise. But if Satan is a true person, he must have some means of figuring out what is going on, can probably read Revelation, and would be stupid to do what the scripture would have him do. That is unless he is a robot being controlled by God. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1el1cyw/revelations_prophesies_make_them_unlikely/

Revelation details what will take place at the end of the world. But…the devil and his anti-christ would have to be complete idiots to fall for it. The devil knows god is god. Jesus himself put him in his place while on earth. Why would he participate in a war to end all wars? Unless you are a Calvinist, this makes little sense. If Satan can read Revelations, he knows how he loses. His entire being would be devoted to avoiding the “end” by all means possible.

This isn’t Tom Brady saying they are going to win the game, it’s god telling him how it ends and Satan knows who god is. He may be vain, he may be deluded but he still knows god is god and Satan isn’t. This is the Christian perspective but it cannot make any sense. The usual Christian reasoning is that Satan is so vain he believes he can defeat god. After thousands of years and encounters, he knows that isn’t true. So following the script written in Revelation makes no sense.

This situation begs the adage- if you are making up fiction, at least make it make sense. The Satan described in the Bible is not a believable individual.

(4895) Power of God not working through anyone

The scriptures make it clear that God’s power should be working though his followers in many manifestations. None of this exists, and this is a good proof that the Christian god does not exist. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1enqmxo/there_is_no_power_of_god_working_through_any/

There is no Power of God working through ANY Christian believers to heal and therefore there is no God.

There is not a single Christian that does what is commanded in the Bible. “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy”

Christians will try and say that healing with God’s power and such was only limited to Jesus and the Apostles to try and defend the fact that there is no one on Earth performing faith healing as Christians were commanded to. However this isn’t aligned with the scripture in the Bible.

The interpretation that the “gifts of healings” and “workings of miracles” in 1 Corinthians 12:9–10 were exclusively limited to Jesus and the apostles is not supported by the broader context of the New Testament. This view seems to overlook how these spiritual gifts are described in the scriptures. Specifically, 1 Corinthians 12:7–10 suggests a more inclusive distribution of these gifts, stating, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” It lists various gifts provided by the Spirit, including wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, and miracles, indicating that these were not reserved solely for the apostolic figures but were available to various members within the church community.

Moreover, 1 Corinthians 12:28 further differentiates the roles and gifts within the church by listing apostles, prophets, teachers, then miracles and healings as distinct functions and gifts within the church hierarchy. This distinction implies that the miraculous gifts of healing and other miracles were not confined to the apostles alone but were additional manifestations of the Spirit among the believers.

This perspective is reinforced in Paul’s letter to the Galatians (Galatians 3:5), where he emphasizes that God supplied the Spirit and worked miracles among them not through adherence to the law but through faith. This suggests that these miraculous works were performed by believers, not limited to apostolic authority. This interpretation aligns with the view in 1 Corinthians 12 that the Holy Spirit distributes various gifts to different individuals within the church for the benefit of the whole community, not restricting powerful gifts like healings and miracles to a select few.

Instead, we are confronted with evidence Christians cannot do what was commanded of them and therefore God’s power doesn’t exist and therefore God is not real. Each time a Christian claims to have done a faith healing, they are exposed as a fraud.

Are you aware that one of the largest Christian leaders in modern times was exposed for rape, torture, abuse and intentional deception for status and financial gain? They had planned out each step of the deception with the fake Miracles he performed. TB Joshua BBC Documentary – you can check that out.

There have been many Christian leaders exposed as such but never once has there been evidence of actual Faith Healings. If God was real, his power would be working through his believers and they would be doing what was commanded of them.

The scriptural promises do not match the facts on the ground. This is sufficient to conclude that Christianity is a failed and false religion. You cannot claim a religion that contains supernatural elements without have any such elements available to be observed.

(4896) God fails Jesus’ command

Jesus taught his followers to love their enemies, forgive them, and to do good for them. But the Father has determined that his enemy, Satan, must be punished in hell. This mismatch is difficult to explain. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1en6qcr/god_punishing_the_devil_with_eternity_in_hell_is/

If Jesus was Lord and The Word, and Jesus preaches love your enemy and turn the other cheek, then God’s merciless punishment of the devil with eternity in hell is hypocritical and very unbecoming.

That would mean even God cannot follow the teachings of Jesus, lest us mortals!

According to The Bible, God has one adversary/enemy, and that is the devil, and if God cannot forgive the devil, that means God cannot love God’s enemy, which is what Jesus preaches.

How can Jesus, and essentially God tell us to love our enemies but then hates the only enemy God has?

If God cannot even love the devil and forgive the devil and save the devil from hell, then how could God to expect any of us to love our enemies when we are clearly not God?

It would be internally inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus, and not only so, it would be hypocritical of God to be telling us that we need to forgive and love our enemies.

Can God turn the other cheek with the devil? If not, then we should not be expected to neither.

It can be imagined that Jesus and the Father would get into an argument about what to do with Satan. But it’s a waste of time to contemplate such, as both of these figures are fictional.

(4897) Limits of faith

We use maps to represent territory but we don’t equate the two. In like manner, faith in a higher power can symbolize ideals that we hold dear, but without equating it the actual existence of such a power. The following was taken from:

https://www.nobeliefs.com/mapandterritory.html

The most revered text in the world, the Bible, prophesies the destruction of the world for an alleged “paradise restored.” Unfulfilled prophecy can just as easily turn into a self-fulfilled prophesy for one or a group of people that have the capability to carry it out.

People get their superstitions, religions, and creeds almost always while young, usually from parents or schools and passed on to their progeny in later life. This gives reason why Hindu’s get their beliefs from other Hindus, Christians from their parents, Islamics from their parents, etc. After years of religious transmission, the beliefs take on an additional conviction: that so many people throughout history could not have made such a grand mistake. History and tradition reinforces the faith while at the same time allows condemnation of the recent “cults.” This results in orthodoxy and all the intolerances that go with it. But unseen and untaught goes the fallacy behind this kind of thinking, commonly called the bandwagon fallacy; the number of people who believe or the length of time believed says nothing about the truth of that belief. This cycle can only break if the method of transmission stops.

Imagine that if, instead of teaching school children what to believe, we taught them first about the mechanism of thinking. Instead of instilling them with untestable superstitions, teach them the difference between abstract symbols that reflect the outside world and symbols that don’t. Only after a thorough understanding of the mechanism of thinking and the fallacies that thinking can produce, would we teach them about the history of religion, politics, and superstition. As far as I know, no society has ever attempted this.

If anyone of faith who reads this as plea to atheism, then consider the weakness of your argument. If, indeed, that truth and progress can come from the items of your faith, then that faith should prove itself even after demonstrating the errors of thinking. That to deny a knowledge of the thinking process only demonstrates an intransigence that can come from faith. To know the world inside and out requires an avenue of exploration with no limits, including the ability to examine any set of beliefs.

Would this avenue of education lead to the absolution of religion? Not necessarily. For whatever reason, religion gives meaning and a reason for living for millions of people. Many people like the ideas that religion provides them. Emotion coupled with an idea gives meaning, but meaning can also derive out of stories, fictions, and myths without the belief in them at all. For example, science fiction has provided meaning for many people including the inspiration for many a productive scientist. There exist people who derive morality from Star-Trek lore (the Prime Directive, for example), lessons for living from the Burning Man cult, Bob Dobbs, and many others. None of these participants (that I know of) actually believes in them; they simply love the idea behind them. And so can the same hold for any religion or myth. One does not need to believe in the superstitions of religion to gain insights to what one desires. As Joseph Campbell has taught us, myths can inform us about ourselves, about our emotions and passions and about our grand illusions. Even a disbeliever can take from religious scripture what he wants while excising the supernatural and unworkable morality. Thomas Jefferson did just that with his version of the gospels. The fundamental faithful cannot so easily dismiss what one wants because of the immobility of sacredness, and with it they must grapple with its contradictions and consequences.

Taking myths as fact without examining them can lead us to the very errors we wish to avoid. We can use maps without believing they equal the territory; we can use fiction to inspire us to make the stories into reality, and we can also use myths as a way of symbolizing our morals and desires that live in our brains, but nowhere else.

Faith can be a blessing and a curse. Those who use it properly acquiesce to a certain knowledge of uncertainty. Those who don’t, equate their faith with the object of their faith, developing an intransigence that can be destructive.

(4898) Mark’s is full of theological problems and absurdities

Most Christians focus on single gospel verses or stories without reading the entirety of one of the gospels in one sitting. But when that is done with the Gospel of Mark, for example, a lot of problems come to light, such that even devout Christians will begin to doubt that this gospel presents an authentic representation of history. The following was taken from:

https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2024/08/the-author-of-marks-gospel-created.html#more

One of my favorite challenges to church folks is: Please read Mark’s gospel—all at one sitting. No such nonsense as a chapter-per-day: that’s as much as admitting lack of interest. Leave the TV off for an evening, and really focus on Mark’s gospel. Read the whole thing carefully, thoughtfully; this will take about as much time as watching a movie. Have a notepad handy, to write down items that sound goofy, farfetched—things that just don’t make sense. If ever I could find a devout Christian willing to do this, I’d love to engage him/her in a conversation about the problematic texts. Mark’s gospel is chock full of theological problems—and absurdities. Please, believers, face them head-on!

If this challenge were accepted—and that notebook is full of distressed comments—many of the devout would ask their clergy for clarification: how could there be so many problems? The clergy might refer them to commentaries written by theologians determined to explain away the problems—to erase the embarrassments. This might bring relief, but it is not entirely honest. It’s a good idea to seek an analysis of Mark’s Jesus-fantasy done by secular scholars who don’t hesitate to tell the truth.

Just a few days ago, Dr. Richard Carrier—whose specialty is the literature of the ancient world—published a long article, All the Fantastical Things in the Gospel according to Mark (30 July 2024). Dr. Carrier is also one of the top Jesus scholars of our time. In this article, he catalogues the many fantasy elements in the sixteen chapters of Mark’s gospel. A careful study of this article makes it very clear that the author of Mark’s gospel didn’t have a clue about what it means to write history. His lack of this skill was shared by the writers of the other gospels.

My fantasy—in any theoretical discussion of Mark with people who have bothered to read it carefully—is to ask them to explain the theological problems presented in Mark chapters 1, 4, 5, 9, 13, 14 and 16. Carrier’s thorough survey makes it clear that every chapter of Mark swarms with problems and absurdities. If you can find any churchgoers who are willing to study this first gospel carefully, send them the link to the Carrier article. It’s a powerful educational tool, a real eyeopener.

Devout readers—with curiosity and skepticism fully engaged—will be puzzled by Mark 1. We read that John the Baptist was “…proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (1:4)—and that Jesus showed up to be baptized. Jesus had sins to be forgiven? When Matthew copied this text, he added Jesus-script to the effect that it was just for show. Nor is there any hint in Mark 1 that Jesus had arrived on earth via a miraculous virgin birth. When he emerges from the water, a voice booms from heaven, “You are my Son, my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.”  (1:11) Mark seems to have assumed that this was the moment Jesus was designated god’s son—after baptism for repentance of sins.

In fact, Carrier identifies twenty fantastical things in Mark, chapter one. It is important to pay close attention to all 45 verses in Mark 1. Right at the outset, the careful reader can detect that there is precious little history here.

The next major stumbling block I urge devout readers to consider is Jesus-script in Mark 4, in which he tells his disciples privately that parables are meant to prevent people from understanding and repenting:

“And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret [or mystery] of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything comes in parables, in order that ‘they may indeed look but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’” (4:11-12)

What in the world was Mark thinking? This makes no sense whatever, and devout scholars have been struggling with this text for a long time.

In Mark 5 we find the truly bizarre story of Jesus’ confrontation with a man possessed by demons. The demons recognize Jesus as a being from the spiritual realm, and beg that he not expel them from the country. Presumably by uttering magic spells, Jesus sends the demons into a great herd of pigs. Carrier notes the strangeness of this episode:

“…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.”

This story survives as a remnant of ancient superstition, another failure of Mark to deliver history. But it has staying power: to this day the Vatican maintains a staff of exorcists.

Two of the most famous stories in Mark are the Feeding of the 5,000 (chapter 6) and the Feeding of the 4,000 (chapter 8), both miracles performed by Jesus, who—so the story goes—was able to conjure food supplies. Carrier’s careful analysis of the details shows just how contrived and silly both stories are: they make no sense, but were meant to appeal to gullible readers.

At the very end of Carrier’s article he provides a link to an article he wrote in 2020, Formalized Gullibility as a Modern Christian Methodology, in which he wrote:

“Believing a ridiculous story (and every Gospel is throughout ridiculous, by every standard historians apply in any other field), simply because its author was smart enough to color it with realistic details, is the very definition of gullible. It declares you will believe any obvious liar as long as they are good at it. And by framing this gullibility as a formal methodological principle, you are essentially declaring allegiance to gullibility as a methodology.”

It would be welcome indeed if Disney—or any other movie enterprise that specializes in fantasy—were to make a Gospel of Mark movie, with heavy focus on its overwhelming commitment to miracle folklore and magical thinking. If the devout flocked to the cinemas, they might be able to grasp just how massively the gospels fail to qualify as history. 

People have become more discriminating in accepting fantastical elements written in ancient stories. Most likely, early Christians accepted these stories hook, line, and sinker. But today, fantasy literature is a well-known theme, and the Gospel of Mark fits the mold perfectly.

(4899) Helping Jesus fulfill prophecy

Robert J. Miller concludes in his book Helping Jesus Fulfill Prophecy that ancient Christian scholars were guilty of manipulating the Old Testament to present a compatible segue into their interpretation of Jesus. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskTheologists/comments/1eem0y8/my_faith_in_christ_was_dealt_a_devastating_blow/

I learned that the overwhelming majority of scholars consider the Gospels to be anonymous and not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Alright. Then I discovered that Paul most likely isn’t the author of the Pastoral epistles. Okay, that is not insurmountable I guess. And then, the final blow came yesterday: I discovered the book Helping Jesus Fulfill Prophecy by Robert J. Miller.

The author claims the book is a product of first-class scholarship and the reviews (here and here) don’t seem to disagree. Miller argues (note, these aren’t my words, I’m trying to sum up his arguments) that Christians blatantly manipulated the Old Testament to make it fit with their narrative about this supposed messiah that Jews rightly dismissed. Here is a quote from it to consider:

[Both Muslim and Christian] interpreters quote selectively and out of context; both ignore relevant biblical material that would wreck their interpretations; both show no interest in what the passages meant in their ancient settings; both impute dubious and arbitrary meanings to the texts; both read their biblical passages within the framework of religious assumptions that emerged centuries after those passages were written … Christian interpreters (including NT authors) sometimes create customized passages by combining pieces from different scriptures, and they sometimes rewrite prophecies. (p. 378)

This is, I’m not going to lie, very scary for me. The notion that the NT authors straight up manipulated the OT scriptures just to project their view on Jesus seems devastating. And look at the implications of that. I would appreciate any advice for getting back to God, because I feel very far away from him now, and I do not really like that.

This is not a controversial argument among secular historians, as there also exist many examples of gospel authors fraudulently tweaking the Old Testament to produce artificial links to Jesus. It should be understood that if Jesus was God’s plan all along, prophecies of his coming would have been CLEARLY presented all over Old Testament literature.

(4900) The Christian god is either evil or fictional

If we take the Bible at face value and assume God’s omnipotence, it results in two possibilities- this god is either evil or he is fictional. There are no other possibilities. The following supports this conclusion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ertarv/the_christian_god_is_inherently_evil/

If God exists – what makes you think he is not inherently evil? Delighting in human suffering and commanding followers to commit atrocities. This god would manipulate his creations to maintain power and praise, using abstract reasons to justify cruelty.

These scriptures like below are exactly what an evil god would say to his followers. He might say in response “but it’s different because I’m not a human, I’m god.” But of course that’s what he would say because it’s what any cult leader would say. Of course an omnipotent being with an investment in keeping believers hooked would say that he is infallible. The only way believers could actually tell that this god was fallible or evil would be to trust their senses and logic. Which the Bible explicitly says not to. Proverbs 3:5-7 (NIV) “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding

Accepting without question that all God’s actions are inherently good, even when they cause immense suffering, mirrors the dynamics of an abusive relationship. The abuser convinces the victim that their suffering is for their own good or that it’s beyond their understanding.

How do Christians know that the Christian god is good? Because he says he is? Because the book he supposedly divinely inspired says he is?

The best evidence we have that god is evil would be any inherent sense of right and wrong that we have. If any human commanded these things we would call it a warcrime or an atrocity. Just replace the word God in the previous paragraph with the name of any person, and tell me what you would think of that person.

God has left his creations confusing and sometimes contradictory instructions, he watches from afar and does nothing to intercede when they are hurt, and he lets evil people warp his words and use them to enrich themselves.

God’s followers are divided against themselves unable to agree on what the scriptures mean. As evident by the 100’s of denominations.

Gods power also remains out of sight but we are told unbelievers must suffer torture for all eternity if they Die before accepting Jesus. It doesn’t matter if someone is born in India or Iraq where the prevalent religion indoctrinated into them as a Child is not Christianity. To hell with them to suffer for all eternity for being born on the wrong side of the earth!

EVIL: Deliberate harm, suffering, or destruction to others. = God

EVIL: Actions or behaviours that are widely considered to be wrong, unethical, or morally unacceptable. = God

Exodus 32:27-28: “Then he said to them, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’ The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died.”Only

Virgins are OK? The Midianites (Numbers 31) Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.'”

Aside from the Fact God keeps commanding genocide – Why kill all the animals as well?

1 Samuel 15:3: “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

Deuteronomy 20:16-17: “However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.”

Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.”

Deuteronomy 28:27: “The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured.”

Luke 12:49: “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”

Its ok to kill 42 Children using two Bears for doing things that children do due to under developed pre frontal cortex?

Kings 2:23-24: “From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. ‘Get out of here, baldy!’ they said. ‘Get out of here, baldy!’ He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.”

Matthew 10:35: “For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—”

Psalm 137:9 (NIV) “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”

Psalm 58:10 (NIV) “The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked.”

Revelation 14:10-11 (NIV) “They, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever. There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.”

So Jesus and God’s angels seem to be watching eternal torture in the end and this is what a loving God is like? A God and his Son he like to watch Torture? Seems to me we have an Evil God on our hands here.

It is astounding that the people who invented the Christian god would cast him in such a poor light. Since this god is allegedly omnipotent, if he exists, he must have been OK to be characterized as such. This leaves two possibilities- god is evil, or god is fictional.

Follow this link to #4901