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

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

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

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

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

(5052) Christianity minus afterlife equals zero

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

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

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

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

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

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

(5053) Apologetics are missing from the Bible

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

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

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

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

(5054) Yahweh qualifies as being non-existent

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

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

What qualifies something as being non-existent?

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

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

(5055) The illogic of Satan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(5057) Electrician’s road to atheism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(5058) Tracking scriptural slavery ethics proves men created god

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

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

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

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

(5059) Old Testament is deeply immoral

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

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

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

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

(5060) God doesn’t care about free will

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

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

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

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

(5061) Followers of Jesus stayed in Jerusalem

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

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

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

Elaine Pagels briefly summarises here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(5063) Christian god cannot exist

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

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

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

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

(5064) Argument against the existence of souls

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

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

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

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

(5065) Origin of gospel parables

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My main sources for this study:

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

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

(5066) Endosymbiosis and the origin of complex life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cell Wall Breakthrough

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Striking the Right Balance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the abstract of the study:

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

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

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

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

(5068) The way Christianity unfolded

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(5069) Jesus fulfills only part of the prophecy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(5070) Prayers versus insulin

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

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

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

The backstory is horrifying:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now the verdict is in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(5071) Anti-wealth Jesus statements ignored

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

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

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

I’m sure y’all know the verses.

Mark 10:17-27:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(5072) Crucifixion makes no sense

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

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

The crucifixion really makes no sense on any level.

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

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

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

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

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

(5073) Christianity and Constantine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(5074) Summary of Judaism and Christianity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(5075) Bible has an inconsistent view of resurrection

One of the central tenets of Christianity and its most powerful motive to gain followers is a promise of a resurrection of those who have died. But the Bible is not consistent on this matter, and that is a problem. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1igojql/who_is_resurrected_in_the_final_resurrection_of/

Dan. 12:2 states that “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”. Many doesn’t necessarily mean all, but it is clearly not just righteous Jews, since they surely wouldn’t be punished with shame and eternal contempt.

The Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch (22) explicitly states that some of the dead would not be resurrected, but, again, at least some of the non-righteous seem destined for resurrection, and there is an accursed place set aside to receive them after this.

Other pre-Christian Jewish texts do indeed seem to reserve resurrection for the righteous, such as the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Test. Jud. 25, Test. Zeb. 10:1-4), the Psalms of Solomon (3:11-12), Pseudo-Ezekiel (4Q385 frags. 1-3) and the Messianic Apocalypse (4Q521 frags. 2, 4, 5, 7), 2 Maccabees (7:14, cf. 14:37-46).

Some Jews apparently denied resurrection altogether, as the Synoptic Gospels and Acts suggest (Matt. 22:23-33; Mk. 12:18-27; Lk. 20:27-49; Acts 23:8). That view may also be exemplified in Job 14 and Sirach 14:3-19.

As for the authors of the Synoptic Gospels, Luke (14:14) refers to a “resurrection of the just”, but this might only be meant to distinguish it from a more general resurrection. That would seem to be the case if Luke and Acts come from the same author, as scholars often maintain, since the latter refers to a “resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous” (24:15). Osei-Bonsu has argued that, in fact, the author of Luke denied a resurrection of the unrighteous, specifically re-working Jesus words in the other Synoptic Gospels to remove that implication. I find his argument a bit tenuous. The other Synoptics don’t give away their position on the matter explicitly, if I recall, but their suggestion that the unrighteous would be punished in both body and soul in Gehenna (Matt. 5:22, 5:29-30, 10:28, 18:9, 23:33, 25:31-46; Mk. 9:43-8) might indicate a belief in the resurrection of the unrighteous for punishment.

Revelation (20) is by far the most explicit, mentioning two separate resurrections—the first for the righteous, the second for the wicked—situated on either side of a millennium, during which the devil would be bound. The passage cited above from Acts apparently quotes Paul, suggesting that he expected all the dead to be raised as well.

It has been argued by some scholars that some of the Pauline Epistles (particularly those of dubious authorship) and the Johannine corpus evince a realized eschatology in which the resurrection is conceived not as an actual reconstitution and immortalization of the flesh, but this is contentious.

One could cite a bunch of other texts in favor of either an exclusive or a universal resurrection. The main point you should take away is that there is no single biblical view of resurrection. It took various different forms, and was even rejected by an apparently significant number of Israelite/Jewish writers.

I would recommend reading C. D. Elledge, Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism (Oxford, 2017); James H. Charlesworth (ed.), Resurrection: The Origin and Future of a Biblical Doctrine (New York, 2006); Alan Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner (eds.), Judaism in Late Antiquity, vol. 4 (Leiden, 2000). I mentioned above an article by J. Osei-Bonsu, ‘The Intermediate State in the New Testament’, Scottish Journal of Theology 44, no. 2 (1991), pp. 169-94.

The Bible, if it was the inspired product of an omnipotent deity, would present a clear and consistent description of the resurrection consequences for both followers and apostates. It clearly does not do this, instead presenting the various views of its various authors. No biblical scholar can state with any confidence what is supposed to happen. This is a marker of a human-created concept.

(5076) God goes silent

The following explores the inconsistency between God’s allegedly ‘active phase’ as depicted in the Bible to the apparent silence of today’s ‘inactive phase.’ There seems to be no good reason for this change in behavior, and it lends much evidence to suggest that the biblical god is mythical. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ihrjdq/gods_silence_today_makes_ancient_claims_hard_to/

It’s one of the most baffling contradictions in religious history: a being supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and ever-present, who was “actively involved” in the lives of people thousands of years ago, but now, silence. No miracles. No divine intervention. No direct communication.

Let’s take a step back and think logically. Ancient civilizations were flooded with accounts of divine encounters. Moses parted the Red Sea. Jesus performed miracles. Muhammad spoke to God directly. These events are foundational to multiple religions, celebrated as proof of divine existence and intervention. But today? No parting of seas. No healings that defy modern medicine. No booming voices from the clouds.

This isn’t rhetorical. It’s a direct challenge to the inconsistency of divine behavior. Ancient miracles are celebrated as proof of God’s existence, yet modern suffering unfolds globally without a whisper of intervention.

So, why this abrupt silence? If the same god who was apparently “active” back then still exists today, why does he/she/it no longer intervene?

The Bible claims God obliterated Sodom with fire, sent plagues to humble Egypt, and resurrected the dead. Fast-forward to 2025: 500,000 die in Syria’s civil war, children starve in Africa, and Natural disasters kill thousands. Where’s the divine hand? If God “works in mysterious ways,” why were those ways so blatant then but imperceptible now? Ancient miracles served as “proof” for pre-scientific societies; today, such claims crumble under scrutiny.

Ancient people attributed earthquakes, eclipses, and disease to gods because they lacked better explanations. We now understand tectonic plates, astronomy, and virology. The only “miracles” left are vague personal experiences (“I found my keys after praying!”), which psychology explains as confirmation bias. If God’s presence has faded alongside human knowledge, is he just the god of ignorance?
Theologians argue God hides to “test faith.” But if a parent ignored their child’s screams during a house fire to “test loyalty,” we’d call them a monster. Why excuse God? The Holocaust saw 6 million Jews slaughtered, many praying for deliverance. If God intervened for Moses, why not for Auschwitz? Either he’s powerless, indifferent, or fictional. All options invalidate Abrahamic theology.

“God’s miracles today are subtle!” Then why the shift from splitting oceans to… subtlety? A deity who once used spectacle to prove himself now hides behind ambiguity? That’s not wisdom, it’s evasion. “You just need faith!” Faith is the excuse people give when they lack evidence. Ancient believers demanded signs (Exodus 7:11); why shouldn’t we?

It’’s hard to ignore the fact that the lack of intervention today is a glaring discrepancy with the claims of past divine acts. Until believers can provide a compelling reason for this contradiction, the question remains: Why is the divine so active in ancient history, yet utterly silent in the present day?

There are three possibilities- (1) God did perform the miraculous activities as depicted in the Bible, but has since decided to just let everything happen on its own, (2) God performed the miracles but has since died or traveled to another universe, or (3) the biblical miracles are mythical. By far, (3) is most likely.

(5077) An alternate story of the resurrection

There exist many possibilities of what happened in First Century Judea that sprang a new sect of Jewish followers who believed that Jesus was a prophet of God who had been miraculously resurrected after being crucified. One such possibility is presented here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ije53z/i_wrote_up_a_naturalistic_narrative_model_of_what/

An Execution and an Empty Tomb

Around the time of Passover one year in the 30s CE, a charismatic apocalyptic Judaean preacher named Yeshua (Jesus) upset the local Roman authorities and was executed by crucifixion. For a number of his most zealous followers, who had sincerely expected to follow this anointed one into the Day of Judgement, this was impossible to conceive. All of them found themselves negotiating with this reality in different ways. Some insisted that this must be part of a greater plan, others went so far as to deny that he had been killed at all, that soon Yeshua would show up and explain this had all been a trick on the authorities. In the minority were both the doubters and those who wanted to find a way to continue Yeshua’s mission somehow, but most of the group wasn’t ready for either of those things.

Meanwhile, some bad actors in Jerusalem, aware of Yeshua’ death, saw this dead prophet as an opportunity for profit.1 The body parts of a holy man were a valuable ingredient in folk magic. So were the body parts of someone who had died a violent death. Put those together and some smelled opportunity. A small group of men organized to raid the tomb where Yeshua’s wrapped body had been placed. Forced to choose between spending more time in the tomb dismembering the body, or simply carrying the whole body, they fatefully chose the latter.

They had nearly made it to their planned destination when they were stopped by Roman authorities and arrested — even with it being the dead of night, more than a few Passover pilgrims had seen the attempted theft and reported it. Some of those same witnesses would later go on to gossip that it must have been Yeshua’ followers stealing his body, an unfortunate misunderstanding.2 The Roman soldiers were much more worried about arresting the grave-robbers than actually returning the body to its original tomb, so the body was disposed of unceremoniously.

When word got back to Yeshua’ disciples of the empty tomb, this highly emboldened them. They were correct all along, they reasoned, to know that this couldn’t all be over. And a disappearing body? They’d heard stories like that.3 A slow-growing seed had been planted that perhaps Yeshua was something more than “just” the messiah.

Simon Kefa, Yeshua’s right-hand man

At this point, the disciples were ready and attentive, anticipating a further message from Yeshua. Truth is, they might have been ready to take meaning from something as simple as an unusually shaped cloud,4 or even their own dreams. But they got something better.

Most of the core disciples of Yeshua had actually remained in Jerusalem, which is why they found out about the empty tomb so quickly. While they had little indication the authorities were meaningfully searching for them, they were making a half-hearted attempt at laying low in the home of a somewhat well-off Jerusalem resident who they had won over in Yeshua’s last week of preaching, though by now the empty tomb had them starting to feel a bit invincible. One day, at around sunset, Yeshua’s former right-hand man Simon Kefa (Simon Peter) had been taking a walk outside when he came back to the home and saw something spectacular.

Seemingly hovering, localized above the building was a light amorphous glow, no bigger than a man.5 What Simon Kefa did not know, and what would never be known, is that the sun was hitting a recently polished gold decoration on the nearby Second Temple, just right, so as to create this anomalous effect.6 What Simon Kefa did know, or thought he knew, was that this was Yeshua.7 Under normal circumstances, this light might have just been seen as a peculiarity. But these were not normal circumstances.

Simon Kefa rushed inside to let the other disciples know what he had seen. But by the time they came outside, the sun had set too far and the glow was gone. The reaction was mixed, but at least some of the disciples enthusiastically believed Kefa and wanted to know more. He did not have much for them, as he had not spent much time focusing on the glow, but he believed Yeshua would be back.

He was right, in a sense. The next day, Kefa was, as would be expected, regularly checking for the return of this glow. When it did return, he rushed the other disciples out and they looked at it in awe. They focused on the glow, and some attempted to communicate with Yeshua in their minds. Some of them believed they received answers, and they excitedly shared these communications with each other. They communicated with and praised this Yeshua until the glow once again disappeared.

By the next day, word had gotten around some of Jerusalem about this miracle. Some even had come by the building too early, but seeing a more mundane intermittent reflective flash, went off proclaiming that they had seen the miracle. By the time that the glow once again appeared, a small crowd had formed. Kefa was overwhelmed with joy by this turnout, and felt Yeshua was calling for him to speak to this crowd. Kefa let the crowd know that Yeshua had a message for them, and gave a homily to the crowd, believing himself to be communicating on behalf of the risen Yeshua.8

Yaqob, the brother of Yeshua

This brings us to Yaqob (James) the brother of Yeshua. Yaqob had not explicitly rejected his brother’s movement, and was friendly with the disciples, but he had not been an active part of said movement either. Instead, he had been attempting to form his own community of a different, less apocalyptic and charismatic nature, focusing on his own criticisms of the current priesthood and calls for a new one. His success had been limited.

In recent days, as he tried to process his own unique grief about the fate of his brother, he had been inundated with excited questions about Yeshua from people who had witnessed the miracle of light. Yaqob, somewhat disgruntled at this, had avoided going and seeing it himself. But he couldn’t avoid thinking about the obvious. This Yeshua movement was ready to pay him special attention, if he was willing to talk about his deceased brother.

Finally, he relented, going to see about this miracle, the supposed luminous presence of his own brother. He was ready to see it. It would actually be a tremendous opportunity to see it. But there was a problem. By the time he made it over, the glow had not been seen for a couple days. The polish on the gold decoration, the weather, and even the sun’s exact position in the sky were no longer in the alignment necessary to create the unusual effect.

Yaqob waited. And waited. As he stared above the building, he started to think maybe he could see it. Yes, he could, couldn’t he?9 Yaqob decided that he could see the glow, and in closing his eyes and concentrating, he somehow felt he could see it even more clearly. He heard the voice of his brother in his mind, confirming the special role that he now had in Heaven and the similarly special role that he, Yaqob, was to have on Earth. He left and kept revisiting the moment in his mind. Doubts sprung up in his mind initially about whether he had really seen anything, but every time he reprocessed the memory, it only became more vivid. The next day, Yaqob would tell the disciples of Yeshua what he had experienced, and be welcomed with open arms into the fold.

Saul, the Persecutor

A few years later, a Pharisee named Saul regularly found himself harassing and persecuting Yeshua followers, believing them to be blasphemers of the worst kind. This persecution sometimes escalated into violence, but never death. Until it did. Saul was a complicit bystander in the brutal murder of a Yeshua follower, a situation that escalated quickly and was further intensified by the victim’s bravery and acceptance of his fate.

Saul walked away from the situation feeling sick to his stomach. Having engaged with mysticism in the past, he turned to this set of practices for answers. For days he fasted and prayed constantly. In a critical moment, he found himself deeply immersed in what we would categorize as an intense daydream.10 But for Saul this was more than that. Following the stories of the merkabah mystics11 he had learned from, he imagined himself to be ascending the levels of Heaven,12 and reaching the top he found the image of Yeshua abruptly enter his mind — or what he imagined Yeshua to look like, anyway — staring at him. Here was the answer to his doubts and his guilt. The followers of Yeshua were right.

Epilogue

In the next few decades, the stories of what happened after Yeshua’s death would grow and evolve. The eyewitnesses themselves would share their experiences with each other, and often find that when one person’s memory was more spectacular than their own, pieces of that other person’s memory would get added into their own upon later recollection.13 Disciples who were not even in Jerusalem at the time, for example a subset who had fled to Galilee,14 would reinterpret some of their own less anomalous experiences in those first weeks as communication from the risen Yeshua as well. But some of the most fantastic evolutions in the stories would come from non-eyewitnesses sharing the stories from others. By the time that the textual tradition that would someday be known as the Gospel of Matthew15 was being written and copied, something like 50 years following the events, it was largely non-eyewitnesses who had taken hold of the stories of what happened in the days and weeks after the execution of Yeshua the Anointed.

——

1 See Daniel Ogden’s Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook for evidence of sorcery-motivated grave-robbing being a known occurrence, possibly even common, in the Greco-Roman world.

2 I’m just having fun here. See Matthew 28:11-15.

3 The disappearing body was an established trope, see Robyn Faith Walsh’s The Origins of Early Christian Literature. Often this is an argument against there having been an empty tomb at all, but I went a different direction with it here.

4 This is a reference to a different model by Kamil Gregor, who inspired my own different pareidolia in this story.

5 My use of this phenomenon was inspired by a Marian apparition, Our Lady of Zeitoun.

6 Illusions of light can happen for countless reasons, so take your pick, but here I was inspired by Josephus’ descriptions of the blindingly reflective gold of the Second Temple in The Jewish War Book 5.

7 1 Corinthians 15:5.

8 1 Corinthians 15:6.

9 1 Corinthians 15:7.

10 I basically conceive of Paul here being the ancient version of a “reality shifter.”

11 Paul being a mystic is probably not required here, but I had to shout out this theory by Dr. Justin Sledge, who I think makes a strong case in this video.

12 Inspired by 2 Corinthians 12.

13 Awareness of rampant false memory formation is pretty high I think nowadays, but The Memory Illusion by Dr. Julia Shaw is a short and sweet book on this if you’re interested.

14 The Gospels present different traditions on whether the disciples fled to Galilee or stayed in Jerusalem. I think either way you can pick one and run with it, but here I’m basically just intending to pay lip service to those competing traditions.

15 The Gospel of Mark alludes to a Resurrection too but does not (in its older form available to us) actually describe the appearance(s).

It goes without saying that this story is infinitely more plausible than that a man came back to life after being dead for 36 hours and then bodily left the planet.

(5078) Jesus didn’t fulfill anything

Christians like to claim that Jesus was prophesized in the Old Testament and that he fulfilled all of the messianic allusions contained therein. This is exactly wrong. The following explains how Jesus failed to fulfill anything:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ijxn8c/jesus_didnt_fulfill_a_single_prophecy/

Christians think Jesus is the messiah, often proclaiming that he “fulfilled hundreds of prophecies from the Old Testament.” The problem for Christianity is that in reality Jesus failed to fulfill even a single prophecy.

A large portion of the “prophecies” that he supposedly fulfilled are not even prophecies — they are just random quotes from the Old Testament taken out of context. Some are just lines in the OT describing historical events. Some are from Psalms which is not a book of prophecies but a book of ancient song lyrics.

———————————————-Fake Prophecies———————————————-

Matthew is particularly egregious in propping up these fake prophecies.

Matthew 2:14-15

Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

But he’s referencing Hosea, which says:

Hosea 11:1-2
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
The more I called them,
the more they went from me;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals
and offering incense to idols.

This isn’t a prophecy. It’s just describing Yahweh bringing the Israelites out of Egypt in the Exodus. Then Matthew throws another one at us:

Matthew 2:16-18

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. Then what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

This is referencing Jeremiah 31:15 and again this is not a prophecy. This is Jeremiah describing the mourning of the Israelites as they went into the Babylonian exile. It is not a prophecy about someone killing kids 600 years later.

Let’s look at one more from Matthew:

Matthew 13:34-35

Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet:

“I will open my mouth to speak in parables;
I will proclaim what has been hidden since the foundation.”

This is a song lyric from Psalms, not a prophecy:

Psalm 78:1-2

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old

These examples go on and on. Christians will often call these “typological prophecies” which is a fancy label for “finding vague similarities anywhere we want and declaring them to be prophecies so we can make it look like Jesus actually fulfilled something.”

As it turns out, I can find typological prophecies in song lyrics also. The World Trade Center was destroyed, and this happened to fulfill what had been spoken by the prophet Chris Cornell in the book of Soundgarden when he said, “Building the towers belongs to the sky, when the whole thing comes crashing down don’t ask me why.“

————————————————————————————————————

When it comes to the actual prophecies in the Old Testament, there are two categories:

1. 1. Ones that aren’t even messianic prophecies that Jesus didn’t fulfill
   2. Actual messianic prophecies that Jesus didn’t fulfill

—————————————-Non-Messianic Prophecies—————————————-

Probably the most famous section from the first category is in Isaiah 7. The context here is that Isaiah is talking to Ahaz, king of Judah, who was under threat of invasion by two kingdoms.

Isaiah 7:10-16

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.” Then Isaiah said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.

This is a prophecy to King Ahaz that he will be delivered from the two kingdoms he is afraid of. That’s it. This is not a messianic prophecy. There is no messiah here, no virgin birth, no virgin at all. There is only a young woman in the court of King Ahaz who is already pregnant and her child’s age is being used as a timeline for how quickly Ahaz will be free of the current threat.

Further in, we have the ever popular Isaiah 53, which describes the “suffering servant” who obviously must be Jesus, right? Chapters 40-55 are known as Deutero-Isaiah because they were written by an unknown second author who lived quite a while after the real Isaiah. That’s relevant because this entire section is focused on the return of the Israelites from the Babylonian captivity and the author repeatedly tells us who the servant is: the nation of Israel.

Isaiah 41:8-9

But you, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
the offspring of Abraham, my friend;
you whom I took from the ends of the earth
and called from its farthest corners,
saying to you, “You are my servant;
I have chosen you and not cast you off”;

Isaiah 43:1 & 43:10

But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel
….
You are my witnesses, says the Lord,
and my servant whom I have chosen

Isaiah 44:1-2

But now hear, O Jacob my servant,
Israel whom I have chosen!
Thus says the Lord who made you,
who formed you in the womb and will help you:
Do not fear, O Jacob my servant

Isaiah 44:21

Remember these things, O Jacob,
and Israel, for you are my servant;
I formed you, you are my servant

Isaiah 45:4

For the sake of my servant Jacob
and Israel my chosen

Isaiah 49:3

“You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”

And then suddenly when Isaiah 53 rolls around and God says “my servant”, Christians say, “GASP, he means Jesus!” And Isaiah 53 isn’t even a prophecy that a future suffering servant will come. It’s written to praise Yahweh for finally delivering the Israelites out of exile for the sake of the righteous remnant among Israel who have already been his suffering servant, maintaining their faithfulness even though they bore the pain, defeat, and punishment for the sins of the nation as a whole during the captivity. I’m including it as a prophecy at all in the sense of saying they will go now on to live in prosperity and regain national power.

I will briefly touch on the book of Daniel since this book is at least written the form of a prophecy and Christians believe it points to Jesus. The problem is that Daniel is a book of fake prophecies. It was written in the 2nd century BCE (primarily), pretending to be written by a prophet in the 6th century, pretty clearly intended to reference the current reign of Antiochus Epiphanes IV. Antiochus ruled over Judea, cut off an anointed one (high priest Onias III), stopped Jewish sacrifices, and set up an abomination by sacrificing a pig to a statue of Zeus in the Jewish temple. There’s obviously a LOT that can be said about Daniel and it could become its own thread, but this post is already getting long so I’m going to leave it as a summary. Anyone can feel free to comment on particular portions of Daniel if they’d like.

——————————————-Messianic Prophecies——————————————-

Now, let’s take a look at some actual messianic prophecies in the Bible. How about Isaiah 11? Let’s see what Jesus fulfilled from there.

Isaiah 11:1
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse

Ok, well later authors at least claim that Jesus was from the line of David (by way of his adopted father).

Isaiah 11:6-8

The wolf shall live with the lamb;
the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

Nope.

Isaiah 11:11

On that day the Lord will again raise his hand to recover the remnant that is left of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea.

Nope. Jesus didn’t bring back all the Israelites that had been scattered around the world.

Isaiah 11:15

And the Lord will dry up
the tongue of the sea of Egypt
and will wave his hand over the River
with his scorching wind
and will split it into seven channels
and make a way to cross on foot;

That certainly didn’t happen.

So the only part that Jesus fulfilled (if we’re being generous) is that he was from the line of David. In which case, millions of other people also fulfilled this prophecy.

Maybe he fulfilled Jeremiah 33?

Jeremiah 33:15-18

In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

For thus says the Lord: David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel, and the Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to make grain offerings, and to make sacrifices for all time.

Jesus was never in a position of authority to execute any justice in the land. He went around preaching and then got killed. Jesus didn’t cause Judah and Jerusalem to live in safety. Jerusalem was and remained under Roman oppression and their uprisings were brutally squashed. He did not sit on the throne of Israel. He did not secure the existence of Levitical priests making burnt and grain offerings forever. Jesus fulfilled nothing here.

Let’s take a look at another commonly cited one in Zechariah 9:

Zechariah 9:9-10

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.

Ok, so Jesus demonstrated that he is indeed the glorious savior of Israel because he… rode a donkey once (of course, this is again Matthew falling victim to having the world’s lowest standards for prophetic fulfillment). Did he protect Ephraim and Jerusalem from attackers? As we already discussed, no. Did he have any dominion at all, much less to the ends of the earth? No.

If that section wasn’t clear enough, you can read all of Zechariah 9 and see that it’s clearly a prophecy about bringing Israel to power and glory as a nation and military force.

Zechariah 9:13-15

For I have bent Judah as my bow;
I have made Ephraim its arrow.
I will arouse your sons, O Zion,
against your sons, O Greece,
and wield you like a warrior’s sword.

Then the Lord will appear over them,
and his arrow go forth like lightning;
the Lord God will sound the trumpet
and march forth in the whirlwinds of the south.
The Lord of hosts will protect them,
and they shall consume and conquer the slingers;
they shall drink their blood like wine
and be full like a bowl,
drenched like the corners of the altar.

Did Jesus wield the sons of Israel like a sword against the sons of Greece? Did Jesus protect the Israelites so that they could drink the blood of their enemies like wine? Come on.

So Jesus’ messianic resume is that he is questionably of the line of David and he rode a donkey once.

—————————————————————————————————————

The only recourse that Christians have when people actually read these prophecies is to just ignore what they are actually saying and make claims of “double prophecy.” But that’s the same kind of nonsense as “typological” prophecies — it’s just disregarding the actual context of the passages to insert whatever meaning you want it to have in order to protect your current beliefs. The reality is that the actual prophecies in the Bible are all about times of difficulty centuries past that the Israelites went through, hoping for relief and future glory that ultimately never came. The actual meaning of them has no bearing or significance for Christians so they have to find patterns and hidden meanings that aren’t there.

The Jews were correct to discard Jesus as being a messianic candidate. Certainly, they realized he wasn’t their promised savior. Christians created a Potemkin Village to form an illusion- one that satisfies only those who are brainwashed or blissfully uninformed.

(5079) Normalized delusion

When you step back from the hoards of people who follow a specific religion, it becomes easy to see what is going on- they have been bamboozled by various elements that have tricked their minds into believing utter nonsense. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1ikt0u8/how_do_adults_genuinely_believe_in_angels_and/‘

It’s honestly crazy how normalized it is for grown adults to believe in angels, demons, and people flying into the sky. If a child said they had an invisible friend who protects them from evil creatures, we’d think it was just their imagination. But when an adult says the same thing—just using words like ‘guardian angels’ and ‘demons’—it’s suddenly considered a deep, profound belief. It’s the same fairy tale logic, just dressed up in religious language.

In a few thousand years, assuming that humans can survive that long, it is fairly certain that belief in Christianity will be seen similarly as belief in fairies is today. There is a time limit to any religion, especially one that defies logic, basic science, and which promises things to happen that never do. Christianity is a dying religion, soon to see its extinction.

(5080) Argument from empirical supremacy

It is telling that the arguments supporting God’s existence all lack any elements of empiricism. Empirical evidence is information gathered through observation, experimentation, or measurement. It’s based on real-world observations, rather than theory or speculation. Given a lack of such evidence, disbelief in God is a reasonable assumption. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ijf4vj/philosophical_arguments_for_gods_existence_are/

I call this the Argument from Empirical Supremacy.

I’ve run this past a couple of professional philosophers, and they don’t like it. I’ll admit, I’m a novice and it needs a lot of work. However, I think the wholesale rejection of this argument mainly stems from the fact that it almost completely discounts the value of philosophy. And that’s bad for business! 😂

The Argument from Empirical Supremacy is based on a strong intuition that I contend everyone holds – assuming they are honest with themselves. It’s very simple. If theists could point to obvious empirical evidence for the existence of God, they would do so 999,999 times out of a million. They would feel no need to roll out cosmological, teleological, ontological, or any other kind of philosophical arguments for God’s existence if they could simply point to God and say “There he is!”

Everyone, including every theist, knows this to be true. We all know empirical evidence is the gold standard for proof of anything’s existence. Philosophical arguments are almost worthless by comparison. Theists would universally default to offering compelling empirical evidence for God if they could produce it. Everyone intuitively knows they would. Anyone who says they wouldn’t is either lying or completely self-deluded.

Therefore, anyone who demands empirical evidence for God’s existence is, by far, standing on the most intuitively solid ground. Theists know this full well, even though they may not admit it.

A valid, evidence-based conclusion is that God most likely does not exist. If God exists and wanted to change this situation, he could.

(5081) Worshiping the Christian god is dystopian

The idea of worshiping a being who exerted no effort to become his existence is bad enough, but even worse is to worship this monster who has created an eternal torture chamber for most of the world’s human population. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1ik8h95/worshipping_is_so_dystopian

It is honestly dystopian when you really think about it. The majority of Christians believe that around 70% of the world—billions of people—are destined to suffer, burn, and be tormented for eternity. And yet, they still gather in churches midweek, singing, dancing, throwing their hands up, and worshiping, all while calling God ‘good’ and ‘just.’

Like, how do you reconcile that? If you truly believe eternal conscious torment is the fate of most humans, how do you go about your life just fine with that knowledge? How do you eat dinner, go to work, watch TV, and then show up at church to sing about how great it all is? Wouldn’t that be the most horrifying reality imaginable? And yet, instead of seeing it as something deeply disturbing, they celebrate it.

It really shows how normalized and desensitized people become to religious doctrine. If any other belief system preached that the vast majority of people would be endlessly tortured, it would be seen as nightmarish. But somehow, when it’s wrapped in ‘God’s love,’ it becomes something to sing about.”

How on earth do Christians reconcile this non sequitur? Why does God get a pass for which any other person would be hunted down, and either killed or put in prison. Any Christian worshiping Yahweh is a non-thinking hypocrite.

(5082) Jesus wanted to restore Mosaic Judaism

Although Christians believe (without sufficient evidence) that Jesus intended to create a new religion (Christianity), it is much more likely that his mission was to restore an archaic form of Judaism that existed at an earlier time- around the era assigned to the fictional Moses. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1imni92/has_anyone_ever_proposed_or_argued_for_this/

Jesus did not seemingly seek to bring a new religion, but rather simply reform an existing one. He believed he was teaching a halakha that more closely resembled what Moses originally taught as opposed to the traditions and interpretations of the mainstream sects of Judaism of his day.

Adherents to 2nd Temple Judaism, in general, had essentially been trained to expect a kind of Messiah that Moses and the prophets before the exile did not originally predict due to the rise of Apocalyptism in Jewish literature that was written in the 200 years leading up to Jesus’ time. Such literature was the result of disillusioned Jews who lost their way and forgot what the original religion was even about as a result of the many hardships they were facing and the oppression of “Gentile” kingdom after kingdom in subduing them. It was perhaps during this period (though probably earlier given Jeremiah’s statement about the “lying pen of the scribes”; see Jeremiah 8:8) that you get interpolations in pre-exilic prophets about a warrior king that would come to drive out the Jews’ oppressors by force and usher in a Jewish utopia by divine intervention at a single point in history called “the end.”

Jesus, however, was not the kind of Messiah that people at this point were now expecting. He was described to be a humble king rather than a bloodthirsty one. He taught what scholar John Dominic Crossan calls a “participatory” or “collaborative” eschatology wherein a person participates or collaborates with God in order to bring about His reign on earth, as opposed to a traditionally apocalyptic eschatology. Perhaps after the death of John the Baptist, or perhaps even as early as his own baptism, Jesus for whatever reason abandoned the apocalyptic Messianism of his late teacher in favor of an eschatology and Messianism that focuses on the present and the belief that the Kingdom of God is within reach of everyone (albeit, in a subversive and non-violent way) through social reform or identity with an “Anarcho-Pacifist” form of Yahwism.

None of this is to say Jesus didn’t probably attempt to predict impending judgement on Jerusalem, as I’m not as minimalist as Mr. Crossan is about what Jesus probably and actually said, but history tends to repeat itself. So when Jesus suffered and died by the hands of his oppressors, some (or most) of Jesus’ followers that didn’t quite get his message were disillusioned and so put on his lips that he would return with vengeance to “finish the job” (so to speak). Thus, you get interpolations added to what Jesus probably did indeed say (e.g., warnings of judgement if there was no repentance) by interjecting things like “when the Son of Man comes (again)” in a way that seemed rather seamless.

Thus, while Jesus may have indeed said something like the speech recorded of him in Mark 13, verses like 26-27 and 34 are probably not original given that they conflict with provably more authentic sayings of his that seem to strongly suggest that he believed the “Kingdom of God” was a present reality already, and was even accessible to all long before he ever personally came on the scene.

It’s possible Jesus interpreted the title “Son of Man” in a way that’s much more consistent with the way the prophet Ezekiel used it when referring to himself as opposed to how it’s used in the Book of Daniel. It’s possible that this title had two meanings for Jesus:

1. 1. “Son of Man” can be used to refer to a specific individual, such as a Messiah.
   2. “Son of Man” can be used to refer to anyone in general, in the way “mankind” refers to both men and women in general.

Jesus seemingly taught a horizontal form of government that would’ve advanced itself through non-violence and love of others, wherein property is shared by everyone, and decisions are reached through consensus and “leaders” are meant only to lead through example and not command. Thus, Jesus might’ve thought anyone can fulfill the role of “Son of Man” (or “Messiah”), as Jesus seemingly believed the traditional paradigm of hierarchy and earthly kingdoms were ultimately dangerous and/or counterintuitive to how YHVH expects His followers to organize themselves. As such, he might’ve thought that he was “sent” to be the perfect example for others to follow or imitate.

All this might be why Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to things like a “mustard seed.” The parable about this in its original form would’ve evoked the idea that, like a weed that spreads fast and all over at the inconvenience of the land’s owners, so too will the Kingdom of God spread among the people (even if as small and seemingly mundane as a “mustard seed” initially). Again, it seems Jesus taught against traditional forms of leadership and hierarchies in general, and that we ought to all serve each other instead of subjugating others to serving ourselves.

Jesus seemingly preached both the renunciation of worldly possessions in favor of a life of simplicity and voluntary poverty, as well as acts of mercy towards the less fortunate. Jesus blessed the poor, the meek, the humble and the persecuted. He seemed to believe that these kinds of people were and are the ones who “inherit” or enter into the Kingdom of God, and that such a blessing can be experienced right now. Such a perspective indicates He might’ve understood God’s reign as something that begins internally “from the heart,” rather than something that is initiated externally by force.

Scholars like George E. Mendenhall in his book Ancient Israel’s Faith and History: An Introduction to the Bible in Context demonstrate that Yahwism did not originally teach much of what is contained in the Hebrew Bible as we have it today, and that the religion was seemingly co-opted by followers of a competing “god” called “Baal” (or “Satan” in the New Testament) that ultimately changed it into the form of Judaism that we’re most familiar with now. Jesus came to return the religion and the people back to something that looked more like what Moses probably actually taught, which is what I am here calling “Anarcho-Yahwism.”

Another part of Jesus’ attempt at a major reform of the Judaism of his day might’ve been the abolishment of the ritual and practice of animal sacrifice altogether, which would’ve been considered an extremely controversial paradigm shift to his contemporaries also. Again, Mr. Mendenhall demonstrates in his book that animal sacrifices probably weren’t original to what the original religion of “Yahwism” actually taught.

Much can be said here about what the historical Jesus’ opinions regarding animal sacrifice might’ve been, as well as whether or not passages where he seemingly condones or encourages it are truly authentic, but this post is long enough as it is and I don’t want it to drag on any longer for fear that others might pass on by because of its increasingly daunting length in a time where attention has become a precious commodity. Suffice it to say, it’s extremely noteworthy that there exists a fragment of a Gospel that is now lost to us that supposedly portrayed Jesus as saying, “I came to destroy the sacrifices, and if ye cease not from sacrificing, the wrath of God will not cease from you.” That Gospel was (again, supposedly) called the “Gospel According to the Hebrews.”

If this scholarship is correct, Jesus was a revolutionary- but not in the forward sense, but rather going backward to an earlier tradition. But, in any sense, there is no theological pathway to connect Jesus to Christianity. That is quite simply a bastardization of what this man was all about.

(5083) All religions are false

The following essay argues that there are multiple reasons to conclude that all religions claiming supernatural elements are false:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1inx301/why_all_faiths_are_false/

If we take a firm, rational perspective with no faith-based reasoning, the argument that all faiths are incorrect can be structured around the following key points.

Major world religions make mutually exclusive claims about reality, the afterlife, and the nature of God or gods. For example, Christianity claims Jesus is the Son of God and the only path to salvation, while Islam states Jesus was a prophet, not divine, and that Muhammad is the final prophet. Hinduism allows for multiple gods and reincarnation, which contradicts monotheistic views If one were true, the others would necessarily be false. If they all contain contradictions, then it’s likely they are all human-made constructs rather than absolute truth.

No religion has provided verifiable, repeatable, and empirical evidence for its supernatural claims. Miracles, divine interventions, and afterlife testimonies rely on anecdotal accounts rather than testable data. Scientific discoveries about the universe, evolution, and human psychology often contradict religious explanations.

Religions evolve over time based on cultural, political, and social influences. Many gods and religious systems have existed and faded away, such as the Greek, Norse, and Mesopotamian pantheons. The fact that religions are constantly changing suggests they are human-created rather than divinely revealed.

Religious doctrines often reflect the biases and moral limitations of the cultures that created them. Many holy texts contain outdated moral teachings, such as support for slavery, subjugation of women, and capital punishment for minor offenses. Secular moral philosophy, human rights, and ethics have evolved independently of religion, often surpassing religious morality.

Cognitive science suggests that belief in gods arises from pattern recognition, agency detection, and social conditioning. Religious experiences, visions, and divine encounters are explainable through neurology and psychology. People’s religious beliefs often correlate with their geographic location rather than an objective truth.

If an all-powerful, all-knowing, and benevolent god existed, as claimed by many religions, unnecessary suffering would not exist. The presence of natural disasters, diseases, and random suffering contradicts the idea of a just and loving deity. Many religious explanations for suffering, such as free will and divine tests, fail to address why an all-powerful being wouldn’t create a better system.

Since religions contradict each other, rely on faith rather than evidence, evolve over time, reflect human biases, and fail to provide satisfactory answers to fundamental questions, it is reasonable to conclude that they are human-made constructs rather than sources of absolute truth.

In addition, it is reasonable to conclude that if one religion is true (and the others false), the true religion would easily out-recruit the others, leaving it as the dominant worldwide faith, with the others withering away like dust in the wind. That is, any religion that was true would become universal in a short period of time.

(5084) God and gay marriage

God obviously allowed anti-gay verses to be placed in his holy scriptures. And being omnipotent, he has the capability to control the actions of humans. Therefore, it is telling that tens of Christian countries had moved to allow for gay marriage.

Here is a list of the 39 countries in the world today that allow gay marriage:

1. Netherlands (2001)
2. Belgium (2003)
3. Spain (2005)
4. Canada (2005)
5. South Africa (2006)
6. Norway (2009)
7. Sweden (2009)
8. Portugal (2010)
9. Iceland (2010)
10. Argentina (2010)
11. Denmark (2012)
12. Brazil (2013)
13. France (2013)
14. Uruguay (2013)
15. New Zealand (2013)
16. Luxembourg (2015)
17. United States (2015)
18. Ireland (2015)
19. Colombia (2016)
20. Finland (2017)
21. Malta (2017)
22. Germany (2017)
23. Australia (2017)
24. Austria (2019)
25. Taiwan (2019)
26. Ecuador (2019)
27. Costa Rica (2020)
28. Chile (2022)
29. Switzerland (2022)
30. Slovenia (2022)
31. Cuba (2022)
32. Mexico (2022)
33. Andorra (2023)
34. Estonia (2024)
35. Greece (2024)
36. Liechtenstein (2025)
37. Thailand (2025)
38. United Kingdom (2024)
39. Antarctica (2016)

With the exception of Thailand and Taiwan, all of these countries are majority Christian.

So what is the apologist response to this- Did God change his mind? Has he lost control of his followers? Is he simply letting Christians sin by allowing for this ‘abomination?’ And if he is allowing for this sin, is there any evidence that he is punishing these countries? Or is it more likely that the anti-gay scriptures were written by men without any inspiration from a supernatural deity? And if so, how about the entire Bible being written without godly input?

(5085) God gets pass on forcing love

Force love is ersatz love, it doesn’t merit admiration. The entire theme of Christianity is forced love- you have no choice but to love your creator, and if you don’t, you will be punished severely. And to make matters worse, your creator hides himself from view, making belief in its existence an exercise in credulity. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1im24n3/love_doesnt_come_with_terms_and_conditions/

Love doesn’t come with terms and conditions.

Christians rarely confront the logic of this argument. They are like zombies, programmed to react without thinking, reflexively worshiping an evil master.

(5086) Galatians fails to solve the slavery problem

The Bible’s failure to condemn the practice of slavery is a big problem. But many apologists have pointed to scripture in Galatians to argue that Paul, and by association, Jesus, were against the practice of slavery. The following explains why this is not true:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1iqfjpv/gal_328_is_not_condemning_or_prohibiting_owning/

Gal 3:28 is not condemning or prohibiting owning slaves, as often argued.

26You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek*,* slave nor free*,* male nor female*, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.* 29And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.

This has come up often lately, and I think it’s wrong for the following reasons.

1) In this passage, the apostle Paul is addressing the early Christian community, explaining that salvation and identity in Christ transcend social, ethnic, and gender distinctions. Paul is not erasing differences but is affirming that in terms of salvation and belonging to God’s family, all people are equal. No one has a greater or lesser status before God based on ethnicity, social position, or gender. In Paul’s time, Jews and Greeks (Gentiles) were often divided, slaves and free people had vastly different social standings, and men and women had different rights and roles. This verse declares that these distinctions do not determine one’s value or access to God.

2) If it were addressing the institution of slavery, Paul would be contradicting himself.

Galatians was written around 48 AD.

This would mean that Paul contradicted this concept when he wrote letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians about 12 years later, where he told slaves to OBEY their masters.

He would have contradicted himself again when he wrote to Timothy and to Titus a year later, where he stated the same thing. He would have contradicted Peter, who wrote the same thing at about the same time: for slaves to obey their masters.

3) He also wrote to the Christian slave masters in those letters and did NOT tell the slave masters that slavery was wrong but simply told them to treat them decently.

4) Does anyone think that Paul was getting rid of genders? No, and those goes for the other distinctions put forth.

So, in conclusion, looking at the data that I’ve presented, If Paul’s meaning in Gal 3:28 was referring to the institution of slavery, then he would have been contradicting himself. This is an impossibility.

Christians must own the fact that their religion condoned the practice of slavery, and that God, who would have known the future condemnation of the practice, did nothing to stop it.

(5087) God’s morality equates to humanity’s past

It should be alarming to a Christian that the morality portrayed by Yahweh in the Bible is disturbingly inferior to the human morality that has evolved over the past twenty centuries. It would seem that if the scriptures were being written today, Yahweh would be drastically different. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1iqpjpw/gods_morality_is_shockingly_bad_humans_have_a/

God’s Morality is Shockingly Bad. Humans Have a Higher Moral Standard Than the Creator

This presents a major challenge to apologists. The only defense is to punt and say that Yahweh decided to not nudge peoples’ innate sense of morality too much, so as not to de-motivate them. But in that case, it would seem that he would have made sure that his scriptures would be updated to meet modern morality standards. However this question is viewed, there is no safe harbor for Christians to retreat to.

(5088) Conflict between classic theism and evolution

The science of biological evolution has become so well-researched and demonstrated that many Christians have (reluctantly?) come to accept its truth. But, as the following discusses, this concession is actually fatal to their faith:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1irkplh/progressive_religionists_who_try_to_reconcile/

Progressive religionists who try to reconcile evolution with Classical Theism are more disingenuous than their counterparts who deny evolution.

Apologists have yet to find a viable way to marry Christianity and evolution into a happy relationship. Kind of like mixing water with oil. Thus, to deny evolution, despite all of the evidence supporting it, is the last retreat for Christians who want to maintain a degree of consistency with their beliefs.

(5089) Faith is a search for refuge rather than truth

In the following essay, it is discussed how people who base their religious beliefs on faith are not engaged in a search for truth, but rather a desire to obtain refuge from an unsettling existence:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1is7xgk/people_struggle_to_defend_their_religious_views/

People struggle to defend their religious views because their faith is actually a coping mechanism in disguise.

Religion has pretty much evolved into a source of comfort in times of crisis with many followers tracing their faith back to an epic life-changing moment while experience a sense of profound despair (be it addiction, grief, trauma, or personal failure).

These personal testimonies are often cited as proof of a religion’s truth, but in reality, they reflect a search for refuge rather than a pursuit of truth. Yes…While such stories are touching and serve to make light out of darkness, they cannot form the foundation of an entire belief system because personal testimonies are inherently subjective, emotionally driven, and shaped by individual biases rather than objective reasoning.

If personal testimonies were a reliable measure of truth, then every religion and belief system would have to be true. Which some people REALLY aren’t ready to hear.

This is why so many religious followers are unable to defend their own beliefs or articulate proper religious concepts because their faith was not built on intellectual inquiry but on “emotional necessity”.

Those who are drawn to religion in moments of desperation tend to accept doctrine without question, relying on their emotional experiences rather than seeking knowledge…

The result? When challenged with contradictions, ethical dilemmas, or alternative perspectives, they often retreat into personal anecdotes or vague assertions instead of engaging with the argument itself.

When confronted with difficult questions, many dismiss opposing viewpoints as attacks on their faith, reinforcing an “us versus them” mentality.

We see how often religious debates rely on emotional appeals and personal narratives, and the reason for THAT is because many followers simply lack the theological or philosophical foundations necessary to defend their beliefs in a rational manner. They are constantly LOVEBOMBED in their religious community through positive affirmations/imagery and a deep sense of belonging. These ideas become fixed not because they have been critically examined, but because they provide comfort and a sense of purpose. I think that many religious institutions are structured in a way that prioritizes emotional reinforcement over critical thinking, ensuring that devotion is sustained not through reasoned understanding but through an ongoing cycle of reassurance and group affirmation. As a result, believers mistake emotional highs for divine experiences, deepening their commitment even FURTHER without critically evaluating their beliefs. You’re essentially just pitching me your religion like a sales tactic. “If it works for them, it’ll work for me!”/”Oh, well if those are the results…”

CLEARLY people like it because it’s watered down and catered to their convenience.

I think that this makes one’s faith out to be very fragile and flawed.

Although having faith is extolled by Christianity as being what God most admires, it is really a tacit admission that there isn’t sufficient evidence to back its claims. And if that evidence existed, faith would be seen as a pejorative- (why do you have faith in Religion X when our religion has compelling evidence?).

(5090) Matthew ‘corrects’ Mark’s ‘mistake’

The theological momentum characterizing Jesus is on display as one reads the gospels in chronological order. In the following example, Mark, the first gospel, clearly shows Jesus relegating himself below the status of the Father. But approximately 10-15 years later, Matthew changes the wording to remove this concession:

Mark 10:17-22:

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not defraud. Honor your father and mother.’” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Matthew 19:16-22:

Then someone came to him and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. Also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “I have kept all these; what do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Then the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

These two gospels are documenting the same event, whether real or fictional. But if real, then one of them is misrepresenting what Jesus said. The meanings are poles apart. So how is one to know which one is more accurate, or more likely to be so? Generally, the earlier version should be credited as such. And in this case, the change that Matthew made while copying Mark is seen as being indulgent- trying to elevate Jesus’ status by dropping a humbling concession.

(5091) Why skeptics reject the resurrection

The following paper examines the reasons why un-indoctrinated historians find the claim of Jesus’ resurrection to be considerably unlikely:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exchristian/comments/1itxzif/the_skeptical_case_against_the_resurrection_of/

The Skeptical Case Against the Resurrection of Jesus: A Critical Analysis

Abstract

The resurrection of Jesus is one of the central claims of Christianity. While believers accept this event as a historical and theological truth, skeptics reject it based on a variety of historical, philosophical, and methodological grounds. This paper examines the main reasons skeptics do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus, including naturalistic explanations, issues with historical reliability, psychological and sociological theories of religious experiences, and methodological concerns regarding miracles. By analyzing these objections, this paper highlights the tension between faith-based and empirical approaches to historical claims.

Introduction

The resurrection of Jesus is a foundational doctrine of Christianity, affirmed by believers as the ultimate vindication of Jesus’ divine status and the basis of Christian hope (1 Corinthians 15:14–17). However, skeptics—whether historians, philosophers, or scientists—tend to dismiss this claim for multiple reasons, ranging from historical inconsistencies to philosophical objections to miracles. This paper explores the key reasons skeptics reject the resurrection, including the application of methodological naturalism, the reliability of the Gospel accounts, alternative explanations for the empty tomb and postmortem appearances, and the psychological and sociological dimensions of belief in resurrection narratives.

Methodological Naturalism and the Rejection of Miracles
One of the primary reasons skeptics reject the resurrection is the principle of methodological naturalism, which holds that historical and scientific investigations should only appeal to natural causes. This principle, widely adopted in academic disciplines, excludes supernatural explanations as unverifiable and unrepeatable (McCullagh, 2004). David Hume (1748) famously argued that miracles, by definition, are violations of the laws of nature and that no amount of historical testimony can establish them as more probable than natural explanations. Hume’s argument continues to influence modern historical Jesus studies (Ehrman, 2008).

Bart Ehrman (2008) argues that because historical methods rely on assessing probabilities, they cannot affirm miracles, which, by definition, are the least probable explanation of events. Instead, scholars must seek explanations based on known natural causes rather than appealing to supernatural intervention. This methodological constraint leads many scholars to conclude that even if the resurrection were true, history as a discipline is incapable of affirming it.

Issues with the Historical Reliability of the Gospel Accounts

Another significant reason for skepticism is the reliability of the Gospel narratives, which serve as the primary sources for the resurrection claim. The Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ death, and skeptics argue that they reflect theological agendas rather than objective historical reporting (Ehrman, 2012). Moreover, contradictions in the resurrection accounts raise concerns about their reliability. For example: • The number and identity of women at the empty tomb differ between the Gospels (Mark 16:1, Matthew 28:1, Luke 24:10, John 20:1). • The location of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances varies, with Matthew placing them in Galilee (Matthew 28:16) while Luke describes them occurring in Jerusalem (Luke 24:49). • The role of the angel(s) at the tomb is inconsistently reported (Matthew 28:2, Mark 16:5, Luke 24:4, John 20:12).

These inconsistencies suggest that the resurrection narratives evolved over time, possibly reflecting theological embellishment rather than eyewitness testimony (Crossan, 1995).

Alternative Explanations for the Empty Tomb and Postmortem

Appearances

Skeptics propose several naturalistic explanations for the empty tomb and postmortem appearances of Jesus. Among the most common are:

The Swoon Theory

Some scholars, including 19th-century rationalists like Friedrich Schleiermacher, have proposed that Jesus did not actually die on the cross but merely lost consciousness and later revived (Strauss, 1835). However, this theory is widely dismissed due to the brutality of Roman crucifixion and the unlikelihood of survival under such conditions (Edwards, Gabel, & Hosmer, 1986).

The Stolen Body Theory

Another explanation is that Jesus’ body was stolen, either by the disciples (Matthew 28:11–15) or by grave robbers. This theory was suggested in antiquity and persists among some skeptics, though it faces challenges regarding Roman security measures and the unlikelihood that the disciples would risk martyrdom for a deliberate deception (Habermas & Licona, 2004).

The Hallucination Hypothesis

One of the most widely accepted naturalistic explanations among scholars is that the postmortem appearances of Jesus were hallucinations or visionary experiences rather than physical encounters (Lüdemann, 1994). Psychological studies suggest that grief-induced visions are common, and the cultural expectation of a resurrected messiah may have primed the disciples to experience visions of Jesus (Allison, 2005). Additionally, Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3–6) is often interpreted as a visionary rather than a physical encounter.

Cognitive and Social Factors in the Emergence of Resurrection Belief

Anthropological and sociological studies suggest that belief in resurrection-like events is not unique to Christianity. Many religious movements, especially in apocalyptic contexts, develop stories of their leaders returning from the dead (Wright, 2003). Cognitive studies also indicate that humans have a natural tendency to see patterns and agency, which may contribute to the formation of resurrection narratives (Boyer, 2001).

Conclusion

Skeptics reject the resurrection of Jesus on several grounds, including methodological naturalism, historical inconsistencies, and alternative naturalistic explanations. While believers accept the resurrection as a matter of faith, scholars operating within the framework of historical inquiry argue that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which they find lacking in the available sources. This debate highlights the fundamental difference between faith-based and empirical approaches to historical events and underscores the difficulty of using historical methods to evaluate supernatural claims.

References • Allison, D. C. (2005). Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters. T&T Clark. • Boyer, P. (2001). Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. Basic Books. • Crossan, J. D. (1995). The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. HarperOne. • Edwards, W. D., Gabel, W. J., & Hosmer, F. E. (1986). “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ.” Journal of the American Medical Association, 255(11), 1455–1463. • Ehrman, B. D. (2008). Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible. HarperOne. • Ehrman, B. D. (2012). Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperOne. • Habermas, G., & Licona, M. (2004). The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. Kregel Publications. • Hume, D. (1748). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. • Lüdemann, G. (1994). The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology. Fortress Press. • McCullagh, C. B. (2004). The Logic of History. Routledge. • Strauss, D. F. (1835). The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined. • Wright, N. T. (2003). The Resurrection of the Son of God. Fortress Press.

It should be noted that if Christianity was true, and Jesus actually resurrected from the dead, then God would (should) have provided enough evidence for anyone to come to a conclusion that this event was factual. That we find the opposite tends to undermine the above hypothesis.

(5092) Prophecy is incompatible with free will

Christians generally believe in prophecy as an accurate prediction of future events. They also believe in free will. However, they fail to realize how these two concepts collide and become incompatible. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1isked7/prophecy_is_incompatible_with_free_will/

Prophecy is incompatible with free will.

This is analogous to the conundrum of prayer- God has a plan, so prayer, unless fully aligned with this plan, is useless- unless God is willing to change his plan. But if God changes his plan, and admits a human has a better plan, then he is not infallible or omnipotent.

(5093) Luke keeps Jesus in Jerusalem

There exists a significant discrepancy concerning Jesus’ post-resurrection travels. Mark and Matthew have him traveling to Galilee, while Luke keeps him sequestered in Jerusalem. The following discusses the implications of this disparity:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ivo4im/luke_deliberately_erased_the_galilean/

Luke Deliberately Erased the Galilean Resurrection Appearances and Replaced them with Appearances Only in Jerusalem.

The people who compiled the Bible apparently didn’t see any problem with Luke contradicting Mark and Matthew on the location of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances, but it leads any critical-minded person to cast doubt on the entire story. Even if you are making up a history, at least make it consistent!

(5094) Christian Nationalism

There is a recent movement among Christians, primarily in the United States, to reconfigure Christian teachings to one that is diametrically opposed to what Jesus taught in the gospels. Although it is easy to dismiss these ‘Christian Nationalists’ as being misguided, it nevertheless can be viewed as a failure by Yahweh to guide his followers in the right trajectory. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ivyrvv/christian_nationalism_is_an_antichristian/

Christian Nationalism is an Anti-Christian movement that drives people away from the teachings of Christ

Christian Nationalism does not spread Christianity—it distorts it. Instead of bringing people closer to Jesus, it drives them away by replacing the Gospel’s message of love, humility, and grace with nationalism, power, and exclusion. It turns faith into a political weapon, using it to control rather than to serve. This is not just a misunderstanding of Christianity—it is an anti-Christian movement because it contradicts the very teachings of Christ.

The entire history of Christianity involves splinter movements that range for minor to major deviations from the original form of the faith. It’s hard to understand how Yahweh could view this situation as being acceptable. Each of these offshoots tends to suggest that Christianity is an invention of humans- who, for obvious reasons, tend to disagree with each other.

(5095) Resurrection of the saints commentary

The Gospel of Matthew claims that dead people came out of their graves at the moment of Jesus’ resurrection:

27:51-53

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

The following explains why this event did not happen:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ixghxa/the_lack_of_external_confirmation_of_matthew_27/

We have lots of writings from that time and from after. Including other writings in the NT itself. If the temple curtain was split in two, alongside an earthquake, and many saints shambled out of their tombs and appeared to many, we would absolutely expect to hear about it. Even if it was exaggerated, we would expect to hear some sort of legends!

Most people around that time had no reason at all to deny Jesus’ divinity because they had no idea who he was and never heard of him. They certainly wouldn’t just pretend dead people weren’t walking the streets en masse to spite some small-time Jewish preacher they’d never heard about. Matthew makes a point of this not being some small unnoticed event – many saints resurrected, and appeared to many, in the middle of portentous natural disasters. We would expect an absolute deluge of local sources about it. It would be the first thing anyone would mention when talking about 1st-century Jerusalem for decades and centuries after.

One guy allegedly resurrected in a tomb by himself and Christians would not shut up about it for 2000 years, and you’re telling me an entire city witnessed a zombie apocalypse of resurrected saints known to be dead and buried for years and just forgot to mention it in ANY writings? And it’s pure ad-hoc speculation to suggest that every single one of the countless external sources that mentioned this event would have been systematically destroyed, including the many which would have attributed it to things other than Jesus or that wouldn’t have even heard of Jesus. If we can say anything at all about any event in the Bible with any confidence, it’s that the resurrection of saints definitely did not happen.

This piece of fiction contaminates the entire account and lends credence to doubt anything else that was written by this author. It is thought that the Gospels of Luke and John were written subsequently, and neither of these authors borrowed or endorsed the resurrection of the saints. It stands alone and we can confidently state with 100 percent certainty that it did not happen.

(5096) Jesus’ apocalyptic teachings were changed

Early Christians expected a quick return of Jesus and the end of the current order. As it became evident that the end times were being delayed, it was necessary to modify these expectations, but in a way that made it seem like it was always meant to be that way. In the following, Bart Ehrman discusses this topic:

https://ehrmanblog.org/how-jesus-apocalyptic-teachings-were-changed-even-in-the-nt/

How Jesus’ Apocalyptic Teachings Were Changed (even in the NT)

I have been arguing that Jesus talked about a figure he called the Son of Man, a cosmic judge of the earth who was soon to arrive from heaven to judge all people, to destroy the opponents of God (both human and non-human) and to reward his (human) followers with a utopian kingdom here on earth.  This was not a weird, unusual, or psychotic message: in basic terms it was a rather common view among Jews in Jesus day, a view that scholars have called “apocalyptic.”

The word comes from the Greek term “apocalypsis,” which means a “revealing” or an “unveiling.”  Jewish apocalypticism was widespread in Jesus’ day: it was a view held by the Pharisees, the Essenes (including the authors and users of the Dead Sea Scrolls), authors of books such as 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch, various “prophets” we know about (named and unnamed), John the Baptist, and many, many others.  These Jews believed the world was controlled for now by forces of evil, but God was soon to re-assert his authority by bringing in a day of judgment in which all that was evil would be destroyed.

It was common among these groups to think this was all going to happen very soon:  these are the end times according to both the Essenes and the pre-Christian Paul; the end is coming right away according to John the Baptist (Luke 3:9); it will happen within his own generation according to Jesus (Mark 9:1; 13:30).  Why soon?  Because the world has gotten as bad as it can get and it can’t last much longer.  God will intervene soon.  If you are suffering for siding with God: hold on!  It won’t be long!  Soon you will be vindicated and rewarded.

Jesus taught this.  His followers believed it.  The Son of Man was to arrive at any time.

What happened when he didn’t?  What happened when the end that was coming soon did not come at all?   Various things happened in different groups.  Among the followers of Jesus, his apocalyptic message of the imminent arrival of the Son of Man came to be transformed — de-apocalypticized — by the storytellers who recounted his teachings.  In our later Gospel sources, Jesus’ teaching begins to sound different.  Less apocalyptic.  Eventually it became non-apocalyptic.  Later still it became anti-apocalyptic.  One can see why.  The original predictions did not pan out. So they must have meant something else.

This represents a human tendency to refuse an admission of failure- when things don’t work out as previously predicted, simply modify the prediction in a way that allows the original theme to survive. If this tendency did not exist, Christianity would have died out by the end of the First Century.

(5097) Jesus fails to fulfill Jeremiah’s prophecy

Most Christians mindlessly believe what they have been told about Jesus’ connection to Old Testament prophecies- that he fulfilled all of them. This is certainly not true. The following discusses how Jesus failed to fulfill prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1iyp4sn/jesus_is_not_the_messiah_promised_in_the_old/

Jesus is not the Messiah promised in the Old Testament.

Another central point in this passage is the statement that “David will never fail to have a descendant to sit on the throne of Israel.” This clearly indicates the promise of a continuous and uninterrupted messianic dynasty. However, Jesus never physically sat on Israel’s throne, nor did he establish a tangible earthly government. Furthermore, Christian tradition asserts that he had no descendants, meaning his lineage did not give rise to a ruling dynasty as the prophecy specifies. If the prophecy referred only to a spiritual kingdom, this should have been explicitly stated; yet, there is no mention of an abstract or heavenly rule—the promise explicitly refers to an earthly reign.

The prophecy also emphasizes the importance of the Temple and continuous Levitical sacrifices, stating that the priests from the tribe of Levi would never cease offering burnt offerings and sacrifices to God. However, with the destruction of the Temple, sacrifices stopped, and the Levitical priesthood lost its function. For the prophecy to be fulfilled, the Temple should still be standing, and the rituals should still be performed—something that has not happened for nearly two millennia.

Finally, the prophecy makes an emphatic comparison: God’s covenant with David and the Levitical priests could only be broken if someone managed to interrupt the natural cycle of day and night—something obviously impossible. Yet, in reality, the visible Davidic dynasty has disappeared, the Levitical priests have ceased offering sacrifices, and Israel has no reigning Davidic king. Therefore, if Jeremiah’s prophecy is to be taken literally, it was not fulfilled in Jesus and remains unfulfilled to this day.

If Jesus was divine and was intended to be the prophecized savior talked about in the Old Testament, he could have done whatever was necessary to fulfill the prophetic elements of that scripture. He did not. We can conclude from this that Judeo-Christianity has a fatal disconnect, and that Jesus was nothing more than a rogue holy man who became overly lionized due to unrestrained, superstitious ignorance.

(5098) The entropicist manifesto

Entropy is a scientific term indicating a state of increasing randomness and disorder. The universe as a whole is entropic- it tends toward disorder over time, but regions of order can appear at the expense of disorder in other places. This is what happened on our planet, with the evolution of life. But intrinsic to this principal is that no one, no god- absolutely nobody controls or designs this process. It is random. The following manifesto explains how this concept eliminates the need to postulate deities:

https://substack.com/inbox/post/158010192?r=5bo5pn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true&triedRedirect=true

The entropicist manifesto

I. There Is No Plan—Only Chance

There is no divine plan. No grand design. No cosmic script written with us in mind.

We are not here because we were chosen. We are not here because we were meant to be. We are here because against impossible odds, we simply happened.

The universe does not think. It does not care. It does not shape events according to a hidden purpose. It is an ocean of chaos, ruled by randomness and entropy, where things unfold without intention.

Some find this terrifying. They ask: If there is no purpose to existence, then why are we here?

The question is mistaken.

Purpose is not something to be found—it is something to be made.

The greatest mistake of human thought has been to assume that meaning must be external, handed down from some higher force. But if meaning could only exist when imposed from above, then it would never have been meaning at all—only obedience.

The absence of a divine plan does not strip life of meaning. It liberates us from the need to ask permission to create our own.

II. The Lottery of Existence: Chaos Brought Us Here

At the moment of your conception, millions of sperm fought for a single chance at life. Had any other succeeded, a different person would have been born in your place.

Had your parents never met, you would not be here. Had a single war ended differently, had an ancestor taken a different path home, had one mutation in the endless chain of evolution not occurred—none of this would be.

And yet, here you are.

This was not destiny. This was not fate. This was luck.

Life is a lottery where every winner looks for a reason why they were chosen—when in truth, they simply happened to win.

Many claim that because the probability of our existence is so small, it must have been willed into being by a higher power.

But this is a misunderstanding of chance.

Consider a lottery with a billion possible number combinations. The odds of any single ticket winning are astronomically small. And yet, someone always wins.

Not because they were chosen. Not because their victory was necessary. But because, given enough chances, improbabilities become inevitable.

This is how life came to be. Not through design. Not through intent. But through an ocean of probabilities, colliding and reshaping themselves for billions of years, until something happened that could think about itself.

III. Meaning Is Not Found. It Is Created.

For centuries, humans have searched for an external meaning—something given to them by gods, by fate, by universal law. They have sought reassurance that their lives are part of something greater, something written before they were born.

But this search is flawed.

There is no meaning waiting to be discovered. There is no divine secret that will reveal why you exist.

Meaning is not something outside of us. It is something we create.

Some claim that if meaning is subjective, then it is not real. That without an absolute truth, all values are arbitrary, all purpose is an illusion.

But meaning does not need to be universal to be real.

• • Love exists, not because the universe demands it, but because we feel it.
  • Art has meaning, not because it is divinely ordained, but because it moves us.
  • Justice is valuable, not because it is written in the stars, but because we choose to uphold it.

We are the only known beings capable of creating meaning. It is not an external force—it is a flame that exists only so long as we keep it alive.

We do not need gods to give us meaning.
We do not need cosmic validation.

The fact that we create meaning is precisely what makes it meaningful.

IV. The Mind and Body Are One: No Soul, No Separation

Religions have taught that humans are made of two substances: a physical body, which is mortal, and a spiritual essence, which transcends death. Many people still believe that consciousness is something higher than the body—a soul, a force, something that will continue when the body is gone.

This is a comforting illusion.

The mind is not separate from the body. It is produced by the body.

Every thought, every memory, every flicker of self-awareness is a function of the brain. It is not floating above your neurons, waiting to be freed—it is your neurons.

There is no ghost in the machine.
You are the machine.

And when the machine stops working, so does everything it contains.

This is not something to fear. This is what makes life precious.

If we lived forever, time would lose all meaning. Urgency, love, achievement—all would become irrelevant if we had eternity to do everything.

It is the fact that life ends that gives it weight.

We must live fully, because there is no second chance.

V. Morality Exists Because We Exist

But morality is not written in the fabric of the cosmos.

It exists because we exist.

Imagine a world where there are no humans.

What morality would remain?

Morality is a social contract—it is something humans created, because we need it to live together.

• • If you were the only human alive, what need would you have for morality?
  • If there was no one else to suffer, what would kindness mean?
  • If there was no one to steal from, what would theft be?

Morality is not universal law. It is a collective agreement—one that only exists because we do.

This does not make it meaningless.

On the contrary, it makes it something we must fight to uphold.

If morality is human-made, then we must take responsibility for protecting it.

No god will punish the wicked.
No cosmic force will reward the good.

Justice exists only if we create it.

Kindness matters only if we choose it.

Responsibility belongs to us alone.

VI. The Only World We Know

We do not know what happens after death.
We do not know if we are alone in the vastness of space.

But this world—the one we can see, touch, and experience—is real.

And it is enough.

Some spend their lives preparing for an afterlife. Hoping for cosmic justice. Believing that their suffering will be rewarded, that the injustices of this world will be corrected elsewhere.

This is a waste of the life we have been given.

If there is something beyond this world, we will never know until we arrive there.

But we know that we are here, now.

And that is enough.

VII. The Entropicist Way of Life

• • Reject the illusion of fate—there is no plan, only chance.
  • Accept that meaning is ours to create, not to seek.
  • Recognize that morality is our responsibility, not a divine command.
  • Live fully, because this is the only life we are certain of.

We were not chosen.
We were not meant to be.
We were simply lucky enough to exist.

And that, in itself, is beautiful.

The fact that there is no plan or design to what happened on our planet is frightening and disconcerting to some, but it is also beautiful to contemplate the lucky set of circumstances that allowed us to even consider these questions.

(5099) Factually, there is no god

There exists uncertainty in every proposition, no matter how infinitesimally small. But we reach consensus on certain facts, nonetheless, because it makes sense to do so. And one ‘fact’ that should be conceded is that the omni-god of Judeo-Christianity, Yahweh, does not exist. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1izg91e/its_a_fact_that_there_is_no_god_not_an_opinion/

It’s a fact that there is no god, not an opinion.

The evidence supporting the existence of the Christian god is of lower quality than that of the Loch Ness Monster, or Bigfoot, yet most Christians concede that those beings don’t exist. Absent the receipt of some new and remarkable evidence, the same should be said of Yahweh.

(5100) Jesus was too ignorant to be God

Christian theology claims that Jesus was God himself, or at least one-third of God, meaning that he would have possessed infinite knowledge way beyond the level that exists in the present day. Yet the scriptures paint a different story- that Jesus was just as ignorant as those around him two thousand years ago. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exchristian/comments/1j16fmn/the_extraordinary_scientific_ignorance_of_jesus/

If one is to believe the Gospels are accurate recordings of Jesus’ ministry, life, and teachings as Christians proclaim, and, more importantly, that this man living in first century Judea was the son of God and also God as per the doctrine of the incarnation, then what are we to make of Jesus’ astounding ignorance on astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. Jesus, according to the words attributed to him in the Gospels, has an embarrassingly primitive, ancient, and demonstrably wrong view of the earth, the solar system, and stars.

When he is recounting the “signs” of the impending apocalypse and second coming to his disciples, which he says will happen in their lifetimes by declaring that many standing here “will not taste death” before his return, he talks about stars falling out of the sky as if stars are contained within the earth’s atmosphere and capable of falling to the surface like glowing meteorites rather than being gigantic balls of gas releasing energy as a result of the sustained process of nuclear fusion and that they are millions or billions of light years away from our little “pale blue dot.”

The view harkens back to the Old Testament’s geocentric cosmology where there is a giant crystal dome called the firmament covering the earth like a snow globe. The sun, the moon, and all the stars were all inside this firmament. Heaven, with its succession of levels, was quite literally up in the sky; otherwise, Jesus’ ascension into Heaven in Acts, and his coming down from the clouds at the second coming, makes no sense whatsoever.

If Jesus was God, it is highly likely that the scriptures would contain knowledge that exceeds what existed during his time on earth. The fact that such is missing indicates that Jesus was not a supernatural being.

Follow this link to #5101