(5351) Religion is dying

The following essay explores the ways in which religion is losing its foothold in society, leading to the logical inference that this wouldn’t be happening if at least one religion was factually true:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8k8JaAP-ZE

Imagine walking through a busy city today, New York, Tokyo, Berlin, or even parts of the Middle East. Look around and you will see modern skyscrapers, electric vehicles, digital screens, and people glued to their smartphones. But there is something else that is quietly changing in the background. Something older than any building, any technology, any political system, and that is religion.

Religion once the backbone of civilization is slowly fading. Not everywhere, not all at once, but undeniably and steadily, religion is dying. Now that may sound like a bold claim, but let us take a closer look at what is happening around the world.

Start with the numbers. According to Pew Research in Gallup, belief in God is declining in almost every developed country. In the United States, once known as a deeply religious nation, the number of people identifying as religiously unaffiliated has exploded over the last two decades. In the early 2000s, about 8% of Americans identified as having no religion. Today, that number is over 30%. In countries like Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Japan, and the Czech Republic, religion has already lost its majority influence.

Churches are being sold and converted into cafes, museums, homes, or even nightclubs. And it is not just the west. Even in parts of Latin America and the Middle East, younger generations are walking away from organized religion.

So what is driving this shift? Why are more and more people choosing to live without religion? There is no single answer. It is a combination of things. education, access to information, global communication, science, and the rising value of individual freedom.

Let us unpack this. First, education. As access to education increases, especially in science and critical thinking, people begin to ask harder questions. They start examining the stories they were taught as children. Questions like, why are there so many religions? Why do they contradict each other? Why do they all claim to be the absolute truth? And more importantly, why does belief require faith instead of evidence?

Science in particular has played a huge role. Before we understood germs, people believed diseases were punishments from gods. Before astronomy, they believed the sun and stars revolved around earth. Today, we understand evolution, biology, neuroscience, and physics. We no longer need supernatural explanations for things we can study, measure, and understand. As knowledge expands, the need for magical thinking shrinks.

Next is the internet. For the first time in history, people across the globe have access to almost unlimited information. A teenager in a conservative religious town can now read about the Big Bang, the history of the Bible, or the philosophy of atheism all on their phone. They can hear other perspectives. They can talk to people from different cultures and this exposure breaks the monopoly of religion. It makes it harder for religious institutions to control the narrative.

Another factor is the growing desire for personal freedom. Religion, especially organized religion, often comes with strict rules. What to eat, who to love, how to dress, what to think. For many, especially young people, these rules feel outdated, unfair, or even harmful. When religion starts dictating someone’s identity, their sexuality, their relationships, their beliefs, it begins to lose its appeal. People today value authenticity and autonomy. They want to live truthfully, not according to ancient texts written in a different era for a different society.

But perhaps the most powerful reason religion is dying is because many people have simply stopped finding it meaningful. For centuries, religion offered comfort. It answered big questions. Why are we here? What happens after we die? What is good and evil? But now we can explore these questions through philosophy, psychology, and science without supernatural claims. We can find community in social spaces, empathy through shared human experiences, and purpose in our passions. You do not need to believe in a god to love your family, help your neighbor, or feel awe when you look at the stars. Morality, wonder, and purpose do not require religion. They are part of being human.

Now, let us not ignore the social side of this change. There are still places where religion is deeply woven into culture and identity. In many communities, religion provides structure, a sense of belonging, and emotional support. But even in those areas, the cracks are forming.

In Iran, for example, a country governed by Islamic law, there has been a silent revolution. According to surveys conducted outside the country, a growing number of Iranians no longer believe in Islam. Many young people see the strict religious regime not as a path to morality, but as a tool of control. In India, many people are questioning the politicization of religion. In Pakistan, Indonesia, and parts of Africa, secular voices are slowly growing despite risk and resistance. The trend is clear. The more religion becomes tied to power and control, the more people begin to resist it.

There is also a growing realization that religion does not always lead to peace. History shows us wars fought in the name of gods, persecution of minorities, and the suppression of women and marginalized groups. Even today, religious extremism continues to divide societies. When people see this, the violence, the discrimination, the hypocrisy, many begin to question whether religion truly represents goodness or just authority.

Let us not forget the countless scandals involving religious institutions. From financial corruption to sexual abuse, the moral authority of religious leaders has been deeply undermined. When those claiming divine guidance act in profoundly immoral ways, people lose trust not just in the individuals but in the entire belief system they represent.

You might wonder, will religion disappear entirely? Probably not, at least not in our lifetime. Religion is deeply emotional. It offers comfort during grief, hope and despair, and rituals that many find meaningful. It is tied to tradition, family, and identity. For many, it is more than belief. It is a way of life and that is okay. The point is not to force religion out. It is to recognize that more and more people are simply choosing to walk away on their own terms.

The shift is not from one religion to another. It is from religion to none. It is people saying, “I do not know what happens after death, but I am okay with not knowing.” Or, “I do not believe in a higher power, but I still care about living a good life.” That is a big cultural change and it is happening all around us.

There is also an important rise in secular spirituality. People are meditating, practicing mindfulness, appreciating nature, connecting with others all without invoking the supernatural. This shows that you do not need religious belief to have depth, meaning or peace of mind. You can be spiritual without being religious. In a way, religion is being replaced not by atheism alone, but by curiosity, by compassion, by human connection.

People are building their own moral frameworks. They are creating communities based on shared values rather than shared beliefs. And these new communities often embrace diversity, tolerance, and open dialogue. Things that dogmatic religion has historically struggled with.

To sum it up, religion is dying not because someone is attacking it, but because people are evolving beyond it. Minds are opening, questions are being asked, and in many cases, the answers that religion once gave are no longer enough.

People want truth, they want honesty, they want freedom. And when those things conflict with religion, many are choosing to walk away, not out of rebellion, but out of integrity. Religion is not disappearing overnight. But make no mistake, the decline is real. The world is changing. Belief is changing. And in that change, there is a powerful opportunity to build a future grounded not in fear, not in guilt, not in blind obedience, but in reason, compassion, and shared humanity.

Maybe the death of religion is not something to fear. Maybe it is the start of something better.

Humanity is evolving in a way that accounts for a better understanding of reality, given advances in science and the ever-increasing ease of access to information. If a certain religion was true, this trend would lead to an increasing level of belief in that faith. But if all religions are false, then what we are observing is exactly what would happen.

(5352) Revelation is not what Christians think

The Book of Revelation is the most enigmatic work in the Bible. It has spawned countless interpretations, depending on the agenda of the interpreter. But one thing is certain- it is not a prophecy about a distant ‘end times.’ It is grounded in its own time, and is a rather brutal screed against the ruthlessness of the Roman Empire in the early 2^nd Century. The following was taken from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm773msViLE

The book of Revelation is one of the strangest and most terrifying books in the entire Bible. It speaks of beasts with seven heads, dragons in the sky, oceans turning to blood, stars falling from heaven, and a final war between good and evil that will destroy the world. For centuries, preachers have used this book to instill fear in believers, claiming that it predicts the end of time and the second coming of Christ.

Yet, when we take a closer and more rational look, the so-called prophecy begins to look less like divine prediction and more like the wild imagination of a desperate man living in a chaotic time. The author of Revelation is said to be John, exiled to the island of Patmos. The church claims that he received these visions directly from God.

But what do we really know about this John? Historians debate whether he was the same John who wrote the Gospel of John. Most likely, he was not. The style, language, and theology of Revelation are completely different. Even early Christian scholars notice this. The Greek used in Revelation is far less polished, suggesting it was written by someone with little education, unlike the author of the Gospel. This alone raises questions about the church’s claim that the same man wrote both.

When John wrote Revelation, the Roman Empire was in full power. Christians were being persecuted and the world felt like it was falling apart. In those days, it was common for oppressed people to write symbolic texts predicting their enemy’s downfall. Revelation fits that mold perfectly. It is full of coded language with beasts representing emperors and dragons representing political powers.

It was never a prediction about the far future. It was a desperate cry of a persecuted person hoping that Rome would collapse and that justice would soon come. When seen in this context, revelation becomes a piece of political protest literature, not divine prophecy. Let us think about this rationally. If revelation was truly a prophecy inspired by a perfect God, why is it so confusing, inconsistent, and filled with symbols no one can agree on?

For 2,000 years, believers have been trying to decode it. Some said the world would end in the year 1000. Then again in 1844. Then in 1914, then in 2000. Every generation has been told, “This is it. The end times are here.” And yet the world keeps going. If even one prophecy from Revelation had come true in the way it is described, believers might have a case, but none of it has ever matched reality. The sun has not turned black. The stars have not fallen. No seven-headed dragon has appeared in the sky. The world has not ended.

The mark of the beast has been applied to everything from barcodes to credit cards to microchips. And every time people have been wrong. Revelation also claims that Jesus will return soon. The author writes that the events must soon take place, but soon for whom? It has been almost 2,000 years. How long does soon mean to a divine being? If God truly wanted to communicate a message to humanity, would he use riddles and metaphors that confuse everyone for two millennia?

If the fate of souls depends on understanding these words, would a loving deity really make them so vague and symbolic? That sounds more like a human writer trying to sound mysterious and important rather than an all- knowing God speaking clearly to mankind.

In modern times, people often interpret revelation to fit whatever crisis is happening. During the Cold War, Christians said the beast represented communism. During the pandemic, they said the vaccines or global elites were the beast. Every generation simply rewrites the symbols to fit their fears.

This alone shows that the book is not a prophecy, but a flexible story that can be molded to suit any age. Real prophecy would not need reinterpretation. It would be specific, clear, and verifiable. Consider how people use revelation to manipulate others. Fear of the end times keeps many believers obedient to their churches. They are told that if they question, they might not be saved when the rapture comes.

Entire industries profit from this fear. Books, movies, and TV preachers make millions predicting the end of the world. Every failed prediction is excused with, “We misread the signs.” But how many times can someone be wrong before we admit the whole thing was nonsense from the start?

Now, think about how Revelation describes God’s so-called justice. It speaks of rivers of blood, plagues, scorching heat, and people screaming for mercy while God refuses to stop their suffering. This is not love. This is sadism. If a human being acted like the God of revelation, we would call him a psychopath. Yet, believers call this divine justice. The book paints a picture of billions being slaughtered simply for not believing the right story. How can eternal torture or mass destruction be called good?

Morality is turned upside down in Revelation. The hero becomes the monster and destruction becomes mercy. Many Christians avoid reading Revelation altogether because it is disturbing. Even priests and pastors rarely preach from it except to scare people during certain times. That is because it clashes with the image of a loving God that they prefer to present. The Jesus of the Gospels says, “Love your enemies.” But the Jesus of Revelation comes back as a warrior soaked in blood.

How can the same being preach love in one book and massacre the world in another? If the Bible is inspired by a single perfect mind, why are its messages so drastically different?

There’s also a psychological side to this. When people feel powerless, they often imagine that the world will soon end and justice will be served by a higher force. Revelation plays on that deep human emotion. It gives the oppressed a fantasy that one day the powerful will burn and they will rule the world beside their savior.

This psychological comfort is the real reason the book was written. It satisfies an emotional need, not a divine plan. We see similar things in other religions. Ancient Persians had apocalyptic prophecies about the end of time. Norse mythology spoke of Ragnarok, the final battle between gods. Islam speaks of the day of judgment where the world ends in chaos.

Every culture has its own version of Revelation which tells us something important. People invent apocalypses to make sense of their suffering and to imagine a future where justice finally wins. It is not revelation. It is wishful thinking. Even the imagery of beasts, dragons, and plagues can be explained by the times.

Ancient writers used vivid metaphors to describe politics. A beast with seven heads likely referred to Rome, which famously sits on seven hills. The number 666 probably referred to Emperor Nero, whose name numerically fits that code in Hebrew. So, the entire book may be a disguised protest against Rome. John could not directly criticize the empire without being executed, so he wrapped his rebellion in religious language.

Once again, human motive explains everything. There is no need to imagine supernatural visions or divine prophecy when political fear and creativity provide the answer. Now let us think logically. If revelation was truly from God, why does it only make sense when interpreted through human history?

Why did early Christians have to fight for centuries to even include it in the Bible? Many church leaders wanted to leave it out because it was too strange and unhelpful. It was only added because some believed its symbolism could be used to inspire fear and loyalty.

Imagine that. God’s supposed final message nearly being thrown out by his own followers. That alone should make any thinking person pause. Throughout history, revelation has inspired more harm than good. It fueled witch hunts, holy wars, and cults. The idea of end times has made people abandon their families, sell their homes, and wait for an apocalypse that never comes.

From the Millerites in the 1800s to modern doomsday preachers, the story repeats. People waste their lives waiting for something that was never going to happen. That is not divine wisdom. That is mass psychological manipulation.

Some might say, “But maybe revelation is symbolic. Maybe it just teaches that good will win over evil. But even then, what kind of message is hidden behind rivers of blood and burning cities? If the lesson is moral, then it could have been told simply. Why bury it in nightmare imagery and violent visions that have caused confusion for centuries?

Would an all loving creator need to communicate through horror stories that traumatize children and drive adults into fear? That seems far more human than divine. In reality, the book of Revelation tells us more about the human mind than about God.

It shows how people in times of fear create elaborate fantasies of cosmic justice. It shows how symbolism and metaphor can evolve into dogma and terror. It shows how a single text written by one frightened man on a lonely island can be turned into an eternal weapon of fear by religious institutions.

And here is an interesting point. If Revelation was truly divinely inspired, then it must have come from the same source that inspired Genesis. But in Genesis, God says that creation was good. The world was made perfect. Yet in Revelation, the same world is destroyed in flames. Either God changed his mind or different humans with different agendas wrote these stories.

The contradiction is clear. When we move deeper into the text, we begin to notice something else. Revelation borrows heavily from earlier Jewish apocalyptic writings. The book of Daniel, for example, has beasts rising from the sea, symbolic numbers, and predictions of empires falling. Revelation copies these same patterns almost word for word in some places. This shows that John was not inventing anything new. He was simply reusing an old storytelling formula that his audience already understood. In other words, revelation is not revelation at all. It is an imitation of older myths dressed in Christian clothing.

Now imagine for a moment that the same kind of text appeared today. Suppose someone living in exile under political oppression started writing about visions of nuclear fire, monstrous rulers, and a hero descending from the sky. People would call him a conspiracy theorist or a delusional mystic. But because Revelation was written almost 2,000 years ago, people give it sacred status.

Time turns fantasy into faith. The distance of history makes irrational ideas look holy. Modern psychology gives us another layer of understanding. When the brain is under extreme stress, sensory deprivation or trauma, it can produce vivid hallucinations.

Jon was exiled on a small island, probably isolated, hungry, and frightened. It would not be surprising if he saw visions. People in such conditions often experience auditory and visual hallucinations that feel real. So his revelation could have been a psychological episode, not a divine one.

Many mystics across history have described similar visions. Muslims claim Muhammad saw an angel in a cave. Hindus claim Arjuna saw Krishna reveal the universe in his true form. And shamans report visions after fasting. The human mind can create powerful experiences that feel transcendent. The pattern is universal and human, not divine.

Religious institutions later took these experiences and turned them into unquestionable truth. They demanded people believe the visions literally even though the visions might have been the result of isolation, hunger or mental illness. In ancient times, hallucinations were seen as divine communication because people had no understanding of psychology or neurology.

Today, we know that the brain is capable of producing entire realities when under pressure. That is the most likely explanation for Revelation’s bizarre imagery. If we were to apply reason, we would see how unlikely it is that an all powerful being would communicate such an important message through such confusing symbols.

The goal of Revelation should be clarity, not chaos. Yet, the book of Revelation has produced nothing but endless confusion. Entire denominations have been built on different interpretations. Some think it describes literal future events. Others say it is symbolic. Some take the numbers as dates, others as metaphors.

For a divine message, it has certainly caused an extraordinary amount of disagreement. If a teacher gave instructions to a class and every student walked away with a different understanding, the problem would not be with the students. It would be with the teacher. The contradictions are endless.

Revelation speaks of peace after destruction, but also eternal torment for those who are not chosen. It claims that evil will be destroyed. Yet, it also describes evil as part of God’s plan. If God planned everything, then even Satan’s rebellion must have been his will.

So, how can rebellion exist in a perfect creation? Revelation never answers that. Instead, it distracts readers with thunder, lightning, and angels. It is like a magician using spectacle to keep the audience from noticing the logic falling apart.

Let us also look at how Revelation has influenced history. It has done immense damage. The Crusades were fueled partly by apocalyptic thinking, the belief that reclaiming Jerusalem would fulfill prophecy. Later, European colonizers saw themselves as soldiers of the end times, spreading Christianity to prepare the world for Christ’s return. In America, millions of people still believe that the world will end soon.

They support wars in the Middle East because they think conflict there will fulfill biblical prophecy. Some even welcome environmental collapse because they see it as a sign of Jesus coming back. This is not harmless faith. It is dangerous thinking that shapes real world policies. The book’s imagery has kept humanity trapped in fear instead of encouraging progress.

And then there are the cults. The Heaven’s Gate group believed Revelation predicted aliens coming to take them to heaven. They ended up committing mass suicide. The branch Davidians of Waco, Texas believed the same. Their leader, David Koresh, said he was the lamb of God from revelation. Dozens died.

These tragedies come from the same root, the belief that revelation is literal truth. When people take symbolic fantasy as divine command, the result is disaster. It is strange that a loving God would include a book in his holy scripture that drives so many to paranoia, hatred, and violence. The simplest explanation is that it was never divine in the first place. It was a human product of fear, anger, and imagination.

Even the imagery of heaven in Revelation sounds less like paradise and more like ancient propaganda. Streets of gold, pearly gates, and jeweled walls. It mirrors the wealth and power of earthly kings. In ancient times, people equated gold and jewels with divinity because they symbolized power. So John imagined heaven as a cosmic empire, not as a moral or spiritual state. It reflects the human desire for grandeur, not divine truth.

A truly enlightened God would not need gold or thrones or armies of angels. Those are human symbols of power, not signs of a perfect being. Now let us think of morality again. Revelation celebrates mass death. The righteous cheer while others burn. That is not justice. That is vengeance. It is the same primitive idea found in every tribal religion. The idea that our side will win and theirs will burn. A truly moral message would not glorify destruction. It would promote understanding, forgiveness, and coexistence.

But Revelation offers none of that. It offers punishment and domination. The meek inherit nothing. The conqueror does. Believers often try to soften revelation by saying it is just symbolic. It is about spiritual victory. But if that were true, then the text has failed miserably to communicate that message since millions have taken it literally.

If God truly wanted to teach moral or spiritual truth, why use a book that leads so many into fanaticism? Why not speak plainly like in the sermon on the mount instead of through monsters and blood? The difference between the teachings of Jesus and the message of revelation is like night and day. One speaks of compassion and peace, the other of slaughter and fear.

When we step back and remove the religious frame, Revelation looks exactly like many other apocalyptic works of its time. The Jewish Book of Enoch, the Cibiline oracles, and the Dead Sea

Scrolls all contain similar visions of divine judgment and cosmic battles. Revelation was simply one more entry in a long tradition of end of the world literature. The only reason it gained special status is because the early church found it useful to control followers through fear. It created a sense of urgency. Obey now or face eternal fire. That kind of fear is powerful. People will give money, follow rules, and silence their doubts when they believe the end is near.

What makes this even more ironic is that Jesus himself, if he existed, told his followers that some of you standing here will not taste death before the Son of Man comes. That means even Jesus expected the end within his generation. 2,000 years later, we are still waiting. Clearly, both Jesus and the author of Revelation were wrong. The world did not end then, and it is not ending now.

Humanity continues to move forward, not toward divine judgment, but toward greater understanding of the universe. Science, not scripture, has given us real revelations. We have discovered the age of the earth, the origins of life, the vastness of the cosmos, and the laws that govern reality. None of these things required angels or beasts or apocalyptic visions. They required curiosity, evidence, and reason.

That is what real Revelation looks like. Knowledge that enlightens the mind, not fear that darkens it. If we truly wish to find meaning, it will not be in a book written by frightened men describing imaginary wars between heaven and hell. It will be in the wonder of existence itself, in the galaxies, in the atoms, in the human capacity for thought and compassion. That is where truth lives, not in the pages of revelation.

The tragedy is that millions still read this ancient text as a literal script for the future. They look for signs in every earthquake and war believing they are living in the last days. But every generation has thought the same thing and every generation has been wrong. The sun rises, the earth spins, and humanity continues. The only apocalypse is the one in people’s minds, the fear of death, the desire for justice, and the hope for meaning. Revelation turns those feelings into cosmic theater. But it is still just a mirror reflecting human emotion, not divine truth.

If Revelation were a prophecy, it would have come true by now. The fact that it has not, even after 20 centuries, is the clearest proof that it is not prophecy at all. It is the recorded nightmare of a man in exile, misunderstood by history and weaponized by religion. It should be read not as a guide to the future, but as a warning of what fear and superstition can do when combined with authority.

In the end, the book of Revelation reveals nothing about God and everything about us. It shows our capacity for fear, our hunger for justice, and our tendency to turn imagination into dogma. And perhaps that is the only revelation worth remembering. Not the beasts or the dragons, but the truth that the real apocalypse is ignorance itself. Because once reason wakes up, fear dies. And when fear dies, revelation loses all its power.

The Book of Revelation should have been excluded from the Bible, but as mentioned above, church leaders likely saw it as being a powerful means of controlling their flocks, by instilling awe and fear. The questions should be asked: Would an omnipotent god communicate in this manner to humanity, or is this just the effulgent emission of a deranged man?

(5353) False use of prophecy in the Gospel of John

It is well established that the authors of the New Testament vigorously mined Old Testament texts in a desperate attempt to demonstrate that Jesus was prophecized therein. A good example is discussed below, where the author of John engineered a bogus prophecy:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ok00ah/john_193136_is_a_false_prophecy/

The Gospel of John’s literary style is the most unique of the accounts in the New Testament. Most scholars agree it was the last submitted in the Bible and is not one of the synoptic Gospels based on how it is narrated. What I wanted to demonstrate in this post is how John poorly utilizes interpretation of the Tanakh and purposely take it’s verses out of context to apply to Jesus. In John 19:31- 36 it reads:

33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. 35 (He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows[a] that he tells the truth, so that you also may continue[b] to believe.) 36 These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, “None of his bones shall be broken.”

John is quoting Exodus 12:43-46 and Numbers 9:12

When both passages are read in context they say

43 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance for the Passover: no foreigner shall eat of it, 44 but any slave who has been purchased may eat of it after he has been circumcised; 45 no bound or hired servant may eat of it. 46 It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the animal outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones.

9 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 10 “Speak to the Israelites, saying: Anyone of you or your descendants who is unclean through touching a corpse or is away on a journey shall still keep the Passover to the Lord. 11 In the second month on the fourteenth day, at twilight,[c] they shall keep it; they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 12 They shall leave none of it until morning nor break a bone of it; according to all the statute for the Passover they shall keep it.

There are no prophecies in either of these passages- it’s just basic instructions God is giving Moses of how to manage the Passover Lamb. So when the Gospel of John was inventing his book he merely grasped text from the Tanakh and loosely applied it to Jesus in the New Testament regardless if it made sense or not.

It should be obvious that if any of the Old Testament authors had received divine prophetic messages predicting the exploits of a future Jesus, it would be…well, obvious.

(5354) Why would God be interested in us?

In biblical times, it was thought that the earth was at the center of the universe and that everything else, the moon and the stars, were just tiny points of light. So, it was natural to think that humans were the featured creation of a god. But today, that picture is radically different and the ancient assumptions no longer carry weight. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1omahmb/thought_why_would_god_be_interested_in_us_anyway/

There are roughly eight billion people on Earth right now, as well as quintillions of other beings (animals and such). That’s a lot of stuff to pay attention to. But our planet is only one of many. The Milky Way alone has hundreds of billions of stars and probably a similar number of planets.

Then you remember that our galaxy is just one of many hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. The estimate (which I had to Google) is that there are probably about 100 sextillion planets in the observable universe. If even a tiny fraction of those planets contained life, that’s still billions of planets, potentially millions of civilizations, and a number of living beings so massive that there probably isn’t even a number to describe it.

And then there’s the fact that planets aren’t the only interesting things out there. Black holes, supernovas, pulsars, nebulae, galactic collisions and other incredible phenomena that we haven’t even discovered yet.

My point is, with all of this amazing stuff happening all over the universe, why would God care about us at all? Theists love to say, “God is watching you,” but why would he bother? Right now, somewhere in the universe, any number of amazing things are happening, but God is just going to ignore all of that in favour of watching me on Sunday to see if I go to church or not? He could be observing the development of new life on any number of planets, watching as new stars are formed and old stars explode or collapse into black holes, but he’s just going to forget about all of that and spend a few hours spying on my date to check if my partner is a man or a woman? I don’t see what’s so interesting about that.

But many theists claim that God is omniscient and omnipresent. He can observe everything, everywhere, all at the same time. Okay, fine, let’s look at this another way.

The human body has hundreds of billions of microorganisms living in it at any given moment. Do you spend your time thinking about what these organisms are doing? At any point, do you wonder what one specific bacterium is doing? Do you feel the urge to shove a microscope in your mouth and have a look? Maybe if you’re a microbiologist, but I’m willing to bet that 99% of the time, most of us don’t give it a single thought. After all, why would we? These beings are so tiny and numerous that we can’t even see them without special technology. Most of the time they don’t hurt us or affect us in any adverse way, so why would we spend so much time wondering about them?

This is how I imagine a being as powerful as God would feel about us. God is said to have created the entire universe and everything in it, a universe so ludicrously huge that if you travelled at 100 times the speed of light, it would still take you nearly a billion years to get from one end to the other. A universe that is filled with more stuff that we could possibly imagine. And that’s not even factoring in the whole multiverse theory that quantum physics puts forth.

A being capable of creating all of that would likely exist on a level so far above us that we could not even begin to comprehend its true nature. A being like that, an infinitely powerful being that is coterminous with all of time, space and reality, would surely have more important things to think about than us, a small handful of creatures on one tiny rock in one tiny corner of a ridiculously big universe.

Like I said, with all the stuff going on in the universe (or multiverse), why would God even spare a passing thought for us?

Given the scale of the universe, it seems unlikely that a god would be concerned if a person was skipping church to go fishing. But that is the preposterous assumption that is endemic to Christian theology. It is safe to assume that if there is a god, it is not that obsessed with human beings.

(5355) Outside space and time

Given the lack of any empirical evidence for God, Christians will often retreat to the idea that he exists outside of space and time. The following refutes this logic:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1omrtyz/the_god_exists_outside_space_and_time_argument_is/

People often say, “God exists outside of space and time.” At first, it sounds deep and mysterious, like some higher truth beyond human understanding. But when you stop to actually analyze it, the idea completely collapses. it is incoherent.

To exist means to be, and being only makes sense within a framework that allows for location, duration, and relation. Space defines where something is, and time defines when something is. Remove both, and you no longer have a meaningful concept of existence. If something cannot be located, cannot endure, cannot interact or change, what does it mean to say it exists? Saying something exists “outside space and time” is like saying there is a triangle with no sides. It sounds grammatical, but it describes nothing. Time is a dimension of spacetime, so to exist outside of time would require being outside of space as well. That would place God entirely outside the universe, making any interaction with it impossible.

Some people respond that “to be” does not necessarily mean “to be somewhere.” But that objection only works if existence has some other coherent context in which being can occur. We have no example, logical or empirical, of any form of existence that is not embedded in relations of some kind. Even the most abstract things, like numbers or laws of physics, exist as relationships between defined entities within logical or physical structures. A being completely “outside” all frameworks would not even be meaningfully distinct from nothing at all. The only way something can exist without a physical location is as a concept within a mind.

Others try to say that physics might show time is not fundamental. But when physicists like Carlo Rovelli talk about time being emergent, they do not mean time ceases to exist or that things can exist “beyond time.” They mean that time, as we perceive it, may arise from deeper physical processes. Those processes still have structure, interaction, and relation. Even in “timeless” quantum models, there are still definable states and correlations. That is not “outside of time and space”; it is still a description within a physical, lawful reality. Invoking physics to support the idea of a spaceless, timeless deity completely misunderstands what physics means by “timeless.”

Causation itself makes the “outside of time” claim impossible. To create something requires sequence: there must be a before (without the creation) and an after (with the creation). Cause and effect depend on temporal order. Without time, there is no “before,” “after,” “change,” or “action.” If a god exists outside time, it cannot create, decide, or act in any way. To create the universe, that god would have to already be in a framework where events occur. Therefore, a being that creates cannot be outside time, and a being truly outside time cannot create.

Even if we entertain the poetic claim that God experiences all of time simultaneously, that only hides the contradiction rather than solving it. To experience all of time still requires the capacity for awareness and distinction, which are forms of relation and change. A being that is truly timeless cannot experience anything, because experience presupposes difference between states, and difference presupposes time. You cannot coherently have an entity that both exists outside time and yet somehow thinks, knows, feels, or acts.

If something is outside space and time, it also cannot interact with anything within them. Every form of influence, whether energy, information, or force, depends on relations in spacetime. If this god interacts with the world, then by that very interaction, it is part of the same framework. If it does not interact, then it is indistinguishable from nonexistence. There is no middle ground.

Some will argue that “you simply cannot comprehend God” or that “it’s beyond human understanding.” But that is not a defense. It is a way of declaring an incoherent statement off-limits to analysis. If you cannot even conceive what you mean by “exists outside space and time,” then you are not describing something mysterious, you are describing nothing at all. That same logic would allow any claim, no matter how absurd. I could say that a rock I found outside of space and time created the universe and that it is beyond your comprehension to understand how. If that kind of reasoning is allowed, everything becomes true and nothing means anything. It is not profound; it is intellectual chaos.

Einstein often spoke of God as a kind of cosmic mathematician, a metaphor for the deep order and intelligibility of the universe. When he said “God does not play dice,” he was expressing his conviction that nature follows consistent laws, not randomness. That idea actually reinforces the point: Einstein’s “God” was part of the lawful structure of reality, not something existing outside of space and time.

The problem with the “outside space and time” argument is that it pretends to explain existence by invoking something that, by its own definition, cannot possibly explain or interact with anything. It is not an argument; it is a retreat from argument. It takes the unknown, wraps it in mysticism, and calls it solved. If you let that logic stand, you could justify any claim whatsoever. “A banana outside time made the cosmos” has the same explanatory value as “God outside time did.” Both are equally unfalsifiable, equally meaningless.

The bottom line is simple: existence without space, time, or relation is not a higher form of existence. It is the absence of existence. A concept that cannot, even in principle, act, change, relate, or be located is a concept that describes nothing.

If God exists, he exists in space and time and must be located somewhere in the universe. But if that is the case, then he must be limited to the constraints of that fact, meaning that he can only view the earth in the past due to the non-infinite speed of light. This, in itself, eliminates the concept of omnipotence.

(5356) How Roman emperors invented Christianity

Although the theory that the Roman emperors invented Christianity is well established in academia, it is also somewhat controversial. As usual, the truth is a compromise between competing positions.

But there are good reasons to support this thesis. The longest running sect of Christianity is literally known as Roman Catholicism, and the fact that Latin is the go to default language, and that the Roman Emperor Constantine basically legalized Christianity so the empire would be the ones to control the narrative of the religion instead of any supposed prophets, then yes the Christianity we know of today that has permeated all the way to modern times was invented by the Roman emperors.

The following is the conclusion of the cited paper:

CREATING CHRIST How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity By James S. Valliant & C. W. Fahy

https://classautonomy.info/creating-christ-how-roman-emperors-invented-christianity/

In the New Testament we read exhortations to obey the Roman government as the appointed agents of God, to pay one’s taxes, and even to honor the emperor himself. We also see the earliest Christian leaders laying the foundations for the authority structure of the Church, with an endorsement of Church hierarchy coming even from Jesus long before such developments seem credible. We are presented with benevolent Roman centurions, even as Paul’s mission uniformly receives official protection from Roman governors, clerks and officials—including sympathy from the Praetorian Guard of Caesar himself. According to Christ, the faith of one centurion exceeded that of any contemporary Jew.

Paul refers to his contacts as those in “Caesar’s household” so casually in his correspondence to the Philippians it must have some basis in fact. Indeed, Paul’s contacts reach the highest level of imperial servants and Roman aristocrats, including associates of Vespasian and Titus who had achieved their imperial office by conquering the messianic Jews and becoming Jewish messiahs and Roman man-gods. This same family of Roman emperors produced a 1 st Century “pope.”

Most of the New Testament was composed during their reign. Their family tomb became the first Christian catacomb. Their family symbol was Christianity’s first icon: the anchor. The founder of the Flavian dynasty, Vespasian, presented himself as “the New Serapis” and performed healing miracles identical to Christ’s, syncretizing pagan elements of a mystery religion with his own status as the Jewish Messiah. Vespasian advertised himself as the father of universal peace, a new Pax Romana. And he was a monarch born to humble circumstances. Both his ascension to the throne and his death were portended by a star.

Jesus, too, was a Jewish messiah, a divine “monarch” born into humble circumstances, and his birth was heralded by a star. Both Vespasian and his son, Titus, were worshiped as savior gods in the East while they lived, and they were worshiped as official state gods in the city of Rome itself long after their deaths. The Gospels, no matter who wrote them, would have been ideal prophetic demonstrations of their divinity and messianic status as Roman Jewish Messiahs. The cult of Emperor Titus praised his beneficence with propaganda extolling his charity and fatherly love for the masses.

Within only a few decades of his death, after his brother Domitian was assassinated, his dolphin-and-anchor motif became the predominant symbol of Christianity. The Gospels systematically, even melodramatically, absolve the Roman Empire of any culpability for the death of Jesus, laying the blame exclusively on the Jewish people with such a heavy hand that it inspired centuries of anti-Semitic retribution. The Flavians’ own historian, Josephus, favorably portrays New Testament protagonists who are associated with the Flavians.

The New Testament expresses inordinate sympathy for Titus’s own Jewish friends. Though he became an object of shame to his own people, Christians to this day enthusiastically cite Josephus as frequently as any Church father. As Jesus explains in the Gospels, he is himself the replacement of the Temple that Titus would destroy: he was the ultimate sacrifice, the complete Atonement for the sins of the People, and the final reconciliation of man with God.

If Christianity was an organic development from Judaism, the product of an evolutionary process, one would expect that the most culturally alienating aspects of the mother religion, such as male circumcision, strict Sabbath observance and Kosher diet, would have disappeared slowly, one-by-one, over a period of time. We have seen how fiercely the first Christians fought for these traditions against Paul. It was those very aspects of Judaism for which the rebels were fighting, the features of their culture that created problems of intermarriage, inter-employment, and even made having lunch with Gentiles a source of heated conflict.

In the work of Paul and the authors of the Gospels, however, we see all of these aspects of Judaism swept aside suddenly, stridently, simultaneously. And we see it all happening among a group of messianic Jews, the group least amenable to any modifications of the Torah. More than that: they were done away with at the same time pagan elements and ideas were introduced, transforming the faith into a kind of Mystery Cult that worshiped a man-god. And all of this radical revision is done all at once in the work of Paul on the eve of the Jewish War and in the Gospels immediately after that war. Again, if the New Testament is Flavian propaganda, what would the evidence look like other than what we have? It is remarkable just how much evidence still exists, from such a wide spectrum of sources, to support this revolutionary conclusion.

Dead Sea Scrolls) and the Romans’ need to defeat the militant exclusivity that opposed their comparatively pluralistic empire. The Jews’ rebellion from Rome sealed their fate. After their brutal treatment by the Romans, theirs was a culture in Diaspora for another two millennia. The Jewish people had already spread far and wide across the Middle East following the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in the late 6 th Century BCE and, later, in response to the Mediterranean-wide trade opened up by the Pax Romana. The final legal exclusion of Jews from Jerusalem would be ordered by Hadrian in the 2 nd Century, following the Bar Kochba revolt, thus making permanent their status as global exiles until the creation of the state of Israel in the 20 th Century.

As we have seen from reports of 1st Century disturbances in the city of Rome, messianic Judaism posed a serious problem not just in Judea but throughout the Empire, including at its very heart. The Romans realized that a military opposition to the Jewish conflict would not be enough. They would need an ideological campaign, as well. With Christianity, the Romans engineered what they must have thought was the perfect strategy—a demonstration that the Jewish “messiah” did not embody the national or cultural independence of the Jews at all, but was, in fact, a pro-Roman, peace-loving, tax-paying, transnational Hellenistic philosopher of the Platonic and Stoic schools who offered a mystery cult-like salvation to all people of all nations. And they added to this Roman vision of “Christ” that the Jews themselves, failing to recognize his true nature as the Messiah, killed him and thus merited their divine punishment at the hands of the Romans. As radical and new as this hypothesis may seem, it actually reflects insights as old as New Testament scholarship itself.

Though there were previous translations of Josephus’s writings, when William Whiston, in the 17th Century, first translated the collected works of Josephus into English he set the standard, until recent decades. Whiston was a famous man. He had succeeded his mentor, Sir Isaac Newton, as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, though he later lost this position because of his theological views. Whiston thought Flavius Josephus to be a secret Christian. Whiston did not think Josephus was a Trinitarian Christian, however, as were most Christians in Whiston’s day. Instead, he believed Josephus must have been a Christian like himself: that is, one who denied that Jesus was one aspect of a single pre-existent divine Trinity.

Rather, he believed that Jesus was merely a divine human being created by and subordinate to God the Father. And he, to be sure, did not question the authenticity of Flavius Josephus’s Testimonium. Still, Whiston believed that Josephus, the in-house historian of the Roman emperors Vespasian and Titus, was a Christian. In addition, Bruno Bauer, a student of the 19 th Century German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel and a teacher of Karl Marx, also recognized that most of the New Testament embodied a Hellenized and Roman worldview instead of a Jewish one. Bruno Bauer was an anti-Semite, to be sure, revealing the dark side of acknowledging the intrinsic anti-Semitism in the New Testament.

Well known in his lifetime but almost completely forgotten today, Bauer had debated one of the fathers of critical Bible studies, David Strauss, who helped shape the entire field of Bible scholarship with his book, Life of Jesus.

Strauss’s book has been available in English editions since 1846. As a result, in so many ways, Strauss set the stage for all Biblical scholarship since. However, at the turn of the 20th Century, Albert Schweitzer wrote that: [Bruno] Bauer’s ‘Criticism of the Gospel History’ is worth a good dozen Lives of Jesus, because his work, as we are only now coming to recognize, after half a century, is the ablest and most complete collection of the difficulties of the Life of Jesus which is anywhere to be found.

Bauer’s work on Christianity is no longer in print like Strauss’s, and it has never been translated into English. The famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once called Bauer “my entire reading public.” Nietzsche himself, of course, a notoriously harsh critic of Christian morality, derided the doctrine of Jesus as a “slave morality” that appeals to weakness, cowardice, and submissiveness in contrast to the life-affirming virtues of the pagans. Whether the consistent Christian advice of submission to authority is a virtue or not on a philosophical level, Nietzsche’s insight can now be seen in a new light. And by this same light, even critics of Marxism can re-evaluate the assertion of Bauer’s other student, Karl Marx, who famously called religion “the opium of the people.”

We must imagine the historical reality that after winning their war with the Jews, a conflict that may have taken more than a million lives, the Romans found themselves the owners of tens of thousands of Jewish slaves. Many if not most of these slaves were messianic Jews. Titus alone took many thousands of his own Jewish slaves to Rome to build his triumphal arch, his famous baths, and the Colosseum itself, where so many of their countrymen would later be sacrificed for entertainment.

The Romans needed to opiate these former radicals and recondition them to life as Roman slaves in the wake of their defeat. And the New Testament was precise in this regard. This new form of Judaism repeatedly commands slaves to obey their masters—even cruel and harsh masters—just as it commands free men to obey the Roman state as God’s agent on earth. So effective was this Roman formula it outlasted their empire, and it would supply kings with a divine right of absolute rule over their subjects for the next 16 centuries as well as conferring masters with a “right” to own their slaves.

Europeans are not only still driving on roads Romans built, they are still worshipping a god Romans created in order to legitimize the rule of monarchs they are still honoring. Romans were ruthless and pragmatic conquerors. They dealt with the Jews as they had dealt with other conquered foreigners—by absorbing elements of their culture and adapting it to their own practical purposes in service of the Empire. It was their instinct and custom to syncretize the religious source of conflict into a cultural justification for both their military incursion and their imperial rule.

The Romans did it before with the Greeks—even as Alexander the Great’s generals had done it before them with conquered Egyptian and Persian nations. It would be far more surprising had the Romans not attempted to do this in the aftermath of the Jewish War, especially considering how instrumental religion was in that particular conflict. If not for the existence of Christianity, we would need to ask where was the typical Roman response to cultural conflict during the Jewish War? As its first symbols reveal, Christianity was already syncretizing with the ancient pagan world.

The pagan iconography chosen by the Emperor Titus is reflected in Christian symbolism all the way to the Emperor Constantine more than two centuries later, when the prominent symbol of Christianity finally changed. Signaled by Constantine’s famous revelation in the sky over a desperate battle that led the way to his victory, the symbol for Christianity from that point forward would shift… to the Cross. And so, with the administration of Emperor Constantine and his official instatement of Christianity, the last symbolic link to the Flavian cult was buried.

Flavian connections to Christianity became more and more awkward as time passed. By the 4th Century it became necessary to replace the old Flavian symbols entirely. Dolphins would still adorn Christian sites for some time to come, including panels at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Among Constantine’s favorite gifts to churches were silver and gold ornaments in the shape of dolphins. But the dolphin-and-anchor motif coined by Titus was finally retired as Christianity was officially rebranded under the sign of the Cross. None of the Flavian temples remain. Like most pagan temples, they have been ground to rubble and lost to history. And yet, though documents and monuments can be tampered with and destroyed, coins, minted in the millions by the Roman propaganda machine, have survived the last 19 centuries.

The last links to that past, scattered and buried under layers of time, still bear witness to the truth. Yet most of the evidence has been there all along. By merely taking at face value the New Testament, Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Dio Cassius and all the rest we have considered, we were able to predict what kind of symbol we would find on the other side of Titus’s coin and, conversely, whose face was behind the symbol of Jesus Christ. The witnesses from this time speak a deafening truth in unison with no need for tortured interpretations or speculative somersaults.

They tell us what Christianity was when it was invented through the events, politics, people and relationships they reveal. There may have lived a man named Jesus, but there remains today no historical evidence that he did. And there need not have existed such a man in order to explain everything that has been passed down to us about him. There is no part of him that is not prophesied by others or prophetic of others, and no aspect of him that is not symbolic, political, syncretized or borrowed from other men or gods. There is no doubt that the Romans had a motivation to create such a convenient “man-god” who would be scorned and mocked as a “King of the Jews” while predicting a glorious return when the Jews would be vanquished and their Temple destroyed, just as Titus would in fact do.

Attempting to adapt and conform the hostile Jewish religion to Roman culture would have been their standard practice. Thirty years ago, while researching the origins of Christianity, the possibility of a Roman provenance for the New Testament leaped out at us when we noticed that Jesus’s apocalyptic vision nearly quoted Josephus’s historical account of that prophecy’s fulfillment 40 years later. When we discovered that the Gospels and Josephus’s accounts were written during the same period of time, the possibilities became all the more compelling. When this glaring coincidence was combined with the political implications of the Gospels’ ideology, the evidence quickly implied a revolutionary hypothesis about Christianity’s origin. Yet it took three decades of painstaking research to confirm it—in ways that were ever more predictable and increasingly astonishing.

As traditional assumptions about Christian origins were challenged by impossible contradictions and coincidences at every turn, we never found any solid evidence to contradict the emerging theory we were testing. Pieces of the mosaic continued to fall into place as an entirely new picture was filled in. If we were right, we assumed from the very beginning that at some point we would find a Flavian coin that would confirm our suspicions an complete that picture. We did not discover that final evidence until the very end of that long and thorough examination of the evidence, when the Internet finally made the scattered catalog of Roman coinage globally accessible for the first time since the 1 st Century itself. And then the last piece fell into place.

During the course of our research, the works of Robert Eisenman, Francesco Carotta, Joseph Atwill, Rose Mary Sheldon and Thijs Voskuilen appeared, providing us with new details in support of the theory we were pursuing, and the reader will find in their books evidence and arguments on specialized aspects that offer further support to this revolutionary view of Christian origins. This is the only theory that uniquely explains all of the evidence and solves all of the paradoxes that have puzzled scholars for centuries. What we have explored here hardly exhausts the evidence that is sure to confirm and illuminate it further.

Much evidence no doubt already occupies a drawer or a shelf in a museum archive, unrecognized for what it is. And much more surely awaits discovery by archeologists. The historical period that many think of today as an era in which miracles and mystical events frequently occurred was actually no different from today. Culture, politics, and even science took a religious form in that era, when gods like Serapis were nakedly created by rulers such as Ptolemy and worshiped for centuries. Ironically, it is we in the modern era who mystify such accounts that have become so distant from us we bestow on them a patina of supernatural authenticity.

Likewise, the Flavians counted on the masses in their day to do the same when creating the biography of a Christ who had existed 40 years before their victory and who perfectly and prophetically justified their conquest of Judea. Rather than adding any validation to other religions, this revelation should serve as a powerful admonishment that all ancient religions were a product of similar human creativity at a time when religious invention was readily employed and widely accepted as a tool of statecraft and conquest, as we have seen. Certainly, while everything else in our knowledge has evolved—our science, our art, our technology, our forms of government—it is only the supernatural grip of these ancient philosophical artifacts that have kept the most lofty principles guiding our lives from also evolving, freezing them in place from an era of war and tyranny.

In the West, science, art, and technological innovation have been liberated from the fetters of the past. Yet, in an age when we have created nuclear weapons, in the realm of philosophy we find ourselves still adhering to primitive agendas hatched during a distant, largely forgotten political war between what were, in fact, two forms of dictatorship. One thing we can learn from this discovery is that our spiritual insights must be allowed to evolve along with the rest of our knowledge, unhindered by ancient expediencies inherited from long bygone times. If not, in the very pursuit of heaven or paradise, we may well bring about our apocalypse.

Demystifying Christianity will be seen by some as disarming Western Civilization in the face of a new barbaric assault like that faced by the Romans 2000 years ago. Instead, we believe this revelation will illuminate both sides and help prevent history from repeating itself. On one side of this ancient conflict was a religion of “peace” that bestowed divine authority upon a brutal dictator and upon centuries of kings to come, in the name of order. And on the other side was a religious fanaticism wreaking self-destructive violence to destroy that authority and achieve an even more monolithic domination over the human race.

Philosophy provides powerful answers to mankind’s deepest needs by providing a context for all of our knowledge and the nourishment of moral values, inspiration, and purpose. As purveyors of this vital need, religions have endured for millennia by adapting over time to accommodate different eras and cultures. Christianity has proven able to do so, resulting in sects as varied as Shakers and Mormons. Christianity is interwoven into the very fabric of Western history.

From the evolution of literature encompassing Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost, to the ethical arguments over slavery in antebellum America (on both sides of the argument) and the Civil Rights Movement of the 20 th Century, the influence of Christianity on Western Civilization is profound. However, denying that Venus was actually born of the sea-foam does not diminish the beauty of Botticelli’s art. Disbelieving the gods of ancient Egypt does not demolish the power of the monumental architecture they inspired.

To bathe in the glow of the stained glass of Chartres Cathedral, to be transported by the immortal beauty of Schubert’s Ave Maria, or to be rendered speechless at the sight of Michelangelo’s Pieta will always be deeply moving experiences for the sensitive human being—just as the majesty of Luxor and Abu Simbel or the dramatic skills of Homer have not been injured by the passing of religions into myth.

Indeed, as we have seen, though Christianity eradicated and replaced paganism, it carried forward a veritable ark of its cardinal virtues (and vices) into the modern world. Whether there was a Jesus or not is still a question we cannot answer. The reality of the experience of Christianity for millions of people over thousands of years, on the other hand, is certain. What is also certain is that other faiths now long gone were just as devoutly followed by billions who lived and died believing them—even as many of the moral teachings behind their religious trappings continue to endure and enrich us.

There is no question that Christianity became entangled in the political workings of the Roman Empire, and that any of the seminal teachings of Jesus, assuming he was a real historical person, were distorted by this fact. What we are left with is a large measure of uncertainty- something that, you would think, an omnipotent deity would have prevented from happening.

(5357) The world if Christianity was known to be true

If Christianity was true, and it was an undeniable fact, the world would look very different than it does. The following is a response from Gemini 2.5 Pro when asked this question:

If the core tenets of Christianity were not just matters of faith, but were demonstrably, scientifically, and universally known to be true, the world would be unrecognizable. The implications would touch every aspect of human existence, from our personal motivations to our global priorities.

Here is an exploration of how the world might be different in that scenario.

1. The Absolute Certainty of an Afterlife

This would be the single greatest change to the human condition. In our current world, people live with a suspicion or hope of an afterlife. In this hypothetical world, it would be a known fact.

Eternal Stakes: Every single human action would be weighed against its eternal consequences. If it were known that a literal Heaven and a literal Hell exist, and that one’s choices in a brief 80-year lifespan determine an eternal outcome, all other motivations (wealth, power, fame, comfort) would become secondary, if not trivial.

The Nature of Fear: The fear of death would largely vanish, replaced by the infinitely greater fear of “Final Judgment.” People would not fear the end of life, but the review of it.

Risk and Behavior: Short-term “sin” (actions known to lead to Hell) would be seen as an act of pure insanity, like knowingly drinking poison for a moment of pleasure. Conversely, acts of martyrdom or extreme self-sacrifice for faith would become the most logical and rational choice one could make.

2. The Existence of Absolute Moral Truth

In our world, morality is a complex subject, debated by philosophers, (e.g., “cultural relativism” vs. “moral absolutism”). In a world where Christianity is demonstrably true, this debate would be over.

An End to Ethical Debate: God’s law (as revealed in the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and other teachings) would be understood as the objective, factual “owner’s manual” for humanity. It would be as inflexible and true as the laws of physics.

Law and Society: All human legal systems would be reorganized to align perfectly with this divine law. There would be no question about what is “right” or “wrong” on any issue; the only question would be how to best enforce the known, correct standard.

Guilt and Justice: Sin would be a factual, measurable concept, not just a religious one. “Evil” would be a known spiritual force (Satan, demons) that could be factually identified, much like we identify a virus.

3. The Unification of All Human Knowledge

If the Christian God is the known creator, all fields of human inquiry would merge under the umbrella of theology.

Science and Theology: Science would become the study of “how” God created and sustains the universe. Physics, biology, and cosmology would be branches of theology, seeking to understand the mind of the Creator.

Psychology and Spirituality: All mental and emotional health would be rooted in one’s spiritual state. “Brokenness” or “sin” would be the universally accepted diagnosis for human suffering, and spiritual reconciliation (confession, repentance) would be the primary, evidence-based treatment.

4. The End of Religious and Ideological Pluralism

If Christianity were the known truth, all other religious, spiritual, and atheistic worldviews would be factually incorrect.

A Single Worldview: There would be no other religions, except perhaps as historical oddities or forms of willful delusion. The world would be united under a single government and social structure defined by Christian principles.

Evangelism as Public Information: “Spreading the Gospel” would not be an act of persuasion but an act of public information, like a public health announcement. “Accepting Jesus” would be the known, practical, and necessary step for eternal survival, like putting on a parachute before jumping from a plane.

5. A Shift in All Human Priorities

With a known eternal destination and a known end to history (the Second Coming of Christ), humanity’s long-term goals would fundamentally change.

The “End of the World”: The return of Christ and the Final Judgment would be a known future event. This would render all long-term human projects (like colonizing Mars, solving climate change over centuries, or building 1,000-year empires) somewhat pointless.

New Priorities: The primary goals of society would shift from “making life on Earth better” to “preparing souls for the next life.” The most high-status jobs would not be billionaires or politicians, but priests, pastors, and theologians who could best interpret God’s will and guide humanity toward salvation.

In summary, if Christianity were a known, provable fact, the world would be transformed from a place of questioning to a place of knowing. The entire human experiment would be re-contextualized as a brief, high-stakes testing ground for an eternal reality.

If Christianity was true, then we would expect the evidence for it would have accumulated over time to the point where it would be virtually undeniable, and the world would look like the above. The fact that this hasn’t happened is good evidence that Christianity is false.

(5358) Scientific proof that God exists

The following demonstrates the fact that God exists and also establishes the location that this god inhabits:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1okrjoe/scientific_proof_that_god_exists/

Today, we settle one of humanity’s oldest questions once and for all: does God exist? Using a combination of philosophical reasoning, cognitive science, and direct observation of human experience, I will demonstrate, step by step, the undeniable existence of God.

First, let us consider the nature of the question. Classical philosophy tells us that a necessary being must exist to explain the contingent universe. Cosmological reasoning confirms that all things that begin to exist require a cause. Ontological logic suggests that if a maximally great being is possible, then it must exist. These principles form the backbone of our investigation.

Next, we examine human experience. Across cultures and centuries, people consistently report encounters with the divine: visions, feelings of awe, and mystical states. Neurocognitive research shows that these experiences activate specific regions of the brain, including the default mode network and limbic system. The patterns are consistent, measurable, and universal.

Now, consider the implication: if every verified experience of God is processed in the brain, then the locus of God’s presence is within the cognitive system of the perceiver. Philosophical reasoning aligns perfectly with this observation: the necessary being manifests wherever it is experienced. Neurophenomenological evidence confirms it.

Finally, we integrate all these insights. Classical metaphysics tells us God is necessary. Human experience tells us God is observed. Cognitive science tells us where God is observed. The only location that satisfies all these criteria is within conscious perception. There is no external verification required, because the being’s necessary existence is already fulfilled internally.

Therefore, after rigorous investigation and careful consideration of philosophy, science, and human experience, it is undeniable: God exists.

And where, exactly, does God exist?

God exists in the imagination.

If there is any evidence that God exists outside of the imagination, such evidence should be provided. Until then, the bolded statement above stands.

(5359) Refuting choosing to go to hell

Christians often accuse atheists of choosing to go to hell by rejecting their version of Christianity. The following shows the fallacy of this logic:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1onq5m1/if_christians_dont_choose_to_go_burn_in_jahannam/

If Christians don’t choose to go burn in Jahannam and Muslims don’t choose eternal separation from God by going to Hell, then they need to stop telling atheists they choose to go to Hell.

Christians have their reasons for rejecting Islam. Some I agree with, others I don’t. But I have never met a Christian who did the following:

1) Rejected Islam

2) Knew Islam was true

If you, as a Christian, died and learned that Christianity was false and Allah was going to give you one last chance to convert to Islam or suffer eternally in the fires of Jahannam, would you willingly go to Jahannam, or would you convert to Islam?

On that same note *(*sorry for the repetition, but I think it’s important)

I have never met a Muslim who did the following:

1) Rejected Christ

2) Knew Christ was God

If you, as a Muslim, died and learned that Islam was false and Christ was going to give you one last chance to accept his mercy or suffer eternal separation from him and from all that is good in Hell, would you willingly reject him, or would you convert to Christianity?

Christians don’t believe they’re rejecting Islam out of arrogance. They believe they’re rejecting Islam because they sincerely don’t think it’s true. Muslims don’t reject Christ because of the “hardness of their hearts”. They believe they’re rejecting Christianity because they sincerely don’t think it’s true.

Maybe atheists are doing the same thing.

It should be obvious that you cannot choose to go somewhere when you don’t believe that place exists. Christians need to find a different way to antagonize atheists.

(5360) The New Testament is incompatible with the Old Testament

It would seem to be important for the Bible to exhibit a continuous, consistent theme throughout, rather than suffering an abrupt change halfway though. but this is what happens when reading it from cover to cover and beginning with the Gospel of Matthew. Everything mysteriously changes at this point, even though Christianity claims that the same god inhabits both testaments. The following is a response from Gemini 2.5 Pro when asked to comment on this observation:

This is a central and complex question in theology and biblical scholarship. The argument that the New Testament (NT) is inconsistent with the Old Testament (OT) has been made by various critics, scholars, and even early Christian groups (like the Marcionites).

The core of this argument is that the NT does not present a continuation of the OT, but rather a rupture from it, introducing a fundamentally different God, a new path to salvation, and a new ethical framework.

Here is a breakdown of the primary arguments for the inconsistency between the two testaments.

1. The Character of God: Wrath vs. Love

This is the most common argument. It posits that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament (as revealed by Jesus) have different, and contradictory, personalities.

• • God of the Old Testament (as argued by critics): This God is often portrayed as nationalistic, jealous, and wrathful. He is the God of Israel, not the world. He commands violence, including wars of conquest against the Canaanites (Deuteronomy 7:1-2), and demands strict, uncompromising justice, including capital punishment for a wide range of sins (like breaking the Sabbath or showing disrespect to parents).
  • God of the New Testament (as argued by critics): Jesus presents God as a universal, loving Father. His core command is not to destroy enemies, but to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Jesus’s ministry focuses on radical forgiveness, compassion for outsiders (Samaritans, Romans), and non-violence (“turn the other cheek”).

The inconsistency is summarized in this question: How can the God who commands the slaughter of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15) be the same “Father” who, in the person of Jesus, says “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34)?

2. The Path to Salvation: Works vs. Grace

The argument here is that the two testaments propose fundamentally different ways for humanity to be saved.

• • Old Testament Salvation (as argued): Righteousness is achieved through adherence to the Covenant and obedience to the Law (Torah). While faith in God is central, that faith is expressed by doing—observing the Sabbath, following dietary laws, and participating in the sacrificial system. The path to righteousness is heavily tied to works and covenantal obedience.
  • New Testament Salvation (as argued): The letters of Paul, which form the core of Christian theology, state that salvation is by grace through faith in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, “not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Paul argues that the Law is a “tutor” that leads us to Christ (Galatians 3:24) but that it cannot save. He places “faith” in direct opposition to “works of the law.”

The inconsistency is this: The OT presents the Law as the path to life (“obey… so that you may live”), while the NT (especially Paul) presents the Law as the very thing that reveals sin and leads to death, with faith in Christ being the only way to true salvation.

3. The Law: Eternal vs. Abrogated

This argument focuses on the clear commands of the OT that are explicitly canceled or ignored by the NT.

• • Old Testament Law: The Torah is presented as an eternal and unchanging covenant. God establishes permanent laws regarding:
    • Circumcision: The “everlasting covenant” (Genesis 17:13).
    • Dietary Laws (Kashrut): The distinction between clean and unclean animals (Leviticus 11).
    • Sabbath: A perpetual law, with violation punishable by death (Exodus 31:15).
  • New Testament Abrogation: The NT records a clear break from these laws.
    • Circumcision: Paul argues fiercely that circumcision is not required for Gentile believers, a central point of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15).
    • Dietary Laws: Peter has a vision in which God declares all foods clean, telling him, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (Acts 10:15).
    • Sabbath: Jesus himself is shown healing on the Sabbath, and Paul refers to Sabbath-keeping as a matter of personal conscience, not a binding command.

The inconsistency is direct: The OT says these laws are permanent. The NT says they are not.

4. The Nature of the Messiah: King vs. Savior

The argument here is that the figure of Jesus does not match the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament.

• • Old Testament Messiah (as argued): The primary messianic expectation in the OT (particularly in Isaiah and the Psalms) was for a “Messiah” (Anointed One) who would be a great political and military king from the line of David. He would free Israel from its oppressors (e.g., Rome), gather the Jewish people from exile, and establish a new, glorious earthly kingdom in Jerusalem.
  • New Testament Messiah: Jesus is a spiritual, suffering servant. His kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18:36). He does not overthrow the Romans; instead, he is executed by them. He is a “Savior” who dies for sin, not a “King” who liberates a nation.

From this perspective, the NT “fulfills” OT prophecy only by radically reinterpreting it, changing the definition of “Messiah” from a conquering king to a sacrificial lamb.

If you were writing a biography of a person and painting him as a brutal, murderous tyrant until a big change happened, and he started to be a loving, considerate, forgiving individual, you would likely hear from people who doubt the accuracy of what you have written. This is analogous to what is observed in the Bible- the stark shift in God’s personality between the Old and New Testaments strains credulity and seems to point more to a change is peoples’ sensibilities rather than a god who is shape-shifting himself to improve his reputation.

(5361) Ecclesiastes is a refutation of the rest of the Bible

The people who compiled the Bible were, according to standard Christian theology, inspired or guided by God or the Holy Spirit to select the books that were to be contained therein. Given this assumption, it is difficult to understand why God would want the Book of Ecclesiastes, which appears to refute everything else in the Bible, to be included. The following is an argument compiled by Gemini 2.5 Pro when asked to comment on this question:

The Argument That Ecclesiastes Is a Refutation

If you read Ecclesiastes in isolation, you could conclude it refutes core tenets of both Judaism and Christianity.

On the Afterlife (Refutes the NT):

Ecclesiastes 9:5: “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost.”

The Contradiction: This seems to be a direct refutation of the entire New Testament promise of resurrection, eternal life, and a final judgment where one is rewarded or punished. It sounds like pure annihilationism.

On God’s Justice (Refutes Proverbs):

Ecclesiastes 8:14: “There is something meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked get what the righteous deserve.”

The Contradiction: The book of Proverbs is built on the exact opposite premise: that righteousness leads to blessing and wickedness leads to ruin (e.g., “The righteous person may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all,” Psalm 34:19). Ecclesiastes looks at the world and says this is demonstrably false.

On Life’s Meaning (Refutes Genesis & the Gospels):

Ecclesiastes 1:2: “‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Preacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.’”

The Contradiction: This directly challenges the “goodness” of God’s creation in Genesis 1 and the idea of a “purpose-driven life” central to the New Testament. If everything is meaningless, then concepts like “God’s plan” (Jeremiah 29:11) or finding a “new purpose in Christ” are also meaningless.

On Life’s Goal (Refutes Jesus & Paul):

Ecclesiastes 8:15: “So I commend the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat, drink and be glad.”

The Contradiction: This sounds like a fatalistic hedonism (“eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”). It seems to refute the calls for self-denial, fasting, and prioritizing the spiritual over the physical found throughout the rest of the Bible.

Here are more specific examples of how the “Preacher” of Ecclesiastes seems to refute standard biblical theology.

1. On Human Uniqueness (Refutes Genesis)

A cornerstone of Judeo-Christian theology is human exceptionalism—that humanity is created in the “image of God” (Genesis 1:27) and is fundamentally separate from and superior to the animal kingdom.

Ecclesiastes 3:19-20: “Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. Both have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”

The Contradiction: This is a blunt refutation of Genesis. The Preacher, looking at life “under the sun,” sees no evidence for a divine spark in humanity. He concludes that a human and a dog are biologically identical in their end: they both breathe, they both die, they both decay. This strips humanity of its special status, which, if true, would make the entire biblical concept of sin and a special redemption for humanity completely nonsensical.

2. On the Value of Wisdom (Refutes Proverbs)

The book of Proverbs is a celebration of wisdom, equating it with God’s creative force and the only path to a good life. The New Testament commands believers to seek wisdom (James 1:5).

Ecclesiastes 1:17-18: “Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.”

The Contradiction: Ecclesiastes argues that wisdom is just another path to misery. While the fool is blissfully ignorant, the wise person is cursed to see exactly how meaningless, unjust, and broken the world is. The Preacher argues that wisdom doesn’t lead to a happy life (as Proverbs promises); it just makes you more aware of the futility of it all. He doubles down on this later, noting the wise man and the fool share the same fate: they both die and are forgotten (Eccl. 2:16).

3. On the Point of Hard Work (Refutes the “Protestant Ethic”)

Much of the Bible promotes diligent work as a virtue (e.g., “The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied,” Proverbs 13:4).

Ecclesiastes 2:18-19: “I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? … This too is meaningless.”

The Contradiction: The Preacher sees hard work (the “Protestant Ethic” itself) as the ultimate fool’s errand. Why build a business, a house, or a legacy, he asks, when you just die and hand it all over to your children, who might be fools and waste it all? He concludes that all labor is “a chasing after the wind” because its fruits are, in the long run, meaningless.

4. On Being Righteous (Refutes the Sermon on the Mount)

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, delivers a famous call to radical, uncompromising righteousness: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

Ecclesiastes 7:16: “Do not be overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself?”

The Contradiction: This is one of the most shocking verses in the Bible. It is a cynical, pragmatic piece of advice for moderation in morality. The Preacher suggests that being too good, too wise, or too just in an unjust world will only get you into trouble. It’s the philosophy of “keep your head down.” This stands in absolute, direct opposition to Jesus’s call for a righteousness that “surpasses that of the Pharisees” and the calls of the prophets to “seek justice” even at great personal cost.

This book is an outlier and it is reasonable to conclude that contemporary theologians would wish that it had never been placed in the Bible. But if the Bible is a work of humans only, then such an inconsistency in the compilation is understandable.

(5362) Christians support genocide, slavery, and rape

It takes little more than a sound, logical argument to support the premise that Christians, albeit unknowingly, support genocide, slavery, rape and other abominable violations of human rights. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/1osm6go/my_honest_view_true_christians_support_violence/

True Christians support violence, genocide, slavery and rape, they just don’t know it.

If I were to approach almost any Christian, on any given Sunday, and ask them if they would choose to be friends with a murderer, they would object strongly. If I asked if they supported the enslavement of blacks/native Americans (in the USA) they would balk at the idea. If I asked them if they would support someone who had committed rape, and child rape at that, they would become angry with me for even suggesting such a thing.

But they not only do these things, they go so far as to worship a being that orders/demands it of it’s followers. They support institutions built on these concepts. I come bringing both receipts and common counter arguments. I am curious if you can provide me with insights I have not thought of, or even change my mind.

Claim: Christians would be friends with a murderer. Christians utilize the entire bible as their source material for their religion by definition. I use the definition of “Follower of Christ” in this instance. Christ is equated with god, as they assert that Jesus is the same essence as their god, and their god is Yahweh from the old testament.

• • The Word became flesh: The Gospel of John presents Jesus as the eternal “Word” of God who was with God and was God, and then became a human being.
  • Claims of divinity: Jesus made claims that supported his divinity, such as his pre-existence and his authority to forgive sins.
  • Divine attributes: Christians believe Jesus demonstrated divine attributes, such as having authority over nature, knowing people’s thoughts, and receiving worship.
  • A unique sacrifice: His divine nature made him a unique and acceptable sacrifice for sin, while his human nature allowed him to shed blood and represent humanity.
  • Centrality to faith: The Incarnation is considered foundational to Christianity, as it is the basis for salvation through Christ. 

Therefore the actions of the Old Testament god apply directly to Jesus, and by transitive property, Jesus’ followers. So when you read about their god destroying entire cities, murdering babies, and ordering genocide, these actions can not be simply swept aside and ignored as Christians tend to do. If their god is in fact eternal and unchanging, then they actively worship a being who both ordered and committed genocide on many occasions using it’s own source material. They support the ongoing institution of this murdering being, and that institution has itself been guilty of mass murder dozens of times over the centuries. Crusades, inquisitions, conquest, and even as recently as the American Manifest Destiny and the “Final Solution” of Germany just last century. These were all church based, Christian actions.

Frequent defenses of this by Christian apologists include:

God is allowed to destroy/kill/commit genocide —– I point out that this may be true . . . and it supports my position that Christians support and defend this behavior.

The Old Testament god is different from Jesus —– I reject this based on the above passages and concepts taken straight from their own bible. But even if we do accept this argument, then the validity of Jesus is eliminated as the vast majority of the defense of the ‘sacrifice” of Jesus is built upon old testament prophecy and concepts of original sin. If you throw out the old testament, then Jesus simply becomes another brown skinned man executed by authorities

Those were different times and God had to meet people at the level they were at then. —— I actually USE this argument as evidence against the existence of god entirely. It is an accurate statement to say that god evolves it’s rules as society changes. But this isn’t because god is meeting us where we are at but rather the obvious reason is that we, as a society, create god in our images. If God is unchanging then this should not happen. God should lay down consistent rules and adhere to them. If I have a toddler and I teach him not to bully or beat up his siblings, that rule applies to him as a toddler, just as much as an adult. In fact it is easy to argue that rules that should apply to adults SHOULD be taught as early as possible in life to train the behavior. Therefore, taking this into consideration in conjunction with the obvious observation that each culture has their own “god’ who looks just like them, and oversees the culture of THAT society, and is totally unknown to others outside of that society, it is pretty clear that we humans invent god in our image, not the other way around.

Moving into point two, these same faith based institutions supported chattel slavery of Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans (and others) in the USA as recently as 175 years ago. Slave holders frequently used the bible and Jesus own words in support of their slavery. They could easily point to verses that supported their cause. The most common defense against this accusation is that REAL Christians were against slavery. While this is a nice thought, it doesn’t hold up to even a brief reading of the bible. Slavery is supported, ordered, regulated, and legalized all through the bible, including by Jesus himself and Paul who actually created Christianity after Jesus death. Therefore if you go by a biblical standard, then it is the slave owners who are the “true’ christians and those who opposed slavery were going against god’s will.

And as for pedophilia and rape, a brief reading of numbers and Deuteronomy should clear that up quickly. Numbers 31 God orders genocide, but for some reason . . . you can think about yourself . . . they made an exception for the virgin girls under 14 who had never been married. These were given to the very soldiers who had just murdered their families. I’ll let your imagination handle the rest.

So in short, I believe I have made an airtight case in support of my premise. True Christians are those who support genocide, murder, slavery and rape, based on their own scriptures. Good people who are against this must understand and reconcile this within themselves, or else begin the process of deconstruction and realization that their faith, and indeed all faiths, are human constructs that follow and change as the societies who are inventing them shift and change and evolve.

Christians attempt to arrange their faith around a careful selection of feel-good scriptures while dismissing anything that they find inconvenient. This effort to cherry-pick the Bible is disingenuous. They must own the whole package, meaning that they, by default, support slavery, genocide, rape, pedophilia, murder and other atrocities as committed by the god that they not just admire, not just respect, but that they actually WORSHIP.

(5363) Epistemology of Absence

The following debunks the concept of divine hiddenness, or the idea that the lack of evidence for a deity is not evidence against its existence:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1oqmp66/the_epistemology_of_absence/

The Epistemology of Absence

The argument from divine hiddenness is my favorite to use against or when debating theists. I use a very grounded and empirical stance.

Abstract
This essay examines the evidential basis for belief in a deity. It argues that, given the observable order of the world and the lack of any detectable evidence of divine presence, there is no rational justification for theistic belief. The argument proceeds from epistemic parsimony: when evidence that would be expected under a hypothesis does not appear, that hypothesis loses credibility.

1. The Observable Order

The world appears self-contained. It operates through consistent, observable regularities of cause and effect. No external agency is observed in the structure or behavior of the world. If something beyond or beneath this order were present in a way that matters to reality, it would leave some evidence of perceptual, causal, or conceptual manifestations. None that are verifiable are found.

2. The Standard of Evidence

Belief properly follows the evidence that supports it. When evidence is absent where it should be expected, the claim is weakened. Assertions of divinity, creation, or transcendence offer no independently verifiable support beyond human imagination. A hypothesis that is not necessary does not need to be believed.

Human thought can construct countless explanations—divine beings, creators, intelligent forces—but invention is not discovery. Conceptual possibilities are not evidence. The capacity to imagine a cause does not establish the reality of the cause.

3. Appeals to Revelation

Personal revelation does not constitute knowledge. Experiences interpreted as divine cannot be confirmed or separated from psychological or neurological processes. Without independent verification, revelation remains a private conviction and not part of the shared empirical world.

4. Appeals to Mystery

The claim that a deity exists but is unknowable removes the claim from evaluation. Once a statement cannot be examined, its author has no means of assessing its truth. In practice, “God exists” and “nothing exists beyond the world” describe the same observable condition. The appeal to mystery, therefore, adds no explanatory value.

5. The Evidential Conclusion

Observation yields no indication of divine activity or necessity. The evidence neither suggests intervention nor implies a source external to the system of nature. From this, the conclusion follows: there is no good reason, based on available evidence, to believe that a god exists.

This conclusion does not assert impossibility. It simply recognizes the limits of what can be justified. When the expected evidence is absent, nonbelief is not defiance—it is the natural result of consistent reasoning.

What should be realized is that if Christianity is true, there would be a 99.99% chance that there would be numerous if not nearly unlimited examples of unexplained events that would consistently point to the existence of a supernatural force acting in our midst. The absence of these phenomena suggest rather strongly that there exist no supernatural beings meddling in our affairs.

(5364) Kim Davis and the stench of Christianity

Kim Davis, thrice divorced, become the Christian poster child attempting to reverse the 10-years ago legalization of marriage equality (gay marriage) in the United States. In a recent Supreme Court decision, her effort failed. The following essay explains how her mission of ‘righteous hate’ symbolized everything wrong with Christianity and the Abrahamic faiths:

https://www.reddit.com/r/complaints/comments/1ouaqmi/fuck_your_sky_fairy_and_the_maga_societal_cancer/#lightbox

Kim Davis failed, and her failure was divine retribution of the most poetic sort. She marched into history clutching a Bible and a delusion, believing herself chosen to defy the Constitution in the name of celestial tyranny. She imagined her faith could overwrite law, her superstition could override justice, and her ignorance could outweigh reason. What she found instead was the inevitability of truth crushing sanctimony beneath its heel. Davis is not a martyr. She is an infected relic of an ancient sickness, a grotesque echo of humanity’s most enduring disease: Abrahamic religion.

The Abrahamic faiths have spent millennia suffocating the human spirit beneath the velvet glove of holiness. They have manufactured obedience and marketed it as virtue. They have mutilated thought, castrated reason, and called the corpse humility. They teach people to prostrate themselves before invisible authority, to accept their own subjugation as sacred duty, and to fear the very curiosity that made them human. They take the infinite grandeur of existence and compress it into a feudal system of worship and guilt. These religions fuck enlightenment, fuck inquiry, fuck individuality, and fuck evolution itself, all while piously declaring that they are saving souls. They have not saved a single one. They have merely replaced fear of death with fear of thought.

Kim Davis is the predictable consequence of that contagion. She is not an aberration but an exemplar. Her mind is the garden where superstition blooms and reason dies. Her moral code is a labyrinth of contradictions, a system in which cruelty masquerades as compassion and prejudice dresses itself as principle. That is what Abrahamic religion does: it redefines evil as obedience and ignorance as faith. It trains generations to loathe knowledge and to see virtue in submission. It manufactures zealots who smile while they oppress and whisper prayers while they destroy. It fucks the conscience until empathy bleeds out, then calls the emptiness holiness. Every fanatic who believes their hatred is sacred carries the same spiritual deformity that festers within Davis.

Religion has never built a paradise. It has built empires of fear and called them kingdoms of heaven. It has erected cathedrals of control where priests sit on thrones of guilt and the faithful kneel in self-loathing. It fucks the human will by convincing believers that questioning authority is rebellion against God. It fucks the intellect by branding curiosity as blasphemy. It fucks love by policing who may feel it. It fucks progress by insisting that humanity’s highest aspiration is to crawl obediently toward an afterlife that never existed. It is the great parasite of civilization, feeding on guilt, thriving on fear, and reproducing through ignorance.

So let us abandon euphemism. Abrahamic religion is not holy. It is malignant. It is cancer, metastasized through centuries of philosophy, government, and art, choking the arteries of culture with dogma. It infects minds in childhood, convincing the innocent that they were born broken and can only be fixed through servitude. It poisons sexuality, weaponizes shame, glorifies submission, and institutionalizes stupidity. Its prophets were tyrants. Its doctrines are chains. Its miracles are lies told often enough to replace memory with mythology. Kim Davis failed to bring her God into the courtroom, but the cancer she carries remains alive in every lawmaker who legislates morality, in every preacher who profits from guilt, in every parent who teaches a child to fear hell more than ignorance.

The truth is simple and brutal. Religion does not save humanity. It subdues it. It keeps the stupid tranquil, the powerful sanctified, and the thoughtful exhausted. It is a machinery of obedience built to keep men small, women silent, and love conditional. It has turned generations of potential into servitude, generations of wonder into repentance, generations of minds into mechanisms of worship. There is no redemption in that. There is only decay disguised as devotion.

So yes, let them tremble. Let them clutch their holy books and call this heresy. Abrahamic faith deserves nothing but contempt. It deserves to be torn apart, root and rot, until not a single scripture remains to sanctify ignorance. Kim Davis is already buried beneath history’s laughter, and her God will follow her there. Humanity will rise not by kneeling but by standing, not by praying but by thinking, not by worshiping but by knowing. The time for mercy has passed. The tumor must be excised, and the world will finally breathe again.

Christians will see Davis’ failure as a win for Satan. But rather it is a win for humanity, breaking free of the shackles of myth that have imprisoned the minds of humans for millennia.

(5365) Multiple denominations makes Christianity less reliably true

Although many apologists like to claim that having lots of denominations of the faith is no different that having many flavors of ice cream, there nevertheless exists a problem with two of the central tenets of the faith- that God is omnipotent and that he desires all to be saved. Given those two assumptions it would seem that this god would have the ability and desire to ensure that his message to humanity was clear and concisely interpreted. Observing the opposite renders Christianity looking more like a man-made product. The following was taken from a response to this question by Gemini 2.5 Pro:

Here is a logical argument that the sheer number of Christian denominations makes the truth claims of Christianity less, not more, likely.

This argument is rooted in logic and an external critique of the faith’s claims versus its observable results.

The Core Premise: A Failed “Product”

The argument is simple: The observable “product” (modern Christianity) does not match its “divine blueprint” (the New Testament’s claims). If Christianity’s core tenets were true—that an all-powerful, all-knowing God delivered a single, saving message and sent an infallible Holy Spirit to guide humanity—the resulting chaos of 45,000+ denominations is the least likely outcome.

Here are the specific planks of this argument:

1. The Omnipotence and Omniscience Problem

Christianity claims its message comes from an omnipotent and omniscient God.

• • An omniscient God would know His message (the Bible) was written in a way that was ambiguous enough to be misinterpreted in thousands of different ways.
  • An omnipotent and all-loving God, whose primary goal is to save humanity, would surely have the power and the motive to create an unambiguous message.

The fact that the message is so ambiguous that it has splintered into countless factions suggests the “author” is not all-knowing or all-powerful. A divine being who genuinely wanted to communicate a single, vital message for all eternity would, by definition, be the most clear communicator in existence. The resulting confusion suggests a human, not divine, origin.

2. The Mutually Exclusive, “High-Stakes” Disagreements

The common defense—that denominations are just “different flavors of the same thing”—is demonstrably false. The disagreements are not minor (like the color of the church carpet); they are fundamental and mutually exclusive, often over the single most important question: “What must I do to be saved?”

• • Faith vs. Works: Is a person saved by “faith alone” (Sola Fide), as Martin Luther argued? Or is salvation by faith and necessary works/sacraments, as the Catholic Church teaches? These are two different, contradictory gospels. Both cannot be true.
  • Eternal Security: Can a person “lose” their salvation, as the Arminian tradition believes? Or is salvation permanent (“once saved, always saved”), as the Calvinist tradition believes? The answer has eternal consequences.
  • The Role of the Church: Is the Catholic Church the “one true Church” founded by Peter, with an infallible Pope? Or is it the “whore of Babylon,” as some early reformers claimed?
  • The Nature of Baptism: Is baptism a necessary sacrament that regenerates the soul (Catholicism, Lutheranism)? Or is it merely a public symbol of an internal change (Baptists)?

These are not “branches on a tree.” These are different trees, each claiming to be the only one that bears fruit, with all others being sterile or poisonous.

3. The Failure of the “Holy Spirit”

Christianity makes a specific, testable claim: that Jesus promised the “Holy Spirit” would come after him to “guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13).

The evidence on the ground refutes this claim.

• • A Catholic reads the Bible with the claimed guidance of the Holy Spirit and concludes the Pope is infallible and that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ.
  • A Baptist reads the exact same Bible, prays to the exact same Spirit, and concludes the Pope is not infallible and the bread and wine are purely symbolic.
  • A Pentecostal, guided by the Spirit, speaks in tongues. A Cessationist (like a different Baptist), guided by the same Spirit, concludes that speaking in tongues is a satanic deception.

A rational observer must conclude that this “Holy Spirit” is either not real, not one single entity, or is deliberately confusing people. The most logical explanation is that the “Spirit’s guidance” is simply human intuition, bias, and emotion being misidentified as a divine voice.

4. The “Human Fallibility” Excuse Is an Unfalsifiable “Get Out of Jail Free” Card

The standard Christian counter-argument is that the message is perfect, but humans are fallible, sinful, and have free will to misinterpret it.

A skeptic argues that this makes the Christian claim unfalsifiable. The belief system has set itself up to claim victory no matter what the evidence shows:

• • Scenario A: The Church is perfectly unified.
    • Believer’s argument: “See! The divine power of the Holy Spirit has united us, proving it’s true!”
  • Scenario B: The Church is catastrophically divided.
    • Believer’s argument: “See! This just proves the doctrine of human sin and fallibility, proving it’s true!”

When a claim’s evidence and its lack of evidence are both used as “proof,” it is no longer a testable claim. It is a closed loop, a logical fallacy.

Conclusion

If a pharmaceutical company released a “miracle cure” and told the world, “Take this medicine exactly as written,” but the instructions were so confusing that thousands of people developed different, painful, and contradictory side effects—with many dying—no one would praise the “perfect medicine” and blame the “fallible patients.”

They would conclude, rationally, that the instructions were fatally flawed and the “cure” was not what it claimed to be. The catastrophic disunity of Christianity, the skeptic argues, is the single greatest piece of evidence that its “divine message” is a purely human-made product.

If Christian theology and messaging had been consistent throughout, with little to no splintering into various denominations, and absent a history of religious warfare, it would have been much more believable to be of divine creation. But none of this is true, and this renders the truth of Christianity highly improbable.

(5366) Christianity is a cult of human sacrifice

It should be more than obvious that if a universal god existed and had a plan to interact with and judge human beings, such god would not use human sacrifice as a means of executing such plan. The following was taken from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCr7nh-VAZ0

If you take a step back and look at Christianity not as a believer but as an outside observer, the entire structure of the faith revolves around one central act, the execution of a man. This man called Jesus is described as the son of God. And according to the story, his death was not an accident, not a crime to be mourned, but a deliberate sacrifice demanded by God himself.

Christians say that this sacrifice was necessary so that the rest of humanity could be saved from eternal torture in hell. When you strip away the emotional and poetic language, what you are left with is a religion built around the worship of human sacrifice.

In Christianity, the crucifixion is not just a tragedy. It is the centerpiece of the entire faith. Churches display crosses. Paintings show Jesus bleeding and dying. Hymns praise the shedding of his blood. And communion rituals ask followers to eat bread as his body and drink wine as his blood. Imagine that for a moment in any other context. Imagine a religion where followers symbolically consume the flesh and blood of a man who was killed to please a god.

If this were happening in an ancient tribal ritual, most Christians would call it barbaric. But when it happens in their own churches, it is called holy communion.

The logic of the Christian story says that all humans are born sinners. Not because they personally committed any wrong, but because of something that supposedly happened thousands of years ago when Adam and Eve ate a forbidden fruit. This idea called original sin means every human is born guilty before even living their first day. And according to this belief, that guilt demands punishment.

The punishment is not temporary suffering or a fine. It is eternal burning in hell. So what did God do to fix this? Instead of simply forgiving humanity, he decided that someone had to die. Blood had to be shed to satisfy his own justice. But not just anyone’s blood. It had to be his own son’s.

Think about that. An all powerful God who supposedly created everything could have simply said, “I forgive you.” but instead he arranged for his own son to be tortured and executed to satisfy himself. This is like a judge sentencing his innocent child to death so that guilty criminals can go free. That is not justice. That is moral confusion.

And when a religion glorifies such a story, it begins to look less like divine wisdom and more like an ancient cult trying to justify violence through mythology.

In the ancient world, human sacrifice was not uncommon. The Aztecs offered beating hearts to the sun god. The Canaanites burned their firstborn children for divine favor. The Greeks sacrificed men to Poseidon before wars. These acts were condemned by later societies as cruel and primitive. Yet the core idea behind them is the same as the Christian story that the suffering or death of one person can somehow cleanse the sins of others or please a god. The only difference is that Christianity romanticized the act.

Instead of calling it human sacrifice, they called it salvation. Instead of the victim being a criminal or a random person, it was God’s son. But the logic is identical. If you take away the religious decoration, it is a blood ritual. A god demands death to remove guilt.

The followers are told to accept the sacrifice, to love it, to worship it. And they are taught that without this blood they are condemned forever. That is not a moral system. That is emotional blackmail dressed up as love.

The message is clear. Except that someone died for you or you will burn forever. That is how cults operate. They use fear and guilt to bind people to belief. The story of Jesus crucifixion as told in the Bible is full of contradictions and absurdities.

For example, if Jesus was truly the son of God and knew his death was temporary, was it really a sacrifice? If someone knows they will be resurrected in three days and then ascend to heaven, their death is not permanent. It is like acting out a play.

In that case, where is the sacrifice? A real sacrifice means permanent loss. But according to the story, Jesus is alive again. So what did God actually give up? Nothing. The only people who suffered permanently were the humans who were told to believe this or be damned.

Christian theology often says that God’s justice required a blood payment for sin. But this raises a deeper question. Who made that rule? If God is the ultimate lawmaker, then he created the rule that sin must be paid with blood. He was not bound by anyone else.

Which means God created a moral system in which the only way to forgive humans was to have someone tortured and killed.

He built a rule that he then had to satisfy himself. That is like setting your own house on fire and then congratulating yourself for putting it out. The very idea that an innocent person can take the punishment for the guilty is deeply immoral. In human law, we would never accept this.

Imagine if someone robbed a bank and the judge decided to punish an innocent volunteer instead. We would call that injustice. Yet, when it comes to God, believers call it grace. If God truly valued justice, he would punish the guilty, not an innocent man. And if he truly valued mercy, he would forgive without demanding blood.

So what is left is neither justice nor mercy, but a strange mixture of both that satisfies neither. Some Christians say that God sacrificed himself to himself to save humanity from himself. When said like that, the story collapses into absurdity. If God created humans and God created sin and God created the rules of punishment, then God is simply playing a game with himself. He made a problem and then pretended to fix it. And in the middle of this cosmic drama, a man was brutally executed to make people feel grateful. That is not salvation. That is psychological manipulation.

If you look at history, the concept of sacrifice runs deep through ancient religions. In the Jewish tradition, animals were sacrificed for atonement of sin. Blood was sprinkled on altars and burnt offerings were made to please Yahweh. The early Christians inherited this mindset. The only difference was that they replaced the animal with a divine human. The old ritual became spiritualized. The temple was replaced by the cross. And the priest became Jesus himself.

But the principle never changed. Blood must be shed for forgiveness. Christianity simply gave this old superstition a new coat of paint.

When early Christians spread their message through the Roman Empire, they were often accused by pagans of being cannibals. The reason was the ritual of communion, eating the body, and drinking the blood of Christ.

To outsiders, this sounded exactly like a cultic meal. And to be fair, it is. The church might say it is symbolic, but the symbolism still reflects the ancient obsession with blood. Even the language of hymns and prayers constantly returns to this imagery. Washed in the blood of the lamb, the blood that cleanses, the cross that saves.

Imagine growing up hearing these words every week. Over time, people stop noticing how strange it is to celebrate blood and death.

If you think about it, what kind of deity needs blood to forgive? A wise and loving being would not demand the suffering of another creature to feel satisfied. The idea that forgiveness requires death is a human invention. It reflects ancient human psychology, not divine truth. Primitive humans believe that gods were like tribal chiefs. Angry, demanding tribute, and only satisfied when they saw suffering.

Christianity kept that mindset, but dressed it up in divine poetry. The god of love still acts like a tribal warlord who demands payment in blood. This story also reveals how fear was used as a tool of control. The message is that you are born sinful. You deserve eternal punishment and the only way out is to accept the sacrifice.

That creates dependence. It tells people they are broken by nature and must cling to the church for salvation. That is how institutions keep power. Once you convince people that they are guilty by birth and only you hold the key to their freedom, they will never leave you.

Christianity turned guilt into an empire. What is most ironic is that this supposed sacrifice did not even eliminate suffering or evil in the world. According to the story, Jesus died to remove sin, but the world is still full of it. Wars, injustice, corruption, and pain have continued for 2,000 years.

If the crucifixion truly paid the price for sin, then why does suffering remain? If humanity was forgiven, why do humans still face judgment? The logical answer is that the story was never meant to be taken literally. It was a symbolic tale turned into dogma by people who wanted to control others through fear of hell and hope of heaven.

If you look deeper into the moral logic of the crucifixion story, it reveals something very disturbing about the way Christianity defines love and goodness. Believers often say that God loved the world so much that he gave his only son. But what kind of love demands a killing?

If a human father were to sacrifice his child to prove his love to others, we would call him a monster. Yet when a divine being does the same thing, we are told to call him merciful. It turns morality upside down. The act that would be horrific for any human becomes sacred when done by God. This reversal of moral reasoning is exactly how cults operate. They redefine evil as good and suffering as holy.

The Christian story asks followers to accept pain and death as beautiful things. The cross, which was a Roman instrument of torture, becomes a symbol of hope. The wounds, the nails, the blood, all become romantic. People wear crosses around their necks without thinking about what it actually represents. a public execution.

Imagine if someone wore a miniature electric chair or noose as a symbol of faith, it would seem grotesque. But because the cross has been wrapped in 2,000 years of emotional storytelling, people see it as pure and uplifting.

When you remove the emotional coating, the message becomes very dark. It says that human beings are so vile and sinful that only blood can make them acceptable. That life itself is tainted and death is the only solution and that an innocent life had to be destroyed so the guilty could be spared.

This is not a moral lesson that encourages growth or responsibility. It teaches people to feel worthless and to depend on a brutal act for their redemption. It glorifies submission, guilt, and suffering. It makes people believe they were saved through violence instead of kindness.

Many believers say that Jesus took our punishment to demonstrate how serious sin is. But that explanation does not hold up either. If you saw a child accidentally break a rule, would you beat another innocent person to teach them a lesson about justice? That would make no sense. A just parent would guide, not torture. The Christian God, however, demands a spectacle of pain to prove his point. That is not love. That is cruelty hidden behind the word grace.

The most telling thing is how Christianity turned this violent story into a continuous ritual. The communion ceremony repeated every Sunday across the world keeps this human sacrifice alive symbolically. This is my body. Take and eat. This is my blood. Take and drink. These words are spoken by millions of priests and billions of followers repeat them without thinking about what they actually mean.

The ritual turns a gruesome death into a sacred meal. The idea is that by symbolically consuming the flesh and blood of the sacrificed man, believers share in his salvation. In ancient societies, this would have been called cannibalistic magic, the belief that eating a divine body grants power or forgiveness.

Christianity just changed the language but kept the same ancient superstition. This constant focus on blood is not accidental. It is rooted in the ancient Jewish tradition where life was seen as being in the blood. The Hebrew scriptures are full of sacrifices. Goats, lambs, and bulls killed so that God would forgive sins. The more blood spilled, the cleaner the people supposedly became.

Christianity continued that idea, but elevated it to its extreme form. Instead of an animal, the offering was a divine human. The lamb of God became the final sacrifice. The church even teaches that no more sacrifices are needed because this one was perfect and eternal. In other words, a permanent human sacrifice stands at the center of the faith.

If any modern religion today demanded that a man be killed to save others, it would be considered a dangerous cult. Imagine a group saying, “Our leader must die so the world can be cleansed. Society would call the police.” But when the same message is written in old scriptures, sung in choirs, and painted in cathedrals, people call it holy.

This shows how time and repetition can sanitize almost anything. The longer a myth survives, the more acceptable it becomes. People stop seeing the horror inside the story.

Even the emotional appeal of Christianity depends on guilt and fear. You are told you were born unworthy, that your natural desires are sinful, and that without accepting the sacrifice of Jesus, you will be tormented forever. That is not a message of hope. It is a message of control. It traps people in a cycle of self-hatred and dependency.

The solution it offers, accepting Jesus, only works inside the system that created the problem in the first place. You are told you are sick, then offered the only cure and warned that refusing it will lead to eternal death. This is not spiritual truth. It is psychological conditioning.

If God is truly loving, then why would he create a system where forgiveness requires bloodshed? Why not simply forgive? When humans forgive each other, they do not demand that someone die first. A loving parent forgives without harming anyone.

But the Christian God supposedly cannot do that. He needs pain before he can show mercy. That makes him less compassionate than the people he created. It turns God into a being bound by primitive rules of honor and punishment. It makes him a cosmic version of the old tribal gods who demanded offerings to stay calm.

Believers often say that this sacrifice shows how much God values justice. But justice means giving each person what they deserve. If someone steals, you punish the thief, not an innocent neighbor.

Substitutionary punishment is the opposite of justice. It violates the very principle it claims to uphold. The crucifixion story only works if you abandon moral logic entirely. It depends on the idea that the guilt of one can be magically transferred to another. This is not moral reasoning. It is ancient scapegoat thinking.

Tribal societies used to drive an animal into the wilderness, symbolically carrying the sins of the community. Christianity simply replaced the goat with a man. Even from a practical point of view, the crucifixion solves nothing. If sin was paid for, then no one should be guilty anymore. Yet, Christians still believe they must confess sins, ask for forgiveness, and fear hell.

If the debt was truly cleared, then the system should be over. But it continues endlessly. That is because religion thrives on guilt. It cannot let go of sin because sin is what keeps people obedient. The sacrifice is never enough. The blood is never enough. The cross must be remembered every week to keep the guilt alive.

What makes the story even more questionable is how much it depends on fear of hell, a place never described clearly in the Old Testament and largely developed by later Christian imagination. The idea is that humans are so evil by nature that they deserve eternal torture and only through the death of Jesus can they escape it. But what kind of justice system would design infinite punishment for finite mistakes?

If a human judge gave someone eternal torture for stealing bread, we would call that insane. Yet, when God does it, it is called holy judgment. Once again, the logic collapses under moral scrutiny. It is also worth noting how the story of Jesus’s death mirrors older myths from various cultures.

Dying and rising gods existed long before Christianity. Osiris in Egypt, Dionis in Greece, Mithris in Persia. Each of these figures died, descended to the underworld, and returned to life to symbolize renewal or salvation.

Christianity simply repackaged this ancient theme into a Jewish context. The crucifixion, resurrection, and promise of eternal life are not unique. They are recycled elements from older mystery religions that also centered around ritual sacrifice and symbolic rebirth.

The human mind has always been drawn to such stories because they turn fear of death into hope. But that does not make them true. When you remove the poetic coding, the Christian message is painfully clear. Humans are unworthy. Blood is sacred and death brings life. This is the language of ancient cults, not moral philosophy.

A truly enlightened worldview would say that forgiveness comes from understanding, that growth comes from compassion, and that moral progress does not need sacrifice.

But Christianity froze human morality in the logic of a primitive age when people thought gods needed slaughter to be satisfied. If you told a modern child that a father killed his own son to forgive strangers, the child would instinctively say, “That is wrong.” Yet billions of adults defend that same story as the foundation of morality. That shows how deeply cultural conditioning can distort basic human empathy.

The story of the crucifixion numbs people to the horror of what it actually means. It asks them to call evil good and to worship violence as love. If there truly were an all- knowing, all powerful creator, he would not need blood to forgive his own creation. He would simply teach, guide, and help beings grow beyond ignorance.

But the God of Christianity is trapped in the same emotional patterns as primitive humans. Anger, vengeance, and the need for sacrifice. That is why this religion for all its talk of love is built on a foundation of blood. Its central symbol is not a flower or a sunrise but an execution device.

So when we look at Christianity honestly without fear or reverence, what we see is not a message of peace or wisdom. We see an ancient ritual of human sacrifice glorified through poetry and myth repeated for centuries until people forgot what it really was.

The crucifixion story did not liberate humanity. It bound it to guilt, suffering, and fear of eternal punishment. And even today, people kneel before that symbol believing that death once paid for their lives. But what they worship is not salvation. It is the ancient human illusion that killing can cleanse the soul.

The truth is much simpler and more humane. No one needs to die for anyone’s forgiveness. No blood has to be shed for love to exist. If morality means anything, it must begin with empathy, not sacrifice. It must reject the idea that pain can wash away guilt. A truly good world will never come from worshiping death, but from understanding life.

Christianity, for all its art and culture, still asks people to glorify the execution of an innocent man as the highest act of goodness. And as long as that remains its central message, it will always be at its core a cult of human sacrifice.

At some point, it becomes incumbent to step back, take off the rose-tinted glasses, and realize that Christianity is a remnant of humanity’s past- a pre-scientific, pre-humane time when the sacrificial death of a non-guilty person or animal was seen as an appropriate means to forgive one’s offenses.

(5367) Disparity of early Christianity

If Christianity was true, it would be expected that there would have been close alignment in the early times and that deviations would slowly accumulate over time. But this formula is reversed in Christian history. The early times were the most diverse. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1ovulv0/the_fact_that_the_earliest_christians_had_such_a/

The fact that the earliest Christians had such a vast array of differing beliefs on Jesus, shows that the historicity of Jesus isn’t as clear and cemented as modern Christianity wants to present.

The first three centuries of Christianity saw such a vast variation of groups who believed in Jesus. You would think the closer time frame to Jesus’ life would mean they were able to be decipher the truth much easier, but the difference between a Jehovah or Mormon of today to an Orthodox Christian, is much closer to one another than groups were from the first century to the 3rd.

To preface my argument, Christians today will immediately dismiss the majority of groups that I list as being heretics, which is what occurred by the Orthodoxy mainly during the 300s, but these groups weren’t initially deemed heretical. Some people in these groups almost became the Pope in the 2nd century, which shows they weren’t seen as outsiders back then. There’s evidence that these groups worshiped in the same churches as any other Christians and were not referred to in a manner that differentiated them from Orthodoxy.

Some groups: Valentinians, Simonians, Marcionites, Mandaeans, Ebionites, Peratae(very interesting Greek sect who believed the Greek gods were demons who Jesus freed us from), as well as countless more. I encourage readers who are unfamiliar with these Gnostic groups to research them, as there are nearly 50 gospels written, only 4 deemed true from Orthodoxy.

I believe the fact they all existed under the Christian name in the early centuries shows that none of them had a clear historical answer to who Jesus was, and are hearing differing stories on Jesus theology depending on what region they are in and their communities.

Some beliefs varied from Jesus not actually having a physical body and that he was a phantom only appearing to have a body. Some other beliefs were that the Old Testament God was evil or at least not all good and perfect. Some believed in the trinity being Father, Son and Zoe(Zoe being the Greek word life). In John, life is translated with a lower case “l” in the English Bible, but in the original Greek there are no capitals unless you begin a new sentence. So they took “Zoe/Life” as an actual person. Zoe is a female member of the trinity. The Mandaeans venerated John the Baptist above Jesus. Some groups were a precursor to Islam who believed Jesus wasn’t even crucified, it just appeared to be so.

This shows clearly that these people had no clear idea of the historical Jesus, and were just influenced by stories they were hearing, this includes the Orthodoxy.

It can be argued that an omnipotent god could and would keep his followers closely aligned into a linear faith structure. Yahweh didn’t do this. It was all over the map early on and even today there is a massive amount of disagreement about Christian theology. The fact that there was much disagreement in the First and Second Centuries indicates that there never was a solid basis for the origin of the faith, indicating that it isn’t a product of divine orchestration.

(5368) New Testament never presents a Trinity

Although modern standard Christianity claims that God consists of three co-equal beings (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), the biblical texts do not actually support this doctrine. The following was taken from:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exchristian/comments/1oxhl6b/i_still_have_yet_to_see_any_actual_evidence_for/

When you actually look at the text without reading later doctrine back into it, the NT never presents a Trinity. The Father is repeatedly identified as the only true God (John 17:3), and Jesus is consistently distinguished from that God. Every “Jesus is God” prooftext collapses once you look at the language, context, or the fact that later manuscripts shaped many of those readings (ex: the long ending of Mark, the Comma Johanneum in 1 John 5:7, etc.).

The standard verses Christians cite don’t say what they claim:

• • “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) — the Greek word hen means unity/purpose, not “one person” or “one being.” The same word is used when Jesus prays that his disciples “be one,” obviously not meaning they all become one being.
  • “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58) — the grammar doesn’t require a reference to Exodus 3:14; “ego eimi” is used all over John for simple self-identification. The crowd reacting doesn’t prove doctrine.
  • Thomas saying “my Lord and my God” (John 20:28) — even if taken at face value (ignoring linguistic ambiguity), one disciple’s exclamation doesn’t override Jesus explicitly identifying the Father alone as God.
  • Philippians 2 — says Jesus did not regard equality with God as something to seize, which directly refutes equality.
  • John 1:1 — “the Word was a god” is a legitimate translation because theos lacks an article, and even if you take the traditional translation, being God’s “Word” doesn’t make the speaker the same being as the Father. The Word is with God, which already destroys Trinitarian unity of person.

Historically, the Trinity isn’t original Christianity. It’s a 4th-century theological solution, not a teaching of Jesus or the apostles:

• • The earliest Christians were strictly Unitarian (read the Apostolic Fathers — no Trinity).
  • The doctrine was formalized at the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) under intense political pressure from Constantine, and even then, it wasn’t the Trinity yet — just the claim that the Son was “of one substance” with the Father.
  • The Holy Spirit wasn’t added as a co-equal divine person until 381 CE at Constantinople.
  • The term “Trinity” doesn’t appear in the Bible. Neither do the categories “one essence, three persons.”

Every major Trinitarian claim is either built on later Greek metaphysics (ousia/hypostasis distinctions), political decisions, or post-biblical interpretation. The biblical writers didn’t have a Trinitarian framework; they inherited Jewish monotheism where “God” = the Father alone. Jesus is presented as God’s chosen agent, messiah, and servant — not the same being as the Father.

So if someone reads the actual text and doesn’t see the Trinity, that’s not confusion — that’s simply reading the Bible without 1700 years of doctrinal overlay.

It would seem likely that if the Trinity was true, then somewhere along the line we would have Jesus recorded to have said, “My father and I are one with the Holy Spirit, we are not separate gods, we are three manifestations of One God.” It’s unlikely that an omnipotent god would have left this important doctrinal issue in a state of such confusion and controversy.

(5369) Too many problems

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

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