{"id":17529,"date":"2022-07-21T01:07:50","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T05:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kyroot.com\/?page_id=17529"},"modified":"2022-08-23T10:33:50","modified_gmt":"2022-08-23T14:33:50","slug":"3901-3950","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.kyroot.com\/?page_id=17529","title":{"rendered":"3901-3950"},"content":{"rendered":"

(3901) Dog pooping analogy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The absurdity of the Christian forgiveness scheme can be shown in many ways. In the following it involves a dog defecating on a neighbor\u2019s lawn:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/atheism\/comments\/w3vrwa\/why_do_people_view_the_narrative_of_christianity\/<\/a><\/p>\n

God creates his own problem (his creation born sinful), creates a nonsensical solution for his own problem (kills himself, as his own son, to appease himself on our behalf, because he decided that only blood sacrifice can forgive sin), and then punishes people who don’t go along with his nonsensical solution with eternal torment.<\/p>\n

Imagine if anyone else used this kind of logic. If a neighbor’s dog poops on my lawn, and I complain to my neighbor about it. The neighbor is sorry and asks what they could do to make it up to me. Then I say, “Oh, don’t worry about it. I already killed my dog so that your dog can be forgiven.” He would rightfully be horrified, but I expand further, saying that if he doesn’t accept my dog’s sacrifice, then I would have to abduct his dog and torture them in my basement. I’d rightly be labeled a dangerous, bloodthirsty maniac, but when God does it, it’s okay? …How? How is what the Christian God does any less barbaric?<\/p>\n

It takes a good measure of brainwashing for a person to not see the absurdity of Christian forgiveness. Why does there have to be any forgiveness in the first place? If a god was intent on judging people, it would simply see how that person lived their life- were they honest?, were they compassionate?, did they work for the betterment of all?- not whether they got their \u2018sins\u2019 washed by a blood sacrifice that they had to \u2018accept\u2019 before it became effective. Christianity is plainly absurd to anyone who thinks <\/a>clearly.<\/p>\n

(3902) Hostility to nature<\/strong><\/p>\n

The philosophy of Jesus to nature, living things other than humans, demonstrates his moral inferiority to other philosophers. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/escapefromplatoscave.com\/the-case-against-the-moral-perfection-of-jesus\/<\/a><\/p>\n

In two of the weirder passages in the Bible, Jesus curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season and casts out demons into a herd of pigs. Here\u2019s what Mark says about the fig tree: \u201cThe next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, \u2018May no one ever eat fruit from you again\u2019\u201d (Mark 11:12-14). The obvious question: Why would Jesus curse a tree for not producing figs out of season?<\/p>\n

His treatment of animals does not appear to be any better. In confronting two demon-possessed men, the demons made the following request of Jesus: \u201cIf you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs\u201d (Matthew 8:30). Mathew continues: \u201c[Jesus] said to them, \u2018Go!\u2019 So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water\u201d (Matthew 8:32). In no other instance of exorcizing demons in the Gospels does Jesus need to cast them into another person or animal. But in this case, he apparently prioritized the desires of demons over the suffering of innocent animals.<\/p>\n

A reason for this is never provided, but we can say that, if Jesus were morally perfect, he would have extended his circle of empathy to include all living things, not just humans, and would avoid committing violence against any sentient beings that can feel pain. In this regard, we can recognize that the teachings of\u00a0Jainism<\/a>\u2014an ancient religion from India that is concerned with the welfare of every being in the universe\u2014holds moral superiority over the teachings of Jesus, as it is a religion that truly teaches total pacifism.<\/p>\n

Jesus set a poor example for this followers that, to this day, results in Christians being on average somewhat more callous toward environmental issues and animal welfare. It would seem that a universal god would have approached these issues in a more sublime <\/a>manner.<\/p>\n

(3993) A real God wouldn\u2019t command faith<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is well established in everyday life that when someone asks you to \u2018just have faith\u2019 it is always in a situation where you have asked for some measure of proof or evidence, but cannot deliver same. But when it comes to a supposedly all-powerful god, it seems strange that such a deity would also be playing the faith card. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateReligion\/comments\/w4o7rh\/faith_is_a_very_suspicious_requirement_for\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Most Christians\/Muslims say that having faith in their religion is necessary to enter heaven\/avoid hell, but it just seems very suspicious to me. I mean I can understand why a human would require you to have faith in their supernatural claims if they can’t back it up with evidence, but I don’t know why an almighty God would require faith when he could easily provide evidence and eliminate all doubt. This is part of the reason why both Christianity and Islam seem so obviously fake to me.<\/p>\n

Also, “faith” is not a good way to determine correct information. People have faith in the wrong things all the time, just look at the members of the heavens gate cult who had faith that they would physically ascend to heaven on a UFO, and if you think that cult members are too extreme\/crazy just consider that if either Christianity or Islam is correct then over 2 billion people have faith in the wrong religion.<\/p>\n

Not to mention, faith is a very unfair way to determine who gets saved and who doesn’t. For example, a child born in Egypt has an over 90% chance of being a Muslim, a child born in Colombia has an over 90% chance of being a Christian, and a child born in Thailand has an over 90% chance of being a Buddhist. If Christianity is true, does it really make sense for God to send the Christian to heaven for “having faith” when he KNOWS that they would most likely NOT be Christian if they were born in a different place? And is it really fair for him to send the Muslim and Buddhist to hell for “lacking faith” when he KNOWS that they would have most likely been Christian if they were born in a different place?<\/p>\n

Honestly the whole idea of faith seems very scammy to me. It seems more like something that a human con artist would demand in order to get you to trust them without thinking and not like what an omniscient, omnipotent God would demand. Could any Christians\/Muslims explain to me why they think that faith is a reasonable way to determine who gets saved and who doesn’t?<\/p>\n

Anytime anyone asks you \u2018to just have faith,\u2019 it should be seen as a warning signal that they might be (or are probably) trying to fool you. There is no reason why Christianity had to use faith as it principal measure of post-life judgment. An omnipotent god, interested in human life, and willing to intervene, would be plainly evident through, for instance, answered prayers and miraculous events. Faith is needed only to buttress the acknowledgment of a non-existent <\/a>god.<\/p>\n

(3904) Soul failure<\/strong><\/p>\n

The more we learn about how our brains function, how our memories are stored and recalled, and how we process our consciousness, the less it seems possible that we could function in the afterlife in any way similar to our earthly life. The soul appears to be nothing more than a product of the imagination of people who feared death and non-existence. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/atheism\/comments\/w3r4xp\/why_do_people_think_they_will_have_conscious\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Some theists like to talk about the \u201csoul\u201d. This soul can travel to other dimensions. No one knows how. But that doesn\u2019t matter. What matters is that they attach all the qualities of the human body and physical earthly experience to the \u201csoul\u201d.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s picture it. The body is dying, it can no longer control it\u2019s arms and legs due to a loss of brain signals that can reach those extremities. As the brain dies so do it\u2019s abilities to translate input from all senses. Now eventually the brain is going to shut off completely. Zero activity. Death.<\/p>\n

Where do people think memories are stored? Where is the human experience stored? Where is recognition, sentiment and operational nuance stored? In the \u201csoul\u201d or in the numerous crevices of the brain?<\/p>\n

If we unplug an external hard drive that contains all of our necessary assets, and try to run the program on the computer, it will tell you that those assets are missing. You will need to re mount the hard drive or that information will not be available.
\nThe brain is dead. The information is not available. The \u201csoul\u201d does not contain the assets necessary to understand and remember what it did as a human. It does not compute.<\/p>\n

Then what is the \u201csoul\u201d. It\u2019s nothing. It\u2019s an illusion created to give dumb people the idea that they will be rewarded for being obedient. Rewarded in death. When they can no longer complain about life.<\/p>\n

If we as a species of supposedly intelligence apes can figure out that ghosts, goblins, poltergeists, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, alien abductions, wizards, witches, angels, demons, fairies, and unicorns are not real, then it seems we should be able to unite around the concession that the soul does not exist as <\/a>well.<\/p>\n

(3905) Christianity claims vs. Scientology<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christians often scoff at the \u2018crazy\u2019 claims of Scientology, but when their claims are put up side by side, a disinterested person would consider the difference to be indistinguishable. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateReligion\/comments\/w5cnbi\/christian_claims_are_indistinguishable_from\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Joe has never been exposed to Christianity or Scientology. He knows nothing of their doctrines or history. He knows they are two religions that exist.<\/p>\n

Tom the Christian and Mary the Scientologist visit Joe to present their cases.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tom: God created two humans and placed them in a Garden that contained a Tree of Eternal Life and a Tree of Knowledge. The humans violated his rules after a snake talked them and were ejected. The Garden was then guarded by a monster with a flaming sword.<\/p>\n

Mary: A quadrillion years ago, Overlord Xenu packed trillions of aliens into spaceships (that look like DC-8s) and sent the ships to earth to crash into volcanos. He then closed up the volcanoes with nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Tom: Because Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they were cursed with Original Sin. This sin was passed on via the DNA of parents to all humanity. This curse causes humankind’s anxieties and violent\/destructive behavior.<\/p>\n

Mary: Those aliens who were trapped in the volcanoes transformed into invisible beings called Thetans. When proto-humans arose, millions of Thetans inhabited their bodies. These Thetans causes humankind’s anxieties and violent\/destructive behavior.<\/p>\n

Tom: Jesus came from heaven to earth to die on a cross and be resurrected to pay the price of our sin, setting us free from its curse to live in peace and love for all eternity.<\/p>\n

Mary: The truth of Xenu’s plan and its consequences on humans was discovered by L. Ron Hubbard. Through his powerful intelligence, he discovered how we can be free of these Thetans by practicing various techniques of Scientology such as auditing. Not only can we be free, but this freedom will result in our receiving amazing powers and success.<\/p>\n

Tom: We know our claims are true because it’s all recorded in a very old book. It’s the true word of god because it says it’s says it’s the true word of. God. Therefore, it is true.<\/p>\n

Mary: We know our claims are true because it’s all recorded in the relatively newer writings of L. Ron Hubbard.<\/p>\n

Tom: We know our claims are true because we can show how the power of Jesus has restored millions of believers and gave them new purpose and a life of meaning.<\/p>\n

Mary: We know our claims are true because we can show how the techniques of Scientology (via Hubbard’s writings) have restored millions of believers and gave them new purpose and a life of meaning.<\/p>\n

Given these two choices, what reasons would Joe have to accept the claims of either religion?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Given two equally preposterous stories, if one is brought up to believe in one of them, they will find it difficult to see how their story has the same degree of incredulity as the other. In fact, anyone raised in a certain religion will likely never be able to measure accurately their faith against any other. And very few Christians will ever see that their faith is no more credible than <\/a>Scientologists.<\/p>\n

(3906) Paul\u2019s struggle with churches defies miracles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paul claimed that he was working miracles in the churches that he established, but it is also conceded by him, to his chagrin, that some of these churches started to follow other preachers or other doctrines than what he had preached. This is a formula for a likely contradiction- if miracles were actually happening, apostasy would be very unlikely to occur. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/AcademicBiblical\/comments\/w5d61m\/were_the_early_christians_known_as\/<\/a><\/p>\n

It seems like Paul\u2019s struggles to retain authority in the churches he planted argues\u00a0against<\/em>\u00a0any actual miracles being performed in their presence. It\u2019s hard to see why the churches in Galatia and Corinth would \u201cso quickly\u201d have deserted Paul for other itinerant Jesus preachers promulgating different doctrines, if Paul himself had evinced some genuinely miraculous and unique superpower in their presence. If, on the other hand, everyone was trading in the same stock of low-yield \u201cwonders and miracles\u201d (ecstatic group worship sessions; praying for a sick person who naturally recovers; praying for rain on Tuesday and lo! it rained on Friday), it\u2019s easier to see why his converts were able to be pulled in different directions, if such was a compelling part of the conversion process.<\/p>\n

I do wish Paul was more specific about what he was claiming he could actually do with his god-powers, especially in 2 Corinthians where he seems to be explicitly threatening his readers with them.<\/p>\n

Of course, this theme could be expanded to all of Christianity. If it was true, and if miracles were occurring, and if prayers were effective, there would be very few people who would leave the faith. Instead, large percentages of Christians are leaving, mostly to atheism. In effect, Christianity over-promised its selling point. If it had toned down the theme of miraculous elements it would be in a better <\/a>position today.<\/p>\n

(3907) Christianity in a nutshell<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is instructive to boil down Christianity into its primary elements, and then step back and see how much sense it makes. After doing this, anyone with an objective mind will immediately dismiss it as ancient folklore. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/atheism\/comments\/w6v82d\/christianity_in_a_nutshell\/<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a 10 step guide to understanding Christianity:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n
      \n
    1. There is an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God. This God is three different persons who are simultaneously the same person (don’t ask, it’s a mystery).<\/li>\n
    2. God hates sin and evil, but decides to create it anyways.<\/li>\n
    3. God created humans and made it impossible for them to meet his standard of goodness.<\/li>\n
    4. He also created a system where failure to meet his impossible standards will result in eternal torture.<\/li>\n
    5. But then God decides to create a loophole : God (or God’s son who is also himself) will come down to earth as a being that is 100% God and 100% man (don’t ask, it’s another mystery) to suffer and die so that humans can avoid eternal torture.<\/li>\n
    6. While on earth, God will pray to himself (Luke 22:39-46), say scientifically inaccurate things (Matthew 13:31-32), make false predictions (Matthew 24:34), die for three days, and then go back to heaven.<\/li>\n
    7. Decades after God’s death, anonymous people living in foreign countries will write down contradictory (and sometimes historically inaccurate) accounts of his life and death.<\/li>\n
    8. Failure to believe these contradictory and inaccurate stories will lead to eternal torture no matter how good, kind or merciful you were.<\/li>\n
    9. God has refused to provide any good evidence for these claims, despite the fact that it will literally take ZERO EFFORT on his part. This is because he doesn’t want to interfere with our free will (because we all know that giving people evidence to believe in something takes away their right to free will).<\/li>\n
    10. God is perfectly good.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Why some people cannot see the blatant illogicality of Christianity is telling- the power of wishful thinking and inculcation, especially at an early age, is a powerful force to disable people from rejecting obvious fiction. For any person with a free mind, the 10 points above, taken as an ensemble, are sufficient to render 100% confidence that Christianity is <\/a>false.<\/p>\n

      (3908) Slavery vs. gay marriage<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Christians explain the Bible\u2019s defense of slavery by asserting that God had to work with the people of the time and that slavery was an established practice 2000+ years ago. But now, that gay marriage has achieved the same degree of established practice, Christians are loathe to assign God the same degree of flexibility. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateReligion\/comments\/w5e7ez\/if_god_can_allow_behavior_he_doesnt_like_simply\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      In the Old Testament God explicitly permits slavery. He states that you may purchase a person as property, own them for life, and give them to your children.<\/p>\n

      \u2018Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves.<\/p>\n

      Leviticus 25: 45-46<\/p>\n

      45<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property.<\/p>\n

      46<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.<\/p>\n

      He also states that you may beat your slave so terribly that they die, as long as they linger for a couple of days after the beating<\/p>\n

      Exodus 21: 20-21<\/p>\n

      \u201cWhen a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. 21 But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money.<\/p>\n

      I have seen many Christians argue that god merely allowed this because other nations also allowed slavery at the time, that it was a product of the time, and that people would not listen to the rule if he made it so severe as to outlaw slavery completely.<\/p>\n

      However, this makes no sense. God’s morality, if objective, should not be bound by the laws of the time. If god truly disdained slavery as an unconscionable evil, as we do now, why would he withhold his hand merely because people really liked having slaves?<\/p>\n

      If you argue that slavery was required to survive, why would god make the earthly conditions such that the Israelites had to resort to an evil practice that he himself found repugnant merely to live?<\/p>\n

      Finally, if God will allow a practice he doesn’t like simply because it is popular for the time, it is illogical that he should not permit gay marriage. Slavery is an evil, disgusting and harmful practice, while gay marriage hurts no one and effects no one outside of the marriage.<\/p>\n

      Gay marriage is a common practice now in many countries. Many people would be harmed if god disallowed it. Many Christians do not obey God’s rule in this case and allow gay marriages in their churches. So why not allow gay marriage? If God did so, many more people would feel comfortable worshipping him. Clearly god’s sense of morality is not so strong that he will not bend the rules to the culture of the time. So what’s stopping him here?<\/p>\n

      If God really opposes gay marriage then he should have opposed slavery. Christians cannot have it both ways. Hypocrisy is a the sign of people not connected to a universal <\/a>deity.<\/p>\n

      (3909) Puzzling ending to Acts<\/strong><\/p>\n

      The ending of the Book of Acts provides a likely clue that the author of this book was trying to cover up something. Most likely it was the inconsistency between what Paul had written about the end times versus what actually happened. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.debunking-christianity.com\/2022\/07\/for-religious-advocates-honesty-is.html#more<\/a><\/p>\n

      Now we come to the stunning, puzzling ending of the Book of Acts, these two verses: \u201cHe lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.\u201d (Acts 28:30-31)<\/p>\n

      The End.<\/p>\n

      Fitzmyer makes two comments: (1) \u201cWhat is striking about this final scene in Acts is that Paul makes no contact with Roman Christians and that nothing is learned about his appearance before Caesar, the climax to which the Lucan story has been building up. It deals only with his testimony to the Jews in Rome.\u201d (p. 790) (2) \u201cIt ends abruptly and surprises the modern reader. Is it unfinished? Has it been somehow truncated in its transmission? No one knows.\u201d (p. 791)<\/p>\n

      Acts is commonly dated by scholars to the end of the first century, or early second. In other words, could the author of Acts have been unaware of what happened to Paul in Rome, and how his life ended? It is so unlikely that the fanatical preacher for a small cult would have been sent to Roman, for his case to be heard by the emperor. This sounds like bravado: see how important our holy hero is! Since the author of Acts made up so much anyway (he has the holy spirit and angels playing active roles\u2014the stuff of fantasy literature), he could have risen to the challenge of depicting Paul facing the emperor.<\/p>\n

      But there\u2019s probably another reason that our author decided to sign off with the eloquent declaration that Paul taught \u201c\u2026about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.\u201d Writing two or three decades after Paul\u2019s death, what an embarrassment that Paul turned out to\u00a0dead wrong\u00a0about Jesus \u201carriving on the clouds\u201d while Paul was still alive. He had promised the Thessalonians (I Thess. 4) that their dead relatives would rise to meet Jesus in the air, and that he himself would be present to take part in the glorious event. There is so much in his writing about the arrival of Jesus\u00a0soon. Married couples should stop having sex, to be pure when Jesus arrives; Christians shouldn\u2019t take each other to court, because they would be judging angels after Jesus brings his kingdom. He advised the Corinthians (I Cor. 7): \u201c\u2026the appointed time has grown short\u2026 For the present form of this world is passing away.\u201d<\/p>\n

      When the author of Acts wrote his story, he must have wondered how things had gone wrong. Perhaps he omitted any mention of Paul\u2019s death, because he didn\u2019t want to draw attention to this major flaw in Paul\u2019s theology. No surprise to us, since it was hallucination-based theology. We almost have to admire this author\u2019s skill\u00a0at cover-ups! In his very first chapter he reports that Jesus ascended to heaven as the disciples watched. This cannot have happened, of course. But if you\u2019re claiming that a resurrected body had been walking around for a few weeks, what else do to with it but sent it up to the sky\u2014to avoid the embarrassment that it died again. This is one of many reasons we know that the resurrection story\u00a0just doesn\u2019t work. This author was okay with covering up what happened to Jesus, so why not do the same thing with Paul? Paul\u2019s preaching \u201cboldly and without hindrance\u201d was his version of a happy ending.<\/p>\n

      It was probably a sore point for Christians that, by the time Acts was written, the expectations of Paul (for an early rapture and end times) had not happened. Thus, it would have discouraged an author to document the death of Paul when he himself believed he would not die a natural death. Christian apologetics were apparently getting an early <\/a>start.<\/p>\n

      (3910) A Christian struggles with doubts<\/strong><\/p>\n

      One of the ways that we know that Christianity is false is that many Christians are struggling with their faith. If it was true, Christianity should be delivering enough evidence of its truth (to avoid such confliction), as well as the fact that its holy book should be above reproach. Neither of these conditions exist. The following is a testimony from a Christian expressing disappointment and doubts about his faith.<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateReligion\/comments\/w7glry\/thoughts_regarding_my_belief_in_christianity\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      I would say I\u2019m Christian but am conflicted.<\/p>\n

      I look at god and I just feel disappointment. Is that a \u201cblasphemous\u201d statement? Probably, perhaps God is immune to criticism. I know the story, man suffers because Adam and Eve disobeyed him now we have free will to choose \u201cgood or evil\u201d in this new wicked world.<\/p>\n

      I don\u2019t want to follow some \u201cvengeful\u201d god or \u201cjealous\u201d god (Deuteronomy 32:35, Exodus 20:5).<\/p>\n

      I don\u2019t want to follow a god that makes humans suffer to prove a point to the devil (I.e job). I don\u2019t want to follow a god that seems its okay for man to suffer from Aids, Rabies, Covid, Death, and Pain all because Adam disobeyed.<\/p>\n

      It\u2019s interesting how many try to distance their idea of god from the Old Testament, because quite frankly I see his actions no different from a warmonger. Killing babies, wiping out civilizations, tolerating slavery, punishing sons for the sins of their fathers.<\/p>\n

      I just cant reconcile my conscious and follow a god who has done and is doing these things.<\/p>\n

      I cannot follow someone who tells me that if I do an action it\u2019s sinful but it\u2019s okay if he does it because he\u2019s \u201cgod\u201d. Just as it is wicked for a man to kill children, it is just the same for god, just as it is wicked for a country to invade, destroy and eradicate populations, it is the same standard of wickedness that should be upheld for what god and his kingdom did with the surrounding nations of Israel.<\/p>\n

      And quite frankly I just feel like a hypocrite, fighting for pro life and the best justification I can give for god killing children is that he\u2019s god so he does whatever he wants.<\/p>\n

      I am on the edge with Christianity quite honestly, from corrupt churches, legalism to the point of men being unable to have long hair or women not being able to wear pants. Perhaps it isn\u2019t for me.<\/p>\n

      Christianity is supposedly being \u2018monitored\u2019 by an unlimited deity who can make anything happen as to his desires. That a Christian can express thoughts such as these strongly suggests the absence of said <\/a>god.<\/p>\n

      (3911) Biological deadliness of evangelism<\/strong><\/p>\n

      God revealed himself to only a small (less that 1%) slice of the population, requiring mega amounts of evangelism for his word to be spread to all peoples. But this effort inevitably led to the introduction of dangerous pathogens to immune-compromised people, and the inevitable scourge of deadly plagues. It seems that an omnipotent god would have realized this problem and would have spread his word worldwide in a more direct manner (e.g. multiple revelations) to eliminate the need for evangelism. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateReligion\/comments\/w7mvii\/the_evangelicals_dilemma_the_biological\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      1.) Starting in antiquity, humans developed countless religions and spiritual belief systems interpreting reality, so the “true nature of God” is clearly not self evident from nature alone – or all peoples would have reached the same evident conclusion. There would not be atheism either if this nature was self-evident.<\/p>\n

      2.) If God’s nature is real and has already been identified by any of the existent religions, evangelism is the only way that message could possibly be spread and accepted. There has been no proven accounts of people with no previous exposure or knowledge of a certain already-existent religion coming to know and believe in that religion through nature and divine revelation alone.<\/p>\n

      3.) In the case of some faith-dependent religions like Christianity, without the human interaction of evangelism, there can be no salvation.<\/p>\n

      4.) History has shown human interaction between distant cultures can lead to deadly communicable diseases that can wipe out large populations of the uninoculated. Interactions between Native Americans and Europeans often led to 90%+ of the Native Americans being wiped out by diseases they had not been inoculated to. In fact, the diseases from these initial interactions often wiped out people before they were even able to be evangelized to.<\/p>\n

      Even two millennia after Jesus, outsiders have not been able to interact with certain tribes such as the Sentinelese long enough to evangelize to them – in spite of often fatal efforts to do so. Doing so has a risk of wiping out the population altogether.<\/p>\n

      So to recap, God created the laws of biology, obscures his own true nature and form to be non-self-evident from nature alone, and then inspires a “correct” human religion which requires the nature of God to be spread via biologically dangerous human interactions that may wipe out entire populations, even before conversion. The moral dilemma of biological endangerment through evangelism calls into question the tri-omni nature of God:<\/p>\n

      Omnibenevolence:<\/strong>\u00a0Does God not care that the human interactions required for eternal salvation will lead to suffering and death, often before that message can even be conveyed?<\/p>\n

      Omniscience:<\/strong>\u00a0Did God not know that evangelism could lead to biological extinction when he created the laws of biology? If he didn’t know…<\/p>\n

      Omnipotence:<\/strong>\u00a0Is God powerless to change the laws of biology to protect the spiritually necessary act of evangelism? Why would a perfect all-powerful God create diseases in the first place knowing that community worship and evangelism exposes followers or potential followers to increased risk of death from disease?<\/p>\n

      Or, alternatively, does God\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0want evangelism or his true nature to be revealed, and intentionally designed the laws of biology to lead interactions between distant cultures to be biologically deadly, which would belie the notion that God seeks a personal relationship with all people and\/or that faith is the pathway to salvation?<\/p>\n

      A real god would have understood biology better than Yahweh and likely would have revealed himself world-wide, to avoid both a centuries or longer wait for all to hear the good news and a catastrophic amount of death due to the introduction of new pathogens to newly evangelized <\/a>nations.<\/p>\n

      (3912) Abundant absence of evidence<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Christians like to say that just because there is a lack of evidence for god, that doesn\u2019t mean that he doesn\u2019t exist. But when we expect to see a lot of evidence for something, but it is absent, this should give us confidence that such a thing does not exist. This applies to the Christian god. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateReligion\/comments\/wa2ol7\/the_abundant_absence_of_evidence\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      If evidence is lacking when\/where we expect it to be abundant, then it very much allows us to dismiss a hypothesis, and absence of evidence\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0evidence of absence.<\/p>\n

      For example, billions of “encounters” have occurred in the past two decades between children and the tooth fairy. Is there a photograph of one? A recorded tooth thievery? Of course not, and I trust that I need not delve any further.<\/p>\n

      As of current, an estimated 6.648 Billion people in the world carry smartphones with cameras built into them.<\/p>\n

      Approximately 31.2% of the world self-identifies as Christian.<\/p>\n

      All things being equal, that’s more than 2 billion Christians in the world with smartphones right now.<\/p>\n

      In a\u00a0survey of Christians,<\/a>\u00a0roughly 22.6% of all respondents reported hearing an “audible voice” they identified as God. Not an emotion, feeling, or instinct. A voice.<\/p>\n

      Again, all things being equal, that right there is an expected 450 million people on Earth who have smart phones and have had “encounters” with God. Every single of them has failed to produce a recording of God’s voice, regardless of the total and collective number of times they’ve had such experiences.<\/p>\n

      So… where’s the audio recording, or a picture of God’s face? I humbly submit that God is precisely as photogenic and recordable as a leprechaun, and for exactly the same reasons.<\/p>\n

      As a point of comparison, The odds of winning either the Powerball or Mega Millions are roughly\u00a0one in 292.2 million and one in 302.5 million<\/strong>, respectively.<\/p>\n

      We are still waiting to hear God\u2019s voice, or to see his image (possibly in a burning bush), or to see an image of an angel or a demon, or perhaps the Virgin Mary, or maybe some of the other saints, or to see things appear or disappear, or to levitate against the pull of gravity, or to see a dead person rise up back to life. All we have along these lines are obvious fake images or recordings. Until the real thing appears, we can safely assume that the hypothesis of Christianity is <\/a>false.<\/p>\n

      (3913) The great asteroid argument<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Christians believe that the Great Flood of Genesis was an act of God for which they have approving sentiments. But when an analogous humanity-killing act of God, an asteroid, is brought into the conversation, their logic crumbles. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/atheism\/comments\/w92zzx\/my_new_favorite_goto_for_arguing_with_a_christian\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      This is an original argument I came up with on the fly a couple months ago. It has yielded some pretty good results thus far. Something like this:<\/p>\n

      So god caused the biblical flood, killing pretty much everything on the planet, cause he was sick of humanity’s shit, right? You’d call that an “act of god.”<\/p>\n

      Yes.<\/p>\n

      Same thing for the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, right?
      \n(Nervous squirming) Yes. (This step is crucial in order to determine if they believe in dinosaurs and\/or space for future arguments)<\/p>\n

      Well what if you could go back in time and stop the great flood? (How is irrelevant) Would you?<\/p>\n

      They inevitably answer “No.” Because religion.<\/p>\n

      What if I went back? Would you stop me if you could?
      \nThis is where I’ve lost a couple people, but the others answered “yes.”<\/p>\n

      Ok, well what if there was a huge asteroid heading straight for Earth right now? That would be another “act of god,” right?<\/p>\n

      Yes<\/p>\n

      Well NASA would try to stop it from hitting Earth. Would you try to stop them? Careful how you answer, because “No” means you’re not a real christian, and “Yes” means you’re an explicit threat to humanity, and a fucking psychopath.<\/p>\n

      This is pretty much where it has ended the three times I’ve made it this far.<\/p>\n

      This is what religion can do to people. It can actually cause them to see efforts to save the planet as thwarting the will of God. It should be obvious that religious belief can be a clear and present danger to the earth and its <\/a>inhabitants.<\/p>\n

      (3914) Falling down becomes kneeling<\/strong><\/p>\n

      The gospel authors copied from each other, but then also changed some of the narrative to fit their image of Jesus. This introduced contradictions that destroy any concept of inerrancy, though some Christians stubbornly continue to assert just that. In the following it can be seen how the author of Luke, while copying from Mark, made a change to present Jesus in a more favorable light. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/AcademicBiblical\/comments\/wamyvz\/did_mark_utilize_preexisting_sources_to_compose\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      You can see the progression of copying even within the Bible itself, for example, Luke was written later on:<\/p>\n

      Mark 14:33-35:
      \nAnd he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be\u00a0greatly distressed<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0troubled<\/strong>. And he said to them, \u201cMy soul is very\u00a0sorrowful<\/strong>, even to death. Remain here and watch.\u201d And going a little farther, he\u00a0fell on the ground<\/strong>\u00a0and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.<\/p>\n

      Luke 22:40-42:
      \nAnd when he came to the place, he said to them, \u201cPray that you may not enter into temptation.\u201d And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and\u00a0knelt down and prayed<\/strong>, saying, \u201cFather, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.<\/p>\n

      In one account, he’s emotional. He’s “unmanly”. In the other, Luke dusts him off, makes him “manly,” and instead of falling to the ground in grief, he’s now in control and “kneels” down. It’s within reason to think Luke copied the work of the others and edited the story to fit the image of Jesus he wanted to tell.<\/p>\n

      As an aside, it’s an actual Biblical textual contradiction. He either knelt or he fell, both can’t be true. There are lessons here for “The Bible is inerrant” folks.<\/p>\n

      Luke\u2019s image of Jesus was a man in full control of his emotions and the situation he was in. Therefore, he could not have Jesus being distressed or troubled, and he certainly didn\u2019t like the image of Jesus \u2018falling down.\u2019 Therefore a more controlled action, that of kneeling, better fit his agenda. It\u2019s up to Christians to decide which account is more accurate, and up to atheists to see that the gospels are not factual <\/a>history.<\/p>\n

      (3915) Entropy de-evidences God<\/strong><\/p>\n

      The process of entropy, where isolated systems tend toward a state of greater disorder, is a signal that a god is not marshaling the universe in any predictable manner. Science has determined the amount entropy in the universe is constantly increasing and will inevitably lead to its heat death. There are some predictions that the universe will die before its heat death in only 5 billion years:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/science\/article\/101027-science-space-universe-end-of-time-multiverse-inflation<\/a><\/p>\n

      However, even if it survives this death trap, there is still the fact entropy will win in the end and the entire universe will end up without regular matter at a constant temperature just above absolute zero.<\/p>\n

      Regardless of the cause of its death, it is certain that the universe is dying as we speak, and this is not what would be expected of a universe created by a supernatural god. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.canertaslaman.com\/2019\/09\/12\/entropy-and-god\/?lang=en<\/a><\/p>\n

      As we have already said, one-way processes are harbingers of death, and the universe is characterised by an increase in disorder. This process, which in physics is called increase of entropy, cannot go on forever. Heat will continuously flow from hotter to colder environments, until the temperature of all environments is the same. This kind of end for the universe is called \u201cheat death\u201d or \u201cthermodynamic equilibrium.\u201d Certain claims concerning the fact that the universe could not exist for all eternity had also been put forward previously. For example the Islamic philosopher and theolog Kindi, who lived in the 9th century, developed lines of thought concerning the passage from the finite quality of the objects in the universe to the vastness of the universe that had nevertheless an end, and from this to the universe\u2019s end over time.[24] However, within the scope of natural sciences, it was discovered for the first time that the end of the universe was inevitable when the entropy law was formulated in the 19th century.<\/p>\n

      According to the Aristotle-Ptolemy system, widely accepted until the 16th century, stars would exist for all eternity thanks to an inexhaustible fuel. Galileo\u2019s and Newtonian physics, which were dominant in the 19th century, had nothing to say about the end of the universe. The evolution of groups of stars, was explained first of all in Kant\u2019s, \u201cA General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens\u201d[25] which was an application of Newtonian physics. Later, when this theory was developed by Laplace, it showed the importance of the transformation in the universe, but this transformation could be seen as something having a circular nature; in other words, the Kant-Laplace approach also did not reach a conclusion on whether the universe would end. What is more, since the first law of thermodynamics, which was formulated in the first half of the 19th century, stated that the total amount of energy remained the same, even if the form of energy is changed, it could be taken as proof that the universe would exist for ever. When, amidst the dominance of such a view, the entropy law stated that the energy within this constant total was evolving into less usable forms, and that thus the universe had to have an end, it created a shock effect in the world of sciences and among philosophers.<\/p>\n

      For example, Bertrand Russell stated his depression following the fact that scientific laws had anticipated the end of the universe, in the following way: \u201cEven more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home\u2026 that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temper of Man\u2019s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins \u2013 all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul\u2019s habitation henceforth be safely built.\u201d<\/p>\n

      The people who invented Christianity, and those who wrote the Bible, could not have understood this phenomenon, or had any idea that the world is dying just like any other living organism. To them, the universe was static and unchanging. Science has given us a new and rather daunting perspective of reality- it has no regard for human life or its achievements. The universe has a time limit. This is not the expectation of a universe created by a <\/a>god.<\/p>\n

      (3916) Three ancient superstitions<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Christianity is very much a patchwork enterprise, taking bits and pieces of theology and cementing them together in a somewhat incompatible manner. It is not like a skyscraper that gets built at one time, but more like a house that keeps adding on new rooms and additions. Three of these ancient bits of theology stand out as the most prominent. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.debunking-christianity.com\/2022\/07\/christian-truth-in-shreds-epic-takedown.html#more<\/a><\/p>\n

      Christianity is a blend of three ancient superstitions:<\/p>\n

      (1)\u00a0\u00a0a tribal god selected one tribe to be his chosen people, and even they suffered because of his bad temper. His chosen people got beat up over the centuries\u2014one foreign conqueror after another\u2014hence the belief emerged that this god would send a hero, a messiah, to rescue them. This developed into nasty, revenge theology: apocalypticism. Most of the people on earth will be killed as a remnant of the chosen people survives.<\/p>\n

      (2)\u00a0\u00a0When the Jerusalem temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, the ancient practice of sacrificing animals to get right with this god\u2014he appreciated the flow of blood\u2014came to an abrupt end. Of course, Judaism turned out to be the better for it, but Christianity headed in the wrong direction: just\u00a0one human sacrifice\u00a0was sufficient.<\/p>\n

      (3)\u00a0\u00a0There were several dying-rising savior cults in the world in which the Jesus cult emerged, so we\u2019re not surprised that this belief was added to the Christian mix: the human sacrifice had come back to life, and believing in this resurrection was a key to getting to live forever. The apostle Paul especially embraced this bit of magical thinking.<\/p>\n

      This is the blend of superstitions behind the popular affirmation that Jesus \u201cis lord and savior.\u201d It has had remarkable staying power, and even today there are armies of apologists, i.e., theologians who vigorously defend these beliefs. So many people have huge emotional investments in believing there\u2019s a way to get out of dying. Jesus is their ticket to eternal life, a theme that the gospel of John, for example, pursues relentlessly.<\/p>\n

      Where can we find actual data that would justify these beliefs? For a long time serious thinkers have critiqued this blend of superstitions, pointing out the fallacies and silliness. As Peter Boghossian has pointed out, \u201cIn the last 2,400 years of intellectual history, not a single argument for the existence of God has withstood scrutiny. Not one. All refuted. All failures.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Once a person becomes aware of the way that Christianity evolved, it becomes nearly impossible to view it as a reliably true faith. Many if not most practicing Christians are blithely unaware of this information, and most church leaders want to keep it that <\/a>way.<\/p>\n

      (3917) Yahweh should have been an \u2018earth-only\u2019 god<\/strong><\/p>\n

      At the time that the Abrahamic religions were evolving into existence, humans had no concept of the size and structure of the universe, mistakenly believing the earth to be the largest and most significant celestial body. At that time it made sense to portray Yahweh as being the creator of the entire universe. But given our current-day understanding of the cosmos, this idea no longer makes any sense. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.kyroot.com\/wp-admin\/index.php?page=cpd_metaboxes<\/a><\/p>\n

      The Abrahamic religions screwed up by potraying their god as the creator of the universe. Obviously to them it’s all believable and makes perfect sense, but if you’re someone that wasn’t indoctrinated and can think critically, you will have a harder time accepting that the supposed creator of this immense universe in which we’re a speck of dust is a humanoid creature that shares our interests and feelings… it would have been more plausible to come up with some “God of the earth” narrative, just make up some story that there is a powerful spirit lurking around on this planet that protects humans. It’s still silly, but “creator of the universe” is just… nope I ain’t buying that.<\/p>\n

      Especially when you look at the time span of the universe, for billions of years we weren’t here, and then all of a sudden this creator decides to bring us into the game so he can have a special relationship with us… you’d think this would make much more sense under a model of a universe where we were instantly created. No wonder creationists cling on to the whole young earth thing, they know how much the actual reality of the universe isn’t compatible with the idea of their god.<\/p>\n

      Although it would still not pass a test of objective rationalism, to have Yahweh being the \u2018god of the earth,\u2019 and therefore plausibly focused on human life, would make more sense than him being credited as the god of the entire universe, with trillions of not just stars and planets, but galaxies as well. A localized Yahweh has some play in it- a Yahweh of the whole shooting match <\/a>doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

      (3918) God watches as children abused by clergy in France<\/strong><\/p>\n

      If the Christian god is real, it would be expected that he would do what is necessary to protect the reputation of his church. But what happened in France over the past seven decades seems to belie that point. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/europe-france-child-abuse-sexual-abuse-by-clergy-religion-ab5da1ff10f905b1c338a6f3427a1c66<\/a><\/p>\n

      Victims of abuse within France\u2019s Catholic Church welcomed a historic turning point Tuesday after a new report estimated that 330,000 children in France were sexually abused over the past 70 years, providing the country\u2019s first accounting of the worldwide phenomenon.<\/p>\n

      The figure includes abuses committed by some 3,000 priests and an unknown number of other people involved in the church \u2014 wrongdoing that Catholic authorities covered up over decades in a \u201csystemic manner,\u201d according to the president of the commission that issued the report, Jean-Marc Sauv\u00e9.<\/p>\n

      The 2,500-page document was issued as the Catholic Church in France, like in other countries, seeks to face up to shameful secrets that were long covered up. Victims welcomed the report as long overdue and the head of the French bishops\u2019 conference asked for their forgiveness.<\/p>\n

      The report said the tally of 330,000 victims includes an estimated 216,000 people abused by priests and other clerics, and the rest by church figures such as scout leaders or camp counselors. The estimates are based on a broader research by France\u2019s National Institute of Health and Medical Research into sexual abuse of children in the country.<\/p>\n

      The study\u2019s authors estimate 80% of the church\u2019s victims were boys, while the broader study of sexual abuse found that 75% of the overall victims were girls.<\/p>\n

      Just do the math- 330,000 children abused in 70 years- that comes to 13 additional children being abused by the Catholic Church every day over that period of time, or approximately one every two hours.<\/p>\n

      This implies one of the following:<\/p>\n

      (1) God is not omniscient and has no control over this situation.
      \n(2) God is omniscient, but chooses not to intervene in the free will of priests or other church officials.
      \n(3) God does not exist.<\/p>\n

      None of these options are easily digestible for Christians, but if they are honest with themselves, they would select #1 and continue to believe that their god is good. Atheists, on the other hand, have a much easier time with this <\/a>selection.<\/p>\n

      (3919) Moral judgment affected by amygdala damage<\/strong><\/p>\n

      It is certain that, according to Christianity, the ability of a person to process moral judgments is critical to their success in attaining heaven and avoiding hell. This would seem to be a fair way to evaluate people, until it is realized that damage to a certain part of the brain, not the fault of the person, can erode one\u2019s ability to act morally. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/bigthink.com\/neuropsych\/amygdala-damage-moral-judgment\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      The so-called \u201ctrolley car\u201d problem is a classic thought experiment widely known in the fields of ethics and moral philosophy. It involves imagining that you are standing beside a switch at a fork in a railway track, with a runaway trolley hurtling down toward a group of five workers. On the other branch of the line is another lone worker. Do you flip the switch to divert the trolley toward the lone worker to save the group?<\/p>\n

      Most of us know that killing an innocent person is wrong. Yet, faced with this dilemma, most people decide that flipping the switch to save five people by sacrificing one is the right thing to do. But, as a new study shows, people with a rare form of brain damage are impaired in their ability to make such utilitarian moral judgements.<\/p>\n

      <\/a>Abnormal amygdala<\/h2>\n

      Jack van Honk of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues examined five South African patients with\u00a0Urbach-Weithe Disease<\/a>\u00a0(UWD), a rare inherited condition that causes an accumulation of calcium salts in the skin and soft tissues, making them hardened and shrivelled. Approximately 400 cases of this disease have been documented to date, more than half of whom have damage to a brain structure called\u00a0the amygdala<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      The amygdala is a small, almond-shaped structure that is known to be involved in emotional processing and is popularly referred to as the brain\u2019s \u201cfear center.\u201d Previous studies of patient S.M., a 50-year-old woman who developed UWD as a child, showed that she\u00a0cannot recognize emotions<\/a>\u00a0in the facial expressions of others and\u00a0does not experience fear<\/a>\u00a0when exposed to live snakes, spiders, haunted houses, and horror films.<\/p>\n

      Subsequent research showed, however, that inhalation of 35% carbon dioxide can evoke\u00a0fear and panic attacks<\/a>\u00a0in S.M. and two other UWD patients, suggesting that while the amygdala seems crucial for fear triggered by external threats, other brain mechanisms are responsible for internally triggered fear.<\/p>\n

      On the basis of animal research showing that the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala plays an important role in outcome-based decisions and behaviors, van Honk and his colleagues hypothesized that this structure would also play a role in utilitarian moral judgments made by humans. The researchers first used high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging to confirm that the five UWD patients do indeed have damage localized to the basolateral amygdala in both hemispheres of the brain, and then compared their decisions on a series of moral and non-moral decisions to those of 11 control participants without brain damage.<\/p>\n

      In the\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>, they\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0that the UWD patients exhibited a breakdown of moral utilitarian judgment on the trolley car problem, frequently choosing to save one person instead of saving larger numbers, even when their decisions would result in killing thousands of people. The authors conclude that the basolateral amygdala is critical for value-based decisions to sacrifice another person for the greater good.<\/p>\n

      The complex neuroscience of morality<\/h2>\n

      A study published last year showed that while S.M. and several other UWD patients cannot predict fear in others, they deem it\u00a0impermissible to cause others fear<\/a>, leading the researchers to conclude that although social emotion recognition and morality may be related, they are distinct from one another.<\/p>\n

      The authors of the new study suggest that heightened sensitivity to social pain may play a role in their patients\u2019 inability to make moral judgments. In interviews, the patients stated that they had understood both the actions required of them and their outcomes, but decided not to sacrifice the individual because it was too upsetting and \u201churts too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

      The more we find out about the brain\u2019s structure and the multifaceted functions of its parts, the less we can assign blame to persons who act or believe in ways that are detrimental to the common good. Christianity takes none of this into account, and the people who created it had no idea of how the brain operates or how peoples\u2019 actions are not totally in their <\/a>control.<\/p>\n

      (3920) Jesus is not the OT god<\/strong><\/p>\n

      As Christians were inventing the idea of the trinity, they walked themselves into a trap. They essentially made Jesus and the OT god one and the same (that is, they believe there is only ONE god, not THREE). But it takes zero effort to see that Jesus and the OT god must have been different gods, with different behaviors, motivations, and beliefs. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateReligion\/comments\/wai762\/jesus_is_not_the_ot_god\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      To me at least, the plain as day conclusion after all that reading is that there is no conceivable way Jesus and OT God (yhwh if you will) are one and the same.<\/p>\n

      One orders people to kill innocents, is capricious, harsh, and unforgiving. The other is rebellious, compassionate, kind, and generous.<\/p>\n

      Of course, my summary here doesn\u2019t do it justice, but it is just crystal clear to me after many many readings that these two entities: 1) Have almost completely different core values. 2) Have almost completely different motivations stemming from said values. 3) Have VERY different attitudes toward rules and authority. 4) Have almost completely different ideas of human \u201csinfulness\u201d and how that should be managed.<\/p>\n

      Then theologians try to tell me they are the same entity. It doesn\u2019t pass the sniff test. It\u2019s like who am I supposed to believe, your hand-waving and rhetorical wiggle dance, or my own good-faith reading, internalization, and reflection on the actual scriptures?<\/p>\n

      Christians are playing a word game, making Jesus and his \u2018father\u2019 into the same being. They are polar opposite entities. The trinity is like a trying to put two similarly-charged metal balls together with a third uncharged ball. They repel and cannot stay touching each <\/a>other.<\/p>\n

      (3921) Christian god much worse than mortal father<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Christians are sometimes led to believe that Yahweh, their god, is a good role model for a Christian dad to emulate. Nothing could be further from the truth. The following compares the Christian god to their own father:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/atheism\/comments\/we3a03\/christian_god_doesnt_measure_up_to_my_mortal_dad\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      My dad shows up, in person, in the flesh. He loves to interact with me, speak with me, teach me.<\/p>\n

      Christian God could, but chooses not to. Christian god thinks I\u2019m unworthy, dirty, beneath him, or simply not important enough to directly interact.<\/p>\n

      My dad cares about me so much, he would do anything to help me. If there was vital information I needed to know, he would lecture me through the damn ground making 110% I knew it.<\/p>\n

      Christian god expects me to pick the right interpretation of a thrice translated bible, but like the correct bible. Not the Ethiopian one.<\/p>\n

      My dad would never lay a hand on me, his children, his wife, or his passed elderly parents. Even if I failed him, all he would want is to help me grow, learn, and be better. My dad always gives me more chances.<\/p>\n

      Christian god would let me be tortured in the worst way for failing him. Branding, rape, torture. Nothing is off limits to the horrors he would allow me to fall into.<\/p>\n

      My dad gets older and the world tires him and is often frustrating. Still, he never wishes atrocities on anyone. He would never allow violence and war crimes in his own house.<\/p>\n

      Christian god uses bears to murder children, demands the mutilation of baby boys, and slaughters all the peoples of earth in a flood.<\/p>\n

      My dad chooses to be as clear and unambiguous as possible with me. If I misunderstand 6th grade math, or need instruction as a little boy about morality and controlling my temper, he clearly teaches and when I don\u2019t understand, he tries again until I do.<\/p>\n

      Christian god chooses to interact apparently through a Rube Goldberg machine. Through insane dues ex machina and the butterfly effect, to win football games. He could exert his influence in any way possible with zero sweat of his back, but he deliberately chooses methods that obscure his involvement.<\/p>\n

      My dad signed our names on pinewood derby cars together. My dad wrote me postcards and letters when he was on trips, and called me frequently.<\/p>\n

      Christian god hides his signature in natural phenomena, and will punish me if I fail his \u201cWhere\u2019s Waldo\u201d.<\/p>\n

      My dad used to come home from long trips and before going to bed would quietly walk into my room. I could always smell the cold on his leather jacket. He\u2019d stroke my head, give my forehead a kiss, and me a gentle hug before going off to bed. He made me feel safe as a child, knowing he was safe and he was there.<\/p>\n

      Christian god threatens me, my loved ones, my family, with violence. My \u201cHeavenly Father\u201d would have my mother and my wife beaten and tortured if they \u201cfail him\u201d. Christian god will torture and beat the people he \u201cloves\u201d for failing a task he designed, knowing they would fail. And chose not to redesign the task to spare the ones he supposedly loves.<\/p>\n

      My dad designed his world around his family. Around being there for us.<\/p>\n

      Christian god designed the universe around himself. Needing to create an entire race just to praise him, on pain of eternal damnation if they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

      My dad raised his children to grow in loving, caring, educated adults.<\/p>\n

      Christian god cares about none of that. Christian god doesn\u2019t care what we do, or how we do it, only so long as we stroke his ego. Because for some reason he needs fallible little monkeys to acknowledge that the infinite being is infinite.<\/p>\n

      My dad cares about his family. Loves his family. We are his life and he is ours.<\/p>\n

      Christian god cares about himself and deliberately obscures his presence by choosing the most discreet ways to alter and shape the world. The almighty being could do anything in any fashion, but with informed power and wisdom, tricks some clever monkeys and tortured them forever as punishment.<\/p>\n

      My dad is a role model. My dad was an amazing father and an amazing husband. He was kind, generous, and wise. And a far, far better person than the Christian god is.<\/p>\n

      Yahweh fails as a caring, compassionate, loving father to his followers, no matter how brainwashed they have to be to actually worship such a vile, murderous, capricious entity. Perhaps Yahweh needs some lessons, and to see how earthly fathers treat their children would be a good <\/a>start.<\/p>\n

      (<\/em>3922) Why do people love Jesus?<\/strong><\/p>\n

      People are programmed to love Jesus without giving it a lot of thought. But if someone takes a careful and objective view of the gospels, a side of Jesus emerges that should make it difficult to respect, much less love him. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/atheism\/comments\/wcwik0\/why_do_people_still_love_jesus\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      I don’t understand why Jesus is seen to be such a good guy just because he said the bare minimum in terms of ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’<\/p>\n

      He was the one to introduce thought crime, basically the cause of so much anxiety to so many people.<\/p>\n

      He was the one to introduce the idea of eternal torture!<\/p>\n

      He was the one to make divorce adultery and marrying a divorced woman adultery, causing so much suffering and even death to so many women who were forced into unwanted marriages, stuck with violent men or just divorced and having to be single forever.<\/p>\n

      He said himself, he wasn’t there to bring peace. He asked people to leave their families behind, didn’t even let them bury their dead.<\/p>\n

      He asked people to sell their possessions while he was being covered in expensive perfume.<\/p>\n

      He demonized anger, which is a perfectly normal emotion, saying people who are angry at their brother\/sister will be judged. He made people feel ashamed of sexual attraction. So many people don’t know how to deal with their emotions because of his teaching and are repressed.<\/p>\n

      He made people think being persecuted is a good thing, to the point that the persecution complex of Christians were created.<\/p>\n

      He never said anything to stop slavery, instead used the term in his parables.<\/p>\n

      I’m sure there are more points I am missing. I see so many people leaving Christianity but still clinging to the idea of awesome Jesus and my question is why? How?<\/p>\n

      There are many good reasons to counter the idea that Jesus was a good person, at least if we credit the gospels as being a reasonably accurate portrayal of his personality. Christians have been brainwashed to consider Jesus as the perfect model of a human and that they should love him. All of this without taking an impartial reading of the <\/a>gospels.<\/p>\n

      (3923) Betrayal story likely a reflection of Genesis<\/strong><\/p>\n

      The story of Jesus\u2019 betrayal has many facets of symbolism and legend, but little resemblance to factual history. In the following it is conjectured that it might have been inspired by a story in the Book of Genesis:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/AcademicBiblical\/comments\/wfem9j\/why_would_christians_make_up_that_jesus_promised\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      It is very hard to know whether the story of the betrayal of Jesus is based on historical events or on something else. The earliest written account that we have of the death and resurrection of Jesus is found in the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians. In a part of this letter,\u00a0I Corinthians 15:3-9, Paul recounts what appears to be a fixed tradition about the death and resurrection of Jesus that he had previously passed on to the Corinthian Church.<\/p>\n

      This account does not appear to be aware of any betrayal by one of Jesus\u2019 twelve disciples. In particular, Paul states that, after his resurrection, Jesus appeared to all of the twelve, while the stories told in the gospels would lead us to the conclusion that there should have only been eleven at that point. This has led many to the conclusion that Paul, writing to the Corinthians sometime around 54 CE, was not aware of any story of such a betrayal.<\/p>\n

      Nowhere else in his letters does Paul refer to betrayal. There are some translations of 1 Corinthians 11:23 that might seem to refer to a betrayal event (e.g.\u00a0NRSV \u201cFor I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread\u2026\u201c), but it should be noted that the Greek word that is translated as\u00a0\u201cbetrayed\u201d\u00a0in the NRSV is the same word that is translated as\u00a0\u201chanded on\u201d\u00a0within the same verse and by no means needs to refer to the betrayal stories in the gospel. The choice to translate it as \u201cbetrayed\u201d is doubtlessly dependent on the gospel stories.<\/p>\n

      So the first account of a betrayal by a man named Judas Iscariot comes from the Gospel of Mark, likely the first gospel written. As I mentioned in the episode, it seems unlikely that the followers of Jesus would have had first hand knowledge of the secret plots that any enemies of Jesus might have laid against him. But, since they believe that the scriptures predicted everything about Jesus, they would not have hesitated to search the scriptures to come up with some explanation for how he was betrayed.<\/p>\n

      There is reason to believe that the story of Judas in the Gospel of Mark has been inspired by a passage in the Book of Genesis (Genesis 37:25-27) in which Judah (or Judas in Aramaic and Greek), one of the sons of Jacob, decides during a meal to sell his brother Joseph off to some foreigners for a sum of money.<\/p>\n

      Now, obviously, that doesn\u2019t mean that there was not a Judas who may have had a role in the arrest of Jesus, but I believe that it indicates that many of the details of his story were filled in by somebody referring to what we call the Old Testament scriptures today.<\/p>\n

      So, with all of that understood, if Ehrman is correct and this tradition about the 12 tribes circulated from Jesus, there would have been no need for it to be reconciled with the Gospel stories of the Betrayer until after Mark created the story.<\/p>\n

      The following scripture is seen as being contradictory to the betrayal story:<\/p>\n

      \u201cTruly I say to you, in the renewed world, when the Son of Man is sitting on the throne of his glory, you (disciples) also will be seated on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Matt. 19:28; cf. Luke 22:30)\u201d<\/p>\n

      It would seem that Jesus would have been aware that one of the twelve would not be available for this duty.<\/p>\n

      There is also the fact that Jesus was not secluding himself prior to his arrest, even making a scene at the temple stalls, so why would anyway pay a betrayer to find <\/a>him?<\/p>\n

      (3924) Sun worship makes more sense<\/strong><\/p>\n

      The ancient act of sun worship, though outdated, actually makes more sense that worshiping an unseen, unheard man in the sky. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateReligion\/comments\/wekxux\/arguably_worshipping_the_sun_as_an_abstract_god\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      Arguably, worshiping the Sun as an abstract God makes more sense than the idea of the Abrahamic God with personal characteristics. The Sun lacks sentience but has a purpose – it is the source of all energy on Earth, indirectly responsible for all life on Earth and maintains all life. As well as this, its position is necessary to maintain the order in our solar system as it lies at the center. Additionally, unlike the rest of the solar system, it\u2019s self-sustaining and extremely long-lived, billions of years old. These are empirical and visible facts. Praising this (worshiping) is more understandable than praising an incomprehensible sentient entity that we have no direct evidence off beyond Holy Scripture and subjective miracles.<\/p>\n

      It makes no sense to worship something that has not been proven to exist. The sun definitely exists and therefore at least meets that compulsory <\/a>requirement.<\/p>\n

      (3925) Simplest explanation for the crucifixion<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Although Christians are trained to believe that Jesus was crucified because he ran afoul of the Jewish authorities who found him a threat to their power, the real reason, assuming Jesus was a real person, was almost surely was that he was seen as insurrectionist threat to the Roman government. The following provides a simple explanation:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/AcademicBiblical\/comments\/wgk820\/if_historical_jesus_was_a_harmless_wandering\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      The Gospels\u2019 answer is that he was claiming to be the Messiah, the son of God (see John 19:7 and Mark 14:60-65) and so the Sanhedrin condemned him to death.<\/p>\n

      The likely historical answer: Jesus was likely sentenced by the Romans for claiming to be the King of Jews and that would have been viewed as inspiring insurgency.<\/p>\n

      The Gospels had to vindicate Pontius Pilate (despite Josephus telling us he is a ruthless cruel leader) and blame it on the Sanhedrin because they are writing to a gentile audience and so did not want to paint Rome as the bad guy.<\/p>\n

      The Romans were very sensitive to any Jew claiming political power, as an insurrection of the population was their greatest fear, even to their own lives. Jesus proclaiming to be a \u2018King of the Jews\u2019 and enjoying immense popular support was enough to set off alarm <\/a>bells.<\/p>\n

      (3926) Car lot analogy<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Although Christians might be encouraged to follow their questions and doubts about the faith, this is really all for show. There is no freedom of thought or reward for following your earnest findings or beliefs. There is a dictatorial one size fits all directive and it negates any encouragement to explore all of the possibilities. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateReligion\/comments\/whd02a\/a_religion_does_not_truly_allow_believers_to\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      I have heard some theists, often Christians or Muslims, say that an important part of religion is wrestling with your beliefs and being introspective. However, all of this investigation and questioning is meaningless if the questioner is told they must arrive at a certain conclusion. This is especially true if the questioner is threatened with hell as punishment for coming to the “wrong” conclusion. Being able to question is meaningless if one cannot follow through to the conclusions their questions lead them to. Many atheists who were initially religious did wrestle with their faith. They came to the conclusion that they did not believe in god. But religion paradoxically tells it’s followers that their questioning must ultimately lead them to accept god.<\/p>\n

      Imagine I owned a used car lot, and I told you you could look at any car on the lot you wanted. You could ask me about the prices, features, mileage etc, and I encouraged you to think very carefully about which car you wanted. Now imagine that after I told you all this, I said that no matter what, you must buy this one car. I will not let you buy any other car. This makes my permitting you to look at the other cars meaningless. No matter what you do, and no matter how many cars you look at, you must buy the one car I showed you anyway. I look like I’ve given you a choice, but I’ve really given you no choice at all.<\/p>\n

      If you decide you like a different car instead, it will be rigged to catch fire and burn you whenever you drive it. This is not a democracy, this is not freedom, this is not compassion. It is a putrid form of uncivilized thought from ignorant and callous ancient humans whose writings by a stroke of historical coincidence still control the minds of billions of current-day people. Frankly, this is embarrassment to the human <\/a>race.<\/p>\n

      (3927) No fact checking possible<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Fact checking the gospels or any other books of the Bible is not possible because these writings came from a time where skepticism and critical thinking were in short supply. People of this time were ready to believe almost anything somebody told them. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.debunking-christianity.com\/2022\/08\/jesus-doesnt-want-you-to-fact-check.html#more<\/a><\/p>\n

      Carrier has described the era<\/a>\u00a0when Christianity arose:<\/p>\n

      \u201cThere is abundant evidence that these were times replete with kooks and quacks of all varieties, from sincere lunatics to ingenious frauds, even innocent men mistaken for divine, and there was no end to the fools and loons who would follow and praise them. Placed in this context, the gospels no longer seem to be so remarkable, and this leads us to an important fact: when the Gospels were written, skeptics and informed or critical minds were a small minority.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Even today, it would seem, there is little skepticism about the gospels among church folks. After all, these documents are part of the inspired word of their god. So they can be trusted, we don\u2019t need to fact-check them. But this is awkward: there are so many gospels texts that many Christians themselves stumble over. Surely something is wrong; in this case they might welcome fact-checking. Let\u2019s look at a few examples.<\/p>\n

      Mark 4:10-12:<\/p>\n

      \u201cWhen he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables.\u00a0And he said to them, \u2018To you has been given the secret [or mystery] of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything comes in parables,\u00a0in order that they may indeed look but not perceive,\u00a0and may indeed hear but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

      Is it really possible that Jesus bragged to his disciples that he taught in parables to\u00a0prevent\u00a0people from repenting? The main thrust of Mark\u2019s gospel is the message that the kingdom of god was about to arrive at any time. People had to be warned to be prepared. So these two verses make no sense. We might wonder instead how the author of Mark\u2019s gospel came up with this idea. Devout New Testament scholars have struggled with these verses for a long time. We would dearly like to do some fact-checking here. But how would we do that? We don\u2019t know who the author of the gospel was, we don\u2019t know his sources, which is what\u00a0any historian would want to check first.\u00a0There are no letters, diaries, or transcriptions available. Instead theologians are left to guess and wonder what the gospel author had in mind.<\/p>\n

      Matthew 12:36-37:<\/p>\n

      \u00a0\u201cI tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter,\u00a0for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.\u201d<\/p>\n

      I suspect many Christians would dearly love to fact-check this. Do they live in constant panic that the god of the Cosmos is monitoring everything they say? That this deity is doing the same thing with more than seven billion humans? I refer to this as\u00a0totalitarian monotheism: you\u2019re being spied upon constantly. There is no evidence whatever that this is the way any god operates. But how would anyone fact-check that? This text is found only in Matthew\u2019s gospel, but given the wrathful god of the Old Testament, it\u2019s no surprise that it shows up here\u2014completely undocumented as anything that Jesus himself said.<\/p>\n

      Matthew 27:52-53:<\/p>\n

      \u201cThe tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.\u00a0After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Matthew reports that this is what happened when Jesus died on the cross: his death was so magical that people came alive in their tombs\u2014and on Easter morning walked round Jerusalem. This is pathetic superstition. These two verses are a devastating blow to Christianity. It\u2019s hard to insist that the resurrection of Jesus was \u201creal\u201d if this author\u2014a Jesus propagandist\u2014thought lots of dead people came alive; this was in the context of other cults that worshipped dying-and-rising gods with magical powers. This incident\u2014which includes these newly live dead people \u201cappearing to many\u201d\u2014is not reported by any of the other gospels. Nor was this horde of the walking dead noticed and reported by anyone else. Fact-checkers would say, \u201cDon\u2019t waste our time with this. Use your common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Luke 14:26:<\/p>\n

      \u201cWhoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.\u201d<\/p>\n

      I\u2019ve come across Christians who don\u2019t even know this text exists. And those who do know it are ready with excuses, e.g., \u201cJesus\u00a0couldn\u2019t\u00a0have meant that!\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re taking it out of context!\u201d \u2026without being quite ready to admit that the Bible got it wrong. Yet the Greek word for\u00a0hate\u00a0is right there, although some dishonest Bible translators just remove the word\u00a0hate. If you can\u2019t believe that Jesus could have said any such thing, then why did the author of Luke\u2019s gospel\u00a0report\u00a0that Jesus said it? Note that hatred of family isn\u2019t enough: you have to hate life itself.<\/p>\n

      Here is the parallel version of this text found in Matthew 10:37-38:<\/p>\n

      \u201cWhoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Which was written first? It\u2019s hard to know for sure if Matthew was modifying Luke\u2019s text, or if Luke was intentionally intensifying Matthew\u2019s text. There no mention of hating life in the Matthew version. We can assume that devout believers today\u2014those who are not cult fanatics\u2014would be relieved if fact-checkers could show that Jesus has been grievously misquoted. But how would they go about this task? We don\u2019t know the actual authors of either Matthew or Luke, we don\u2019t know their sources. No contemporaneous letters, diaries, or transcriptions are available. There is no way at all to verify\u2014or disqualify\u2014these as words of Jesus. Both gospel authors had creative imaginations and agendas, e.g., membership in the Jesus sect meant that\u00a0divided loyalties were not tolerated.<\/p>\n

      John 6:53-57:<\/p>\n

      \u201cSo Jesus said to them, \u2018Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.\u00a0Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day,\u00a0for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.\u00a0Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.\u00a0Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

      If modern readers came across these words in a medieval book of magic spells, they might shrug them off, \u201cOh, how grotesque! You mean people took that seriously?\u201d Or if it these words turned up in Professor Snape\u2019s\u00a0Potions Textbook\u00a0at Hogwarts, no one would be surprised: a bizarre touch in a work of entertainment fiction. But no, John 6:53-57 is a text that\u00a0drags Christian theology to a low point. I wonder how many Christians have seriously pondered this Jesus quote. They are probably more familiar with the words of the eucharist in Mark 14:22-24:<\/p>\n

      \u201cWhile they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, \u2018Take, this is my body.\u2019\u00a0Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it.\u00a0He said to them, \u2018This is my blood of the\u00a0covenant, which is poured out for many.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

      There\u2019s nothing here about the bread and wine functioning as magic potions. In fact, Luke 22:19 adds to the words, \u201cDo this in remembrance of me.\u201d But where do these words come from? We find these verses in I Corinthians 11:23-26:<\/p>\n

      \u201c\u2026the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread,\u00a0and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, \u2018This is my body that is for\u00a0you. Do this in remembrance of me.\u2019\u00a0In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, \u2018This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.\u2019\u00a0For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord\u2019s death until he comes.\u201d<\/p>\n

      This is a fact-checker\u2019s nightmare: Paul claims that he received these words from the Lord, that is, from his visions of the dead Jesus speaking to him. It\u2019s possible these words of Paul ended up in the gospel accounts of the Last Supper\u2014but Paul doesn\u2019t mention disciples gathered around Jesus in an upper room, the image we are so used to. To top off the confusion, the episode in John 6:53-57 doesn\u2019t happen at the Last Supper; at that event in John, Jesus washes the feet of the disciples; there\u2019s no eucharist.<\/p>\n

      Christian laity should be banging on the doors of devout New Testament scholars and theologians, begging them to hone their fact-checking skills and\u00a0clear up this mess. But there is no way to clear it up, as these scholars and theologians know full well. There are no contemporaneous letters, diaries, or transcriptions for them to consult. Moreover, John\u2019s gospel contains so many long Jesus quotes entirely unknown in the other gospels. Richard Carrier has functioned as a superb fact-checker:<\/p>\n

      \u201cJohn\u2019s Gospel contains long, implausible, never-before-imagined speeches of Jesus (and yet, no Sermon on the Mount, or indeed hardly any moral instruction of any sort), and entirely new characters and events also never heard of before (Nicodemus, Lazarus, Cana)\u2026 John has thus run wild with authorial gluttony, freely changing everything and inventing whatever he wants. By modern standards, John is lying.\u201d (On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt<\/a>, Kindle, p. 542)<\/p>\n

      One of John\u2019s major inventions is his story of Doubting Thomas, found in chapter 20\u2014and it\u2019s not hard to see why he invented it. Thomas happened not to be there when the resurrected Jesus appeared to the disciples, and he didn\u2019t believe them that Jesus was alive. He wanted evidence; he had the instincts of a good fact-checker! Thomas was with the disciples when Jesus showed up a week later.<\/p>\n

      \u201cThen he said to Thomas, \u2018Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.\u2019\u00a0Thomas answered him, \u2018My Lord and my God!\u2019\u00a0Jesus said to him, \u2018Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0(John 20:27-29)<\/p>\n

      Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.\u00a0\u00a0Jesus didn\u2019t like fact-checkers, but\u00a0this has been the steady chorus of religious leaders of all brands for millennia: don\u2019t ask for evidence, just trust us that\u00a0we know\u00a0what the god(s) want and expect. Humanity ended up with so many different, conflicting religions because nobody, in fact, has such privileged knowledge. It\u2019s all pretend, even if it\u2019s\u00a0sincere, devout, pious\u00a0pretend.<\/p>\n

      Although fact checkers are abundant in today\u2019s world, there is still a generous supply of gullible people who allow themselves to be deceived by religious leaders who present a very saccharine view of the scriptures along with a not-so-subtle hint for these people to avoid trying to figure them out for themselves. This is why some Christians feel confident in their beliefs whereas they would not be so assured if they studied the scriptures thoroughly on their <\/a>own.<\/p>\n

      (3928) God not all-powerful due to worship demand<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Christianity is self-contradictory in that it made out its god to be all-powerful, but at the same time having his psychological state vulnerable to whether or not humans respect or worship him. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateReligion\/comments\/whhhf6\/a_being_that_desires_worship_is_dependent_on\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      A being that desires worship is dependent on others for fulfillment and is therefore not all-powerful<\/p>\n

      If a being is made happy by the worship of others and angry by the lack of it, then that being is is not all-powerful. Being all powerful includes the power not to have your emotional state involuntarily altered by outside influence. If not being worshiped bothers God, and if being worshiped makes him happy, then God’s emotions are ultimately at the mercy of lesser, created creatures. Any being who can be altered by lesser creatures is not all-powerful.<\/p>\n

      The scriptures should have avoided any mention of God being angry or disappointed by the actions of human beings. But, of course, when you are creating fiction, there is always a chance that you will assign contradicting qualities to your <\/a>characters.<\/p>\n

      (3929) Loren Boebert bible citizenship test<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Loren Boebert is a United States congresswoman infamous for her hateful Christian nationalism. She has stated that the government should not be separate from the church- in direct opposition to the founders’ principles. She has also stated that Bible literacy should be a condition for citizenship and holding office. So, to help her in this effort the following offers a Bible quiz:<\/p>\n

      http:\/\/www.skeptophilia.com\/2022\/08\/exam-day.html?m=1<\/a><\/p>\n

      You might have seen the most recent lunatic pronouncement coming from the Christofascist right wing here in the United States, this time from\u00a0noted wingnut Representative Lauren Boebert<\/a>\u00a0of Colorado.\u00a0 Boebert appeared on the show\u00a0Flash Point, and in response to a question about what we should do to improve our country, she said,\u00a0“Maybe we need to have some sort of legislation that requires Constitution Alive! and biblical citizenship training in our schools, and that’s how we get things turned around.”<\/p>\n

      It hardly bears pointing out that\u00a0Constitution Alive!<\/a>\u00a0is a Christian ultra-nationalist approach to interpreting the Constitution, and says right on its website that its goal is “restoring America’s Biblical and Constitutional foundations of freedom.”<\/p>\n

      \"See<\/p>\n

      I’m more interested, though, in Boebert’s “biblical citizenship” test idea.\u00a0 So in the interest of seeing if she’s qualified herself, I submit a short quiz I put together to test her understanding of the Bible (along with biblical references, in case you want to check my sources).\u00a0 See how you score, Representative Boebert.<\/p>\n

      1. Which of the following should be sufficient to prohibit you from entering a church?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      a) Having a flat nose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      b) Having a broken hand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      c) Being blind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      d) All of the above.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Answer: (d).\u00a0 Oh, and guys?\u00a0 You better have intact balls, too.\u00a0 Leviticus 21:18-21 says,\u00a0“For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken.\u00a0 No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the Lord made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.”<\/p>\n

      2. A guy and his wife are walking home one evening, and he’s attacked by a guy with a knife.\u00a0 It looks like the attacker’s going to kill him, but his wife saves the day by grabbing the attacker by the nuts and giving a good squeeze.\u00a0 What should he do to reward her for her valor?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      a) Give her a great big kiss.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      b) Buy her a nice gift.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      c) Tell all his friends about how brave his wife is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      d) Cut off her hand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Answer: (d).\u00a0 Deuteronomy 25:11-12.\u00a0 “When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.”<\/p>\n

      3.\u00a0 Some people move in next door.\u00a0 They seem nice, but upon inquiry, you find out that they aren’t Christians.\u00a0 What is the appropriate response?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      a) Treat them with kindness and compassion, because that’s what the Bible says to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      b) Try to convert them to Christianity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      c) Stone them to death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Answer: (c).\u00a0 Deuteronomy 17:2-5.\u00a0\u00a0“If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the Lord thy God, in transgressing his covenant, and hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; and it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel: Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.”<\/p>\n

      4.\u00a0 Well, suppose there’s an entire\u00a0town\u00a0where people aren’t Christian.\u00a0 What should you do about them?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      a) Let them be — as long as they’re not hurting anyone, they have the right to believe what they want.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      b) Try to convert them to Christianity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      c) Kill them all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Answer: (c). Deuteronomy 13:12-14.\u00a0\u00a0“If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the Lord thy God hath given thee to dwell there, saying, Certain men… are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known; Then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you; Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly.”<\/p>\n

      5.\u00a0 Okay, we killed all the people in the non-Christian town.\u00a0 What should we do about their cattle?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      a) What kind of stupid fucking question\u00a0is\u00a0this?\u00a0 Why should you do anything about the cattle?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      b) Kill them all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Answer: (b).\u00a0 Deuteronomy 13:15 goes on to say, “Destroy all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.”<\/p>\n

      6.\u00a0 You ask your kid to load the dishwasher, and he rolls his eyes and tells you to go to hell.\u00a0 What should you do?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      a) Ground him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      b) Withhold his allowance for the week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      c) Stone him to death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Answer: (c).\u00a0 Leviticus 20:9.\u00a0 “For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.”<\/p>\n

      7.\u00a0 Someone treats you badly.\u00a0 How should you respond?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      a) Forgive him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      b) Turn the other cheek and let him hit that one, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      c) Laugh as you’re smashing his children on a big rock.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      d) All of the above.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Answer: (d), even if that’s hard to imagine.\u00a0 Matthew 6:14, Matthew 5:39, and Psalm 137:8-9, respectively, if you don’t believe me.<\/p>\n

      8.\u00a0 What should the punishment be for kids who make fun of a priest’s bald head?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      a) Nothing.\u00a0 Ignore it.\u00a0 Kids do that sort of stuff sometimes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      b) Tell their parents and let them deal with it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      c) Get some vicious bears to eat the children.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      d) Stone them to death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Answer: (c).\u00a0 Ha!\u00a0 I bet you thought it was (d), but no.\u00a0 2 Kings 2:23-24.\u00a0 “And he [the prophet Elisha] went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.\u00a0 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord.\u00a0 And there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare [ripped apart] forty and two children of them.”<\/p>\n

      9.\u00a0 As a good Christian American, can I own slaves?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      a) What?\u00a0 Are you kidding?\u00a0 Owning slaves is inherently immoral!\u00a0 I don’t care what your religion is!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      b) Yes, as long as they’re Canadian.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Answer: (b).\u00a0 Leviticus 25:44.\u00a0 “Both thy male and female slaves, which thou shalt have, shall be from the countries that are around you; of them shall you buy your male and female slaves.”<\/p>\n

      10.\u00a0 How much authority does Lauren Boebert have to talk about the Bible, religion, and such matters?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      a) Zero, because she has the IQ of a Pop-Tart.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      b) Zero, because someone as clearly sociopathic as she is has no standing to preach morality and ethics to anyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      c) Zero, because she’s female.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Answer: Well, they’re all correct, honestly, but the biblically-supported one is (c).\u00a0 1 Timothy 2:12.\u00a0\u00a0“But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”<\/p>\n

      So in telling you to sit down and shut the fuck up, Representative Boebert, please don’t take it personally.\u00a0 I’m just trying to make sure that I’m living up to my “biblical citizenship training.”<\/p>\n

      Maybe once Loren actually \u2018learns\u2019 her Bible she will retire and stay home, do the housework and take care of the kids, something she is obviously more qualified to do than to be a representative of American <\/a>government.<\/p>\n

      (3930) Eight areas where God is not detected<\/strong><\/p>\n

      We could never prove that a god doesn\u2019t exist because there is a possibility that such a god lets everything happen by the natural laws of physics and does not intervene in any fashion. But when a group of people claim that there is a god with the characteristics of the Christian god, then we can point out how such a god can be disproved. In the following it is discussed how the Christian god is missing in eight separate areas of our lives where he otherwise should be detected:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/onlysky.media\/bseidensticker\/is-god-hidden-or-is-he-absent\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      Victor Stenger makes the\u00a0Argument from Absence<\/a>, which observes that we don\u2019t find God where we\u2019d expect to. This is a direct response to a popular Christian argument that goes something like this: \u201cYou say God doesn\u2019t exist? Well let me ask you this: have you looked everywhere in the universe? How do you\u00a0know<\/em>\u00a0he doesn\u2019t exist if you haven\u2019t looked everywhere?\u201d<\/p>\n

      This is simply the \u201cYou can\u2019t\u00a0prove<\/em>\u00a0God doesn\u2019t exist\u201d argument, which is off topic because the typical atheist isn\u2019t arguing that. However, when you look in places where you\u2019d expect to find evidence of God,\u00a0and you find none,<\/em>\u00a0that is evidence against God.<\/p>\n

      Stenger explores eight areas.<\/p>\n

      1. Cosmology.<\/em>\u00a0We should find evidence for God in cosmology, but natural laws are sufficient. We find no data that needs a miraculous violation of laws. \u201cWell-established cosmological knowledge indicates that the universe began with maximum entropy, that is, total chaos with the absence of structure. Thus the universe bears no imprint of a creator.\u201d<\/p>\n

      2. Evolution.<\/em>\u00a0We should find God in the structure of living things, but evolution is a sufficient explanation. Complex organisms evolved from simpler ones in a variations-on-a-theme way. Life forms are marvelously complex, but elegance is what we\u2019d expect to find in a designed lifeform, not mere complexity. Far from being evidence of a Creator, the\u00a0junk in DNA<\/a>\u00a0argues for the opposite conclusion.<\/p>\n

      3. Souls.<\/em>\u00a0We should find evidence that God gave humans souls, but the supernatural isn\u2019t necessary to explain\u00a0consciousness, memory, or personality<\/a>. There is no evidence that souls are anything more than wishful thinking.<\/p>\n

      4. Revelation.<\/em>\u00a0The Bible claims that God communicates through revelations, but we can\u2019t verify this. In particular, there\u2019s no reason to believe the supernatural claims. Even many of the un-supernatural claims like the Exodus and David\u2019s empire now appear to be false.<\/p>\n

      5. Prayers.<\/em>\u00a0Jesus in the Bible claimed that\u00a0prayers are reliably answered<\/a>. The Bible has no qualifiers like \u201cif you\u2019re worthy\u201d or \u201cif your prayer lines up with God\u2019s plan.\u201d Christians make billions of prayers, but there is no convincing evidence that God answers any. Prayer is easy to study scientifically, but the comprehensive Templeton Study found\u00a0no evidence of the value of prayer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      6. Inhospitable universe.<\/em>\u00a0The Bible makes clear that the universe was created with man in mind, but the vast majority of the universe (even the majority of the earth) is inhospitable. The universe has 200 billion galaxies, but earth was the actual purpose? There\u2019s no evidence pushing us in that direction.<\/p>\n

      7. New information.<\/em>\u00a0If God communicates with people through prayer or revelation, there should be evidence of people having information they could only have gotten supernaturally. Instead, no such claim has checked out, and\u00a0the Bible has no information<\/a>\u00a0that wouldn\u2019t have already been available to the people who wrote it.<\/p>\n

      8. Morality.<\/em>\u00a0Is God the source of morality? Given the\u00a0barbaric morality God displays<\/a>\u00a0in the Old Testament, it\u2019s clear that\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0is no moral authority. For example,\u00a0God said that slavery was fine<\/a>, but we say that it\u2019s abhorrent. Both can\u2019t be right. Christians must pick.<\/p>\n

      This relates to\u00a0Hitchens\u2019 Moral Challenge<\/a>: identify a moral action taken or a moral sentiment uttered by a believer that couldn\u2019t be taken or uttered by an unbeliever\u2014something that only a believer could do and an atheist couldn\u2019t. There is nothing.<\/p>\n

      But now think of the reverse: something terrible that only a\u00a0believer<\/em>\u00a0would do or say. Examples from the Bible easily come to mind\u2014Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac, for example. Today, Christians justify lots of things, from Westboro Baptist Church\u2019s \u201cGod hates fags\u201d to any hateful or selfish conclusion justified by \u201cbecause God (or the Bible) says\u201d such as condemning homosexuality, blocking civil rights, prohibiting stem cell research, and so on.<\/p>\n

      Could God be hiding under a rock somewhere that we haven\u2019t peeked under? Sure, but this secretive god isn\u2019t the Christian god who\u2019s eager for a relationship. These are eight places where we would expect a god to be, and our searches have come up empty.<\/p>\n

      A deist god could exist, but the Christian god really cannot- unless he is far less intrusive than Christians claim or he is not all-seeing and all powerful- but these concessions are not digestible for most Christians. So, to be safe, we can say for all practical purposes, we can prove the non-existence of this particular <\/a>god.<\/p>\n

      (3931) Refuting claims of Bible science<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Apologists like to cherry pick and creatively interpret scriptures to create the illusion that the Bible contains scientific information that was unknown at the time, therefore presenting this as evidence for divine inspiration. But a closer, objective look at this claim reveals it to be unfounded. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

      https:\/\/onlysky.media\/bseidensticker\/the-bibles-confused-relationship-with-science-2-of-2\/<\/a><\/p>\n

      Christian apologists are eager to tell us that scientists didn\u2019t inform us of many facts about cosmology, physics, and biology. No, they were in the Good Book all along if we just had the faith to trust it!<\/p>\n

      One supportive source they often cite is a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Arno Penzias. He said in 1978:<\/p>\n

      The best data we have (concerning the Big Bang) are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Really? From the Old Testament you get at 13.8-billion-year-old universe? Expansion from a point? A universe that\u2019s not only expanding but whose expansion is accelerating? Dark matter and dark energy?<\/p>\n

      If it\u2019s all there in the Bible, tell us the rest: what caused the Big Bang, if anything? Is there a multiverse? How are Relativity and quantum physics unified? While you\u2019re at it, tell us if string theory is correct.<\/p>\n

      It seems to me that the Bible is as useful at informing us of scientific realities as\u00a0The Bible Code<\/em>\u00a0is for predicting the future, but let\u2019s consider some of the Bible verses that apologists think are so clairvoyant and see if the wild claims hold up.<\/p>\n

      Claims about cosmology<\/strong><\/p>\n

      1. The Bible says that the earth is a sphere.<\/em><\/p>\n

      [God] sits above the\u00a0circle of the earth<\/strong>, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers (Isaiah 40:22).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Well, we\u2019re actually looking for the earth as a\u00a0sphere,<\/em>\u00a0but that does sound intriguing. First, though, consider another verse in the same book of the Bible:<\/p>\n

      [God] will wind you up tightly into a\u00a0ball<\/strong>\u00a0and throw you into a wide, open land. There you will die. (Isaiah 22:18)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      The first word means typically circle in the sense of a\u00a0perimeter<\/em>\u2014think of a guard walking the perimeter of a camp. The second verse shows that Hebrew had a word for sphere, and if the author wanted to identify the earth as a sphere, the correct word would\u2019ve been used. Notice also that Isaiah 40:22 isn\u2019t written as if it\u2019s sharing scientific knowledge. It touches on the earth as a flat disk only in passing.<\/p>\n

      2. The Bible knows that the earth is in empty space.<\/em><\/p>\n

      He stretches out the north over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing (Job 26:7).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      This is scientifically vague and gives no clear description of our solar system. The earth isn\u2019t just\u00a0there;<\/em>\u00a0it moves around the sun. If you\u2019re hoping that Job had a planetary model in mind, just four verses later we read about the \u201cpillars of heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

      3. The Bible knows that the number of stars is uncountable.<\/em><\/p>\n

      Therefore there was born [of Abraham] as many descendants as the stars of heaven in number, and innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore (Hebrews 11:12).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      How many descendants did Abraham have when this book was written in the first century? A million people? Whatever it was, \u201cAs many descendants as stars in the sky\u201d is hyperbole. The author can\u2019t have meant that there were then 1021\u00a0Jews in the world (which is roughly the number of stars). Again, the Bible is saying nothing remarkable.<\/p>\n

      If the point of any of these verses were to give new, surprising scientific knowledge, they would make that clear. Each reads as if it\u2019s using ideas accessible by the people of the time.<\/p>\n

      These passages have been picked by modern Christians because they vaguely sound like information that science has taught us. But that\u2019s backwards. Instead, imagine giving each to an unbiased reader of that time. Would they derive the science that these apologists imagine? Would they see a heliocentric solar system, for example? The apologists need to show that these facts came from biblical insights rather than modern science, but they can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

      Claims about earth science<\/strong><\/p>\n

      4. The Bible knows about the water cycle.<\/em><\/p>\n

      Many verses are cited to argue that the Bible understood the water cycle where water evaporates from the ocean, condenses into clouds, falls as rain, and flows back to the ocean.<\/p>\n

      He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth<\/strong>; who makes lightnings for the rain, who brings forth the wind from His treasuries (Psalms 135:7).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      For he\u00a0draws up the drops of water, they distill rain from the mist<\/strong>, which the clouds pour down (Job 36:27\u201328).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      All the rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is not full.<\/strong>\u00a0To the place where the rivers flow, there they flow again (Ecclesiastes 1:7).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      This shows nothing that an observant person from Old Testament times couldn\u2019t have figured out. Water left in a pot will gradually vanish into the air. If that pot is heated, the water vanishes faster. Rain comes from clouds. The sea doesn\u2019t get deeper even though rivers keep flowing in, and so on.<\/p>\n

      And the primitive understanding of meteorology is evident when these passages are taken at face value. God is given credit for water turning to vapor and falling as rain, but we know that physics is sufficient. Imagining treasuries to store the wind (from the first verse) would be cute coming from a child, but this is not wisdom from the omniscient creator of the universe.<\/p>\n

      Or take the third passage above. Just two verses earlier we see the geocentric solar system of the time:<\/p>\n

      The sun rises and the sun sets; and hastening to its place it rises there again (Ecclesiastes 1:5).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      5. The Bible knows that wind circulates as cyclones.<\/em><\/p>\n

      Blowing toward the south, then turning toward the north, the wind continues swirling along; and on its circular courses the wind returns (Ecc. 1:6).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Here\u2019s a time lapse simulation of the\u00a0jet stream in the northern hemisphere<\/a>. Sometimes the air flows in a circle, though usually not.<\/p>\n

      Yes, wind comes from different directions. This verse tells us nothing remarkable.<\/p>\n

      6. The Bible knows about ocean currents and undersea mountains.<\/em><\/p>\n

      The Bible tells us of \u201cthe springs of the sea\u201d (Job 38:16). It also talks about birds and fish traveling \u201cthe paths of the seas\u201d (Psalm 8:8), whatever that means. David imagines God blowing away the water to reveal \u201cthe channels of the sea\u201d (2 Samuel 22:16), and Jonah, thrown into the ocean, imagines descending to \u201cthe roots of the mountains\u201d (Jonah 2:6).<\/p>\n

      Why is this impressive? Fishermen of the time surely observed that the ocean has currents, and swimmers and sailors would have noticed that some parts of the Mediterranean dropped steeply, just like on land.<\/p>\n

      The Bible could\u2019ve\u00a0told\u00a0us something new. Science has only recently revealed the deep sea geothermal vents and the ecosystems that live there. And the deep trenches created by tectonic forces at plate boundaries. And the magma flow that drives oceanic spreading at mid-oceanic ridges. Why didn\u2019t the Bible reveal this?<\/p>\n

      Claims about health<\/strong><\/p>\n

      7. The Bible knew all about disease.<\/em><\/p>\n