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(5551) Voices of the awakened<\/strong><\/p>\n

The transcript of the following video is enlightening:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8SN38uH3gfk<\/a><\/p>\n

Interviewer:<\/b> What do you think happens when you die?<\/p>\n

Speaker:<\/b> As Bertrand Russell said, I believe that when I die, I shall rot and nothing of my ego shall remain. That’s it. Yes. The end. Nothing. There’s nothing else. How could it be otherwise? I mean, you have a brain, an evolved brain which works by nerve impulses. And when that decays, what could possibly be left? When you’re dead, you don’t know anything. It’s just like before you were born. I think it was Mark Twain said, “I was dead for billions of years before I was born and never suffered the smallest inconvenience.”<\/p>\n

The supposed good news of the gospel is really just solving a problem of its own making. It’s like, how much respect should you have for a doctor who runs around cutting people with a knife so he could sell them a band-aid? You know, I mean, that’s kind of what Christianity is. You are rotten. You are doomed. You are horrible.<\/p>\n

But we’re still aware that we’re reading fiction. Why then do so many of us suspend our judgment so that we can be scammed by people who would sell us felt insoles with embedded magnets? Enjoy the fantasy, the fun, the stories, but make sure that there’s a clear sharp line drawn on the floor. To do otherwise is to embrace madness.<\/p>\n

So what I find particularly difficult about Christian readings of the New Testament and other early Christian and Jewish texts that didn’t make it into the New Testament for various reasons… what I find really difficult about those readings is this claim to exclusivity when it comes to the resurrection. Resurrection wasn’t some kind of amazing new idea that just popped up in the time of Jesus. This is built on a model in which all sorts of deities\u2014half human, half divine beings\u2014resurrected from the dead, some even three days later. This is a recycling of religion.<\/p>\n

Speaker 1:<\/b> What if you’re wrong?<\/p>\n

Speaker 2:<\/b> If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong. I’m risking being wrong about every religion, and you’re risking being wrong about every religion except yours. And I don’t know how much time you’ve spent worrying about other religions’ heavens or hells, but I don’t think it’s probably very high. And I don’t spend any time worrying about anybody’s heavens or hells, including yours.<\/p>\n

Speaker 1:<\/b> As we know more and more that, and it seems harder and harder to prove that anything might exist like that, where does that leave us?<\/p>\n

Speaker 2:<\/b> On our own. Which to my mind is much more responsible than hoping that someone will save us from ourselves so we don’t have to make our best efforts to do it ourselves. People who are well don’t go to the doctor. It’s only people who are sick who go to the doctor. And I said, “There you go.” We atheists and agnostics don’t view ourselves as sick. We don’t view ourselves as damned. We don’t view ourselves as corrupt and degraded. We view ourselves as well. Thank you. So my take on salvation: if salvation is the cure, then atheism is the prevention.<\/p>\n

Speaker 1:<\/b> So, why is God so immobile? First of all, why is God so immobile?<\/p>\n

Speaker 2:<\/b> I don’t think that God exists. But if we’re talking about the God character in the Bible, it’s a pretty horrible, jealous, angry being that advocates slavery… that you either have a God who sends child rapists to rape children or you have a God who simply watches it and says, “When you’re done, I’m going to punish you.” Well, here’s the thing, though. If I were in a situation where I could stop a child rapist, I would. That’s the difference between me and your gods. He watches and says, “I’m shutting the door, and you go ahead and rape that child, and when you’re done, I’m going to punish you.” If I did that, people would think I was a freaking monster.<\/p>\n

What is faith? It is belief in the absence of evidence. Believing when there’s no compelling evidence is a mistake. Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved in the writing of this book.<\/p>\n

Redemption after being oppressed is a very common myth throughout history, and you can understand the psychology behind it. The Native Americans in 1890 began a messiah myth with a Paiute Indian, Wovoka, who received visions of God. He was thought to be the Messiah or the deliverer of the Messiah in which the buffalo would all return, the white man would leave and go back to Europe, and life would become better again. This is what oppressed peoples do. They make up stories that make them feel better.<\/p>\n

There’s 50 more stories like this of the geographical location, the time you happen to have been born, the anthropology of religion, the psychology of religion, the sociology of religion. We know exactly how this happens now, all the way down to the neurology, the neuroscience of religion. We know that people are making this up. What’s more likely? It’s obvious that all these other gods are made up. You already know that. You agree with me on that. You’re all atheists for all those other gods. So, I would just implore you to go one god further. Thank you.<\/p>\n

Suppose you were walking by my house one day. You’ve been walking by for a long time, and I were to go up on the porch and say, “Hey, stop. I’ve got some good news. Good news for you people. Stop. Stop. Stop. You don’t have to go down in my basement!<\/p>\n

This is great news. You’ve been walking by all this time. You’ve been ignoring me, and I deserve to be recognized and honored. And you’ve been ignoring me and it has made me so angry and so mad and I just get so horribly mad. So, I built this torture chamber down in the basement and there’s some hooks down there and there’s some sharp things and there’s some vats of stinky stuff and there’s a furnace and there’s some chains and it’s horrible and there’s flames… but you don’t have to go down there!<\/p>\n

I sent my son down there. And it was gruesome. I tell you, it was really horrible. But that satisfied my anger. And now his blood was shed. And now you’re free. You don’t have to go down. All you have to do is come on up here. Just come up and tell my son that you love him and hug him. And then you can move in with us. We’ll live up in the attic and you can tell me how great I am. You can just tell me how much you love me and we’ll do that. Won’t that be great?”<\/p>\n

So… would you keep walking?<\/p>\n

Suppose you have a baby that dies in agony only a few months after its birth from some disease that we can do nothing about. Tell me, can anything that happens in some afterlife remedy that or make it right? No, it can’t. And the idea that God is calculating things in such a way that this baby’s suffering is weighed on the balance as something that can be compensated is pretty disgusting.<\/p>\n

But even if it’s possible, it’s wishful thinking. Suppose you go to a restaurant and you’re going to have a four-course dinner and you have the starter and it’s absolutely disgusting. What is the rational view to take about what the rest of the courses are going to be like? Well, probably they’re going to be disgusting, too, right? You don’t say, “Oh, well, that was really awful, but the next course must be fantastic to make up for it.”<\/p>\n

These are compelling arguments to conclude one of two things- either the Christian god is mentally handicapped, or he doesn\u2019t exist. We should all hope it is the <\/a>latter.<\/p>\n

(5552) Bible out-of-context claim failure<\/strong><\/p>\n

When confronted with difficult biblical passages, Christians reflexively employ the excuse that the verse in question must be understood in its correct context, while not invoking this same principal for the verses that they like. The following is the text from the following video:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PK7P7uZFf5o<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

I was reading the bible last night.<\/p>\n

Hmmm! That’s great.<\/i><\/p>\n

I read some interesting passages.<\/p>\n

Grr, let me guess, you’re going to read something that sounds unkind or violent…<\/i><\/p>\n

(John 13:34) Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.<\/p>\n

Hmmm!<\/i><\/p>\n

(Joshua 1:9) Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.<\/p>\n

Hmmm!<\/i><\/p>\n

(Psalm 23:4) Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me;<\/p>\n

Hmm!!!<\/i><\/p>\n

(Matt 7:7) Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.<\/p>\n

Hmmmm!<\/i><\/p>\n

(Prov 30:5) Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.<\/p>\n

Hmmmm!<\/i><\/p>\n

(1 John 4:7) Let us love one another, for love comes from God.<\/p>\n

Hmmm!!<\/i><\/p>\n

A priest’s daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death. (Leviticus 21:9 NAB)<\/p>\n

Out of context!! That’s not what it means!! You’re leaving all the important parts! Don’t cherry pick the bible. Come on, you’ve twisted the meaning of that.<\/i><\/p>\n

(Lev 24:16) Anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him.<\/p>\n

What about the historical context? You’re leaving out the important parts of that. Why do you have to take one verse on its own. That’s for a different time and a different culture.<\/i><\/p>\n

I will release wild animals that will kill your children and destroy your cattle, [so your numbers will dwindle and your roads will be deserted. (Leviticus 26:21-22 NLT)]<\/p>\n

Hold on, I know what you’re trying to do, but that’s not actually God speaking there. Look. The bible was written by fallible [human beings like you and me who..]<\/i><\/p>\n

Hold on, hold on. No no, no, it’s Yahweh. From Verse 13 of that chapter Yahweh is speaking in the first person.<\/p>\n

Oh, yeah? Well, you must have taken it out of context!! Come on, look at the surrounding story. Read it with the culture it was written in. You don’t know the context of that. You’re just picking and choosing to suit your own agenda.<\/i><\/p>\n

God is love. (1 John 4:8 New International Version)<\/p>\n

Hmmmm!<\/i><\/p>\n

Right. So you’re not concerned about knowing the context of that.<\/p>\n

No, no, no. That’s fine. Hmmmm!<\/i><\/p>\n

(Nahum 1:7) The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.<\/p>\n

Hmmmm!<\/i><\/p>\n

(Joshua 10:39-40) And Joshua took all the cities thereof; and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed all the souls that were therein; he left none remaining [… but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel had commanded.]<\/p>\n

There must be a context for that! You don’t know the correct context of that…<\/i><\/p>\n

Oh, the context? Well, Joshua had been Moses’ apprentice, and in fact commanded the first battle after the exodus, against the Amalekites in Rephadim. Having successfully spied upon Canaan, he was rewarded by god for his faith, and was given divine assistance in slaughtering city after city in a lengthy invasion of the region known as the Promised Land. [Securing it by force for Israel, vanquishing a total of 31 kings and their kingdoms, slaughtering thousands and thousands and thousands of people leaving none alive, man woman or child. Later, he went on to…]<\/p>\n

No, no, no, hold on, hold on, hold on. That’s not the correct context. The context was God’s overall plan for humanity! He had to protect the lineage of Jesus!<\/i><\/p>\n

What, so, an omnipotent god couldn’t come up with any other way to do it than with iron age barbarity and piles of dead children?<\/p>\n

The correct context is one in which killing children was OK, OK?!! That’s the correct context! You’re not a theologian! You can’t understand this kind of thing! Out of context!<\/i><\/p>\n

I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. (Phillipians 4:13)<\/p>\n

Hmmmm!<\/i><\/p>\n

“Now, O Lord GOD, You are God, and Your words are truth, (2 Samuel 7:28)”<\/p>\n

Hmmmm!<\/i><\/p>\n

O LORD, You have deceived me and I was deceived (Jeremiah 20:7)<\/p>\n

Hmm?! What? Ummm- Hang on, hang on! Just go back one again—?<\/i><\/p>\n

“Now, O Lord GOD, You are God, and Your words are truth (2 Samuel 7:28)”<\/p>\n

Right. And the next one?<\/i><\/p>\n

O LORD, You have deceived me and I was deceived (Jeremiah 20:7)<\/p>\n

Umm. OK – that first one, that’s OK, but the second one about God deceiving someone that’s obviously completly taken out of context! You’re leaving out the important parts of that. You’re just picking and choosing to suit your own agenda.<\/i><\/p>\n

(Deuteronomy 28:53) Because of the suffering that your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you.<\/p>\n

Context! Out of context!<\/i><\/p>\n

Yes, it certainly is taken out of context. But in what context is it OK for an infinitely powerful being to threaten puny petrified humans that they’ll be forced to eat their own children?<\/p>\n

Well there must be a context in which making a threat like that is the epitome of kindness, generosity and love, or else Yahweh wouldn’t have done it, would he?! And whatever that context is, you DEFINITELY took that verse OUT OF IT! Hmmm!<\/i><\/p>\n

Well, how do we know whether or not a passage from the bible has been taken out of context?<\/p>\n

Well, obviously if it sounds horrendous, brutal, savage, merciless, immoral, murderous, petty, heartless, unjust, sickening, appalling, barbaric, cruel, unfair, ridiculous or disgusting it’s been taken out of context. Otherwise… it’s OK.<\/i><\/p>\n

Well look I have to disagree with you on that. I think that if a scriptural verse sounds horrendous, brutal, savage, merciless, immoral, murderous, petty, heartless, unjust, sickening, appalling, barbaric, cruel, unfair, ridiculous or disgusting, then it probably IS horrendous, brutal, savage, merciless, immoral, murderous, petty, heartless, unjust, sickening, appalling, barbaric, cruel, unfair, ridiculous and disgusting.<\/p>\n

What!? That makes NO SENSE AT ALL! This is Holy SCRIPTURE we’re talking about!<\/i><\/p>\n

Hmmm! Well how about this verse: But as for those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them; boiling fluid will be poured down on their heads. Whereby that which is in their bellies, and their skins too, will be melted; 22:21 And for them are hooked rods of iron. 22:22 Whenever, in their anguish, they would go forth from thence they are driven back therein and (it is said unto them): Taste the doom of burning.<\/p>\n

That’s out of context!<\/i><\/p>\n

No, no, sorry, that one was from the QUR’AN. (Qur’an 22:19-22)<\/p>\n

That’s a made-up book!! That is obviously an evil book. God didn’t write that book. Evil book! Despicable!<\/i><\/p>\n

Yeah, I know, right? How about this one, too: when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, while my sword devours flesh: the blood of the slain and the captives, the heads of the enemy leaders.<\/p>\n

That is morally repugnant. That book should be banned. Those people are maniacs. How can anyone take that seriously? <\/i><\/p>\n

No, no, no, no, no. That’s Yahweh speaking in the bible. (Deuteronomy 32:41-42)<\/p>\n

That’s obviously completely taken out of context! Come on, look at the surrounding story. Read it with the culture it was written in. <\/i><\/p>\n

What about the bit in the bible where Yahweh sends fire from heaven to burn 102 men to death? (2 Kings 1:10-12)<\/p>\n

Out of context!! Don’t cherry pick the bible.<\/i><\/p>\n

Right, and the command to kill non-believing family members? (Deuteronomy 13:6-9)<\/p>\n

That’s not what it means. C’mon, you’ve twisted the meaning of that. You’re leaving out the important parts of that. <\/i><\/p>\n

Or the bit where god helps David kill a Philistine whose head he then cuts off and walks around with for a while? (1 Sam 17:57)<\/p>\n

That’s not what it means. You’re leaving out the important parts of that. Don’t cherry pick the bible. <\/i><\/p>\n

The bit where god’s holy angel kills 185,000 people in one night? (Isaiah 37:36)<\/p>\n

What about the historical context? You’re leaving out the important parts of that. Why do you have to take 1 verse on its own.<\/i><\/p>\n

Children being killed by bears sent by Yahweh? (2 Kings 2:23-4)<\/p>\n

Come on, you’ve twisted the meaning of that. You’re just picking and choosing to suit your own agenda.<\/i><\/p>\n

God giving out rewards for stabbing a foreign woman through the guts with a javelin? (Numbers 25:6-9)<\/p>\n

You don’t know the context of that. Read it with the culture it was written in. You’re just picking and choosing\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

Consistency is not a hallmark of most Christians, who accuse others of cherry-picking the Bible while they do the same by summarily disowning any verse that doesn\u2019t meet their smell test. This is wildly disingenuous. They must accept the entire package, or discard it completely <\/a>(recommended).<\/p>\n

(5553) Christianity\u2019s success had nothing to do with the truth<\/strong><\/p>\n

Darante\u2019 Lamar presents a detailed, cogent case against the claims of Christianity surrounding the figure of Jesus, demonstrating the weakness of the evidence and the probable manipulations that led to the finished doctrinal product. The following is the transcript of this video:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xJV1j6Eoj-c<\/a><\/p>\n

Chapter 1: Evidence Not Faith<\/h3>\n

If Jesus really rose from the dead, why didn’t anyone outside his movement write about it? If hundreds saw him alive, why do the earliest Roman and Jewish historians ignore him completely? These are not questions of faith. These are questions of evidence, and the deeper you dig, the clearer it becomes.<\/p>\n

Christianity did not become widely accepted as true because of miracles, eyewitnesses, or overwhelming proof. It became true because it co-opted its rivals, attached itself to power, and rewrote the record after the fact. I know that’s uncomfortable to hear, especially if you’ve been taught that Christianity exploded across the ancient world because of how compelling and obvious it was. But what we find in actual history is very different. Let’s take a look at the record. Let’s start with the first to third century. The educated rejected it.<\/p>\n

Chapter 2: Elite Critics Speak<\/h3>\n

The earliest philosophers, scientists, and statesmen who lived within one hundred to two hundred years of the gospel claims rejected Christianity outright. Not quietly, not skeptically, but explicitly, publicly, and intellectually.<\/p>\n

Celsus, writing in the late second century, called Christianity a superstition for the uneducated, a movement that rejects reason and appeals to fools and the unlearned. Galen, one of the most respected medical minds in the empire, grouped Christians with those who make up stories and refuse to demonstrate what they believe. To paraphrase, he stated, “Christians and Jews accept dogma without inquiry. They preach certainty, but flee from reason. They believe not because they have proven, but because they have been told.”<\/p>\n

And then there was Lucian. A Roman satirist mocked early Christians for worshiping a crucified con man and embracing death like it was a badge of honor. And then Tacitus, perhaps the most respected Roman historian, didn’t just reject Christianity. He called it a pernicious superstition, born from shame and followed by the gullible. To him, Christianity likely looked like an irrational, emotional cult that weaponized suffering and ignorance.<\/p>\n

These weren’t disillusioned atheists. These were the intellectual elite of the empire. People trained in logic, philosophy, history, and public life, and they saw Christianity as irrational, fabricated, and socially dangerous.<\/p>\n

Chapter 3: Missing Miracle Records<\/h3>\n

Let’s talk about the silence around the supernatural. The Gospels don’t just claim Jesus rose from the dead. They claim the earth shook, the sky went dark, and the tombs opened with dead saints walking through Jerusalem for everyone to see. Matthew 27:52-53 reads, “The tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”<\/p>\n

That’s not a private vision. That’s not an inner conviction. That’s a mass resurrection in a major capital during Passover in front of thousands, and yet not one Roman historian mentions it. Not Tacitus, not Suetonius, not Pliny, not even Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who lived in Jerusalem’s shadow and wrote volumes about Jewish religious movements, but never mentions Jesus, the crucifixion, or walking dead saints. Nothing.<\/p>\n

The only people who wrote these events down were believers decades later in theological texts with no external verification or proof of contemporary confirmation, and we don’t even know who those writers were. Even Paul, writing earlier than the Gospel, says Jesus appeared to over 500 people at once after his resurrection. But he never names a single one. There are no preserved testimonies, no names, no official records.<\/p>\n

If 500 people had actually seen a man rise from the dead and dead saints walking the streets, the Roman governors would’ve been writing home about it. The temple authorities would’ve documented it. The philosophers of Athens would’ve debated it. But we get silence, which is exactly what you’d expect if those things actually didn’t happen.<\/p>\n

Chapter 4: Constantine Mythbusting<\/h3>\n

By the early fourth century, Christianity was still fragmented, persecuted in waves, and widely distrusted. Enter Constantine. Now, here’s what you may have heard: that Constantine saw a vision of a cross in the sky before battle, heard a voice from heaven, and converted to Christianity on the spot, changing history forever by making Christianity the official state religion.<\/p>\n

But here’s what actually happened. There is no record from Constantine himself of any vision in 312. The first time this story appears is years later in Christian texts, and it changes depending on who’s telling it. In fact, Constantine continued honoring Sol Invictus, the Roman sun god, on his coins well after that battle. He didn’t get baptized until he was dying, and even then, it was by an Arian bishop, a theological outsider condemned by the very council Constantine supposedly championed.<\/p>\n

So what really happened? Constantine didn’t convert. He didn’t believe. He didn’t write theological works, recite creeds, or claim Jesus as Lord. What he did do was allow Christianity to rise into imperial toleration, and Christian leaders rushed to claim him as their own. The vision of Constantine is not just embellished, it is entirely post hoc. There is no record in 312 that he had any Christian revelation, made any public acknowledgement of Christ, or attributed his victory to the Christian God. To suggest otherwise, even cautiously, is to narrate legend, not history.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t Constantine who co-opted Christianity. It was Christianity that co-opted Constantine, wrapping the emperor’s image in sacred myth, forging a new narrative of divine favor, and using the machinery of state to crush rival sects and rewrite its own history.<\/p>\n

Chapter 5: Empire Makes It True<\/h3>\n

So how does Christianity move from tolerated to true? If Constantine never actually became a Christian, how did Christianity go from tolerated to true? From street cult to state creed? The answer isn’t miracle, martyrdom, or mass revelation. It’s imperial enforcement, and it happened in stages.<\/p>\n

The first stage is it was legalized, but still one among many. In 313, Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan legalizing Christianity\u2014not declaring it true, not even making it official, just legalizing it alongside all other religions. Christianity was now permitted, not promoted, and most citizens of the empire kept worshiping Jupiter, Apollo, Mithras, or Sol Invictus.<\/p>\n

So what changed? Well, stage two is the fight for theological control. By the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325, Christianity wasn’t unified. It was fracturing further than ever before. Who was Jesus really? Was he equal to God? Was he created? Was he subordinate? The Arians said one thing, the Nicenes said another, and other sects said Jesus wasn’t divine at all. Constantine didn’t care what theology won. He just wanted the fighting to stop. That’s why he called the council. That’s why he funded the bishops. That’s why he enforced the Nicene Creed, not because he believed it, but because he needed to keep the peace, and he didn’t even enforce it consistently. He flipped sides later and exiled the very bishop, Athanasius, who had championed the winning view.<\/p>\n

There’s also stage three: Christianity becomes the state religion in 380 CE. It wasn’t until Theodosius I, nearly 50 years later, that Christianity was finally declared true in the legal sense. In 380, he issued the Edict of Thessalonica, which reads, “We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians. The rest shall be branded as heretics and may expect the wrath of God and the punishment of our authority.”<\/p>\n

Let’s be clear. This wasn’t about the resurrection. This wasn’t about fulfilled prophecy. This wasn’t about scripture or miracles or apostles. It was imperial legislation enforced by the army, funded by the treasury, and backed by the bishop class. And with it, Christianity went from being a religion among many to the only legal form of truth in the Roman world. Belief was no longer a matter of evidence. It was now a matter of law. Which brings us to stage four: syncretism and absorption.<\/p>\n

Chapter 6: Syncretism And Absorption<\/h3>\n

This took place in the late fourth to sixth century. After becoming the state religion, Christianity didn’t just suppress other beliefs, it absorbed them. Pagan festivals were renamed. Saturnalia becomes Christmas. Roman religious language and titles were retrofitted into the church hierarchy. Saints replaced household gods. Virgin cults echoed those of Isis or Demeter. Christianity became culturally dominant, not just by legislation, but by blending with older traditions while claiming it had always been the truth. This wasn’t theological purity. It was adaptive imperial branding.<\/p>\n

Chapter 7: Conversion By Force<\/h3>\n

And then there’s stage five: Conversion by colonization and violence (the fifth through the fifteenth centuries). Once Christianity dominated Rome, it didn’t stop there. For the next thousand years, mission meant military conquest. Conversion meant submission or death. Whole regions were baptized at swordpoint, from Charlemagne’s forced conversion of Saxons, to the Crusades against Muslims and Jews, to the colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.<\/p>\n

Christianity wasn’t spreading because of truth. It was spreading because of unearned and unchecked power. What began as a persecuted minority movement became a state ideology, a cultural monopoly, and eventually, a justification for global domination.<\/p>\n

Chapter 8: Forgeries And Fraud<\/h3>\n

In this next section, I want us to talk about some forgeries. Let’s be honest. If we found out today that a political movement or religious group had falsified its foundational text on purpose, we’d call it what it is: fraud. But in early Christianity, that wasn’t just common, it was defended.<\/p>\n

One of the most influential early Christian historians, Eusebius of Caesarea, wrote this in the early fourth century: “It may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine for the benefit of those who need such treatment.” Let that sink in. The man called the Father of Church History openly quoted Plato to justify lying for religious purposes, so long as it helped bring people to the faith. He normalized deception as a tool for salvation, and this wasn’t just theoretical.<\/p>\n

Of the thirteen letters in the New Testament attributed to Paul, at least six are widely considered forgeries by mainstream scholars: 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians. These weren’t just written anonymously. They claim to be written by Paul decades after his death to promote new ideas he never taught\u2014things like establishing bishops and deacons as permanent offices, forcing women to remain silent in church, and cementing obedience to authority. These forgeries didn’t preserve Paul; they overwrote him to serve the needs of a growing church hierarchy.<\/p>\n

If you needed to win a doctrinal argument, you wrote a letter from Paul. If you needed to build a hierarchy, you made Jesus or Peter appoint bishops. If you needed to match rival religions like Mithras or Dionysus, you invented new miracles. This wasn’t just manipulation, it was strategy. And early Christians understood that narrative was power.<\/p>\n

So yes, early Christians forged documents. Some were caught, others were canonized anyway, and still others are only recognized as forgeries by modern scholars who have nothing to gain by saying so. But here’s the most damning part. They did it not despite believing the faith was true, but because they did. And when you believe something so deeply that you’re willing to lie for it, you’ve stopped searching for truth and started manufacturing it.<\/p>\n

Chapter 9: Crucifixion Reality Check<\/h3>\n

Now let’s talk about the problem with the crucifixion. Before we close, there’s still one more claim we need to confront. It’s one of the most repeated in Christian apologetics: Jesus had such a massive following that the authorities feared him. The crowds cheered him as king. He was such a threat, they had to kill him.<\/p>\n

But that story doesn’t hold up. Let’s look at the Roman logic. Rome didn’t crucify kings with real political traction. They negotiated with them, imprisoned them, or used them as leverage. Spartacus wasn’t crucified until after a major rebellion, and Rome crucified six thousand of his followers to make a point. If Jesus had tens of thousands of active followers, as some gospels claim, Rome wouldn’t have crucified him in public during Passover, the most politically volatile time of the year. That would’ve been a riot risk, a political disaster.<\/p>\n

Instead, they handled him like a nobody. Crucifixion was for failed messiahs. Crucifixion wasn’t just about punishment, it was a signal of humiliation. Rome used it on slaves, failed rebels, and criminals with no political capital. In other words, people you could kill without consequence. And what do the gospels themselves admit? That Jesus was abandoned by his followers. No uprising followed. He was arrested, tried, and executed within twenty-four hours, and the same crowd that allegedly cheered him just days before was now calling for his death.<\/p>\n

Now, does that sound like a real king, or does it sound like a spiritual figure with symbolic language reimagined decades later to sound like a revolutionary?<\/p>\n

Tacitus helps expose the gap. When Tacitus mentions Jesus, or more specifically Christus, he doesn’t describe him as a king, a prophet, or a revolutionary. He just says, “Christus, from whom the name Christian had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius, and the superstition thus checked for the moment broke out again.” That’s it. No miracles, no messianic movement, no crowd. Just an executed man named Christus\u2014not Jesus or even Emmanuel\u2014and a fringe cult that followed him.<\/p>\n

If Jesus had been a legitimate threat, Rome would’ve abused him, silenced him quietly, or crushed a movement far larger than one man. Instead, they crucified him swiftly, publicly, and without fear of consequence. That only happens when your movement has no teeth. The Romans didn’t kill a king, they killed a failed prophet, and what followed was not a reaction to his real influence, but the construction of a mythology big enough to rewrite the memory of all of it.<\/p>\n

Chapter 10: When Truth Became Law<\/h3>\n

So when did Christianity become true? Not when Jesus was crucified, not when Paul wrote letters, not when the Gospels were assembled, not even when Constantine saw a cross in the sky. Christianity became true when the empire said it was, and by the time most people were born into it, there were no competing stories left to believe.<\/p>\n

So let’s say it plainly. Christianity didn’t become true in the first century. The philosophers rejected it. It didn’t become true in the second. Historians ignored it. Not in the third. Emperors persecuted it. Not even in the early fourth century when Constantine legalized it and yet never joined it.<\/p>\n

Christianity only becomes true in 380 Common Era when Theodosius made Nicene Christianity the only legal religion of the Roman Empire under threat of punishment, property seizure, and death. From that moment forward, to question it was heresy, to resist it was treason, and to teach anything else became blasphemy.<\/p>\n

The church didn’t win a debate. It inherited the enforcement arm of the empire. The Gospels didn’t spread because they convinced people. They spread because there was no one left to contradict them without fear of death. That’s not spiritual revelation. That’s state suppression. The story of Christianity’s rise is not a story of truth triumphing over doubt. It’s a story of power rewriting the rules of belief.<\/p>\n

Christianity didn’t spread because Jesus walked out of a tomb. It spread because Christianity co-opted its rivals, aligned with empire, absorbed its enemies, and forged its own legitimacy with law, violence, and theological branding. The people who believed it didn’t witness miracles. Its truth status wasn’t earned through reason, history, or investigation. It was declared by emperors, enforced by bishops, protected by military power, and defended by centuries of forgery, fear, and forced conformity after nearly 400 years of contemporaries calling it out for the clear fraud that it was.<\/p>\n

Once you look \u2018under the hood,\u2019 Christianity loses its magic and becomes nothing more than a fraudulent, fictional movement designed to benefit those at the top. One thing we can be sure of- if God really sent \u2018himself\u2019 to the earth, we would have vastly more reliable evidence of such. A video similar to the above would not have been <\/a>possible.<\/p>\n

(5554) Ten quotes that destroy religion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Secular voices have produced many quotes that surgically expose the soft underbelly of religious traditions. The following discusses ten of them:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T_Se-YhcHF4<\/a><\/p>\n

Words have a strange power. The right sentence arriving at the right moment can quietly dismantle a belief you have carried for decades. Not through force or argument, but through the simple, irreversible clarity of an idea that lands exactly where it should. What follows is an attempt to gather 10 such ideas drawn from scientists, philosophers, and skeptics. Each one asking a question that religion, for all its age and reach, has never quite managed to answer.<\/p>\n

Stephen Roberts<\/b> once observed that he and religious believers share more common ground than either side usually admits: “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Every Christian is already an atheist with respect to Zeus, Odin, Ra, and the thousands of other gods that human civilizations have worshiped throughout history. He simply goes one god further. What makes this more than a clever remark is what it reveals about the geography of belief.<\/p>\n

Had you been born in rural Texas, you would almost certainly be Christian. Born in Riyadh, almost certainly Muslim. Born in Varanasi, almost certainly Hindu. The faith you hold with bone-deep certainty is in nearly every case the faith of your parents and your postal code rather than the conclusion of any independent investigation into which of the world’s thousands of religions happens to be true. And every person who prays to a different God than you does so with the identical feeling of inner conviction, the same sense of personal contact with the divine, the same emotional weight during worship. If subjective certainty is the evidence, then all religions are equally proven. And if all religions are equally proven, none of them are proven at all.<\/p>\n

The philosopher Delos McKown<\/b> put the next problem with quiet devastation. He noted that the invisible and the non-existent look remarkably similar. It is worth sitting with that observation seriously. What, in practice, is the difference between a god who exists but leaves no measurable trace, produces no verifiable effect, and cannot be detected by any means we possess, and a god who simply is not there?<\/p>\n

Every religious tradition asks you to believe in something beyond the reach of evidence. And when pressed for that evidence, the answer is almost always the same: “You must feel it. You must have faith.” The absence of proof is not proof of absence. Yet, we apply this logic nowhere else. If someone claimed an invisible force was protecting their home, one that left no physical signature and could not be confirmed or denied by any test, you would not build your life around that claim. Religion alone receives a permanent exemption from the basic standards of evidence we apply to everything else. And that exemption is applied conveniently to the most important questions of human existence. The very questions where people are most desperate for answers and where the evidence is, on honest examination, the thinnest.<\/p>\n

Ricky Gervais<\/b> once quipped that God made him an atheist, and asked, “Who are we to question God’s wisdom?” The joke conceals a genuine problem. If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and responsible for creation, then God is also responsible for atheism. He designed the human brain with its capacity for reason and doubt. He arranged the world such that the evidence for his existence is ambiguous enough that billions of intelligent, sincere people across thousands of years have examined everything available to them and concluded he is probably not there.<\/p>\n

A god that wanted universal belief had infinite means to achieve it. A voice heard by every human being simultaneously. Miracles consistent and verifiable enough to settle the question permanently. A sky that simply said something. Instead, the faithful and the faithless look at the same universe, the same suffering, the same sunsets, and arrive at opposite conclusions. The standard religious explanation is that God wants us to choose freely. But a child raised from birth inside a single tradition, given no meaningful alternative, shaped by community and family and fear, is not exercising a free spiritual choice. They are walking the only path they were ever shown.<\/p>\n

Carl Sagan<\/b> spent years thinking carefully about what separates knowledge from wish. And what he arrived at was this: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The claim that an infinite being created the universe, listens to billions of prayers simultaneously, has a personal relationship with each living human, intervenes in history, and authored specific texts through human writers, is not a modest claim. It is the most extraordinary claim ever made.<\/p>\n

And the evidence offered in its support is, when examined honestly, a collection of ancient texts written by people who also believed the earth was the center of the cosmos. Subjective feelings shared equally by adherents of contradictory religions, and events that admitted of natural explanations. We do not approve a medication because some patients feel it is working. We run controlled trials. We demand reproducibility. We require independent verification. Religion is the one domain where the most enormous claims in human history are accepted on the basis of the weakest possible evidence, and where asking for more is treated as a form of hostility.<\/p>\n

Blaise Pascal<\/b>, mathematician and devout Christian, is remembered for his famous wager: believe in God because if he exists and you believe, you win everything. And if he does not exist and you believed anyway, the cost is negligible. What Pascal never fully addressed is the question that immediately follows: Which God?<\/p>\n

The logic of the wager applies with equal force to every religion ever devised. It is just as valid a reason to become Muslim, Hindu, or a devotee of some faith not yet invented. If fear of being wrong is your motive for believing, you must first determine which of thousands of possible gods is the correct one. In the moment you use reason and evidence to make that determination, you have returned to exactly the secular thinking the wager was designed to bypass. There is also a deeper difficulty. Most religious traditions do not recognize faith motivated by self-interest as genuine faith at all. A god who knows your heart would presumably notice that you are hedging rather than believing, which means the wager fails even on its own terms.<\/p>\n

Christopher Hitchens<\/b> contributed what may be the cleanest single principle in the philosophy of belief: What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. It is so fair, so simple, so obviously reasonable that the only way to argue against it is to change the subject. Ancient Romans believed their gods controlled the weather. The Aztecs believed the sun required human blood to keep rising. Medieval Europeans believed disease was punishment for sin. We do not debate these beliefs using evidence. We simply note that they offered no real evidence to begin with, and we move on.<\/p>\n

Modern religion asks to be treated differently. But the structure of its claims is identical: A supernatural being with intentions and powers interacting with the human world in ways that cannot be independently verified. The only genuine difference is recency and familiarity. And familiarity has never been a substitute for evidence.<\/p>\n

Bertrand Russell<\/b> was asked what he would say if he died and found himself standing before God, being asked why he had not believed. He reportedly said he would answer simply: “Not enough evidence.” There is something remarkable in the calm of that response. He was not being defiant. He was applying the same standard to God that he applied to everything else he was ever asked to believe. And he would have updated that position immediately if the evidence had warranted it.<\/p>\n

This is widely misunderstood about atheism. Most atheists are not people who have decided in advance to reject religion. They are people who examined the available evidence with the same tools they use for everything else and found it insufficient. The willingness to be wrong, to follow evidence wherever it leads, even when the destination is uncomfortable, is not a failure of spirituality. It is the foundation of intellectual honesty.<\/p>\n

Sam Harris<\/b> identified a tension that tends to make everyone uncomfortable. Religious moderates, he argued, provide a kind of protective cover for religious extremists by insisting that faith itself must be exempt from criticism. When a society teaches that believing without evidence is a virtue and that doubt is weakness, it creates the precise conditions in which dangerous fundamentalism takes root and flourishes.<\/p>\n

The moderate and the extremist are reading the same text. The moderate has simply decided, usually for social and cultural reasons rather than textual ones, to set aside the more violent and troubling passages. But having done so, they cannot argue against the extremist on principled grounds because the extremist is often more literally faithful to what the text actually says. This is not a coincidence. The Crusades were not a misreading of Christianity. The Inquisition was not an accident. When a worldview is built on the foundation that a particular book is the literal word of God, drawing a principled line between the parts to follow and the parts to ignore becomes finally impossible.<\/p>\n

Charles <\/b>Darwin<\/b> never intended to challenge religion. For much of his life, he was a genuinely devout man who studied the natural world out of love for its creator. But what he found changed everything. And what he concluded later was that he could not bring himself to believe that a good and all-powerful god would have deliberately designed the world as it actually is.<\/p>\n

A world where wasps paralyze living caterpillars to serve as food for their larvae. A world where children are born into painful and fatal illness. A world where natural disasters erase thousands of lives without warning and without apparent purpose. A world where 99% of all species that ever existed have gone extinct, most in conditions of enormous suffering. This is not the world you would design if you were infinitely wise and infinitely loving. It is the world you would expect if no one designed it at all.<\/p>\n

Theologians have spent centuries on this problem, and every answer eventually arrives at the same destination: Mystery. God’s ways are beyond our understanding. But when the only available defense of a belief is that we cannot comprehend it, we have stopped doing theology and started writing poetry. And poetry, however beautiful, is not an answer to a child dying of cancer.<\/p>\n

Mark Twain<\/b>, who knew the Bible more thoroughly than most clergy, said simply that “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” Behind the humor is a distinction worth making precisely. There is a meaningful difference between saying, “I do not have enough information to be certain,” which is intellectual honesty, and saying, “I will believe this regardless of what the evidence shows,” which is the definition of faith as most religious traditions use the word.<\/p>\n

We do not want this second approach from our doctors, our engineers, or our courts. We want doctors who know the medication works, engineers whose mathematics have been verified, juries who have examined actual evidence. The only domain in which believing without evidence is called a virtue rather than a failure is religion. And perhaps that tells us something important about why religion has always needed to protect itself so carefully from scrutiny. Because the moment you apply to religious claims the same standard of thinking you apply to everything else in your life, the structure looks quite suddenly very different.<\/p>\n

None of this proves there is no God. Nothing can prove a negative with complete certainty. And anyone who claims otherwise is making the same mistake they are criticizing. What these observations do is ask something simpler and more honest. They ask you to be consistent. To bring the same mind, the same standards, the same intellectual seriousness that you use every single day to the biggest claim you have ever been asked to accept. That is all. Just be consistent and see where it leads.<\/p>\n

There exist many reasons to question the veracity of any religion. What is discussed above usually bypasses most religious people who tend to avoid consideration of these types of <\/a>insights.<\/p>\n

(5555) Christianity was built by people<\/strong><\/p>\n

Any objective review of Christianity, it\u2019s origin, it\u2019s history, its sacred scriptures all point to one conclusion- it is solely a human creation. The following is the text of this video:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2AzlaiAEqN0<\/a><\/p>\n

Let’s talk about something that billions of people consider the most important truth in the universe: Christianity. Over two billion people follow it today. It shapes laws, governments, cultures, wars, and the way people raise their children. It claims to be the word of an eternal, all-knowing God. But here’s a question worth sitting with for a moment: What if it wasn’t handed down from the sky? What if it was built piece by piece by human hands, human politics, and human need? That’s what we’re going to explore today. Not to attack anyone’s faith, but to look honestly at the history, the evidence, and the logic. Because if something is true, it can survive scrutiny. And if it can’t, then maybe we owe it to ourselves to look.<\/p>\n

Let’s start at the very beginning\u2014not Genesis, the actual beginning of Christianity as a movement. Jesus of Nazareth, if he existed as described, lived and died in the first century in Roman-occupied Judea. He left behind no writings, not a single sentence. Everything we know about him comes from other people writing about him decades after his death. The earliest gospel, Mark, was written roughly 40 years after Jesus died. Matthew and Luke came after that. And John was written somewhere around 90 to 100 AD, nearly a full century after the crucifixion. Think about that. Imagine trying to write an accurate biography of someone who lived a hundred years before you, in an era with no recording devices, no cameras, no instant communication, and where most people couldn’t read or write. The room for error, exaggeration, and invented detail is enormous.<\/p>\n

Now, here’s something most people raised in Christian households were never told: The Gospels were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Biblical scholars, including Christian ones, widely agree on this. These names were attached to the texts later to give them authority. The actual authors are unknown. We have anonymous documents written decades after the events they describe by people who were not eyewitnesses, and we’re supposed to treat these as the literal word of God. That’s the foundation.<\/p>\n

Paul is actually where Christianity really begins to take shape. And Paul’s letters predate the gospels; he’s writing in the 50s AD. But here’s what’s fascinating: Paul barely talks about the life of Jesus. He doesn’t mention the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, the miracles, feeding the 5000\u2014almost none of it. For Paul, what mattered was the death and resurrection, the theology, the mystical Christ. Some historians argue that the Jesus of Paul and the Jesus of the Gospels are almost two different figures. One, a mystical dying and rising savior; the other a Jewish preacher from Galilee.<\/p>\n

And the dying and rising idea? That wasn’t new at all. Before Christianity, the ancient world was full of gods who died and came back. Osiris in Egypt was killed, dismembered, and resurrected. Dionysus in Greece was torn apart and reborn. Attis, a Phrygian deity, died and rose again, and their followers celebrated this in spring. Mithras, worshiped across the Roman Empire, shared several striking similarities with later Christian tradition: born on December 25th, had 12 companions, was associated with a sacred meal. These religions predate Christianity. The pattern of the dying and rising god was a template the ancient world already understood. Christianity didn’t invent the formula. It plugged a new name into an old structure.<\/p>\n

This is called religious syncretism, and it’s incredibly well documented. Religions absorb ideas, rituals, and stories from the cultures around them. This isn’t a conspiracy theory; it’s just how religion works throughout history. Christmas is celebrated on December 25th not because that’s when Jesus was born\u2014the Bible gives no birth date\u2014but because the Roman festival of Saturnalia and the celebration of the sun god, Sol Invictus, were already happening at that time. The early church absorbed the holiday and rebranded it. Easter is timed around the spring equinox and shares its name with fertility traditions. The Easter egg, the bunny\u2014none of that is in the Bible. It’s layered in from older spring celebrations. If God designed Christianity from scratch, why does it look exactly like what you’d expect if humans were borrowing from their cultural surroundings?<\/p>\n

Now, let’s talk about the canon\u2014the Bible as you know it. That specific collection of books was not handed down complete from heaven. It was assembled by committees of men over centuries of debate, politics, and often violent disagreement. In the early centuries of Christianity, there were dozens of gospels, epistles, and apocalypses floating around: the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Philip. These were read, studied, and believed by early Christians. They didn’t make the cut. Why? Because powerful church leaders decided they didn’t align with the theology they wanted to promote.<\/p>\n

The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD is often mentioned here. The Roman Emperor Constantine, who had converted to Christianity for reasons that were at least partly political, called together hundreds of bishops and told them to get their act together. Christianity was fracturing over theological disputes, particularly over the nature of Jesus. Was he fully God, part God, a created being? These weren’t minor questions. They divided entire communities. The God of the universe apparently needed a Roman emperor to call a meeting to clarify what he actually was.<\/p>\n

This process continued for centuries. The biblical canon, the official list of books, wasn’t fully settled until the Council of Trent in the 1500s. Over 1,500 years after Jesus supposedly lived, Christians were still arguing about which books God actually inspired, and different Christian traditions still disagree today. Catholic Bibles have books that Protestant Bibles don’t. Ethiopian Orthodox Bibles include texts that neither Catholics nor Protestants accept. If the Bible is the perfect, complete, divinely inspired word of God, why has it taken this long to figure out what’s in it?<\/p>\n

Let’s talk about contradictions because they matter\u2014not just as trivia, but because they reveal a very human process of storytelling and revision. The four gospels don’t agree on basic facts. Mark’s gospel, the earliest, has no birth story; Jesus simply shows up as an adult. Matthew and Luke add birth narratives, but they contradict each other on major points. Matthew says the family fled to Egypt; Luke says they went to the temple in Jerusalem. Both can’t be true. John’s gospel has a completely different chronology of Jesus’s ministry. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus cleanses the temple near the end of his life, which triggers his arrest. In John, it happens at the beginning. These aren’t minor differences; they’re structural disagreements in the foundational texts.<\/p>\n

The resurrection accounts are even more contradictory. Who went to the tomb? How many women? Was there one angel or two? Did they see Jesus immediately or not? Did the disciples go to Galilee or stay in Jerusalem? Each gospel gives a different answer. If four journalists covered the same event and gave wildly different accounts, we wouldn’t call it a miracle. We’d question the reliability of the reporting.<\/p>\n

Now, here’s an argument that doesn’t get made often enough. God, if real and all-knowing, would know exactly what message he wanted to communicate. He would know the languages that would last, the preservation methods that would work, the cultures that would receive the message without distortion. Instead, what we have is a message delivered verbally in a regional language, Aramaic, then written in Greek by anonymous authors, then translated into Latin, then into hundreds of other languages over centuries, with thousands of transcription errors discovered along the way. Biblical scholars have cataloged over 400,000 textual variants in the surviving New Testament. 400,000 places where the copies disagree with each other. For context, that’s more variants than there are words in the New Testament. A God who wanted humans to clearly understand his message would not design a system this messy. But a religion built by humans, passed through human hands, filtered through human mistakes and agendas\u2014that’s exactly what this looks like.<\/p>\n

And then there’s the geographic problem. If Christianity is the one true religion that every human soul depends on for eternal salvation, why did God introduce it in one small corner of the ancient near east and let it spread slowly and unevenly across the world through human missionaries, conquest, and colonization? Billions of people in the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and Australia lived and died for tens of thousands of years with no access to the Christian message. Were they all simply out of luck? Most Christian theologians have no satisfying answer to this. It’s a problem they call the “scandal of particularity.” And it makes a lot more sense if Christianity is a regional human religion that spread through human effort rather than a divine plan for all of humanity.<\/p>\n

Speaking of spread, let’s talk about how Christianity actually grew\u2014not through peaceful preaching alone. The conversion of the Roman Empire under Constantine meant Christianity went from a persecuted minority to the state religion with military backing. The Crusades were launched in the name of Christ and resulted in the massacre of thousands of Jewish communities in Europe on the way to the Holy Land. The Spanish Inquisition tortured and killed people for not believing correctly. Indigenous peoples across the Americas, Africa, and Asia were forced to convert under threat of death, enslavement, or destruction of their cultures. Their languages were banned. Their traditions were labeled satanic. Their children were taken to mission schools. This is how Christianity became a global religion\u2014not because it was obviously true, but because it had the backing of empires.<\/p>\n

The Bible itself endorses practices that any decent person today recognizes as morally horrific. Slavery is regulated, not prohibited. Women are told to be silent and submit. Children who curse their parents should be executed. Genocide is ordered by God repeatedly. Entire peoples, including children, are to be wiped out. Now, most modern Christians reinterpret these passages, add context, or simply ignore them. And that’s actually revealing. It shows that modern Christians are applying their own evolved moral intuitions to filter what they accept from their holy book. In other words, their conscience is doing the moral work, not the scripture. They’re editing God with their own human values. That’s not what a perfect divine moral code looks like. That’s what human moral evolution looks like: messy, gradual, driven by culture and reason, not revelation.<\/p>\n

And here’s something worth thinking about slowly. Every person who is Christian today is Christian largely because of where they were born. If you were born in Saudi Arabia, you’d almost certainly be Muslim. Born in India, you’d likely be Hindu. Born in ancient Rome, you’d worship Jupiter. The religion you hold as absolute truth is statistically the religion of your parents and your culture. The same mechanism that produces Christians produces Muslims, Hindus, and every other believer. That mechanism is cultural transmission: parents teaching children, communities reinforcing belief, identity binding people to inherited tradition. If one religion were actually true, we’d expect some cleaner signal, some way of distinguishing it from the noise. Instead, we find that religious belief follows the same patterns as language, food preference, and political leaning. It’s almost entirely determined by where you happen to be born.<\/p>\n

One last thing, Christianity has not stayed the same. It has evolved constantly in theology, in ethics, in practice. Early Christians expected Jesus to return within their own lifetimes. He didn’t. So that belief was quietly adjusted. The church once insisted the earth was the center of the universe. Science proved otherwise, and Christianity adapted. It once defended slavery using scripture. Abolitionists won and suddenly the same scripture was reinterpreted. Today, many churches have reversed their position on homosexuality, on the role of women, on interfaith marriages\u2014positions that just decades ago were presented as God’s unchanging truth. Religions that adapt to human progress over time look exactly like human institutions. Unchanging divine truth doesn’t get updated based on cultural pressure. But human-made systems do; they always have.<\/p>\n

None of this proves there is no God. That’s a different conversation. But it does make a strong case that Christianity as a system, its texts, its canon, its theology, its history, its spread bears every hallmark of something built by people. Smart, sincere, often well-meaning people. But people nonetheless. And once you see that clearly, the question isn’t whether to disrespect anyone’s faith. It’s whether you owe yourself the honesty of seeing things as they actually are. That’s worth thinking about.<\/p>\n

A divinely-created religion would almost certainly<\/i> look very different than Christianity. Whereas: a human-created religion would look precisely<\/i> like <\/a>Christianity.<\/p>\n

(5556) Christianity\u2019s pre-eulogy<\/strong><\/p>\n

If people today were to write a new Bible, it is certain that they would make their god out to be very different- it would exhibit no tendencies toward genocide, sexism, racism, homophobia, jealousy, egotism, etc.<\/p>\n

The problem for Christianity is that it has to live permanently with Yahweh as he is portrayed, and therefore, as civilization moves on, its apologetic defense strategies become less effective with each passing day.<\/p>\n

There is a reason why belief in gods tends to fade over time. Wisdom increases, morality becomes more refined, and knowledge expands and becomes more accessible. Each of these things are kryptonite to any religion and especially for those that are confined inflexibly to the distant past.<\/p>\n

Christianity becomes more irrelevant every day. It is frozen within an Iron Age mentality and suffers credibility as its promised returning savior becomes increasingly overdue. Soon its creditors will demand payment or else they will abandon the ship. In that day, Christianity will join the giant graveyard of forgotten religions.<\/p>\n

If the entire history of Christianity, from beginning to end, were to be condensed into a single day, the time now would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of 10:30 p.m. (2230). The grim reaper is approaching; it is not far <\/a>off.<\/p>\n

(5557) Religion as viewed by Osho<\/strong><\/p>\n

Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, (1931-1990) was an Indian philospher and an opponent of institutionalized religion. The following is a compilation of this thoughts on this issue:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VEjWWpAZJVc<\/a><\/p>\n

Let’s talk about something most people are afraid to say out loud: There is no God. Not the God sitting on a cloud. Not the God who answers prayers. Not the God who created the universe in 6 days and rested on the seventh. Not the God who is watching you right now keeping score of your sins and your good deeds. None of it.<\/p>\n

And the person who said this most clearly, most boldly, and most beautifully was Osho.<\/p>\n

Now, before you click away, I want you to stay with me for a moment because this is not just another angry atheist rant. This is not someone trying to destroy your peace of mind. This is actually an invitation. An invitation to think more deeply, to question more honestly, and maybe to find something more real than what religion has been offering you.<\/p>\n

Osho was one of the most controversial thinkers of the 20th century. Born in India in 1931, he spent decades traveling, teaching, debating with scholars, priests, theologians, and he never backed down. He was called dangerous. He was called a cult leader. He was called the sex guru. Governments were afraid of him. Religious institutions hated him. And yet millions of people around the world listened to him because what he said made sense in a way that sermons never did.<\/p>\n

So what exactly did Osho say about God? He said God is the greatest lie ever told. Not the greatest mystery, not the greatest question, the greatest lie. And here is why that matters. When something is a mystery, you explore it. When something is a question, you investigate it. But when something is a lie, it has a purpose. It was created for a reason. And Osho spent his entire life trying to help people understand what that reason was.<\/p>\n

Let’s start from the very beginning. How did the idea of God even come into existence? Think about early human beings. They had no science. They had no understanding of weather, disease, earthquakes, death. When lightning struck and burned down a forest, they had no explanation. When a child died suddenly, they had no reason. When a volcano erupted, when floods came, when droughts killed their crops, they were completely helpless and completely confused. And human beings cannot tolerate confusion. The mind always wants an answer. Even a wrong answer feels better than no answer.<\/p>\n

So what did they do? They invented an explanation. They said there must be someone behind all of this. There must be a powerful being who controls these events. And if we please that being, if we offer it gifts, if we pray to it, if we follow its rules, maybe it will protect us. This is where God was born. Not in the heavens, in the human mind, in fear.<\/p>\n

This is not Osho’s opinion alone. This is actually supported by anthropology, by the study of ancient civilizations. The earliest gods were gods of nature. The sun god, the rain god, the god of the river, the god of the harvest. Every natural force that humans could not control, they turned it into a god. Because if it’s a god, at least you can negotiate with it. At least you can pray to it. At least you have some illusion of control.<\/p>\n

And here is the key word: illusion. Osho said that religion at its core is the business of selling illusions, comfortable illusions, soothing illusions, illusions that make people feel safe in a world that is genuinely unpredictable and genuinely dangerous. And he was not wrong. Look at how prayer works. When something good happens after you pray, you say, “God answered your prayer.” When something bad happens after you pray, you say, “God works in mysterious ways,” or, “God is testing you,” or, “It was God’s will.” The explanation shifts to fit whatever happens. This is not logic. This is what psychologists call confirmation bias. You only remember the times the prayer seemed to work. You forget or explain away the hundreds of times it did not.<\/p>\n

Now, here is something important. Osho was not saying this to be cruel. He was not saying it to take away your comfort. He was saying it because he believed that living inside an illusion, even a comfortable one, is a kind of prison. And people deserve to be free.<\/p>\n

Think about it this way. If a child is afraid of the dark, and you tell them there is a magical guardian angel protecting them, they might sleep better that night. But you have not actually solved their fear. You have just covered it with a story. And one day when they grow up and realize the story was not real, that fear comes back, often worse than before.<\/p>\n

Osho believed that religion does exactly this to entire societies. It takes the very real human fear of death, of suffering, of meaninglessness. And it covers it with stories about heaven, about God’s plan, about eternal life. And people feel better for a while, but the underlying fear is never dealt with. It’s never looked at honestly. And so generation after generation grows up afraid, afraid to question, afraid to doubt, afraid to think for themselves because they have been told that doubt is sin, that questioning is blasphemy, that the curious mind is the enemy of faith.<\/p>\n

This is one of Osho’s most powerful observations. He said that organized religion has always been the enemy of intelligence. Look at history. When Galileo said the earth moves around the sun, the church put him under house arrest for the rest of his life. When Darwin said species evolve through natural selection, religious institutions called him a servant of the devil. When Giordano Bruno suggested the universe is infinite and there are other worlds besides our own, the church burned him alive at the stake in the year 1600.<\/p>\n

These were not evil men. These were curious men. Men who looked at the world and asked honest questions. And the institution that claimed to represent God, the most loving, the most wise, the most powerful being in the universe, responded to honest questions with torture, imprisonment, and fire. Does that not tell you something?<\/p>\n

Osho pointed out that every single time science and religion have come into conflict, science has eventually won. Every single time.<\/p>\n

And religion has had to quietly retreat and reinterpret its texts to fit the new knowledge. The earth used to be the center of the universe until science said otherwise. Humans used to be specially created in God’s image until evolution showed we share common ancestors with every living thing. Disease used to be divine punishment until germ theory explained what actually causes it. If God’s book keeps needing updates every time science discovers something, maybe the problem is with the book.<\/p>\n

Now, let’s talk about the God of prayer. This is something Osho spoke about with great clarity. If God is all knowing, God already knows what you need, so why pray? If God is all good, God already wants to give you what is best for you. So, why ask? And if God is all powerful, God has already decided what will happen. So how does your prayer change anything? Religious thinkers have wrestled with this for centuries and they have never found a satisfying answer because there is no satisfying answer. The concept of an all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful God who also responds to prayer is logically incoherent. You cannot have all of those things at the same time.<\/p>\n

And then there is the problem of suffering. This is perhaps the most powerful argument against the existence of a loving God. And it is not new. Philosophers have been making this argument for thousands of years. But Osho brought it to life in a way that was impossible to dismiss. Every single day, children die of cancer. Not adults who have lived their lives, children, babies, innocent, helpless human beings who have done nothing wrong. Earthquakes flatten entire cities. Famines wipe out populations. Diseases spread through communities with no logic, no fairness, no mercy.<\/p>\n

If God exists and God is good and God is powerful, then God is choosing to let this happen. Every single time a child dies of a preventable disease, God is watching and deciding not to intervene, every single time an innocent person is tortured, God is present and choosing silence. The only defenses religion offers are things like “God works in mysterious ways,” or “suffering builds character,” or “this life is just a test for the next one.”<\/p>\n

Osho said, and this is worth sitting with, that if a human being had the power to stop a child’s suffering and chose not to, we would call that person a monster. But when God does it, we call it divine wisdom. We are expected to bow down and worship a being whose behavior, if displayed by a human, would land them in prison. This is not logic. This is psychological conditioning. This is what happens when you are taught from childhood that God is beyond question.<\/p>\n

Let’s move to something else Osho talked about a great deal. The relationship between God and power. He observed that in virtually every civilization, the idea of God has been used by those in power to control those without power. The king rules by divine right. The priest speaks for God. The caste you are born into is God’s will. The suffering of the poor is God’s plan. The wealth of the rich is God’s blessing. This is not a coincidence. When you tell people that their circumstances are divinely ordained, you remove their motivation to change those circumstances. Why fight an unjust system if that system was designed by God? Why question the authority of the powerful if the powerful derive their authority from heaven?<\/p>\n

Religion in this way has historically been one of the most effective tools of social control ever invented. Not always consciously, not always with evil intent, but the effect is the same. Keep people focused on the next life and they will be more patient about the suffering in this one.<\/p>\n

Osho said that genuine spirituality, real inner growth, real awakening has nothing to do with God, nothing to do with temples or churches or mosques, nothing to do with priests or rituals or sacred books. Real inner work is about looking at yourself honestly, understanding your own mind, freeing yourself from your own conditioned responses, your own fears, your own unconscious patterns. And for that you do not need God. You need awareness. You need honesty. You need courage. He said the most religious thing a person can do is think for themselves. And the most dangerous thing a person can do from the perspective of organized religion is ask a simple honest question.<\/p>\n

There is also something profound in what Osho said about death. He said that the fear of death is the foundation of all religion. Every religion without exception offers some kind of answer to death. Heaven, hell, reincarnation, paradise, nirvana. These are all responses to the same terror, the terror of not existing anymore. And Osho said very simply, what if death is just the end? What if there is no soul that travels anywhere? What if this life, this consciousness, this moment of being aware and alive, what if this is all there is?<\/p>\n

Most people recoil from that thought. It feels cold. It feels empty. But Osho said, “Why?” If you have never experienced not existing, how do you know it is terrible? Before you were born, you did not exist. Were you suffering? Were you in pain? Was it cold and dark? You were simply not there. He said that accepting the reality of death, truly accepting it, not running from it into religious fantasies, is actually one of the most liberating things a human being can do. Because when you stop being afraid of death, you stop being afraid of life. You stop holding back. You stop waiting for heaven and start actually living on earth.<\/p>\n

This is what Osho meant when he said that killing the idea of God is not about destroying something sacred. It is about clearing space. Clearing space for genuine experience, for genuine curiosity, for genuine love that is not about reward and punishment, but simply about connection and presence. He was not asking people to become cold or mechanical or nihilistic. He was asking people to grow up, to stop outsourcing their meaning to an invisible authority and start finding it in their actual lived experience.<\/p>\n

And maybe that’s the most unsettling thing about Osho’s message. It is not that he was angry at religion. It is that he was inviting people to take full responsibility for their own lives, their own minds, their own moral choices with no divine safety net, no cosmic judge, no eternal reward waiting at the end. That is genuinely difficult. It is much easier to believe that someone else is in charge, that there is a plan, that everything happens for a reason.<\/p>\n

But Osho would say the ease of a belief is not evidence of its truth. The comfort a belief provides is not evidence of its truth. The fact that billions of people share a belief is not evidence of its truth. History is full of things that billions of people believed for thousands of years that turned out to be completely wrong.<\/p>\n

So here we are at the end of a very long conversation that Osho started decades ago and that humanity is still slowly, reluctantly having. There is no God. Not in the sky, not in the text, not in the ritual. But there is this, this moment, this awareness, this strange and brief and beautiful experience of being alive and conscious in an enormously old universe that does not owe us anything. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.<\/p>\n

Osho was a brilliant thinker who correctly perceived religion for the devious mind illusion that it is. His thoughts are a comfort to people who prefer to live life as it actually <\/a>exists.<\/p>\n

(5558) Jesus is not coming back<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christian apologists have worked overtime to rescue the promise of Jesus returning, despite having to deal with scriptures indicating that this event should have happened long ago. The following discusses why it can now be assumed that Jesus is NEVER coming back:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateAChristian\/comments\/1thri48\/jesus_is_not_coming_back\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Jesus is not coming back.<\/p>\n

The bible makes it very clear, repeatedly, that Jesus vowed to return to earth, descending from the clouds with a host of angels, while his disciples, accusers and executioners were still living.<\/p>\n

We find this promise in the gospels, the epistles of the apostle Paul, and the book of Revelation.<\/p>\n

By the time the last-written gospel, John, was published, the author knew these prophecies were not going to materialize. He turned Jesus into the Greek LOGOS (the \u201cWord\u201d) and the Creator of the Universe, but he wasn\u2019t going to return from the clouds as the other gospel writers promised.<\/p>\n

However the authors of the other three gospels, and of Revelation and the Pauline epistles, made it very clear that Jesus was going to return before everyone died.<\/p>\n

Jesus vowed that he would return during the lifetimes of his disciples. When this didn\u2019t happen and Christians started dying, the apostle Paul had to rationalize things, as in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18:<\/p>\n

\n

But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jesus’ own prophecy (Matthew 24:34)<\/p>\n

\n

Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The gospels make it clear that \u201cthis generation\u201d means the disciples standing before Jesus as he spoke.<\/p>\n

Matthew 24:29-34 explains what was to be fulfilled while the generation listening to Jesus was still alive:<\/p>\n

\n

Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Matthew makes it clear that \u201cthis generation\u201d means the disciples standing before Jesus:<\/p>\n

Matthew 16: 27-28<\/p>\n

\n

For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It is possible that \u201csome\u201d was an interpolation added after early Christians began dying and Jesus had not returned as promised.<\/p>\n

Luke 9:27<\/p>\n

\n

But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Luke 21:32:<\/p>\n

\n

Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mark 9:1<\/p>\n

Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.<\/p>\n

Mark 13:30<\/p>\n

\n

Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In Mark 14:62, Jesus told his accusers \u2014 the high priest Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin \u2014 that they would see his return:<\/p>\n

\n

And ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Revelation 1:<\/p>\n

\n

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John… 3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand…Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The writer is anticipating that those who executed Jesus will see his return.<\/p>\n

Revelation 22:10<\/p>\n

\n

And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The earliest Christians were expecting Jesus to return during their lifetimes.<\/p>\n

Here is Paul again, in 1 Corinthians 15<\/p>\n

\n

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep\u00a0(i.e., die)<\/em>, but we shall all be changed,<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But of course they all did die without Jesus returning in power from the clouds with a host of angels, and every human eye seeing his return.<\/p>\n

The things to be fulfilled while the people of that generation were still alive included:<\/p>\n

*The sun darkened. *The moon no longer shining. *Stars falling from the sky and the heavens shaken. *Jesus appearing in the clouds with power and great glory, to be seen by all the people of the earth. *The angels appearing with the great sound of a trumpet to gather the elect from every part of the earth.<\/p>\n

None of these things happened during the first century AD, when that generation was alive.<\/p>\n

Some pastors make their livings by taking passages from the Bible to impute end-times prophesies in our modern age. For example,\u00a0Greg Laurie<\/a>\u00a0mentions Iran. He scares people, and brings in generous tithes and offerings. But, he is just bullshitting.<\/p>\n

But, it is all nonsense. Jesus did not return, and bring about the end of the world, while anyone he knew was still alive, as purportedly promised. He certainly isn’t going to return now, or any time in the future.<\/p>\n

Jesus did not come back as promised. That is all we need to acknowledge to conclude that Christianity is a false religion. All of the hand waiving, the excuses, the mental gymnastics that Christians use in defense are nothing but vacuous shreds of unjustified <\/a>hope.<\/p>\n

(5559) Why do people want a god so bad?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The following video transcript explores the likely reasons why humans gravitate toward a belief in gods, despite an extreme lack of evidence sufficient to support such a claim:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=04E9C0Mjfg8<\/a><\/p>\n

Why do people want a god so bad? This is a deceptively good question. I really took some time to think about it because at first I thought this is too obvious, but then I realized that all the answers I was going to give are the surface-level answers. They’re still very deep in their own right, but they all add up to the same thing.<\/p>\n

This would be like: because people are afraid of death, because suffering is so unbearable without an objective purpose, because chaos makes us crave control, because we want to be reunited with our loved ones, because injustice is not fun to deal with and we want some kind of cosmic justice or, in some cases, payback. But all of those again roll up to why we want comfort so bad, and God being an answer for some people for comfort.<\/p>\n

But that doesn’t actually fully explain why people specifically<\/i> want a God. God is so much more than just comfort. He is a king. He is a judge. He is a parent. A witness to our lives. A lawgiver, a rescuer, a punisher, a narrator, and then again a comforter. So the real question is, why do people want there to be this mind, this personal aspect behind the universe?<\/p>\n

And so I came up with three, I think, more nuanced and unique answers to this question.<\/p>\n

1. People Want Reality To Be Personal<\/h3>\n

One is that people want reality to be personal. We want the universe to know us. I think a lot of this boils down to ego. A cold, uncaring, non-personal universe or reality can still be beautiful. It can still inspire awe and contain love and friendship and transcendent moments, but it doesn’t look back. It doesn’t notice us. We are not observed, and thus it cannot remember and it cannot validate our experience. And I think for a lot of people that feels heavy and quite unbearable.<\/p>\n

We talk all the time on the channel about if you can have meaning without God and the difference between subjective and objective meaning. But I do see legitimately a disconnect for people who even get on board with, “Yeah, we can still have meaning without God,” but that meaning feels incomplete to them unless it is recognized by something bigger than ourselves.<\/p>\n

And actually, right there, I think is why prayer matters so much to so many people. We always think of prayer as asking for something or trying to get God to do something, trying to help you, trying to protect you. Of course, there’s intercessory prayer where you’re doing that for someone else. But in general, psychologically speaking, prayer is this idea that your inner life has an audience. That you are not so alone. Your fear is heard. Your pain and suffering are seen. The sacrifices that you make get recorded somewhere. Your good deeds don’t go unnoticed.<\/p>\n

And so, yes, here I think the concept of God is so emotionally powerful. God makes reality feel relational. It could just be as simple as we want someone to be concerned over us. It’s one thing to be produced by the universe, to just show up as a natural order of things, but it’s another to be produced and parented. And for those of us that don’t believe in a god, we don’t believe in any kind of higher power than ourselves that is looking down, watching, caring, guiding, interacting, or any of those things we just covered. We want someone to know, to read our story. And I think some of that ties into the eternal nature of things that you get with God\u2014for things to matter eternally versus just temporarily.<\/p>\n

And by the way, I’m not saying any of this to discourage people who have arrived at the obvious conclusion that there is no personal God out there, or to tell people it’s better to fake and pretend to believe to get these things back. But to empathize, to sympathize with why believers believe, why people want a god, why people in the in-between or deconstructing or going through the deconversion can feel so disconnected about the whole idea of it all. I still think it’s better on the other end. I still think reality is always the best and I still think there’s so much beauty, but this is me truly trying to extend that I do get it.<\/p>\n

I said ego, and I didn’t mean that as negatively as it may have come across. By ego, I mean our deepest part. We want our deepest, truest essence to matter. To matter to something that can’t forget them, that can’t betray them. Although again, you can get into God clearly forgetting and betraying people in the Christian religion. But in general, I’m trying to answer this question about why we crave the higher being.<\/p>\n

And I try to remind myself of this because I know just even if I’m being as kind and respectful as possible, how offensive what I say sounds to believers because to them I’m not just saying something as simple as, “You’re wrong,” or “Hey, I disagree with your theology,” which even that can still not be a fun thing to deal with. But it’s so much deeper than that. I’m saying no one’s ultimately watching. No one’s keeping track. No one’s coming to rescue you. No one cares in the cosmic sense. And that’s a whole another loss on top of already the loss we’re discussing.<\/p>\n

But we’re still stuck with the problem, the reality of the situation. Wanting the universe to be personal doesn’t make it so. Desiring there to be this God doesn’t make him appear. And it’s so ironic because believers will say this against the atheist all the time, that we don’t believe so that we can have what we want, so that we can sin more or escape accountability. But belief in God does something very similar in a different direction. It makes reality emotionally responsive. It turns existence into a relationship. It tells you the universe knows your name and cares. But again, just because this is what you want doesn’t mean it’s true. So, if there’s one person that is denying reality to get their way, I don’t think it’s the atheist.<\/p>\n

2. People Want Their Moral Instincts To Be Cosmic Facts<\/h3>\n

Let’s get into the second reason that I think people want there to be a god. I think people want their moral instincts to be cosmic facts. I think they want their morality woven into the very fabric of the universe. This is why they seem so dissatisfied in the argument with Christian apologists on the topic of objective or subjective morality.<\/p>\n

I think that you can look around clearly and see that people have morals, that even atheists can be moral. If you’re one of the believers who says, “No they can’t,” you’re being unbelievably foolish. The slightly better but still horrendous argument is that they can’t be objectively<\/i> moral or they can’t say that anything is right or wrong, and all of those other things. But again, I think that’s just a cop-out from them because they prefer their made-up system that morality has been granted and handed to them by the creator of the universe\u2014which, by the way, would still make it subjective, but we’ve talked about that before.<\/p>\n

But they do want it woven into the very fabric. They want goodness to be more than a preference. And I know that it sucks that it isn’t kind of, but they do. They desire it so strongly. They want evil to actually exist because it feels better if it’s more than just a social construct. And I think the big one here is they want justice to be more than just a human project, which it so clearly only is.<\/p>\n

And I really do get this. It doesn’t feel good to say that things like murder and rape and slavery are merely things that most humans dislike. That’s not very emotionally satisfying. They want them to be wrong with a capital W. And then the worst part is to hear the kinds of believers that say, you know, “If there was no God, if I found that out, I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t be held to this.” And that shows their hand a little too much. And that’s not speaking for all believers. But I think a lot of people don’t get the beautiful experience of discovering and evolving your own personal morality based off things like empathy, compassion, and justice, and instead are just living under this divine command theory and feeling very moral.<\/p>\n

A lot of this just comes down to feelings. What they don’t like: no cosmic justice, no cosmic morality. And what they do want or like: being seen, being cared for, being parented, having a purpose. And thus they desire and invent God and religion. God can do that, or the concept of God. He can make morality feel like gravity, past something that we just invented or that became a social utility developed over time. I think people just want their moral outrage to be backed by the universe. We all can understand that feeling even if some of us are choosing not to pretend because of it.<\/p>\n

And I know that I’ve been a little bit dismissive of the believer in some cases here, but there’s actually something really beautiful going on behind the scenes. I do think for some of them some of the time, when they see something so atrocious that what other word could you use but evil? When someone does something so terrible to an innocent child, they don’t just want it to be something that we as a society discourage or make a law against. They want it to be absolutely, actually wrong, that it shouldn’t exist. And I get that passion. I get that zeal.<\/p>\n

But putting all your eggs in that basket of cosmic justice being handed out after the fact\u2014that there’s someone watching who’s going to take care of everything\u2014that can have such an inverse effect for actually making things better or alleviating more suffering. I think the best thing you can do is be honest about morality and meet it where it’s at, and address justice where it is and with what we can do, not opting out of it because “God’s got it.”<\/p>\n

And that’s very frightening. But frightening does not mean false. And that is the false equivalency that is made constantly by believers. And then many have the audacity to say that when we no longer believe, that we’re actually rejecting God. And that when we’re rejecting God, what must we actually be rejecting then? Morality. Because they’ve tied the two together.<\/p>\n

I can tell you that a huge part of me waking up to the fact this God could not exist was me caring so deeply and looking so earnestly at morality. So it’s quite the opposite for me and for many others. I don’t want a morality that is only subject to the will of a god, especially a god with the nature that is described in the Bible. That makes it terribly flexible, first of all, which is not ideal for law and order. And also, you can be on the wrong side so quickly. You can make excuses about when God commanded one group to kill another group, why that was moral until you’re the other group. Maybe no one should be killing innocent people in general. Maybe there shouldn’t be justification based off chosen people or land or what someone’s great-grandfather did that makes these terrible things somehow holy.<\/p>\n

So yes, you can say, “Well, without God, your moral opinion is just that. It’s an opinion.” Yep. So is yours. One of us is just not pretending. But still, I understand the desire. And I think we’ve said enough about that for the second reason that people desperately want there to be a god.<\/p>\n

3. People Want A Story Where the Pain Is Not Wasted<\/h3>\n

Now, the third one does have to do with comfort, which is what I said all the others boiled up to. In fact, even my first two still have. I just think we’re looking at it in a more nuanced way. But the third one is that people want a story, a narrative where the pain is not wasted.<\/p>\n

One thing that it is for sure to be human is to have suffered. We all have that. We all have the pain. And being afraid of death is one thing. But I think an even greater fear is that people’s suffering meant nothing. There was no test behind it. There is no betterment that comes because you went through it. There is no paradise awaiting you. There is no cosmic trade-off that was worth it in the end. To think that the worst thing that ever happened to you will not, or even cannot, be redeemed or explained or balanced or used or anything else is a terribly brutal thought.<\/p>\n

So religion and\/or God gives people a huge out here. A narrative where the pain is not random. Where the abuse makes you stronger, where the illness taught you dependence on your maker, where the loss had a hidden purpose that God planted there just for you to find. The unanswered prayer was actually protection by a creature greater than yourself with omniscience who knew that wasn’t going to be the right move for you. The betrayal of that person prepared you for this relationship over here. The trauma that you have is actually a beautiful testimony and you can do your part in furthering the kingdom of God.<\/p>\n

But what’s hilarious for me to see is under my belief that gods and religions were constructed by man and man alone, you’re already doing what you’re hoping a god will do for you. You are making lemonade out of the lemons. You are finding the silver linings. I think this is what all people do. But again, wouldn’t it be better to be able to do if we didn’t pretend? What if we could acknowledge that, you know what? No, trauma doesn’t always make you stronger. Many things just weaken you. But sometimes, under some resources and tools and understanding, it can still be used for something good. What if we strove towards that instead of just assuming that there’s this cosmic karma that is working everything out that we gave the name God? Would we take more agency and responsibility and autonomy? And wouldn’t that be better? I think so.<\/p>\n

Final Thoughts<\/h3>\n

Religion’s tricky like this, using your pain, using your fears, using your desires, which are what these three things all boil down to, to maintain itself. So much so that the ardent believer not only of course believes but then thinks so much less of the non-believer who’s just getting in their way, who’s just so lost and confused.<\/p>\n

It’s amazing how we are just seeing past each other like this. And I know I’m saying that I think I have it right, but I think there is a unique difference. Not all the religions can be right, but they can all be wrong. And when you can see how clearly they fit the desires of man and how unemotionally satisfying my position is, I think there’s a little bit of light in the shadow there for who again is pretending.<\/p>\n

The sad reality is some pain, most pain, is wasted. The suffering that is going on should not have happened. Many losses don’t become beautiful. We simply survive them. And sometimes we don’t even do that. And yeah, that sounds depressing and darker at first until you get to that freedom. Because if suffering isn’t sent from God, we don’t have to justify it. Let us not justify it. Let us fix it. Say, “That was wrong. That was unfair. That shouldn’t have happened. So, let’s do better. Let’s build it differently instead of all the excuses about the secret lessons and the undecided good.”<\/p>\n

No, there is no God. There’s no one making this work. There’s no one keeping track. It’s up to us. That’s real. It’s real freedom which equals real responsibility and I think both are terrifying to the believer. Thus again why we have the great pretend.<\/p>\n

Human psychology explains why gods have been invented thousands of times over and for various reasons. There is a palpable emotional return to the investment of time, ceremony, and expense. But it doesn\u2019t reflect reality, which when confronted head on, actually delivers a more authentic experience of <\/a>life.<\/p>\n

(5560) Simplest \u2018resurrection\u2019 theory<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the following it is speculated that the theme of Jesus\u2019 resurrection could have been instigated by the actions a single man (or him plus a helper) -Joseph of Arimathea, the man who allegedly allowed his tomb to be the initial resting place of Jesus\u2019 body. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/exchristian\/comments\/1tirvrr\/joseph_of_arimathea\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Sometimes I think about Joseph who allegedly collected Jesus’ body and put him in his tomb. Since this was his tomb, it’s likely it was his intent to move the body to a more appropriate place after the Sabbath. I can just imagine him doing so early in the day, before the women arrive.<\/p>\n

Then the women arrive and are of course shocked. They go tell people, the other disciples are bewildered. A mythology of this mysteriously disappearing body grows and spreads. And Joseph, being a disciple, I imagine out of fear\/embarrassment, says nothing. He’s just like, “Oh shit, oh no, this went too far. But I can’t say anything now. Better keep my mouth shut. Surely this’ll blow over.” And now we have Christianity.<\/p>\n

This would be all it would take in a world of high superstition and limited information. The simple fact of Jesus\u2019 unexpectedly missing body could have fomented the legends that later became part and parcel of the <\/a>gospels.<\/p>\n

(5561) Inexplicable need for spilling blood to forgive<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fact that God evidently needs something or someone to bleed before he can forgive one\u2019s transgressions is a strong marker that this theology is the creation of ancient humans and not that of a celestial deity. The following is a partial transcript of this video:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ee8zYH0khXU<\/a><\/p>\n

Why does God need or want blood to forgive? Basically, I am just talking about the whole forgiveness situation surrounding the holiday. For most people, Easter is about Jesus dying on the cross and resurrecting three days later, right?<\/p>\n

All of this is supposed to paint the picture that God is so good, so loving, and so selfless that he would sacrifice himself to himself to be able to forgive us. I’m sure you guys have seen the meme, but it pretty much sums it up. This is something I think about a lot: why does God need blood to be able to forgive?<\/p>\n

We see this in the Old Testament, that God wants people to sacrifice an animal for him to be able to forgive them. If you’re looking at it from the outside, it’s creepy as hell. There’s no other way to put it; it’s really weird and really creepy. Why do you need some weird blood ritual sacrifice to forgive us?<\/p>\n

I imagine if I hurt somebody in my life and I ask for forgiveness, and they’re like, “Yeah, Taylor, I actually will forgive you, but first you need to sacrifice one of your guinea pigs and spill her blood.” Oh, hell no. First of all, go fuck yourself. I would genuinely think that person is a freak, and I would want them to stay very far away from me. Why are you bloodthirsty? Why are you interested in some weird blood sacrifice? Why is that something that you want, when you could just forgive me without taking an innocent life? This is what I wonder about God.<\/p>\n

I say this a lot in previous videos, but this feels like another example of holding human beings to a higher standard than God himself. Because it’s God, we just accept him being bloodthirsty and wanting very weird blood sacrifices and rituals. But if a human were to ask another person to do that, we wouldn’t find that acceptable for obvious reasons. We would think they’re insane. Why would we think they’re insane? Because we know for a fact they do not need a creepy, weird blood sacrifice to be able to forgive. It seems like the person is just weirdly violent and bloodthirsty. That is the conclusion I would draw.<\/p>\n

So why are we humans held to a higher standard than God? First, I think it’s because it’s normalized, obviously. If you grow up in this, you think it’s a perfectly normal thing, and we should just accept the fact that the God we worship consistently throughout the Bible wants the spilling of blood and wants violence before he forgives anyone.<\/p>\n

We see a lot of thought-stopping cliches like, “Well, you just don’t understand God’s ways,” or “God’s ways are mysterious.” But if that is the case, you’re essentially telling me that you understand him enough to say that he’s good and worthy of worship, which feels convenient. If somebody questions or says something critical, or maybe something you don’t like, then all of a sudden our brains can’t possibly comprehend him. I find that very convenient.<\/p>\n

If you think about it, Christians claim to understand him all the time, because why would you dedicate your life to something you don’t understand at all? You obviously think you understand him to the point where you think he’s good, but no one can understand him to the point where they think he’s immoral, bad, or not loving. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.<\/p>\n

I’ve asked this question on other platforms, and I still haven’t gotten a good answer to these questions about why God needs violence. Why does God need blood? Why does he need a blood sacrifice to be able to forgive us when he obviously has the ability to just forgive us if he’s an all-powerful being? To me, that leaves the only option that he wants this or thinks it’s a good system, and I think that’s really weird. Again, humans do this every day. We forgive each other all the time without violence and bloodshed because what does that do for the situation? I don’t know.<\/p>\n

If it seems that this doesn\u2019t make sense, it is because it doesn\u2019t make sense. Why would a god need blood to forgive when lowly humans can do it easily without shedding blood? The answer is obvious. Yahweh is a creation of people who lived at at time before human morality had evolved to modern <\/a>standards.<\/p>\n

(5562) Abrahamic religions are one franchise<\/strong><\/p>\n

The evolution of the Abrahamic religions over time is something that no clergyperson would want their congregation to examine. This is because the dirt is in the details of how this all unfolded. And in this history, the fact that it is all just a human production is spectacularly obvious. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/atheism\/comments\/1tm7ywv\/the_three_abrahamic_religions_are_one_continuous\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The three Abrahamic religions are one continuous franchise that keeps rebooting and insisting the previous installment was the fake one.<\/p>\n

Quick thesis: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam aren’t three separate revelations. They’re one stream of Near Eastern religious material with three imperially enforced cutoff points, each declaring the prior version corrupted and itself the definitive cut. It’s less “three faiths” and more a franchise that keeps rebooting the timeline and telling you the last movie doesn’t count.<\/p>\n

**The continuity, briefly:**<\/p>\n

Yahweh doesn’t start as the cosmic monotheist CEO. The earliest layers of the Hebrew Bible are henotheistic. Yahweh is one god among many, with a specific portfolio: storm, war, mountains. Deuteronomy 32:8 to 9 has a higher god, Elyon, dividing the nations among the gods and assigning Israel to Yahweh as his allotment. Psalm 82 has God standing in the divine council, among the gods. This is in the text. It’s just theologically inconvenient, so it gets read past.<\/p>\n

The strict one god monotheism shows up later, crystallizing around the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE, which is conveniently exactly when the Judeans are marinating in Persian Zoroastrianism and pick up the cosmic dualism, the final judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and an adversary figure who graduates from prosecutor working for God (the satan in Job) into Satan, capital S, the opposition. None of that load bearing cosmology is in the early material. It’s imported set dressing that everyone now treats as original architecture.<\/p>\n

Then Christianity reboots: same God, new covenant, previous installment declared incomplete. Then Islam reboots again: same God, final seal, both previous installments declared corrupted (tahrif). Each sequel cannibalizes the prior canon and reframes itself as the original authority. Standard franchise behavior.<\/p>\n

**Why this feels like a conspiracy theory when it isn’t:**<\/p>\n

Eastern traditions don’t trigger the same “wait, that can’t be right” reflex, and not because the scholarship is better. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism openly contain their own layering. Hinduism will happily tell you the Upanishads developed the Vedic material. No crisis. But the Abrahamic religions each claim direct unmediated revelation at a fixed moment, which means any visible genealogy is an existential threat rather than an expected development. The history looks wild only because it’s contradicting an enforced silence.<\/p>\n

**The war god bit (handle with care):**<\/p>\n

The fun part, and the spiciest claim, is that Yahweh’s deep origins plausibly trace to a southern warrior storm deity. The Kenite\/Midianite hypothesis puts Yahweh’s homeland in Edom, Teman, Seir, and several old poetic passages (Judges 5, Habakkuk 3, Deuteronomy 33) have Yahweh literally marching up from the south like a regional storm warrior before the franchise promotes him to Lord of the Universe. So the eternal omnipotent monotheist God arguably has, in his backstory, a job in regional weather and smiting. Make of that what you will.<\/p>\n

I’m not claiming all three religions are the same war god with three names. That overstates it, and someone in the comments will correctly call it out. The honest version is better anyway: not one renamed deity, but one continuous tradition that kept editing its own past and threatening anyone who noticed.<\/p>\n

Most fervent Christians ignore the histories surrounding the origin of their faith- because to do so would injure the certainty that fuels their enthusiasm. A more principled stand would be to face all of the facts and then make a value judgment as to how to proceed. Atheists are typically far further along on this process. The truth is actually in plain sight- it just takes a little courage to embrace <\/a>it.<\/p>\n

(5563) Problem of a revelation frozen in time<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Christianity is using scripture that was written 2000 years ago. Times were very different back then and whatever made sense at that time often doesn\u2019t today. Google Gemini 3.0 Pro was asked the question: Does it make sense that a revelation from God should be updated periodically to account for changing conditions? This was the response:<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a profoundly complex question because it forces a collision between human logic and classical theology.<\/span><\/p>\n

From a purely sociological and developmental standpoint, it makes perfect sense that any guiding text should be updated. However, from the standpoint of internal consistency and moral philosophy, the idea of a “periodically updated” divine revelation creates massive structural problems for the concept of an all-knowing, morally perfect deity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is a breakdown of why this concept presents such a severe logical paradox:<\/span><\/p>\n

The Human Logic: Why Updates Make Sense<\/span><\/h3>\n

If we look at human history, our understanding of the universe and our baseline moral frameworks have evolved drastically.<\/span><\/p>\n