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142 Questions for Christians

Part 1 | Part 2

  101.   Who wrote Hebrews?   If you believe it was Paul, why do you believe this?   Are you aware that the writing style of Hebrews is very different from the style of Paul's other writings?

Many of the books of the Bible have no particular designated author. There are scholarly educated guesses, but in even those cases the personality, opinion, situation and character of the probably authors is not known.

The pseduepigraphica, apocrypha, and deuterocanonical books of the bible are definitely in dispute, depending on the Christian denomination or Judaic sect opinion, agenda, doctrine, tenets, and catechism.

102.   If God made an announcement tomorrow to the effect that hell had been abolished, that is, that there was no more everlasting punishment for sin, would you continue to live a moral life?   Would it offend you in any way if God abolished hell, thereby letting the unrepentant "bad guys" get away with their sin?

Look deep into your heart for just a moment.   Honestly now ... doesn't it give you just a bit of a thrill when you imagine a sarcastic Bible-hating bastard like me screaming in pain as I roast in the flames of hell for eons and eons?

This piece of Christian pornograpy was penned by an English Baptist clergyman by the name of Spurgeon:

When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone; . . . but at the Day of Judgement thy body will join thy soul and thou wilt have twin hells; thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body suffused with agony. In fierce fire. . . thy body will be, asbestos-like, forever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the feet of pain to travel on; every nerve a string on which the devil shall for ever play his diabolical tune of hell's unutterable lament.

Nice, don't you think? Can't you just feel that much lauded Christian love?

  103.   Some Christians say that the earth is only 6,000-8,000 years old.   Yet there are stars that are many thousands of light-years away from us; the fact that we can see them at all proves that their light has traveled for more than a million years.   How old do you believe the earth to be?

Another problem for the young-earth believers arises when they try to explain the fossil record. Some have tried to say that God created all of these layers at the beginning of the world. Is that logical? Do they really believe that the fossil bones of dinosaurs and buried forests were put into the rocks at the creation of the world? That would mean that those dinosaur fossils did not come from real animals.

Is it possible that God just buried all of those fake fossils down there? That doesn't seem likely. Could God be so deceptive? Perhaps they believe in a deceptive God otherwise they must conclude that the fossils are real, and that the rocks in which dinosaur fossils were found were formed after those dinosaurs had lived and died. So many rocks down there could not have been formed during a one-week creation, but were formed later, after the dinosaurs they cover had died.

  104.   Which Bible translation is your favorite or, to put it another way, which one do you believe to be the most reliable?   Why do you believe this?   How much Hebrew and/or Greek do you know?   If you can't read even one word of Hebrew or Greek, how can you make any assessment of the accuracy of any Bible translation?

And how do you know that all the translators (of all the English translations) haven't been lying to you all along?   Haven't you made a pretty big leap of faith, considering that your eternal future is involved?

It doesn't matter which translation is used because hermeneutics is the key and allows you to say that the Bible doesn’t mean what it says, it means what I say it means. Since I have faith I can chose any interpretation I want, even though none of what I say is actually scripturally supported.

For example, the most embarrassing verse in the Bible: “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.”

With faith, and knowing the Bible can't be false, I can change the definition of generation to mean "a group of people that have things in common", or invent a new a new Greek tense:"the perfect indefinite future tense".

If that doesn't convince the heathens then it's obviously meant to be poetic, or an analogy, or a metaphor.

  105.   People have seen images of the Virgin Mary in tortillas, and in stains on the sides of buildings (to name a couple of places).   They've even seen Jesus' face on toilet paper and on an oyster shell.   Do you believe that any of these "sightings" are valid?   Would you agree with me that a lot of people who call themselves Christians are blithering idiots?

And can you explain to me how any sane person could believe that the Infinite Creator of the Universe would reveal Himself through an image on a tortilla?   And if He did so ... what is He trying to SAY?   Please translate into plain English the Message of the Holy Tortilla.

Translation: Because I'm so unsure of my faith I need constant reinforcement to tell my that I'm right.

  106.   Do you believe that Catholics are saved (going to heaven after they die)?   What about Mormons?   Jehovah's Witnesses?   Southern Baptists?   Pentecostals?   Presbyterians?   Episcopalians?   Assembly of God?   Church of Christ?   Why or why not?

And if your answer is, "Yes, Catholics are saved if they've really received Jesus and been born again," please describe in detail (for the benefit of our Catholic friends) the exact process whereby one receives Jesus and is born again.   And please be very, very specific, because if even one small ingredient is misstated, then a person may needlessly end up in hell.   Thank you.

Fundie mode on

If you sense the oldness and deadness, the emptiness and vanity, the confusion and frustration, and the tragic destiny of the first life, you need Jesus. Only He can enliven you by bringing the life of God into you to give you a new birth, a new life. Only thus can you be born again to be a Christian, a Christ-man, an adherent of Jesus Christ, full of life, joy, peace, rest, purpose, and fulfillment in God.

Say to Him boldly, "Lord Jesus, I need You as my Savior. Save me from eternal death. Give me God's life. I want to be born again of God. Make me a Christian." Then you will receive the life of God to make you a born-again Christian.

Fundie mode off

  107.   You're a Christian.   If you committed suicide, would you go to heaven?   If not, (a) why not, and (b) what is the scriptural basis [if any] for your answer?

Does the Bible say suicide is wrong?

No, actually, it doesn't. There are seven suicides and one attempted suicide reported in the Bible, and they are presented either neutrally or as appropriate, under the circumstances.

In all four Gospels Jesus chose to aggravate the authorities into crucifying him. Jesus was explicit in stating that his life was not being taken but that he was voluntarily choosing death. In :John 10:18 He says: "No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself." While many Christians would vehemently deny that this amounts to suicide, Jesus' actions in behaving in a way that he knew would cause the authorities to condemn and execute him, and his refusal to take any action to avoid his execution, is similar to what today would be called "suicide by cop".

  108.   Adolf Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews.   According to evangelical Christian beliefs, if Hitler dropped to his knees and repented (and received Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior) three seconds before he died, then he would be saved, and he'd go to heaven and would live forever, right next door to the dead Popes and the virgin Mary and the apostle Paul.   Do you think this is fair?   Have you noticed that Biblegod has quite a few policies that are offensive to the average person's instinctive sense of morality?

It's very easy to tie genocide to ideology, but also it's important to tie ideology to politics and to the complex social forces at work in any given time or place. Humans have tortured and killed each other since the dawn of history using religion, politics, and all else to their own ends.

Every group that has had the power to do so has done this, from the Romans to the Crusaders to the Muslims and Hindus to the Communists. Ideology becomes not a principle but a tool; in each case, the prevailing interest was the conquest of land, plunder of resources, control of trade, subjugation of labour. Ideology provides a useful excuse for the actions carried out for material ends.

MURDER AND PLUNDER: IDEOLOGY IN ACTION
Murder / plunder name	Dates	Est. deaths	The pretext	True aim	Ideology preached in	The author
African Mideast slavery	650-1981	19 million	Civilizing the infidels	Plunder	Legal ruling	Ahmad al-Wansharisi
Crusades	1095-1291	1.5 million	War against the infidels	Plunder	Clermont sermon	Pope Urban II
Mongol conquests	1175-1368	40 million	Mongols are chosen people	Plunder	Precepts	Genghis Khan
Inquisition	1215-1800	50,000	War against heretics	Plunder	Decree of Pope Innocent III	Pope Innocent III
Thug murders in India	1300-1848	8 million	Thugs are chosen people	Plunder	Rituals to Bhowanee	Unknown
Timur Lenk's wars	1369-1405	17 million	War against pagans	Plunder	Institutions	Timur Lenk
European colonies, Asia, Africa	1415-1956	11 million	Civilizing the infidels	Plunder	Dum Diversas Bull	Pope Nicholas V.
Annihilation of American Indians	1500-on	20 million	War against pagans	Plunder	Decree of Pope Alexander VI	Pope Alexander VI
African American slavery	1550-1860	17 million	Civilizing the infidels	Plunder	Slave Trade Consistent with Principles of Humanity	Thomas Thompson
Manchu conquest of China	1616-1644	25 million	Manchus are chosen people	Plunder	Mandate of Heaven calendar	Adam Schall
Taiping Rebellion	1850-1864	20 million	War against evil	Plunder	Principles of the Heavenly Nature	Hung Hsiu-Chun
USSR	1900-1991	62 million	War against the burgeois	Plunder	Communist Manifesto	Marx, Engels et al.
China - Kuomingtang	1928-1949	10 million	War against the Manchus	Plunder	New Life Movement	Chiang Kai-shek
Nazism	1933-1945	35 million	Germans are chosen people	Plunder	Mein Kampf	Adolf Hitler
Japanese militarism	1936-1945	15 million	Japanese are chosen people	Plunder	The Essence of National Polity	Okawa Shumei
China - Communism	1949-1987	40 million	War against imperialists	Plunder	Mao's Little Red Book	Mao Zedong
U.S. Iraq wars	1990-on	1.5 million so far	War against America's enemies	Plunder	Rebuilding America's Defenses	Perle, Wolfowitz et al.
State wars & genocides	3000BC-on	2115 million	Government is your friend	Plunder	Plato's Republic, Federalist Papers, media	Plato, Hamilton et al.

Table compiled by George

  109.   In Isaiah 7:14 we read a prophecy about a virgin having a baby, and she names it "Immanuel."   Matthew 1:23 tells us that this was a prophecy of Jesus.   But Jesus was named Jesus   —   not Immanuel.   How do you explain this?   Was Isaiah a false prophet (Deuteronomy 18:22)?

A reading of the verse in context shows that Isaiah's prophecy was that the child Immanuel was to have been born in 742 BCE, the first year of King Ahaz's reign. Ahaz, the king of Judah, faced the combined armies of Syria and Israel. Isaiah explained to Ahaz that he should not form an alliance with Assyria. In support of this advice, God would provide a sign: a young woman would conceive and bear a child who would be named Immanuel.

The sign would have only have been effective if it happened almost immediately. It would not have given a lot of support to Isaiah's prophecy if more than seven centuries passed before it was fulfilled, over 700 years after King Ahaz' death.

Isaiah was clearly not referring to some event that would occur centuries later. When he referred to the far future, as in Chapter 11, he typically used a phrase such as "In that day."

The translation of the Hebrew name Immanuel, (Greek Emmanouel) as "God with us" in Matthew 1:23 implies that the name-holder is divine. The name really means "God is with us," meaning that God will support us. The name makes perfect sense if the child's name was to indicate to King Ahaz that God is on their side.

Luke 1 states that Mary would call her son Yeshua (Jesus in Greek). He is called Yeshua throughout the Christian Scriptures ~ not Immanuel.

  110.   In Matthew 17:1-5 we read the story of the "transfiguration" of Jesus.   Moses and Elijah dropped in (perhaps in spectral form?) and talked to Jesus.   Immediately, Peter wanted to build shelters for Moses and Elijah, calling them by name.

How did Peter know who they were?   From photographs?

I don't know. Perhaps it was a later embellishment, added to make the fable more believable.

  111.   In the foregoing questions, I've shown conclusively that your "God" is in reality a hateful, twisted, nasty, vicious, petty, vengeful, double-talking, self-contradictory, nit-picking, spiteful being of low moral character.   How do you know you're not really worshipping Satan?  I'm not asking you to hold God accountable, or to judge him (he's opposed to that, of course); I'm just asking you if there is any minimum standard of decency that you'd hold him to.   Have you decided in advance to worship God no matter what kind of a violent, twisted, sick son of a bitch he is shown to be in his own book?

In other words ... the Bible contains instructions on how to avoid the eternal fires of hell.   God (1) made the rules, (2) created an imperfect human race that he knew in advance would break his rules, (3) created a horrible place where the rule-breakers would be tortured forever, and then (4) provided us with information (albeit confusing and contradictory) on how to escape the hell that he himself created.   Wouldn't it have been a hell of a lot simpler if the all-powerful God, by a snapping of his fingers, had just eliminated all of the problems we humans must endure ... instead of giving us this complicated book and just hoping we could figure it out?

Biblegod is omniscient; he knows everything.   This means that when he created the universe, he saw the suffering that humans would eventually endure (in hell) as a result of their sins.   He actually heard, in advance, the screams of the damned.   Surely he knew that it would have been better for those humans never to have been born (in fact, the Bible says this very thing about one particular sinner ... Mark 14:21), and surely an all-compassionate deity would have foregone the creation of a sinful human who was (a) destined to imperfection and therefore (b) predestined to suffer forever.   I contend that it is not logical that a perfectly compassionate God would create beings whom he knows are doomed to suffer forever and ever, and that this is the most obvious contradiction in your belief system (and the most shocking, outrageous flaw in God's character).   What do you think?

Did you hear that just now?   It's the crying of a newborn baby.   The young mother, her hair wet with sweat, cradles him gently, as tears of happiness fill her own eyes.   And up in heaven, your God looks down on this tender scene, on this tiny infant, knowing that it will spend countless eons being tortured in hell.   How does God feel right now?   How do YOU feel about this?

Nicely put. I don't think that there is anything I can add.

112.   A Christian once told me that the only way to explain the origin of the universe was that God created it, since matter can't come out of nothingness.   Question: Where did God come from?   When did he have HIS beginning?   Who created HIM?   How can God exist without having a beginning?   And if GOD can exist without having a beginning ... why can't the universe itself do that?

Believers will usually respond with one of a couple of common objections. The first is to claim that this creator-god has always existed while the universe has not; because the universe began to exist at some point, it requires a creator in a way that their god does not. Unfortunately, the assertion that this god always existed is unsupported and apparently unsupportable — it’s just an assertion and there is no particular reason to believe it. The assertion that the universe “began” to exist is also problematic because time itself is a feature of the universe, and therefore the universe does not exist “in” time such that we can talk about a time “before the universe” or a time “after the universe.”

Another objection raised by believers is the idea that their god is a “necessary being” and doesn’t need a “creator.” Unfortunately, this is also unsupported and unsupportable. There is no basis for such an arbitrary assertion, except to try to excuse their god from the same standards they wish to apply to the universe.

The evolution of Yahweh is the most remarkable and impressive of any supreme being invented by the human psyche. On the crest of psychological, sociopolitical, sociological and literary mechanisms, Yahweh has graduated from a god of the Hebrews to the God of the Hebrews to the God of two religions, Judaism and Christianity, and the God of the western world. Initially a storm god or "god of the atmosphere," Yahweh has come a long way and is now the God of the cosmos whose original name is interchangeable with the general moniker "God."

Most people who believe in God and who at the same time accept Christianity don't even know the Anglicized proper noun for God: Yahweh, yet they still worship Him because they essentially accept the Bible to be true.

Generally, Western God-believers who cross-culturally accept Yahweh as their one and only God also are ignorant of his original status as one of many gods in a system of Jewish polytheism. Eventually, the other Gods in the Hebrew pantheon were rejected and Yahweh kept.

  113.   This same Christian friend told me that there can't be any design without a designer.   She pointed out the incredible complexity of the universe, and of biochemistry and reproduction.   If the universe (and life) is complex, then the Designer who thought it up must be much MORE complex, right?   So who designed God?

"There is a temptation to argue that, although God may not be needed to explain the evolution of complex order once the universe, with its fundamental laws of physics, had begun, we do need a God to explain the origin of all things. This idea doesn't leave God with very much to do: just set off the big bang, then sit back and wait for everything to happen. The physical chemist Peter Atkins, in his beautifully written book The Creation, postulates a lazy God who strove to do as little as possible in order to initiate everything. Atkins explains how each step in the history of the universe followed, by simple physical law, from its predecessor. He thus pares down the amount of work that the lazy creator would need to do and eventually concludes that he would in fact have needed to do nothing at all!"
Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker

  114.   Hebrews 10:4 states unequivocally that it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin.   That being true, why did God give the Jews so many commandments about animal sacrifices (see Leviticus 9:2, for instance)?   Was he just playing a joke on them?   Why didn't he tell them, way back in the Old Testament days, that their animal sacrifices were useless?

Most of Leviticus was written to give the priests a non-stop supply of food:

"But, the divine law of compensation was strikingly exemplified here: the laborer was indeed worthy of his hire. These three poor over-worked bloody drudges of priests were bounteously rewarded, in the matter of eating, if they ever really found time to eat. Out of many bounteous provisions of Yahveh's law for his monopolist priests, one (Num. xviii, 9-11) may be cited to show the munificence of Yahveh to his holy servants: "This shall be thine of the most holy things, reserved from the fire: every oblation of theirs, every meat-offering, [etc., etc.,] which they shall render unto me, shall be most holy for thee and for thy sons. In the most holy place shalt thou eat it; every male shall eat it."

"All this and much more "I have given [unto Aaron and his sons], by a statute forever," Yahveh decrees. Aaron at first had four sons, but two of them, Nadab and Abihu, were early slain by Yahveh because they put "strange fire." into their censers (Lev. x, 1, 2); this left but Aaron and two sons and their families to enjoy the daily offerings of the 2,414,200. And as Yahveh had commanded, he must be obeyed: these countless thousands of offerings daily must be eaten, by the three and their families, and "in the most holy place of the sanctuary."
From Is It God's Word? By Joseph Wheless

  115.   Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44).   He can appear as an "angel of light" (II Corinthians 11:14).   How can you be absolutely sure that the Bible isn't an elaborate deception created by Satan  —   containing just enough "good stuff" to make it palatable and credible?   Do you believe in the Bible just because you were raised on it, just because "everybody always told me it's the real thing?"   How is this different from a little Muslim child who is 100% sure about the validity of his Koran just because he was raised on it?

St. Jerome, also called Eusebius Hieronymous, translated the Bible into Latin in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. Jerome decided that Lucifer was a fallen angel and that Satan and Lucifer are indeed the same individual.

He then combined both of them into the Christian Devil which was adopted as dogma throughout the early Church. The underlined passage is the one that has helped cause so much trouble.

Isaiah14

14:12How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

Jerome's opinion relied on a single in Isaiah 14:4-22, but anyone reading the entire section would conclude that Lucifer, called the "Day Star, Son of Dawn" in the RSV, was an evil human king who was cast into the already existing Hell. In other versions of the bible the the word hell is rendered as sheol, pit or grave.

Isaiah is the only place in the entire Bible where the name Lucifer appears, but it has through the centuries become the basis for the Christian Devil even though it clearly refers to an evil human king of Babylon. He is not presented here as the king of Hell or a demon of any kind, but instead is presented as a human who believes himself to be superior to God and wishes to ascend to Heaven from Earth where he clearly abides. According to most legitimate scholars, "Lucifer" refers to the Babylonian King Helel (Hebrew: "Heyleyl"), which translates "Morning Star, son of Dawn" as related in the RSV version of the above KJV account. Other scholars believe it refers to the despised King Nebuchadnezzar, others as an evil king named Tiglath-pileser, and others as a king of Tyre.

116.   As you know, the Bible allows us to have more than one wife at a time; Moses had more than one wife, and God never batted an eye.   The Bible has references to multiple wives (Genesis 4:23, Genesis 28:9, etc.) and even gives us some rules on polygamy (Deuteronomy 21:15ff), but has nary a prohibition against the practice.   Only bishops ("overseers") are prohibited from having multiple wives (I Timothy 3:2).   Do you agree with this?   If you and your husband (who isn't a bishop, let's assume) lived in a country where polygamy was legal, do you realize that he could take multiple wives (he'd probably invite you to the weddings, but not the honeymoons), and it wouldn't violate any Biblical commandments?

The widespread condemnation of polygamy is a recent development, mostly of puritanical origin, especially in the United States. There has been polygamy throughout the ages, and in contemporary life as well. There has also been monogamy in ancient times as well as in present times.

Those who condemn polygamy are projecting their own opinionative mores upon others. I'd recommend to those people who condemn polygamy to not take more than one spouse.

  117.   My friend Gordon, a Christian, gets upset when I use the expression "goddam" (the proper pronunciation requires the accent on the second syllable).   He doesn't get upset when I just say "damn."   I have told him that in using the full "goddam" version, I am acknowledging that only God can damn; to say "damn" only could be a suggestion that some other entity may be damning the object of the imprecation.   In other words, as I patiently explain to him, I am in fact honoring his god.   What do you think?

I think you should be more imaginative with your cursing. Try using the following:

From The JavaScript Source

  118.   Imagine that there's a shipwreck, and ten survivors are washed ashore on a deserted island.   All of them have complete amnesia, but they retain the ability to read.   The only book they have is the Bible (let's say it's the NIV).   For the next five years, they study the Bible and use it as the basis for a religion they develop (which they call "Biblianity").   How similar would their doctrines (and worship services) be to what we'd find in your own church among your Christian brothers and sisters?

Or, in the alternative, is it perhaps more likely that they'd spot the same contradictions, inconsistencies, and outright horrors that I did, and simply reject the Bible out of hand?

That's really impossible to say without details of their levels of intelligence.

One possibility is that they build ten separate churches based on ten different interpretations and ten different belief systems and spend countless hours accusing each other of being heretics.

  119.   Do you believe that most people "come to Christ" and "receive Jesus" because they become convinced, at some point in their lives, of the validity of Christianity?   Or is it obvious that most people who "surrender to Christ" do so at a time of crisis and emotional turmoil in their lives, and are simply grabbing an emotional life saver?

Have you ever noticed that nobody "comes to Christ" on the afternoon before prom night?   Nobody "repents" as he's walking into the Pleasure Den whorehouse in Reno after winning $8000 at the roulette wheel ... it's always after he's landed on death row, and all his appeals have been exhausted (like Carla Faye Tucker ... she COULD have "found Jesus" just before she grabbed the pickaxe. Why didn't she? Guess it would have been just too damn inconvenient).   Aren't you a little bit skeptical about the "jailhouse conversions?"   Do you think Jesus is a bit disappointed that he gets so much of the dregs of society ... no Donald Trumps or Bill Gateses?

And by the way ... why would any sane person believe that the answer to every problem on earth is the torture-murder of an innocent man?

One obvious reason to think that religion is a crutch for the weak-minded is because religion pretends to answer questions that we find difficult to answer: things like "what is the meaning of life?" and "what happens to us after we die?"

Having these questions go unanswered causes varying degrees of anxiety in people. Trying to set aside other factors such as the fact that the religion you are taught in childhood will have a profound impact on your religious views later in life, presumably the people who cannot cope with this anxiety will be religious, and the people who can cope with it will be atheistic.

History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love" by Robert Heinlein

Just remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

"Nobody expected religion to be a challenge or to provide an answer to the meaning of life. People turned to philosophy for that kind of enlightenment. In the Roman empire of late antiquity, people worshipped the gods to ask for help during a crisis, to secure divine blessing for the state and to experience a healing sense of continuity with the past. Religion was a matter of cult and ritual rather than ideas; it was based on emotion, not on ideology or consciously adopted theory."
Karen Armstrong - A History of God

  120.   In the Bible (Genesis 30:37-39), it tells the story of animals mating while they looked at speckled trees; the result is that the calves that were born were speckled.   Honestly, do you believe this story?   What do you think would happen if we tried to replicate this event under controlled conditions?   Same result?

Genesis 30:37-39 ~ Then Jacob took fresh rods of poplar and almond and plane, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the rods. He set the rods which he had peeled in front of the flocks at the watering troughs where the flocks came to breed. Because they bred in front of the rods, the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted offspring.

This passage qualifies as pure nonsense. It flies directly in the face of everything we know about modern genetics and how the mechanics of inherited physical characteristics works.

  121.   Do you believe that atheists and Wiccans and lesbians have exactly the same legal rights that you do?   If your answer is "yes," have you taught this to your children?

Yes and yes

  122.   After Noah's ark landed, and the flood waters receded, what did the carnivores eat while the prey animals were repopulating?

  123.   After Noah's ark landed, and the flood waters receded, what did the pandas eat?   There damn sure isn't any bamboo in the Middle East (and if there had been, it would have been soaking in salt water for the previous 40 days, and would have been inedible).

124.   After Noah's ark landed, and the flood waters receded, the two polar bears traveled all the way from Mt. Ararat (in the Middle East) to the Arctic Circle, leaving no population or offspring behind.   If they had traveled at a constant speed of 2 mph, never stopping to sleep, eating while they were on the move, and didn't slow down even for mountains or oceans (this being, of course, impossible), the trip would have taken them three months.
(a) How did they do this?   (b) How did they survive the hot temperature?   (c) What did they eat?

  125.   After Noah's ark landed, and the flood waters receded, the two duckbill platypuses traveled all the way from the Middle East to Australia, swimming through thousands of miles of salt water (and leaving behind no offspring).   How did they survive this trip?   And what did they eat?   Everything on earth was dead, except the small group of animals located right there where the ark landed.   When they lit out, headed away from Mt. Ararat, there was NOTHING out there ... nothing for them to eat.

And by the way ... when the flood waters "receded," where did they go?   This was, supposedly, a worldwide flood.   If the waters had had somewhere to go, they wouldn't have waited 40 days to go there.

  126. [Re: the Noah's ark flood]   Why did only Noah and his family survive?   Wouldn't there have been somebody else somewhere on earth who had a seaworthy boat that could stay afloat as long as the ark did?   Wouldn't there have been lots of (human-occupied) boats floating around in the oceans and rivers at the time the rain started falling that would have simply "risen with the tide?"

If (a) Noah's flood really happened and (b) evolution is a false theory, how many Negroes and Japanese married into Noah's family, back before 2304 BC?

All life on earth destroyed because of the actions of God's imperfectly designed humans. Why couldn't He have just wiped away humankind? Why not just remove the evil ones? Surely God knew who they were; after all, He made them the same as He made evil and introduced sin into His creation:

If God is omnipotent, why not just kill those He wanted killed directly? Were the plants and animals so full of sin that they had to die as well? Other life-forms, though not as complex as humans, have sensory systems that are capable of experiencing pain, stress and fear but do not have the capacity to learn from punishment, nor are they capable of making moral judgments ~ logically only a self-aware entity has the capacity to make informed moral decisions ~ yet all life had to suffer and die. Why were these billions of other non-sentient creatures denied the goodness and benevolence of what the Christians like to tout as a morally perfect being?

If the whole idea was to rid the world of wicked people, did His plan work? Is the world now free of sin and wickedness?

"The story of the Flood as told in the Bible closely approximates both of the earlier Mesopotamian versions. Though the Hebrews spent perhaps more time in Egypt, their is little doubt in my mind that they adapted their story of Noah’s flood from that of the Sumerians and Akkadians. The same may be perhaps true for the Greek flood myth. The Egyptian flood myth appears to be independent, and while it is also an aetiological myth, linked perhaps to the observation of natural events, that turned the Nile to blood: the Nilotic red tide produced by the combined red algal bloom, and the annual deposition of Nilotic mud.

It is also quite possible, that in a Jungian sense, all cultures find it necessary to incorporate an apocalyptic vision into their explanation of existence.

Finally, an actual hydro-meteorological event or series of events, occurring in Mesopotamia itself, namely a catastrophic flood or series of floods on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers is the most likely source for the story’s origin." Anthony Orr Clarke.

For a detailed analysis of the Genesis and other flood myths see: Anthony Orr Clarke. For an extremely detailed breakdown showing why the Genesis global flood has no basis in reality, have a look through the files of Graham Kendall.

As with many other of the myths and legends in the bible Noah's global flood story is an adaptation of older stories: in this case the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic and the Babylonian myth of Atrahasis, and regardless of the "proof" presented by psysdoscience site like Creation Science or Answers In Genesis there is a total lack of compelling evidence to substaniate a literal interpretation.

COMPARING THE GENESIS AND GILGAMESH MYTHS
FLOOD DETAILS	GENESIS	GILGAMESH
Date Written	Circa 1000 BCE	Circa 2000 BCE
Any Historical Evidence?	No	No
Any Geological Evidence?	No	No
Sent By	Yehwah	Assembly of Gods
Extent of flood	Worldwide	Worldwide
Caused By	Mankind's Sins	Mankind's Sins
Name of hero	Noah	Upnapishtim
Announced Via	Direct from God	In a dream
Flood caused by?	Heavy rain	Heavy rain
Height of the ark	Three stories	Six stories
Ark landed at	Mount Ararat	Mount Nisir
Intended for whom?	All humanity	All Humanity
Human taken onboard	Family members	Family members and a few others
Other life taken onboard	Two,or seven, of every species	All species of animals
How many compartments?	At least one	Many
Shape of doors and windows?	Rectangular	Square
Outside coated with?	Pitch	Pitch
Character of Hero	Righteous	Righteous
Complaints from Hero?	Many	Many
Duration of deluge	Forty days	Six days
Instructed to build boat?	Yes	Yes
Hero blessed after flood?	Yes	Yes
Sacrifice given after landing?	Yes, by Noah	Yes, by Upnapishtim
Test to find land	Release of raven and dove	Release of raven, dove and swallow

  127.   Genesis 3:8-9 indicates that Adam and Eve successfully hid themselves from God.   If he's all-knowing, how is this possible?   And is there somewhere that I could hide from the son of a bitch so that he won't send me to his hell when I die?

Let's have a look at this fable:

God creates Eden and He places various creatures there, among them a man and a woman. The humans differ from the animals in that they have been invested with the ability to reason - to deliberate and to make choices. Despite this, however, the man is forbidden on pain of eternal death to eat from a tree in the Garden of Eden because it bears "the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil."

But what could possibly be wrong in wanting to know the difference between good and evil? And why, if God didn't want Adam to know the difference between good and evil, did he give him the ability to reason? The distinguishing difference between men and animals is man's ability to weigh the various options in a given set of circumstances and make a rational decision. Moreover, if one doesn't know the difference between good and evil, how does one distinguish between what is good and what is evil? And beyond all this, why would God give Adam the power to choose when, being omniscient, he would know before doing so how Adam would react when tempted?

None of it makes sense.

  128.   I'll bet you have at least one relative that you know isn't "saved."   How can you enjoy an eternity in heaven knowing that that person is screaming in pain in the unquenchable fires of hell, forever and ever and ever, until the end of time ... and beyond?   Wouldn't this spoil your eternal bliss?   And if it wouldn't, aren't you a pretty hard-hearted person?   Just as hard-hearted, I might add, as your God?

As you're talking to a Brit, a citizen of Europe containing a godless quarter of the globe with Britain being the most atheistic part of it, where religion very seldom rears it's ugly head, I can't answer the questions.

  129.   Do you believe that a Pagan is just as happy as you are?   Do you believe that a Pagan could be happier in life than you are as a Christian?

I don't know because I couldn't find a consensus, even within faith traditions or religions as to what constitues a pagan.

  130.   The story of Noah and the flood recounts how God killed every person and every animal on earth, except for just a few.   If you illustrated this story for children, would your picture show all the millions and millions of rotting, bloated corpses floating on the surface of the water, and the swarms of black flies?   Are you surprised that PETA doesn't rise up and denounce God for cruelty to animals?

PETA seems to too busy engaging in eco-terrorism, car bombings, death threats, beatings, abuse, harassment, abusive telephone calls, death threats, publicly labelling those who disagree with them as perverts, paedophiles or prostitutes to be too concered about God's actions.

  131.   Imagine that you're walking out of church after the Sunday morning service with your son, who is six years old.   As you're getting into the car, he says, "Piss! Ass! Foreskin! Whore! Dung! Breasts! Bastard! Concubine! Eunuch! Fornication!"   Would you be offended?   Would you punish him for using such language?   Are you aware that each one of those words is in the King James Version of the Holy Bible ... the very book your son has tucked under his little arm?   Do you realize that he's just "quoting the Bible?"

There are no better porn writers than the authors of the Bible. Consider the unbridled eroticism of the Song of Solomon. Or if you want hardcore smut, incest, rape, sexual mutilation, voyeurism, watersports, fornication, adultery, etc., look no further than your family Bible.

Christians justify the sex therein as "contextualized" with a "moral message." Wrapping porn in a morality tale is the oldest ploy of smut peddlers. No one reads the endings anyway, but including a moral message salves the conscience of the pious. It's one way to have your..., shall we say "cake," and eat it, too.

"Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt. For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses." (Ezekiel 23: 19-21)

"and lusted after her paramours there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose emission was like that of stallions." (Ezekiel 23: 21, NRSV)

Although this uplifting tale of the whores, Aholah and Aholibah gives a much needed moral lesson against the sins of the flesh, why does God have to describe their adventures in such pornographic detail? Is God a lover of porn?

Would any parents want their children to compare the size of men's penises to donkey genitals and the sperm flow to that of horse issues? Apart from giving their daughters false expectations, think of the harm it will do to a young boy's self esteem, it also leads to the question: Why Do Christians Want To Pervert Our Children?

  132.   [April 2005] Pope John Paul II just died.   For the last few months ofhis life, he was too sick to do his job, yet he refused to retire and hand over the reins of power to a successor.   Isn't this evidence of fleshly pride?   Isn't this evidence that he was in love with power?

I doubt if he was in love with power and nobody should let their prejudices get in the way of acknowledging his achievements.

  133.   Do you believe that quantum mechanics equations contain hidden variables that cause determinism to prevail?   Why or why not?

I've no idea of what you're talking about or what the above sentence means.

  134.   Do you believe that church attendance is important?   Why?   Are you aware that there is only one Bible verse that even vaguely orders Christians to attend church services (it's Hebrews 10:25) but there are four separate commandments in the New Testament that order you to kiss every person that you meet (I Corinthians 16:20, II Corinthians 13:12, I Thessalonians 5:26, I Peter 5:14)?   Which are you doing more of these days   —   going to church, or kissing people?

And in case you're wondering ... no, there's nothing in the Ten Commandments that requires church attendance.   You "keep the Sabbath day holy" by not working, period.   You can look it up (Exodus 20:8).

And by the way ... the Sabbath is Saturday, not Sunday.   Do you work on Saturday?   Are you arrogant enough to think that you have the right to change God's Sabbath from Saturday to a different day of the week?

The Sabbath was a Jewish institution, and, according to the Bible, only the Jews were commanded to keep that day. Jehovah said nothing to the Egyptians on that subject; nothing to the Philistines, nothing to the Gentiles.

The Jews kept that day with infinite strictness, and with them this space of time known as the Sabbath became so holy that he who violated it by working was put to death. Sabbath-breaking and murder were equal crimes. On the Sabbath the pious Jew would not build a fire in his house. He ate cold victuals and thanked God. The gates of the city were closed. No business was done, and the traveller who arrived at the city on that day remained outside until evening. If he happened to fall, he remained where he fell until the sun had gone done.

The early Christians did not hold the seventh day in such veneration. As a matter of fact, they ceased to regard it as holy, and changed the sacred day from the seventh to the first. This change was really made by Constantine, because the first day of the week was the Sunday of the Pagans; and this day had been given to pleasure and recreation and to religious ceremonies for many centuries.

After Constantine designated the first day to be kept and observed by Christians, our Sunday became the sacred time.

The early Christians, however, kept the day much as it had been kept by the Pagans. They attended church in the morning, and in the afternoon enjoyed themselves as best they could.

The Catholic Church fell in with the prevailing customs, and to accommodate itself to Pagan ways and superstitions, it agreed, as far as it could, with the ideas of the Pagan.

Up to the time of the Reformation, Sunday had been divided between the discharge of religious duties and recreation. From SABBATH SUPERSTITION By By Robert Ingersoll

  135.   In Luke 22:36, Jesus specifically orders Christians to buy swords   —   even if they have to sell their outer garments to get the money.   Do you own a sword?   If you don't, when do you plan to buy one and end your rebellion against the Lord's clear and unequivocal commandment?

No, I don't own a sword but, given the era and context, JC's advice was sound. Jesus fully expected His disciples to face hostility and encouraged them to sell their outer garments in order to buy a sword.

The sword mentioned was probably a maxairan: a dagger or short sword that belonged to the Jewish traveler's equipment as protection against robbers and wild animals. A plain reading of the passage indicates that Jesus approved of self-defense.

  136.   In Matthew 19:12, Jesus said that some people have castrated themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.   If your son told you that he wanted to follow Our Lord's suggestion, what would you say?

Self-Castration

Is it to a man's spiritual advantage to castrate himself? Anyone familiar with the Old Testament, specifically Deuteronomy, would say no.

23:1 He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord. (King James Bible, Deuteronomy)

But Jesus has a different opinion:

19:11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. 19:12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. (King James Bible, Matthew)

Most Christians ignore this verse or redefine "eunuch" to mean celibate. But the translation doesn't say "celibate." It says "eunuch." And the original Greek word says "eunuch" too. Besides, if we substitute "celibate" for "eunuch" then Jesus' words become: "For there are some celibate, which were so born from their mother's womb." Only some are born celibate from their mother's womb? Does this make sense? Aren't all infants born celibate? It boggles the mind to try to think otherwise.

Once we admit the verses say "eunuch" rather than "celibate," an obvious question arises: Might Jesus himself have been a eunuch? There's no definite answer to the question, of course, but if Jesus recommended self-castration then it's reasonable to wonder if he "practiced what he preached."

On purely emotional grounds, most Christians would say "No! Of course, Jesus wasn't self-castrated." A more reasoned argument against Jesus being a eunuch is that, being God, he had no compulsion to resort to such a drastic means to subdue his sexuality. A reply is that, as God, he had no need of praying or fasting either, yet the Bible says he did both. And even if Jesus himself wasn't castrated, wouldn't it be logical to suppose the Apostles were? Was self-castration a condition of being in the inner circle of Jesus? Is this why Jesus told his followers to leave their wives? Or did the Apostles ignore Jesus' suggestion about self-castration just as Christians do today?

And while it may be to a man's advantage to make himself a eunuch "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven," what about women? Is there any sexual self-mutilation they can do "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven"? Or are they already acceptable just as God designed them?

  137.   In John 21:15-17, we read about an exchange between Jesus and Simon Peter.   Jesus asks Simon three times, "Do you love me?"   As you probably know, when you read this passage in Greek, Jesus uses different words for "love."   Pastors adore this passage because it's a ready-made sermon.   There are a couple of problems, though: (1) Jesus didn't speak Greek when he talked to Simon, because Simon wouldn't have known what the hell he was saying, and (2) if you try to do this in Aramaic, which is the language that Jesus would have used, it just doesn't work, since Aramaic doesn't have as many words that are translated "love."   How do you explain this?   Could this be a fake story?

You have to bear in mind that the figure of Jesus Christ is some sort of figment. First, he may have originated as a mythic deity like Mithras, Attis, Asclepius, and many other similar figures.

Second, even if Jesus really did exist as some sort of historical figure beneath the many legends and inauthentic sayings later attributed to him by others, the historian's reconstruction remains a fiction, the hypothesis of the historian that can never be verified.

Third, the personal savior of pious subjectivity is a case of projection, an imaginary play-mate, when it is not merely a piece of shorthand referring to devotional prayer and bible reading.

Fourth, "Jesus" has become a banner standing for a number of debateable and extraneous questions, and it becomes an excuse for Christians not to deal with those questions. Christians say you are against Jesus or Christ when you oppose their political views, their theological opinions or their interpretations of the bible.

  138.   Proverbs 22:15 clearly says that it is acceptable for me to hit my child with a stick.   If you observed me in my back yard "being Biblical" by hitting my seven-year-old son with a stick, what (if anything) would you do?

I would tell you to stop hitting him because the correct response to a child who questions authority should be a volley of high-velocity stones, accompanied by the catchy slogan, "Question this!"

  141.   Did you know that your Bible specifically commands you   —   twice   —   not to be screw your mother (Leviticus 18:7, Deuteronomy 27:20)?

Has your minister preached any sermons on this topic lately?

And are you aware that Silver RavenWolf, Raymond Buckland, Doreen Valiente, Margot Adler, and Stewart Farrar, in all their many Wiccan books, have never thought it necessary to instruct Wiccans not to screw their own mothers?   Why do you think your God needs to tell you twice not to do so?

And by the way ... are you still sure you want your child reading this filthy book?

Seems a fairly sensible set of laws addressing their sexual practices. and wisely prohibiting incestuous alliances.

  142.   Do you read the Bible the same way you read any other book?   If you owned a shop manual with this many inconsistencies and contradictions, would you keep using it?   Are you more willing to forgive the errors and inaccuracies in the Bible than you would if it weren't a "holy book?"   Are you in fact making allowances for the imperfections of your God?   Are you making special accommodations and excuses for this book, the same way you would for a mentally retarded child?   Isn't your Bible a kind of a weird, defective, antiquated thing that you tolerate only because you feel like you have to, because you're afraid of what might happen if you questioned it in a fair, reasonable manner?   And isn't fear an integral part of your religion   -   not fear of evil spirits or of Satan, but fear of God himself (Deuteronomy 6:13, Joshua 24:14, Psalm 2:11, Ecclesiastes 12:13, Isaiah 33:6, II Corinthians 5:11)?   Is the Bible something that is occasionally an embarassment to you?   In trying to come up with answers to the questions on this page, do you find yourself having to stifle your normal common sense?   Do you find yourself saying things like

• (a)   "God can do whatever he wants to, because he's God" or
• (b)  "God is holy, and can't allow any sin in his presence" or
• (c)   "Well, things are different today than they were in Biblical times" or
• (d)  "There are a lot of things in the Bible we just don't understand" or
• (e)  "We just have to trust in God; we have to have faith" or
• (f)  "We can't always understand God; his ways are not our ways" (this is also true of Charles Manson) or
• (g)  "That Bible verse must have been taken out of context ... I'll look it up some time" or
• (h)  "Well, that's just one of those difficult Bible passages" or
• (i)  "That was back in the Old Testament; it doesn't apply to us" or
• (j)  "I can't explain it, and I don't really understand it, but I still believe in the Bible, no matter what..."

when deep down inside, in the common-sense part of your mind, you suspect that the Bible is really a not-too-admirable invention of man   —   not really "the word of God" at all?   Do you find that the more you study the Bible, the more you have to engage in "double-think?"   If this many legitimate questions existed about an airplane that you were about to board, would you go ahead and make the trip?   Or would you wait for the next flight?   If you had the courage to be absolutely, 100% honest, would you tell people that you really believe that the Bible is perfect and infallible?   If we hooked you up to a polygraph when you made that statement ("Yes, I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, and it's 100% infallible"), how much would the needles wiggle?
What would it take to convince you that the Bible and its God ARE fatally flawed (assuming you're not yet convinced)?   And if nothing could ever convince you, isn't your "faith" pretty meaningless?   Isn't it, in fact, mere stubbornness ... which is of the flesh?

Why is it that you employ your critical faculties (i.e., your good common sense) in every aspect of your life other than this one?   You wouldn't invest your kids' college savings in a scheme run by a cheesy scam artist.   You don't buy the crap they advertise in the infomercials ("Wait! If you call in the next ten minutes ...").   But ... let somebody use the magic word "God" or show you some commandment or assertion in an old leather-bound book (an incomprehensible self-contradictory 17th-Century English translation of a ragtag collection of spurious copies of Greek and Hebrew manuscripts that were collected over a period of 1800 years, and selected from an even larger collection of manuscripts by people that you know nothing about) and, regardless of how patently absurd or preposterous the assertion is, you drop your pants and bend over, no questions asked.   Does it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, you're allowing yourself to be controlled by ... the wrong thing?

Many people think that in order for a person to be moral, they have to be a religious believer. More broadly, many believe that secular cultures are inherently immoral, un-anchored from any system that could provide an ethical underpinning necessary for a successful civilization.

In fact, the opposite is true; far from providing a bedrock foundation, the man-made and all-too-manipulable mythologies of faith are a dangerously shifting sand-dune of arbitrary absolutes and solipsistic meta-relativism.

Case in point: BTK killer/pillar-of-the-Lutheran-church Dennis Rader. In a recent interview, the ten-time serial torture-killer insisted: "I just know it's a dark side of me. It kind of controls me. I personally think it's a -- and I know it is not very Christian -- but I actually think it's a demon that's within me."

In truth, there is nothing quite so Christian as blaming one's heinous transgressions on possession by evil spirits. It's the ultimate "get out of jail free" card, which is ultimately the appeal of all religions. They absolve you of responsibility. As Rader watched his victims' families weeping on the TV news about the devastation his terrible crimes had wrought upon them, his Christian faith allowed him to tell himself: "Wow. That's one evil demon that's got itself wedged up inside me! Oh well. I'm sure God will forgive me when I meet him in the Great Hereafter. After all, I can't possibly be held responsible for what a demon does, can I?"

Of course, it's true that Rader won't be held responsible in the Great Hereafter, because there is no Great Hereafter, and, deep down inside, Rader knows it. They all know it; the child-molesting priests, the bombers, the hijackers, the idiots who stone rape victims to death, the high officials who launch jihads, inquisitions and fatwahs… but they refuse to face up to it. Because every religious believer is a believer of convenience. They're more afraid of personal accountability than they are of burning in an everlasting afterlife, because they know that stuff is bogus.

Meanwhile, somewhere out there, another religious True Believer is stocking his car with duct tape, pliers and a blowtorch at the slavering behest of his own, personal demon. God save us from those who believe in Him.