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Existence of Yahweh
Apologetics
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If apologists want to win debates and apologists are willing and able to share best arguments with each other and there is a bulletproof argument for the existence of Yahweh, why is this argument not the very first thing every apologist says when debating for the existence of Yahweh?
What is one thing that theism better explains than atheism?
How does the theistic explanation of divine hiddenness, the problem of evil and biblical confusion compare to the atheistic explanation?
Do you perceive the presence of the resurrected Jesus within you and are you 100% certain that this presence is Jesus?
Bible god
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What is the evidence that the god described in the Bible exists, created the entire universe in 144 hours for the sole purpose of being worshipped by human beings on Earth, is the only god, is one god of several gods, sleeps, doesn't sleep, is material, is immaterial, changes, does not change, punishes children for their parents' sins, does not punish children for their parents' sins, tempts people, does not tempt people, confuses, does not confuse, is all-merciful, is all-just, stays angry, doesn't stay angry, cares whether you believe in it, does not care whether you believe in it, forbids killing, demands and rewards killing (especially sons), supports slavery, opposes slavery, is good, creates evil, loves gay people, hates gay people, loves everyone, hates Esau, loves everyone equally, has one chosen race, can be seen, cannot be seen, lives inside human bodies, dwells in the light, dwells in darkness, rewards human sacrifice, forbids human sacrifice, knows everything, doesn't know everything, knows the future, has free will, keeps all promises, does not keep all promises, supports war, supports peace, feels transient feelings, exists outside of time and space, can do anything logically possible, cannot kill itself, cannot defeat Satan or people who have chariots made out of iron, cannot have multiple sons, cannot lie, lies, cannot fail, fails, cannot not punish people for sin without dying on a cross and being dead temporarily, cannot eliminate great evils without permitting small evils, cannot forgive a blasphemer, makes no mistakes, regrets mistakes, exists outside of time and space, is omnipresent throughout space, is jealous, is not jealous, has a face, has a right hand, has back parts, cares about the condition of the testicles of sacrificed animals, cares about how to make curtains and underwear for priests, cares about whether you're wearing a hat while you pray, cares about grain offering recipes, likes the smell of burning animal flesh, hates foreskins, chose methods of incarnation and death common throughout prior mythology, reads your thoughts and judges you for them, loses its temper, has a master plan, responds to our pleas, acts in the world on a daily basis to serve our interests, and defined, by direct, transcendental inspiration of many different, unrelated, anonymous human authors, the rules, rewards and penalties for our behavior in precisely those ancient texts chosen out of many candidate texts by a particular group of primitive, fallible human clerics for inclusion in the Bible?
Burden of Proof
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How can you prove something to be true if there is no way to prove it is untrue?
Is the lack of a proof of Yahweh's nonexistence compelling evidence that Yahweh exists? Is the lack of a proof of Zeus's nonexistence compelling evidence that Zeus exists?
What proof that Yahweh doesn't exist would you accept?
In general, do you accept every possibility that cannot be disproven? When you walk down a street are you constantly looking up to check that a grand piano isn't about to fall from a second floor window and crush you? If you go into your garden, do you always take mine detecting equipment with you, in case one of your neighbours has planted mines in your garden overnight? When you leave the house do you always sprint as fast as possible, just in case a large, invisible dragon is waiting just outside the front door to eat you?
Consciousness
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Could consciousness not exist without Yahweh existing? Why not? How are naturalism and idealism or naturalism and dualism incompatible?
Contingency Argument
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Are there no brute facts and does everything have a reason? Why hasn't anyone been able to prove the principle of sufficient reason?
Assuming there is a reason to support the principle of sufficient reason, what is that reason's reason, and so on?
What is the difference between self-caused entities and unexplained, brute facts?
How is the brute fact of an uncaused god acceptable but the brute fact of an uncaused universe is not? Which of the two better obeys Occam's razor?
Cosmological Argument
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If Yahweh made the universe, what made Yahweh? Is it impossible for something to come from nothing? Is Yahweh something? Is it impossible for Yahweh to come from nothing? How do you know whether Nothing or Something is the default? "Was" "there" nothing "before" the Big Bang? There where? Was when? Before when? What does the word "there" mean without 3-dimensional space? What do "was" and "before" mean without time? Does it make sense to say that something or nothing existed at a moment one hour of time before time "started"?
Is infinite past incoherent? Why? Is infinite future coherent? Why?
If everything whose beginning we know about had a temporally earlier cause, how does it follow that some thing can have causes that are not temporal?
How does the existence of a conscious god, as commonly understood, logically follow from the universe having a cause? How does the existence of YOUR god logically follow?
If everything we can observe has a cause, does it follow that everything we can't observe also has a cause? What is the evidence that everything that begins to exist, ex nihilo, has a cause? What's one thing that began to exist ex nihilo? How do you know that it began to exist, ex nihilo? Did it have a cause? How do you know that it had a cause? How can we make any claims about things outside of the universe? What does 'outside the universe' mean? What is the evidence that there is an outside of the universe?
Is it easier to accept that a thing more simple than anything we know came from nothing or that a thing more complex than anything we know came from nothing? If a thing is really complex does that mean a creator created it? Must something be more complex than the things it creates? Would a creator of the universe be more complex than the universe?
If it is possible for Yahweh to lack a beginning, why can't the universe? If one unmoved, uncreated god can exist, could twenty-seven thousand two-hundred and forty-one of them also exist?
Is the first inch of a yardstick the beginning of its existence?
Is it possibility that matter and antimatter can annihilate each other? If that is possible and we have no Nothing to examine and therefore no way to know what is and is not possible with Nothing, is the reverse process really so impossible?
Is it common sense that a god must have created the universe? Why did everyone once think that the Sun goes around the Earth and that the Earth is flat? Is common sense a reliable method of determining truth?
Deist god
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What is the evidence that a single, infinite, supernatural, all-powerful, unmoved, uncreated, intentional agent exists and created the universe for a purpose?
Five ways
Do the five ways of Aquinas prove the existence of the god of your religion? Do the five ways of Aquinas prove the existence of the god of other religions?
How do you know that things outside of our observable universe behave the same way that things inside our observable universe behave? How do you know that an infinite regress is impossible?
If a thing is indeed responsible for the beginning of the universe and caused everything to exist, how do you know that this thing must necessarily be any sort of intelligent being, let alone that it is the god actually worshiped by any particular religion?
Is a chair without a broken leg better than one with a broken leg? What does a perfect standard have to do with that?
How can you be sure that non-intelligent things can't behave regularly without divine intervention and/or design?
What is the proof that everyone has an innate knowledge of Yahweh? What is the proof that atheists, babies, and indigenous people in remote villages have innnate knowledge of Yahweh?
Hiding god
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If Yahweh exists, wants everyone to know it, is able to provide convincing evidence to everyone, and was once willing to provide such evidence to a few ancient Jews and worshippers of Baal 1 Kings 18:16-39, why does it not provide material evidence of its existence to everyone and prevent non-belief in Yahweh and mistaken belief in the wrong gods from being so widespread?
Does Yahweh remain hidden because providing clear evidence would deny us the freedom to choose or not choose to have a personal relationship with it? Is it possible for a person to convince you that they exist without compelling you to have a relationship with them? How can Satan have both free will and certainty of Yahweh's existence? If Yahweh was once willing and able, why did it stop contravening people's free will and doing obvious miracles like pausing the Earth's rotation and parting the sea?
If the evidence for religious claims about Yahweh were as solid as apologists say, why do so many of them write long books explaining what Yahweh really meant to say, each with a different opinion on the subject?
If Yahweh hides and withholds the evidence for Heaven and Hell in a manner so complete that it must be purposeful, why does it provide clear, visual perceptions of Heaven or Hell to a highly disproportionate and small number of the people whose brains are severely deprived of oxygen and hearts stop temporarily but not to any of the world famous atheists with millions of admirers?
Are you 100% certain right now that Yahweh exists? If a being appeared visibly to the whole world simultaneously, claimed to be Yahweh, and told each person in their own language that every amputee would be immediately restored, and then it happened, would your percent certainty of Yahweh's existence go up or remain exactly the same? How can your certainty go up if it is already 100%?
Occam's Razor
If two explanations are possible but one of them is more complex, which one is more likely to be true? Is it possible for the universe to exist without a god? Is that explanation simpler than one requiring an infinitely complex additional element (a god)? Why do some geniuses think that it is at least possible for the universe to exist without a god?
Old and popular
There are many Christians and few pagans today. Does that make Christianity true and paganism false? There were once many Pagans and few Christians. Did that make Paganism true and Christianity false?
Christianity is old. Does that mean it is true? Hinduism is older than Christianity. Does that mean Hinduism is truer than Christianity?
Omnipotence
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If Yahweh was able to create the universe by itself why did it need help from people to write a book? to communicate to other people? to evangelize? to get pregnant mothers to view prenatal sonograms? to torture accused heretics in order to extract confessions? to stone people for picking up sticks on the Sabbath Numbers 15:35?
If Yahweh is omnipotent, why didnt it just provide a place for the Israelites and another place for the Canaanites?
If Yahweh is omnipotent why does it need helpers (angels)?
If Yahweh is omnipotent, why can't it come up with better solutions to problems than genocide Genesis 6:13, Genesis 19:24?
Why would the creator of the universe need to stick fingers into someone's ears to magically heal his deafness Mark 7:33, or put mud on his eyes to make him see John 9:15? Why didn't Jesus just cast the demons directly into oblivion without putting them into innocent pigs that then fled into a lake and drowned Matthew 8:28-34?
Are these stories more likely to be factual accounts or literary flourishes? Would you believe them if they were contained in the Qur'an?
Omnipresence
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Is Yahweh everywhere? If Yahweh is everywhere then how is it possible to be separated from Yahweh in Hell? How can an omnipresent being walk through a garden from one spot to another spot Genesis 3:8? How can an omnipresent being step in poop Deuteronomy 23:13-14? If you can't see, hear, smell, taste or touch Yahweh, how would you know whether you are separated from it?
Omniscience
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Does Yahweh know everything? If there is something Yahweh does not know, how would it know about it? How could an all-knowing god not know where Satan came from Job 1:6? or where Adam was Genesis 3:9? or that man would sin so that it had to destroy almost all life on Earth but man would keep on sinning so that it had to be incarnated and then executed, but man would keep sinning anyway?
If Yahweh knows everything, then how is it within our power to let a thing be known to Yahweh Philippians 4:6?
Is Santa Claus constantly watching you? Is Yahweh constantly watching you? Can Yahweh see when we masturbate? Can Yahweh see when priests molest children?
When Yahweh bet Satan that Job would not turn against him, did Yahweh know in advance that Job would remain loyal, meaning that Yahweh ruined Job for no reason, as Yahweh admits Job 2:3?
Did Yahweh know that Abraham was willing to kill his son? Why would an omniscient god need to conduct any tests of loyalty at all?
Why did Yahweh grant Isaac's blessing to Jacob instead of Esau after Jacob tricked Isaac into thinking that he was Esau by tying some goat skins to himself Genesis 27:16? Did Yahweh not know that it was really Jacob?
Why did Yahweh need to send angels to Sodom and Gemorrah in order to confirm rumors about the activities in those towns? Why didn't Yahweh already know Genesis 18:21?
Why didn't Jesus know that the fig tree did not have any figs Mark 11:13?
Was Yahweh disappointed by Adam and Eve for disobeying it? How can an omniscient being experience disappointment about anything?
Does Yahweh know what lust and fear feel like?
Why would Yahweh need people to put blood on their door frames in order to know which of them are Jewish so that it didn't murder the wrong innocent, firstborn children Exodus 12:13-29?
How can Yahweh know what the future holds but also have the option to change things that affect the future? Does it know in advance which future-affecting changes it will choose to make? If the future is knowable, how is free will possible?
Ontological Argument
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Is Yahweh that than which none greater can be conceived? What is the evidence that Yahweh is "that than which none greater can be conceived"? How can this statement be falsified? What is the difference between a premise and a definition? If existence is implied in any declarative statement whose verb is "is", how is saying "Yahweh is that than which none greater can be conceived" any different from saying "Yahweh exists and is that than which none greater can be conceived"? By one measure of greatness, the universe is the greatest conceivable thing. Is the universe Yahweh? I can conceive of something that created the greatest thing you conceived of. Is my thing Yahweh or is yours?
Is a god that requires faith as perfect as a god that does not require faith?
How does it follow from Yahweh's maximal greatness that Yahweh exists in all possible worlds?
Why is it necessary that a necessary being exists?
Perfection
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Is Yahweh perfect? Was Yahweh perfect without the universe? If Yahweh was perfect without the universe, then why would it need to create a universe? How can an infinite being lack something? How can a perfect creator make an imperfect creation? Wouldn't a creator that makes perfect creations be more perfect than one that makes imperfect creations? If plants and animals are intelligently designed why have 99% of all species had designs that were not good enough to keep them from going extinct? Why would a perfect intelligent designer create galaxies that crash into each other? Why did Yahweh intelligently design foreskin that it wanted to be cut off? Would a god be more perfect if it provided solid evidence of its existence instead of requiring faith? Would a god be more perfect if its book contained no contradictions and could not be interpreted and misinterpreted in many different ways?
Smart theists
"The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
-- Albert Einstein
"To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without."
-- Nikola Tesla
Is the fact that some scientists believe in your god evidence that your god exists? Is the fact that some scientists believe in a different god evidence that that god exists? Why is it that most theistic scientists believe in the god that is most popular in their culture? Have some scientists begun believing in Yahweh? Have some scientists stopped believing in Yahweh?
Teleological Argument
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Too much sun causes cancer.
Too much water kills you, as does not enough.
Most water is undrinkable.
There are more than 4,000 genetic diseases.
Most of the planet is inedible.
Most of the universe is a deadly radiation bath.
Black holes could consume the entire solar system in seconds and we would never know it.
The candiru is a fish in the Amazon that swims up the urethra and uses sharp gill spins to hold itself in place.
Are the complexity and appearance of design of a thing evidence that it has a designer? Are the complexity and appearance of design of Yahweh evidence that Yahweh has a designer?
Vegetables are much more complex than watches and they grow naturally and not in vegetable workshops. Does this mean that the even more complex universe also grew naturally and not in a universe workshop?
Can you name something that you know for a fact was not created? If not, how does saying that a thing was created make any claim of distinction about it from other things?
Why did the divine designer design breast cancer?
Do you think the precise constants of the universe make its existence without an intelligent designer highly improbable? Without knowing the number of possible universe configurations (p1) and the number of such configurations that are conducive to the development of life (p2), how can you determine the probability of a life-supporting configuration (p2/p1)? How do you know that it's even possible for the constants to be something other than what they are? How do you know that our universe is not one successful try among a set of 10^55 failed universe tries with different constants, each big banging timelessly into existence and collapsing back into nothing?
If the constants had been slightly different then rocks would not have existed. Does that mean the constants were set by a creator as they are in order for rocks to exist?
If life is distinguished from nonlife by immaterial souls, why would a god-tuned material universe be necessary for life to exist?
If a hole perfectly fits the puddle contained within it, does that mean that the hole was intelligently designed to fit the puddle? Is the fact that the person who won the last lottery did so against tremendous odds proof that it could not have happened purely by chance? Were ears designed to hold up glasses? Can you imagine the distribution of land and sea on Earth being different from what it is due entirely to unintelligent forces of nature? Under those conditions would you expect the species of life to be exactly the same or different from what they are?
Do you dismiss the multiverse hypothesis because multiple universes cannot be observed? Is Yahweh any more observable than multiple universes? Should scientists suspend judgement about the multiverse until they have hard evidence? Should Yahweh believers suspend judgement about Yahweh until they have hard evidence?
Theist god
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What is the evidence that a personal god exists and acts in the world on a daily basis to serve our interests and respond to our pleas?
Transcendental Argument
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What is the evidence that if Yahweh did not exist, rational thought would not be possible? If a godless worldview cannot currently account for rational thought, how do you know that it will not do this sometime in the future? How do you know that any worldview at all must account for rational thought?
If the logical absolutes are subjective and contingent upon Yahweh, how can they be absolute?
If Yahweh either exists or does not exist (atheism), and if atheism is disqualified by failing to account for rationality, does this mean Yahweh must exist by default?
If Zeus either exists or does not exist (atheism), and if atheism is disqualified by failing to account for rationality, does this mean Zeus must exist by default?
Is there any less mystery in knowing who did a thing but not how they did it than there is in just not knowing how a thing happened?
How does it follow from logic (our thought processes) being conceptual that the absolutes upon which they are founded are also conceptual?
How can a thing that transcends time answer the question "why" (what is the temporal cause) about the laws of absolutes?
When did time begin? If we can observe time and time did not begin, then how can it be said that everything we observe is dependent?
If the classical laws of logic depend upon Yahweh for their existence, then the classical laws of logic must not apply to Yahweh. If that's true, then why do apologists write books, give lectures, debate atheists or say anything other than "Yahweh is beyond comprehension"?
If Yahweh's nature is incomprehensible and Yahweh's ways are mysterious, then why bother trying to comprehend them? How can any mortal, fallible human, including the anonymous ancient book authors, purported ancient prophets and modern clergy, be trusted if he claims knowledge and comprehension of Yahweh's nature? or Yahweh's plan? or what Yahweh likes? or what Yahweh wants you to do? How can you believe in something without even comprehending what you believe in?
Are you absolutely sure that you understand Yahweh correctly and everyone else who thinks otherwise understands incorrectly? If everyone else is equally sure that they have it right, how can we determine who is right and who is wrong?
If Yahweh is incomprehensible to you and the universe existing without a god is incomprehensible to you, how do you decide which incomprehensible propositions to accept and which to reject?
Yahweh origin
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Which ancient Israelite decided to switch the Israelite religion from polytheism to monotheism? How did Yahweh, the war god, take over as top god from El, the original top god from whom Israel's name, "may El rule", derives? Why isn't Israel's name "Israweh" instead? What happened to Asherah, the fertility goddess, El's wife and Yahweh's consort or mother? How would an outsider have determined whether the followers of fertility god Baal or war god Yahweh were worshipping the correct god?
Did Yahweh really cause a chopped-up bull and altar to go up in flames for someone named Elijah 1 Kings 18:16-39? What is the evidence that this really happened?
Tropes
Atheists don't understand
Context
No atheists in foxholes
You were never a Christian
If those who say that they have left Christianity were actually never Christian in the first place, then why do you care about this happening? Why do these people matter?
You just want to sin
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Do a lot of sinners reject Yahweh just because they want to have consequence-free sex? If atheists actually believe in Yahweh (despite what they say) how would they think that rejecting Yahweh will remove final accountability?
What about ex-believers who don't go on sex binges but just stay home with their cats?
If someone believes in Yahweh but just wants to sin, wouldn't the sensible thing be to just sin and then ask for forgiveness?
If Jesus died for our sins and we don't sin, does that mean Jesus died for nothing? Should we sin more to make Jesus's death matter?
What benefit does the inclusion of negative consequences add to some types of pleasure? Who receives this benefit? Are you glad that sex has potential negative consequences or would you prefer that it did not? Are you glad that bowling does not have negative consequences or would you prefer that it did? Do you agree with Mother Teresa after losing her faith that suffering is a gift from Yahweh? Do you think that the pain of childbirth is really a punishment for original sin?
If I am fully aware that I could possibly suffer a misfortune by engaging in an activity but I decide to do it anyway and I suffer the misfortune, am I responsible for causing the misfortune? Does my culpability for the misfortune depend on how much I enjoyed the activity?
If I am fully aware that sometimes people are killed in car accidents while delivering food to homebound senior citizens but I decide to do it anyway and I am killed in a car accident, am I responsible for being killed? What if I added armor to my car, wore a helmet, and took back roads but I was still killed?
If I am fully aware that there is a possibility that a fertilized egg could implant into my uterus if I have sex but I decide to have sex anyway, am I responsible for causing the fertilization of the egg and its implanting in my uterus? What if I used condoms and took birth control pills but an egg was still fertilized and still implanted into my uterus?
If the goal is to reduce abortions, why are barriers set up to prevent women from getting tubal ligations?
Divinity
Is Jesus God?
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Is Jesus Yahweh? If Jesus is Yahweh, why did he say "My Father is greater than I." John 14:28, "My Father is greater than all." John 10:29, "...I cast out devils by the Spirit of God...." Matthew 12:28, "...I with the finger of God cast out devils..." Luke 11:20, "I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me" John 5:30, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone" Mark 10:18? If Jesus did not identify himself as Yahweh, why do you identify him as Yahweh?
If Jesus did identify himself as Yahweh John 10:30, why didn't the authors of Mark, Matthew or Luke, the oldest Gospels, mention it? Why didn't Paul mention it? If Jesus is Yahweh then to whom did he pray in the desert for forty days? Why would one member of the triune godhead (Jesus before his crucifixion) beg another member of the triune godhead (the father) to be released from doing something he really does not want to do Matthew 26:39? When criticized for claiming the Yahweh-exclusive power to forgive sins, instead of saying he was Yahweh, why did he say, "Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" Mark 2:10? If Jesus had the power to forgive sins, why did he ask the father to "forgive them for they know not what they do" Luke 23:34? If Jesus is Yahweh, why didn't he, the Son, know the day or the hour when the rapture will occur (according to the original manuscripts but not the revised versions) Matthew 24:36?
If the author of Acts believed Jesus was god why doesn't it say so in the sermon of Peter Acts 2:14-47?
Was, as his hundreds of thousands of followers think, Ethiopian emperor and founder of Rastafarianism Haile Selassie divine, even though Haile himself insisted that he was not divine in any way?
How does Jesus's divinity logically follow from his purported rising from the dead? Was Lazarus also divine?
If Jesus is Yahweh, why did John the Baptist continue doing his thing Acts 19:1-7 instead of following Jesus? How could anyone (the Mandaeans) have continued to follow John the Baptist after he declared that Jesus was the one he had been sent to reveal?
If Jesus had claimed to be Yahweh, why did the chief priest ask him if he was the Son of the Blessed instead of asking him if he was Yahweh Mark 14:61? If the chief priest was looking for a way to have Jesus executed and Jesus had claimed to be Yahweh, why wouldn't the chief priest have charged him with claiming to be Yahweh?
If Jesus was an omniscient deity, why did he think that the Exodus and its raining bread from Heaven actually happened John 6:32? Why didn't Jesus know that the fig tree did not have any figs Mark 11:13?
If you were the omniscient creator of the universe could you come up with a better way to teach people not to judge each other than an analogy about eye specks and eye planks Matthew 7:3? How can someone have a plank in his eye? How can someone see that someone else has a speck in his eye? Why would anyone judge another person for having something in his eye? Why would omniscient Jesus prescribe amputation and eye removal as corrective measures for misbehavior Mark 9:43-47?
If Jesus was the omniscient creator of the universe, why did he think the Noah story Matthew 24:36-41, the Jonah story Matthew 12:40, and the Exodus story Luke 18:20 were true when all research, evidence and logic disproves these stories?
If thinking about committing adultery is just as bad as actually committing adultery, is thinking about doing every bad thing as bad as actually doing every bad thing? If Jesus suffered temptation Hebrews 2:18 and therefore thought about doing bad things, how can he be sinless?
Must Jesus be a lunatic, a liar or the Lord? Why can't Jesus be a legend or just mistaken?
Jesus evidence
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What is the evidence that a single person named Jesus (Yeshua ben Yosef) lived in Nazareth during the early first century CE and the miraculous events of his life are accurately chronicled in the stories of the Bible?
If the evidence of Jesus's divinity were so good, why do some scholars believe fewer than 1,000 Jews converted to Christianity in the first few centuries of the Common Era? How is it possible that with only one or two exceptions, every Jewish Bible scholar who has ever lived has rejected the evidence presented to them by Christians that Jesus was the Jewish messiah or that God raised him from the dead?
What is the evidence that he performed miracles? Do you support the mainstream, independent scholarly consensus that Jesus existed? Do you support the consensus of these same scholars that Jesus was an ordinary mortal and that no prophecies were fulfilled?
What did Philo of Alexandria, Epictitus, Martial, Juvenal, Pliny the Elder, Seneca the Younger, Gallio, Justus of Tiberias, Nicholaus of Damascus, or any other non-Christian contemporary of Jesus say about him? Why didn't Origen reference Josephus's Testimonium Flavinium? Why didn't any non-Christian contemporary of Jesus report the resurrection of more people during the time of the New Testament than were said to have been resurrected in the entire Old Testament?
Why did the author of Mark name Jesus's father "Yosef" instead of "Ananias", the name of the father of the Jesus recorded by Josephus as most similar to the Jesus in the Bible?
Which Jesus
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Jesus ben Sirach. This Jesus was reputedly the author of the Book of Sirach (aka 'Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach'), part of Old Testament Apocrypha. Ben Sirach, writing in Greek about 180 BC, brought together Jewish 'wisdom' and Homeric-style heroes.
Jesus ben Pandira. A wonder-worker during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (106-79 BC), one of the most ruthless of the Maccabean kings. Imprudently, this Jesus launched into a career of end-time prophecy and agitation which upset the king. He met his own premature end-time by being hung on a tree – and on the eve of a Passover. Scholars have speculated this Jesus founded the Essene sect.
Jesus ben Ananias. Beginning in 62AD, this Jesus had caused disquiet in Jerusalem with a non-stop doom-laden mantra of 'Woe to the city'. He prophesied rather vaguely:
"A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against the whole people."
– Josephus, Wars 6.3.
Arrested and flogged by the Romans, Jesus ben Ananias was released as nothing more dangerous than a mad man. He died during the siege of Jerusalem from a rock hurled by a Roman catapult.
Jesus ben Saphat. In the insurrection of 68AD that wrought havoc in Galilee, this Jesus had led the rebels in Tiberias ("the leader of a seditious tumult of mariners and poor people" – Josephus, Life 12.66). When the city was about to fall to Vespasian's legionaries he fled north to Tarichea on the Sea of Galilee.
Jesus ben Gamala. During 68/69 AD this Jesus was a leader of the 'peace party' in the civil war wrecking Judaea. From the walls of Jerusalem he had remonstrated with the besieging Idumeans (led by 'James and John, sons of Susa'). It did him no good. When the Idumeans breached the walls he was put to death and his body thrown to the dogs and carrion birds.
Jesus ben Thebuth. A priest who, in the final capitulation of the upper city in 69AD, saved his own skin by surrendering the treasures of the Temple, which included two holy candlesticks, goblets of pure gold, sacred curtains and robes of the high priests. The booty figured prominently in the Triumph held for Vespasian and his son Titus.
Messiah rules
According to the Old Testament prophecies, the Messiah must
1) bring about world peace Isaiah 2:4,
2) bring about worldwide recognition of Yahweh Isaiah 2:1-4, Isaiah 32:15-18, Isaiah 60:15-18, Zephaniah 3:9, Hoseah 2:20-22, Amos 9:13-15, Micah 4:1-4, Zechariah 8:23, Zechariah 14:9; Jeremiah 31:33-34,
3) redeem the Jewish people spiritually and physically and return them to the nation of Israel Isaiah 43:5-6,
4) restore the temple Isaiah 2:1-4, Ezekiel 37:26-28,
5) spread universal knowledge of Yahweh as king of the world Zechariah 14:9, and
6) descend on his father's side from King David Genesis 49:10, Isaiah 11:1, Jeremiah 23:5, Jeremiah 33:17, Ezekiel 34:23-24 {mt1>16.
How can Jewish Jesus be the Messiah without doing any of these things? Where in the Old Testament does it say that the Messiah will die to atone for sin? What do you know that those who consider Hassidic Jew Menachem Mendel Schneerson to be the Messiah don't know?}
The Trinity
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Are the declarations of the Nicene Creed true? Why? Do you think that Jesus was begotten, not made? How can a thing and a thing it begets be the same thing? Are you and your parent the same thing?
How were the attendees of the First Council of Nicea selected? Why did Constantine continue to practice his pagan faith and mint his coins with Mithras (pagan sun-god), long after his alleged conversion? If, like the Robbers Council, this council had been convened on short notice, or in a place far from Athanasius and his supporters, or if Eusebius had gotten Athanasius exiled before the council instead of doing so afterwards, leading it to a different outcome, would you still consider Jesus to be of a single nature and an equal person in the godhead with Yahweh the Father and Yahweh the Holy Spirit? What evidence refutes the position of Arius that Yahweh the Son was less than Yahweh the Father because the latter begat the former? of the Docetists that Jesus was a being of pure spirit? of Nestorius that Jesus has one divine nature and a separate human nature? of the Chalcedonians that Jesus had two perfectly unified natures - one divine and one human? of the Menophysites that Jesus had only one nature that was both divine and human? If the emperor's guards had denied entry to Cyril's disguised beggar and so he did not receive the message stating Nestorius was excommunicated, would you accept Nestorius's position over Cyril's?
Is it more likely that the Trinity doctrines are actually true claims about the supernatural or that they are simply a case of history being written by the winners?
Is it more likely that the Christian doctrine of the trinity from the fourth century is an accurate characterization of Yahweh or an adoption of the convention of threes from nearly every nation of antiquity such as: Sumeria (Sky god Anu, Earth god Enlil, and water god Ea), Babylonia (three-headed god and equilateral triangle symbology), India (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva), Egypt (Amun + Re + Ptah and Isis + Osiris + Horus), Phoenicia (Ulomus, Ulosuros and Eliun), Germanic nations (Wodan, Thor and Fricco), etc?
Which Old Testament scriptures support the doctrine of the Trinity?
Was Yahweh only one person before the birth of Jesus or was it always a trinity? What use was the fully-human, fully-god person of the godhead and the animistic, dynamistic, intervening person of the godhead for the first 13.8 billion years of the material universe before human beings evolved into being and needed moral guidance and to have their hearts filled up? What were these two persons doing from the time of Adam and Eve until the birth of Jesus?
If the case for the Trinity is so strong, why is it necessary to recite a creed every week in unison pledging belief in it? Why do tyrants require their subjects to recite creeds declaring their loyalty? Would it be appropriate for your loving parents to ask you to recite a loyalty pledge to them every week? Why don't scientists recite creeds professing their belief in evolution and gravity?
Epistemology
Evidence
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What is the difference between a thing for which there is insufficient evidence and a non-existent thing?
If Christianity is based on good evidence, why would Paul consider it foolish to nonbelievers 1 Corinthians 1:18? If the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus were 'good', then why does this alleged historical event not appear in public university history textbooks as an historical fact like other events from antiquity, such as Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon, Muhammad's attack of Medina or details of the life of Joseph Smith? If the evidence is so good, why have so few Jews converted to Christianity?
Is historical evidence the primary basis for your belief in the resurrection of Jesus or are your personal perceptions of answered prayer, experiences of miracles, and an ongoing personal relationship with this individual ("the testimony of the Holy Spirit") the primary basis for your belief in the historicity of this alleged event?
Would you teach a child that alien abductions are real without first thoroughly investigating the evidence? Would you teach a child that an ancient Jew died and came back to life without first thoroughly investigating the evidence?
Are you convinced, as Hindus are, by the evidence supporting Hinduism? Do skeptics hold your miraculous claims to an unreasonable standard? To what standard do you hold the miraculous claims of Muslims that Mohammad rode on a winged horse into outer space (heaven), of Buddhists that the Buddha caused a water buffalo to speak in a human language for 30 minutes, or of Mormons that Joseph Smith was visited by an angel with golden plates?
Faith
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Is faith sufficient reason for people in other religions or just yours?
If faith can lead different people to reach different, conflicting conclusions about what is true, how can faith be a reliable method for determining what is true?
If your feeling is the proof of Jesus speaking to you, is a Hindu's identical feeling proof that Ishvara is speaking to her?
If you have a really powerful feeling that Aphrodite does not exist, is this a good indication that Aphrodite does not exist? If an atheist has a really powerful feeling that Yahweh does not exist, is this a good indication that Yahweh does not exist?
If your child believed on faith that she could fly, would you allow her to jump off a tall building? If someone believed on faith that he would be given 72 virgins as property in Heaven by flying an airplane into a building would you respect the possibility that this is true?
In determining what is true, do you value faith or reason more? If you could have either faith or evidence, which would you choose?
How can a matter be resolved between two people when their positions on an issue are based only on feelings and their feelings are different?
What does "faith transcends reason" mean? How is "transcending reason" different from "evading reason"?
What are you able to reliably predict using religious truth claims that you cannot reliably predict using science and reason?
What is the difference between faith and superstition? between a religion and a cult? between miracles Mark 1:40-45 and magic 2 Chronicles 33:6?
If faith means believing things without sufficient evidence and gullibility means believing things without sufficient evidence, what is the difference between faith and gullibility?
Do you disagree with the Bible that says faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" Hebrews 11:1? Does "faith" actually mean "commitment", and is not about belief in things on bad evidence (unseen things)? Did Jesus tell his disciples that they could literally move a mountain if they had only a tiny bit of commitment or a tiny bit of devout belief on bad evidence in supernatural mountain-moving powers Matthew 17:20?
Do you think that you could handle deadly snakes and drink poison if you have enough faith Mark 16:18?
God of the gaps
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Throughout history people have unanimously credited things to gods that were later explained by science - everyone knew that the earth was flat, that disease was caused by demons, and that thunder happened because the gods were angry. What is different about the things that you credit to Yahweh? Why has the opposite never happened - something is first given a scientific explanation that is later replaced with a supernatural explanation? Why isn't our understanding of the supernatural world any better today than it was millennia ago?
Heart belief
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What is the difference between believing something and believing it in your heart? Why do people believe things in their hearts and not their small intestines which contain more neurons than any organ other than the brain? How are you able to tell in which organ your believing is happening? Does someone need to get re-baptized after having a heart transplant?
If you were on trial for murder would you accept feelings as arguments from the prosecution or would you require evidence?
Does Jesus speak to your heart? How do you know which organ he is talking to? Do your ears hear it too? What does "Yahweh is in your heart" literally mean? How can a thing outside of space and time (a spirit) occupy a particular part of space (a human heart or body)? How can priests and holy people suffer heart attacks while Jesus is in there with his healing powers? Why do religious instructors speak in metaphors when using plain language is possible and would be clearer? If Jesus loves everyone and wants everyone to get to Heaven, why did he also want to weed out followers by speaking in parables?
Man-made Yahweh
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🗣 "Men create the gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life."
- Aristotle
🗣 "I don't believe in any gods or goddesses, because they are so obviously human inventions. Desert-dwellers have severe, austere and dry gods; suffering and oppressed people have loving and merciful gods; farmers have gods of rain and fruitfulness, and I have never met a liberal who believed in a conservative god, or a conservative who believed in a liberal one. Every god I have ever heard of bears the indelible marks of human manufacture, and through history we can explain how and why we invented them."
- Andrew Copson
🗣 "God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them."
- John Stuart Mill
🗣 "I distrust those people who know so well what god wants them to do, because I notice that it always coincides with their own desires."
- Susan B. Anthony
🗣 "And that what we call god's justice is only man's idea of what he would do if he were god."
- Elbert Hubbard
🗣 "Man created god in his image: intolerant, sexist, homophobic and violent."
- George Weinberg
🗣 "If triangles made a god, they would give him three sides."
- Montesquieu
🗣 "If horses had gods, they would look like horses."
- Xenophanes
Personal relationship
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What is the difference between resurrected Jesus and the Holy Spirit? How do you know whether you have actually accepted Jesus into your heart? How can you have an intimate personal relationship with someone who is invisible and doesn't talk? How can so many people claim to have personal relationships with Jesus but report different positions Jesus takes on issues like Hell, abortion, homosexuality, and conditions of salvation? What is the difference between the intimate personal relationship someone has with Jesus and the intimate personal relationship someone has with Lord Vishnu?
Do you expect to meet your maker one day? If you already have a personal relationship with your maker now, then what does that mean?
If someone fails to establish a personal relationship with an undetectable friend, how can you determine whether it is because they did not have sufficient faith or the friend did not exist?
Is it good parenting to demand that a child do something (have a relationship with Jesus) that they can't know how to do successfully and they can't know whether they have done successfully and comes with a penalty of eternal torture if done unsuccessfully?
Respect Beliefs
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Science
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If religious texts were all lost and teachings were forgotten would their truth claims return in a thousand years? If science books were all lost and teachings were forgotten would their truth claims return in a thousand years?
Wishful thinking
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Do you believe the report in Cassie Bernall's mother's book that Cassie professed to her killer her belief in Yahweh before being shot at Columbine High School, or the report of a student present during the event that this did not happen? Do the countless, similar alien abduction reports convince you that alien abductions are really happening?
Is your mind strong enough to guarantee that you don't fall victim to wishful thinking? Why did Albert Einstein add a corrective term to his equations making them show the universe to be static, as he strongly believed it to be, but we now know since Edwin Hubbell to be false? Is your resistance to wishful thinking stronger than that of Albert Einstein?
Why yours?
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What questions do you use to reject the claims of religions different from yours? How is this list of questions different from the atheist's list that rejects the other religions' claims and the claims of yours?
Why did Yahweh engineer the cultural isolation of the vast majority of people who are condemned to Hell for eternity for being ignorant of your sacred book?
Do you think that each religion is a different path to the same god like the different parts of the same elephant? Was this same god preached by Jesus, a celibate ascetic with a message of love for the enemy, help for the poor, pacifism and insistence on devotion to him and only him? by Mohammed, a warrior with multiple wives and concubines, wealthy from gold and other booty captured in battle, who taught "the golden rule" only as it applied to other Muslims and expressly ordered his followers to kill unbelievers? by the Buddha, a philosopher who didn't even believe in a god, taught inner peace through accepting the reality of suffering, and detachment from things and people (kind of the opposite of sacrificial love)? Why did this one god tell priests to drink wine and remain celebate, but tell imams to abstain from alcohol and have four wives?
If they are all true, how do you reconcile the different Protestant and Christian takes on interpretation of scripture, baptism, tongues, communion, eternal security, predestination, women in the church, the Rapture, the Second Coming?
The vast majority of religious adults practice the religion of their parents. Is it more likely coincidental or causal that your parents and you have the same religion?
If your parents had belonged to a different religion and you were born in a country of predominantly that religion, do you think you would be your religion or that other religion? If Osama bin Laden had had your parents instead of his parents, would it have been more likely that he be Christian?
Does it make any sense to label a child as a Keynesian or a Marxist? Does it make any sense to label a child as a Christian or Muslim?
Do you believe in the existence of the god of the Bible/Qur'an (Yahweh/Jehovah/Allah)? Why don't you believe in Thor, Ra, Vishnu, Zeus or the other 6,000 gods?
Do you think the existence of Greek gods is in a different class of ontology than the existence of your god because the former gods are described as being within the physical universe but yours is "outside" the physical universe? How did the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments come to be? What does "outside the physical universe" mean?
If people did not make up their gods, why are there multiple religions? How can the religion of Scientology exist? How is the mind of every single Scientologist who believes in a religion invented by L. Ron Hubbard distinct from the mind of every single person in your religion in its susceptibility to fraud?
If your god is eternal and omnipresent, why did your religion not arise in different places independently? Why is there no example of any religion arising independently in two different places?
Useful
Appeal to consequences
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🗣 "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."
- George Bernard Shaw
Is utility of belief a compelling argument for the existence of Yahweh? How does the existence of Yahweh logically follow from the utility of belief in the existence of Yahweh?
Do you accept that any good that may come from belief in every god other than your god is due to the placebo effect and random chance? How is the effect of belief in YOUR god different from the effect of belief in other gods?
Art
Causation
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Does belief in Yahweh make people good?
Which of these is more virtuous: helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it and will punish you for not doing it Exodus 20:20?
Most people who have done good deeds have been religious. Do you need to be religious to do good deeds? Most people who have plucked chickens have been religious. Do you need to be religious to pluck chickens?
Jains are so peaceful they won't even eat meat. They have never started a war. They have never colonized, enslaved or mass-murdered people. Why are you not a Jain?
How useful is it that millions of Muslims believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom? that the Sunni and Shia in Iraq have such heartfelt religious differences? that so many Jewish settlers believe that the creator of the universe promised them a patch of desert on the Mediterranean? that Christians have agonized over human sexuality for centuries? How useful is it for billions of moderate religious people to live in fear of eternal torture?
How beneficial to society have been religion's use of torture, murder, burning at the stake, life imprisonment, stoning, banishment, destruction of books, slander, libel, and every form of destruction and suppression that it could devise to hinder human happiness?
Does lack of belief in Yahweh cause human suffering? Why are atheists so under-represented in prisons and divorce courts? Why do bonobos, babies and illiterate Sentinelese tribesmen act kindly without having read the Bible? Why isn't rape and murder rampant in the more secular countries?
Can you name an instance of suffering that was caused by excessive rational thought, skepticism or rejection of claims found to be unsupported by evidence? Can you name an instance of suffering that was caused by strict observance of ancient religious teachings? Can you name a society that embraced the teachings of rational non-believers and fell into a state of tyranny and suffering? Can you name one that did so while guided by belief in the supernatural?
Without the Bible's foundational threat of eternal burning in a lake of fire Mark 9:43, Matthew 13:50, Matthew 18:8, Matthew 25:46, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 14:10, Revelation 21:8, how would you treat people differently? Would you be unable to treat others with kindness? How can some people be good without knowing about Heaven and Hell? Without belief in Yahweh and afterlife carrots and sticks would you be unable to live a fulfilling life? How can some people be able to have fulfilling lives without knowing about Heaven and Hell?
Without someone's interpretation of an ancient sacred book written at a time when few children lived to be ten years old, what would motivate a parent to deny her children the medical care recommended by a consensus of experts in the fields related to raising children?
Charity
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Why does the Church accept donations from poor people who cannot afford to give anything? Do you think it's good for poor people to give away to the rich church what little they have Luke 21:1-4? If Cracker Barrel can allow overnight parking, why don't churches? Instead of requiring almsgiving, why doesn't Yahweh just inspire the winning Lottery numbers into the pastors' thoughts?
Do churchgoing Christians spend more time and money on church attendance or helping the needy? Which is more important to Yahweh: stained glass church windows or well-fed veterans with safe places to sleep? How much of the money collected at church makes it to god and how much is used by the church?
Have you given up everything Luke 14:33? Do you make earning money a low priority Matthew 6:24? Have you sold all of your possessions and given the money to the poor Matthew 19:21? Do you deny yourself Luke 9:23-25? Do you live in a commune Acts 2:44-45?
Do you think that multi-millionaire Joel Osteen and all other clergy should continue to be allowed to deduct their housing expenses on their tax returns? Should fire fighters, police officers, social workers, teachers, nurses, and daycare workers be allowed to deduct their housing expenses on their tax returns? Is it fair that all secular nonprofits in the US have to report income and expenses to the IRS but churches don't have to?
Correlation
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Which countries have the highest percentage of believers? Which countries have the weakest economies and poorest health?
Which countries have the lowest percentage of believers? Which countries contribute the highest percentage of their wealth to social welfare and foreign aid, and have the lowest CEO-employee pay disparities?
How many hate groups recognized by the Southern Poverty Law Center openly identify as Christian? How many identify as atheist?
Death
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Do you think that belief in Yahweh is necessary to relieve a fear of death?
Without having been taught about Hell, why would you fear death? Why don't you fear monsters under your bed? What is the evidence for Hell? What is the evidence for monsters under your bed?
Will you be scared while not experiencing things after you die? Were you scared while not experiencing things before you were born? What is the difference from your perspective between things that will happen after you die and things that happened before you were born?
What unpleasant experience is there to fear in a condition when you don't exist to experience anything?
Decline of Religion
Between 2009 and 2019, Christianity lost 11 million members in the US alone, dropping from 77% of the adult population to just 65%. During the same 2009 to 2019 period, nones grew by 29 million people, going from 17% of the US adult population to 26%. That's an increase of almost THREE MILLION nonbelievers per year.
Grift
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Why don't the camerapersons ever get the holy ghost during a service? Why does the Holy Ghost take people over in church but not in line at Walmart?
Hope
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How hopeful is a belief system anchored in the idea that most people will be tormented for eternity?
If Christianity is necessary for feeling hopeful, how do you explain the fact that people are hopeful without being Christian?
Justification
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How could someone justify slavery if their morality were based on the principle of consent? How could they do it if their morality were based on a book containing a curse by Yahweh's chosen one of an entire lineage to a life of servitude Genesis 9:25?
How could someone justify persecuting mixed-race marriage with a moral code based on consent? How could they do it with a moral code based on a book containing a command not to intermarry Deuteronomy 7:3 and a story of someone skewering with a spear a loving, mixed-race couple and then being rewarded by Yahweh Numbers 25:8?
How could someone justify the punishment of a descendant for the actions of his ancestor if his principles of justice are based on personal accountability? How can someone do this if his principles of justice are based on an ancient book containing multiple instances of heritable covenants and curses?
How could someone justify misogyny if their morality were based on the principle of equality? How could they do it if their morality were based on a book that says that Yahweh curses women to be ruled over by men Genesis 3:16 and that Yahweh made the first woman as an afterthought companion to man Genesis 2:20-21?
What vile or cruel act could only a man of faith justify by pointing to some line of scripture as his motivation for doing it which a faithless man could not? What demonstrably kind or worthwhile act could only a man of faith perform which a faithless man could not perform too?
Pascal's wager
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Do you think that it is better to believe in a god and be wrong than to not believe in a god and be wrong?
If Satan is powerful enough to trick humanity then Satan could have tricked you to believe what you believe. How do you know that this isn't the case?
How do you know which of the thousands of proposed gods to believe in? Do you fear the wrath of Yahweh? Do you fear the wrath of Zeus? Do you think that belief is an act of will? How can you make yourself believe in anything without satisfactory evidence? Can you believe in Zeus? If you pretend to believe in Yahweh would Yahweh know you're just pretending? If you worship the wrong god, does the right god get mad every time you pray?
How do you know that the real god doesn't want Heaven to be populated only with atheists who only believe things with evidence and that the real god doesn't annihilate all sycophants and yes men?
In what matters other than religion do you employ Pascal's Wager reasoning? Do you believe in the tooth fairy just in case? If someone said that the tooth fairy would torture you as punishment for non-belief, would you begin believing? If you give me $100 you'll be happy forever, otherwise you'll suffer forever. Is it better to believe me and be wrong than to not believe me and be wrong?
How is the concept of a dichotomy of eternal joy and suffering coherent? Could you be eternally joyful while a loved one is suffering eternally?
Is it harmless to believe things on bad evidence? Is it harmless for people of a belief different from yours to believe what they believe on bad evidence, organize their entire lives around this wrong belief, shun children because of this belief, spend money to support the operation of the religion behind this belief and forego opportunities because of this belief? Would such a person consider it harmless for you to do these things regarding your belief?
Is it harmless to society for its smartest citizens to spend their time studying the Qur'an instead of doing research into vaccines?
Is it harmless to a society for its members to support a system of moral accountability whereby offenses can be brushed off by clerical fiat, and environmental stewardship is unnecessary because the end is near?
Is it harmless to have a belief in an afterlife that diminishes the importance of this real life?
Is it harmless to legitimize an apocalyptic book that orients billions of people to neglect or actively oppose stewardship of the planet and society?
Is it harmless to give your money to psychics? How would the belief in supernatural religious ideas affect a person's vulnerability to psychics?
Is it helpful for you to maintain a high standard by which to discern truth from nontruth? Is anything lost by lowering this standard?
Would the utility of believing that you are destined to marry Angelina Jolie make it a good idea to believe that you are destined to marry Angelina Jolie? How could doing so impact a person's relationships with people?
Why do parents eventually tell children that Santa Claus is not real?
Was it harmless for the 9/11 hijackers to believe that they would be rewarded in Heaven if they flew airplanes into the World Trade Center?
Can you name anything that poses a greater threat to a rational, evidence-based worldview than a worldview that encourages accepting claims without good evidence?
Prosperity
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Revelation
Absurdity
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The bible says:
* to not shave, Leviticus 19:27
* to not eat shellfish, Leviticus 11:9-12
* to not eat pork, Leviticus 11:6
* to not eat rabbit, Leviticus 11:7
* to not eat meat with the blood still in it, Leviticus 19:26
* to not wear two different types of fabrics, Leviticus 19:19
* that women should cover their heads when they pray, 1 Corinthians 11:5-6
* a woman is twice as unclean if she gives birth to a girl, Leviticus 12:1-5
* women should shut up and never try to teach a man, 1 Timothy 2:11-15
* zombie saint rose from the dead Matthew 27:52
* you can kill your children with stones if they're disobedient, Deuteronomy 21:18-21
* to not touch a woman on her period, Leviticus 15:19
* if you have sex with a woman on her period, you're both ostracised, Leviticus 20:18
* if you think your wife isn't a virgin when you marry her and she is, you're fined, if she isn't then kill her, Deuteronomy 22:13-21
* women shouldn't wear jewelry, just be nice, 1 Timothy 2:9-10
* a woman should have an abortion if she has cheated, Numbers 5:11-31
* that god performs abortion, Hoseah 13:16
* that tattoos are an abomination, Leviticus 19:28
* to mutilate yourself if you look at a woman, Matthew 5:28-30
* to cut your balls off if you can do it Matthew 19:12
* Yahweh sent a bear to maul 42 boys for mocking a bald man, 2 Kings 2:23-24
* Yahweh made the disabled, but doesn't like them, Exodus 4:11, Leviticus 21:17-23
* if you have a damaged penis, you're not allowed in church, Deuteronomy 23:1
* to not go to psychics, Leviticus 19:31
* to not work on Saturday/Sunday, Exodus 35:2
* to be put to death if you hit your mother or father, Exodus 21:15
* that if a child is born out of wedlock then the next ten generations aren't allowed in church,Deuteronomy 23:2
* giants exist, Genesis 6:4
* unicorns exist, Job 39:9-12
* bats are birds, Leviticus 11:13-19
* zebras got their stripes by breeding in front of sticks, Genesis 30:37-39
* you have to eat your children if you sin,Leviticus 26:27-30
* who and how to enslave, Exodus 21:2-11, Leviticus 25:44-46
* the rich can't get in to heaven, Matthew 19:24
* Jesus didn't come to earth to be nice and doesn't like your family, Matthew 10:34-36
* you can cure leprosy with magic, Leviticus 14:49-57
* that there is a seven headed red dragon wearing crowns, Revelation 12:3
* a man gave his 2 daughters away to be gang raped to stop 2 men being raped, Genesis 19:1-8
* a righteous man had sex with his two daughters, Genesis 19:30-38
* a woman was thrown out of her lover's house to be gang raped then she was cut up by her lover who sent parts of her all over the country, Judges 19:22-29
* King Saul Gave his daughter away for marriage in exchange for 100 foreskins1 Samuel 18:25-27
* Yahweh told a guy to tie himself up, draw a picture on a brick, and cook over a fire of human dung but switch to cow dung because he hadn't eaten anything that died of natural causes Ezekiel 4:1-15
* Yahweh decided not to kill Moses because Moses's wife cut off their son's foreskin and rubbed it on Moses's feet
Contradictions
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If Yahweh is not the author of confusion 1 Corinthians 14:33 and the Bible is the inerrant word of Yahweh 2 Peter 1:19-21, 2 Timothy 3:16 and if oral tradition was so high-fidelity in ancient times, why are there so many contradictions?
Which version of the Bible is inerrant?
Is there life after death John 5:25, or not Job 7:9?
Did Jesus descend from David through Joseph Matthew 1:1, or was he born of a virgin mother Matthew 1:18?
Was Joseph's father Jacom Matthew 1:2 or Heli Luke 3:23?
Can you see Yahweh's face Genesis 32:30, or not Exodus 33:20?
Are Jesus and Yahweh one and the same John 10:30-38, or does Yahweh, but not Jesus, know when the world will end Matthew 24:36?
Was Abiathar Mark 2:26 or Ahimelech 1 Samuel 21 the high priest when David and his men ate the showbread from the tabernacle in Nob?
Did Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt Matthew 2:1-23, or return to Nazareth Luke 2:1-40?
Did Jesus die the day before the Passover John 19:31 or the day after the Passover Mark 14:12?
Was Mary Magdalene informed of the resurrection by an angel Matthew 28:5 or by Jesus John 20:14?
Did Satan incite David to conduct a census 1 Chronicles 21:1, or did Yahweh 2 Samuel 24:1?
Was Jehoiachin eighteen 2 Kings 24:8 or eight 2 Chronicles 36:9 when he became king?
Was Ahaziah twenty-two 2 Kings 8:26 or forty-two 2 Chronicles 22:2 when he began to reign?
Did Jesus clear the temple at the beginning John 2:13-22 or the end Mark 15:11-19 of his ministry?
Did Paul's companions hear the voice Acts 9:7 during Paul's conversion experience or not Acts 22:9?
Can witnesses be convinced by a risen Lazarus John 11:38-44, or not Luke 16:19-31?
Did Gyrus's daughter die before Matthew 9:18 or after Mark 5:23 Gyrus asked Jesus for help?
Was the paralytic man in a house with a roof of mud and branches Mark 2:4, or tile Luke 5:19?
Did Judas hang himself Matthew 27:5, or did his intestines explode Acts 1:18?
Did Judas give the money back Matthew 27:3, or did he buy a field Acts 1:18?
Is it forbidden to drink blood Leviticus 17:14, or mandated John 6:53?
On the day he died was Jesus in Paradise Luke 23:43 or Hell Matthew 12:40?
Was Jesus in Hell for 3 nights Matthew 12:40, or 2 nights Matthew 27:45-50, Matthew 28:1?
Was the stone rolled away before John 20:1 or after Matthew 28:1-2 the women arrived at the tomb?
Did the sun rise before Mark 16:2 or after John 20:1 the women arrived at the tomb?
Did Nicodemus provide the spices John 19:39, or did the women Mark 16:1, Luke 23:56?
Did Jesus appear to eleven disciples 1 Corinthians 15:5 Latin Vulgate, or twelve disciples 1 Corinthians 15:5 English NRSV?
Was Jesus taken up to Heaven on the day he met the disciples Luke 24:51, or did he spend 40 days with the disciples, and then go to Heaven Acts 1:3-10?
Did Jesus tell the disciples to bring a staff Mark 6:8, or not bring a staff Luke 9:3?
Did Jesus come for the Gentiles too Romans 15:16, or just the Jews Matthew 10:5-6, Matthew 15:24-26?
Do you get into Heaven based on your deeds Matthew 16:27, James 2:17, or your blind faith Ephesians 2:8, Galatians 2:16?
Is everyone who calls on the lord saved Acts 2:21 or not Matthew 7:21?
Do you consider the contradictions in holy books of other religions to be good arguments against their claims of divine authority? For example, in Surah 1:1 of the Qur'an, Allah is called most merciful. In Surah 24:2 Allah says to not let pity keep you from whipping people. Do you find this contradiction a good argument against the divine inerrancy of the Qur'an?
If the original manuscripts of the Bible were accurate but errors crept into copies, why did Yahweh let that happen?
Delivery fail
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Why didn't Jesus himself just keep a journal that clearly condemned ethnic cleansing, slavery, and using torture to extract heresy confessions, and then put it somewhere that he knew it would be found and intact? If you were an omniscient deity with a message to spread to the world and you were incarnate at a time after the establishment of written language, would you let decades pass before your message was written down? Would you inscribe it onto fragile rolls of leather indiscernible from those of all other mythologies and leave its compilation into a single volume up to the fallible forces of human argumentation?
Why would a god that insists that the only route to eternal salvation is through it only reveal itself to a small group of people in one geographical area, at a time when worldwide communication wasn't possible, meaning that millions of people all over the world were doomed to Hell through no fault of their own? Why would Yahweh choose to reveal itself, not in literate, civilized China where people could have an intellectual evaluation of the evidence, but to the most illiterate, superstitious desert people in the Middle East? Why would Yahweh wait for 100,000 to 250,000 years of human history to reveal itself but not wait another 2,000 years for the invention of paternity tests and video and audio recording devices?
Embarrassing and novel
Does the inclusion of embarrassing stories in the Bible mean that it is true? Is the inclusion of the embarrassing castration of Attis in stories about him proof that this god is real and those stories are true?
How do we know whether something that is embarrassing today was embarrassing two thousand years ago?
Does the inclusion of some novel components of the Biblical stories prove that they are true? Do the novel ideas of magic underwear and golden tablets prove that Mormonism is true?
Interpretation
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Does your holy book need to be interpreted? Is there a divine interpreter? Who is that person? Is there a divine interpreter identifier? Who is that person? Is there a divine interpreter identifier identifier? Who is that person? Is there a divine interpreter identifier identifier identifier? Who is that person?
How do you know which parts of your holy book are to be taken literally and which are symbolic or that any of it is symbolic? How is it okay to interpret scripture when "no prophecy of the Bible is of any private interpretation" 2 Peter 1:20? How can one of many conflicting, subjective, symbolic interpretations of something count as proof of anything at all?
If newspaper writers use third-grade level words to ensure that most readers can understand their meanings, why would Yahweh inspire a book to be written in a way that can only be properly understood with the help of many other books, functional literacy in Greek, years of theological training and guidance from the distinct religious apologists each person happens to encounter? If Jesus loves everyone and wants everyone to get to Heaven, why did he also want to weed out followers by speaking in parables?
What was the intent of the author of the two Genesis Creation stories? Did the author believe that what he was writing was historical fact or was he writing an allegory? Did the author of the story of Joshua and the sun standing still really believe that the sun stood still or was he writing an allegory?
If oral tradition was so high fidelity in ancient times, why didn't Yahweh just include the unambiguous details of foretold events instead of using vague language of a short-lived literary genre that could be interpreted many different ways?
Was the Bible interpreted metaphorically before the rise of literal Fundamentalism in the 20th Century? Did Christians prior to that time interpret the resurrection, virgin birth, walking on water, and water-to-wine transformation stories metaphorically too? Why did Jesus think that the Jonah story was a true historical account Matthew 12:40?
If scriptures are definitively interpretable by modern-day clergy who communicate their accurate interpretations to their followers, why didn't Yahweh's authors just write these unambiguous interpretations into their books instead of riddles that needed interpretation? Does Yahweh like poetic manners of expression and sectarian violence more than clear understanding and peace? When two apologists disagree, which one is right? How do I know whether or not I am reading the Bible with the guidance of the Holy Spirit?
If presented with DNA-quality evidence that refuted a belief would you abandon the belief? Were Mormons justified in rejecting the DNA evidence that refutes their belief that Native Americans descended from sea-faring Jews?
Is there anything a book could claim that Yahweh did that seemed on face value so cruel or illogical or immoral that you would not be able to excuse it and rationalize it?
Nothing new
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Does the Bible contain a single sentence that could not have been written by ancient humans without supernatural help? If the Bible is the inspired word of an all-knowing god, why is there nothing mentioned about electricity, or places beyond the Middle East or germ theory or flush toilets or mosquito repellent or anything that we now know to be true thanks to our modern capabilities but would have been impossible for primitive people in the Middle East to know without modern scientific methods or insight from an all-knowing god who doesn't want people to suffer?
To the contrary, why does the Bible make claims, such as: leprosy can live on walls Leviticus 14:37 and be cured with a ritual of blood and birds Leviticus 14:1-20, seeds die before becoming plants 1 Corinthians 15:36, the world is flat Matthew 4:8 and is covered by a big metal colander Genesis 1:6-8 and was created before the Sun Genesis 1:1-16, and does not move Psalms 104:5, plants also came before the Sun Genesis 1:1-16, bats are birds Leviticus 11:13-19, insects have four legs Leviticus 11:20-23, stripes and spots on lambs depend on which sticks their parents saw while breeding Genesis 30:37, rabbits chew the cud Leviticus 11:6, men lactate Job 21:24, mustard seeds are the smallest Matthew 13:32, ants are fully autonomous Proverbs 6:6-8, the value of Pi is 3.0 2 Chronicles 4:2-5, menstruation is unclean and the uncleanliness is contagious Leviticus 15:19, demons and sin cause illness Matthew 12:22-32, Mark 7:24-30, Luke 13:10-13, John 5:1-16, Mark 2:1-12, John 9:1-7 prayer and oil are good cures for illness James 5:14-15, looking at a brass snake on a pole is a good cure for snakebite Numbers 21:9, stars are smaller than the Earth Revelation 6:13, Revelation 8:10, and Earth is a quadrilateral Revelation 7:1 that we now know are not true but were believed in ancient times?
Why did Jesus defend his disciples' failure to wash hands before eating when he had the opportunity to teach the world about germs and save millions of lives Mark 7:15?
Prophecy
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If the future is knowable, how can free will exist? If Yahweh exists and the future is knowable, how can Yahweh have free will?
If fulfilled prophecy is such bulletproof evidence, why do the top apologists use anything other than that to make their case in debates?
Did Isaiah prophesy the virgin birth of Jesus Isaiah 7:14? How could Yahweh deliver Ahaz and his people into the hands of the Arameans 2 Chronicles 28:5 if it had promised to protect them and even give a sign for verification? Why, in 700 BCE, would Yahweh promise to deliver Jerusalem to Ahaz through the birth of a messiah that he would give as a sign to Ahaz 700 years later, long after he was dead and could therefore not receive signs Isaiah 7:1-16? Is it perfectly common for virgins to have babies by first having sex and then getting pregnant? Where does it say that the virgin to bear the child will do so while remaining a virgin? How could Yahweh deliver Ahaz and his people into the hands of the Arameans 2 Chronicles 28:5 if it had promised to protect them and even gave a sign for verificationIf you can't tell by looking at her whether a mother is a virgin, how can virgin birth be a sign? Is it more likely that the prophesied child was that of Isaiah in the very next chapter or Jesus 700 years later? Was the child of Isaiah the product of a virgin birth? If Jesus fulfilled the prophecy, why was his name Jesus (Greek), or Yeshua (Hebrew), and not Immanuel?
The word "bethulah" is used to refer to a married woman in Joel 1:8; Es 2:17,19; Deu 22:19. Why do Christians read the word "bethulah" as virgin in Isaiah 7:14, and not as honorable young woman who remained a virgin until marriage? What do Christians know that Jews don't know?
Why did Antiochus die in Persia 2 Maccabees 9:5-9 instead of a location between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean Sea as Daniel predicted Daniel 11:45?
How can the report of a prophecy fulfillment be trusted if the reporter of the fulfillment was aware of the prophecy at the time he reported its fulfillment? If something happens after it was predicted, how do you know that it wasn't caused by someone who was just trying to make the prophecy come true?
Does the greater number of connections people find in the Qur'an compared to the Bible convince you that the Qur'an contains true prophecies?
Why is the author of the Gospel of John the only gospel author to mention that Jesus predicted in front of non-believers in the Temple that after the "temple" is destroyed (mentioned in all four Gospels) he would raise it up in three days?
If Isaiah said that Babylon would never be re-inhabited, how is it that Iraq, present-day Babylon, has since been inhabited Isaiah 13:20?
Do you think the suffering servant Isaiah 53 was a literal reference to a prophesied messiah or a metaphor for Israel? Do you think the barren woman Isaiah 54 was a literal reference to an actual person or a metaphor for Israel? Why did Yahweh encrypt this Jesus prophecy so cleverly that Jews interpreted it as a metaphor?
Reliability
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If many scholars (some would say a very large majority of them if one excludes evangelicals) believe that the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses or the associates of eyewitnesses, can you admit that it is possible and plausible that the Gospels are not historically reliable accounts?
Would you take a drug if a drug maker said that it works or would you need some other evidence that it works?
How can a claim be called revelation in any transmission after its first statement? What is the difference between hearsay and revelation?
With there being so many diverse, incompatible metaphysical claims today, how can you be sure about any single ancient metaphysical claim?
Why did Jesus say that Zechariah, son of Berechiah was killed at the temple Matthew 23:35, when it was Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada who was killed at the temple 2 Chronicles 24:20-22?
Was oral tradition super high-fidelity in ancient Mediterranean cultures? Was it also high-fidelity for the Catholics in the same cultures who told silly, superstitious legends?
How could Abraham, in the early 2nd millennium BCE, have come from Ur, the land of the Chaldeans, if Chaldea did not exist until the 9th century BCE Genesis 11:28?
How could Daniel have lived during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius, and Cyrus over a period of more than a century?
How could two bears kill 42 boys 2 Kings 2:24? Wouldn't they all scatter as soon as bears showed up?Who witnessed and recorded the private conversation in Job between Yahweh and Satan, or the private conversation between Pilate and Jesus in which Jesus said that his kingdom was not of this world John 18:36, or that of an angel and Zechariah or Elizabeth with herself Luke 1:24-25?
How could the exchange have happened between Jesus and Nicodemus over the ambiguous idea of being "born again" John 3:3-8 when the dual-meaning Greek word "anothen" cannot be retroverted into Aramaic with the same confusing double-entendre?
How could there have been domesticated camels in the Old Testament stories when camels were not domesticated until the late second and early first millenia BCE Genesis 37:25?
If Peter had heard Jesus say to evangelize to "all" nations, why didn't he just say so instead of talking about a dream to justify preaching to gentiles Acts 11:5?
If Paul had stayed for two weeks with Peter and James Galatians 1:18-19, then why in his letter to the Corinthians did he say that he heard the Last Supper story via revelation from Jesus and not from Peter and James 1 Corinthians 11:23? With this story having been "revealed" rather than reported to Paul, how reliable can its retelling in the Gospels be twenty or more years later? Why doesn't paul quote Jesus more?
Do you think that the adulteress story, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her", was part of the original Bible John 8:1-11? Why doesn't this story appear in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of John or in any of the other Gospels? Why isn't there any mention of this story in commentaries by Greek commentators until the tenth century?
Do you think the Sermon on the Mount was scribed verbatim decades after the event by someone who wasn't there? Do you think that anyone could in 2018 without any notes, records or personal memory of the event accurately write down Gerald Ford's first State of the Union address?
Is it more likely that the creator of the universe took the time to immortalize in the most important book of all time how annoying a nagging wife is, or that this was written by an annoyed husband without any divine inspiration Proverbs 21:19, Proverbs 25:24? Is it more likely that humans invented swords in the Bronze Age and included their invention in their creation myth or that Yahweh created the first sword at the beginning of time Genesis 3:24?
The Bible says that if two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to the defense of her husband, and she reaches out and seizes his foe by the private parts her hand should be cut off Deuteronomy 25:11? How common is such an occurrence? Why did Yahweh put such an obscure statute in the most important book of all time?
Is "Luke's" claim that 3,000 Jews converted to Christianity on Pentecost in Jerusalem historically reliable? If so, why in 50 CE were there only 5,000 Christians worldwide? If both are true, that means that Christianity increased by 3,000 people in 40 days after Jesus' death, but then by only 2,000 in the next 20 years. Why the big slow down? Is this story realistic or was someone inflating his numbers? If so, what else did he inflate?
Is "Matthew's" story of an earthquake shaking people out of their graves to roam the streets of a major city historically reliable? If so, why do most scholars including some very conservative evangelical scholars doubt this event occurred?
Why do the overwhelming majority of scholars think that "Matthew's" story of Roman guards at the tomb is not historically reliable?
Is "Matthew's" story of the calling of the apostle Matthew historically reliable? Why do most scholars, including conservative evangelical scholar Richard Bauckham, believe that "Matthew" invented this story?
How is it that a first century tax collector, the close associate of a fisherman, a physician, another fisherman, and one vision-prone rabbi understood the Jewish Scriptures better than all the Jewish rabbis, scholars, and sages combined?
Why did the authors of the earlier gospels leave out the extraordinary Lazarus story or the Sermon on the Mount contained in the later Gospel of John?
Do you think that the Romans just stood by as thousands of Jews greeted Jesus on Palm Sunday as the new Jewish king?
Is it more likely that the creator of the universe with its billions and billions of planets had one and only one offspring and it took the form of a verbal primate evolved for fitness to the conditions on this particular planet, Earth, or that this is a fictional story conceived by an Earthling-supremacist, primitive human?
Satan wrote it
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If the fallibility of lowly but devout human scribes could produce inaccuracies in the Bible Jeremiah 8:8, why trust that powerful and motivated Satan did not likewise doctor it all up? How do you know that the Bible was not actually written by Satan who is supposedly evil and would want the world to be in a constant state of holy and sectarian war, exactly as it has been since the invention of religion?
Scripture
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If the Bible is the actual word of the creator of the universe, why do fewer than a third of self-identified American Christians read it?
What does "the Bible was inspired" literally mean? What makes you think the Gospel of Mark is the inspired Word of Yahweh? What makes you think the Gospel of Peter, Epistle of Barnabas, and Infancy Gospel of Thomas are not the inspired Word of Yahweh? Why was the Shepherd of Hermas once but no longer part of the canon? After eighteen months in isolation, Isaac Newton introduced Calculus, the laws of motion and the field of optics to the world, arguably the most awe-inspiring display of human intelligence in the history of human intelligence. Why doesn't anyone think that these discoveries were inspired by Yahweh?
If a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit and all people are corrupt sinners and all scripture was written by people, then how can scripture be good fruit Matthew 7:18?
Why do you reject Joseph Smith's uncorroborated claim of seeing the angel Moroni, but accept a similar uncorroborated claim by a different man, St. Paul, living 2,000 years ago? How did the relatively unknown 2 Peter make it into the canon, but the better known and revered Apocalypse of Peter didn't?
How did the Church forefathers decide which books to include in the Bible? Do you think that there being four corners of the Earth is a good reason, as given by Irenaeus of Lyons, for having four Gospels? If the Synod of Hippo had happened in 75 CE instead of 393 CE would Matthew, Luke and John have been added to the Bible later at the times they were written? What happened around 150 CE to make Yahweh stop inspiring men to write its word anymore? Why should we trust the judgment of the Early Church Fathers regarding the inspiration of the books of the New Testament when these same early Church Fathers were wrong about the divine inspiration of books in the Old Testament?
Why are there so many differences in the basic composition of Yahweh's pre-Common-Era books - the Protestant Bible (39 book Old Testament), the Hebrew Bible (24 books), the Catholic Bible (46 book Old Testament), Eastern Orthodox Bible (51 book Old Testament)?
If the books of the Pentateuch are 1) regarded among learned theologians as not literally true, and 2) serve when read literally as the justification for countless horrible atrocities, why has the Church not removed them from the officially accepted translations or at least labeled them clearly as fiction? Why are entire Bibles not color-coded according to which words are, per official decision, to be read literally and which symbolically?
Why are the last two verses of 2 Chronicles repeated in the book of Ezra?
Why didn't Christians accept the four canonical Gospels as orthodox scripture until around 180 CE? What did people in 180 CE know that people in 80 CE did not know?
If Yahweh is eternal, words have multiple and constantly changing meanings and scriptures are translated between languages, how can the Word of Yahweh exist in the form of human language?
Yahweh talks
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Do you think that Yahweh actually talks to people and spoke to the characters in ancient, anonymous books that say so without any supporting evidence?
If you could only ask Yahweh one question when you die and go to Heaven, what would it be? If you communicate with Yahweh now, why haven't you asked it?
Do you think that Yahweh actually wrote ten rules onto stones and gave them to someone named Moses who lived thousands of years ago? Do you think that Yahweh actually told George W. Bush to invade Iraq as he claims? told George W. Bush, Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee, Herman Cain, Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, Ben Carson, and Rick Perry to run for president as they claimed? speaks regularly to televangelist Pat Robertson and televangelist convicted of felony fraud Jim Bakker as they often claim? told Pastor Paula White to show Trump who Yahweh is as she claimed? told former South Carolina Republican Party leader Todd KinCannon to strangle, stab to death and mutilate his mother's beagle as he claimed? told Republican state rep Mark Stansel to beat students in his class as he reported to police? told Pope Pius XII that Jesus's mother ascended into Heaven? told the wife of Hobby Lobby founder David Green to leave the stores open amid the Coronavirus outbreak? Do you think that Yahweh actually told Florida Republican state Senator Mike Hill that he needed to remove the exceptions for rape and incest in his abortion ban bill as he claimed? Do you think God commanded Dena Schlosser to remove her daughter's arms and then her own? Did Yahweh tell the pope that we shouldn't eat meat on Fridays? Did Yahweh tell the pope that it's okay to eat meat on Fridays?
Do you think that Yahweh actually told Balaam to not go with the princes of Moab Numbers 22:12? Do you think that Yahweh actually told Balaam to go with the princes of Moab Numbers 22:20?
Do you think that dead Jesus actually spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus? If Paul had actually spoken to Jesus why did he erroneously tell people that Jesus was returning so soon that they should purify themselves by not having sex anymore, an instruction that would cause the end of Christianity if followed 1 Corinthians 7:29?
If someone you personally knew told you that the voice of Yahweh told him to kill and burn his own son, would you believe him? Would you believe this claim more if you instead read it about someone you didn't know in an ancient book of unknown origin?
If someone confesses to murder but says Yahweh told him to do it, should he be acquitted?
Do you think that the creator of the universe actually told Ezekiel to lie for 430 days tied up in rope on his side in front of an iron pan in front of a brick with a drawing of Jerusalem on it, lay siege to the Jerusalem drawing, cook barley cake over a fire of human dung, and switch to cow dung because he had never eaten something that had died of natural causes or was killed by another animal Ezekiel 4:1-15?
Do you think that the creator of the universe actually told someone named Moses that after a man is cured of a skin disease, a priest must kill a bird over a clay pot of water and then dip into the water a live bird, some cedar wood, some scarlet yarn and some hyssop herbs, and then sprinkle the man with these things, and then slaughter some animals and put the blood on the man's right earlobe, right thumb and right big toe, and then sprinkle olive oil seven times and then put it on the man's right earlobe, right thumb and right big toe Leviticus 14:1-20? What should be done if the man with the skin disease is missing his thumb or ear lobe? Could a wooden bowl be used instead of a clay pot? If you are out of hyssop, can you use spearmint instead?
If Yahweh contacts me, what method should I use to be sure it's not the devil tricking me?
Legend
Antisemitism
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If Yahweh ordered that the decisions of the Levitical priests be abided by, and the priests sentenced Jesus to death then why did the Catholic Church charge Jews with deicide until 1964?
Should we condemn the children of people who laughed at David Koresh's claims of prophetic powers?
If the critical part was his rising from the dead, why couldn't Jesus have been killed by a lone maniac instead of being crucified in a manner that demonized all Jews and provided justification for the Holocaust?
If everything happens according to Yahweh's plan, and if Yahweh could only forgive our sins by dying on the cross, shouldn't Christians be grateful to Jews for having brought this about?
Crucifixion
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Were Jesus's last words "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" Luke 23:46, "My god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me?" Matthew 27:46, or "It is finished" John 19:30?
Was someone who just happened to have the name Barabbas, meaning "son of the father", really set to be crucified next to Jesus or is it more likely that this was just allegory for the Yom Kippur ritual where one scapegoat carried sins into the wilderness and another was a perfect sacrifice?
Was Jesus crucified on a cross Matthew 27:40 or hanged from a tree Acts 5:30, Acts 10:39, Acts 13:29, 1 Peter 2:24?
If Jesus was fulfilling his destiny, why would he ask his father to forgive the ones who brought it about?
How could Pontius Pilate, with his overwhelming military might, give in to the requests of an unarmed group of civilians and release Barabbas when acting with such acquiescence would have been grounds for his own execution, and when apart from the Gospels there is no record of Paschal pardons even happening? Why would Pilate do what the high priests asked and order his guards to watch the tomb?
Did Jesus really say, "My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?" (Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?) Mark 15:34, Matthew 27:46? Why wouldn't the authors of Luke and John record these last words of Jesus? If the Gospel of Mark had been written by John Mark, carefully recording the memoirs of the Apostle Peter, how is it possible that Aramaic-speaking Peter could come up with a story about fellow Aramaic-speaking Jews confusing "Eloi" with "Elijah" ("Elias" in Greek) while standing at the cross and report that those present thought Jesus was calling out for Elijah?
Rather than maximizing deterrence through gore and humiliation as usual by letting the body rot on the cross and then casting it into a common grave, why would the Romans grant a proper Jewish burial to someone they executed for the serious, seditious crime of claiming to be a king in a Roman controlled land?
How was it possible for a solar eclipse to take place during the period of the full moon of Passover?
Did the tombs of the saints really open on Friday when Jesus died, and that the resurrected saints waited around, reanimated, in their tombs until the resurrection on Sunday when they finally got up and walked into town to appear to many people Matthew 27:52-52? Did the saints die again after a while? Why wasn't this extraordinary occurrence reported in any of the other gospels or any non-biblical records?
Why would Joseph of Arimathea render himself doubly unclean before Passover by having contact with a Gentile (Pilate) and a corpse? Why would Joseph of Arimathea, supposedly a rich member of the Sanhedrin, choose for his personal family tomb a place next to Golgotha, a Roman execution site John 19:42? Where is Arimathea? Why isn't there any record of a place called Arimathea, meaning "Good disciple town"?
Why are the Pharisees only included in the tomb guard story of Matthew's Gospel, a Gospel written during a time, 80-90 CE, when the Pharisees were chief opponents of Matthew's church? Why does the story include the Pharisees and not the Sadducees who had power at that time? Why is each chronologically successive canonical Gospel more sensational than the previous?
If Jesus was crucified for only 6 hours Mark 15:25, Luke 23:44 instead of the usual several days is it more likely that he really died, remained dead for three days and then rose from the dead or that he just went into a coma and then came to? If, two thousand years ago, anyone came out of a coma, would anyone at the time say that he had not been risen from the dead?
Why didn't the authors of Mark, Matthew, or Luke mention the fact that the Jews asked Pilate to break the legs of Jesus and the two thieves; that the soldiers did break the legs of the two thieves, but when they came to Jesus, he was already dead? If they wanted to make sure that Jesus was dead, why didn't the Roman soldiers just break his legs as they had been ordered instead of piercing his side with a spear? Why doesn't Matthew, Mark or Luke mention anything about Jesus being stabbed by a spear but John mentions it twice.
Is the Holy Sepulchre the location of Jesus's tomb inside Jerusalem? Why would the Jews who demanded Jesus's crucifixion violate their own prohibition of burials within the walled city before the conquest of Jerusalem in 70 CE?
Jesus appearances
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Do you believe that resurrected Jesus actually appeared to people because it says so in an ancient book? Do you believe that Gabriel actually appeared to Muhammad because it says so in an ancient book? When pre-death Jesus took three of the disciples up on the Mount of Transfiguration, and they "saw" Moses and Elijah, had these ancient prophets been resurrected Matthew 17:1? How did the disciples know that these guys were Moses and Elijah? Did they have bodies of flesh and bones or were they just visions? If they were just visions, then was resurrected Jesus likewise just a vision? If Moses and Elijah did appear to the disciples in resurrected bodies, does that mean that Jesus was NOT the "first fruits of the Resurrection" but...the "third fruits" 1 Corinthians 15:23?
How could the disciples still doubt even after three personal encounters with resurrected Jesus Matthew 28:17? If teleporting Luke 24:31-37, John 20:19-26, flying Luke 24:51, Acts 1:9-11, resurrected Jesus could appear to Paul, why didn't he appear to the Chinese or the rest of the world, or to even the scribes and Pharisees to keep his promise to them that he would give them this sign Matthew 12:39? Why didn't the disciples invite people to come and talk to Jesus during the forty days that he spent with them Acts 1:3?
Do you think that Jesus spent forty days with the apostles after rising from the dead? If Jesus spent the entire forty days talking about "the kingdom" why is it that on the fortieth day, the day when he (allegedly) ascended into heaven, the apostles still thought incorrectly that "the kingdom" to be restored was terrestrial Israel Acts 1:6?
How many public university world history text books state as an historical fact that Jesus was seen alive again after his execution?
If resurrected Jesus was recognizable to people who knew him does that mean that resurrected bodies are very similar in appearance and age to earthly bodies? What about those who die as 150-cell blastocysts, Siamese twins, and feeble senior citizens? If resurrected Jesus had holes in his side, hands, and feet, does that mean we will retain all our injuries for eternity? Do all resurrected bodies in Heaven appear to be age 33 as Jesus was? Is it possible to starve or suffocate in Heaven? Why did resurrected Jesus need to eat Luke 24:41-43? Of what use in Heaven are the organs and features of a mortal, earthly, human-like body naturally selected for land-based life on a planet with the mass and environment of Earth where an immune system is required to fight off disease, a digestive system is required to process life-sustaining food and a respiratory system is required to process life-sustaining oxygen?
Did the risen Jesus appear naked? If not, what was he wearing? What were his clothes made out of? Did their material share the power to appear and disappear, and pass through closed doors?
Martyrdom
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Does the purported martyrdom of apostles from an ancient book of unknown authority convince you that people really did encounter a resurrected Jesus? When did the martyrs die, how did they die, and what were the circumstances of their death? Does the castration and suicide of Heaven's Gate leader Marshall Applewhite, documented with modern recording technology, convince you of his reported personal encounters with aliens? Why would Joseph Smith die defending a story that he made up about the angel Moroni? Why did Proteus Peregrinus, a charlatan prophet, immolate himself, knowing full well that he was a fraud? Why is there nothing in the Book of Acts, likely written around 85 CE, about Peter's or Paul's execution around 65 CE?
What is the evidence that 1) a group of individuals, 2) specifically named, 3) who saw a physically resurrected Jesus, 4) willingly died for this belief, 5) and not for any other reason?
Were the women of Salem set free after saying that they were not witches? If a King Herod wanted to wipe out Christianity what difference would it make to him whether or not the leaders of the movement recanted when they faced execution?
No records
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Do you believe that Jesus was greeted by crowds of thousands on Palm Sunday as the next King of Israel; that his trial before Pilate and Herod brought the city to near revolt; that upon his death the earth shook, the sky went dark for three hours, and dozens of dead saints wandered out of their graves to walk the streets of a major city; that hundreds of people in Palestine began seeing a resurrected, walking, talking, teleporting dead corpse; that these sightings continued over a period of 40 days; that at least a dozen eyewitnesses watched this resurrected corpse levitate into the clouds; and only weeks later, the "eyewitnesses" to these miraculous events preached to crowds of thousands in the Temple, on Pentecost, causing thousands of devout Jews to convert to the Christian movement... yet no one bothered to record the exact date of his death or alleged resurrection?
Why don't Christian genealogists have any record of the descendants of Jesus' brothers and sisters?
Why don't world history textbooks include even the naturalistic details surrounding these events? If Jesus had truly appeared to his followers in a flesh and bones body, why didn't early Christians memorialize the sites of this? They memorialized practically every other site from the Gospel stories, including the location of his baptism, his birth, and some would allege, his grave. So why not the site of Jesus' first post-resurrection appearance or of any of his alleged appearances? Why is there no shrine at any of these locations?
Is Jesus's tomb in the garden, as the Protestants assert, or the Holy Sepulchre, as the Catholics assert?
The Passion
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Do you believe the passion story is a historical account? Why did anyone have to betray Jesus if he wasn't in hiding? How did the authors of Luke Luke 22:3 and John John 13:27 know that Satan made Judas do it? Why wouldn't the soldiers and police of the high priest arrest Simon Peter after he cut off the ear of the high priest's slave John 18:10? If the soldiers watched Jesus restore a severed ear why would they continue arresting him? Do you believe the story that Dionysus was arrested and tried on charges of claiming divinity?
Why was Judas paid in silver at a time before silver was used as currency Matthew 27:3?
Why would the anti-Jesus Jews, knowing of the resurrection prediction, request or even permit a tomb burial instead of just doing nothing and letting the body remain on the cross in plain view to be eaten by scavengers as was the norm in the case of crucifixions? Why didn't the anti-Jesus Sanhedrin just order the body to be dumped into a dirt grave in accord with the Rabbinic law prohibiting burial of criminals in tombs? Why did the priests and Pharisees wait until the next day, the Sabbath, to ask Pilate to post a guard at the tomb Matthew 27:62? Why would the priests of the Sanhedrin and devout Jews violate the Torah Leviticus 23:3 and on the Sabbath, the 14th or the 15th of Nissan do work or order others to do work by requesting that a Roman soldier guard the tomb Matthew 27:64, lighting a fire Luke 22:55, holding a trial Matthew 26:56-64, working in the fields Mark 15:21, buying and selling burial linen Mark 15:46, and preparing spices Luke 23:56? Why would the Jewish authorities break their own laws that 1) Legal actions could not be brought in a private house, but only in the proper place: in the temple area called the "Beth Din", the seat of the Great Sanhedrin, for capital offenses, 2) Legal actions could not be brought at night-time, 3) Legal actions could not be brought on the eve of a holiday, 4) A sentence could not be pronounced on the basis of an extorted confession, and 5) Death sentences could only be pronounced at least 24 hours after the interrogation?
The Resurrection
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Why don't Christians know with absolute certainty the year, much less, the exact date, of the resurrection?
If most non-Christian theists (Jews, Muslims, etc. ) believe there are multiple, plausible, natural explanations for the Resurrection of Jesus belief, can you admit that there are multiple *plausible*, natural explanations for the early Christian belief that Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected from the dead?
If Jesus rose from the dead and appeared as proof that it happened, why didn't anyone record exactly where this most important event in human history happened?
If people saw Lazarus leave the tomb and the son of the widow of Nain raised from the dead, and if Jesus predicted his own resurrection three times, why didn't anyone wait outside the tomb to see it happen? Why didn't the apostles believe the women when they said it had happened?
Do you accept the claims of Paul of Tarsus? Why? Do you accept the claims of Muhammad? Why not?
Did Jesus die in 33 CE, rise, ascend into the clouds and reappear to people? Did Romulus die in 716 BCE, rise, ascend into the clouds and reappear to people? Are countless modern day tabloid eye witness reports of seeing living dead people true?
On the Mount of Transfiguration, did Elijah and Moses appear in glorified, resurrected, material bodies Mark 9:4? If so, does that mean Elijah and Moses were the first fruits of the resurrection, not Jesus?
Were they resuscitated bodies like that of Lazarus or Jarius' daughter? If Lazarus eventually died a normal death, did Moses and Elijah do this too?
If Jesus's family claimed he appeared to them after his death, why didn't more Jews believe?
If the apostles preached the resurrection story to thousands of people, in the Temple, on Pentecost, 50 or so days after Jesus' public execution, why didn't the Romans keep them from continuing to do so decades later when Paul returned to Jerusalem to meet with James and the Eleven?
Were Elijah and Moses immaterial ghosts rather than resurrected, material bodies like Jesus? If so, why did Peter want to build houses for them? If they were ghosts like Obi-wan Kenobi, how do you know that resurrected Jesus, reported by the same Peter, was not like this too?
If Jesus was Yahweh, why did he not raise himself from the dead but rather depended on Yahweh to do it as reported by Paul Colossians 2:12, 1 Corinthians 15:16, 1 Corinthians 6:14 and Peter Acts 2:24?
If Lazarus and all the others were able to rise from the dead without being Yahweh or the son of Yahweh, how does it follow that Jesus was Yahweh or the son of Yahweh from Jesus's alleged rising from the dead?
Why didn't Paul mention the women in his list of people who saw resurrected Jesus 1 Corinthians 15:3-8? How many eyewitnesses saw an angel push away the stone and saw Jesus rise from the dead and exit the tomb? If resurrected Jesus was able to walk through locked doors John 20:26, why did an angel need to push away the stone in order for Jesus to exit the tomb or allow the women to enter it and believe the resurrection Matthew 28:2? Why were women doing the spice ritual on a man? Why would the women bring spices to anoint the body if they knew the tomb was sealed and guarded, and why would they wait two days to do it when the body would already be decomposing by then Matthew 28:2-10? How could a tomb rock roll away in 33 CE when they did not start making round tomb rocks until around 70 CE? Why didn't Jesus just go along with the women witnesses to be seen by everyone?
Was Mary Magdalene informed of the resurrection by an angel Matthew 28:5 or by Jesus John 20:14?
Was Jesus in Hell for 3 nights Matthew 12:40, or 2 nights Matthew 27:45-50, Matthew 28:1?
Was the stone rolled away before John 20:1 or after Matthew 28:1-2 the women arrived at the tomb?
Did the sun rise before Mark 16:2 or after John 20:1 the women arrived at the tomb?
Did Nicodemus provide the spices John 19:39, or did the women Mark 16:1, Luke 23:56?
Did the women from the tomb tell the disciples Matthew 28:10, Luke 24:9 or not Mark 16:8?
Do you believe that Roman guards witnessed the resurrection events and then lied to their commander and the governor, Pilate, that they had fallen asleep on the job and were asleep while Jesus's disciples rolled away a massive, sealed tomb rock without waking them up Matthew 28:11-15? Why would the Jews break the Sabbath by approaching Pilate and asking him to seal the tomb? Why would Pilate have granted a guard for something he surely would have found to be absurd? If the guards went straight to the chief priests instead of their commander to report the event because they were afraid of telling the extraordinary true story to their commander, why did the chief priests need to give them any money in order for them to cooperate and tell a lie? If they knew what had actually happened - a dead man came back to life - why would they risk certain execution and tell a lie that would easily be uncovered as soon as the dead man appeared to the authorities or word got around another way?
If the guards divided his clothes among themselves before the crucifixion Mark 15:24, did Jesus appear naked to the women Matthew 28:8?
If Luke was accurately recording historical information, why did he omit the very first post resurrection appearance of Jesus Matthew 28:5-10?
Is a miraculous resurrection the most probable explanation for an empty tomb? Is it more probable than a raid of the tomb of wealthy Joseph of Arimathea? Is any explanation less probable than a miracle? When you lose your keys do you conclude that a supernatural force moved them? Is a resurrection more probable than someone seeing a Jesus doppleganger which triggered the construction of elaborate fictions as happens on a daily basis?
Why would omniscient Jesus teach a Hellenistic concept of resurrection that was introduced by Jewish translators in third century BCE Egypt into the Septuagint not found anywhere in the Pentateuch nor in the subsequent other pre-exilic books of the Hebrew Bible?
Is the apocryphal Gospel of Peter true that three Heaven-tall people and one talking, floating cross exited the tomb? Are the resurrection stories of Adonis, Romulus, Zalmoxis, Dionysus and Inanna from as far back as 1700 BCE true? Is it true that Mythra had twelve disciples, a last supper and was resurrected?
Why is there a great earthquake in the resurrection story of Matthew Matthew 28:2, but not the story in Mark that was written earlier? Do you believe the reports of great earthquakes when Caesar and other Romans died? How did an earthquake strong enough to roll away a giant stone from a tomb not cause massive collateral damage or merit non-biblical record?
Could you enjoy an eternity in Yahweh's Heaven knowing that your friends are burning in Yahweh's Hell? If for this reason the idea of Hell can't be real, then what would have been the point of Jesus rising from the dead even if it really happened?
Is evolution false and all biologists who believe it wrong, or is evolution true, original sin false and resurrection to cure original sin pointless?
Vicarious redemption
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If Jesus was able to forgive sins by just saying they were forgiven why did he need to die on a cross to forgive them Luke 5:20? When did Jesus say that he was dying to atone for sins?
Did Jesus die for our sins? What does "Jesus died for our sins" even mean? What would have been the consequences if he hadn't? If original sin caused suffering and death, and Jesus died to pay for our sins, then what is the point of eternal payment for sins in Hell?
Do you believe that Maui tried to give humans immortality by turning into a worm and crawling up Hine-nui-te-pō's (goddess of death) vagina but being crushed by her vaginal obsidian teeth?
Do you believe that Prometheus let an eagle eat his liver every day so that we could have fire?
Which Old Testament scriptures support the notion that sins are forgiven by the atoning death of the Messiah Luke 24:45-47? How could Jesus die for sins of others if "every man shall be put to death for his own sin" Deuteronomy 24:16 and the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father Ezekiel 18:20?
Why couldn't an omnipotent god forgive the sins of humanity without anyone being executed?
If whether we spend eternity with or apart from Yahweh depends on how we exercise our free will, then what was the point of Jesus dying? If Jesus died for our sins, what difference does it make how we exercise our free will? If this is up to Yahweh and Yahweh loves us, then why didn't Yahweh just admit everyone into Heaven straight away without Jesus or anyone dying? If it is not up to us and not up to Yahweh, then what is it up to? Who created Hell?
How exactly does one person dying have anything to do with the sins committed by other people? Do you think that the ancient Israelite practice of sending a live (scape)goat into the wilderness to die had some effect on anyone's sins? Do you think that the annual slaughter at Hajj of hundreds of thousands of animals by Muslims is effective in bringing the participants closer to Allah? Does the slaughter of animals in the annual Hindu Gadhimai festival make wishes come true? Do you think that Jesus dying on a cross had some effect on anyone's sins?
Do you think that the human sacrifices of the Aztecs were effective in appeasing their gods? Do you think that the human sacrifice of Jesus Hebrews 9:22, Hebrews 10:10, the convenant transgressors Joshua 7:15, pagan priests 2 Kings 23:20 , or thirty-two Midianites Numbers 31:28-40 was effective in appeasing your god?
How does a system of vicarious redemption promote moral accountability? Should people be allowed to substitute themselves for convicted murderers on death row?
If Jesus died to pay for our sins, then exactly whom did he pay? And how did the recipient of this payment benefit from this payment?
If Jesus could work miracles and could have saved himself from crucifixion, and therefore went through with the crucifixion voluntarily, how can he be classed among actual victims whose suffering is not voluntary?
If the fair price to pay for sin is eternal conscious torment in Hell, and if Jesus paid for our sins, shouldn't Jesus be suffering eternal conscious torment in Hell?
If Jesus paid for our sins at the cross as a sacrifice, why will temple sacrifices start again during the millennial reign of Jesus?
Is it virtuous for Yahweh to sacrifice itself to itself to appease itself in order to save us from itself? Is it virtuous for a soldier to throw himself on a grenade whose pin he pulled himself?
How was Jesus's death a "sacrifice" for Yahweh if Yahweh can do anything and Jesus didn't stay dead and is now with Yahweh, who is also Jesus? How is it possible for Yahweh to permanently lose (sacrifice) anything? If Jesus came from and then went back to Heaven, wouldn't his 33 years on Earth be the real suffering and his six hours on the cross be a trivial and welcome exit method?
We're still here
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Why hasn't the world come to an end yet even though Jesus said that it would happen before the end of a generation Matthew 24:34 and the author of Hebrews says it will happen "in a little while" (Hebrews 10:37? If Paul had actually spoken to Jesus why did he erroneously tell people that Jesus was returning so soon that they should purify themselves by not having sex anymore, an instruction that would cause the end of Christianity if followed 1 Corinthians 7:29?
If we should take no thought for tomorrow, as Jesus says Matthew 6:34 and if the world is supposed to end within a generation of Jesus, why do we have to plant trees, recycle, care for the planet, go to school and learn job skills?
Witnesses
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Do you accept the documented, eye-witness reports by specific people of Elvis sightings from the 20th century? Do you accept the numerous modern day eye-witness reports of Mary sightings by Catholics? Do you accept the alleged sightings of Jesus reported in an anonymous book from the first centuries? Do you accept the eye-witness reports by Mormons of seeing the angel Moroni and his Golden Plates?
Without being an eyewitness of the event himself or providing the names of any eyewitnesses, St. Paul claimed that a round number of 500 people saw a resurrected Jesus. None of these 500 sightings were reported independently anywhere else. Do you find this compelling evidence that it really happened? Do you think that someone counted the witnesses?
Do you find as compelling evidence the signed affidavits from 12 known Mormon eyewitnesses stating that they saw the Golden Tablets, three of whom stated that they saw the angel Moroni? Do you find it compelling evidence that an ancient book reports that 3,000,000 ancient Jews heard Yahweh speak to them at Sinai and tell them that he would never take the form of a man? Do you believe that the Buddha caused a water buffalo to speak in a human language for half an hour in front of a group of eyewitnesses?
Why does Luke, the physician of Paul report that Paul's Damascus road experience was a 'vision' (hallucination) Acts 26:19?
How many people have reported seeing resurrected Jesus? How many people have reported seeing Bigfoot?
Do you believe the eyewitness testimony that Muhammad flew to Heaven on a winged horse? Do you believe the eyewitness reports that Romulus vanished into the clouds on Campus Martius and ascended into Heaven? Do you believe the testimony of the author of Luke, who was neither an eyewitness nor an associate of one, that Jesus floated up into the sky in a manner never seen before or since or was even reported in any other Gospel?
If eyewitness testimony is not terribly reliable when it comes to car accidents and murder cases, why would you believe it to be reliable for 2,000 year old alleged sightings of a walking, talking, broiled fish eating, levitating into outer space, resurrected corpse?
Do you believe stories from weeks after her disappearance, spread among villagers of several islands in the South Pacific that the dead Amelia Earhart had appeared to multiple people in some fashion, to individual persons, most often chiefs and other elders among the natives, as well as groups of hundreds of people? Do you believe the reports in four anonymously published books that a supernatural being appeared to a group of women villagers, telling them that Amelia Earhart would soon be appearing to multiple villagers, giving them a divine message from the gods, or reports that the villagers were able to touch the body of the dead Earhart to examine her injuries from the plane crash?
Myth
Abiogenesis
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Abraham
Adam and Eve
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Was there really once a man named Adam, a woman named Eve, a talking snake, and a Garden called Eden where they lived? Were the man and woman made simultaneously Genesis 1:27 or was Eve made out of Adam's rib Genesis 2:21? If Eve was made later, did Adam initially have reproductive organs or were they added later too?
If Yahweh made the universe from nothing, why did it need one of Adam's ribs in order to make Eve? As the rib contained the same genes as the rest of Adam, why didn't it just become another Adam? Why didn't Yahweh just create Eve the same way it created Adam without using a rib?
If people were immortal before The Fall, why did they need to breathe life-sustaining oxygen or consume life-sustaining food and water in order to continue living? Did they have fully evolved digestive and respiratory systems? Did they need reproductive systems to reproduce? Why did Yahweh give carnivorous dinosaurs teeth suitable for tearing through meat if it created them before The Fall at a time when everything only ate plants? If human childbirth became painful because of The Fall, why is animal childbirth painful?
If originally organisms reproduced but did not die and if The Fall hadn't happened, would the planet be covered in a thick mass of living insects, plants, animals and people by now?
Why can't snakes talk anymore? Without any knowledge of the concept of clothing or nakedness, how did Adam and Eve decide where to put the fig leaves?
Who was the mother of Cain's children? How does Yahweh feel about incest Leviticus 20:17? Where did the thriving community in the land of Nod come from Genesis 4:16?
Why was Eve punished for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil if Yahweh gave the commandment to not eat from it Genesis 2:17 before creating Eve Genesis 2:22?
Why did angels need a sword to guard the entrance of the garden to keep Adam and Eve out Genesis 3:24? Does this garden, the angel guards, and the flaming sword still exist somewhere on Earth? Why hasn't anyone found it yet? Is it tiny?
Is this story a good reason for opposing gay marriage? for subordinating women? for being so bothered by genitals and female nipples? for the sanctification and condemnation of the insertion of one body part into another body part? How is a child harmed by the sight of an adult female nipple?
What benefit came from Yahweh's creating a tree of knowledge at all? Who received this benefit? Why would Yahweh put it in a place near people instead of somewhere inaccessible? Why was Satan given free reign to wander about Yahweh's perfect creation, tempting Yahweh's perfect creatures, when he had previously been cast into "the pit" for his insurrection? Was it all a setup? Where was Yahweh when the snake was tempting Eve? Why did Yahweh make the talking snake at all? Why didn't Yahweh keep the talking snake away from Eve?
The idea of Eden doesn't originate with the Hebrew Bible, but in earlier Mesopotamia, the home of ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Kassites, and Hebrews. The name Eden is not Hebrew but originates in another Semitic language, Akkadian. Edinu, or edin, meaning plain or uncultivated land
"Ala" means rib bone in Aramaic. "Tsela" is what Genesis says Yahweh took from Adam to make Eve. It is translated as "half" or "side" in each of the other forty places it is used, but never "rib". That's because the translator was a misogynist who didn't want to give equal status to women.
Christmas
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How could Joseph, a Galilean, have put a nine-month-pregnant Mary on a donkey for a 5-day trip from Nazareth in Galilee to his ancestor's homeland Bethlehem in Judea (not part of the Roman Empire at the time) to report for a historically unrecorded Roman census called by Caesar Augustus that would have only counted rich, male, Judean, current landowners and happened before 4-1 BCE when King Herod died and also after 6 CE when Quirinius became governor of Syria Luke 2:2? Why would a census of a place count people who did not live in the place? In which ancestor's homeland should a person be counted in a census? Did everyone in the Roman empire have to return to the homes of their ancestors from 1000 years earlier? How are we to imagine the massive shifts of population for this census? And no other source even bothers to mention it? Why does Joseph have to register in the town of his ancestor David from 1000 years before? Why not an ancestors from 1200 years earlier? or 700 years earlier? or 100 years earlier?
Why didn't the author of Matthew mention anything about a trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem Matthew 2:1?
Where in scripture does it say that the number of wisemen is three?
Why did Yahweh use a magic star to lead the wisemen first to Jerusalem where they told (four-years-dead) King Herod that a baby king was being born which predictably angered (four-years-dead) Herod so much that he set out to kill Jesus? Why wouldn't Herod have just sent his troops five miles to Bethlehem to kill just Jesus? Why doesn't Luke mention King Herod? Why would pagan astrologers from the East be interested in knowing where the king of Israel was born and come to worship him? Were they doing this for all babies who were bound to become kings of foreign countries? Why didn't historian Josephus, who took great delight in cataloging Herod's crimes mention this slaughter of babies that would have been the worst of his crimes? Why didn't Yahweh's magic star just lead the wisemen straight to Bethlehem avoiding King Herod in Jerusalem and sparing all those babies? Did this star lead them first to Jerusalem, then mysteriously disappear, then reappear and lead them to Bethlehem? How can it be said that a star, light years away from Earth, is above a particular spot, Bethlehem, on Earth Matthew 2:9? How could the wisemen distinguish a star being directly overhead when standing at the Jesus spot and not all the way back in Jerusalem?
Was Joseph in Egypt when Herod died Matthew 219 or did he present Jesus in the temple accoring to the law after forty days Luke 2:22?
Why doesn't Matthew mention Luke's inn and shepherds? Why doesn't Luke mention Matthew's star and wisemen?
Seeing clearly that Mary was pregnant, wouldn't Mary's family or the Jewish authorities in her town insist on knowing who the father was in order to establish tribal affiliation? If they were told Joseph was the father, wouldn't they insist that he marry Mary before the birth? How could Joseph plan to divorce Mary quietly if they were not even married yet Matthew 1:19?
Why do we celebrate Jesus' birthday in December instead of August the time when shepherds are watching their flocks?
Creationism
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Is the Biblical creation story true? How was there light before the stars existed? If Yahweh didn't make the sun until the 4th day, how could it count the days? When did Yahweh make the planets? If Yahweh rested after six days, who is making the new planets and stars that are forming every day? If Yahweh is omnipotent, why did it take so long to create the universe? How could Yahweh create all the stars in only one day if it took three whole days to create just the Earth?
When Yahweh said, "let there be light", who was he talking to?
Did the six days in the Genesis story refer to six eons? When Moses told people to rest on the seventh day, did he mean they should work for six eons and rest on the seventh eon Exodus 20:9?
Is the firmament used as evidence by flat-earthers metaphorical but the rest of the story is literal? How can modern Christians better understand the ancient Hebrew word used than ancient Hebrews who took it to mean a literal dome?
If Yahweh created the universe so that it could be worshipped by us in Heaven for eternity and it knew which of us would and would not make it to Heaven, why not just create these elect few in Heaven in the first place and skip the material universe part? If Yahweh created the universe for the sole purpose of having a relationship with humans, why did it choose a design whose vastness is almost entirely unsupportive of that purpose and is reasonably explained to scientists and skeptics as the product of natural forces indifferent to human life? Why didn't Yahweh just implement it all in an undeniably supernatural way that could not be so easily and universally misunderstood by very intelligent people as purely naturalistic?
Should the Biblical creation story be taught as history to children in public schools? Should it be taught in literature class along with Greek and Roman mythology or in science class along with evolution? Should all of the thousands of religious creation stories be taught as well? Why is chemistry taught in public schools but alchemy is not? Should the stork theory of reproduction be taught alongside the sexual theory of reproduction?
Evolution
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If land animals did not evolve from fish, why does the left recurrent laryngeal nerve run all the way from the brain down to the heart, around the main artery and back up the neck to the voice box only a couple of inches away from where it started, an efficient path for neckless fish but one that creates a fifteen-foot detour for giraffes?
Why do whales have flipper bones similar to those of hands and hind quarter bones similar to hips, thighs, and shins of land animals? Why do kiwis have wings? Why do blind cave fish have useless eyes?
Why do humans have appendixes and tailbones? Why do male humans have nipples? Why do human embryos have tails, yolk sacs and gill arches?
Why does the urethra, a conduit that must not be constricted, pass through the prostate gland, an organ that is prone to swelling?
Why do humans have both a pyramidal system that sends motor system messages and an extrapyramidal system that sends messages to ignore the pyramidal system messages?
Why does the optic nerve pass through the retina creating a blind spot? Why didn't Yahweh give people eyes without this problem, like squids got?
Why do human males have vulnerable external testicles instead of internal ones like elephants and birds have?
Why is the birth canal so close to the urinary tract that many women die of fistula after breakages occur in prolonged labor?
Why are the trachea and esophagus of a human so close together that choking is a serious hazard, and not like those of a whale that don't have this problem?
Why do different species contain genes from the same endogenous retroviruses? Why do organisms have so much DNA that doesn't do anything?
If humans and apes did not evolve from a common ancestor, then why do humans have a chromosome with two telomeres in the middle and apes have two chromosomes like the halves of this chromosome?
Is Answers in Genesis right that homo naledi fossils are fully ape? Is the Institute for Creation Research correct that they are imaginary creatures? Is Creation Ministries International correct that they are fully human?
Is evolution real or does Yahweh create new flu viruses every year? Does Yahweh speak into existence every new species that has arrived over time since the beginning?
If the appearance of intelligent design in a thing means it had an intelligent designer, does the appearance of incompetent design in a thing mean it had an incompetent designer?
If human beings are special and have dominion over all other species on Earth, why are people made of material that is edible to animals and not some special, different substance that can't be eaten? Were humans made of something else before The Fall?
Would you like teaching Evolution to be banned throughout the US as it is in Islamic Pakistan?
If Christians came from Jews, why are there still Jews? If grandchildren evolved from grandparents, why are there still cousins?
Heritable fault
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How do you square that a person's eternal disposition is determined by her own choices, but her suffering on Earth is consequent to the choices of an ancestral original sinner? Do you think that fault can pass from a parent to a child Isaiah 14:21, 2 Samuel 12:14? Should the descendants of Nazi death camp guards be charged with war crimes? How can one person's guilt transfer to another person? Why would Jesus kill Jezebel's children with pestilence Revelation 2:23? What did they do wrong? Are the 18,000 daily child deaths by starvation due to Adam and Eve's disobeying Yahweh's order? Why would Yahweh visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations Exodus 20:5? If you keep the commandments will your third and fourth generation descendants be spared punishment if they do not keep the commandments? Why did Yahweh kill David's son as a punishment for David 2 Samuel 12:15?
How can the unborn descendants of Moses and Noah be parties to covenants between these biblical characters and Yahweh? How can a contract be valid when either party is under duress? If these characters did not actually exist, can they have any descendants?
In North Korea, families of criminals are sent to prison and the children and grandchildren born there must spend their whole lives there. Do you think this is a good system of justice?
If we are all born guilty and deserve to be tortured forever how does the innocence of a guilty fetus give it rights to use its mother's uterus?
Irreducible complexity
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If it would be impossible for human eyes to acquire their functionality gradually and through evolution without an intelligent designer, how is it possible that organisms exist with such vastly different organs for sensing light, from much simpler than the human eye to much better than the human eye? Why didn't Yahweh give humans the same eyes that octupuses and squid have?
Which feature of which organism has been conclusively shown to be irreducibly complex?
Where were the steel components of a steel mill forged?
Is Yahweh irreducibly complex? How can Yahweh be irreducibly complex without having a creator?
Moses
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Was there really a man named Moses from the 14th century BCE who was as a baby set adrift on a river in a basket, was adopted, was favored by Yahweh, really parted the Red Sea and really killed people by the hundreds of thousands with Yahweh's help and blessing? Do you believe the story from 1500 years before the story of Moses that Mesopotamian King Sargon of Akkad was as a baby set adrift on a river in a basket, was adopted and rose to power?
Do you believe the story from a thousand years before the purported placement in history of Moses, itself a thousand years before the appearance of Moses in texts, that Pharaoh Snefru folded the Red Sea over on itself in order to retrieve some lost jewelry?
Do you agree with most modern archaeologists that the stories of Moses and the Exodus are pure fiction, or the anonymous author of John who wrote that Jesus said Moses had written about him John 5:46?
* the book of Deuteronomy was writing from the western side of the Jordan that Moses never got to
* it says "to this day we don't know where his body is" Deuteronomy 34:6. You only use "to this day" when speaking of a long period of time
* it says "no prophet has arisen in Israel like Moses" Deuteronomy 34:10 which means it was written at the time of prophets which was when kings reigned which was the late 8th century
Noah's ark
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tl;dr - The heat problem, and specifically accelerated nuclear decay, is the strongest debunk of Young Earth Creationism. All the Creationism organizations admit that they can't solve it. The mud problem is just as bad.
But for kicks ...
Was there really a worldwide flood and a man who really made an ark by hand and lived to be 950? Was the man's name Ziusudra, Noah, Utnapishtim, or Atrahasis? Do the similarities of different earthquake legends mean that they all refer to the same event?
Was the rate of radioactive decay accelerated to give the false appearance of age? How did this happen without creating enough heat to reduce the planet to a cloud of ionized gas?
How did sedimentary rock form from mud in only a hundred years between the Flood and the tower of Babylon construction?
Why didn't Yahweh just snap its fingers and annihilate everyone without all the drowning and theatrics and without killing the animals? If, in the beginning, Yahweh was able to create all the animals, why did it need to make a big flood and save pairs of them in Noah's time? Why not just create them the same way it did the first time? Were the land animals sinful and the sea animals sinless? If Yahweh was able to create the universe without any help, why couldn't it create a boat without help?
How did they fit 5 million pairs (or sevens) of animals including all the dinosaurs plus enough food and water for a year on a boat that size, and keep them from eating each other or suffocating in air less breathable than that inside transatlantic slave ships? How did the obligate carniores get enough taurine without eating meat?
How did Noah source, transport, and mill all the lumber necessary to build an ark in the desert?
If Yahweh made the animals travel around the world to the ark without killing each other, why are there cages to protect them from each other on the Ark Encounter depiction of this vessel? Who removed all the waste created by these millions of animals? How did they collect and remove the urine?
Did they bring plants or seeds of plants of every kind too? Who collected them before the flood? Who planted them back in the ground after the flood?
How did the microscopic parasites and the species that reproduce asexually survive the flood?
How did all the species survive such intense inbreeding during the post-flood repopulation period? How does Yahweh feel about incest Leviticus 20:17? How did the different races evolve from Noah's family and the different species evolve from the ark ones in less than 6,000 years?
If evolution cannot produce creatures of different species, then how did two ark passengers of the cat "kind" give birth to leopards, domestic cats, lions, tigers, and cheetahs? If we know lions and tigers to be in the same "kind" by their genetic similarity, why aren't humans and chimpanzees with even more genetic similarities in the same "kind"?
How could eight people reproducing generate in only 150 years a population big enough to build a city and impressive tower Genesis 11:1-9? or in 100 years a civilization in Egypt great enough to build the pyramids?
How did the ark survive seas filling from rain and geysers at a rate of 30 feet/hour for forty days? How did they stay afloat in rough seas in a flat-bottom wooden box for a year?
If Noah's ark landed in a single location, freeing all the species, then how and why did every single species of kangaroo (red kangaroo, tree kangaroo, wallaby, etc.) migrate all the way across the ocean to and from Australia/New Guinea, collecting the bones of their dead on the way home so that no trace could be found? How did the Koalas find enough eucalyptus along the way to survive the trips to and from the Ark? Why did all of the guinea pig variants (chinchillas and the like) all go to South America? How did the penguins and tree sloths who live thousands of miles from the Middle East get to and from the ark? Why doesn't the global distribution of animal species taper off from a concentration centered on Mt. Ararat?
How can there be continuous records from that time from thriving Chinese, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Mayan, Sumerian, Inuit and Peruvian civilizations with nothing about a worldwide flood?
Why do we speak different languages?
Why didn't anyone else in the entire world have a boat? Why didn't Noah pass down detailed boat construction instructions so that subsequent boats could be built as well as the ark?
What happened with the freshwater fish? or the saltwater fish that die of shock in reduced salinity? How did any aquatic life survive in brackish water much worse than what kills it in modern-day floods? Did the fish live at the bottom with the plants and high pressure or the top with no plants and low pressure? As the input of so much freshwater would have killed everything below them on the food chain, how did blue whales and other whales survive? Were they and thousands of tons of food kept in oxygenated tanks onboard?
Why isn't there a worldwide layer of sediment from this period containing both rabbit fossils and stegosaurus fossils? How did the world's chalk beds settle in only a year?
Where did the 800 million cubic miles of water come from? Where did it go? Was there a vapor canopy? How did a sufficiently aqueous vapor canopy condense into rain without raising the atmospheric temperature to 3,300 degrees C? If the water came from a vapor canopy how did it return there later and where is the vapor canopy now? Did it come from underground reservoirs? How did the ground keep from collapsing after the water came out? With the air saturated from so much water moving, how did anything with lungs avoid dying from pulmonary adema?
Did an asteroid strike cause the flood by opening the fountains of the great deep Genesis 7:11? How could Noah and his family have survived the fallout in an atmosphere full of poisonous vaporized rock, acid rain and enough heat from condensed rock falling back through the atmosphere to boil the ocean? Why doesn't the Bible mention anything about asteroids, volcanoes or darkness in the Flood story? If asteroids did not cause the Flood, how do you explain evidence of asteroids hitting the Earth over billions of years?
How was Noah able to sort the clean and unclean animals Genesis 7:2 based on the dietary law that hadn't been given yet Leviticus 11:1-47 and before people ate meat Genesis 9:2-3? Is everything that lives and moves food Genesis 9:3, or just some things Leviticus 11:1-47?
What did everyone eat after the flood ended and all the plants were dead? How did an olive tree survive the flood so that the dove could fetch one of its branches? If the ark landed on top of Mt. Ararat with an elevation of 5,165 meters and trees can't grow above 4,500 meters elevation and olive trees specifically grow in low mediterranean areas, how could the dove have fetched a branch from a live olive tree earlier when the water was even higher than when the ark landed?
How can a perfect, eternal, incorporeal, infinite being be pleased by the soothing aroma of burnt animals and presumably become more perfect than before it was pleased Genesis 8:21? If Yahweh likes the smell of burning flesh, why doesn't it just burn the flesh itself without waiting for a person to do it?
If rainbows did not exist before the Noah flood, how did optical refraction of sunlight in water droplets work before then?
How bright was it for Yahweh to kill everyone sinful without changing anything about human nature so that sin just came right back anyway? Why didn't Yahweh send Jesus when there were only eight people and it would have been so much easier to get his message to everyone?
Were there no men on Earth more righteous than a guy who got drunk and cursed to lives of slavery all the descendents of a son who had just helped him load and care for all the world's animals but accidentally saw his dad naked Genesis 9:20-22? Why did Noah, who was supposed to be a righteous man, let his grandfather Methusaleh drown?
Being five hundred years old, why did Noah only have three children? Did he not have any grandchildren before the time of the Flood? Did he have grandchildren but let them all drown?
How long did it take for Noah's vineyard to mature and for the wine to ferment before he got drunk and cursed his offspring?
Can you imagine a 3-day old baby slowly drowning in a great flood intentionally caused by a loving god?
Why did Jesus believe in the story of Noah Matthew 24:36-41, Luke 17:26?
Why do religious education teachers present the ark story as historically true to credulous children at an age when they still think that Santa Claus is real? Why do those who teach the Noah story to small children not also teach it to high school students?
Obey
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Why would Yahweh want Adam and Eve to be good but not be able to tell the difference between good and evil Genesis 2:9? When choosing whether to obey Yahweh or the snake, how could fallible Adam and fallible Eve know which was the great deceiver and which was the benevolent, loving master? Is it more likely to you that this is a true story or that someone wanted to control people by scaring them into blind obedience? Was it virtuous for the guards at Auschwitz to obey orders from Hitler to murder strangers? Was it virtuous for Abraham to obey an order from a voice in his head to murder his son? Was it virtuous for Jephthah to murder his only daughter as a sign of loyalty to Yahweh?
Why are blind obedience and ignorance so important to Yahweh that it chose as the mother of all sins a combination of exercising free will through disobedience and pursuing knowledge through consumption of fruit from the tree of knowledge? Isn't hurting someone worse than asserting personal autonomy and knowing things? How could Adam and Eve have known that disobedience was wrong before eating fruit from the tree of knowledge of right and wrong? Is anything more important to tyrants than obedience and ignorance?
Why did Yahweh send an angel to kill Balaam for obeying its order to go to Balaak Numbers 22:20-22?
Is it virtuous for you to accept dogma without asking questions and obtaining evidence? Is it virtuous for a suicide bomber to accept dogma without asking questions and obtaining evidence?
Original sin
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Prior art
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Why would an omniscient god intervene in the world in a manner so similar to older mythology? Why would Jesus have twelve disciples when the number twelve was so steeped in mythology and astrology and would, therefore, lead a reasonable person to conclude that this was just another myth based on older myths?
In their birth stories, both baby Moses and baby Jesus are hunted by an evil king who seeks to destroy them; both narrowly escape this evil king's attempt to kill them, but many other Jewish male babies are slaughtered; wise men warn the evil king that a marvelous Hebrew/Jewish male has been born who will save his people. Do you think there is anything fishy about this coincidence?
Why did the Church adopt practices from pagan groups of people they were trying to assimilate?
Is it more likely that Easter bunnies were introduced because they have something to do with Jesus or because a prolific procreator animal would appeal to people who worshipped fertility gods?
Do you see anything pagan about observing Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox, around the time when Pagans traditionally offered sacrifices to Eastra, the goddess of spring?
Why did Christians adopt as their Jesus fish symbol the vesica piscis symbol that had been associated with the goddesses Atargatis and Venus because it resembles female genitalia?
Why did the ancient Israelites adopt the pagan practice of offering foreskins as a rain/fertility ritual?
Why do Christians celebrate Christmas using cut down trees when this pagan practice is brutish and foolish Jeremiah 10:2-8?
Why does Mark's gospel, written for a Greek audience, have parallels to the Greek stories in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey?
Satan
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Why hasn't Yahweh killed Satan?
Do you believe in someone named Satan who is a real supernatural being, can influence behavior and lives in Hell? What is the evidence that Satan exists?
Is Satan a fallen angel? Are angels Yahweh's helpers? Is Yahweh omnipotent? Why would an omnipotent being need helpers?
Does Satan cause people to sin which causes them to go to Hell? If so, then how do people bear the responsibility for putting themselves in Hell? If Yahweh wants us to choose to seek it freely and Yahweh has the power to stop Satan and Satan is causing us to end up in Hell, why doesn't Yahweh just prevent Satan from influencing us and interfering with our free-will Yahweh choice?
Will we be punished eternally for being deceived by Satan? Why would a loving just god punish someone for being deceived by a villain that it created on purpose with foreknowledge and give it the ability to deceive? Should there be civil laws against being deceived?
Why did Yahweh throw Lucifer to earth instead of some other planet where humans don't exist?
What threat could a jealous devil present to an omnipotent god? Is Yahweh Satan's accomplice or is Yahweh unable to stop Satan?
If you can desire power without it causing you to become evil, why couldn't a devil do that?
If the devil is highly intelligent, why would it not know that returning to Yahweh's good side is in its interests? Why would it not know the Bible story that foretells his defeat? Does Yahweh love all its creatures? Would a good god accept a prodigal son or lost sheep?
Why do Christians think that the serpent in the book of Genesis was Satan but the book never suggests this and Jews throughout history including Jewish Jesus did not think this? If the serpent was Satan and was cursed to crawl on its belly all the days of its life Genesis 3:14, how could it have been able to walk around in Job Job 1:7?
How did "Satan" transform from Zoroastrian destructive spirit Angra Mainyu to god of justice Hades to a conceptual inclination to do evil in ancient Jewish times to a theatrical comic relief character in the Middle Ages to a cunning and terrifying tormentor in modern times?
If Satan leads people to have premarital sex, does that mean Satan leads rabbits to have premarital sex too? If Satan is thoroughly occupied being eternally burned in hell, how could he refocus his attention on the eight billion people on earth at the same time and long enough to cause them to sin?
If someone was led astray should he be allowed to file a lawsuit against Satan?
Is it evil to kill people with floods, plagues, and armies? How many people did Satan kill with floods, plagues, and armies? How many people did Yahweh kill with floods, plagues, and armies? If Jesus was Yahweh and knew it and Satan as a fallen angel also knew that Jesus was Yahweh, why would Satan tempt Jesus with offers to give him some of the things in a universe that Jesus himself had entirely made and therefore already possessed Matthew 4:9?
"Lucifer" means "light bringer". What's wrong with enlightenment? Is Yahweh light?
The Exodus
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Was there really an exodus of Jewish slaves from Egypt and did they wander in the wilderness for forty years to get from Ramses to Canaan which is only about a six-day trip on foot? Why have the majority of Israeli archaeologists agreed that there was no such exodus?
If Yahweh was able to drown Pharaoh's army, why did it not stop the armies of Moab? What difference would it make for the Israelites to avoid capture by Pharaoh's army if they were still in areas of Egyptian political influence? Why is there no historical record of a loss of 33% of Egypt's population among the records of Egypt or its enemies who would have easily conquered them because of it?
Why is there no archaeological evidence of a mass Israelite migration but there is for Viking sagas and Homeric epics? If in fidelity to their heritage the enslaved Israelites avoided Egyptian cultural assimilation for 400 years why did they assimilate Canaanite culture?
What good came from killing the innocent firstborn sons of non-Jewish Egyptian slaves? Instead of killing all the innocent firstborns and sending all the plagues, why didn't Yahweh just kill the Pharaoh, or better yet - persuade him with a dream, or even better yet still - simply not harden his heart and just allow him to free the Israelites as he would have otherwise done Exodus 4:21?
Virgin birth
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What is the evidence that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born? Do you believe that Caesar Augustus, Ghengis Khan and Alexander the Great were born of virgins too as reported in ancient books?
Which is more likely: a temporary suspension of the natural order or a lie about how someone got pregnant? Who besides Mary witnessed Gabriel's prophetic visit to Mary Luke 1:35?
If Yahweh was able to create Adam from dust, why could it only create Jesus by impregnating Joseph's wife, a method that any reasonable, modern family law court would ascribe to simple infidelity, not anything supernatural? Of all the ways Yahweh could have incarnated itself - fashioned from mud, blinked into being, zapped down from the sky in adult form, etc - why did it choose virgin birth when that was a method used in countless previous mythologies of god incarnations, and therefore would lead reasonable thinkers to conclude that the whole thing was just a fiction fabricated out of the other similar stories?
Is it plausible that the Greek-speaking authors of the Gospels could have just transferred motifs of divine sonship, virgin birth, double paternity, world rule, a world mission on behalf of humanity, divinization, and death before completing the mission from Greek Alexander the Great who had conquered Palestine before Jesus's time and consequently held the status of a god among the local people?
If Mary knew Jesus was the son of Yahweh having been visited by an angel, magically impregnated by Yahweh and visited by magi, why would she have been confused when Jesus said he was doing Yahweh's business Luke 2:49-50?
Why is there no mention of virgin birth in Mark or John? Why was the Hebrew word for "young woman" (almah) translated into "virgin" (betulah) instead of "young woman" in the Greek translation of Isaiah 7:14 used by the writers of Luke and Matthew?
How could Jesus be in the tribe of Judah or David if Jesus had no human father and tribal affiliation was patrilineal? Did Jesus descend from David through his son Solomon 1 Chronicles 22:9-10 or through his son Nathan and then Judah and then Mary Hebrews 7:14? Why does Luke's genealogy record Luke 3:23-37 list 14 more generations than Matthew's Matthew 1:1-17? Where in Luke's genealogy from Adam to Jesus does the myth end and the historical record begin Luke 3:23-38?
How can someone be his own son? What does the word "son" mean?
Young Earth
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tl;dr - The heat problem, and specifically accelerated nuclear decay, is the strongest debunk of Young Earth Creationism. All the Creationism organizations admit that it has not been solved. The mud problem is just as bad.
But for kicks ...
Were human beings created about 6,000 years ago in their current form? How can the universe be only 6,000 years old if we can see more than 6,000 light years away from Earth and we can date organisms from more than 6,000 years ago? How can fossils turn into oil in only 6,000 years? How did the tectonic plates move to their current positions in only 6,000 years and without creating enough heat to vaporize all life on the planet? Did dinosaurs and people live at the same time?
How did sedimentary rock form in only a hundred years between the Flood and the tower of Babylon construction?
If Yahweh created the appearance of old age by creating the beams of light millions of light years long at the same time as their source stars, why did it do this? If things only appear old because elements underwent an accelerated period of radioactive decay during the Great Flood, why wasn't the planet's crust vaporized by the released heat?
Are the ages listed in Genesis accurate and evidence for the actual age of the universe? If it was normal and common for people to have children in old age, why does the Bible say that Abraham was surprised by the proposition that Sarah would have a child in old age Genesis 17:17?
Is the universe only six minutes old but was created with the appearance of age?
Did time pass more slowly on Earth than in space due to gravitational time dilation? If so, why don't we see a blue shift in light from objects in space?
Magic
Absolution
Baptism
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If you have been baptized, what difference does it make how you behave in life? If being baptized makes no difference then what's the point of doing it? What effect did the baptism of Jesus have?
Miracles
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If the evidence for miracles is so compelling, why do the world's best apologists use anything other than that to make their case?
Do you think Jesus performed miracles? If Jesus performed miracles before thousands of witnesses, each with many personal contacts, why did he only have about 120 followers at the time of his death Acts 1:15? What government would let someone who works miracles in public wander around freely with his mates, completely unsupervised, for a couple of years? What parent with a gravely ill child is going to let their government execute someone who might be able to cure them?
If Jesus was able and about to bring Lazarus back from the dead, why did he weep over reports of Lazarus being dead John 11:35? Why didn't Josephus report these events that would have been more amazing than anything supposedly done by Elijah or Elisha?
Is it more likely that Jesus actually did miracles but only ones that happened to closely resemble amazing things from the Old Testament or that someone who knew the Old Testament stories made up very similar stories about a person named Jesus?
Why, in Acts or the Epistles, is there no mention of great churches of miracle witnesses established throughout Judea? While purportedly driving out demons, why does Jesus's family think he's crazy in the older Mark Mark 3:21, but not in the newer Matthew or Luke accounts that were written with knowledge of Mark?
Do you accept the miracles of Moses parting the Red Sea Exodus 14:21-31, Joshua stopping the sun Joshua 10:12-14, Isaiah reversing the sun Isaiah 38:7-8, Jesus feeding thousands using only five loaves of bread and two fishes Mark 6:34-44? Why is there no record of any of these things that would have been witnessed by so many people from many different parts of the world?
Thousands of people attested that Guru Sathya Sai Baba, born in 1926, could walk on water, raise the dead, fly without technology, materialize objects, read minds, and foretell the future. He claimed to have been born of a virgin. A million people showed up for his birthday party. Do you believe the supernatural reports about him? Do you believe that Apollonius of Tyana had a miraculous birth, was the son of God, could cast out demons, heal the sick, and raise the dead and that he ascended into Heaven? Do you believe that Guru Sri Yukteswar came back from the dead and appeared to his disciple Paramhansa Yogananda? Do you believe that the Buddha caused a water buffalo to speak in a human language for half an hour in front of a group of eyewitnesses?
What method do you use to dismiss the miraculous claims of people in belief systems different from yours?
Is it better to put a twenty-dollar bill in the collection basket or a one-dollar lottery ticket?
Rituals
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Does it bring good luck and prosperity when Hindus drop babies from the roofs of buildings, or when they have a holy man smash coconuts over peoples' heads? when people throw goats out windows in Spain? when Filipinos nail themselves to crosses? when Orthodox Jews swing chickens over their heads? when Bulgarians suspend their dogs between two poles and spin them? Is the freemason handshake, adopted by Joseph Smith for the Mormons, really a key to entrance into Heaven? Does wearing the Hindu bindi on one's forehead have any effect on anything? Does wearing ashes on one's forehead have any effect on anything? Does stringing wire from pole to pole all the way around Manhattan actually keep Orthodox Jews compliant with the law of the creator of the universe not to carry anything from a private to a public space on the Sabbath?
What is the effect of swearing on a Bible? What happens if you lie after swearing on a Bible? Why do you have to raise your right hand and place your left hand on the Bible? What if you raise your left hand and put your right hand on the Bible? Why does a hand have to be raised? What would happen if you put it in your pocket instead? What if the Bible is backwards or upside down? What if the Bible is upside down, backwards, Chinese, in brail and half the pages are missing? Would that still count?
Should you remove your hat in a church because you are in the presence of Yahweh? If Yahweh is everywhere, how can you where a hat anywhere? Should Catholic women or Jewish men wear hats? Should Catholic men or Jewish women remove their hats?
Supernatural
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At one time, millions of people, in all cultures, claimed that their illnesses were caused by evil spirits. Most people in the educated, industrialized West no longer make these claims. Is that because evil spirits have suspended their illness-causing activities or because the Scientific Method disproved this superstition?
Do you hold your own supernatural beliefs to the same standard you use when evaluating the supernatural beliefs of other people?
Do you support the Hindu belief that the Universe was created out of a giant golden egg?
Do you support the Mormon belief that after death we become gods (with white skin if it's not already white) and we each rule over our own planet? that seafaring Jews settled in North America, were visited by Jesus upon his crucifixion and battled against evil Lamenites (Native Americans) with a sole survivor, Mormon, who recorded the story onto golden tablets in Reformed Egyptian that Joseph Smith translated using a pair of stones, fastened to a breastplate joined in a form similar to that of a large pair of spectacles? that you can distinguish angels from demons by whether or not they will shake your hand? that Earth will become a giant magic crystal? that people with dark skin are descendants from Cain? that there were two days and a night on Jesus's birthday and two nights and a day on the day of Jesus's death? that you can be baptized after death and be released from spirit prison into Heaven? that Cain is Bigfoot? that human Mormons currently live on other planets? that Yahweh is a human man with bones and skin? that there are very tall, very old Quakers living on the sun and the moon? that entry to Heaven depends in part on knowing the secret password and handshake?
Do you support the Muslim beliefs that Muhammad flew to Heaven on a winged horse and split the moon in half?
Do you support the Mahayana Buddhists' belief that sacred texts were hidden in another dimension by snake people?
Do you support the Scientologists' belief that knowledge of Xenu will cause fatal pneumonia in a mind that is unprepared for it.
Do you support the biblical belief that Elijah was brought to Heaven on a chariot of fire? that a woman was literally turned into a pillar of salt? that a flaming sword guarded a magical garden? that Samson's magical hair gave him the strength to kill hundreds of people with the jawbone of a donkey? that the sun stood still for a day in the sky? that zombies wandered around Jerusalem? that a disembodied hand scribbled on a wall? that horn blowing caused walls to fall down? that oceans magically parted? that donkeys, snakes and burning bushes could talk? that eating fruit took away immortality? that Jonah lived for three days in the stomach of a big fish? that Jesus walked on water, brought a dead person back to life, turned water into wine, and rose from the dead? Did joshua bring down walls using trumpets? If he had this military power, why did he only use it once?
Do you support the Catholic belief that bread and wine turn into the flesh and blood of Jesus?
Morality
Bad Jesus
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"I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!" Luke 12:49
"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" Luke 14:26
Why would Gentle Jesus give tacit consent to the murder of people who refused to be his subjects Luke 19:27?
If Jesus is the Prince of Peace Isaiah 9:6, why did he not come to bring peace but a sword Matthew 10:34, and why did he tell his followers to sell their cloaks and buy swords Luke 22:36?
Why would Gentle Jesus condemn to eternal torture people for just not accepting what he was saying Matthew 23:33?
Why would Gentle Jesus deny forgiveness to people who do an unspecific thing like sinning against the Holy Spirit Matthew 12:32?
Why would Gentle Jesus come to send fire on the Earth Luke 12:49?
Why would Gentle Jesus want someone to be drowned in the depth of the sea for offending a child Matthew 18:6?
Why didn't Gentle Jesus ever clearly condemn slavery?
Why didn't Gentle Jesus tell the people who were about to stone the adulteress that it is wrong to stone a woman for adultery?
Why would Gentle Jesus tell slave masters to beat some slaves more than other slaves, instead of just telling them to set their slaves free Luke 12:45?
Why would Gentle Jesus threaten to torture people if they don't forgive people Matthew 18:34-35?
Why would Gentle Jesus take vengeance in flaming fire on those who don't know Yahweh and punish them with everlasting destruction 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9?
When the Gentile Canaanite woman asked for his help in curing her daughter, why did Jesus first ignore her then compare her to a dog in contrast to his followers whom he considered beloved children Mark 7:27, Matthew 15:21-26?
Why would Jesus threaten people who don't follow and tell them they will be cast into a fire and burned John 15:6? Do you agree with Jesus that raping children is forgivable but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not Mark 3:28-29?
Bad Peter
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Why did Peter magically murder the couple in his communist Christian community for disobeying his order and keeping some of the proceeds when they sold the property that they owned Acts 5:1-11?
Children
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Does Yahweh love children?
If Yahweh loves children, why would it murder all the non-Israelite firstborn children Exodus 12:12,
curse parents to eat their own children Jeremiah 19:9, Deuteronomy 28:53, Leviticus 26:27-29,
bless those who dash children against rocks Psalms 137:9, Hoseah 13:16,
starve children because their parents worshipped the wrong god Hoseah 9:11-14,
kill David's son because David had raped Bathsheba, Uriah's wife which somehow caused the Lord's enemies to commit blasphemy 2 Samuel 12:15-18,
order the death penalty for children who curse their parents Leviticus 20:9,
order the death penalty for all little Midianite boys Numbers 31:17,
send bears to tear apart 42 children for making fun of a prophet's bald head 2 Kings 2:23-24,
cause the ground to open up and swallow those who provoke Yahweh as well as their children Numbers 16:27-33,
or curse children Deuteronomy 28:18?
Should parents beat disobedient children Proverbs 13:24, Proverbs 20:30, Proverbs 23:13-14 or kill them Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Mark 7:9-13, Matthew 15:4-7?
Should parents in VA, WV, IA, OH, MS, AR, WA and ID continue to be exempted from prosecution for withholding medical treatment of their children for religious reasons?
Is Jesus right that parents should hate their children Matthew 10:37, Luke 14:26?
What happened to the wives and children of the apostles after the apostles abandoned them to follow Jesus?
Convenient credit
Is Yahweh due credit for everything good? Is Yahweh due blame for everything bad? If a soldier steps on a landmine and loses a leg, should he blame Yahweh for not protecting the leg or should he thank Yahweh for protecting the other leg?
If an airplane crashes and only a baby survives should Yahweh be blamed for all the deaths or thanked for the one survival?
If your house doesn't burn down, does Yahweh deserve thanks? If your neighbor's house burns down does Yahweh deserve blame?
Should we thank Yahweh for the food we eat? Should we blame Yahweh for not providing food to the 18,000 children who starve to death every day?
Did Yahweh make flowers? Did Yahweh make malaria?
If you work really hard and achieve a goal, does Yahweh deserve any of the credit? If you fail to achieve the goal, does Yahweh deserve blame for that?
Divine command
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With only human claims, many hundreds of times removed, that your religious book contains the commands of Yahweh how can anyone know what Yahweh's divine commands really are?
Are moral right and wrong whatever Yahweh arbitrarily says they are or is morality independent of Yahweh? Would you kill or enslave someone if Yahweh told you to do it? Was the Hitler-ordered Nazi genocide of non-Aryans moral? Were the Yahweh-ordered Israelite genocides of the Amalekites, Girzites, Geshurites, Midianites, Hittites, Ammonites, Amorites, Canaanites, Merathaimites, Benjamites, Heshbonites, Bashanites, Girgashites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, including all of the children, moral Exodus 23:23, Deuteronomy 20:17, Deuteronomy 2:33, Deuteronomy 3:3, Deuteronomy 7:2, 1 Samuel 15:3, Judges 20:48, Jeremiah 50:21?
Is there any other situation besides behaviors involving Yahweh in which otherwise unacceptable behavior can be made acceptable due entirely to who the actor is? Can an unacceptable behavior become acceptible for no reason other than that it is done by Kim Jong-un?
If right and wrong are whatever Yahweh says they are, why would Abraham have to teach Yahweh that it is not right to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah as long as there are at least ten righteous men there Genesis 18:25?
Why did Moses need to teach Yahweh that it's not right to murder all the Israelites who worshipped the golden calf instead of Yahweh Exodus 32:11-14? Were Yahweh's initial plans (to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and murder the golden calf worshippers) mysterious ways or errant ways? Why did Yahweh destroy all the golden-calf worshippers (anyway) before they had heard the commandment to not worship anything other than Yahweh?
Family
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How could a loving god tell the Levites to kill everyone including their brothers, friends, and neighbors Exodus 32:26-29? promise to dash parents and children against each other Jeremiah 13:14?
Why did Jesus demand that each of his followers hate his family Luke 14:26? Why did he "come to turn a man against his father" Matthew 10:35? Why did he say "anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" Matthew 10:37? Why did he promise rewards to those who abandoned their families Matthew 19:29? How is this different from similar anti-family directives of death cult leader Jim Jones? is it wrong for the Unification Church to isolate members from their families?
How can you love an undetectable character from ancient Jewish literature more than your own child Matthew 10:37, Genesis 22:2? Do you in fact love Jesus more than your own children? Do they know? Do you have enough faith to murder your own child at Yahweh's request Genesis 22:10)? Would you like your faith to be strong enough that you could murder your children at Yahweh's request?
Why would a loving god curse people to eat their own offspring, but not share any of the flesh with their wives, brothers or other children Deuteronomy 28:53?
Golden rule
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In 600 BCE, philosopher Thales said, "Never do ourselves what we blame in others." In 500 BCE, Confucius said, "Do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you"? Do you think that Jesus invented the Golden Rule?
Is it better for a masochist to treat others as she would like to be treated or as the others would themselves like to be treated?
Heart morality
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Do you think that Yahweh wrote morality on everyone's heart? If so, why did Yahweh need to write commandments on stone tablets? If so, why are there any moral instructions in the Bible? Why does the conscience of one person tell them to do the opposite of what the conscience of another person tells them? If so, why did Yahweh need to tell Adam and Eve not to do certain things? Why would it be impossible for someone to do good without Yahweh having written morality on their heart?
Hitler
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Was Hitler an atheist? If Hitler wasn't religious, why did the belt buckles of Nazi uniforms display the words "Gott Mit Uns" (god with us)? Why did Hitler outlaw the German Free Thinkers League and convert its meeting hall to a Christian outreach center? Why did the Catholic Church only excommunicate Joseph Goebbels for marrying a Protestant but not Adolf Hitler for crimes against humanity? Is it worse to murder millions of people (not grounds for excommunication) or to report a pedophile priest to secular authorities (grounds for excommunication)?
Stalin and Hitler both had mustaches. Does having a mustache cause people to commit genocide? Did these dictators kill in the name of their disbelief in Zeus, their disbelief in Brahma or their disbelief in some other god?
Harry Truman was Christian and killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese. Did he kill these people in the name of his disbelief in Thor? Did he kill them in the name of his disbelief in Brahma?
Loving god insult
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If you were a loving god, would you be insulted by creatures who believed that you were a monster who demands servility and subjects its creatures to eternal torture for trivial offenses? Would you be offended if your creatures divided themselves and fought wars against each other in your name? Why would a loving god want its creatures to waste any of their scarce time worshipping it when they could instead be doing the things it created them to do?
Lucky us
Why would a loving god for the first 100,000 to 250,000 years of human history sit idly by and watch as people suffered? Do you think that the universe was created just for human beings, but for the first 14+ billion years and over the expanse of billions of billions of billions of cubic light years, save Earth, was devoid of these creatures for which it was expressly made? Which species of animal was Yahweh's favorite before homo sapiens evolved?
Objective morality
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Is Yahweh good? How can you use human standards of morality to establish that Yahweh is good if Yahweh cannot be judged by human standards of morality? If indeed religion is moral, how would you be able to figure that out if you didn't already have an independent moral compass?
How can morality be objective across all time, space and culture if it is simply the subjective opinion of the anonymous authors of ancient books and it varies widely between people of different religions who each claim that morality is objective and that they act according to it?
What is the evidence or reason that morality must be put into a person by an omnipotent, external, intentional agent?
If God "put it there", then who put it in God? Why don't some people have it? Isn't Yahweh supposed to be perfect?
Is it objectively immoral to lie? Is it okay for an undercover police officer to lie to child traffickers?
Is it objectively immoral to eat shrimp Leviticus 11:10?
If morality precedes religion, then what value does assigning authorship of morality to a deity add to the morality that comes to you automatically by just dealing with people in life without being a psychopath? How are Jewish kids able to behave without believing in Santa Claus? Can you see any evolutionary advantage to being nice to people? If morality is objective and revealed by Yahweh through particular books, why do god-believers using the same books fall on both sides of moral issues like abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty? Can two people both be morally superior to each other if they take opposite positions on controversial moral issues?
If moral truths exist, why can't they exist without Yahweh?
If acceptable behavior from different times and places has varied so wildly that the Bible has been used to justify atrocities, how can such a variably-interpretable thing as the Bible be a better eternal guide to moral conduct than the universal, timeless, unambiguous alternative concept of consent?
Slavery
Why did Yahweh prohibit eating shrimp (eight times), approve of slavery Leviticus 25:44, and sanction beating slaves so badly that they die in three days Exodus 21:20? And by fulfilling and not abolishing a single jot or tittle of the law Matthew 5:17-18, a perfect law Psalms 19:7, a law that is harder to make go away than Heaven and Earth Luke 16:17, why did Yahweh (as its Jesus person) reaffirm its support for slavery, not eating shrimp and all the rest of the Old Testament rules? Paul of Tarsus Ephesians 6:5, 1 Timothy 6:1, Colossians 3:22 and the unknown author of 1 Peter 1 Peter 2:18 said that slaves should respect their masters even when they are cruel and serve especially well if the masters are believers. Do you agree? Do you agree with Jesus that slaves should get more lashes if they knew what their masters wanted Luke 12:47?
Why do African Americans embrace Christianity, a religion foisted upon their ancestors by slave masters who used the Bible to justify slavery Genesis 6:9, Genesis 7:1, Genesis 9:25, Genesis 24:35, Genesis 17:12, Genesis 16:8, Genesis 26:12, Deuteronomy 24:7, Exodus 21, Exodus 22:2, Exodus 12:44, Exodus 20:17, Leviticus 22:11, Leviticus 19:20, Leviticus 25:39, Leviticus 25:44, Deuteronomy 15:12, Deuteronomy 20:10, Deuteronomy 20:14, Joshua 9:23, Luke 12:46, Luke 17:7, 1 Corinthians 7:21, Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22, Colossians 4:1, 1 Timothy 6:1, Titus 2:9, 1 Peter 2:18?
If Jesus was a Palestinian, why is he depicted as a European in most art?
If the proper English translation of Greek "doulos" is "servant" and not "slave", why did Paul tell the Corinthians that their bodies did not belong to them and that they had been bought like slaves are bought, not hired like servants are hired 1 Corinthians 6:19-20? If "doulos" means servant, why does baptism equalize servants and free when servants are already free Galatians 3:28?
If slavery in the time of the Old Testament was so good, why did Moses go to so much trouble to free the alleged Jewish slaves?
Why would a loving god order an army to kill all the boys and every woman who has slept with a man, and to save for themselves every girl who has never slept with a man Numbers 31:17-18? How did they find out which girls had slept with a man? How does Yahweh feel about child sex slavery? If Yahweh said to spare the virgin girls, not for use as sex slaves, but out of concern for their well-being having just had all their caregivers murdered, why not spare all the disabled people, little boys and seniors too? Is it evil for ISIS or Boko Haram to take sex slaves? How about Moses or Joshua?
The disabled
Why would a loving god deny entrance to the temple to anyone who is blind, lame, disfigured, deformed, crippled, hunchbacked, or short Leviticus 21:17-23? Why were men with damaged testicles or missing penises Deuteronomy 23:1 or people without married parents Deuteronomy 23:2 forbidden from entering congregation? Does a priest need to inspect the testicles and penises of every man entering the congregation or can a lay minister do it? How does Yahweh feel about the disabled? Instead of banning them from the temple, why doesn't Yahweh just repair their damaged testicles?
Tolerance
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Why did John tell the woman not to invite into her home or even greet a person unless they are Christian 2 John 1:10?
Why is it okay to charge interest on a loan to a foreigner, but not to your brother Deuteronomy 23:19-20?
Why does the Bible paint all Samaritans as heartless?
Why is it okay to serve to strangers and foreigners the meat of animals that died of natural causes but it's not okay for you to eat it Deuteronomy 14:21?
Unhelpful god
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Is Yahweh better than the worst human? Which is morally worse: sending millions of people to labor and die in concentration camps for up to five years or sending hundreds of billions of people to Hell to suffer the most excruciating torture imaginable for eternity?
Is Yahweh love? If Yahweh is love and there is no fear in love 1 John 4:18, then why should we fear Yahweh Deuteronomy 4:10, Deuteronomy 5:29, Deuteronomy 6:2, Deuteronomy 6:13, Deuteronomy 6:24, Deuteronomy 8:6, Deuteronomy 10:12, Deuteronomy 10:20, Deuteronomy 13:4, Deuteronomy 14:23, Deuteronomy 17:19, Deuteronomy 28:58, Deuteronomy 31:12, Deuteronomy 31:13?
Should we fear Yahweh Matthew 10:28, or love Yahweh Matthew 22:37?
Why would a loving god create creatures that must kill and consume each other in order to survive?
Why would a loving god allow 18,000 children to die of starvation every day?
create childhood leukemia, malaria, viruses, mosquitoes, Harlequin ichthyosis, appendicitis, and a worm that can only survive by burrowing into the eyes of children?
Would you rather be impaled on a stake by Vlad the Impaler and die after a few minutes, or be subjected by Yahweh to endless burning in a lake of eternal fire Mark 9:43, Matthew 13:50, Matthew 18:8, Matthew 25:46, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 14:10, Revelation 21:8?
Why wouldn't a loving god protect the 11 million people killed in the holocaust? the 75-200 million people killed by the Black Plague? the 50 million people killed in the 1918 influenza? the 10,000 to 100,000 worshipping men, women and children killed in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, tsunami and fires that struck on All Saints Day? the 600 people including 400 women and children killed in a church in Oradour-sur-Glane by retreating Germans? the hundred thousand Yahweh-fearing Christians in Angola killed by insurgent armies? Why didn't Yahweh send Gabriel to Jephthah with a last-minute order not to kill his child, as it did with Abraham Judges 11:29-40?
Yahweh the Terrible
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Is Yahweh good? Why would a good god
☠️ command people to throw stones at their loved ones until they are dead Deuteronomy 13:7-12?
☠️ command a man to murder his son Genesis 22:2?
☠️ kill a man for ejaculating on the ground instead of getting his brother's widow pregnant Genesis 38:10?
☠️ kill the guy who was helping transport the ark of the covenant because he grabbed it to keep it from falling when the oxen stumbled 2 Samuel 6:1-7?
☠️ train warriors and subdue people Psalms 144:1?
☠️ help Jephthah slaughter the Ammonite men, women, children and babies in exchange for his murdering his only daughter Judges 11:29-40?
☠️ curse the Anathoths to die by the sword or starvation Jeremiah 11:21-23?
☠️ help Joshua to utterly destroy every man and woman, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys in the city of Jericho, and take all the gold and linens Joshua 6:1-27?
☠️ order 24,000 Israelites to be killed and have their heads posted for display Numbers 25:4?
☠️ smite 50,070 men of Beth-Shemesh for looking at the ark of the covenant 1 Samuel 6:19?
☠️ kill captives and kill captive children before their parents' eyes Isaiah 13?
☠️ help Abijah kill 500,000 Israelites 2 Chronicles 13:15?
☠️ help Asa kill one million Ethiopians 2 Chronicles 14:8-14?
☠️ allow Satan to kill Job's whole family and make him destitute, then replace the children as if children can be replaced Job 1:13-19?
☠️ make Uzziah a leper for burning incense without a license 2 Chronicles 26:18-20?
☠️ kill the worshippers of Baal who stopped worshipping Baal once they were given good evidence for Yahweh 1 Kings 18:16-39?
☠️ make people wicked Proverbs 16:4?
☠️ set out to kill Moses's son for not being circumcised Exodus 4:24?
☠️ kill 70,000 people because David conducted a census without paying Yahweh a half sheckel 1 Samuel 24:16?
☠️ kill the guy who collected sticks on the Sabbath Numbers 15:32-35?
☠️ kill the Israelites who asked for meat because they were tired of eating manna Numbers 11:13-33?
☠️ kill a man because he didn't strike the prophet with his weapon when the prophet told him to 1 Kings 20:35-36?
☠️ curse someone's innocent children to wander in the wilderness for forty years Numbers 14:33-34?
☠️ ruin a good man for no reason Job 2:3?
☠️ curse people to eat their own family members Leviticus 26:27-29, Deuteronomy 28:53, Deuteronomy 28:57, Ezekiel 5:10, Jeremiah 19:9, Lamentations 2:20?
☠️ raise up evil against David 2 Samuel 12:11?
☠️ bless those who dash children against rocks Psalms 137:9, Hoseah 13:16?
☠️ starve children because their parents worshipped the wrong god Hoseah 9:11-14?
☠️ kill David's son because David had raped Bathsheba, Uriah's wife which somehow caused the Lord's enemies to commit blasphemy 2 Samuel 12:15-18?
☠️ order the death penalty for children who curse their parents Leviticus 20:9?
☠️ send bears to tear apart 42 children for making fun of a prophet's bald head 2 Kings 2:23-24?
☠️ cause the ground to open up and swallow those who provoke Yahweh as well as their children Numbers 16:27-33?
☠️ curse children Deuteronomy 28:18?
☠️ make people speak different languages to keep them from being able to work together Genesis 11:7?
☠️ order the killing of old men, young men, maidens, little children, and women Ezekiel 9:6?
☠️ kill all the firstborn sons Exodus 12:29?
☠️ give people rules that they could not follow and make them sacrifice their firstborns so that they knew that it was Lord Ezekiel 20:25-26?
☠️ threaten to lift up people's skirts over their faces that their shame may be seen Jeremiah 13:26?
☠️ tell followers to hate its enemies Psalms 139:21-22?
☠️ harden the hearts of the people Joshua wanted to conquer so that Joshua could kill all of them Joshua 11:20 instead of doing nothing so that the conquered people's lives would be spared Deuteronomy 20:10-11?
☠️ tell people to beat fools with a rod Proverbs 26:3?
☠️ create evil Isaiah 45:7,
☠️ devise evil Micah 2:3,
☠️ bring forth evil Jeremiah 6:19,
☠️ speak evil 1 Kings 22:23,
☠️ have evil thoughts Exodus 32:1,
☠️ send forth evil spirits Judges 9:23,
☠️ send forth lying spirits 1 Kings 22:22,
☠️ have smoke come out of his nostrils 2 Samuel 22:9,
☠️ have fire come out of his mouth 2 Samuel 22:9,
☠️ threaten to spread dung in peoples faces Malachi 2:3,
☠️ starve people, send plagues, create drought, cause military disaster and kill people to get them to worship it Amos 4:6-11?
☠️ drown every man, woman, child, animal, and plant except for a family of eight and a boatful of animals Genesis 6:13, Genesis 19:24?
Sex
Abortion lies
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❌ Lie: Most women regret abortions.
✅ Reality: A 2018 study supported that the most typical emotional response to an abortion is relief. Only about 6% of patients had mainly negative emotions about the procedure. The vast majority of patients' did not experience a change of heart about their choice five years out.
❌ Lie: Didn't Roe (of Roe v. Wade) regret her decision though?
✅ Reality: Nope. A few years ago before her death in 2017, Jane Roe, aka Norma McCorvey, confessed that the pro-life movement threw a small pile of cash at her to bat for their side.
❌ Lie: The pro-life movement has always been a thing.
✅ Reality: Ronald Reagan signed one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country as governor of California in 1967, six years before Roe. Republicans and religious organizations we most commonly think of as abortion opponents saw its legality as providing safe medical care for women. There are quotes in support of abortion from Baptist groups from that era will blow your goddamn mind.
Some Catholic anti-abortion groups had already formed in the sixties. Then through the seventies, the pro-life movement gained steam. The broad coalition of the 'New Right' started coming together in large part around propaganda about protecting fetuses.
❌ Lie: Abortion causes breast cancer.
✅ Reality: There is no science to back this up. This isn't my conclusion, this is the conclusion of three major medical organizations: the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. An examination of more than thirty studies by the organizations supported this conclusion.
❌ Lie: Most abortions happen after a baby is a whole viable human.
✅ Reality: 91% of abortions happen in the first trimester when you'd be hard pressed to look at it and differentiate it from a fish fetus. The majority of clinics do not provide late term abortions, and the procedure has different limitations state by state at various points in pregnancy. Virtually without exception, late term abortions are due to the types of health issues that leave pregnant women devastated over a baby that was very much wanted.
❌ Lie: IUDs cause abortions.
✅ Reality: IUDs work by a few different mechanisms of action, one of which involves stopping a fertilized egg from implanting. Pregnancy begins after an egg implants. If you don't believe me, ask all the people who have been through heartbreaking rounds of IVF and have had fertilized eggs deposited that didn't implant. They were not pregnant for the few weeks between deposit and negative pregnancy test; they were simply never pregnant. Which is understandable because about half of fertilized eggs just naturally fail to implant.
If God exists, and this is the standard for abortion, God's one hell of an abortionist.
❌ Lie: The morning after pill causes an abortion.
✅ Reality: The morning after pill is like a megadose of the birth control pill. It's recommended to be taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex or birth control failure. Much like an IUD, it can prevent implantation. It can also prevent ovulation. It can't be an abortifacient because nobody's pregnant within three days of an "I meant to pull out but then I thought of Helen Mirren."
❌ Lie: Abortions have extremely high rates of complications.
✅ Reality: Yeah, back alley ones with coat hangers and vacuums and giant doses of random herbs tend to be messy. But Americans from 1973 until, give or take, last week? One of those 'safe and legal' procedures gives less than a 0.3% risk of complications that require hospitalization.
The fatality rate of all abortions in the US from 1998 to 2010 is 0.0007%. By comparison, complications from pregnancy in the US have a 0.017% fatality rate.
It's almost like they're not pro-life.
❌ Lie: Jesus and the Bible say abortion is a one-way ticket to hell.
✅ Reality: The word abortion isn't the Bible, and it's definitely not in the super-Jesusy chapters. The Bible is kinda 'eh' on children as a whole. Hosea 9:14 says "give them a miscarrying womb." Isaiah 13:18 preaches 'They shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eyes shall not spare children." Numbers 31:17 espouses "Now therefore k!ll every m@le among the little ones." Which I censored partially because, Jesus Christ, the bible is gonna get me banned from facebook.
-SciBabe
Adoption option
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Pro Lifer: Well the mother should just give the baby up for adoption if she doesn't want the baby
Me: So who will adopt the baby?
PL: I don't know there's lots of couples who want to adopt
Me: Do you know any couple who is waiting to adopt?
PL: Um well not personally but like I know there's lots of people waiting to adopt.
Me: Do you know what a domestic adoption costs?
PL: I don't know. $15,000 maybe?
Me: The average cost of domestic adoption in the United States is $70,000 if you go through a private agency.
PL: Oh I didn't realize it was that much
Me: Yep it's really expensive. It can be more if you want a newborn straight from the hospital. Up to $120,000.
PL: Well all life is precious.
Me: it really is. I've adopted through foster care and am currently a licensed foster parent. Would you be interested in becoming a foster parent yourself?
PL: Oh no I couldn't do it.
Me: Why not?
PL: It would just be too much for me right now.
Me: Why is that?
PL: It would be too hard to handle all the issues that came with it. I've heard horror stories.
Me: Yep it can be extremely difficult. But what if I told you that you were required by law to become a foster parent?
PL: what?
Me: what if you had to become a foster parent by law?
PL: they would never do that. That would never happen.
Me: Well, if a woman is forced to bear a child she doesn't want, and she goes ahead and has that child, someone has to care for the child either through adoption or foster care. You have to do one of those two things.
PL: But I don't want any more kids.
Me: So you don't want someone forcing you to have a child in your home that you don't want or aren't able to care for?
PL: no, that's not my job to raise someone else's child.
There it is, folks. Have the baby, but we don't want anything to do with it afterwards.
But, let's ban abortion...
Ban realities
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❌ "The Home" was a place for ostracized unwed mothers run from 1925 to 1961 in Ireland by Catholic Bon Secours nuns where remains of 800 children were found in a septic tank and never given proper burials
❌ after Texas's 2021 abortion ban, maternal deaths in Texas rose by 56% compared to an 11% increase across the rest of the nation
❌ At the Bethesda Home for Girls, as recently as 1980, parents sent their disobedient and pregnant daughters who were censored, beaten, imprisoned and forced to give up their babies for $250
❌ A 2011 World Health Organization study found that 11 percent or at least 2,000 women who had illegal abortions in El Salvador between 2005 and 2008 died from them.
❌ Amnesty International found that suicide now accounts for 57 percent of deaths of pregnant females aged 10-19 in El Salvador.
❌ In Romania under Ceausescu, the government monitored women's menstrual cycles
❌ Stillbirth and spontaneous abortion are effectively crimes punishable by 30 years in prison in El Salvador where abortion is illegal in all situations including rape of girls?
❓ If you very much wanted to have a child but you suffered a spontaneous abortion, would you like for the police to conduct an investigation?
❓ What should a woman in Mississippi do if she has a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy and the nearest abortion provider is hundreds of miles away?
❓ What should a pregnant mother do if she has cancer and the only treatment would kill her developing fetus?
❓ What should an eleven-year-old girl do when she is raped and gets pregnant?
❓ Would you like to raise a child with your rapist if you were raped and lived in a state with paternity rights for all men including rapists?
Black genocide
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"Do not kill, do not take life, but prevent." -Margaret Sanger
Do you think that Planned Parenthood provides abortion services in the United States as part of a plot by Margaret Sanger to wipe out Black people? Planned Parenthood only operates in the United States. Do you think that abortion providers in other countries provide abortion services as part of a plot by Margaret Sanger to wipe out Black people? George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and founded the United States. Do you think that slavery is part of the purpose of the United States?
Do you think that giving black women a choice over whether and when to become mothers amounts to unjust black genocide? How is forced birth justice for the person who is forced to give birth? Was forced birth justice when it was imposed on black slaves? Was forced sterilization justice when it was imposed on Native American, Puerto Rican and Mexican American women? Was the forcible removal of children to boarding schools and foster care from these women justice? Was the forced experimentation of contraception pills on Puerto Rican women justice?
Bodily autonomy
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How long should Big Government put a man in prison if he chooses not to quit his job or school and donate part of his liver to save the life of a son or daughter he has never met?
Should the world's greatest concert violinist be allowed to plug into your body without your consent and use your kidneys to stay alive if you were the only compatible person around?
How long should Big Government put someone into prison for not donating blood?
Should Big Government be allowed, without obtaining any consent, to harvest organs from a corpse to save someone's life? Does a live pregnant person have more or fewer rights than a dead corpse?
Should those able to render aid be required to? Should Good Samaritanism be compulsory? How long should the 38 bystanders to Kitty Genovese's murder be sent to prison for not calling the police? for not physically intervening?
If someone wants an abortion but Big Government denies her an abortion and she then dies during labor, how should hardworking tax payers compensate her orphaned children? If it survives, how long should the newborn baby be sent to prison for depriving her of her right to life and causing her to die? How long should it be sent to prison if one twin absorbs another?
Why is it illegal for Big Government to force the driver of a vehicle to donate part of his liver to save the life of a passenger injured in an accident he caused, and illegal for Big Government to force a mother to donate a kidney, even if she is the only compatible person on earth, to save the life of a child she deliberately poisoned causing his kidneys to fail?
If your 200-lb adult child threatens your life, would you be morally justified in killing him or her to save your life? If a 2-lb fetus is threatening your life would you be morally justified in killing it to save your life? At what point in a pregnancy is the lethal risk to the pregnant person zero?
Is your ethical calculus affected at all by the fact that human fetuses develop inside of someone's body and not in external shells the way birds develop? Why didn't the intelligent designer make women lay eggs like birds do and solve the whole abortion problem?
Is it okay for someone, without your consent, to live inside your house for nine months, tear up your genitals and threaten to kill you every day or do you have a right to forcibly remove them using deadly force if necessary, per the Castle Doctrine? Do you have more rights over your house or over your body?
Celibacy
Child adopters
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Should pregnant children be forced to give birth? Should they be forced to give up the babies for adoption? Should children be allowed to adopt babies if they want to?
Child sex abuse
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Contraception
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What did Jesus say about birth control?
What is the harm in using artificial contraceptives? Who receives this harm? If contraception is wrong because it prevents the opportunity for life to be created, is it also wrong for two married people to spend time doing anything at all other than having unprotected sex, and thereby preventing the opportunity for life to be created? If it is a sin to use contraceptives, is it also a sin to eat a grape without burying the seed in the ground? Is it a sin to spay your dog? If one spouse in a married couple has AIDS is it okay with Yahweh if they use condoms?
Should women be allowed to use contraception if they have a medical condition that makes pregnancy more lethal than usual?
When a couple uses Natural Family Planning to deliberately and successfully prevent fertilization is it the will of the creator of the universe for them to not get pregnant? If an STI is transmitted in the process is that Yahweh's will? When a couple uses condoms to deliberately and successfully prevent fertilization is that a violation of the will of the creator of the universe for them to get pregnant? If an STI is not transmitted is that a violation of the will of the creator of the universe for an STI to be transmitted? What did Jesus say about NFP and condoms?
How should a person treat endometriosis without taking birth control pills?
Should the United States continue to pay for abstinence-only billboards in Africa after $1.4 billion was spent on it and it was shown to make no difference in behavior?
Do you oppose artificial birth control? Does artificially enabling erections give a person control over birth? Should Viagra be illegal for providing control over birth? Should it be illegal for men to buy Viagra if they are not in proper Christian marriages? Is erectile dysfunction part of Yahweh's will?
Is it ever possible to be so poor that using birth control to prevent unaffordable children is better than having a child who will lack all basic necessities?
Criminalization harm
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After they enacted a needle exchange program in Washington DC new HIV cases dropped 70%.
In every city where Craigslist offered an escort services site, female homicides dropped.
The war on drugs has cost 60,000 lives in Mexico alone in only the last ten years.
Before abortion was legal, 17 percent of all deaths due to pregnancy and childbirth were the result of illegal abortion. Today, less than 0.3 percent of women undergoing legal abortions sustain a serious complication requiring hospitalization.
After enacting the Volstead Act (Prohibition), 10,000 people died from drinking unsafe industrial alcohol.
In Colorado, they enacted a program of low cost, long-acting, reversible contraception. After five years the birth rate and abortion rate for Colorado teens aged 15-19 had fallen 48 percent. During the same period, the overall US rates dropped only 36 percent.
Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the drop in crime that began eighteen years after Roe v. Wade.
Can you name a time when criminalizing consensual vice for adults reduced harm overall or a time when providing a means to engage in the activity more safely or cheaply increased harm overall? In your prayers to end abortion, do you ask Yahweh to expand the Colorado program that reduced abortion by 12% in five years?
When should you base decisions on empirical data and when should you use feelings?
Divorce
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🗣 "[No fault divorce is] a step towards removing the acrimony and bitterness between a couple that is harmful not only to their children but also to society as a whole."
- Ronald Reagan
Faux pro life
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❌ after Texas's 2021 abortion ban, maternal deaths in Texas rose by 56% compared to an 11% increase across the rest of the nation
What has your church done to reduce the deaths by spontaneous abortion of 20% of all wanted fetuses or 60% of all fertilized embryos? What does it do to keep out of prison women in El Salvador who are imprisoned for losing fetuses they wanted? Over 200 million fertilized embryos die of spontaneous abortion every year. Birth control pills reduce by 99% the number of embryos that fertilize but die before being born. How much money has the Church spent on research into improved embryonic life support interventions or prenatal care for the poor or sterilization or birth control pills? How much has the Church spent on administration, priest retirement and abortion criminalization campaigns?
Do you care about the welfare of pregnant women? If a woman in El Salvador attempts to abort her pregnancy illegally by herself using a coat hanger or by falling down stairs or stepping into traffic, would you prefer for her to be okay or to be harmed/die in the process?
Do you support an abortion ban exemption to save the life of the mother? What percent chance of dying would be necessary to qualify for that exemption? What if one doctor estimates higher than this and another estimates lower than this?
Girls can start ovulating as young as seven years old. Should a sixty pound girl be forced to carry a pregnancy to term, a risk that will most likely kill her?
Fetal pain
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Do you think a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks? What do you know that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists do not know? Do you think a baby boy can feel the pain of circumcision and recovery at 9 months? Do you support mandatory pre-abortion sonogram viewings? Do you support mandatory viewings of circumcisions by parents considering that procedure?
Fetal souls
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Do the souls of miscarried and aborted fetuses automatically go to Heaven? If so, why do you want to stop abortion and prevent these souls from automatically going to Heaven? Is there any greater act of heroism than to bring eternal suffering upon yourself so that another soul can automatically go to Heaven with no risk of taking the Lord's name in vain Exodus 20:7 and then spending eternity burning in the eternal lake of fire Mark 9:43, Matthew 13:50, Matthew 18:8, Matthew 25:46, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 14:10, Revelation 21:8?
Do these souls automatically go to Hell? If they never had the chance to try to be good Christians, why would a loving, just god send these souls to be tortured in Hell for all eternity, especially given that most of them died spontaneously at the hand of Yahweh who alone determines the birth of every human being? Why would anyone take the chance of ever getting pregnant when it is very possible that she could have a spontaneous abortion and cause a soul to spend eternity in Hell?
Which is morally superior: 1) to bring to term a fetus that will go through life without the basic necessities and then, in trying to meet unmet needs, sin and burn in Hell for eternity, or 2) to cause a soul to automatically go to Heaven for eternity?
If souls are real and can be attached/detached from flesh in various situations (conception, embryo division, embryo combination, out of body experiences, death), perhaps the souls of aborted fetuses simply reattach to other fetuses later on. Perhaps this happens under potentially better physical, environmental or socio-economic circumstances. Is there any way to know whether fetal soul reattachment is true or the probability of it being true? Is it more likely that a loving god prefers souls to be attached to flesh under good circumstances or under the circumstances of their very first fetal attachment no matter how good or bad the circumstances are? If Yahweh is omnipotent and does indeed ensoul human beings with souls could it create ensoulment mechanics in which this really happens or is Yahweh unable to make it work this way?
As the fertilized embryo had no say in the matter, how do you know that it consented to play a game with eternal conscious torment as the stakes?
Fun sex
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What did Jesus ever say about having or not having sex for fun?
If a young woman has a hysterectomy or an old woman goes through menopause, so that pregnancy is no longer possible, is it okay with the creator of the universe if she has sex without being married? Is it okay with you? Is it okay with the creator of the universe for a married woman to have non-procreative sex while she is pregnant and unable to become pregnant?
You are 20x more likely to die driving from Detroit to Chicago than to die from AIDS after having unprotected sex. Is it best to abstain from sex? Is it best to abstain from driving?
Should people only have sex in order to make babies? What's wrong with sometimes doing something just for fun and sometimes doing it to make a baby? Is it okay to sometimes take a joy ride and other times drive to work?
Why did Yahweh give humans year-round interest in sex rather than just seasonal interest like most other species have?
What did Jesus say about having sex without being married? Was it a sin to have sex before marriage existed?
Is it okay with Yahweh if unmarried male and female adults have consensual sex? What is the evidence? Is it okay with you? Do you think that "Thou shalt not commit adultery" means "Thou shalt not have sex without being married to the other person regardless of your promises to other people"? Do you agree with Yahweh that a man has a duty to impregnate his brother's widow without being married to her Genesis 25:5-10?
How important is sexual compatibility to the health of a marriage? Do people divorce because of sexual incompatibility? Without having sex before getting married, how can two people determine their sexual compatibility?
Up until a hundred years ago, women frequently died in childbirth, there were no cures for sexually transmitted diseases, and about 1 out of 4 kids died by age 9. There were also no paternity tests for securing property rights that used to go entirely to firstborn sons. Since then we have made huge advances in obstetrics, pediatrics, and cures for sexual diseases, and 50 years ago we got effective birth control.
Is it more likely that ancient societal sex rules had to do with spiritual purity or public health and property inheritance? Is it more likely that the creator of the universe cares what people do with their genitals or that the originators of the Bible prohibitions wanted to control people with threats of eternal torture?
Gay
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Is it okay with the creator of the universe if adults of the same birth gender have consensual sex or marry? Is it okay with you?
If Yahweh doesn't like homosexuality, then why did it make people gay? If people choose to be gay, then why do gay people die of suicide out of proportion?
If the goal is to reduce homosexuality, how practical is it to shame gay people into fake straight relationships which leads them to propagate gay genetics that would otherwise not propagate if they were openly in gay relationships?
Why does Leviticus 20:13 use two different words, Ish (Man) and Zachar (male person of any age), in "If a MAN (Ish) lies with a MAN (Zachar)". If its author meant to decry sex between two consenting adult men, why not just use "Ish" in both places? If this is a condemnation of homosexuality, why should this old covenant rule be obeyed but not the one about cutting hair at your temples?
Is it gay that male David preferred the love of male Jonathan over the love of a woman 2 Samuel 1:26?
Do you think arsenokoitai means consensual sex between adult men and not pederasty? Why would Paul include consensual sex but not pederasty in a list of abuses of power 1 Corinthians 6:9-10?
What did Jesus have to say about homosexuality? Why was the disciple whom Jesus loved reclining on Jesus's bosom John 13:23, John 21:20? Why did Paul tell brethren to greet other brethren with a kiss 1 Thessalonians 5:26? Why does the Bible tell men to kiss lips of men who give the right answers Proverbs 24:26? Why should it matter what an ancient book has to say about sexual attraction and activity?
Why is religious outrage over homosexuality (mentioned twice in the Bible/Torah) greater than religious outrage over eating shrimp (mentioned eight times in the Bible/Torah)? If religious people don't like abortion why do they oppose homosexuality which prevents abortions?
Does Yahweh think homosexuality among sheep is disordered and unnatural? How are the morality and physiological determinant of homosexual attraction different for humans and for sheep? 8 - 12 percent of people are left-handed. 3 - 20 percent of people are attracted to people of the same sex. Is left-handedness disordered and unnatural? Is homosexuality disordered and unnatural?
If something is unnatural, is it bad? Religion and sewage infrastructure are unnatural. Are religion and sewage infrastructure bad?
Do straight people in Heaven have straight sex in Heaven? Why do they want to have straight sex? Do gay people in Heaven (who were admitted into Heaven by not having had gay sex during life) have gay sex in Heaven? Why do they want to have gay sex?
Throughout history, have homosexual people been severely persecuted for their sexual orientation? Do you think that being gay is a choice? Did you choose to be straight? Is being gay a choice for gay animals too?
Choose to be gay. Did it work? Are you now gay?
If sexual orientation actually were a choice, how would that make it anyone's business?
What is the evidence linking sexual orientation to parental fitness?
Gender / Transphobia
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Is it more moral for a society to recognize five genders as the Native Americans did before Christian colonization, or for a society to recognize only two genders and leave people who don't feel like either of them to live lives of persecution, self-loathing and alienation? Why do men have nipples?
▪️ In the village of Las Salinas in the Dominican Republic, 5-αRD is so common that one güevedoce is born per every ninety unaffected male births
Genital mutilation
Do you support genital mutilation of girls? Do you support genital mutilation of boys? Without religion, why would anyone mutilate the genitals of a child?
Later abortion
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After picking out a name, buying a crib, painting a room, and setting up a college fund, how many women pay $30,000 to abort non-threatening, healthy fetuses after seven or more months just because they changed their minds and didn't feel like having a baby after all?
Life
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✅ In 1875 a microscope was invented that was powerful enough to show a sea urchin egg become breached by a sperm cell. Before then everyone thought that sperm cells entirely contained the precursors of people.
If heartbeats are the official indicators of human life, why did Yahweh never say so in the Bible? Why did Yahweh say at least eight times that breath is the indicator of life Genesis 2:7, Genesis 7:22, Psalms 33:6, Ezekiel 37:7-10, Job 33:4, Job 34:14-15, Isaiah 42:5, Job 27:3? Is someone dead when they are in the middle of having a heart transplant? How can plants be alive without having hearts?
If a fetus is a human life, why does Yahweh leave punishment for one's killing up to the discretion of judges in the verse Exodus 21:22 immediately before the verse mandating the death penalty for killing Exodus 21:23?
How can life begin at conception if the sperm and egg are both alive before conception? What is the difference in a sperm cell before and after it dies? What about a cat? a person? an engine? Where does a flame go after it is extinguished and leaves the candle? Where does a knot go when you untie a rope? When does the life of a navel orange tree begin? When does an unshaved face become a bearded face?
Is heat a substance? Why don't they teach caloric anymore in science classes?
Why do Christians celebrate birthdays but not conception days? Why is birthright citizenship determined by place of birth and not place of conception?
Masturbation
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What is the evidence that masturbation causes harm? What is the harm? Who receives this harm? Is it okay for anyone at all, ever to masturbate? What about soldiers who are deployed away from their spouses? What about people who have trouble meeting partners or those who live in remote places without very many other people? How often do you masturbate? Is it worse for someone to masturbate or to force himself on another person when his urges become unbearable? Do you think that the creator of the universe watches you while you masturbate? How effective is prayer at reducing libido?
Personhood
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I have a heartbeat, and DNA distinct from my mother's, and I am older than the age of viability. By any definition, I am a person. Does this give me the right to use my mother's blood, kidneys and liver without her consent? If I do not have this right, why would an embryo?
Pro-abortion Yahweh
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🗣 "God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed."
- Professor Bruce Waltke of Dallas Theological Seminary, 1968
🗣 "the soul is formed at breath, not with conception."
- Southern Baptist Convention president Wayne Dehoney, 1976
🗣 "the one clear thing which the Scriptures indicate about abortion is that it is not the same as murder... [because] an unborn baby is not fully human... (Ex. 21:22)."
- Dr. Norman Geisler, 1971
🗣 "The Bible definitely pinpoints a difference in the value of a fetus and an adult. Thus, the Bible would appear to disagree with the official Catholic view that the tiniest fetus is as important as an adult human being."
- Christian Life Magazine, 1967
🗣 "work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother."
- Southern Baptist Convention, 1971
Where does the Bible mention abortion or willful termination of a pregnancy by the pregnant person (άμβλωση or έκτρωση or αποβολή in original New Testament Greek)?
If Yahweh wants it to be a crime to have an abortion, why did it design the human reproductive system such that more than 50% of all fetuses, embryos, and zygotes are spontaneously aborted?
Why does Yahweh let abortions happen?
Why did Yahweh put fetuses into women who it knew were going to have abortions or whose lives would be threatened or lost because of the pregnancy?
Why did it drown pre-born babies in the flood Genesis 7:17, Matthew 24:37,
incinerate them in a fire Genesis 19, Genesis 38:24, Matthew 11:24,
curse the fruit of the womb Deuteronomy 28:18,
curse people to eat their own children Deuteronomy 28:53, Ezekiel 5:8-10, Jeremiah 19:3-9,
cause the ground to open up and swallow everyone including babies Numbers 16:27-33,
execute pregnant women by Moses's army Numbers 31,
have no mercy on the fruit of the womb Isaiah 13:18,
cause spontaneous abortion Hoseah 9:14,
rip open women's wombs Hoseah 13:16, 2 Kings 15:16, 2 Kings 8:12,
curse unborn children 2 Samuel 12:14,
curse everyone to death including the unborn Jeremiah 44:7-8,
invent an abortifacient for adultery suspects Numbers 5:11-31,
and damn unborn babies along with the rest of the unrighteous Matthew 24:19, Revelation 20:11-15?
What did Jesus say about abortion? Was Jesus wrong that it would have been better if Judas had not been born Matthew 26:24? Should Judas's mother have had an abortion?
Prohibition futility
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How well have laws against narcotics kept people from getting these drugs that make you feel good for a few minutes? How well do you think legal prohibitions would keep people from getting RU 486 that prevents the complete destruction of a young woman's dreams and potentially frees her from poverty? or anti-ulcer medicine Misoprostol which can also be ordered online, delivered and used to abort a pregnancy for only $2 with 90% effectiveness? If Argentina has laws against abortion, how can 500,000 abortions still happen there every year?
After millions of years of humans and pre-human species having non-procreative sex how well do you think effectively criminalizing it will work to eliminate this practice?
What is the abortion rate in countries with abortion bans? What is the abortion rate in countries with legal abortion?
Prostitution
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Why did Judah have sex with a prostitute, his unmarried daughter-in-law Tamar, but also order her to be killed for prostitution Genesis 38:16-24? If it became known that Tamar was prostituting herself doesn't that mean she was doing it with more than just Judah? How can we know that Judah is the real father of her twins? Why was it okay for Judah's lineage to continue through his sex with his daughter-in-law but not through his half-Canaanite sons?
Is it a sin for the Dutch to provide taxpayer-funded sex workers to the disabled who would otherwise go their entire lives without ever having sex?
Purity
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Reproductive sex
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How many children must a couple have to prove their openness to having children?
Do you think that Yahweh actually said "be fruitful and multiply" Genesis 1:22, Genesis 9:1, "Where are you (Adam)?" Genesis 3:9, "Let Us make man in Our image" Genesis 1:26, and "dust you (the snake) will eat. All the days of your life" Genesis 3:14? How do you decide which, if any, words in the book of Genesis are true Yahweh quotes and which are not? Why don't snakes eat dust? If the snake is really a symbol and not an actual snake, why would it be cursed to eat dust? How fruitful and multiple is fruitful and multiple enough? Could it ever be possible to have too many people on Earth where only 15% of the surface is habitable?
Stories
Traditional marriage
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If a marriage is between one man and one woman, why did Yahweh give inheritance rules to follow if you have two wives Deuteronomy 21:15-16? Does it still count as a traditional marriage if your wife gives you her slave as your second wife Genesis 16:3? Were Gideon, his many wives and a concubine part of a traditional marriage Judges 8:30-31? Did Solomon, his seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines form a traditional marriage 1 Kings 11:1-3? Was Moses's marriage to both the Midianite Zipporah and the Cushite woman a traditional marriage?
Is it okay with Yahweh for adults to marry anyone at all if they are sterile or don't want kids? What is the evidence? Is it okay with you? Intersex people and redheads each represent about 2% of the population. Is it an abomination for people to have red hair? Which gender can someone marry who went through Guevedoce (born female and became male at puberty)? if they have both XX and XY chromosomes? if they have XXY chromosomes? if they have one ovary and one testicle? if they have neither ovaries nor testicles? if they have ovaries but no uterus?
Minds
Angels and Demons
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Why don't atheists ever get possessed by demons, but theists in undeveloped, illiterate cultures so often do?
Why do demons only possess people in churches and at home? Why not while someone is presenting the weather forecast on a local news station or while on stage during a shareholder meeting?
If Yahweh is omnipotent why does it need helpers (angels)?
Why do angels need wings to produce the lift necessary to overcome the force of gravity? Why did angels need swords to guard the entrance of the garden to keep Adam and Eve out?
If Yahweh wants us to have free will, why would it allow us to be possessed by demons?
Hallucinations
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Given that one out of eight people has a hallucination while awake and almost everyone has a vivid dream while asleep, and that scientists are able to induce spiritual experiences with brain electrodes and psychedelics, which is more likely: an abnormal release while awake of DMT - the psychedelic naturally produced in the brain and released when you dream, or an actual supernatural experience with characters from the religious stories you happened to have been taught as a child through the accident of your birth and no such experiences with characters from other religions, and the same thing for people of other religions with characters from their religions and not yours?
How can someone tell whether they are hallucinating or having a supernatural experience? whether the voices in their head are internally or externally sourced?
Why did everyone claim that the Emperor had clothes on? Why do men, women and children members of the 600-million-member Pentecostal churches regularly speak in gibberish and writhe around in mass fits of spastic convulsion during services? but people in other religions don't?
Do you believe alien abduction reports? Do you believe the reports of Jesse Duplantis, Louisiana television pastor and owner of three private jets, that he saw aborted fetuses hugging Jesus in Heaven and that he needs a fourth private jet?
Do you accept the placebo effect as a natural phenomenon or a supernatural phenomenon? How do you distinguish between inordinate credulity and strong faith? Do you accept the near-death experience reports by Hindus of seeing their deities?
Near Death Experiences
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Why don't 91% of people who have recovered after losing a pulse report anything about Heaven or Hell?
Where are the police sketch artist drawings of Jesus of Nazareth?
Why are NDE reports similar within cultures and different across cultures? Why don't people in Bangalore see Elvis when they have near death experiences but people in Tennessee do?
Why don't the heavenly characters encountered during near death experiences share useful information like cures for Alzheimers or cancer?
If you can see, hear, and perceive position during an out-of-body experience while your spirit is disconnected from your brain, then why do we need the parts of our brains that serve these functions?
How do people who claim to see Jesus recognize the person as Jesus? How were the artists who first depicted Jesus centuries after his death able to get it right?
Do you think that NDEs happen during the hours of a surgery while the brain is inactive and not during the first moments after activity is restored? How do you know this?
Why hasn't the International Association for Near-Death Studies, founded in 1982, conducted a single successful scientific study that would prove out of body experiences using devices with displayed information that could only be seen and recalled by a legitimate out of body experience?
Why doesn't anyone claiming to have had a NDE ever report stimuli different from those we can experience with our regular material senses?
Do you consider deja vu to be compelling proof of the existence of the supernatural?
Afterlife
After afterlife
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If there were no afterlife, would life be meaningless? If there is no Afterheaven, would life in Heaven be meaningless? Why would anyone in Heaven get up in the morning if they have eternity to get things done?
If you could only afford to go to Paris once in your life, would you refuse to go because you couldn't go again?
Why does a dog, a fish, or a cockroach resist being killed if it is not going to go to Heaven?
Heaven
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What is Heaven like? Do you think you will be reunited with lost loved ones in Heaven? How will you recognize your ugly friends? Will ugly people be ugly in Heaven forever?
Is there free will in Heaven? What happens when someone in Heaven uses their free will and makes a bad decision? Is love a choice? Is there love in Heaven? If it is possible for free will and evil to not coexist, why didn't Yahweh make this the case on Earth?
Is there violence in Heaven Matthew 11:12? Is there war in Heaven Revelation 12:7? Where do you go if you die in a Heaven war fighting for the good guys? Without jealousy, deception and violence in Heaven, how was Satan able to incite a rebellion there?}
If Heaven exists and Yahweh forgives all sins except for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit Matthew 12:31, why haven't you jumped off a building and asked for forgiveness on the way down?
Would you be able to enjoy Heaven knowing that some of your friends and family are burning in Hell for eternity? If in Heaven Yahweh wipes your memory of your condemned loved ones but leaves the rest of your memory intact how would you make sense of the gaps Isaiah 65:16-17? If your mind is so altered that the eternal suffering of your loved ones no longer bothers you, how would you still be you?
Why do people cry at funerals but not when seeing their friends off at the airport?
Why don't believers have parties when they get diagnosed with terminal disease?
Why do people actively take any measures to delay their own deaths? Will you burn in Hell for playing golf in a thunderstorm? for not eating lots of green vegetables to extend your life?
Will we have the character, skills and appetites in Heaven that we developed through struggles and experiences while alive? How does someone develop these things if he died as a baby? If your child dies as a baby will you have to change its diapers for eternity after you die?
What about people whose only loved ones were animals? Wouldn't Heaven be better with pets? If you had twenty dogs over the course of your life, will you have to walk all of them every day? Who gets the shared pets? What about people who have tarantulas for pets? If dogs and cats make it to Heaven, do pigs and cattle too? Do bad dogs and bad cats go to Hell? If not, is it better to be a dog and definitely go to Heaven than a person and possibly go to Hell? If livestock is slaughtered at 100 times the rate that humans die, will Heaven be overrun with chickens? What about wild animals? If there are only human souls in Heaven, wouldn't that make it a very dull, horrible place? Are the dogs in Heaven pets for Americans or dinner for Chinese?
Will we have clothes in Heaven? Why do ghosts wear the same clothes they had on when they died? Do clothes have souls? Do we have to wear the same thing for eternity? Why aren't ghosts naked like Adam and Eve were? Why do the characters reported in near death experiences wear clothes? Are there decency laws in the afterworld?
If two people in Heaven want mutually exclusive things, what do they do? For example, if I want to be with someone but they don't want to be with me, or if we both want to live alone on the same stretch of heavenly beachfront property what do we do?
Do straight people in Heaven have straight sex in Heaven? Why do they want to have straight sex? Do gay people in Heaven (who were admitted into Heaven by not having had gay sex during life) have gay sex in Heaven? Why do they want to have gay sex?
Is everyone equal in Heaven? If there is a class system in Heaven from greatest to least Matthew 5:19, how do the least keep from getting jealous of the greatest?
What do people eat in Heaven? Do slaughtered cows die on Earth, then go to Heaven only to be slaughtered again to become meat again? If we eat in Heaven, do we also poop in Heaven? Who cleans the toilets?
Do we need to prepare food in Heaven? Are people who love to cook happy or are people who hate cooking happy? Do lawns need to be mowed in Heaven? Are people who love to mow the lawn happy or are people who hate mowing the lawn happy?
Will you be with your parents in Heaven? Will your parents be with their parents? Will your grandparents be with their parents? Will your great-grandparents be with their parents? Will your great-great-grandparents be with their parents?
Will you spend eternity with your widow's new spouse and family?
Which pre-Homosapien species was the first to have a soul? Are these souls in Heaven? Do they miss their parents? Do all living things have souls? Did ensoulment begin with abiogenesis? If so, do trees and salamanders end up in Heaven or Hell too, or just people?
Do you have to spend all of your time watching over your loved ones on Earth from above? How many generations of loved ones do you have to watch over? If you gave up a child for adoption, do you have to watch over them or do the adoptive parents? Do you have to watch over your child if they killed you?{x
Where is Heaven? Is it located above Bethany Luke 24:50-51? Is it a golden cube twelve thousand furlongs on each side Revelation 21:16? Is it located in the material universe in the direction of the clouds above Earth Acts 7:55? Which clouds - those over North America or those over South Africa? Those over Bethany? Is Heaven a golden cube trapped in a geostationary 24-hour orbit above Bethany? How high is the orbit and what force keeps it in an orbit that can't be centered at Earth's center of gravity because Bethany is not located on the Equator?}
Why does Heaven have gates? Is it in a rough neighborhood? Is it more likely that Heaven really is a place with actual gates or that an ancient human who knew only about gated cities on Earth produced a story about an exaggerated version of such a city? Are the roads in Heaven paved with gold? Wouldn't that much gold make gold relatively worthless? Wouldn't gold roads be too slippery when it rains?
Do all martyrs in Heaven get 72 virgins as it says in an ancient book?
Is dog Heaven squirrel Hell? Is suicide bomber Heaven virgin Hell?
How can bodies and souls be reunited on judgment day if the matter of one body decomposes and then makes its way via the food chain into many other bodies? If you are eaten by a cannibal, do you get the eaten parts or does the cannibal? What about organ donors and recipients?
Did resurrected Jesus have holes in the hands and side of his heavenly, eternal super body John 20:22? Is it better to enter Heaven without an eye than to go whole to Hell Mark 9:47? Does that mean we will all retain the physical injuries we incurred during life forever? What about people who died by falling into wood chippers?
If you get a nose job, will your old, ugly nose be restored? If you get a boob job, will your old, saggy, small or big boobs be restored? Do you get a body aged to your age at death? Do short, fat, and disabled people, siamese-twins and spontaneously aborted fetuses get the same bodies? What color hair will someone get who died as a zygote before the hair color genes were expressed?
How can a body be reunited with its soul and also replaced by a different, better body? Are the bacteria of a person's gut biome and all 39 trillion nonhuman cells in their body resurrected too?
Is Heaven good? Without any evidence about the nature of Heaven, how do you know that you will enjoy it?
Assuming that in Heaven there will be no imperfections, nothing to fix, nothing to improve, nothing to strive for, no comeback stories, no falling in love, no making up after breaking up, no mysteries to solve, no one in need and so no satisfaction of helping someone, nothing to tear down, nothing to maintain, nothing to build, no issues to debate, no need to exercise, no need for food or drinks, no golf courses, no bowling alleys, no baseball or NFL, no movies, no pornography, no gambling, no practical jokes, no white lies, and no raucous comedians - what will you enjoy about Heaven? Will you spend your time in Heaven worshipping Yahweh nonstop? If that is so good, why don't you do it now? Can you imagine doing your favorite things for a trillion trillion trillion years without getting sick of them?
Heaven utility
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Would you like to live in North Korea and spend your life worshipping and thanking a mass murderer? Would you like to go to Heaven and spend eternity worshipping and thanking a mass murderer? Do you consider Donald Trump's insatiable need for praise to be a virtue or a vice? Is a demand to be worshipped, on penalty of extreme punishment, a characteristic of a "good" person? How could the creator of the universe crave love from its creatures? How can the creator of the universe be jealous Deuteronomy 6:15?
How can someone who believes in an afterlife in paradise value life as much as someone who believes that this life is all we get?
What good is Mutually-Assured Destruction as a nuclear war deterrence to people who believe in an afterlife that is better than the current one?
Hell
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Do bad people go to Hell when they die as it says in the Bible Mark 9:43, Matthew 13:50, Revelation 14:10? Do elves go to Valinor when they die but they can be reborn in Middle Earth as it says in Lord of the Rings?
Why didn't anyone talk about the idea of eternal conscious torment until the fifth century?
Is damnation permanent as it says in Revelation? Is damnation temporary as it says in the Apocalypse of Peter?
If Hell exists, and odds are that you are going there Matthew 7:13-14 to spend eternity burning in its lake of fire Mark 9:43, Matthew 13:50, Matthew 18:8, Matthew 25:46, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 14:10, Revelation 21:8, or even a greater than zero chance, why would you risk it and do anything other than pray and evangelize during every waking moment of your entire, brief life on Earth? If there were even a remote chance that it could help spare you from an eternity literally burning in a fire, why would you not give up all of your possessions Luke 14:33 or sell them and give the money to the poor Luke 12:33, Luke 18:22? Why would Yahweh make the evidence of the existence of Hell so weak that nobody with their god-given capacity to assess plausibility does this?
Would you be able to enjoy Heaven knowing that any of your loved ones are burning in Hell for eternity?
How much sleep have you lost worrying about suffering for eternity in Hell for not worshipping Allah in the manner mandated in the Qur'an?
How can a soul with no nervous system experience pain? If Hell is outside of space and time, then how can someone suffer in Hell for an infinite amount of time? If time goes on infinitely into the future, does it go infinitely into the past? What were Yahweh and all the souls doing during all that time before the physical universe was created?
Did Yahweh create everything? Is Hell something? Did Yahweh create Hell? Why? Did Hell exist before Satan fell from Heaven? Why? Who had been in charge of Hell before Satan took over? If Yahweh created evil Isaiah 45:7, why did it punish people for doing evil things? Why would an omniscient, omnibenevolent god create a soul that it knows will suffer in Hell for all eternity Romans 9:19?
Do your enemies go to Hell when they die? Do your enemies' enemies go to Hell when they die?
Where is Hell? Where does it say where Hell is?
Were Moses, Abraham and Elijah being tortured in Hell for thousands of years before Jesus rose from the dead?
Without any method for positive verification and deterrence, what is the benefit of a soul being tortured in a lake of fire for eternity Mark 9:43, Matthew 13:50, Matthew 18:8, Matthew 25:46, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 14:10, Revelation 21:8? Who receives the benefit?
If Hell exists and eternal damnation is highly likely or even just possible, how can you justify having children? Should non-Christians stop having children if the probability of their conversion is less than 10%? less than 1%? Are 99 souls suffering in Hell for eternity a price worth paying for one soul going to Heaven for eternity?
Souls
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If a soul can think, choose, form words, retain memory, feel emotions and process stimuli without a body or brain, then why do we need the parts of our bodies and brains that serve these functions? Why do these abilities diminish in predictable ways when brains are damaged? How can animals do largely the same things as humans but not have souls? Why is the similarity of behavior and interaction between animals and humans proportional to the similarity in brain size?
Which pre-Homosapien species was the first to have a soul? Are these souls in Heaven? Do they miss their parents? Do all living things have souls? Did ensoulment begin with abiogenesis? If so, are trees and salamanders judged and sent either to Heaven or Hell too?
Does a monkey-human hybrid embryo have a soul? How many souls would two human clones have?
Is internal monologue the voice of a soul? Do people who do not have internal monologues not have souls?
If the right and left hemispheres of someone's brain are disconnected from each other, and if by alternately closing one eye, reading a written question and pointing with the corresponding hand to either the word Yes or No, the person professes belief in Yahweh in one case and disbelief in Yahweh in the other case, does the person have one soul or two? Which of the two belief systems will determine whether the person goes to Heaven or Hell when they die?
Does every human have one soul? Does Yahweh make them on the fly? If so, when? At birth? At conception? Or is there an eternal stock of souls and souls are taken from it as needed? Is it a finite number created once? How many were there originally? When the stock runs out, does that mean Judgement Day is coming? Or is the soul stock replenished from time to time?
Is there a pool of individual souls, or is it like a pot of soul soup where Yahweh ladles out individual portions (souls) when required? How much soul was there initially? What happens with the "unused" soul soup after Judgement Day? Do discrete souls combine back into the soul pot after death?
Does a soul enter flesh at the moment of conception? Which identical twin gets the soul that arrived at conception? Which of the two embryos provides the soul of a chimera?
Souls are said to be eternal. Yahweh is said to be eternal. Which depends on which? If you can have two eternal things can the universe also be eternal?
Are souls judged on Judgement Day? Where are they in the meantime between death and Judgement Day? Is there another stasis chamber pool where they are stored for reuse? Or are they judged immediately (making Judgement Day unnecessary) and the bad souls are sent straight to the Pool of Hell? Do they send themselves to either Heaven or Hell making Judgement Day unnecessary or false? What were they doing before they were incarnated? Were they conscious?
What happens to the souls after Judgement Day when the universe has ended, there is nothing left besides Yahweh, and eternity "begins"? Are the souls now separate from Yahweh or an integral part of Yahweh? If the latter, is the Pool of Hell also an integral part of Yahweh? If the Universe ends and nothing else exists except Yahweh, how can souls be separate from Yahweh?
Are Scientologists correct that clusters of body thetans exist, infest human bodies causing physical and mental ailments, are reincarnated periodically over quadrillions of years, and retain memories of prior lives? Why not?
Where is a soul located? Are its boundaries coincident with a body's boundaries? Is part of a soul lost after an amputation? Is a child's soul smaller than an adult's soul? Is it a tiny particle smaller than a zygote? Is it in the heart? What happens to a soul when someone gets a heart transplant? Is it located in the brain? Where in the brain?
What are the soul boundaries of conjoined twins? of mothers and fetuses? How many souls do twins have if they share a hip? a brain? a heart? How many if there's one body with two faces?
If a soul provides consciousness to a body, what provides consciousness to a soul? How does an immaterial soul interact with or provide consciousness to a material body?
Judgement
Compulsory love
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Is it moral to demand love from someone on penalty of eternal torture Mark 12:30? How is compulsory love possible?
End times
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Do you think the rapture will happen? How could a trumpet blast be heard all around the world? What about deaf people? How could Jesus descend bodily from somewhere in outer space through the stratosphere, hover in the sky at a particular location, and be seen by everyone around the world? How could living people on earth be transported bodily into the sky to meet him in the air? How could decomposed bodies in their graves be reconstituted to meet Jesus in the air? And what about those who have been cremated? What happens with organ donations?
Gaming Yahweh
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If someone offered you a million dollars to believe in Santa Claus, could you make yourself honestly believe in Santa Claus?
Do you believe in a god that punishes honest atheists who take the question of its existence seriously enough to reject it when they don't see it supported, and at the same time rewards insincere religionists who profess belief in order to avoid eternal personal suffering? How can you choose to believe something? How can such a god be worthy of worship? If you pretend to believe in Yahweh would Yahweh know that you are just pretending?
Justice
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Are you causing your cells to divide? Are you causing your synapses to generate your thoughts? If your thoughts are not determined or random, then what causes them? Do you think souls exist? Did you choose your soul? If a person doesn't choose his own soul and doesn't ask to be born, and he only sins in order to meet needs that result from being born, what is the justice in his eternal torture?
Do you think that Yahweh gave us free will? How did Yahweh decide who to give a sort of free will to make good decisions and who to give a sort of free will to make bad decisions?
Which finite mortal offense deserves a punishment of infinite torture in Hell in a manner more horrible than can be imagined?
Why are judges in courts of law given any discretion in sentencing? If Yahweh's justice is proportional and fair rather than binary, how can it be said that the ordering of the commandments doesn't matter, that is to say each of them - from working on Sunday to first-degree murder - carries the exact same punishment - eternal conscious torment?
Why is there only one eternal reward and one eternal punishment even though there are as many different degrees of moral rectitude as there are people? Do you consider it justice to send one person to Hell for eternity and the very next better person on the goodness spectrum to Heaven for eternity?
Is it justice for unsaved aborted fetuses and unsaved serial child molesters to receive the same punishment (eternal conscious torment)? Is it justice for those who learned about Hell and those who never learned about Hell to both receive the same eternal punishment for an identical transgression? If accepting Jesus as Lord is all that matters, why did Jesus spend so much time giving instructions about moral conduct?
If Yahweh cannot be harmed, then how is it possible to commit a crime against (harm) Yahweh?
If two people take the Lord's name in vain and then one of them dies before she has time to ask Yahweh for forgiveness and the other asks for forgiveness the next day and then dies, does the first one go to Hell to be tortured in a lake of fire for all eternity (Mark 9:43, Matthew 13:50, Matthew 18:8, Matthew 25:46, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 14:10, Revelation 21:8 and the second go to Heaven for all eternity?
If someone like Charles Whitman gets a brain tumor that leads him to commit mass murder, is his eternal disposition determined by his pre-tumor or post-tumor righteousness? If a mass murderer gets amnesia is his eternal disposition determined by activities that he does not remember?
If someone is sentenced to the worst punishment possible for committing one mortal sin, what is his incentive not to commit a million more mortal sins?
Is it just for the good souls sent to Hell before Jesus died to have been there at all?
Life's a test
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Is life essentially just a test? With eternity being so much longer than the average human lifespan, is the goal of every action you take during your short time on Earth ultimately to secure for yourself a heavenly eternal afterlife? If Yahweh is omniscient, then why would there need to be any tests to determine who does and does not get into Heaven?
Is life a test for chimpazees, cockroaches, and adults who were never told that life is a test?
Is it fair that kids younger than the age of accountability are exempt from the test?
If it were proven that there is no afterlife, how would you live your life differently?
How do you reconcile certainty that your departed loved ones were good enough for Heaven while being uncertain that you are good enough?
Salvation terms
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How does someone get into Heaven? How do you know?
Do you need to obey the commandments Matthew 19:18, or believe in Jesus Acts 16:31?
Is it completely predestined and out of our control Ephesians 1:11?
Do you believe as hundreds of millions of people do that the only way to salvation is to surrender yourself to Lord Krishna?
Do you believe as billions of people do that Jesus is the son of Yahweh and the only way to salvation is to accept him as your personal savior?
Do you believe as the countless ancient Egyptians believed that our spirits are judged by Anubis, the god of death, by weighing them against a feather of Maat?
Do you believe as billions of people do that Mohammed is Allah's final prophet and the only way to salvation is to adhere to the five pillars of Islam?
What happens to a person's soul when they die if they had never heard about Yahweh? If their soul goes to Heaven, then isn't it best to not tell anyone about Yahweh?
Self served Hell
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Do people put themselves in Hell or will Jesus someday come again in glory to judge the living and the dead? Will everyone someday be judged for every word that they have spoken Matthew 12:36? If people put themselves in Hell, then why does Jesus need to judge them? What is the consequence of such a judgement?
Do people put themselves in Hell? Which Hell - Christian Hell, Muslim Hell, Baha'i Hell, Jain Hell, Shinto Hell, Jewish Hell, Zoroastrian Hell or Cao Dai Hell?
Do you think that rejecting an imaginary, narcissistic, genocidal tyrant is the same thing as choosing to be tortured for eternity instead of choosing to live in perfect happiness for eternity?
Do fetuses and embryos choose to put themselves in Hell? If they don't and therefore they all go to Heaven automatically, why do you oppose abortion?
If I refuse to give a mugger my wallet and he shoots me, have I chosen to die?
Does an atheist put herself in Hell by rejecting an offer that she doesn't believe exists from one of many, many, many gods that she doesn't believe exists? How can someone reject an offer of anything that she doesn't believe exists?
If you loved your child and a man told her that you told him to tell her to go into one of two rooms behind closed doors, that this room contained a pony and the other room contained an alligator, but your child didn't believe this man and chose instead to go into the other room, would you intervene and protect her, or would you sit back and let the alligator eat her? What if a different man told her that you told him to tell her to go into the alligator room and she dutifully followed his instruction?
If Yahweh allows people to choose Hell without knowing that it exists, much less what it is actually like to be there, why doesn't Yahweh allow people to choose Heaven once they are burning in Hell and clearly know what it is actually like?
Suicide
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Unaccountability
Do you think that Einstein, Gandhi, Malala, the faithful Jews killed in the Holocaust and everyone who does not pledge allegiance to Jesus are tortured for eternity in a lake of fire Mark 9:43, Matthew 13:50, Matthew 18:8, Matthew 25:46, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 14:10, Revelation 21:8?
Do you think that Charles Manson who repented before his death and every serial killer who pledges allegiance to Jesus go to Heaven?
Do those who died before Jesus or died without hearing about Jesus spend eternity in Hell? How is that fair? Do they receive posthumous, undeniable evidence of Jesus and an offer to enter Heaven if they pledge allegiance to Jesus? How is that fair to people who have to pledge allegiance to Jesus without any good evidence?
Unconditional love
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Does Jesus love all of us unconditionally? What does the word "unconditionally" mean? Do you think that someday Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead? What does the word "judge" mean? What do you think will happen to those on whom Jesus renders an unfavorable judgment? Why would Jesus choose to render a judgment on someone he loves unconditionally that sends them into a lake of eternal fire Mark 9:43, Matthew 13:50, Matthew 18:8, Matthew 25:46, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 14:10, Revelation 21:8 or something equally unpleasant and unwanted by the person if he could instead render a judgment that doesn't do this? Why not just cause the bad souls to not exist anymore instead of subjecting them to eternal torture or a presumably very unpleasant separation from Yahweh that doesn't benefit anyone?
Were the slaughtered Amalekites, Girzites, Geshurites, Midianites, Hittites, Ammonites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Heshbonites, Hivites and Jebusites, including all of the children, loved unconditionally by Yahweh Exodus 23:23, Deuteronomy 2:34, Deuteronomy 20:17, 1 Samuel 15:3?
How can a god love you unconditionally but bring upon you eternal hellfire unless a pastor dunks you under water? Aren't baptisms conditions? Do you think the creator of the universe would institute a system whereby one's eternal disposition hinged on these things?
If salvation is a gift that cannot be earned, then why bother declaring "Jesus is Lord" Romans 10:9-10, being baptized Acts 2:38, giving money to the church 1 Corinthians 16:1-2, witnessing, reading the Bible, having regular family devotionals, voting Republican, choosing the correct denomination or participating in every church activity?
Prayer
Yahweh's priorities
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Why would Yahweh answer a prayer for good weather at a picnic but not an end to all suffering? How does Yahweh decide which football team's prayers to answer? How does Yahweh decide whether to answer the prayers from Florida to send a hurricane to Georgia or the prayers from Georgia to send the hurricane to Florida?
Is Yahweh responsible when poor people win lotteries? Is Yahweh responsible when rich people win lotteries?
Prayer formalities
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Is Yahweh able to hear your prayers better when your hands are folded and your head is bowed? Does a prayer still reach Yahweh's ears if you don't say "amen" at the end? How does kneeling help you communicate with Yahweh? Why didn't Paul need to be kneeling for Yahweh to reveal itself to him on the road to Damascus?
Do you need to pray over main courses? appetizers? salads? desserts? What are the consequences of not doing that?
What are the people doing in church who don't have internal monologues? Can someone be a cloistered nun if she has no internal monologue?
Why are there churches if Jesus said to pray alone in our rooms Matthew 6:5-6?
Prayer efficacy
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Does prayer help heal people? If faith healing works, why don't faith healers spend all of their time in hospitals? Why do Christian hospitals have operating rooms but not faith healing rooms staffed by whoever in town has the best prayer batting average?
What method can be used to determine that prayer is effective? What method did Aztecs use to determine that human sacrifice is effective? What is the difference?
Does Yahweh really answer prayers with "yes", "no", or "wait"? How do you know? Does a jug of milk answer prayers with "yes", "no", or "wait"? How do you know? If Yahweh actually did not answer a prayer with "yes", "no" or wait", how would you know? Are prayers to Yahweh answered more reliably today than prayers to Zeus were when that god was as popular?
Why has Yahweh never restored the limb of an amputee? Why does Yahweh only effect cures that can be explained by coincidence and the placebo effect? Why does Yahweh provide a kidney donor at the last minute instead of just keeping the kidney healthy?
Why do prayerful Christians suffer sickness, bad test scores and bankruptcies at the same rate as everyone else? Why are Muslims generally worse off than Christians even though they pray so much more often to Allah who is Yahweh by another name? Why aren't healing rates better at Christian hospitals than non-Christian hospitals?
With so many people praying for them, why hasn't the health of royalty far exceeded that of the rest of us? Why haven't the pope's annual prayers for peace ever been answered?
Why aren't insurance rates lower for prayerful believers and higher for non-believers?
If prayer works, why are the powerful elites encouraging the poor masses to do it instead of keeping this power to themselves?
Why ask?
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If Yahweh can read our minds, doesn't it already know what we want? Why would we need to tell it what we want? Does it already know whether or not we will tell it what we want?
If Yahweh knows everything, then how is it within our power to let a thing be known to Yahweh Philippians 4:6?
If Jesus said to ask for anything and it will be given, why ask to heal only one person and not just ask for all problems to be solved Matthew 7:7, Matthew 17:20, Matthew 18:19, Matthew 21:2, Matthew 21:21, Mark 11:24, John 14:12-13, John 16:23, James 5:15-16? Was Jesus lying when he said you would get whatever you ask for? If I ask Yahweh for religion to go away will it?
Why wouldn't a god that loves you and knows whenever you need help just help you - regardless of whether you beg for help (pray) or not?
Why wouldn't a god that loves a baby and knows whenever it needs help just help the baby - regardless of whether its parents beg for help (pray) or not?
If the neighbor's child fell out of a tree and her parents were unable to provide help, would you help her immediately or wait for the parents to beg you to do it? If the parents pleaded to you as sincerely as they possibly could, would you most likely still not help the child?
If Yahweh has a plan of action, what is the point in trying to influence its action through prayer? What is the benefit of singing songs of praise to Yahweh? Who receives this benefit?
If Yahweh deviates from its plan and answers a trivial prayer, how does it avoid the butterfly effect and not cause dramatic changes to the rest of the course of human history contrary to its original plan? If it does this millions of times per day over thousands of years, how is it possible for the course of history to even remotely resemble a plan made at the beginning of time?
Why do you pray for help in the event of a disaster to the same god that permitted that disaster to occur? And, if Yahweh wanted that disaster to occur (which is implied by its non-intervention), does that mean that it wanted the consequences of that disaster to occur? Why do you seek to avoid those consequences, if they are the will of Yahweh and you are committed to following the will of Yahweh?
If you help a friend fight cancer but it is Yahweh's plan for her to die, have you crossed Yahweh for obstructing its plan? When should you ask Yahweh for forgiveness for obstructing its plan?
Is prayer misunderstood to be about asking Yahweh for things? Is it really just a way to connect with Yahweh? If so, why should you let your requests be known to Yahweh Philippians 4:6?
Yahweh's Plan
Apathy excuse
If someone thinks that climate change is part of Yahweh's will would she be more or less inclined to take action to fight it? Should she be punished for fighting it?
Playing god
What does "playing god" mean? How is playing god different from practicing medicine? What did Jesus say about biotechnology, gene therapy, and embryonic stem cell research?
Is it "playing god" to take someone off a ventilator? Is it "playing god" to put someone on a ventilator?
Purpose
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Does Yahweh have a purpose for you? If Yahweh actually did not have a purpose for you how could this be proven? Without Yahweh would your life have no purpose? Does Yahweh have a purpose for the 18,000 children who die of starvation every day? What is their purpose?
Does everyone eventually solve the mystery "What is Yahweh's purpose for me?"? Do most? Do any? How can it ever be known whether even one person has solved this mystery? If even one person does not solve it, what does this say about Yahweh's Plan?
Are you more likely to make a good life for yourself if you think that it is entirely up to you to determine, or if you think that Yahweh has a special plan for you and you need to wait for Yahweh to tell you what it is in a manner that other people report being 100% able to understand and therefore if you are not likewise so certainly informed it means Yahweh has not told it to you, so you need to just wait for this revelation that is perfectly clear to other people?
If Yahweh didn't actually have a special plan for you and therefore it was entirely up to you whether your life turned out okay, how would you live it differently?
What is Yahweh's plan?
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How can things happen that are not part of Yahweh's plan?
How do you know when the death of a person, fetus, embryo or zygote is part of Yahweh's plan and when it is not?
Was it Yahweh's will for people to die of syphilis before penicillin was discovered? Was it Yahweh's will for people to survive syphilis after penicillin was discovered? Was penicillin discovered through a process directed by human free will or was its discovery caused by Yahweh causing humans to do things?
If Yahweh's plan is good and murder and abortion happen, and nothing can happen without being part of Yahweh's plan, are murder and abortion good?
If a person doesn't buckle up and dies in a car crash according to Yahweh's plan, should we stop using seat belts?
Is a bad thing only part of Yahweh's plan in cases when someone was aware, able and tried to stop it?
If it is possible for things to happen that are not part of Yahweh's plan, does Yahweh need to be constantly interfering with free will in order to keep its plan on track?
Do you think that the Holocaust might have been part of Yahweh's plan?
Can you name a thing that could not be justified by saying that it was part of Yahweh's plan? If something is in fact not part of Yahweh's plan how can we determine this?
Was the sinfulness that lead Yahweh to regret having made man and subsequently destroy the world by a big flood part of Yahweh's plan? If Yahweh regretted making Saul king, does that mean Yahweh makes mistakes 1 Samuel 15:11?
If every human birth is the will of Yahweh and a rape results in human birth does that mean that the rape was the will of Yahweh? If every human birth is the will of Yahweh and consensual sex between unmarried people results in human birth does that mean it was Yahweh's will for them to have sex? Is forbidden sex only a sin if it doesn't lead to a birth because if it does lead to a birth then this means it was part of Yahweh's will?
If two people are unable to have children after three IVF attempts, does that mean it is Yahweh's will that they should not have children? If they are able to have a child after eight IVF attempts does that mean it is Yahweh's will that they should have children?
Does Yahweh have a special plan for each of the 18,000 children who starve to death every day?
Suffering
Argument from justice
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Do you support the just-world hypothesis? On what evidence? Is it justice for 18,000 children to die of starvation every day? If you believe that all suffering will be offset after death, why bother working to reduce suffering during this life?
If a person suffers during their life on Earth does it follow that they will experience joy in Heaven after they die? If a chimpanzee suffers during its life on Earth does it follow that it will experience joy in Heaven after it dies? If a box of oranges has a top layer of bad ones does this mean that the ones underneath are good?
If you could either prevent child rape or punish the rapist afterward (unless he repents), which would you do? Which does Yahweh do? If a rapist is only punished after he dies, how can he use the experience of the punishment to benefit others? If you could allow someone to suffer but make it up to her after she dies, or just prevent her suffering in the first place, which would you do? Which does Yahweh do?
If your life is an increment less pleasant than that of someone else, will your experience of Heaven be an increment more pleasant than theirs? Do people living in comfort with modern conveniences through the accident of their birth circumstances receive a smaller portion of Heaven than people who were born during the Dark Ages?
Do you expect your enemies to go to Hell when they die? Do your enemies expect their enemies to go to Hell when they die? How would a third party decide whether you're right or your enemies are right?
Free will
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Most people who have lived either did not know about Jesus or they were not sold Christianity as a child. So how can these people be said to have made free will choices against Jesus?
According to the myth, a third of all the angels in Heaven left with Satan, and this never happened again. So it's possible to reject Yahweh in Heaven.
Animals suffer. How is this suffering the result of human free will? If suffering is necessary, how do you explain excessive suffering beyond that which is necessary? If animals do not have free will, then what's the point of their suffering?
Did sin enter the world when Lucifer fell or Adam and Eve disobeyed Yahweh? The Bible says God physically walked with Adam and Eve. If Yahweh was observable to Adam and Eve, why is Yahweh hidden from everyone else?
If we are not free to feel sorrow or loss in Heaven or to choose other than constant worship, then we're not free in Heaven.
Handled with Yahweh
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Does Yahweh never give us more than we can handle? Does Yahweh never give people who die more than they can handle? If Yahweh keeps us from all harm and watches over our lives, why should we lock our doors, wear seatbelts or take any precautions Psalms 121:7-8?
Irreligious suffering
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Does lack of belief in Yahweh cause human suffering? Can you name an instance of suffering that was caused by excessive rational thought, skepticism or rejection of claims found to be unsupported by evidence? Can you name an instance of suffering that was caused by strict observance of ancient religious teachings? Can you name a society that embraced the teachings of rational non-believers and fell into a state of tyranny and suffering? Can you name one that did so while guided by belief in the supernatural?
Problem of evil
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Why is there evil and suffering in the world?
Is Yahweh willing to prevent evil, but not able? If so, how can it be omnipotent? Is it able, but not willing? If so, how can it be benevolent? Is it both able and willing? If so, then why is there evil in the world? Is it neither able nor willing? If so, then why worship it?
Is suffering an unfortunate consequence of giving people free will and The Fall? What is the justice in punishing someone for what an ancient ancestor did? Why did Yahweh create a universe in which The Fall was possible? If we suffer because of The Fall, why do some suffer so much more than others when everyone was equally (not at all) responsible for The Fall? Why is there suffering from natural disasters and illness that is not the result of free will? With tracheas and esophaguses so close to each other, how did Adam and Eve avoid choking on food before The Fall? Is suffering punishment for willful offenses the person themself committed Amos 1:3, Isaiah 1:4 or for the sin of ancestral Adam Genesis 3:17? Why does Yahweh allow children to suffer before they have reached the age of reason when a person is able to take responsibility for their acts of free will? Why do some good people suffer while some bad people do not suffer? Why do nonhuman animals suffer? Does each species of creature that suffers have an ancestral original sinner?
Why do some organisms have systems whose only function is to cause suffering?
Is there evil or suffering in Heaven? In Heaven will we return to a pre-Fall state by forgetting the difference between good and evil? Do the souls in Heaven have free will without sinning or the possibility of a Fall? How and why does Yahweh make that work there, but not here on Earth? If the souls in Heaven don't sin because they don't have the free will necessary to sin, and if making people on Earth robotic without free will would have been cruel during their short time on Earth, is it also cruel for Yahweh to do that to robotic, heavenly, unable-to-sin souls for all eternity? When police, doctors and parents intervene to reduce and avert suffering does that make robots of those affected by their interventions?
Did Pharaoh have free will when Yahweh hardened his heart Exodus 7:3-4? Did the Chaldeans pillage of their own free will or because Yahweh raised them up for this purpose Habbakuk 1:6-11? Did Judas betray Jesus of his own free will Matthew 26:49 or was it pre-ordained and inevitable Matthew 26:21? How can it be that we have free will if Yahweh has mercy on whom it wants to have mercy, and hardens whom it wants to harden Romans 9:17-18?
Is suffering a way for Yahweh to test our faith and strengthen our character? Is animal suffering a way for Yahweh to test an animal's faith and strengthen its character? Why would an omniscient god need to conduct tests to obtain information? Why do most people not come out stronger after suffering? Should you allow your child to get hit by a car in order for you to strengthen your character? Whose faith is tested every seven seconds when a child whose parents had never heard of Jesus starves to death?
Is suffering one of Yahweh's mysterious ways that is mysteriously in the best interest of the sufferer Job 1:22? How do you distinguish a seemingly bad thing caused with ill intent by Satan from a seemingly bad but mysteriously good thing caused with good intent by Yahweh? Are kindergarten shootings mysterious ways of Yahweh? Are condoms, abortion and Pride parades mysterious ways of Yahweh?
Are bad things necessary for bringing about good things? Is the pain of an injection justified by the greater good of immunity? If it were possible to administer a vaccine without pain, would it still be moral to administer this vaccine with pain? Is anything possible with Yahweh? If Yahweh allows evil in order to mysteriously bring about a greater good, are you offending Yahweh by praying that kindergartens not be massacred anymore, in defiance of Yahweh's mysterious will? Should we allow children to be raped because in Yahweh's plan a greater good will come out of that lesser evil?
Does suffering serve an unknown greater good? Why not an unknown greater evil? Greater good for whom? Having my car stolen serves the greater good for the thief who stole it, but not for me. Rape does not serve a known greater good for the victim. Does it serve an unknown greater good for the victim? Is this the same greater good served for me who is not a rape victim? That works out well for me but not so much the victim. If the greater good is not a single thing but rather one thing for me and a different thing for the rape victim, does that solve the problem? Is the greater good one thing for a rape victim and something better for a gang rape victim? What is the greater good for an avalanche victim and what is the greater good for an identity theft victim? What greater good could require Yahweh to create a worm that can only survive by burrowing into eyeballs? If it serves a greater good, why don't you put burrowing worms into your eyeballs? If seemingly bad things are actually necessary for bringing about greater goods, then why bother working to reduce seemingly bad things?
If you don't know the explanations for bad things happening, how can you be certain good fortune is Yahweh's reward for good behavior? Are you able to imagine a bigger-picture, Yahweh-view of reality in which thousands of children dying in a tsunami actually can be a good thing? Is anything possible with Yahweh?
If theodicies can defend the good god hypothesis against the existence of some evil, why can't the same lines of reason be used to defend the evil god hypothesis against the existence of some good?
Law
1st Commandment
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If there is only one god, then why does the first commandment acknowledge the existence of other gods that ought not to be worshipped? If there is only one god, why did it tell the Israelites that it would kill all the firstborn in Egypt in order to execute judgements on all the gods of Egypt Exodus 12:12? Why did it not just say that there are no other gods in existence to worship? Why would you want to worship a god that demands that you worship it? What is the harm of not worshipping Yahweh? Who receives this harm?
Do you agree with Yahweh that anyone who worships a different god should be put to death Deuteronomy 17:2-7 or that if the people of a town worship a different god then everyone in it as well as all the livestock should be killed Deuteronomy 13:13-19?
2nd Commandment
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Do you think that making an image is really the second worst thing that you can do? What is the harm of making a graven image? Who receives this harm?
3rd Commandment
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Yahweh thinks taking its name in vain (prohibited) is worse than rape and slavery (not prohibited) Exodus 20:1-17. Do you think taking Yahweh's name in vain is worse than rape and slavery? Are Almighty Yahweh's feelings hurt when its name is taken in vain by puny human beings? Why did Yahweh list taking its name in vain (2nd or 3rd) before killing (5th or 6th)? Do you think that taking Yahweh's name in vain is worse than murder? If the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values, why is the lesser offense of murder a crime but taking Yahweh's name in vain is not a crime even though it is listed higher in the Ten Commandments? Would you like for the punishment for taking Yahweh's name in vain to be more severe than the punishment for first-degree murder, as it is in Pakistan? What is the harm of taking Yahweh's name in vain? Who receives this harm?
Do you agree with Yahweh that anyone who blasphemes must be put to death Leviticus 24:16?
4th Commandment
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Why would the creator of the universe care which day of the week we take off? If Yahweh's true meaning was for us to take any day of our choice off, would Yahweh have been able to find the words to say so? Why would an omnipotent god need to rest on the seventh day? Is the Sabbath to be kept holy because Yahweh rested on the seventh day Exodus 20:11, or because Yahweh freed the Israelites from Egypt Deuteronomy 5:15? What is the harm of not keeping holy the Sabbath? Who receives this harm? Does Yahweh think it is okay to gather wood on the Sabbath Mark 2:27, or not okay to gather wood on the Sabbath Numbers 15:35? If you see someone working on the Sabbath should you report it to Sabbath police who are also working on the Sabbath?
Is it a sin to dishonor the Sabbath on the International Space Station and planets other than Earth? What counts as the seventh day to people who are not on Earth? Do aliens or will future people on other planets need to check which day it is on Earth? Which point on Earth should they use to determine the day? How should businesses set their business hours if the planet does not have 24-hour days?
How should the millions of employees who work on Sundays at Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowes, Burger King, McDonalds, Jiffy Lube and Family Christian Stores be put to death Exodus 31:15?
5th Commandment
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Should respect and obedience be automatic or earned? Is not honoring your parents (prohibited) worse than rape and slavery (not prohibited)? Should a girl honor her father if he rapes her? Do you think you should beat disobedient children Proverbs 13:24, Proverbs 20:30, Proverbs 23:13-14 or kill them Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Mark 7:9-13, Matthew 15:4-7?
6th Commandment
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Why did Yahweh deliver a command to not kill Exodus 20:13 then tell Moses to have the Levites slay 3,000 of their brothers, friends, and neighbors Exodus 32:27-28?
What is the biblical penalty for breaking any of the Ten Commandments?
Why did Yahweh give specific rules for who you are supposed to kill:
unbelievers 2 Chronicles 15:12-15,
followers of other religions Deuteronomy 17:2-7, Deuteronomy 13:6-12, Numbers 25:1-9,
witches Exodus 22:18,
fortune tellers Leviticus 20:27,
people who ignore priests Deuteronomy 17:12,
children for cursing their parents Leviticus 20:9,
sinners (Ezekiel 18:4),
sons of sinners Isaiah 14:21,
the curious 1 Samuel 6:19-20,
adulterers Leviticus 20:10,
children who hit their parents Exodus 21:15,
children who disobey their parents Deuteronomy 21:20,
rape victims who do not scream out loud enough Deuteronomy 22:24,
gay people Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-32,
non-Hebrews Deuteronomy 20:16-17,
nonbelievers 2 Chronicles 15:12-13,
anyone who curses Yahweh Leviticus 24:16,
entire towns if one person worships another god Deuteronomy 13:12-19,
males who lose a war Numbers 20:13,
women who are not virgins on their wedding night Deuteronomy 22:16-21,
false prophets Zechariah 13:3,
anyone who blasphemes Leviticus 24:10-16,
anyone who works on the Sabbath Exodus 31:12-15,
and anyone who kills anyone Leviticus 24:17?
Why did Yahweh itself kill:
42 children for making fun of a prophet's bald head by sending 2 bears to tear them to pieces 2 Kings 2:23-24,
people for looking at the ark of the covenant 1 Samuel 6:19-20,
provocateurs and all their family members Numbers 16:27-33,
all of the firstborn of Egypt just to prove it was real Exodus 11:4-8,
everyone on earth except for Noah and his family,
and a man because he didn't strike the prophet with his weapon when the prophet told him to 1 Kings 20:35-36?
What does "kill" mean? Is it a sin to kill a human embryo? a human sperm cell? a carrot?
Without this commandment, would people think that murder was morally acceptable? How did Cain know that it was wrong to kill Abel without having read this commandment Genesis 4:9?
7th Commandment
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Do you think that adultery should be a capital crime Leviticus 20:10? Why wasn't King David stoned to death for committing adultery with his general's wife 2 Samuel 11:4? Why did Yahweh give David's wives to his neighbor to adulterate in public 2 Samuel 12:11?
If conjoined twins Brittany and Abby Hansel each get married, would it be adultery for either of them to have sex with their husbands?
If thinking about adultery is just as bad as adultery then what threat of punishment is there to stop someone from actually committing adultery after first thinking about it?
8th Commandment
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Did Yahweh's commandment not to steal provide any value to anyone? Did the people think that stealing might be okay before Yahweh said it was not?
If there is a commandment to not want other people's things, why do we need a commandment to not take other people's things? Why would someone steal something if they don't want it?
Is it a moral absolute to not steal? Is it immoral to steal plans from terrorists and save thousands of lives? Is it immoral to steal a loaf of bread if you are starving?
Why would Yahweh instruct Moses to take the Midianites' stuff and divide it among his men Numbers 31:25-27?
9th Commandment
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Why did Yahweh tell Moses to bear false witness (lie) to the Egyptian Pharaoh Exodus 3:18? If Yahweh was protecting Abraham, then why did Abraham tell his wife Sarah to lie to the Egyptians that she was his sister and not his wife in fear that they would kill him before taking her Genesis 12:13? Is it okay to bear false witness against someone who is not your neighbor? If not, why didn't Yahweh just omit the "against your neighbor" clause to avoid confusion over this term that has been understood by scholars to refer only to other Israelites?
Why did Yahweh make the prophets lie 1 Kings 22:22, cause people to be deluded so they would be damned 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12, and give people bad rules Ezekiel 20:23-25?
Was Yahweh lying when it said that it would never destroy the world Genesis 8:21 or when it said that it would destroy the world 2 Peter 3:10-11? when it said that you cannot see its face Exodus 33:20 or when it said that you can see its face Exodus 6:2-3, Numbers 12:6-8?
Why would Yahweh lie to people 2 Thessalonians 2:11, Ezekiel 14:9, or make people lie 1 Kings 22:23?
10th Commandment
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How is it possible to not be attracted to a married person you find attractive? How would the species survive without people looking lustfully at other people? Do you agree with Jesus that if a man looks lustfully at a woman the best thing for him to do is to gouge his eyeball out Matthew 5:29? Should women also gouge their eyeballs out if they look lustfully at someone?
How is it possible to obey a commandment to not want a thing that you want? What would economic development be without the desire to have things that other people have? Why are wives allowed to covet their neighbors' spouses but husbands aren't? How can the Ten Commandments be regarded as applicable today and forever if its regard for women as chattel is no longer acceptable in modern culture? Why are houses listed higher than wives on Yahweh's list of property of your neighbor that you must not covet? If the Israelites were not supposed to covet, why did they seek to conquer and acquire the land of their neighbors?
Christian Nationalism
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🗣 "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion..."
- Article XI of the Treaty of Tripoli between the United States and Libya signed by John Adams and unanimously ratified by the Senate
🗣 "I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution."
- George Washington
🗣 "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
- Thomas Jefferson
🗣 "In every country and in every age, the priest/minister has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814
🗣 "I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."
- Benjamin Franklin
🗣 "Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
- Benjamin Franklin
🗣 "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
- Thomas Paine
🗣 "What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
- James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
🗣 "The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity."
- John Adams
🗣 "Any church/religion/or so called sincerely held religious beliefs, In a country, governed by 'Constitutional Law', that requires the power of the state with the assistance of law, regulation, and statue, to enforce and uphold the doctrines , laws, and dogmas of a church/religion/or so called sincerely held belief, then that church/religion/or so called sincerely held beliefs, must be construed to be false. In a free society, freedom of religion, also affords us freedom from religion. 'Spiritual Truth' will stand on its own with no assistance from government!"
- Jim Green "notes on religion and law"
🗣 "I always find it very curious that when one is confronted with what one does not like, approve, or understand, one suddenly has "Sincerely held religious beliefs ".
- Jim Green
🗣 "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute."
- John F. Kennedy
🗣 "We establish no religion in this country. We command no worship. We mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must remain separate."
- Ronald Reagan
🗣 "I don't know that we live in a Christian nation. I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say, maybe not, and it's not our job to do that."
- Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts
🗣 "Welcome to the end of democracy. We're here to overthrow it completely. We didn't get all the way there on January Sixth, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here (pointing to a crucifix)."
- Trump supporter Jack Posobiec, speaking at CPAC
❌ Alexander Hamilton was a deist
❌ George Washington was a deist
❌ George Mason was a deist
❌ Benjamin Franklin was a deist
❌ John Adams was a deist
❌ James Madison was a deist
❌ Thomas Paine was not Christian
❌ Thomas Jefferson was a deist
❌ John Q. Adams was not Christian
❌ Millard Fillmore was not Christian
❌ William H. Taft was not Christian
❌ William Henry Harrison was not Christian
❌ Lyndon B. Johnson was not Christian
❌ Ulysses S. Grant was not Christian
❌ Rutherford B. Hayes was not Christian
❌ Abraham Lincoln was not Christian
❌ only three or four people at the constitutional convention wanted a prayer which was therefore never said
❌ the Constitution explicitly bans religious tests for office
❌ Yahweh is not mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution
❌ "under God" was not in the pledge of allegiance until 1954
❌ "In God, we trust" was not on the back of dollar bills until 1956
❌ John Quincy Adams and Franklin Pierce swear on law books at their inauguration
❌ America was only 17% religious in 1776
❓ How could the founding fathers have launched a rebellion against the British authorities, if they were Christian and the Christian Bible says that you must obey the authorities Romans 13:1?
❓ How many Bible quotes and Christian images are contained in architecture in Washington D.C.? How much pagan imagery is there?
❓ Where does the Bible teach democracy, consent of the governed, peaceful protest, freedom of speech, habeas corpus, separation of powers, duty to rebel against tyranny, power from the people, innocence until proof of guilt, protection from self-incrimination or gender equality? How can the Bible's enumerated rules be amended as the US Constitution can?
❓ Where does the U.S. Constitution enshrine the biblical principles of a kingdom of God, cruel, unusual punishment (Hell), vicarious redemption, heritable fault, chosen people, compulsory love, capital punishment, misogyny and slavery?
❓ Is the US constitution based on the Ten Commandments of the Bible? Why does the First Amendment (worship any god) negate the First Commandment (worship only Yahweh)? Why don't the words "God", "Bible", "Jesus" or "Christianity" appear anywhere in the constitution?
❓ What does worshipping other gods, making idols or taking the Lord's name in vain have to do with the constitution? Why does the constitution forbid forcing businesses to close on Sundays? How do you know whether the Bible's prohibition of murder and theft comes from the Ten Commandments or from the moral code of every other society that prohibits these things? Why do we have a first amendment that protects blasphemy? Why isn't divorce and wanting something of someone else a crime? Are the constitutions of all the other countries also god-given? How do you know which constitutions are given by Yahweh and which ones are not? Do our rights come from god? Which rights? The Bill of Rights? What about the different bills of rights in other countries?
❓ Why don't Jewish people use the word "Judeo-Christian"?
Jesus Commandments
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How is it possible to love others as much as or in the same manner as yourself Mark 12:31? How is it possible to command someone to love someone?
Do the commandments apply to the whole world or just to Jews? Why did Jesus specifically tell his disciples to only preach to Jews and not to Gentiles or Samaritans Matthew 10:5?
Keeping Torah
Why did James and the other Jewish Christians continue to Keep Torah (keep kosher, circumcise their sons, and worship in the Temple with animal sacrifices) after Jesus died Acts 21:26?
Did Jesus follow the law or not follow the law?
Moderates
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"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice"
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Do you believe that Jesus is the incarnation of the god John 10:30 that drowned all the world's babies Genesis 7:17, Matthew 24:37 and cursed parents to eat their own children Leviticus 26:27-29, Deuteronomy 28:53, Deuteronomy 28:57, Ezekiel 5:10, Jeremiah 19:9, Lamentations 2:20?
Is it objective morality that you should love your neighbor as yourself Mark 12:31, or kill non-Hebrews Deuteronomy 20:16-17?
How do you decide which Bible rules to obey and which to ignore? If you must not add or remove anything from the commands Deuteronomy 4:2, and if Jesus did not abolish a single jot or tittle of the law Matthew 5:17-18, a perfect law Psalms 19:7, a law that is harder to make go away than Heaven and Earth Luke 16:17, that stands forever Isaiah 40:8, 1 Peter 1:24-25 how is it possible to ignore any of the rules? If Gentle Jesus is a co-equal member of the triune godhead, why were the arbitrary, draconian Old Testament rules enacted at all?
Do you wear clothes made of two different materials Leviticus 19:19? eat shrimp Leviticus 11:10, trim the hair at your temples Leviticus 19:27, plant crops with two different kinds of seed Leviticus 19:19, have any tattoos Leviticus 19:28, have any contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual unclean-ness Leviticus 15:19, work on Saturday Exodus 35:2, or approach the altar without having 20/20 vision Leviticus 21:20? If you menstruate, do you sacrifice two doves before entering church after your period Leviticus 15:19 and avoid wearing gold at church 1 Timothy 2:9? Do the males of your household appear before the Lord three times every year Exodus 23:17?
Did Jesus invalidate all the Old Testament laws? Do you support a national divorce ban in accordance with what Jesus said about divorce Luke 16:18, Matthew 5:32, Matthew 19:6, Mark 10:12?
Where did Yahweh say that the law of the Old Testament was only temporary? What does it mean to "fulfill a law" Matthew 5:17? If I wanted to fulfill the law against driving through a red light, how would I do it? If Jesus did not abolish a single jot or tittle of the law Matthew 5:17-18, a perfect law Psalms 19:7 that is harder to make go away than Heaven and Earth Luke 16:17, that stands forever Isaiah 40:8, how are you able to pick up sticks on Saturdays with impunity?
Are the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament still in force? Is "Don't commit adultery"? Is "Keep holy the Sabbath"? How do you know?
When Jesus spared the adulteress from stoning was he admitting that the old law was not Jesus/Yahweh-given, or was he voiding it John 8:1-11? If Jesus was Yahweh, why hadn't Jesus/Yahweh initially included a qualifier to only stone adulteresses if you are without sin? Why did Jesus/Yahweh leave out this qualifier and allow all those adulterers to be stoned for all those years by people who were not without sin? Are there other unwritten qualifiers of other laws? Why doesn't this story appear in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of John or in any of the other Gospels? Why isn't there any mention of this story in commentaries by Greek commentators until the tenth century?
Have you given up all of your possessions Luke 14:33 or sold them and given the money to the poor as it says in the New Testament Luke 12:33, Luke 18:22, Matthew 19:21? Do you give people whatever they ask for as it says to do in the New Testament Luke 6:30, Matthew 5:42? Do you think slaves should be beaten more if they knew what their masters wanted as Jesus says in the New Testament Luke 12:47?
Is it irrational to take literally the story of Yahweh creating the world in six days? Is it irrational to take literally the story of a dead person coming back to life? Is it simplistic for atheists to read literally the verse saying Jesus will come down from the sky Mark 13:26? Is it simplistic for Christians to read literally the verse saying Jesus went up to the sky Acts 1:11?
Is it an unjust belief of Fundamentalists that thought crimes are punished by everlasting torture? Is it an unjust belief of Moderates that thought crimes are punished by annihilation?
If the Noah's ark flood was actually only a regional event, then are the people from other places who lived and did not descend from Noah under any covenant with Yahweh at all?
Is the Old Testament the inspired word of Yahweh with its characterization of Yahweh as a genocidal, narcissistic, petty, misogynist, jealous, vain, sadistic, pyromaniacal, nationalist tyrant? Besides providing the antiquity necessary to effectively market a religion during the first centuries CE, what good is the Old Testament? What makes the New Testament any more credible and inerrant than the Old Testament? If the concepts of thought crime Matthew 5:28 and eternal torture in the afterlife Mark 9:43, Matthew 13:50, Matthew 18:8, Matthew 25:46, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 14:10, Revelation 21:8 were not introduced until the New Testament, how is the New Testament kinder and gentler than the Old Testament where you were free to think with impunity and Yahweh's vengeance ended at death? Why didn't Jesus denounce slavery or the genocides committed by Yahweh in the Old Testament?
Do you think that there really was a time long ago when Yahweh thought it was an abomination for men to wear women's clothes and women to wear men's clothes Deuteronomy 22:5? for a man to lie with mankind as he lies with a woman Leviticus 20:13? for people to have sex while the woman is on her period Leviticus 20? to burn incense Isaiah 1:13? to sacrifice a blemished sheep Deuteronomy 7:1? Does Yahweh still think they are abominations? If Yahweh still thinks they are abominations, then what difference does it make whether these things are still strictly forbidden in the new covenant? If Yahweh does not think they are abominations any more, then what changed its mind?
Other commandments
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Yahweh thinks you should keep the feast of unleavened bread Exodus 34:18, sacrifice every male firstling among your cattle, ox or sheep Exodus 34:19-20, observe the feast of weeks Exodus 34:22, and have all your sons appear three times per year before Yahweh Exodus 34:23? Do you think so too?
Yahweh thinks boiling a goat in the milk of its mother (prohibited) is worse than rape and slavery (not prohibited) Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26. Do you think boiling a goat in the milk of its mother is worse than rape and slavery? Is it also worse to offer a blood sacrifice with leaven, or wait until morning to offer a passover sacrifice Exodus 34:25?
Do you think that without the moral law of the Bible human morality would become relative and arbitrary?
Religious right
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Do you think that Bob Jones University was unfairly stripped of its tax-exempt status after prohibiting interracial dating? Do you agree with 1960 Bob Jones that "if you are against segregation and against racial separation then you are against God"? If, in response to this action by the IRS, Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich and their friends at the Heritage Foundation had chosen to demonize adultery instead of abortion, would you call for the biblically mandated death penalty of adulterers instead of the deaths of women and doctors that are ordered nowhere in the Bible?
Ten Commandments
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Do you believe that Yahweh actually wrote down ten rules onto stone tablets and gave them to someone named Moses on top of a mountain? Do you believe that Dionysus wrote down laws onto two stone tablets? Do you believe that Minos received sacred laws from Zeus on a high mountain? Is it more likely that the creator of the universe had exactly ten distinctly important rules or that ten was a good round number to put into a story?
Why did Yahweh give different sets of commandments Exodus 20, Exodus 23, Exodus 34, Deuteronomy 5 and Deuteronomy 27? Did Yahweh make a mistake the first time?
Theocracy
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What's more important to you - Christianity or democracy? Ideally, would you like Christianity to be the official religion of the United States? Ideally, would you like the United States to be a Christian theocracy with a leader from the clergy? Do you think laws from an ancient book supersede laws established through the processes of democracy?
Do you agree with Peter and the apostles that we must obey God rather than men Acts 5:29? Do you think Wahhabi Muslims in Saudi Arabia must obey God rather than men? Do you agree with St. Paul and Jeff Sessions that everyone needs to submit to the authorities Romans 13:1?
Do you think bacon should be banned with civil laws because it offends Muslims? Should an employer be allowed to deny insurance coverage of blood transfusions if he is a Jehovah's Witness? of all doctor intervention if he is a Christian Scientist? Why didn't Maurice Bessinger have the religious right to deny service to black people on the grounds that "serving members of the negro race would violate his sacred religious beliefs"? Should insulting someone's religion be a crime in the US like it is in majority Catholic Philippines? Do you think that the Bible should be the basis of laws? What about the Qur'an? What about the Hindu Epics?
Misogyny
Rape
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Where in the Bible does it say that a woman's consent to sex is necessary or desirable? Why did the angel tell Mary she was pregnant instead of asking for permission to impregnate her?
Is it okay for a man to rape his wife's slave girl if his wife is too old to bear children Genesis 16:4?
Should rape victims be executed if they do not scream out loud enough Deuteronomy 22:24
Why did Yahweh curse David to have his multiple wives raped by the neighbor 2 Samuel 12:11-14?
Why did the author of Genesis have Yahweh reward Lot after he got drunk and impregnated both of his daughters Genesis 19:36?
Yahweh and the authors of his books consider rape to be a property crime against the father of the rape victim Genesis 34:8, Deuteronomy 22:13-21, Deuteronomy 22:28-29, Exodus 21:7-11. Do you consider rape to be a property crime against the father of the rape victim?
Women
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❓ In a Christian wedding, why do fathers give their daughters in marriage but mothers don't give their sons in marriage? Why do women take their husbands' names but men don't take their wives' names?
❓ If a woman is forced to marry her rapist Exodus 22:16-17, should she be stoned to death for not being a virgin on her wedding day Deuteronomy 22:30?
❓ Why is it okay for men to divorce their unfaithful wives, but not for wives to divorce their unfaithful husbands Matthew 5:31-32?
❓ Are wombs the property of the cis men who own the wombs' women Proverbs 31:2?
❓ How is a woman unclean after giving birth? Why is she unclean for 14 days after having a baby girl but only unclean for 7 days after having a baby boy Leviticus 12:1-5?
❓ Why is female virginity so important in the Bible but male virginity is not? If a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night should she be stoned to death on her father's doorstep Deuteronomy 22:20? If a man is not a virgin on his wedding night should he be stoned to death on his mother's doorstep?
❓ Why do men get to eat holy meat but women don't Leviticus 6:29?
❓ Is St. Paul right that it is okay for men to speak in church but wrong for a woman to speak in church and if she wants to learn anything she should not ask in church but should ask her husband at home 1 Corinthians 14:34-35? that men are the image and glory of Yahweh, but women are only the glory of men 1 Corinthians 11:7? that women were created from and for men 1 Corinthians 11:8-9? that a woman must learn quietly with all submissiveness and may not teach or exercise authority over a man 1 Timothy 2:11-14? that women have to give birth in order to be saved 1 Timothy 2:15? Do you think that all women who do not have children will burn for eternity in the lake of fire Mark 9:43, Matthew 13:50, Matthew 18:8, Matthew 25:46, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 14:10, Revelation 21:8? Why do women have to cover their hair but men don't 1 Corinthians 11:5?
❓ Why do male slaves get freedom after six years but if you sell your daughter into slavery she can only be bought back if she doesn't please her master Exodus 21:7-8? Do you agree with Yahweh that you can sell your daughter into slavery and allow her master to rape her Exodus 21:7-10? Why would a loving god allow masters to rape their female slaves and then order the slaves to be punished Leviticus 19:20-22?
❓ Why are only males to appear three times before the Lord Exodus 23:17?
❓ Why does Yahweh dictate a fidelity test for women but not for men Numbers 5:11?
❓ If male travelers are staying in your house and the locals come by to gang rape them, should you give your daughters to them and let them rape your daughters instead of the travelers who have super powers and surely don't need any help defending themselves against a few mere mortals Genesis 19:8? If a mortal male traveler stays at your house and a gang shows up to rape him should you give your female concubine to them to rape instead? Judges 19:16-30
❓ Why didn't Jesus have any female apostles?
❓ Why wasn't the Acts of Thecla included in the Canon?
❓ Why did Yahweh talk to Abraham but didn't include Sarah in the discussion about murdering her son Isaac?
❓ If men and women are equal in the eyes of Yahweh, why did Yahweh curse women to be ruled over by men Genesis 3:16?
❓ Why do women choose to obey the Bible?
❌ Yahweh thinks that the value of a woman is 60% the value of a man and the value of a girl is 50% the value of a boy Leviticus 27:1-8. Do you think so too?
❌ Yahweh says that women should be stoned to death if they do not scream loudly enough when they are being raped Deuteronomy 22:24
❌ Yahweh says that if you rape a virgin you will be forgiven if you pay her father and marry her Exodus 22:16-17
❌ Yahweh promised to pull up the Israelites' skirts over their faces to expose them Jeremiah 13:22-26
❌ Yahweh considers a person unclean if they touch the bed of a woman during her period Leviticus 15:23
❌ Yahweh caused head scabs and exposed private parts of women who are haughty, walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walk and mince as they go, and make a tinkling with their feet Isaiah 3:16-17
❌ Yahweh commanded banishment of women for seven days every month while they are on their period Leviticus 15:19-24
❌ Yahweh closed up all the wombs to punish Sarah Genesis 20:18
Yahweh's gender
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Why is sexless Yahweh referred to using male pronouns? Which components of Yahweh's nature distinguish it definitively as male and not female? If Yahweh can get angry and if Yahweh is actually female, does it make Yahweh angry to always refer to her with male pronouns?
Indoctrination
Child abuse
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Should adults present unsupported, extraordinary religious claims - eternal torture, talking donkeys and bushes, unicorns, living in a whale stomach, virgin birth, resurrection, invisible, surveilling angels, an invisible boogeyman living at the center of the Earth, etc - as truth to impressionable children at their most credulous, imaginative time of life, when they have not yet developed the critical thinking skills, experience or brain physiology necessary to judge truth? Is it moral for Muslims to lie to children about very serious things? Is it moral for Christians to lie to children about very serious things?
According to the National Association of Evangelicals, the majority of the respondents (63 percent) accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord while they were 4-14 years old, in what is known as the 4/14 Window. How can a four-year-old make an informed, rational decision as to the reality of dead corpse reanimation?
Gaslighting
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Why does Yahweh destroy wisdom and cleverness 1 Corinthians 1:19, and tell wise men to become fools 1 Corinthians 3:18, and suppress all disobedient thoughts 2 Corinthians 10:5, and discourage trusting one's own understanding Proverbs 3:5, Isaiah 55:8-9, and punish the pursuit of knowledge Genesis 2:17 but there is nothing written in the Bible in praise of human intelligence, the most distinguishing characteristic of the human species? Do you think the foolishness of Yahweh is wiser than man's wisdom 1 Corinthians 1:25? Do you think it is wrong to ask Yahweh for explanations Romans 9:20?
Did the originators of the Bible stories have anything to gain if their listeners just followed them without thinking critically? How could Yahweh create a scientific marvel like the universe and create us in its image but discourage scientific inquiry?
Do you agree with Jesus that people who believe something without proof are blessed John 20:29? Are Flat-Earthers blessed for believing that the Earth is flat? When is it best to accept something without good evidence and when is it best to require good evidence before accepting something? What is evil and adulterous, as Jesus claimed, about people asking for evidence Matthew 12:39? Do you agree with Jesus that having lustful thoughts is just as bad as committing adultery Matthew 5:27-28?
According to the Bible, every one of the Eleven and Paul believed only after perceiving something extraordinary. What is wrong with the rest of us insisting on seeing clear evidence before believing? If the Jews of Jesus's day were there, and if they knew their Scriptures, and if they believed in Yahweh, and if they believed in miracles, but they didn't believe Yahweh raised Jesus from the dead then why should we believe it? Do you believe that Yahweh will reveal itself to anyone who sincerely asks?
Does it seem reasonable to you that we can only enter Heaven if we have the faith of a child, a person who can be fooled into believing that Santa Claus is real, that you can dig a hole to China and that the nice man in the van really has candy as he claims Matthew 18:3? Why does the Church use sheep/shepherd metaphors? Why is it a slur to refer to someone as a sheep if we should aspire to being sheep?
With access only to the comprehension powers of our own minds, how is it possible to lean on the understanding of anyone else Proverbs 3:5-6? If something does not make sense to you, what difference does it make to you if it makes sense to someone else? How is it possible for someone to know that someone else understands something?
Do you agree with 58% of Republicans that colleges and universities have a negative impact on the US? Do you agree with 72% of Democrats that colleges and universities have a positive impact on the US? Do you agree with Jehovah's Witness leader Gerrit Losch, that going to university is like shooting yourself in the head?
Questioning
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Do you think that religious people should or should not ask challenging questions of their religious instructors and religious parents? Why is the Campus-Crusade-taught policy for handling questions from skeptics to not answer the questions because it puts the Christian on the defensive? If something is true, what does it have to lose by being challenged? If something is not true, what does it have to lose by being challenged? Do you agree with the author of 1 Peter that you should always be prepared to explain why you believe what you believe 1 Peter 3:15? What kinds of questions should Christian students ask and not ask? What kinds of questions should Muslim students ask and not ask?
Do you think that the followers of cult leaders Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Marshall Applewhite should or should not have asked them questions?
Do you agree with Jesus that people who give kids a list of questions that lead them to doubt Christian teachings ought to have a stone tied around their necks and drown Matthew 18:6?
Do you think that followers of Poseidon should not put their beliefs to the test? Do you think that followers of Yahweh should not put their god to the test Deuteronomy 6:16? Do you agree with Paul of Tarsus that you should prove all things and only keep what's good 1 Thessalonians 5:21?
Is it best to test claims of being god Isaiah 41:21-24, or not do that Luke 4:12?
Do you agree with St. Augustine that to be happy you should not live in accordance with the mind and reason but should instead be subject to Yahweh?
Suckers and skeptics
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If Yahweh wanted more than anything else for people to believe things without good evidence, why would it create people with the credulity to believe charlatans who claim to speak for Yahweh but do not? Why would it create atheists with critical thinking skills that make them skeptical of the existence of Yahweh?