By Larry Rhodes | 28 May 2015
Digital Freethought Blog
It’s funny that whenever I tell a believer that I’m an atheist, they always start asking me questions. I don’t really mind, I realize that I might very well be the first atheist that they’ve ever met, and I’m happy to put the lie to some of the church-given notions about us. However, what continues to amaze me is that these questioners, who are VERY happy to question my beliefs, so rarely question their own.
With that in mind, I have drawn up several questions that I would like believers (in this case Christian believers) to ponder. And it’s not for my own edification that I ask them, but for theirs. I hope that if they honestly consider these questions they might realize for themselves just how much of their own skepticism and rationality they have been sidelining.
So, let’s get started:
1. What, exactly, is your basis for believing that the Bible is True; not necessarily the word of god, but true? Remember, your answer can’t be “Because the Bible says it’s true”, ANY book would be true by that measure, and any religion would be true by that measure. They can’t ALL be true because they contradict each other. Further, if you’ve read it, you know that it’s not a good book; that is, god doesn’t exactly set a good example. He’s a ruthless dictator and the book is full of His atrocities.
Is it just because your parents told you that it was true? And that most of the people you know think that it is true? Really, think about it, what real, extra-biblical basis do you have to believe it is the work of a God? And if you’re considering answering “I just feel that it’s true”, go ready my article entitled “Feelings aren’t facts”.
2. In the Bible, in the Garden of Eden, if the fruit of the Tree-of-Knowledge contains the knowledge of Good/Evil and Right/Wrong, then how could Adam and Eve have known it was “wrong” to disobey God and eat the fruit before they did? They couldn’t have known what right and wrong meant. Also if God had explained to Adam and Eve what right and wrong was before they ate of the fruit so that they would understand why it was wrong to eat the apple, then wouldn’t He have essentially given them the Knowledge that he had just forbidden them to have? Remember; THIS is the Original Sin, the basis for the need for salvation in all of Christianity.
Moreover, why did God put the Tree-of-Knowledge in the Garden of Eden in the first place? Especially if He knew what was going to happen? Isn’t he supposed to know everything that will ever happen? It would have been so easy just to place it on the other side of the world; or on the Moon for that matter.
3. How could an All-Loving God send ANYONE to hell? Remember, He is supposed to love us more than any parent ever loved their child; and note that He isn’t using Hell as a remedial, instructional punishment like a parent punishes; a parent punished a child in order to teach them to behave better. Here, God is punishing sinners just for the sake of inflicting pain and suffering forever. There is no lesson to be learned or benefited from, with this type of punishment. How is this a god of love?
And really, which is worse, Hitler killing 10,000,000 people (Jews, Homosexuals, atheists, gypsies, etc.) or God keeping hundreds of millions of people alive just to torture them for eternity; some simply for not believing in Him, or even a particular version of Him? According to the teachings of Christianity, all of the Jews that Hitler tortured and killed were then promptly sent to Hell for not believing that Jesus was the Christ/Savior; and according to the Bible, these are God’s Chosen People!
4. If God is All Loving, how could He allow Children to get cancer? Heck compared to God, ANYONE on earth would have more love and compassion for children. I can’t imagine a single human that would intentionally give cancer to a child, or even ALLOW them to get cancer if they could prevent it.
Also, in a court of law, if you know about a crime that is about to be committed, and don’t try to report or prevent it, you’re considered an accessory to that crime. That would mean that God, and Jesus, who know everything that is about to happen, are accessories to every child-murder, rape or kidnapping that happens anywhere on the planet.
5. Why did an All-Loving God create Evil? (Isaah Chapter 45:7) Or for that matter, allow the King of Evil, Satan, to live amongst us, with super powers to boot! How are we, as mere mortals, supposed to know what is true if Satan is there to plant false evidence and create illusions to fool us? You can’t conclusively say that he didn’t create the Bible itself. If you compare God and Satan based just on their atrocities in the bible, Satan would come out looking pretty good! The only people in the Bible that Satan killed were Job’s family, and then only when God said it was Ok.
6. How could God make the eating of shellfish and ham, or a woman wearing a man’s clothing, abominations? Not just dangerous, but abominations!? That puts them right up there with homosexuality.
7. How could an All-Loving God command his chosen people to kill babies, and children? (Hosea 13:16, Sash 13:15-18, etc.)
8. If I only have to have Faith to believe, how do I know what to believe? Every different sect of Christianity (and indeed, every religion) says I have to have Faith to believe that what they say is true. And if having Faith MAKES it true, then why not make up your own new religion, one without a hell, and have faith in that!?
9. How could Satan think that he could have a revolt against someone who is All-Knowing and All-Powerful? How could there even BE a war in Heaven, when God would know about it before hand, and could just snap His fingers and wipe out all opposition?
10. Why did God try to kill Moses right after sending him on the mission to free the Jews from Egypt? (Exodus 4:24-26) And THEN why did a foreskin-ectomy by Moses’ wife stop him?
11. For that matter, what’s with God’s obsession with foreskins? Isn’t God supposed to be a perfect being? Why would a perfect being design men with foreskins, then command us to cut it off!? (Not to mention that the creator and ruler of the universe should have more important things to worry about.)
12. Why did God send Moses to Egypt to free the Jews, and then “harden Pharaoh’s heart” (Exodus 7:3) so that he would not let the Jews leave, thereby making it necessary to set his 10 plagues loose on Egypt? Doesn’t that pretty much negate Pharaoh’s free-will in the matter, and punish all the people of Egypt because of it?
13. Why would God condemn his own son to torment and death at the hands of the people that He was planning to forgive anyway? Why not just forgive them? Was that not in his power? Indeed, according to Christianity, what is NOT in his power?
The Meta-Contradictions of Christianity via
Digital Freethought Blog https://t.co/aMqPfDuz0u— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) November 17, 2020
14. If God is constantly curing illnesses through prayer, and faith-healers, why can’t He re-grow an arm, or a leg? You never see that happen. Also, it seems that the cures that we are told DO happen are always internal, and therefore unverifiable. If he really loved us and wanted us to believe in Faith healers, why doesn’t he command his faith healers to go to hospitals and heal the people there?
15. Why does God let Catholic priests victimize our children? Do you think that those children are not praying for it to stop? Why doesn’t god DO something about it? Tracy Harris of the Atheist-Experience out of Austin, TX, said, “If I could stop a person from raping a child I would. That’s the difference between me and your god.” That doesn’t say much for your god, but it stands to reason if god is evil, or if there IS no god.
16. Why does God let Televangelists take money, in His name, from the sick, old and infirm who cannot afford it, and who will suffer because of it?
17. If God is everywhere, then where the heck was He when the Serpent was tempting Eve? Was he just playing games with humanity at the time of their greatest crisis? What kind of person would do that?
18. If Christians are forgiven, and they know they will be forgiven no matter what they do, why should they refrain from doing evil? Atheists don’t have that expectation for forgiveness, and they don’t go around killing and stealing. They know they have to live with the consequences of their actions, in the real world; and that it’s the only world they’re going to get.
19. How can God blame us for our imperfections when He made us that way? That is, if he didn’t want us constantly fornicating, then why did he make our sex-drive so strong? The Bible says that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination, so why did he create people that way? NO, it’s not a choice. Their sexual-orientation is no more a choice than yours is. How easy would be for you to reverse your sexual orientation?
20. How can God be surprised or angered by anything we do when He’s supposedly all-knowing? And why does God get angry, and demand vengeance when we succumb to the weaknesses that He put in us in the first place? This would mean He’s not all loving AND that He is subject to human emotions.
21. If God tells you to do something horrible like he did with Abraham and “Son of Sam” would you do it? Or rather, wouldn’t you think that this order can’t be from GOD, God is good, and this is an awful thing to do.
The following is from If God is dead, is everything permitted? By Elizabeth Anderson:
Kant advances a moral criterion for judging the authenticity of any supposed revelation. If you hear a voice, or some testimony purportedly revealing god’s word, and it tells you to do something you know is wrong, don’t believe that it’s really god telling you to do these things.
I believe that Kant correctly identified the maximum permissible moral limits of belief in extraordinary evidence concerning god. These limits require that we reject the literal truth of the bible.
My colleague James Tappenden argues that such a liberal approach to faith is theologically incoherent. Perhaps it is. Still, given a choice between grave moral error and theological muddle, I recommend theological muddle every time.
That is, if you “receive” a thought that is theoretically from God, judge it for its moral worth. If it’s not good, it’s not from god. (Remember, to Theists, GOD isn’t the only supernatural being that has the ability to put thoughts in your head.) Doing this shows that our own morals prevail over a “revelation” from a supposed deity. Also, if we judge the Bible by these criteria, it would be shown that major portions of the Bible have to be rejected; as the passages could not be from a good God. How much of the Bible would we have to throw away then?
22. If this life is infinitesimally short, and the next one eternally long, then why should we try to DO anything other than “praise the lord” while we’re here? Why go to school or pursue a college education? Why do anything other than just study the Bible and wait? Would you have us all be like the “Holy Men” of India, or Monks of the old world, who do nothing but study scriptures?
If so, you might as well turn off your computer and TV. Park your car, and throw away your cell phone. Modern society would soon crumble into dust. The entire world would revert back to medieval times (or before). Doctors would no longer have colleges to go to, all scientific research would stop, and all other training would end.
Reprinted with permission from the author.
Larry S. Rhodes was born into a Christian family, but is now a 40-year Atheist. He is the Founder and President of the Atheists Society of Knoxville as well as the President of the Rationalists of East Tennessee. For 4 years he was the Executive Producer of Freethought Forum, a public access call-in Atheist TV show that is still airing. He is also the author of Atheism: What’s it all about?.
Why Can’t Christians Understand the Word Atheist?
The True Core Of The Jesus Myth
The ‘Jesus of history’ – Memory or Myth?
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As I struggle with faith, one question that's popped up over the years is, when Cain was afraid of being banished because others might kill him, who were the others? We read that Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel, Cain killed Abel, but then Cain was afraid of being killed by "others" if he was banished, and so God put a mark on him. Again, who were the others? Where did they come from? Up until that moment, the reader assumes there were four people in all of humanity, minus one thanks to Cain.
Is it or was it ever morally right to put someone to death for a homosexual act? God is immortal, beyond time, never-changing, yet today (thankfully) we would sentence a person to life imprisonment (or maybe even death) for following this of God's commands. Is the man who takes a homosexual person's life really the good guy and the rest of us the bad guy for prosecuting him? If your uncle blurted out at Thanksgiving dinner that homosexuals should all be killed, would you think he's a morally upstanding person or would you think he's out of his mind, or maybe vindictive and evil? If the latter, then is God always good, even if He ordered something vindictive and evil? This is touched upon in the above article, but this is the way I look at it. But really, did God change His mind, or are we just doing all sorts of intellectual yoga to explain away why we conduct our lives as if some of His Old Testament commands are immoral?
How could anything take place on the first day, when a day is measured by the earth spinning one complete time and on the first day there was no Earth? What does the first day even mean when there was no standard by which to measure one?
None of this is meant to mock. They're genuine questions from a person who struggles.
Maybe this post is so old that it will not be seen; but it reflects a real lack of knowledge about the Bible and God as well as all sorts of moralistic judgments that show you believe you are more moral than the God of the Bible. On what basis, I would not know. For instance, on point 7, would you kill an alcoholic, abusive father to protect his toddler child? If not, why not? On what basis could you affirm that such an act would be wrong? If you did kill him, you are no different from God. If there is a God who created us, He has every right to do as He wills, even if He is unjust in our minds (though I do not believe God is unjust). God's will was known to the people who willfully turned from it and would not be reconciled. In His wisdom, He deemed it better to eliminate them. Babies and children were rescued from the potential sin of their parents and taken to paradise. God then will judge each adult according to His perfect judgment. I think there are real answers to your questions. Contact me if you want to discuss them.
Every single one of your comments have answers for them. I’ll be answering two of them and then asking you questions.
The question on you asking how could the bible be true and that we can’t say that the Bible proves itself because if you say that then every book can, but here’s the thing with your incorrect statement.
The bible is actually 66 books, each written different times from eachother, without contradicting eachother, now answer this, how does a book, a book that people say is false, not contradict itself with many different writers who didn’t even know of some of the others existence
The other one you said was “how could God allow cancer etc.” Here’s the thing, have you ever heard of, the fall, and sin, God created a perfect world and man brought sin into this world by disobeying what he told him, and before you say, oh they didn’t know, they actually did understand, in genesis 3 1-4 eve clearly states that she understands that they aren’t allowed to eat from it, anyway, the answer to why God allows cancer and illness, is because of sin, when Adam and eve sinned, that is called the fall, and that has caused death, illness, and harder to farm, and thats because humans chose to disobey God, if you want me to answer the rest of your questions, I would be more than happy too but I have to do things right now, so message me if you want answers or if you have questions
I believe that to be a Christian you must compartmentalize your brain so as to allow some thought to exist and to block any that may create disharmony. If God was real, and loved us surely he would stop a grown man from sexually penetrating a very young girl just on his love for that child. Why doesn't he? and finally; the young girl that prayed to god to help her and was ignored, how does she grow up and believe in God?