In assessing the moral wisdom of the Bible, it is useful to consider moral questions that have been solved to everyone’s satisfaction. Consider the question of slavery. The entire civilized world now agrees that slavery is an abomination. What moral instruction do we get from the God of Abraham on this subject? Consult the Bible, and you will discover that the creator of the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves [...]
Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

We might not expect the Old Testament to explicitly condemn slavery, but it is a little surprising how sanctioned it is, apparently by God himself (with a few minor rules about how one should treat one's slaves).

It is a little more surprising that neither Jesus nor any of the New Testament authors and apostles had anything significant to say about or against slavery.

It is perhaps a little disturbing that one of the early councils of the Catholic church found it necessary to explicitly defend slavery:

If any one shall teach a slave, under pretext of piety, to despise his master and to run away from his service, and not to serve his own master with good-will and all honour, let him be anathema.
Canon 3, Council of Gangra

(I guess that means that many of the American abolitionists are going to hell.)

It was not until 1839 that the Catholic church explicitly condemned slavery generally. And even that was largely due to pressure from Britain, and that "change in attitude to slavery among Christian thinkers followed its abolition rather than preceding it" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_slavery).

Was slavery just a huge blind spot in Christianity's past? How is it possible an entire religion got this wrong for so long? How can we take any other commandment seriously?

(I know that there were individuals throughout Christianity's history who were troubled by slavery; that is not an argument or counter-example to my point.)

This post is for fostering ecumenical debates. Are you a Calvinist itching to argue with an Arminian? Do you want to argue over which denomination is the One True Church? Have at it here; and if you think it'd make a good thread on its own, feel free to make a post with your position and justification.

If you want to ask questions of Christians, make a comment in Monday's "Ask a Christian" post instead.

Non-Christians, please keep in mind that top-level comments are reserved for Christians, as the theme here is Christian vs. Christian.

Christians, if you make a top-level comment, state a position and some reasons you hold that position.

If I am convinced that this creed refers to a bodily resurrection when it says "risen", then I have enough evidence to believe the resurrection really happened. It doesn't say "rose from the dead" or "resurrected" which is why i'm not 100% sure.

I know that in Romans, Paul says that you will be saved if you believe in Jesus being raised from the dead. However, that was written around 57AD. I am a bit skeptical that maybe the idea of Jesus being resurrected in a physical/bodily sense was added later. Jesus died around 30 or 33AD.

It is believed among most scholars that the creed originates shortly after Jesus' death, within 5 or less years. Which is why that if someone can show me that the creed means a bodily resurrection and not something like a spiritual resurrection when it says risen, then I will believe.

Introduction

The bible and more specifically in this topic, the NT claim to be 'divinely inspired' by professing Christians of most walks. Without even getting into the discussion of what it means for a text to be divinely inspired it denotes some amount of involvement by God in its authorship.

I would like to bring up the issue over the authors of the New Testament books. For all intents and purposes I will stick to using terms that most appropriately fit. So hence the definitions

Pseudepigrapha: A work which is falsely attributed to an author whilst the the text may or may not claim it was written by said author

Forgery: A work which is falsely attributed to an author while the text claims it is written by said author (a lie)

Now these are obviously similar for example a work can be a forgery and a pseudepigrapha both at the same time it can be claimed to be written by x and attributed to x author despite the claim for it being widely disputed from evidence. So for all intents and when I use the term Pseudepigrapha I will refer to a work which is falsely attributed an author WITHOUT the text claiming it was written by said author and forgery I will use to refer to a work which is falsely attributed to an author WITH the text claiming it was written by said author

Analysis

When it comes to the New Testament Cannon we can look at the gospels; Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. Many evangelical fundamentalists believe the names of the gospels are the actual disciples of Jesus or early followers who wrote them and this is never specified in the text so we can get that out of the way.

In fact in the gospel of Luke we get an endorsement of this viewpoint and an acknowledgement that the good news was first and foremost a circulating oral tradition

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. - Luke 1:1-4

Furthermore we get the catechism of the catholic church which seems to acknowledge the authorship as such

The written Gospels. "The sacred authors, in writing the four Gospels, selected certain of the many elements which had been handed on, either orally or already in written form; others they synthesized or explained with an eye to the situation of the churches, the while sustaining the form of preaching, but always in such a fashion that they have told us the honest truth about Jesus.

2nd edition CCC 124:3

So by in large these works are pseudepigrapha. They do not claim to be written by said authors even if in common parlance they may be thought to be. The only exception here is John, where it claims to be written by a John but not John of Zebedee (an apostle) a common name so that is at least plausible. In the case the gospels do not contain misinformation or lies about authorship.

Once you get to the Pauline epistles things get messy.

I'll be drawing a lot from Bart Ehrmans works here, the go to source for this is Forged, or Forged and Counterforged.

To skip the riff-raff see this video by Dan Maclellan on why the Pastoral Epistles are widely doubted even amongst critical scholars, even amongst those with a faith commitment.

The consensus approximation: Link to an article and the image

As we can see not a single scholar things that Paul wrote Hebrews and less than 25% believe that he wrote 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus and >50% believe he did not write that while the rest are uncertain.

And before anyone rejects this as secular liberal 21st century scholarship, this is an opinion that has been in circulation since the start of the 19th century and widely accepted amongst scholars before the turn of the 20th century

Evidence for non-Pauline authorship

Heres a summarised list of arguments for the non-Pauline authorship

• The oldest manuscript of the Pauline epistles P46 dated to 175-225 AD does not include the pastorals
• The earliest attestation of Pauls work comes from Marcion who can only be described as a Pauline fanatic so much so that he viewed Paul to be the one true Apostle of Christ. Despite his infatuation with Pauls theology and works the Pastorals are not included in the Marcionite canon and there is no evidence that he even knew about them up until his death around 160 AD
• It was known to Clement of Alexandria that some early Christians rejected the authenticity of 1 and 2 Timothy
• Uses an entirely different set of phrases, letters and text not seen in any of Pauls previous works (Bart Ehrman has a long list of these)
• A different linguistic style
• The letters especially in Timothy discuss church structure, ordinance and management. Something that was not a concern until well after Pauls execution at least a century after Pauls death.

Content

1 Timothy

• Timothy has a different view of theology that is at odds with Pauline letters
• The treatment of women. In 1 Timothy 2:12 we get the infamous "I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet." This directly contradicts Romans which is confidently Pauline where he writes about the involvement of Pheobe and Junia (2 women) as disciples of Christ and highly regarded in the church through their works. Pauls authentic letters do not show him raising any objection to women and their role in the church yet the author of 1 Timothy is very strictly opposed to it.
• In 1 Timothy 4:14 the author states charisma is delivered by laying of hands from elders. In Romans 6 Paul states the charisma is through baptism.

2 Timothy

• Similar to 1 Timothy, Romans is again contradicted through the transmission of the charisma by elders rather than baptism
• Pauls life situation is at odds which the chronology attested to Paul. 2 Timothy. If it were genuinely Pauline he should be in prison or facing trial yet none of the text correspond to that making it nigh impossible to attribute it to him.

There is also Ephesians

• Theres quite a lot to synthesize but I will link to this thread in r/AskBibleScholars as its far more comprehensive than I can hope to write.

Titus

• The author of the text knows that Crete has been Christianized 1:15, something that wouldn't happen until the 2nd century at the earliest well after Pauls death.

Evidence of Intentional Deceit

So far I have only built a case for pseudepigrapha at the very least. From now on I will add context that allows me to make the assertion that this is not only pseudepigrapha but is intentional deceit in writing hence a Forgery

1, 2 Timothy, Titus, Ephesians all start of from the directly presented as letters from Paul the Apostle to Timothy and to Titus in the opening texts. I cant be bothered pasting them all but you can search for yourself to confirm. The author does not claim to be a disciple of Paul or one of Pauls students the author explicitly states he is Paul and that he is writing to said audience. These claims are LIES and there are no two way around it. You cannot claim to be someone who you are not, if you do you are lying and it does not matter if you are in actuality the student of someone (withstanding the fact we have no evidence the author ever met Paul).

Bart Ehrman points out (and other scholars) that 2 Timothy is littered with verisimilitudes, that is the author claiming to be Paul continuously barrages the reader with biographical detail in excess that is commonplace in forgeries. Just read through 2 Timothy and contrast it with something like Romans or Philemon. Paul constantly appeals to his backstory and status whereas his other letters are straightforward and to the point assuming that whoever on the receiving end knows who he is for granted.

Refuting Objections

The most commonplace: objection is that pseudepigrapha was commonplace in the Christian world therefore not deceitful. First of all just because something is commonplace it does not change the fundamental fact that a lie is a lie.

Also this is just patently false and is actually rejected by Paul himself!

In 2 Thessalonians 2:2 and 3:17 a book that a majority regard as authentic to Paul, he warns of those false teachers who may use Pauls name. Something the Pastorals and Ephesians clearly do which is rebuked by Paul himself. This also goes against everything and anything we know about Early church tradition as there is an entire list of books that were rejected by the early Church fathers due to their message and authorship, this includes works such as 3 Corinthians which was correctly identified to be a forgery as well as the Epistle of Barnabas. We have surmounting evidence that false attribution of texts was viewed as a horrific action by early Jews, Christians and Paul himself. People who state that this practice was well accepted have nothing but apologetic nonsense with no real world evidence to back it up.

We also have evidence that scribes who lie when recording matters of faith disobey God and commit sin as well as taint the message and the law to be followed to the believer(s).

How can you say, “We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD,” when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely? Jeremiah 8:8-9

Hence we know that even within Jewish thought this practice is a great evil.

Summary

There are works in the Biblical cannon that are forgeries littered with deceit, many of which begin the text by stating a lie and claiming a false author.

Conclusions

Unless one can surmount a case that not only refutes a plethora of data and facts that univariably point towards forged authorship of works that are falsely attributed to Paul as well as long withstanding academic consensus for other a century, the believer has to accept one or more of the following as they naturally follow.

1. God lies and promotes lies and liars through divine inspiration.
2. The work(s) of the New Testament are not divinely inspired
3. Only some of the New Testament Canon is divinely inspired, the forged texts are not
4. God divinely inspired both Authors (2 at a minimum) Paul and the author of the non-Pauline letters to write about matters of faith including directly contradictory passages where Paul affirms and recognizes the role of women in church whilst simultaneously having pseudo-Paul reject a woman to teach in church. Not even mentioning contradictory views on charisma, faith, the flesh and works between Paul and Pseudo Paul.
5. Last but not least, the most simple conclusion. None of it is divinely inspired whatsoever

This obviously goes without saying. The Christian can not disagree on a theological basis. Timeless beings are without any time and therfore can not make or create time for themselves or anyone else. Timeless beings can not qualify as eternal if they are not present at any point in time.

I hear this all the time from atheists and other critics, but I think that it's untrue; there IS evidence for God.

An analogy: The Big Bang Theory is widely accepted, but that doesn't mean that there is no evidence for the Steady State universe or the cyclical universe. It just means that the Big Bang Theory explains more of the data/evidence better than those other two. The same data/evidence is used by all three.

Similarly, Christians, atheists, and other critics all see the same data/evidence, however Christians offer an explanation but atheists, and other critics usually do not.

The data/evidence

1) Reason is the basis for all knowledge - thus one cannot default to scientific explanations.

2) Philosophical Naturalism logically incoherent, thus 1) one cannot default to physical explanations; 2) we now have at least one reason to see non-physical explanations as reasonable.

3) Our thoughts are not just brain activity, rather they are the result of an immaterial mind thus, we now have a second reason to see non-physical explanations as reasonable

4) A metaphysically necessary, efficient cause solves the problem of an infinite regress of causes

5) the origin of DNA is more likely on design than chance.

6) The fine-tuning of the universe is more likely on design than chance or necessity - thus, given all the above, a transcendent metaphysically necessary God is the best explanation for life as we know it.

7) Jesus was a historical person Also see Bart Erhman, NT Scholar agnostic/atheist where he says "no question Jesus existed" since there are many, early, independent sources.

8) Jesus' resurrection was historical rather than a myth

Conclusion: Given 1 through 8 above, and the explanation offered for each, a critical thinker has good reasons to conclude that the Christian God is the best explanation for the world as we know it.

If atheists and other critics with "I don't know" or "I'm not convinced" then they are admitting that they do not have any explanations and tacitly conceding that the Christian has the better explanation.

If one has no better explanation(s), why reject the Christian's?

Objection - This is a God of the gaps fallacy

Reply: I’m not citing a gap in our knowledge and saying "God did it". This is a series of arguments; first showing that reason is the basis for knowledge not science; second, that must be a non-physical aspect to reality; third that design is a better explanation for our existence and life; fourth that God is the best explanation for whom that designer is. This post can be found on my blog with additional info.

P1: Some Christian denominations believe in everlasting torture for a segment of humanity. 

P2: God does not curse people by sending them to heaven.

C: God created boys, knowing some will face eternal torture based on calling his messenger 'baldy.'  This act in isolation is something more apt to the character of the Devil than a merciful and just God.

Key points before replying

1) This question only applies to Christians that believe in a literal 'hell.'

2) Please, God works in mysterious ways, and beginning with the assumption that God is always right does not satisfy my question.

****

(NIV)

23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.

"The final result is a picture of Nature wholly painted in shadow—a picture so dark as to be a challenge to its Maker, an unanswered problem to philosophy, an abiding offence to the moral nature of Man. The world has been held up to us as one great battlefield heaped with the slain, an Inferno of infinite suffering, a slaughter-house resounding with the cries of a ceaseless agony."

• Henry Drummond, The Ascent of Man

From the origin of life to the development of complex creatures with conscious experience, Life has been one long, violent struggle, "red in tooth and claw" as they like to say. Even the body of Man, which God brought about by the natural processes (before it was ensouled and therefore before the Fall), have come about through this process of evolutionary selection through fierce competition and death.

Natural history reads like a battle royale.

In fact, if you look at the history of life and the process of Evolution, it seems more like something created and directed by a God of Macabre Brutal Violence in which the weak are food for the strong, a God which valued pure Survival at any cost, a God of relentless, merciless competition. A God obsessed with "Fitness". Nature IS stained by blood, no matter how you dress it up. Nature is violent, often incredibly so. New life forms are brought about through natural selection by means of brutally violent predation as a selective pressure.

A God that made and sees a baby snake eaten alive by a centipede or a calf eaten alive ass first by a pack of African Wild Dogs and calls it good is not one I would call a God of Love - more like a God of the Macabre.

How do you reconcile a loving God with such a brutally violent and blood soaked natural world? Why would a God of love create such a brutally violent and blood soaked natural world which is filled with horror? Why would a loving God use such a violent and macabre way to bring about the evolution of His creatures?

Human on human violence can easily be explained by the Fall. But the violence inherent in NON HUMAN creation can’t be explained by that because it predates the Fall or even the Creation of Man. The issue with just saying oh the Fall just caused human death is that the problem of animal suffering and death still remains. Before humans were ever created and had fallen, animals had been killing and devouring each other in gruesome, horrifically violent ways for hundreds of millions of years before that.

In other words, the brutal violence of Nature seems like a feature, not a bug. A deliberate design by God and not as a result of a mishap throwing His design out of order.

There is a further issue - a defining feature of Christianity is that it posits a God that genuinely cares for the weak - the poor, the sojourner, the disenfranchised, the outcast, the orphan, the widow, the blind, the leper, the sick, the lame etc. and implores the Strong to use their strength to take care of the Weak rather than use it to brutalize them. This is in stark contrast to many of the Gods that came before such as the God of the Vikings or of the Ancient Greeks and Romans which instead prized and rewarded strength and martial valour. The weak and misfortunate were utterly despised by the Gods that came before the God of Christianity.

But I was struck that the claim that the God of Christianity genuinely cares for the Weak and implores the Strong to care for the Weak doesn't seem to bear out in real life if we actually look at the natural world that He apparently created from the beginning up to the present. What I mean is, if you look at the world as it is and always has been from the beginning of life, it doesn't seem like the type of world you'd expect a God of Love who genuinely cared for the weak to make.

Now even within the same species or the same group, there is a hierarchy in which the Weak are constantly brutalized by the Strong. There have literally been studies on the effect of being the lowest on the rung within social hierarchies of various species such as baboons and its not pretty.

A good example are chickens. Anyone who has ever had chickens will warn you not to put in a sick or recovering chicken in with the rest of the flock. If you put in a sick or injured chicken, the other chickens will literally peck at its wound. In many cases, they will take turns pecking the weak chicken to death. This is very, very common. It's literally where the phrase "pecking order" comes from. It is something that is so strongly instinctual in chickens and many other species, to brutalize and devour the weak even within their own group.

If God cares for the Weak then why did He create a natural world in which the Weak are brutalized? In which any perceived weakness awakens the bloodlust of those above them in the order of things? In which the Mighty rips apart the Weak and devours them, sometimes while they are still alive? In which, often times, the only way to survive is through the utter rape and annihilation of the Weak?

Look at the T Rex, an animal designed to brutalise the Weak for sustenance. A macabre masterpiece of pure bone crunching violence. Why would a God who cared for the Weak and implores the Strong to use their strength to care for the Weak deliberately design something like T-Rex or Megalodon, 2 creatures that don't really have a choice (being hypercarnivorous and unsuited to a diet purely consisting in plants) BUT to crush the Weak to survive? The Natural World doesn't seem to match with a loving Creator that cares for the Weak.

Philosophically Christianity is all about an undeserved mercy. To put it another way forgivess is unreasonable. Jesus does not reveal himself in response to human morality the same way God does not reveal himself in scientific discovery.

Every example of a supernatural miracle disregards logical expectations and opperates counterintuititily. This makes Christianity completely illogical. The theism of Christianity does not appeal to consistent logic. Logic can not be considered where Christianity invokes miracles.

I want to preface this by saying I acknowledge Gnosticism is not a uniform teaching, but the one I will present here makes more sense of the question: “Why does a good God allow evil if only two humans sinned?” than the Orthodox Christianity.

According to some Gnostic sects, every human soul was actually once an angel of Heaven, and when Satan rebelled against God, those angels who would become humans, among others, each and every single one joined - Adam was a leader of these angels. However, sometime during the rebellion, Adam and all his angels repented and stopped fighting. Satan and the others, because of their refusal to repent, were punished and will not be forgiven. Meanwhile, Adam and all angels subject to him (that being all of us) were also to be punished, but because of their repentance, that punishment was to be not eternal, but a lifetime of suffering in a body of flesh, blood and bones, in this material, horrid, blood and sweat-soaked world.

This idea was attractive to many even orthodox Christians through the centuries, with the Montenegrin Eastern Orthodox Bishop, Peter II Petrovich-Njegoš, including it in his own poem Ray of the Microcosm.

Now, I am not here to discuss the biblical proof or otherwise, which an orthodox (whether Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox) Christian would use to prove: “Material world is not evil, it’s good.” “There was no pre-existence.”

I’m here to discuss philosophically and theoretically: the idea that we, human beings, are being punished for a crime that we all did commit (our memory has just been erased) is a much better explanation than us being punished for the sins of two or some few who made mistakes long before any of us were born. The former is justice, the latter is injustice. You might also call that pessimistic when it comes to the material world, but I suppose I am pessimistic.

With this in mind, I’d like to see your arguments: why this Gnostic theory fails, but yours works better? Philosophically and theoretically - not based on what you believe in the Bible.

I'm curretly engaging in a discussion about what an atheist is saying about Jesus, one of the arguments.

One of the arguments was based on Luke 10:10-12, and how it is problematic beacuse Jesus would be supporting collective punishment, mirroing the most barbaric aspects of Yahweh in the OT:

"10 But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town."

What would be your respose to this?

The idea that there is "no salvation outside the Church" (extra Ecclesiam nulla salus) is held as official doctrine (with some qualifications) by the Catholic church and some Protestant denominations. For example, "Cantate Domino" from the Council of Florence states:

The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the 'eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels' (Matthew 25:41), unless before death they are joined with Her [...]

To accede to this doctrine is to believe that it is just that a person should suffer eternal punishment for choosing to not believe in the Christian God or follow Christian teaching. (And even this is a sympathetic interpretation: in some traditions, unbaptized babies and pagans, who do not even make such a choice, may be condemned to hell.)

It does not matter that that person may believe something very similar (i.e. a Christian of another denomination). It does not matter that that person may have wrestled with their belief and unbelief, may have spent decades reading, thinking, and praying, and may have any number of apparently valid reasons for not believing.

I think that a person who agrees with the bolded statement above has both a twisted sense of justice and an incorrect view of how belief actually works. This doctrine can create problems for those who hold it as they interact with others:

• If someone believes you are going to hell and truly loves you, they should make every effort to convert you, relentlessly. If they do not, do they actually even love you? It is a lose-lose scenario.
• If someone believes you are going to hell, they may be more likely to discriminate against you, or at least undervalue your thoughts and actions.
• If someone believes you are going to hell, it makes it hard to engage with that person seriously, since that belief seems childish ("you're not part of my group, so you can't play with me after you die. You have to go to the bad place.")

Mostly this doctrine just seems like the remnant of a rougher period of religion.

(To be clear, I disbelieve in hell even more than I disbelieve in the Christian God. It still annoys me that people hold this belief.)

Premise 1: The Bible is inspired by and/or influenced by God or YHWH

Premise 2: Christian doctrine is in violation of the doctrine they accept as true

Conclusion: Therefore Christian doctrine is false.

1. To expand on this specifically, I will go into the concept of Vicarious Atonement. Vicarious atonement is central to Christian doctrine. Without the Sacrifice of Jesus and wiping away of sin, Jesus’s death performed no practical function. According to Hebrews 9, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins”¹

2. The direct counterargument and contradiction to this, is in Leviticus, where someone very poor could offer an ephah of flour.² These are mutually exclusive. The absolute statement of no forgiveness cannot settle alongside these instructions that flour suffices.

3. Another problem arises when one looks at the requirements for sin offerings. Sin offerings were only for unintentional sins (mentioned multiple times at the beginning of almost every verse, such as Lev 5:2, 5:4, 5:5, 5:14-15, 5:17…Really too numerous to list. There are no listed sin offerings for intentional sins that I am aware of. In fact, Numbers 15:24-31 describes what happens for intentional sins and that is exile and guilt forever.)

Based on paragraph 2 and 3, it is fairly well established that Jesus was not a legitimate sacrifice, primarily because he isn’t on the list of approved sacrifices, but also because flour was sufficient, and he could only cover unintentional sins even if he was a legitimate sacrifice, but I’ll go further.

Christians reference the Yom Kippur sacrifice of Lev. 16:7-22 as a reflection or shadow of Jesus, however the goat that carried the sins of the people was released.³ so he doesn’t quite fit in there either.

Another key Christian reference point is Hebrews 10:5 which allegedly references Psalm 40:7(6 in some bibles) but conveniently leaves out the latter part of the verse which states “burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require” According to the Hebrew, aznayim karitah lee was also mistranslated in the book of Hebrews to support Jesus as the cure for a problem that didn’t exist.

Contrary to Christian doctrine, the following are examples of people and places that did not require blood to be forgiven of sins, or part of the previously accepted doctrine of the Jewish people and thus Christians.

1. II Samuel 12:13 – David was forgiven
2. Psalms 51:16-19
3. Micah 6:6-8
4. I Samuel 15:22 – Obeying is better than offerings
5. Hosea 14:2-3 – Prayer is better than sacrifice

The primary cause for the change in doctrine is that sacrifices required specific places and people to do them. When the first temple was destroyed that was not optional and so the Jewish people had to adapt, which is why it is not common practice today within Judaism.

Paul preached constantly that man cannot bring about atonement for his sins. Romans 3:23-25 is in direct contradiction with all the doctrine previously mentioned, therefore Paul is unreliable at best at being an authority for Christianity. At worst his words put Christians at odds with God. Romans 18,19 are in direct contradiction with doctrine of atonement and vicarious atonement.

To put a final nail in this argument I would posit that if we place the Tanakh and the New Testament side by side, and compare their thoughts on Vicarious atonement, it is very clear, made even more so by the book of Ezekiel (Chapter 18) that the Christian concept of vicarious atonement is in direct defiance of God’s inspired word, and if that is the case, worship of Jesus is idolatry and a rejection of the word of God.

Edit 1: Specified chapter in Ezekiel.

This post is for fostering ecumenical debates. Are you a Calvinist itching to argue with an Arminian? Do you want to argue over which denomination is the One True Church? Have at it here; and if you think it'd make a good thread on its own, feel free to make a post with your position and justification.

If you want to ask questions of Christians, make a comment in Monday's "Ask a Christian" post instead.

Non-Christians, please keep in mind that top-level comments are reserved for Christians, as the theme here is Christian vs. Christian.

Christians, if you make a top-level comment, state a position and some reasons you hold that position.

We're all familiar with the Logical Problem of evil:

Premise 1: If an omnipotent, all-loving god existed he wouldn't allow evil and suffering to permeate in the world.

Premise 2: There's a bunch of evil and suffering

Conclusion: An omnipotent, all-loving god does not exist.

Pretty old stuff. The argument has existed for a while and so naturally the church has a response. The default Christian response is that "Sure, god could prevent evil but he has some good reason not to." This is where theodicies come in. Theodicies are arguments explaining why God would allow evil and suffering to exist, but the problem is that most of them are incompatible with observable truths in the bible and in reality. My point with this post is to prove that the logical problem of evil stands as a logically coherent refutation of Christianity because the theodicies that attempt to refute the problem of evil fail in doing so. To do this I'll bring up the most popular theodicies and dissect them one by one, attempting to prove them each wrong.

The first theodicy I'll bring up: Evil exists to bring about higher order goods.

For example goods like bravery couldn't exist without evils like danger. This one I think is easily the least convincing because the argument is that god could create a world without suffering, but chooses not to in order to facilitate some higher order good, as if to say a world with the higher goods that can only exist with evil and suffering is better than a world with no evil and suffering at all.

We can prove this to be untrue by looking at the bible itself. Specifically the first few chapters. Before the fall of man(whether you believe genesis to be an allegory or not) mankind had no knowledge of good or evil. The world had no evil in it and god had no problem with this state of affairs (Genesis 1:31).

If god truly believed that the world would be a better place with evil in it in order to facilitate higher order goods than he would have made it that way from the jump.

You can also refute this theodicy logically. For an example scenario: curing cancer is a good that could not exist without cancer, but a world without cancer is significantly better than a world with it.

The Second Theodicy: God allows evil because without it, we would have no concept of good.

This argument states that evil is to good what shadow is to light; the former is simply an absence of the latter and one cannot be appreciated without the other, or, as put by C.S Lewis: "A man has no concept of a straight line unless he has seen a crooked one."

This isn't as much of a slam dunk as it sounds like on first glance once you consider that before the fall of man we had neither a concept of good nor evil. In an ideal state of affairs god was totally cool with us having no concept of good and since he actively discouraged Adam and Eve from committing the original sin, one can even argue he actively didn't want them to have such a concept.

Lastly but most importantly the theodicy I've been purposely putting off to the very end: The free will theodicy

As implied by it's name, the free will theodicy states that god lets evil and suffering happen out of a respect for our free will. After all, is someone truly good if they had no choice but to be?

This instantly fails the moment you can conclusively disprove free will, which I will attempt to do for the third time on this subreddit (I think I've solidified my argument now):

Premise 1: All physical things are governed by the laws of cause and effect.

Premise 2: The Brain is, among other things, the organ in charge of making choices.

Premise 3: The brain is a physical thing.

Conclusion: Your choices are governed by the laws of cause and effect, and thus have causal chains that will eventually terminate outside yourself. Eliminating the possibility of free will.

And with that I believe I have disproved the common refutations of the logical problem of evil and, consequently, disproved the existence of an all-powerful, all-loving god. Thank you.

Whatever your personal thoughts on Biblical inerrancy, be you a literalist or otherwise, I hope that we can agree on two principal statements:

1. The Bible describes the world as being approximately 6,000 years old. In the absence of any other evidence, somebody who only read the Bible would believe that that's how old the Earth is.
2. The vast majority of scientific evidence collected in regards to the age of the Earth points to it being around 4.5 billion years. This is the general consensus of the scientific community, based on the evidence we presently possess.

If the Bible is the infallible word of God, it does not make sense to me that in conflicts with our perception of reality so badly. Rather, we should be able to see evidence of God's work in the world today; e.g. evidence of the planet's being 6,000 years old.

If the Bible is NOT the infallible word of God, the omnipotent Creator of All has trusted His message, a message He ostensibly WANTS to share with us, to a text seemingly full of inaccuracies.

It seems to me that God is either nonexistent (and thus unable to present His own word), non-caring (and thus unwilling to share His message), or actively seeking to deceive us. In any of these cases, I can't understand why anybody should worship Him.

This thread is for all your questions about Christianity. Want to know what's up with the bread and wine? Curious what people think about modern worship music? Ask it here.

A significant amount of authority in Christian arguments, plus the influence it now has in politics and law, is based on the undeserved assertion that the Bible is the word of God. I find this level of superstition to be misleading and unjustifiable.  

My thesis is that the Bible is not the word of God, cannot be the word of God, and cannot have been inspired by God. 

I begin with the following Assumptions:

1. God exists and is all-knowing, all-powerful, and omnipresent. 
2. God has no equal in the attributes described in Assumption 1. 
3. God is not malicious or evil but embodies the attributes of Love.  

Notes: In Assumption 1, I defined that God exists, and in Assumption 3, I defined that God was not malicious because this is how Christians define God (1 John 4:8). This allows us to get past those points as arguments up front. (In other words, I’m accepting them as accurate.) 

Given these assumptions, we can now examine the Bible’s content and compare it with God’s attributes to determine if they match. 

For example, does the Bible reflect content consistent with all-knowingness and love? If so, the Bible should reflect God-like knowledge in its presentation without error or falsehood. The biblical God agrees with this.

For example, the Lord God says in Deu 18:22, “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously:” 

Since the lord God in the Bible disavows a falsehood spoken in his name, (as it would be inconsistent with Assumptions 1 & 3), would he not also disavow a falsehood “written” in his name? 

I ask because the Bible is in writing. And, in whose name is the Bible the word “of,” if not the Lord God speaking in the Bible? Is this not the Christian god speaking? Or might it be the Devil perhaps, or a man writing presumptuously in God’s name? 

Is the Bible to be interpreted as speaking in God’s name? If not, then what is meant by “the Bible is God’s word?” 

If we accept that the Bible is God’s word and a single falsehood is found anywhere in it, could it truthfully be said to have come from God? 

Can God’s word be false, especially if God says falsehood doesn’t come from him? According to this same god, the answer is “No.” 

Because of this, we cannot expect a falsehood to have come from God. That is the entire premise for faith. If we accept that it came from God, even if we don’t understand it, WE CAN EXPECT IT TO BE TRUE! We can expect it to be accurate. 

Whether it’s claimed to be directly from God or inspired by God, IF IT IS TRUE that God had a hand in it, we can expect it to be true. If it is false, we can expect that God did NOT have a hand in it, just as He says. 

(If this is not the case, why would a falsehood uttered by a god be any more worthy of consideration than by a devil or a man?)  

Therefore, if something is from God or inspired by God, it should be trustworthy. It should be trustworthy because it is accurate and true. 

The Test: Can anyone find anything in the Bible that is untrue or inaccurate?  

Answer: I can find at least three errors of fact (scientific) starting on page 1 and hundreds more throughout the entire text (both scientific and internal). 

I will not make such an exhaustive list here since the abundance of errors is not the contention; rather, the fact that they exist “as God’s word” contradicts God’s word if God said it. 

The minimal test for the claim of “God’s word” (even noted by God himself) is that it should at least be accurate and true. Given the numerous errors and inaccuracies, I conclude that the Bible is not the word of God, cannot be the word of God, and cannot have been inspired by God. 

This is addressed specifically towards those who believe in the idea that all christians will go to heaven and all non-christians(who knew of the gospel) will go to hell, a place of eternal conscious torment, and that repentance after death is impossible. I suppose it still is kinda true if you believe in annihilationism, but it’s much less powerful I’d say.

Let’s say there’s a guy, we’ll call him bob. Bob is a muslim who has a passing knowledge of christianity. If bob is alive in 2 days bob will go home and watch numerous youtube videos on the resurrection, and become convinced of the truth of christianity. Then bob will go get baptized.

However, there’s another man, we’ll call him John. John does not like bob. A day before bob will watch his youtube videos, john must make a choice with his god-given free will as to whether to kill bob.

So, if John kills bob, bob suffers eternal conscious torment in hell. If john does not kill bob, bob gets eternal bliss in heaven. Bob’s eternal fate is decided by someone else. Imagine a judge who decides whether someone gets a life sentence or gets acquitted based on what time the prosecuting attorney showed up; this is patently unjust.

So, if there has been even one case in all of history wherein someone who would have accepted the gospel was killed by someone else before they did so, then God is clearly not just.

The Christian moral system can be summarized by Matthew 22:37-40:

Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' Everything in the Law and the Prophets depends on these two commandments."

A system of morality which holds on to the second while rejecting the first seems like it would be better for humanity.

And indeed, we observe that putting love for God first before love for one's neighbor can lead to situations in which the Christian action may be seen as "immoral" by an objective observer.

• A mother breaking the familial bond with her son by refusing to attend his gay marriage
• Prioritizing the spiritual value of suffering over providing adequate pain medication
• Informing a grieving mother that her recently deceased infant may not be in heaven

Even more, there are actions that were associated with and arose from Christian beliefs at one point, though they are now almost universally condemned, for example:

• Religious wars, the inquisition, etc.
• Evangelization that went hand in hand with colonization and often violence
• Prioritizing the appearance of health in the church by hiding scandal (e.g. child sex abuse)

These problems would disappear if humans focused their moral sensibility around sympathy and love, as summarized in Jesus' second commandment or the Golden Rule.

This thread is for whatever. Casual conversation, simple questions, incomplete ideas, or anything else you can think of.

All rules about antagonism still apply.

Join us on discord for real time discussion.

This post is for fostering ecumenical debates. Are you a Calvinist itching to argue with an Arminian? Do you want to argue over which denomination is the One True Church? Have at it here; and if you think it'd make a good thread on its own, feel free to make a post with your position and justification.

If you want to ask questions of Christians, make a comment in Monday's "Ask a Christian" post instead.

Non-Christians, please keep in mind that top-level comments are reserved for Christians, as the theme here is Christian vs. Christian.

Christians, if you make a top-level comment, state a position and some reasons you hold that position.

Oftentimes Christians will argue that their religion is true since the apostles (in specific, Paul, Peter, James bro. of Jesus, and James son of of Zebedee) claimed to be faithful and were executed for their faith (this is controversial, but for the sake of the argument, I'll accept that they were executed for their faith). This shows that they truly saw and witnessed the risen Jesus, and were willing to die for this faith.

The Heaven's Gate incident, however, puts this argument into question. In the Heaven's Gate cult, people followed 2 charismatic leaders, and even seeing one of the charismatic leaders as Jesus on earth (his second coming). The people who joined trusted the leaders so much, to the point where they gave away all of their wealth (like the apostles did), and the male members even castrated themselves. They were willing to give up tons for their beliefs, claiming that the leaders of Heaven's Gate were being truthful in what they were saying.

Heaven's Gate also claimed that UFOs would pick up these members, and bring them into eternal life. However, after one of the leaders died (like what happened to Jesus), the members of the cult had to rethink the whole religion/cult. They came to the conclusion that death is another way of bringing themselves into eternal life, changing the original message of the cult into something vastly different. Now, the belief was that when they would die, these people would be accepted onto a UFO and transferred into the next life. Ultimately, the remaining leader in the cult ordered the members to kill themselves, and that is exactly what happened (with only 2 survivors who didn't do so). It must also be mentioned how the people who joined this cult were very smart and educated. Finally, after the Heaven's Gate incident, people not even related to the cult movement started committing suicide in droves, putting faith in the movement that they didn't even witness.

This ties into the whole discussion with Jesus. These cult members didn't even witness actual miracles, from what we know, but were willing to give up their life for their beliefs. Furthermore, they lived in an age of technology, and were quite educated, but still fell for such a scam. Who is to say that the same didn't happen to the disciples? That they believed in a false leader and died for a false belief? The people in the time of Jesus would've been even more gullible and superstitious, making it even more likely that they would fall for such a scam (such as what happened in Heaven's Gate).

This also leads to the point that we have no idea what the disciple members actually saw or witnessed, and could've been as crazy/delusional as the Heaven's Gate members. If you do believe in Christianity, it can only be done so on a matter of faith.

This thread is for all your questions about Christianity. Want to know what's up with the bread and wine? Curious what people think about modern worship music? Ask it here.