Monthly Archives: March 2020

BSR 5: The Bible Is Full of Contradictions

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Let’s run through a few Bible contradictions and consider what real eyewitness testimony would look like.

(These Bite-Size Replies are responses to “Quick Shots,” brief Christian responses to atheist challenges. The introduction to this series is here.)

Challenge to the Christian: The Bible is full of contradictions.

Christian response #1: There’s a difference between a contradiction and a variation. Two reports about the same thing may not be identical, but that doesn’t mean they contradict.

The gospels all have women telling the disciples about the empty tomb, except for Mark. In that gospel, the women are told by a man in the tomb to report the resurrection to the disciples. But “trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” And there Mark ends. That’s a contradiction.

Here’s another. The second Commandment against worshiping idols has this: “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me” (Exodus 20:5). In a more sober frame of mind in a later book, God changed his mind: “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin” (Deuteronomy 24:16). That’s a contradiction.

There are thick books like The Big Book of Bible Difficulties that have rationalizations for hundreds of cases like these, but this shouldn’t give the Christian much solace. These books admit the apparent contradictions, which is precisely what a book inspired by the perfect Creator of the universe should not contain.

There are rationalizations for hundreds of Bible contradictions, but this shouldn’t give the Christian much solace. These rationalizations admit the APPARENT contradictions, which is precisely what a book inspired by God should not contain. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #2: “Why wouldn’t there appear to be contradictions in the gospels? This is the nature of all reliable eyewitness testimony.”

All reliable eyewitness testimony has contradictions? That’s doubtful. Contradiction seems to be the nature of legend and fiction much more than eyewitness testimony. Which of these two categories seems the better fit for the Bible?

Surely we should have higher standards for a book that claims to be inspired by God. At no stage was God’s divine hand apparent: not at the writing of the originals, not by preserving through copying, not through flawless translation. Every opportunity God has to show that he exists, he ignores. The Bible is error-prone at every step because it’s people all the way down.

Here’s what eyewitness testimony looks like: “I Simon Peter and Andrew my brother took our nets and went to the sea” (from the Gospel of Peter). “I Thomas, an Israelite, write you this account” (the Infancy Gospel of Thomas). “These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down” (the Gospel of Thomas). But this is apparently unconvincing because these books aren’t in the New Testament! And Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have no clear, identified eyewitness claims like these.

At no stage of the Bible was God’s divine hand apparent: not at the writing of the originals, not the copying, not the translation. The Bible is error-prone at every step because it’s people all the way down. [Click to tweet]

(The Quick Shot I’m replying to is here.)

Continue to BSR 6: All Religions Lead to the Same Place

For further reading:

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark
or the adult afraid of the light?
— Maurice Freehill

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Image from Federico Pitto, CC license
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Christian Prophets vs. Tabloid Psychics

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I remember the tabloid magazines from years ago at the grocery store checkout stand. Every new year’s first edition had famous psychics’ predictions splashed across the cover. What Hollywood or royal celebrities would get embarrassed, arrested, or divorced? What gaffes would various world leaders commit? What natural disasters or wars would happen, what scientific or medical breakthroughs would develop?

What was surprising was how they could keep doing this, year after year, when the issue just one week earlier had the end-of-year scorecard showing how badly the prior year’s predictions had done.

Kidding! There was no scorecard, not at the end of the previous year or ever. No need to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

The tabloid fan might admit that if you really want to get precise about it, sure, the occasional prediction wasn’t completely accurate. If the prediction was that a celebrity would lose a child from a drug overdose, but what actually happened was that their ex got divorced, that was close enough, right? Blur your eyes and score generously, and those psychics were still worth reading.

This has been called the Jeane Dixon effect after a prolific psychic. From her oeuvre, you can find loads of preposterously wrong predictions as well as the occasional correct one. Knowing what sells, the media celebrated the hits and forgot the misses. (One author called this kind of selection bias the Jeane Dixon defect.)

And isn’t it fun to believe? For the tabloid buyer, maybe, just maybe, the psychic will be right, the predicted natural disaster will happen, and they can say they knew it all along.

For the kid waiting for Santa, maybe, just maybe, they’ll get that pony they asked for.

And for the Christian, maybe, just maybe, their prayer for a miracle will be answered.

Christian predictions

This naïve belief is widespread in many Christians today. The fraction of Americans who say that we’re living in the end times as described by the Bible is 41 percent. Of American evangelicals, it’s 77 percent.

When you or I hear a terrible news story—a pandemic virus, for example—we likely see this in the context of bad stuff that happens across the world from time to time. For apocalyptic Christians convinced that Armageddon is around the corner, however, any tragedy neatly confirms their conclusion.

John Hagee’s hysterical 2015 blather about the four blood moons scratched that “All aboard!” itch that these apocalyptic Christians seem to have. They’re playing the poker game of eternity, they’re all in, and they’re eager to show their cards. About the four blood moons, Hagee said, “God is literally screaming at the world, ‘I’m coming soon,’ ” and “The coming four blood moons points to a world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015.”

(You didn’t notice the world ending in October, 2015? No four horsemen? Nothing to suggest the End? Me neither. The only blood is Hagee’s bloody nose when he walked face-first into reality.)

Just like psychics’ failed predictions in tabloid magazines, Christian prophets have no final reckoning. The Jeane Dixon defect is in play, and failed predictions are either ignored or reinterpreted to be close enough.

One relevant difference is that the Bible demands the death penalty for false prophets.

A prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded . . . is to be put to death. (Deuteronomy 18:20–22)

How can we identify this false prophet? The passage continues:

You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously.

Hagee’s flock haven’t picked up stones. He hasn’t even been shunned or exiled. It’s almost like Christians aren’t consistent and are selectively reading the Bible.

Comparison: psychics vs. prophets

The National Enquirer psychics seem not to be on the covers anymore, but they did predict big things for 2015: an assassination attempt on Pope Francis, a Hollywood job offer for Barack Obama, significant volcanic activity in the Pacific Northwest, and a deathbed confession that that moon-landing thing really was a hoax. Wrong, as usual.

And notice what they missed. No 2015 prediction about ISIS or the Paris attacks or Charlie Hebdo. Nothing about the Obergefell decision or Christian bakers or Kim Davis. Nothing about Donald Trump and the sycophantic comedy that American politics would become.

We can laugh at how badly the psychics got things wrong, but then the Christian prophets, perpetually crying wolf about the latest disaster, were just as laughably wrong. My prediction for 2020: more empty and irresponsible predictions from both psychics and Christian prophets.

Risky predictions have been successfully made
thousands of times in science,
not once in religion.
— Vic Stenger

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/1/16.)

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BSR 4: Who Created God?

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When the Christian declares that everything must have been created and that God was the creator of the universe, the atheist can reply, but who created God?

(These Bite-Size Replies are responses to “Quick Shots,” brief Christian responses to atheist challenges. The introduction to this series is here.)

Challenge to the Christian: Who created God?

Christian response #1: This question is nonsensical. God is uncreated by definition.

Give God whatever properties you want—zero calories, organic, lemon scented, made of soap bubbles, whatever. You still must justify those claims. Some Bible verses suggest that God is eternal, but that’s not evidence. You can start by showing that God exists.

We’ve seen this trick before, in Bite-Size Reply 1, where the apologist tries to disqualify an argument to avoid having to address it. “Who created God?” is a reasonable question that follows naturally from the apologist saying, “Everything must have a creator, and in the case of the universe, God is that creator.” Or if the argument is, “Everything but God has a creator,” then justify that.

Give God whatever properties you want (like “uncreated”), but you still must justify them. You can start by showing that God exists. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #2: Everyone believes in something eternal—if not the universe, then what caused it. Christians just believe that cause was personal, which explains the personal attributes of existence.

Christians believe? “I believe” here is in the same category as “I have faith,” but it’s better to let belief follow from sufficient evidence. Let’s rely on evidence-driven science, the discipline that has taught us what we reliably know so far about reality.

Science doesn’t call the universe eternal. Time in our universe had a beginning, though there’s likely more to be discovered. Science has unanswered questions about the universe, but it has the track record of providing reliable answers. Religion also has answers, but each religion’s origin story is incompatible with the next, making none worth believing in.

Pointing out the gaps in scientific knowledge does nothing to bolster religion’s claims (for example, undercutting evolution does nothing to strengthen Creationism). If Christianity wants to provide answers to science’s unanswered questions, it needs to do the heavy lifting itself. “But science doesn’t have an answer!” is no argument.

“But science doesn’t have an answer!” is no argument. If Christianity wants to provide answers to science’s unanswered questions, it needs to do the heavy lifting itself and make a strong case. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #3: Person A borrows from B, but if B doesn’t have it, they borrow from C. At some point in the progression, someone must actually have the thing. When the thing is existence, that someone must be “a self-existent, eternal, necessary Being.”

Borrowing existence isn’t like borrowing a hammer or a cup of sugar. What does “borrowing existence” even mean? Let’s find a charitable interpretation and see it as a variation on Thomas Aquinas’s Argument of the First Cause: you can’t pass the buck forever, and the buck stops with God. God grounds existence.

That has a common-sense feel to it, but relying on common sense at the frontier of science is to bring a knife to a gunfight. The Big Bang, the event that brought the universe as we know it into existence 14 billion years ago, might’ve been a quantum event, and quantum physics throws common sense out the window. It is completely counterintuitive—events without causes, virtual particles popping into existence, quantum entanglement, quantum tunneling, quantum superposition, and so on.

Before you hypothesize a Being that is the source of existence, show that natural explanations are insufficient. That is, don’t simply say that science has unanswered questions about the origin of the universe (yes, it does). You must show that no natural explanation is possible. Otherwise, the consistent record of failure of supernatural explanations means that we have no reason to expect such a thing.

Thomas Aquinas argued that you can’t pass the buck forever, and the buck stops with God. God was the First Cause. This has a common-sense feel to it, but relying on common sense at the frontier of science is to bring a knife to a gunfight. [Click to tweet]

(The Quick Shot I’m replying to is here.)

Continue to BSR 5: The Bible is full of contradictions  

For further reading:

Religion gives us certainty without proof;
science gives us proof without certainty.
— a modified version of an Ashley Montagu quote

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Image from Federico Pitto, CC license
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BSR 3: Christian Hypocrisy Proves Christianity False

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Are Christians consistent in the standards of truth they use for Christianity vs. what they use for other religions? Or do they hypocritically apply an easier standard for their favorite religion?

(These Bite-Size Replies are responses to “Quick Shots,” brief Christian responses to atheist challenges. The introduction to this series is here.)

Challenge to the Christian: Christian hypocrisy proves Christianity is false.

Christian response #1: And does atheist hypocrisy prove atheism false? Everyone is hypocritical!

The hypocrisy that I notice is Christians giving their god a pass that they’d never give another religion. For example, there’s a worldwide pandemic right now, which would be an excellent opportunity for God to do something, anything, in an overt and public way. But he’s perpetually hidden, and his human handlers can always invent some excuse. Would Christians accept this from another religion?

Or think of the many clues that we don’t live in a world with a god. God needs praise and worship. Religious beliefs are just cultural traits. Life on earth is trivial in an unimaginably vast universe. Prayer doesn’t work. There is unnecessary pain. Does this look like a world with a god?

Or consider Bible contradictions. The Bible tells us that Christians sin (or don’t). Women proclaimed the news of the empty tomb (or didn’t). No one can see God (or can they?). Faith saves (or maybe it’s works). Jesus predicted the End in the lifetime of his hearers (didn’t happen). People deserve punishment for their ancestors’ sins (or not).

Christians don’t see the double standard but would spot these problems in an instant in another religion.

God is hidden, the Bible contradicts itself, and our world looks like a world with no god. Christians don’t see the double standard but would spot these problems in an instant in another religion. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #2: The Christian moral standard is grounded in God’s perfect moral nature. Of course Christians will fall short of the mark!

“God’s perfect moral nature”? Guess again. Any person who committed the atrocities that God did in the Old Testament isn’t moral. God defined the rules for slavery, creating an institution pretty much identical to slavery in the United States. He called for genocide. He demanded child sacrifice from the Jews. He imposes eternal punishment in hell. His morality in the book of Job was “might makes right.”

What moral standard does God follow? Certainly no moral standard acceptable in the Western world today. Maybe God’s morals weren’t bad compared to other Bronze Age gods of the Ancient Near East, but that is far from perfect morality.

As for people falling short of the mark, blame my imperfections on my Creator. That God created imperfect people and then is outraged that they don’t meet his high standards is a doctrine unworthy of any thoughtful person. Christopher Hitchens lampooned this by noting that, in Christianity, “We are created to be sick and commanded to be well.”

Maybe God was pretty good compared to other Bronze Age gods of the Ancient Near East, but that is far from perfect morality. [Click to tweet]

(The Quick Shot I’m replying to is here.)

Continue to BSR 4: Who created God?

For further reading:

In response to Adam and Eve’s eating the apple:
“There were only two of them
and you couldn’t keep an eye on them?
There’s THREE of you! What were you doing?”
— commenter LeekSoup at
Godless in Dixie blog

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Image from Federico Pitto, CC license
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BSR 2: Jesus Is a Copycat Savior

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Was Jesus a copycat savior, with traits copied from prior mythologies?

(These Bite-Size Replies are responses to “Quick Shots,” brief Christian responses to atheist challenges. The introduction to this series is here.)

Challenge to the Christian: Jesus is a copycat savior.

Christian response #1: “Whether it’s Mithras, Osiris, Horus, or any other ancient myth, none of them resemble Jesus as much as skeptics claim.”

Jesus resembles Dionysus in that both died and rose again. He resembles Helen of Troy in that both had supernatural conceptions. He resembles Asclepius in that both miraculously healed the sick. He resembles the Oenotropae, three sisters who could change water into wine. These figures all preceded Jesus, and they all came from nearby cultures that influenced Palestine.

No, Jesus’s biography isn’t identical to that for Dionysus. If it were, we’d call him “Dionysus.” The claim isn’t that these other supernatural figures were identical to Jesus, just that they were each identical on one supernatural point.

What’s likelier, that the supernatural traits of the Jesus story are all true or, like the prior mythological figures that share those traits, Jesus is mythological as well? If Jesus were historical, he wouldn’t look like a copycat savior with a crazy quilt of supernatural features picked from neighboring religions. A real god would’ve done something lasting—eliminating disease or terraforming Israel from a desert into a meadow—rather than fleeting miracles.

What’s likelier, that the supernatural traits of the Jesus story are all true or, like the prior mythological figures that share those traits, Jesus is mythological as well? [Click to tweet]

Christian response #2: “Why would you be surprised that ancient people, when thinking about the existence and nature of God, would think of Him in ways that are similar to the true God?”

What true God? Honest scholars don’t presuppose a god into existence and then show it’s compatible with the evidence. Instead, they follow the evidence without preconception and let the conclusion take its own shape. There is no “true God” to test human religious ideas against.

But let’s accept the premise and suppose the true god were only vaguely perceptible. First, this shy and reluctant god doesn’t sound at all like Christianity. And second, we don’t see every culture with a vague sense of the true divine, comparing notes and coming together. World religions are diverging. Look at Christianity: there are tens of thousands of denominations, and this number grows by two per day. We find this same fertility in the world’s other religions.

You can imagine the Christian story as true and reinterpret other religions as supernaturally anticipating Christianity, but the naturalistic explanation is much more plausible. It neatly explains the facts, by hypothesizing that nearby cultures—Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and others—invented supernatural properties for their gods, and then a Jewish sect incorporated them into its new religion.

You can imagine the Christian story as true and reinterpret other religions as supernaturally anticipating Christianity, but the naturalistic explanation is much more plausible. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #3: “Skeptics who claim the story of Jesus is similar to ancient mythological gods are exaggerating and cherry-picking.”

You can sift through history, searching for surprising similarities such as the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy (both presidents were shot in the head, both were succeeded by southern Democrats named Johnson, both assassins were themselves killed before their trial, and more). Searching through millions of potential pairings and keeping the handful with the most curious coincidences, like this one—that’s cherry-picking. Starting with Jesus and looking for precedents in the supernatural traits of the gods from surrounding cultures is simply resolving a sensible question.

This is a poor comparison. The Lincoln/Kennedy similarities are natural; by contrast, Jesus, Dionysus, and other gods are supernatural. Lincoln and Kennedy are from history, while Dionysus, Asclepius, and quite possibly Jesus are legend and myth. Kennedy’s biography wasn’t tweaked to make it match Lincoln’s, but the traits of Jesus might have easily been cherry-picked from earlier gods. The Lincoln/Kennedy coincidences are surprising, but the similarities between Jesus and other gods have an unsurprising natural explanation.

Similarities between Jesus and earlier gods don’t prove there was borrowing, but that’s the way to bet. The Jesus story is best explained as legend and mythology, not history.

Similarities between Jesus and earlier gods don’t prove there was borrowing, but that’s the way to bet. The Jesus story is best explained as legend and mythology, not history.  [Click to tweet]

(The Quick Shot I’m replying to is here.)

Continue to BSR 3: Christian Hypocrisy Proves Christianity Is False

For further reading:

Never attribute to malice that
which is adequately explained by stupidity.
— Hanlon’s Razor

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Image from Ruth Hartnup, CC license
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BSR 1: There Are No Objective Truths

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What kind of truths can be said to be objectively true?

(These Bite-Size Replies are responses to “Quick Shots,” brief Christian responses to atheist challenges. The introduction to this series is here.)

Challenge to the Christian: There are no objective truths.

Christian response #1: Subjective truth claims are grounded in individuals and their opinions, while objective truth claims are grounded in (and tested against) reality. Dismissing objective truth—what causes disease, how fire can be mishandled, or 1 + 1 = 2—would lead to a dangerous society.

Objective truth isn’t the issue. Yes, it exists. The interesting question is whether objective moral truth exists. Christianity claims to be the gatekeeper to objective moral truth, but this bold claim is made without evidence. We can use the definition of objective morality from Christian apologist William Lane Craig: “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.” No, objective moral truth isn’t merely strongly felt or universally agreed-to morals.

Objective moral truths? The burden is on the Christian to show that moral values grounded outside of people exist. And these moral truths are useless unless they’re reliably accessible by everyone.

These objective moral truths should be obvious, so where are they? Not only do Christians disagree among themselves on abortion, same-sex marriage, contraception, euthanasia, and every other current moral debate, but modern Christians disagree with the Bible on God’s support for slavery, his demand for genocide, and more.

Objective moral truths? The burden is on the Christian to show that moral values grounded outside of people exist. And these moral truths are useless unless they’re reliably accessible by everyone. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #2: “If there are no objective truths, then the statement, ‘There are no objective truths,’ can’t be objectively true.”

People interested in the truth respond to the strongest formulation of their opponent’s argument. Instead of straw-manning their argument (erecting an intentionally weak version and then knocking it over), a more honest approach is the reverse. Before you rebut an argument, improve it to be so clear and effective that your opponent would be satisfied using it themselves.

The gambit used in this Christian response attempts to get an argument dismissed on a technicality rather than face it, but the gambit fails. It’s easy to change “There are no objective [moral] truths” to “I see no objective moral truths; please show that they exist” or something similar. With a moment’s effort, we’ve changed a statement that self-destructs into a challenge that puts a central claim of Christianity in the crosshairs.

Change “There are no objective moral truths” to “I see no objective moral truths; show that they exist.” With a moment’s effort, we’ve changed a statement that self-destructs into a challenge that puts a central claim of Christianity in the crosshairs. [Click to tweet]

(The Quick Shot I’m replying to is here.)

Continue to BSR 2: Jesus Is a Copycat Savior

For further reading:

Dorothy: “We want to see the Wizard of Oz.”
Gatekeeper: “That’s impossible.
No one has ever seen the great wizard.”
Dorothy: “Then how do you know he exists?”

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Image from Federico Pitto, CC license
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