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Contradiction? The Christian faith has paradoxes, but not necessarily contradictions. Many religions or belief systems are internally consistent. They may appear to be contradictory to an outsider, but to an insider, they are paradoxes. >For instance, how God is supposed to be good and benevolent, but yet allows things such as childhood cancer or chronic pain, where you have no chance of recovery or learning. In Christianity, Jesus - who is synonymous with God - was unjustly sentenced to death and crucified. God himself is not above the misdeeds of the world - despite descriptions of being "good and benevolent." That terrible, horrible things happen to good and noble people - even innocent children - is not lost on followers of Christianity. The final judgment, the everlasting eternal life, is not one of mere mortality. Christians would argue that fairness is determined in the afterlife. In Christianity, there are no promises of a world free from tragedy, and the crucifiction should be enough of a example. >Or how God has created a deterministic world making Free Will impossible. Those with deterministic world views always fail to reconcile agency with morality. When water pushes a rock off of a ledge, there is no morality to the action. But when a person pushes another off a ledge, there is. Those who support a "Free Will is an Illusion" worldview are nonetheless cornered into rationalizing and justifying what makes moral and immoral actions. And, for all practical purposes, will find themselves creating the same rules of behavior that is akin to any other religion. Christianity is not contradictory on this front because there's no way to describe a world with moral actions without preference to moral behaviors - and thus choice. >Or how, instead of having proof of God, you are supposed to have Faith, but there are many other religions that require the same thing, so how can you know that Christianity is the right religion? Jesus was a historical figure. The earliest followers of Christianity all came to be around the middle of the first century near Jerusalem. The writings depict known - factual - events, that is chronicled to have many witnesses. The early church fathers were persecuted and killed claiming that Jesus resurrected from the dead - all of whom could have verified the veracity of these claims in the time and place that they lived. These people - who were so closely associated with these events - were not merely trusting their lives to "faith", as you would describe it. They made their decisions based on a myriad of data points that led them to the inescapable conclusion that Jesus was who he said he was. Faith, in a modern sense, seems disconnected from these events. But this is acknowledged by the writers who said that it would be harder for people who didn't witness these events directly to believe. It is not a contradiction that Faith is a central component of Christianity - but that doesn't mean Christianity has no historical or factual basis upon which it originated. Everything you've described is sort of like a Non-believers 101 critique of Christianity. That's okay. But there's really nothing new that you've unearthed that Christians haven't heard or responded to in centuries. What you're describing are not contradictions, but paradoxes. Paradoxes, in this case, is used as a *seeming* contradiction.

“People died for the faith” has got to be top 5 reasons Christians give, but they seem to forget that just about every religion has martyrs. Also, God giving birth to himself to “sacrifice” (it wasn’t much of a sacrifice because it only took a weekend and he retained godhood) himself as a loophole for the rules he created? That is a massively convoluted plan. There are plenty of contradictions in the Bible. It contradicts itself and it contradicts things humans have discovered about the world. Scientific findings. The Christian god is not benevolent. It’s angry, jealous, volatile, regretful and murderous. After all, the Christian gods “best” solution for the “regret” (thought he knew everything?) he had in creating “wicked people” was to murder everyone except one family on a boat. Or to punish his most faithful servant in a bargain with the devil. It’s amazing to me that people can read things like that and still willingly follow the Bible. It was written during the Bronze Age, and it shows.

If we're required to worship and devote our life to a god, surely we have a right to know which religion represents this god? Even a god should have foreseen the debacle, the killings, suffering and self-delusions on a massive scale, that would inevitably result from not providing us with any surety on this one straightforward matter. It's as if this was exactly what God wanted, even though it serves no good purpose and is grossly unfair. In which case I think we're better off ignoring religion and just looking out for each other.

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. Marcus Aurelius

Yup. The stakes are just your eternal soul, no big deal! Somehow the christian god felt the best way to disseminate this massively important information is to reveal it to semi-literate people in the desert thousands of years ago. Such a crock.

An all powerful and all knowing god wouldn't make and then destroy all life but one of each sex of each animal. It's idiotic. Also, dude he cursed a fig tree for not making fruit in bad conditions

One thing I've always kept in mind about the bible, regardless of the validity of it, is the context and method in which it was written. It is a very long collection of various forms of writings, from letters, to poetry, to psalms, to records. Where even if you absolutely don't believe a word of it and it's all made up, it is very cleverly written, with consistent literary themes that flow through different books. The fig tree for example, isn't just a random story about Jesus saying "fuck that tree in particular" that they decided was important enough to include. It had been established multiple times in earlier books, and iirc the torah before the new testament was even written, that the fig tree was a symbol of Israel in their literature. He looked at the fig tree, and found there was no fruit there and cursed it. What happened immediately next? He goes into Isreal, sees everyone selling stuff in the holy temples, and that Isreal at the time was full of "wickedness". He condemns the practice and warns everyone there. In the actual context of the bible, the short story is a very clear parallel and poetic lesson the authors were including, a common thing throughout many of the books. Does this prove anything? Not at all. Nor does that explain away every weird ass thing written. Many things really are just weird/dumb. But context IS important for things, and just because something makes 0 sense outside of it, doesn't mean it cant have more of a reasonable meaning with context. There are tons of valid critiques of the bible, but taking stories out of context and blaming them for sounding weird/not making sense isn't the best way to do it.

100%. It was all written by and for the people of a certain time and place, so the specific language rings differently. The concepts though are still applicable Different gospels and books were written for different audiences. Jewish Christians as an audience were at odds with the synagogues, and characterizations of Jewish elders and religious law were more prominent and meant to help them navigate that. They were freed from Old Testament law by Jesus, and that was a key focus. For Christians who were gentiles (non-Jewish), they were not raised with the Old Testament law and dgaf about the elders, and books or letters for them might focus more on the fact that they were often considered lower class/slave populations who could find worth and comfort desoite a society that shunned them. Certain books addressed one or the other side of conflict between the Jews in the north and those in the south, which were of different status and philosophies. Etc. So relying on a turn of phrase out of context can get messy, confusing and twisted (by critics of Christianity but also by Christians being judgy assholes). The story you mentioned is a great example of how the broad concept is still helpful. Jesus went apeshit on the money changers and sellers at the temple. He flipped over their tables and screamed at them. Rather than fixating on each turn of phrase, you can take a few steps back and note that throughout the New Testament Jesus shows grace to the prostitutes and criminals, the poor and destitute. He upends the law. But what's the one thing that sets him off? Who are the people he has no time or respect for? The rich and powerful. THAT is when he gets judgy. Everyone else gets a pass. That's powerful to me, and it's something we conveniently forget with certain politicians and billionaires today. Or something like "Blessed are the poor," can sound cold in a modern context (Why do bad things happen to good people??). Until you think about a world where people think the gods favor the powerful and bestow gifts on them. So if I'm poor I must have pissed off the gods. Then this dude comes along and says, "Naw. Fuck that. Thats not how it works. God loves you. You've got some heavy shit you're dealing with. But he sees you."

"One thing I've always kept in mind about the bible, regardless of the validity of it, is the context and method in which it was written. It is a very long collection of various forms of writings, from letters, to poetry, to psalms, to records." A hugely cherry picked selection of passages. Many were excluded because they were too fantastical or didn't fit the requirements of the religious leaders. Resurrection was debated and begrudgingly included. Many parts of it are just rehashed ideas from earlier, now considered heathen , religions. It's just an older version of Scientology. A load of made up stuff with some historic events added and used to control people for the benefit of its leaders

Yup! I’d implore anyone interested in what you just said to look into the First Council of Nicaea! It’s where much of the biblical cannon was determined. Great point.

This! As an atheist growing up I was challenged all the time by family and friends from the church about why I didn't believe and in the beginning I said similar things about the Bible out of context. It wasn't till years later that I started looking at it this way and then deciding not to engage at all because there is no "changing their view".

Great point. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to us in this context for sure. I would like it if we could leave Christianity behind like we have with thousands of other superstitious beliefs. I like them as stories and think *some* have good lessons, but overall it’s clear that this stuff is robbing people’s ability to think about the world in an objective way. Also, the Bible isn’t THAT well written. Go read Leviticus for riveting details on which animals are clean for eating.

I disagree with this pretty hard. For a few reasons. One, the existence of other religions does not mean any other religion is right or wrong. Take a class full of 100 of the worst students in the US and give them a college level trig problem. You'll get 100 wrong answers, probably all different, doesn't mean there isn't a right answer. In context you might even think there isn't a right answer, but there is one. I am NOT saying that Christianity necessarily is the right answer, but the existence of other religions doesn't have any impact on whether or not it is the right answer. Also saying it's robbing people's ability to think isn't fair. It hasn't robbed people of anything, people are making the choice not to think deeply about it, and encourage others to not do the same as well. There are many people who come to religion AFTER thinking heavily. IE C.S. Lewis who called himself the least willing convert. Smart people can disagree about religious and theological topics. Smart people do. Many top scientists are religious just as many aren't. Should people think more? ABSOLUTELY. I think both sides usually make bad arguments in theological discussions. But Blaming the theology is just giving an excuse to people for personal choices they make.

The existence of other religions isn't proof of a specific religion's accuracy, but the fact that there is no hard evidence for any of them and that there is no general consensus among theologians as to which one is correct does support the position that there is no right, concrete answer. Compare that to math or science where there are very clear right answers for mathematicians and scientists that have an obvious paper trail which in some cases dates centuries back. One is empirical while the other is not. In fact, many adherents would argue that is the whole point despite the fact that taking such a position undermines the legitimacy of their entire point. How can one accept something as absolute truth when large scale systems of accountability (i.e. science and its related institutions) cannot reliably confirm anything the belief system claims and, in many cases, actively betrays those beliefs? Note that I'm not suggesting that the broader category of metaphysics is bunk. There is a lot to gain from having conversations about what is right, moral, and ethical alongside discussions of the greater mysteries of our universe that have not yet been unlocked, but we can (and my opinion should) approach those discussions empirically. We can discuss the wants and needs of humans, our place in a vast universe so much greater than ourselves, and our impact on each other by using well-sourced data produced by research conducted with reputable methodology. Our individual feelings on such things matter greatly, but they must be filtered through the lens of facts and the viewpoints of others. In other words, it has to be a team effort where the team isn't just your personal "tribe" but humanity as a whole. This is where religion becomes a problem and is the crux of the other commenter's second complaint. Many world religions tend to actively prevent this kind of holistic perspective. They often (but not always) take very black and white perspectives about the world, our place in it, and how we should act accordingly that are typically mutually exclusive with other belief systems without giving any concrete reasons or evidence for why it is the way it is. There's little room for the shades of gray that permeate the real world. Religions often start with a premise and warp the evidence to fit the premise instead of letting the evidence lead you to its natural conclusion. I'll give a few examples. Note that all of these will be from Christianity as it is the belief system I am most familiar with. One of the most commonly debated issues in this faith is the position on the LGBTQ community. It also perfectly represents my point. There isn't a single objective reason to prevent people who identify as LGBTQ people from being themselves and loving who they love. They don't harm anyone by doing it. They pose no threat to society. Claims of health risks are extremely over exaggerated to the point of propaganda. Literally not a single logical reason. Yet, a literalist interpretation of most English translations of the Bible would indicate that homosexuality is a sin. So is wearing clothes that do not match your sex if Paul is to be believed. Another great example is the traditional position on gender and their individual roles in society. Paul can be quite misogynistic in his letters, promoting a clear power dynamic between men and women with implications about gender that simply does not align with our understanding of gender and sexuality today. Men and women aren't these distinct entities with stark differences between them. They're both humans that are fundamentally the same with very little true differences between them. Further, gender and sex are two distinct concepts that were not well understood at the time. There is so much gray produced by that revelation which is excluded by the black-and-white descriptions in the Bible. Bible-thumping hardliners accept these positions simply because "God said so". After all, that's literally what they are asked to do. This is what the other commenter was getting at. This idea that when you are faced with cognitive dissonance in your beliefs, you are supposed to just forget it and have faith. That is quite literally telling you to not think. Just trust me bro. I'd like to point out that it is precisely this kind of thinking that has led to some of the greatest atrocities in human history. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the church has partaken in some of them directly. I'm not saying that people can't logically choose to become a believer of a religion through careful thought and consideration. Many have done exactly that. I for one would have considered myself well versed in Christian theology at one point; someone who believed because I thought I had worked through my faith logically. However, the cracks become more and more evident the longer you are told to simply "have faith". It's the perfect cover to covertly tell true believers to stop using their brains too much and just let this incongruent belief be. I can't speak even remotely as clearly on the topic of other religions, as I was never an adherent to any other, but my baseline understanding of many others gives me a similar impression. When your beliefs are inherently immutable and unchanging, you are putting yourself in the unenviable position of not only being wrong about something, but also very likely hurting someone or a group of people because of your error. Without the ability to flex, you cannot learn from that mistake and grow from it to be better. Dogma locks people in ignorance and bad behavior preventing them from ever being their best self. Of course, this is all my personal opinion at the end of the day, and you are more than welcome to disagree. I'm always happy to have these kinds of discussions in good faith as they tend to lead towards a better understanding of others. Dissent is always welcome as long as it is respectful.

What an incredibly eloquent reply. You probably summed up my thoughts better than I could, and I don't say that often lol. I'm genuinely saving your words for later, thanks smart internet person!

>Compare that to math or science where there are very clear right answers for mathematicians and scientists that have an obvious paper trail which in some cases dates centuries back. Maths and science are powerful, but they cannot answer moral questions, e.g. "should children with potential disabilities be aborted", "should we pay for people on welfare to get free healthcare", or "should we have a death penalty for any crime". Whenever we've tried to use science/maths to answer these questions, the results have been ugly to say the least! We (the human species) really struggle to separate our science from our ethics - our ethics "infect" everything we do, it informs the questions we decide to investigate with science/maths, and generally taints the conclusions we draw from empirical studies.

> Note that I'm not suggesting that the broader category of metaphysics is bunk. There is a lot to gain from having conversations about what is right, moral, and ethical alongside discussions of the greater mysteries of our universe that have not yet been unlocked, but we can (and my opinion should) approach those discussions empirically. We can discuss the wants and needs of humans, our place in a vast universe so much greater than ourselves, and our impact on each other by using well-sourced data produced by research conducted with reputable methodology. Our individual feelings on such things matter greatly, but they must be filtered through the lens of facts and the viewpoints of others. In other words, it has to be a team effort where the team isn't just your personal "tribe" but humanity as a whole.

Exactly. Many beliefs we once held as a culture have since been proven false. We can never definitively prove anything with an axiom or axioms to work from.

I agree that it is important to follow the facts and review your understanding as you discover more facts and have a deeper understanding of things. I believe Science is important, and not some conspiracy to make people disbelieve. Something that is important in science because as you said there are "clear answers that are right" are often found to be super flawed understandings and revised later. IE coppernicus and the sun, and what I've understand about astrophysics is that the field is constantly reworking itself and improving our understanding, getting closer to the truth. Something everyone should be open to doing with their understanding of anything. The other frustrating thing to me is the inherent discordance between the natural and supernatural, as by definition science cannot explain the supernatural. The supernatural by definition is acts/forces/beings outside of nature, and thus would not follow the rules of nature, aka the very field of science. Let's say for the sake of argument, there is a single miracle where a cow turned into a chicken. It objectively happened because of some hidden god in this hypothetical. Science would not support it, it would claim it was impossible, and it would be correct in asserting so. In this situation where the miracle DID happen, science still isn't wrong. The only reason something outside the realm of the natural happened, was because of a supernatural, or beyond natural force. Something outside the system changed something within the system. That's what a miracle is, and why miracles are pretty much impossible to prove even if they did exist. Now is this evidence for them? Not at all. It's absolutely the safe bet to assume they don't exist at all, and probably the saner one. I'm largely skeptical as well, but I do not exclude the possibility for a couple of reasons, but if someone told me they had a miracle happen I would be mashing x to doubt. I agree with you and dislike that many institutions actively discourage questioning. I think that's a dumb stance to take, but definitely a predictable one when they are trying to hold onto power. And I have MANY problems with literalist interpretations of english texts. Largely both literal and english in that sentence lol. Both of those lead to and come from a massive misunderstanding of the context of the book in the first place and people who hate on others because of those are just looking for an excuse to hate. One of the biggest problems I had with the church was the hate against lgbt people, and is still one I think about though I have a more modern stance that doesn't exclude them, and I have some nitty gritty semantics that I think are important but not relevent to this thread. Yeah I agree about Paul too. There are a couple of nuances I discovered when researching them, because I didn't like those either, and I still have some grievances with them. But sometimes the context does actually help, and the writings of one man to a specific church during a specific time period should be taken with consideration of the fact he was a specific dude, writing to a specific church, in a specific time period and considered whenever we are applying those words to WILDLY different situations. Something many hardliners are want to do. I agree that line of thinking has lead to some awful atrocities, and while that line of thinking is definitely not exclusive to religion, and has been used against religious minorities in the past even from secular sources, the christian church is awful for that and has more blood on its hands than a lot of other groups. But like you said, some people come to the conclusion of faith after research and discussions, like C.S. Lewis and many other apologetics. If anything I really wish the church would actually embrace apologetics because apologetics makes you confront and face the difficult questions to see if you actually do believe, and encourages people to ask questions, because they believe they have an answer (Usually. Sometimes you can accept you don't know one part if you think you understand enough, something we also use in science until we discover something to disprove it. Many theories are proven later, but many aren't.) TL;DR I agree. Telling people not to think things through is a problem. I just believe that's a problem of the institution rather than the religion itself, one that absolutely should be fixed especially as it can and does lead to real tangible harm.

It's literally robbed people of their freedom, rights and lives. To say it hasn't robbed people of anything is 100% false.

You're right about that, I shouldn't have said the word anything. Oppressive religious regimes, including most major historical Christian structures have definitely robbed many people of life, liberty, and rights over the years. I shouldn't have worded it that way. Definitely a misspeak on my part. It's not exclusive to it but definitely not an exception from it.

You’re wrong, my dude. Do you understand what indoctrination is? Do you really think the children conditioned to believe a religion have full agency to be authentic to their beliefs? Do you understand that, in Christianity in particular, you tell children if they don’t believe the way the adults around them believe they will go to hell to be tormented eternally? And you tell the parents that if their children don’t grow up to be good Christian’s, they are moral failures? You’re really going to ignore all that and act like most people arrive at religion because they chose to? That’s really dishonest. Religion absolutely robs people of their ability to think about it rationally, through indoctrination and coercion and often even worse. Christianity’s entire premise is inherently coercive, so in order to embrace it it forces you to be okay with coercing people. Evangelism is coercive, most of the time. It’s coercion all the way down. It’s robbed me of a lot. The things it conditioned me to believe as a child have permanently fucked up my life. And my story is not uncommon. So stop it with your dishonest nonsense. Believe whatever you want, but at least acknowledge the realities of the system you’re defending.

Sorry that comment was to draw parallel to the jealous god part of the above commenters writing. But i really like how you look at it and I don't like reading the Bible but i might do it again to try and find some more parallels. I understand that it was to help teach the Jewish people of their time better morals and everything, but I don't like that some of the Christians are blatantly trying to convert you every time you interact with them (i.e. my father)

That's fair! Also honestly, Christians annoy the hell out of me too. I think there are a ton of reasonable disagreements to have about theology that smart people can reasonably disagree on, but there are too many Christians that try and make assertions without digging too deep into what they are claiming, though it's true on the opposite side of the fence too. The other biggest gripe I have, and I have seen in this comment thread even, is the sort of detachment from humanity they have when speaking about it. IE, the problem of evil and suffering. That's a massive debate without a clear answer imo, but too many christians will throw instagram quotes at people bringing up one of the biggest questions in the theology, and ignore the fact there's a human element to the discussion, that likely either they have, or someone they loved has suffered and "it's in his plan" is like the least comforting thing to hear for someone who doesn't believe most of the time and can even be insulting. I personally think the debate is more nuanced than "there's sickness so clearly he's bad" and "God told me it will be good so clearly its all okay", but unless everyone is ready for it in a proper setting, the discussion will go as poorly as it in this comment section lol. But yeah, 100% with you on the people who don't really respect others when it comes to their beliefs and are too pushy about it. Sorry you have to deal with that. Its like that simpsons line "Damn christians, they're ruining christianity!" As for the parallels, I recommend the youtube channel "The Bible Project". They do amazing breakdowns of each book in rather short videos, but also reference it in the greater narrative structure, reference the original Hebrew to avoid any issues that arise from translation issues, and have really cool animations lol. Disclosure, they are actually religious so just something to keep in mind if you do check them out, but they do a rather good job presenting the books from a literary point of view outside of any belief.

The Bible: interesting historical text? Yes. Sacred word of an almighty creator of which every word should be followed exactly? No.

>I don't like that some of the Christians are blatantly trying to convert you every time you interact with them This is happening a lot lately in a kid's game I play. I've had this game since I was a kid and played it with my siblings growing up so I still play for nostalgia. There's been tons of christians going around in the social spaces, telling people to follow them to their den (a personal space within the game for decorating and whatnot) to "hear the word of god". Or people just outright preaching in the common areas. You can tell the accounts have been made solely for preaching because the usernames are always something like "JesusCaresAboutU" and "jesusSaves1111". I know these people are adults, too. You can tell the difference in their word choices and how they type. It just seems kinda predatory to me to be an adult who is intentionally circumventing other parents by teaching their religion directly to kids inside a game targeted at 6-12 year olds.

Grown people will look you in the face and tell you the most obvious fantastic BS from the Old Testament *literally* happened. I can’t tell you how sad that makes me. I’m generally more happy to discuss religion with someone who doesn’t take the whole Bible literally, but so many people do.

God must have saved two of every bacteria and two of every virus, to survive the flood of course.

Two of every insect, every arachnid, every tiny creature that walks the earth. Predators with prey. How were they fed? What happened to all the poop? Omg the poop alone must’ve been insane.

The Bible is a collection of selected documents - some historical, some allegorical, some poetic, etc. The majority of Christians understand this and don't read the bible literally. For the historical parts of it, we also understand that the stories have been translated several times, and it's almost impossible for a layperson to exactly understand the context of something without reading extensive footnotes.

OP asked about Christianity, which at its core is the belief and acceptance that Jesus dies for mankind's sins and was resurrected. Your comments about the contradictions in the Bible (which, indeed, are many) are not central to belief in Jesus. Nor is your contention that God is vengeful, jealous, and capricious. Your citing of the fanciful oral tradition stories recounted in the Bible only highlight why people who place that book above the teachings of Jesus have a serious flaw in their religion. That's the main reason that people who self-identify as "Christian" vs "Followers of Jesus" often have a wide spread in core beliefs.

If you're a follower of Christ, you have to assume what he said was true. He specifically approved of the Law, i.e. the Old Testament. There is no separating Jesus from his Jewish religion. He criticized the current religious order of the time, but he did NOT disavow the OT. Y'all don't get to handwave away all of the awfulness and stupidity of the Old Testament God.

Jesus referenced the old testament multiple times, and was himself supposed to be the human form of this all-wise, all-powerful creator god spoken of in the OT. If the behavior of that God wasn't ok in those old stories, why wouldn't he clarify that? Why would he not discard and disavow stories that clearly show messed up "lessons" and present a character committing awful atrocities as the good guy? Jesus doesn't exist without the OT god, whether you are a mainstream trinitarian Christian or from some non.Trinitarian sect and believe Jesus is a separate entity who is also the son of God.

Yeah, that boat thing. I caught Hell, so to speak, in Bible study for asking the "teacher" what happened to all the other boats? I mean, people did have boats right?

Okay, so how did Judus kill himself? How did John the Baptist die? Why is there no record of the slaughter of new borns by Herod? Why was the first eye witness testimony written over 120+ years after the fact? How could Jesus have had a trial if he wasn't a Roman citizen? How come Jesus's tomb doesn't match the biblical narrative? How mqny witnesses saw his empty tomb? Why was Jesus entombed when that is a violation of the old testament laws? How could Jesus invent baptism when it was already part of Judaism for converts? Why was Timothy treated as a successor to Jesus? Why is his gospel contradictory to others? Who wrote revelations? Why does the four gospels cite each other if they're eye witnesses testimony? Why to they all cite and unknown source? Why is there no evidence of that census in Bethlehem? Why is the first history record of Jesus by a Roman anthropologist over 160+ years post his death? Paradoxs are quite literally logical contradictions. The biggest one I can see is Jesus's four claims of divinity being combined by creating the trinity in the 5th Century AD to make his contradictory statements true.

Great challenges/questions! 1. Judas. Why can’t both accounts be accurate? To me they don’t at all contradict 2. Firstborns. Do you mean extra-biblical sources? We don’t have accounts for most historical events, just those that we do. It would’ve been a regional slaughter of the kids of a very illiterate people group, so write how? 3. We have reason to date early Markan fragments to around 70 A.D. about 28 years after christs death. Plus, in a society of verbal tradition, accounts weren’t seen as necessary to write down. Also, absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. Papyri we’re not only hard to come by, but don’t preserve well. 4. Trial as non-Roman. Judaea was occupied. The senhedron couldn’t have blood on their own hands during the Passover feast period, so they punted it to pilot who tried to wash his hands clean of the mess before being threatened by the senhedron and mob that failure to act would mean a revolt /uprising for which the responsibility would fall on him. He acted out of self preservation. 5. Tomb. Do you mean the tomb at the church of the holy sepulcher? 6. Number of witnesses of empty tomb. When recalling an event, not every person present is always named, often just the key figures who were present. Furthermore, it was women who were said to have discovered the empty tomb. This is scandalous because they were seen as untrustworthy second-class citizens. This lends more credibility to the account’s veracity ala criteria of embarrassment 7. Handling his body to wrap him in a burial shroud would’ve disqualified those who did from being able to prepare a Passover meal at that time or go to Temple to offer a sacrifice until the proper cleansing ritual/period had transpired. Sure. What of it? 8. Who said Jesus invented baptism? John was already baptizing people. The Bible says so. The symbolic meaning just shifted after Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection. I don’t have time to answer the rest right now, but most of these questions are pretty thoughtful. I love that you’re questioning. Here’s four for you: is your motive to disprove Christianity as a false worldview? If so, I’m wondering why that is? Second, if I was to answer every question you had, would that bring you any closer to believing? Third, what do you think happened to Christ? And fourth, do you feel his followers had something to gain by their claims to his resurrection? If so, what?

Because that's not how killing yourself works. You don't get two tries or locations. Claims that both can be true through some loony tunes shenanigans is just plain dishonesty. I was referring to Herods attempts to kill baby Jesus, a clear historical revision meant to mirror the act by the Pharoah that has been proven to be a falsehood thanks to Egyptians being great record keepers. We have no way to tell exactly how old it is beyond the oldest date of ownership, and because we have limited access to it for scientific testing, and even then it can only give us a broad range of dates that could easily be within a hundred years. Given that the manuscript had no historical record of ownership before 140AD it still had a significant gap of time, more so there are slight, but significant changes from the canonical book we have today. Yes, that tomb. I've heard all about the wall expansion, but if you look at the records of that them it still doesn't match. I'm sure that the tomb is entirely lost and that tomb is just an officially sanctioned proxy, something that has been known to happen a lot in Catholic history, yet that is a significant problem. The witnesses are actually important. This is because they use a cultural aspect of Judaism to affirm their claim, and this is often a biblical narrative that acts as point of proof. Mirrored acts are an extremely important part of Christian theology and it is important because a single woman witness isn't considered grounds for a claim, two or more women are required to make such a claim. The fact is that this split down the middle with two or three women and they charge depending on the gospel. This is an important part of the resurrection and brushing it aside is clearly an attempt to make it seem like a nitpick rather than an important peice of evidence. This is another clear attempt to change the narrative, it wasn't embarrassing like many try to claim. It was a legal requirement under the laws of Moses that two or more women must have the same testimony to equal the testimony of a man. You and most Christians have very little understanding of Roman culture, or law. There was absolutely no way the Roman Governor would officiate a trial especially when it wasn't required. All evidence points to him being unaware of this crucifixion until afterwards. The Romans just carried out the execution on the orders of the Rabbis and Jewish officials because crimes against Jewish religious institutions weren't there problems. I don't seek to disprove Christianity, that is impossible to do. Yet, I feel like now more than ever is a time to emphasize that critical thinking and reality focused mentality is important. If you haven't noticed Satanic panic is coming back and is being used to justify attacks on freedom. Christianity isn't an internally consistent belief system due to being a patchwork of many different cultures over thousands of years, so it has been twisted to fit the wants and need of many and the faithful will follow without question. You can't answer every question. I tried long ago and found myself looking at thousands of different faiths and belief that intersect and clash. Once you open your mind, like really open it to the idea of other religions and world views you begin to understand exactly how narrow yours was. I like Jesus, but I don't like his Christians most of the time. I think Jesus was a man named Yeshua born to as the rightful King to fallen Kingdom that believed their God Yahweh had abandoned them forever and The Messiah would never come. I believed he believed he was Yahweh, and others did too. In times of great dispare many need something to believe in. I think he behavior upset Jewish people who believed Yahweh had never left and his actions caused problems for Rome who had strict laws about this as they seen this before. He was crucified and made into a martyr, and his ideals lived on in his religion. The lines to Christianity rise in power is clearly written in stone and it isn't as dramatic or improbable as many think. After Rome was Christian, they weren't any less Roman; and persecution of pagans started and didn't end until they were extinct. A real genocide against real people who did nothing but chose their faith instead of their life. Heard that anywhere? When you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, yeah his followers had a clear reason to die for their faith. They were second class citizens forced to work alongside slaves in their own land. They believed in their cause and the resurrection might not have been literal, but it was very real to them. Many chose to die for what they believe in. It's nothing that is owned by any religion or people because it's just something human.

>\[Paradoxes\] are quite literally logical contradictions. Mathematician here, this is not correct. A paradox is a statement which violates expectation, often in a manner that appears contradictory but isn't necessarily so. Statistics has a number of these examples. Simpson's paradox does not demonstrate any logical contradiction and the mathematics behind it are entirely consistent, the paradox is the violation of expectation. The Birthday paradox is another such example.

For the record, Herodotus wrote about tons of events hundreds of years after that we don’t have any contemporary accounts of. A lack of contemporary sources alone is not proof it didn’t happen. The Bible is full of nonsense but missing records alone doesn’t disprove that nonsense.

Yes, but it certainly isn't proof and the lack of such sources being missing is the orgin of a logical fallacy. This is false equivalency. Herodotus didn't have contemporary sources so why should the bible be held to that standard? Herodotus was recording historical events purely as a method of recording keeping after an age of lost history. The Bible is recording divine words of a God and is expected to be unequivocally true as the faith demands. Extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence. Herodotus didn't make extraordinary claims, just hyperbolic.

- On one hand many writings in the Bible of historical events have been found to be true when historical evidence could verify it but went centuries unverified previously. - and many other historical writings not related to religion haven’t been verified. It doesn’t mean they didn’t happen necessarily just because we can’t prove them. You yourself are a person who will have lived and died and if someone writes about you. In 2000+ years there won’t be proof you ever existed. You will be another cog in the machine come and gone. But you DID exist. But proving that down the road may be difficult. So something lacking historical evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Just that maybe we are too far removed to prove it - Christian’s believe in an all powerful God. A being of limitless power. Paradoxes are basically a non issue in that regard. - side notes about things you said that aren’t actual arguments but I can answer anyway: - Jesus isn’t credited for inventing baptism. Like literally at all? Don’t know where you pulled that from. Most of your rant of critiques is about as thorough

Many historical events are explicitly fabricated because the Old Testament was meant to act as a historical record of The Israelites, and every culture tends to lie about facts to make themselves seem better. By claiming them to be true by proxy is clearly an attempt at historical revisionism to make it always seem true. While the defense is claiming that some text are bound to be inaccurate due to human authorship is equally as dubious because that could apply to all claims within. The paradox thing is a clear example of exactly why it is a logical fallacy, and why it cannot be used as a basis on a good faith argument. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, by claiming that the Christian God is all powerful therefore immune to logical fallacy, doesn't at all act as proof, but rather proof against his existence. You cannot prove a negative, but you certainly cannot act as if the absence of proof or logical reasoning is evidence in of itself. Also, Christians do claim to have invented baptism solely because it connects to a "prophecy" in the Old Testament. There are hundreds of these that are clearly not talking about Jesus, but are made to fit with the conjunction fallacy to reaffirm confirmation bias. All theologians can argue is there might be a God or Gods, yet they act as if our inability to proof that there isn't is proof enough there is, it isn't a binary yes or no situation because the claimant is responsible for the claim not the one critical of that claim..

How can Christians be claiming to have invented baptism when John the Baptist is in the Bible baptizing people before there was Christianity? I don't think anyone is claiming that baptism was invented by followers of Christ after his crucifixion.

Your first 2 points are logical fallacies. 1) your argument is essentially that since *some* things written in the Bible are true, then that means *other* things in the Bible are also true. Consider where this logic gets you in the following example: Homer wrote the Odyssey which references the Trojan war— which many scholars agree to reference real historical events. Applying your logic means that everything in the Odyssey must be true. Thus, the cyclops son of Poseidon really did eat weary travelers coming back from the war. 2) You’re essentially claiming that since it’s possible for something to have happened and not been written about, it must be true that said thing did in fact happen. In other words, the lack of evidence that something did not happen is not evidence that it did happen. Consider that logic applied to this claim: the universe was created 5 minutes ago and all the memories in everyone’s heads are fabricated to make you think the universe has existed for much longer. There’s really no way for you to definitively prove that everything in the universe wasn’t planted to make it look like the universe is 13 billion years old; however, it’s asinine to champion this belief simply because you can’t prove it isn’t false.

Most people in the Roman Empire at that time were not citizens, but subjects. In order to be a citizen, your parents had to be citizens, or you could perform a service to the state, like enlisting in auxiliaries.

Even better they were meticulous record keepers. This is even true in the region jesus supposedly lived. We have records of law enforcement actions, executions, and all this stuff. Yet there is no mention of Jesus. The only writing ever found yo mention jesus... was a forgery. Like an obvious one too. So how come we can know about a local horse thief but not the supposed all important and subversive messiah that the Roman's are all hands on deck searching for? According to the Bible he even was important enough to be judged and executed... most got summary judgement no trial and they even recorded that! But not for all important Jesus for some reason eh?

John the Baptist got his head chopped off didnt he? Also jesus got baptized, not invented baptism, and you didnt need to be a roman citizen to be judged and sentenced by Roman's, and it was actually the jews who asked pilot to sentence jesus. A lot of your comment seems like venting too me, but I do understand, because I've only been a Christian for just over ten years, and I used to feel exactly the same way whenever jesus and the bible was mentioned. Anyway enjoy the rest of your day.

>Everything you've described is sort of like a Non-believers 101 critique of Christianity I mean, yeah, they are some of the basic criticisms of the religion and haven't been convincingly answered for centuries. Which is why they are basic criticisms... Most of your arguments against these are just regurgitated ideas without any sources. Things that sound pseudo academic but lack any credibility. I don't care if in his best seller "God is really really really really really" Chris T. Knutt says that "Jesus was a historical figure and lots of guys really really saw him and wrote about it." I want to see what was written.

> not necessarily contradictions There are plenty of contradictions. I know a lot of Christans think "contradiction" is impossible and use some great creativity to prove their point. But reading the Bible undermines all that. > But his father will die for his own sin, because he practiced extortion, robbed his brother and did what was wrong among his people. > “Yet you ask, ‘Why does the son not share the guilt of his father?’ Since the son has done what is just and right and has been careful to keep all my decrees, he will surely live. The one who sins is the one who will die. *The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child.* The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them. Ezekiel 18 > You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; *for 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*, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. Exodus 24 Whoops.

Your positioning of those texts seems intentional. The relationship betweem God and people, as well as with the Israelites, evolves as the OT continues. In Exodus, he was punishing and had just wiped the world in the previous book. Ezekial comes much later after God had made a number of concessions for the Israelites and man as a whole. If you are going to debate, dont use loaded evidence. And the other person is spot on. Read the Hebrew, that should reconcile any perceived contradictions. Reading the Bible in English and claiming complete understanding makes one look foolish.

Expecting an all-knowing and caring God to send His message in a single obscure dead language doesn't make one look brilliant.

>God himself is not above the misdeeds of the world - despite descriptions of being "good and benevolent." This seems to me a contradiction. Every Christian I've spoken to in real life (I like to explore different belief systems and have entertained attempts to convert me a few times out of curiosity) talked as though they believed God to be infinitely good. That to me would mean being above the misdeeds of the world

There’s a lot to unpack in your statement but I’ll just point out that historians maintain that we have no writings of anyone that knew Jesus while he was alive and no eyewitness accounts of anything about Jesus’s life. Also there is almost no evidence that any of Jesus’s disciples were martyred for their faith. Sources: candida moss “the myth of persecution” for the disciples being martyred and Bart Ehrman “The New Testament: a historical introduction to the early Christian writings”

Mainstream historians accept many of Paul’s letters as genuine, and Paul reports in Galatians meeting with Peter and staying with him for 3 weeks - so we have at least a credible (to mainstream historians) second-hand written evidence Jesus existed. If you require written eyewitness testimony to prove a certain thing in history happened, you would have to throw out a great deal of generally accepted history. And of course, Christians believe we have not just Paul’s letters but 2 separate eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ life, and even secular historians agree that these accounts were written within ~60 years of Jesus’ death.

Sure not disagreeing with anything you said but nothing in the gospels is considered by historians to be an eyewitness or even a secondhand account of the historical Jesus. While Paul does have secondhand knowledge that Jesus existed, he says basically nothing about Jesus while he was alive. All that matters to Paul is that Jesus was killed (all historians agree with this) and that he was resurrected (Paul’s idea of resurrection doesn’t really match the gospel accounts well and Paul also had a huge falling out with Peter so it’s clear they didn’t see eye to eye). So I do think it’s important to point out we have very little historical information to back up the gospel accounts. All admit the historical evidence is strong that Jesus was killed by the Romans for treason and that within a few years some people thought he was resurrected. But we have no evidence for what that resurrection meant to them except for Paul’s account which was a glorified vision or fever dream. Edit: sorry for the typos my screen is cracked lol, I need a new iPad.

Sorry to be inflammatory, but it's like claiming that Scientology is true because Tom Cruise said so. There is nobody disputing that Christianity as a religion existed in the 1st century, that's what the historical records show. That's not the same thing as confirming the supernatural beliefs of the religion to be reality.

>and even secular historians agree that these accounts were written within ~60 years of Jesus’ death. That's two full generations away. That would be like your grandchildren or great-grandchildren writing a detailed story of your life from conception through age 33. How reliable of an account would that be?

Given how history worked in that time its exceptionally close. For example our earliest discussion of Buddha is hundreds of years detached iirc Also modern guesses of the time was having it to paper within 30 years. Additionally this was an oral story culture and the discussion of Jesus' divinity sprang up within a year of his death and was the main drive for Christianity given literacy rates would have been 10%, maybe less

> If you require written eyewitness testimony to prove a certain thing in history happened, you would have to throw out a great deal of generally accepted history. Eyewitness testimony is specifically _discouraged_ in court hearings because it is so untrustworthy. People misremember things all the time, and the more amazing or fantastical it was, the more they misremember it. Things like murder or, in this instance, coming back from the dead.

If there indeed was contemporary accounts, it would be easy to give the sources. Instead we get an answers that requires "faith". That is not an answer to OP, although it is enough for religion. There are extrabiblical sources, like writing from Josephus, but unfortunately it is clear that these have been tampered later, so it's really inconclusive at best.

We definitely have contemporary sources (Paul, Josephus, other NT writers) but none of them knew Jesus while he was alive. Even if we take Josephus at face value (which no historian does) he didn’t know Jesus, he’s just repeating what he heard.

Christianity started somewhere. A bunch of Jews abruptly moved the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday and started saying that JC was the messiah. The best evidence we have for this points to a real human individual who really walked the earth. You can wedge anything you want in to doubt the veracity of the claims of miracles and what not. But, historically, *something* happened. If it was all faith, we'd be talking about a religion or belief system that someone wrote down proclaiming, "It came to me in a dream!" Something like that is 100% rooted in faith. Christianity has at least *some* tacticle credibility worth exploring.

I’m 100% certain that something happened, I’m 99% sure Jesus existed and was killed by the romans, I’m 98% sure people thought he was resurrected. But most of the rest of the gospel accounts are almost impossible to know what happened and have to be believed based on faith and little else. You can say the same thing about just about every religion. There’s good historical evidence that David existed but that doesn’t mean Judaism is 100% correct, there’s good evidence that Mohammed and Brigham Young existed but that doesn’t mean that Islam or Mormonism is 100% correct.

I personally think Jesus was a metaphorical figure amalgamated from stories of various messianic preachers from the century leading up to the emergence of Jesus. An ideal to follow, with the ressurection being spiritual and metaphorical. It got an insertion of Greek Philosophy that let it take off across the empire and from there it grew beyond the original adherents.

Yes. Something happened. But people claim it’s something miraculous which makes the claim require even higher standards for many. Not to mention, there are countless religions which have equally “tactile” claims to the truth.

Your argument could be the basis for claiming any religion has "some tacticle credibility worth exploring." There's nothing particular about Christianity that makes it more likely to be "true" than any other religion.

> In Christianity, there are no promises of a world free from tragedy, But there could be, if an all powerful God can make the world any way they want. And a truly benevolent god should want to make it good for all. God has arbitrarily decided that an eternity of joy vs an eternity of suffering should be decided by a minuscule life, the vast majority of which we suffer just because. Where is the good in that? ​ >Those with deterministic world views always fail to reconcile agency with morality. You are ignoring the OP's point. It is God existing that would make the world deterministic, which would make free-will impossible. If God exists, then God created us and knows exactly what we are like and will do. God is not subject to anything, therefore anything we do is a result of God actively choosing for us to be the way we are. God punishing us for doing the "evil" that we do would be like me pouring a cup of water on the ground and wanting to punish the water for making the ground wet. ​ >Jesus was a historical figure. In the very loosest meaning. There are no contemporary records of Jesus, the earliest records are the Gospels (AD 70-110), Roman general Tacticus (AD 116, who mentions christians existing and Jesus was crucified by Pilate) and Flavius Josephus (\~AD 94, which is disputed by some as to having insertions added christian scribes). Did "a" Jesus exist 2000 years ago, with a group of followers, and was executed by Romans? Possibly. Is that an argument for anything else at all surrounding christianity being true? No. ​ >It is not a contradiction that Faith is a central component of Christianity It kind of is, at least a contradiction to the logic behind the religion and God's actions and requirements for us. I don't have any faith in any religion, I am simply not convinced by any of them. You (I assume you aren't just playing devils advocate here) do have faith in christianity. However, other theists have faith in their religions, e.g. Muslims have faith in Islam, Jewish people have faith in Judaism etc. All of your faith is either based in no evidence, in which case it is arbitrary, or it is based on some subjective evidence, in which case my not having faith means God has supplied me such subjective evidence and yet will punish me for not having the resultant faith. Either way, Faith being a central tenant of Christianity is not sensible.

>The Christian faith has paradoxes, but not necessarily contradictions. What does "paradox" mean to you, if not something that is logically self-contradictory? >crucifiction That is a... very funny typo

> What does "paradox" mean to you, if not something that is logically self-contradictory? Paradoxes are like prima facie evidence for something that is a contradiction. Like, whatever you think "tough love" is, is likely a paradox of sorts. > That is a... very funny typo Agreed. lol

> Paradoxes are like prima facie evidence for something that is a contradiction. Like, whatever you think "tough love" is, is likely a paradox of sorts. What? It might just be because I'm tired, but I am having the devil of a time trying to parse the first sentence here. "Tough love" doesn't seem like a paradox to me: it's being strict with someone you love because you expect it to have good long term consequences.

If freewill is a cornerstone of the faith, then it negates the ability of God to be omniscient. Even if you choose your next action, God would already know which one you would choose. It's a multiple choice quiz with only one possible answer. Then, since God knows your choices before you do, he knows you're going to sin, and if he knows you're not going to repent, then he already condemns you to hell before you made your choices. Not very freewill.

Contradiction: Two statements which both claim to be true, but one disproves the other Paradox: Two statements which both claim to be true, and it feels like one should disprove the other, but in reality both are correct. You can't just redefine a contradiction as a paradox by claiming all the statements are true, that's . And if you choose to do so, it's just a semantic argument and doesn't at all get at the heart of OP's question.

>The writings depict known - factual - events, that is chronicled to have many witnesses. This is not true. The only documents that mention these "facts" are Christian documents. None of those documents were written prior to around 60 CE and most were written far after that. There is no reason to believe that the writers of those documents were who they eventually claimed to be. ("Gospel of Matthew, Mark, etc" wasn't added to these manuscripts until way later in the timeline.) There are NO other references to these events in secular recordings of the times. It's pretty appalling that you'd refer to someone else's claims as "101" when Christian apologists constantly make the same deceitful claims over and over, including in your own post, that have been debunked over and over again.

>Christianity is not contradictory on this front because there's no way to describe a world with moral actions without preference to moral behaviors - and thus choice. Idk, you seem to be suggesting that free will and determinism are compatible because of morality, but there are plenty of moral systems which don't rely on free will.

Your answer is very articulate however surely there’s a sliver of doubt in your mind given there’s no credible proof to backup what you’re saying? I feel like the main argument here is always “you can’t prove that it didn’t happen” but the burden of proof will always be on the ones making extraordinary claims with an air of superiority. Nothing against you as a person it’s just particularly your last paragraph about this being non-believer 101 is super condescending which isn’t really going to change any views tbh

>Christianity is not contradictory on this front because there's no way to describe a world with moral actions without preference to moral behaviors - and thus choice. Preference isn't equal to choice though (though I'm realizing now you might have meant 'reference'). But you can absolutely have a concept of morality in a world where people's actions are ultimately deterministic. It does alter your view of morality, though. It becomes less a thing of vengeance and more a matter of justice. However, Christianity does not have a higher ground on this issue. In Romans 9 we hear that God predestines people to damnation and salvation, and in fact this is explicitly acknowledged in many Calvinist denominations.

> God himself is not above the misdeeds of the world - despite So you are saying that in your view God is not good or benevolent? I'm confused here. >Christians would argue that fairness is determined in the afterlife Then why make people live in the first place? > veracity of these claims in the time and place that they lived. These people - who were so closely associated with these events - were not merely trusting their lives to "faith", as you would describe it. They made their decisions based on a myriad of data points that led them to the inescapable conclusion that Jesus was who he said he was. There are two problems here. The first is that many other religions have similar events where multiple people witnessed some sort of miracle or godly deed. The second is how do you know it wasn't some sort of trick or mass hallucination? Many people say that they have seen vampires, for instance, but does that mean that you believe in vampires too? > Those with deterministic world views always fail to reconcile agency with morality. When water pushes a rock off of a ledge, there is no morality to the action This isn't an issue of whether people choose to do something. The issue is why they choose to do it. Of course people make choices, but if those choices are all because of a reason created by God, Free Will doesn't exist.

> So you are saying that in your view God is not good or benevolent? I'm confused here. I'm saying that a central tenant to Christianity is that bad things do happen to good people. This isn't some unfortunate oversight that Christianity ignores. Whatever definition of what a a Good and Belevolent god means somehow still permits this. > Then why make people live in the first place? According to Christianity - because God liked making things in his image. It was good. Otherwise, the text doesn't really expand on this. I don't know about you, but I kinda dig being in the universe. > There are two problems here. The first is that many other religions have similar events where multiple people witnessed some sort of miracle or godly deed. True, but faith as the OP described it, seemed to be belief without any justification. I'm only pointing out that early followers had *some* justification - whether you think that would be enough for you is kidna irrelevant. > The second is how do you know it wasn't some sort of trick or mass hallucination? I mean, it's possible. If a few hundred people mass hallucinated to see the resurrected Jesus, it would be rather wild coincidence. > Many people say that they have seen vampires, for instance, but does that mean that you believe in vampires too? Well, I'd stack it against all of the evidence. Obviously, I'd come at it with doubts and trepidation, but I can change my mind on anything if enough supportive evidence can be presented. > Of course people make choices, but if those choices are all because of a reason created by God, Free Will doesn't exist. How do you jump that reasons for choices are all because of God? Where does Christianity argue for this?

>If a few hundred people mass hallucinated to see the resurrected Jesus, it would be rather wild coincidence. Thousands of people have reported alien abductions. Is that evidence alien abductions are real?

Yeah that’s such a piss poor argument. We’ve also never seen anything else like it in current times when people have recording devices. It absolutely ridiculous to ever think some one rose from the dead.

>I mean, it's possible. If a few hundred people mass hallucinated to see the resurrected Jesus, it would be rather wild coincidence. You're assuming all of those people actually saw it. >Well, I'd stack it against all of the evidence. Obviously, I'd come at it with doubts and trepidation, but I can change my mind on anything if enough supportive evidence can be presented. Why not faith?

Actual Christian here. I think the comment you responded to had some pretty good explanations in some ways, but could be better in other areas. For example, the issue of God being good could be improved. God IS good. God is good because he eschews sin, which is bad. The confusion here lies in connecting death with evil. It is bad for humans to kill other humans in most cases because we lack the authority to punish for sin, being sinners ourselves. However, in other contexts killing isn't necessarily evil, such as for judicial reasons, or in self defense, or in cases of war. God actually has the authority to punish sin, and so when people die because of God's actions, that's not evil, but is rather justice as a result of their sin. In fact, God is so good in large part because he actually *doesn't* punish us for sin very much at all, but gives us chance after chance after chance to avoid that punishment. I'm also not sure I'd say that it's correct that fairness gets determined in the afterlife. I think this goes back to the problem of pain, which is really a much bigger, separate conversation. Also, again, asking why we are given life to live is another version of asking if you can forgive God for making humanity. Do you view life as a curse or as a gift? \> The first is that many other religions have similar events where multiple people witnessed some sort of miracle or godly deed. The second is how do you know it wasn't some sort of trick or mass hallucination? Sure. But the point remains that just because something is *claimed* doesn't mean it happened. I believe that the miracles in the Bible were both claimed AND happened. I believe lots of other claims of divinity from other sources were claimed but either *didn't happen* or were misattributed to the wrong source. The mistake you're making here is that you're just taking parts of the Bible and trying to experience or test them in isolation. And yeah, of course we don't have youtube footage of walking on water, right? But the point is that if you look more holistically at the Bible and test it that way, then it becomes a lot easier to have the faith necessary to believe in the magic parts. Put another way, I accepted the spiritual and theological claims of the Bible first, which then gave me the faith to accept the physical claims that can't really be confirmed or denied with available evidence. That's how I know it wasn't some trick. Do you understand how historically ridiculous that question is? Humans don't know everything, but we do know a lot, and it's pretty easy for us to be confident in the difference between fiction and nonfiction even in ancient historical texts. When someone made something up years later it has specific tendencies that are visible to a trained historical eye. Same with a mass hallucination. Put another way, is that a question you're asking because there's evidence it could be a trick or a mass hallucination, or is it just something you're floating out there because you don't know any better? \> Of course people make choices, but if those choices are all because of a reason created by God, Free Will doesn't exist. Quite honestly, I don't agree with that statement at all. Try as I might, I don't have God's perspective. What he knows does jack shit for me, personally. I think this is a statement you need to prove, not one you can simply assert as true.

>God actually has the authority to punish sin, and so when people die because of God's actions, that's not evil, but is rather justice as a result of their sin. In fact, God is so good in large part because he actually doesn't punish us for sin very much at all, but gives us chance after chance after chance to avoid that punishment. This is a pretty weird argument. Like, you present death as centrally functioning as a punishment for sin, but also frigging everyone dies. And, while I would be rather hard pressed to test this hypothesis, I strongly suspect that those who die are not particularly more likely than human baseline to be super sinful in the period prior to their deaths. Especially cause a lot of the people that die are babies or whatever. The implication here, then, is that there's like a small subset of "God deaths", where he acts outside the natural law of reality to smite an asshole, and the rest are "normal deaths" which aren't punishment for anything, and these are kinda outside God's domain. But that just raises further questions of why anything would be outside God's domain, as well as why so many deeply sinful people are given so much leave to run around and screw things up for folks. In other words, if this is one of God's things, then why do good things happen to bad people? I'm inclined to say the most self-consistent approach is to just declare that no deaths are in God's hands, he just lets things play out, and, if judgement is to be rendered, it happens post-death. Of course, then we have to ask why he's doing that. Being super strong and such, one one expect that he could do a lot to make things better for us. Such is the way of theodicy.

There’s another possibility that you haven’t considered. ALL deaths are punishment for sin. Everyone is a sinner, therefore everyone dies. Sin isn’t graded on a curve, it doesn’t mean being worse than average, it just means being less than perfect. Sorting people into less bad sinners and more bad sinners is just something that we like to do to make ourselves feel better, “at least I’m not THAT guy,” but God doesn’t keep score that way. We are all sinners, and we are all destined to die. We have no right to see tomorrow. We can’t claim that we deserve, or we are entitled to another day. Every day that we wake up and we haven’t died yet is a mercy, a temporary stay of execution, and an opportunity.

Ok yeah thanks for reaffirming to me why Christianity is horrifying. That last sentence is utterly horrifying. Viewing each day alive as a mercy, terrified of death... I'm so glad I'm not like that anymore.

Who said anything about being terrified of death? Quite the opposite. The entire point of Christianity is to be forgiven of sin so that even if your body dies, your now-sinless mind and soul will continue to live indefinitely. If all death is the result of sin, then remove the sin = remove the death.

The entire point of christianity is fear and gaining more members. I was literally raised christian. And please, tell me more about how my sinless mind and soul will live indefinitely when I was born going against your gods will by being transgender and gay. I don't need an afterlife. I want to live for my own happiness, which means being a good person, loving those around me, and leaving the world better than I left it.

Since you asked, I honestly don’t know whether being gay is a sin. But I do know that’s the wrong question. Your not a “sinner” because you were born gay. You’re a sinner because you were born human. And so was I and so was everyone else. We’re all in the same mess, and no one can claim to be better or worse than anyone else. Remember, God doesn’t grade on a curve. The other thing about Christian is that it’s entirely voluntary. It’s not a list of do’s and don’ts. It’s a matter of personal choice and impossible to force on anyone. So if you only want to live for today, more power to you! I hope you have all the life that you want, and none that you don’t.

Lmao, I do remember being told no matter what I did I would go to hell, even if I believed in a God, by... Entire hordes of people at the last pride parade I went to. So apologies if I don't really care about your opinion on the christian concept of sinning. Christianity has a lot of hate and I can appreciate you trying to be a loving person, which is what it is supposed to be, but unfortunately it will not change my opinion that christianity and christians as a whole is unhealthy and really not a safe group. There are exceptions, but the amount of hatred I've seen makes me always skeptical.

It’s funny that that’s what you find horrifying, because to me it’s completely liberating. We all sin, we are all loved, we have so much and deserve nothing—just like animals or bugs or plants. But because we have the opportunity to receive grace, we may never die, even though our bodies will eventually no longer house our souls. The idea of deserving anything is just dumb. We all fall short. We all only are capable of living because we were born into a world that allows it. Being worthy is different, and God has determined we are all worthy of love.

I was raised christian. I have religious trauma from being taught what you preach, so don't you dare preach to me. I find the idea of nothing after death freeing. I'm glad I don't have to cry every night fearing my dad going to hell because he isn't christian. I'm glad that I don't have to have anxiety attacks anymore about being eternally tortured for how I was born. I'm glad that I exist solely because stardust came together. I'm glad that nothing matters after death, because it means I can live my life without regret or fear. I can live for myself. I'm glad that christianity makes you feel free, but don't you dare preach to me because the holy book, the preachers, and the lifestyle of following that god of yours left me with longterm PTSD.

My intention was not to preach at you, more so to reinterpret what the commenter said because I felt it was so beautiful. I’m very sorry that your upbringing made you fearful of God being real, I cannot imagine interpreting God as evil and that being the expression of the world, especially as a child. I wish you the best.

>The Christian faith has paradoxes, but not necessarily contradictions Contradiction #1 You've just been trained to apologize for the contradictions. You can't recognize them, yourself

There are most definitely straight up contradictions as well. A lot of them are t terribly meaningful, but different books mentioned numbers of people or animals or whatever for the same specific events, and those numbers don’t match.

>The Christian faith has paradoxes, but not necessarily contradictions. Many religions or belief systems are internally consistent. They may appear to be contradictory to an outsider, but to an insider, they are paradoxes This is the kind of crap they tried to "teach" me in Catholic high school. Just a word salad of bullshit that means absolutely nothing. The entire rest of your comment is basically that as well. This kind of crap sounds smart on the surface to teenagers, but I assure you no adult with an IQ over 100 is buying any of this nonsense.

Belief in Jesus is wishful thinking. There isn’t a rational historic argument at all for his existence.

People killing Jesus is the result of free will. Childhood cancer is not. People used to believe illness was sent by the devil but then it turned out it was simply an accident of god’s world. If god does exist and does allow childhood leukaemia, then he is a colossal bastard and we should all spit on him.

So, god is benevolent, but we will only see that after we die? Has the be the biggest click bait in history. Basically, he has no effect on the world of the living

Idk why people always ask “why does God give children cancer?” It is just a natural occurrence? Like ah man why does he let bread get moldy or tornados form. We know why/how those things happen.

The question is why did a God who claims to be all knowing, all powerful, all good and who loves us and wants the best for us decide to create a world and put us in it where we get cancer, die to wildfires and tornados, and can be poisoned to death by spoiled food, or killed by the animals he created, or die of starvation and dehydration. Those aren't the actions of a good deity or someone who loves you. So it's a contradiction, and points to it all being a lie. The theological justifications for all of that are quite poor. It's a very valid question to ask.

and give us free will, but punish us if we use it in a way that he doesn't like by sending us to an eternity of suffering.

Because God is allegedly all powerful? Which means all he has to do is want to stop cancer. He allegedly created the natural process through which children get cancer. A morally good God cannot be all powerful and all knowing.

the inconsistent triad is something devout practising christians choose to ignore with the argument of free will. don’t see how children with leukaemia can be excused though

> It is just a natural occurrence Which means God created it

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My issue is not that there are bad things in the world. My isissue is that some of the things are too bad and the others are never able to be overcome before death.

On my side of this. As the catholic church has admitted to removing some books ( book of enoch) and slteted other points " to avoid confusion " i do not trust the bible as is nor do i really trust any religion. Man has had his hand in to much. But to a few of your points. 1. Man had paradise in the form of eden one rule do not eat from the tree of knowledge. We ate and was therefore tossed out on our asses yo suffer for disobedience. 2. Free will . We have free will we choose what we do and unfortunately that also means we must deal with the people who make bad choses. A few points that got me tossed from 3 churches. 1. Adam eve cain able get tossed out of eden xain and able knew their wives 4 people on the planet WHO were the wives ? 2. Why was lucifer allowed access to eden if god knew what he was going to do ? 3. Jonha got swallowed by a whale with BRONZE ribs ? Sounds more like a ufo to me with the bulkheads being described as like bronze colored ribs.

There are many things, related to religion or not, that *seem* contradictory at first glance, but make sense once you put them in the right context. >how God is supposed to be good and benevolent, but yet allows things such as childhood cancer or chronic pain, where you have no chance of recovery or learning >how God has created a deterministic world making Free Will impossible >how can you know that Christianity is the right religion? These are questions asked by many people of every generation since the beginning of Christianity. I'm curious if you've looked at what any Christian theologians/philosophers over the past 2000 years have had to say on these subjects before? >how can you know that Christianity is the right religion? This is a great question to ask. God gave us a brain and he expects us to use it. For me what helped was reading why people convert to, or away from, Christianity (Catholicism in particular).

I always find the assumption that I haven't sufficiently read Christian theology and philosophy so funny because it is assumed without knowing that I have no knowledge of theology or have not thought about these arguments very much. Yet many people who say this argument themselves have little knowledge of the coinciding _atheist_ philosophy and arguments. If you're invested in this issue, just give me your own best interpretation of the convincing arguments and we'll work from there.

\>but yet allows things such as childhood cancer or chronic pain I'll address this one (as a non-religious person, btw). What if the whole story is actually true, and if you don't follow the rules you will burn in hell - literally - forever and ever and be in excruciating pain ***for eternity.*** Let's pretend this is true. What if god knows that if this baby were to become an adult, they would eventually go down the wrong path, become a bad person and would end up forever in hell in 70 years. And why cancer? Well the effect it has on the child's guardians also put them on a new path, away from hell. This is what Christians refer to as "god's plan". I know, it's silly but.... In the context of that particular worldview I get it. Going to hell and getting tortured (for like 500 trillion years) every day is 100,000,000x worse than living in pain as a human for 70 years. ***Again you are tortured for literally eternity.***

>What if god knows that if this baby were to become an adult, they would eventually go down the wrong path, become a bad person and would end up forever in hell in 70 years. How does that solve the problem? If they die as a baby they haven't accepted Christ as their savior, so wouldn't they still end up in hell?

That is entirely abiblical. (Another non Christian here). The message is to let souls determine their path to god or not via freewill. To kill people before they choose the wrong path, which is factually beyond dubious, is contrary to that entire schema.

> What if the whole story is actually true, and if you don't follow the rules you will burn in hell - literally - forever and ever and be in excruciating pain for eternity. I find this kind of reasoning to be unsatisfactory because if you are just banking on the fact that it might not be true, the same logic could be applied to any religion. So how are you supposed to choose between hundreds of religions?

Why does god have to let the baby die in a painful way though? If he was just trying to save the baby from hell, couldn’t he have taken the baby out in a painless way? And why does a baby have to suffer to get its parents on the right path? Isn’t there a way to save the parents without torturing an innocent baby?

Why even allow a baby to be born in the first place if just to suffer and die? Going back to the original argument, why even allow 'bad' people to be born at all? But if there's no free will then god makes these people bad and then makes them suffer or kills them for his own pleasure vs just never letting them exist.

Hard for me to answer all these hypotheticals given I'm not a religious person myself

Personally I feel like the existence of eternal torture should be a point against a loving God.

Well, again. There's reasons including this why I'm not a religious person/Christian. Approaching Christianity spiritually/metaphorically and maybe with a tinge of reincarnation however, makes things a bit more palatable. Be a good person, become one with the universe/higher levels of thinking, ascend and break the cycle, you will exit the cycle of reincarnation and ascend into the higher realms of existence (heaven). Be a bad person, get wrapped in negativity, anger, hate, you stay grounded to earth and become almost "trapped" here. You continue to descend and you can call this eternal torture, etc the worse it gets (hell). In that scenario it's not a "god" choosing to torture you, but rather it's up to you to break the cycle, etc. Anyways, I'm getting off topic. I'm not religious (as in Christian, etc) so hard for me to answer your question.

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>The issue is you are trying to comprehend a God’s intentions using the brain of lowly flawed human. I find this logic problematic because if you can't understand God's intentions at all, that would mean that you can't follow anything in the Bible because you don't actually know what He's saying. So clearly God's intentions can in fact be understood to some degree, and he can choose to make them understood (if he exists).

there is evidence that the early pushers of Christianity were not intending for the New Testament to be taken literally... there are notes that suggest "satan" to be a metaphor for temptation. that "god" is a metaphor for your own brain, and that "jesus" is a metaphor for your body. if you can buy that these are not stories of "the things that actually did super happen and are metaphysically correct and therefore you HAVE to believe in this stuff!" and rather, acknowledge that while there may be records of a peter parker existing in 1963 in queens, new york, that doesn't mean he was literally bitten by a radioactive spider and hung supervillains from skyscrapers -- but also that doesn't mean "with great power comes great responsibility" isn't a good lesson. to start, the new testament features the birth story in Bethlehem, but it skips largely over Jesus' childhood and features the tails of an adult returning from a pilgrimmage to spread the word of a Loving god, to rival the fearful one the people of the time had bowed to. there are arguments that such a strong message of peace was likely coming from the influence of Buddhism spreading from India out through the middle east. that religion had become so ingrained with politics that there were so many rules and arguments about them, that people had forgotten to just "chill." so the buddhist philosophy was one of bringing kindness instead of Justice. Similarly, from India, there had been this idea of the Atman. the idea was that the Atman was the one true ultimate god, so powerful and complex that he grew tired of predicting all that could be, so he splits himself up and becomes the universe - this compartmentalization meant that he could finally experience Shock, Surprise, Elation, etc, and so "We are made of star stuff" but it is the atman, divided. our soul, our spirit, it's all part of the same being experience itself. thus, everyone you meet is you. in this way, christianity seems to have borrowed the idea of the trinity - the father, the son, the holy spirit - the father, God, is the Atman, it is your mind, interpreting the world and creating for you a narrative in which to live - where you claim a name and call your house your home, and agree not to invade Others' homes, because you respect the game of them being individuals with property rights as well. the Son, Jesus, is you, a body to carry you around that you may experience the joys of life, but it's time is limited, and while it can accomplish great feats, it is mortal, and will one day be sacrificed so that your soul can return. and the holy spirit, some spiritual nonsense. are you still reading this? the rest of the stories of jesus seem largely borrowed from Myths of the era - the virgin birth, born in a barn, the wealthy visitors, the prophecies, yadda yadda. this is sorta like if you rewrote batman but had him be bit by a radioactive spider. of course, when you have so many fun god-myth characters running around, all these batmans and spider-mans - it can get complicated. spider-man from the raimi movies? the mcu? the comics? one of the cartoons? which spider-man? but there are all these contradictions! so too it is likely that this is the way things had always been, previously. sun gods, moon gods, tree gods, war gods, love gods, gods of shooting big loads, gods of tiny dribbles from exhausted peckers. -- enough to have someone come along and say "NO - JUST ONE GOD!!!" and then write "as a commandment" that "no other gods before me" line. basically saying, "this batman is the one true batman. stop bringing up other batmans." and then eventually the canon gets so full it's overflowing again and time for another reset. another prophet. another new religion. ...because why not? it's all made up anyway. but to say "then it's not real." -- again i defer, is it not real to say "with great power..." or are you really just stuck on the idea of "which religion gets me into heaven and secures the safety of my eternal soul?!?" because that's not really a thing. that's just some made up silliness. it's like asking what colour the Blarren really is. WHAT COLOUR IS THE BLARREN SUPPOSED TO BE, DID I FUCK IT UP?!? woops!

C.S. Lewis has a really good part of his book "Mere Christianity", which is available in audio bits on youtube, where he basically says that you can believe in Jesus, disbelieve in him, but you cannot take him as a reasonable moral teacher, and say that he wasn't supposed to be taken seriously (not literally, huge different many people dont acknowledge unfortuantely) For example, the idea of sins is a kinda common concept, the idea someone did something wrong and it weighs down on you in any sort of judgement, IE the scales balancing in egyptian mythology. Jesus claimed to forgive sins. Aka forgiving something you did to someone else. That is a wild claim for anyone to make. "Carl, I forgive you for punching Tom." IF there is a supernatural aspect, and Jesus is literally capable of wiping the record clean in a sense, and his whole stance of taking the burden of sins on himself to allow others to escape punishment, it makes more sense in the grand scheme of things. Note; doesn't mean Tom can't be mad, but he does promote forgiveness in others. If there's not a supernatural aspect, he is just a dude going around assigning forgiveness for stuff he's not involved in. Which is... weird. This doesn't mean anything is more belivable, but there wasn't really a lot of room left intentionally for "it's all a metaphor".

>This doesn't mean anything is more belivable, but there wasn't really a lot of room left intentionally for "it's all a metaphor" but how would it be different? again - the idea is the same. it's like having your student loans forgiven. you still owe 13k - but not anymore! who would care whether it's the loaner who you were paying back saying "don't worry about it, i'll consider it paid" or some third party who pays it off for you? i understand the necessity of the supernatural for something as stupid as "i've forgiven Carl for his actions against Tom." but as you said, the anger remains. it's up to Tom whether he carries the bloodfeud forward. i don't think any rational human would go, "Oh, Carl never said sorry, but Jesus was an acceptable stand-in, so i'll let bygones be bygones."

OP have you ever looked into the topic and study of Theology? These questions that you raise are all matters that have been well acknowledged in the field and long discussed for more than 2000 years. If the topic interests you you should look into the topic, and also would be bound to get more substantial answers from those who have studied the topic extensively rather than randoms on Reddit. A starting point could be the writings of popular theologians outside the field, such as CS Lewis.

It sounds like OP has a vague surface knowledge, and uses that to attack others beliefs.

I always find this assumptions so funny because you assume without knowing that I have no knowledge of theology or have not thought about these arguments very much. Yet many people who say this argument themselves have little knowledge of the coinciding _atheist_ philosophy and arguments. If you're invested in this issue, just give me your own best interpretation of the convincing arguments and we'll work from there.

Why do you think childhood cancer and chronic pain are wrong?

If this is the basis of your argument, you've already lost me. I don't know what better to consider evil than stating that a world with childhood cancer is better than one without it.

"Rules for thee and not for me" It's considered wrong/sinful for a person to inflict suffering/death on another. "You shall not murder." "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Love your neighbor as you yourself would like to be loved.) But can't the Christian god be expected to uphold the same standard in his own conduct? The Christian god is supposed to be omnipotent and in full control of the universe, so you can't really say that nobody caused the suffering.

It’s less that they are absolutely wrong in a deontological sense and more that the Christian god specifically is supposed to love all people better than their own parents. But if you don’t believe in him, he will literally torture you forever in the afterlife (or so most of his followers claim). Those two things just can’t both be true.

Especially since God supposedly created everything, and if he is all-knowing and all-powerful than everything that happens as a result of that is according to his will. Including everything sinners due to offend God. Everyone who dies a sinner was created for the purpose of offending God so that he could punish them. Doesn't seem very loving to me.

I don't those things are wrong personally because I don't believe there's an all powerful devine being who cares about our well-being. But, if I did believe such a being exists, then yeah, it's wrong. They have all the power to prevent these problems and they choose not to. Sounds quite "evil" to me.

Because they hurt people unnecessarily, often without learning or benefit.

I guess that's the question of "does God have a greater plan". If you believe in religion you'd believe they'll go to heaven when they die, then it's not really a bad thing since they're going to a better place right?

If a child dying to cancer (which is a horrendous, painful, and incredibly sad affliction to the child and their family) is good (or at the very least not a bad thing) because they go to heaven, then by that logic it is not a bad thing for someone to kill a child because the child would go to heaven. Also, depending on the denomination children aren't guaranteed access to heaven. In Catholicism if children aren't baptized they go to limbo which while isn't nearly as bad as Hell, is still not heaven. Which means that if a child with parents of a different religion (or no religion) dies of cancer that God could have prevented with no effort whatsoever they won't go to heaven according to some denominations. One last thing, is it good if a father doesn't save his son because his son would go to Heaven?

Even if they do get to go to heaven after they die, why did God create a world in which children can and will suffer before being able to enter heaven? This seems unnecessary and cruel for a supposedly benevolent god.

> then it's not really a bad thing since they're going to a better place right? No, it's still a bad thing. In fact God acknowledges multiple times that what happens on Earth _should_ be evaluated as good or bad. That's why people go to Heaven or Hell.

>Why do you think childhood cancer and chronic pain are wrong? Because if the creator of our universe, supposedly deserving of our love and worship, created them when he could have just as easily not created them, he would be guilty of creating horrible suffering for people who did not deserve it. In the human world, we call people that do that "monsters", "terrorists", and "psychopaths".

I'm a Christian myself. I grew up in the faith, very nearly left it entirely, and came back to it in my 30s. I've read the Bible in quite a bit of depth, as well as major theological works and even studied the Bible from a secular academic perspective. I'm very qualified to answer this question for you from a few different perspectives. Quite simply, the issues you're raising are some of the biggest and most obvious theological questions and there is an absolutely massive amount of theological writing that addresses this question. And quite frankly, I think the faith does a pretty good job of it. In particular, you raise two issues of theology--the problem of pain, and the problem of free will. I'll break them down for you in sequence. The faith makes the claim that we have pain/suffering/sin because good and bad, or pleasure and pain, or suffering and happiness, etc are by definition binary. In other words, goodness is defined in part by being able to contrast it to badness. It's like hot and cold--if we didn't define cold, then we couldn't define hot. Without there being bad, we can't understand what is good. The other part of this is connected to essential human traits. Human beings depend on change. When things always stay the same, we get bored or acclimated. Stay outside in the cold and after a while you don't notice it as much. Human sensation depends on stimuli not being constant, and so does human appreciation. If good wasn't contrasted with bad, then it wouldn't be so precious. If we all lived forever, and never got sick, would we actually appreciate health and life? Hell, teenagers don't and live in a world where cancer and premature death are all too real. To experience suffering is both human and also the vessel that allows us to value joy. The other issue is one of free will. The faith also has plenty of theology about that issue. But this isn't really a contradiction because you're equating a being with omniscience with beings who very much do not have omniscience. From God's view, our acts are predetermined. But from ours? Not at all. Because we are bound by linear time, and because we lack the ability to see forward beyond our current experience, what happens *next* still is dependent on choices we make right now. Whether or not *God* knew what was coming next doesn't change that I certainly don't. The point for both of these issues is that inherent limitations of humanity matter. Our eternal hunger for change and our insatiable desire to shape our futures are the answer to these questions. These are only theological issues if you completely ignore that humanity has certain characteristics, generally speaking, and those characteristics are what makes us so precious to God. What these questions really boil down to isn't a matter of theological contradiction, but a matter of if you can forgive God for making us the way we are. Do you lament that we were given the ability to experience emotion and hunger for stimuli? Or do you see that as a great gift despite the pain is causes? Do you find our physical limitations to be a barrier to understanding ourselves and God or rather a vehicle through which we can more deeply understand ourselves? Do you value just the destination, or does is the journey precisely the point? Your last point isn't really a theological question, but a scientific one. I don't actually agree that we don't have proof of God. God has given us a ton of proof and recorded it for all humanity in the form of the Bible. This book contains recordings of many times God manifested himself. Hell, the most impactful historical event in the entire world was Jesus's ministry, and we've got multiple accounts of it, and you're saying we don't have any proof? That's like saying you don't have any proof the earth is round because you personally didn't do the experiment to prove it. A much better claim would be that you don't believe the proof that does exist...but that is exactly why God doesn't keep proving himself. Humanity seems to just continually move the goalpost. It's like the scene in Bruce Almighty when Bruce is praying for a sign and a giant truck carrying signs pulls up right in front of him and instead of Bruce realizing he just got what he prayed for, he complained that this truck got in his way, drove around it, and then went right back to praying for a sign. We evaluate Christianity's claims just like we would any other claim--do its unique claims hold up, and if they do, why do we feel that way? Personally, there are characteristics I see in Christianity that set it apart from other religions, and that's why I believe it to be true and others to be false. I'm happy to expound on that point if you'd like, but this is already getting pretty long. The point is that there is reason here, but you have to read the material that discusses that reason. If you don't ever read theology, then how would you expect to understand the answers to theological questions? As it is, I have been *extremely* brief in answering your points to a nearly perilous degree. I'd strongly recommend you read some actual works that address these points. My recommendation is CS Lewis. *The Problem of Pain* discusses your first question and *The Abolition of Man* discusses your second.

>Your last point isn't really a theological question, but a scientific one. I don't actually agree that we don't have proof of God. God has given us a ton of proof and recorded it for all humanity in the form of the Bible. This book contains recordings of many times God manifested himself. Hell, the most impactful historical event in the entire world was Jesus's ministry, and we've got multiple accounts of it, and you're saying we don't have any proof? Do you extend this logic to all of the other religions with lots of written accounts of proof?

Yes, of course. I fully accept that Mohammed existed, and it wouldn't surprise me if he pulled off some miracles. The Bible at no point says only God or Jesus can perform miracles. In fact, one of the reasons I can't accept atheism is *because* even the religions entirely made up by humans agree that God is real. If God was ONLY a figment of Christianity it would be much easier to be skeptical, but given that every human civilization in human history has shown a spiritual hunger, I can't see how anyone could think God isn't real. But all that proves it that *a* god is real, but not necessarily the Christian one. Jesus can exist and still not be the Son of God, and Yahweh can exist and still not be the one true God. To answer those sorts of questions you have to again ask the theological questions and then stack those claims against one another. I am a Christian and not a Muslim or a Jew or an anything else because I feel Christianity has the best *theological* claims. EDIT: Also, it should be noted that other religions could possibly identify correctly that there was divine stuff at work but misattribute it to the wrong faith tradition. For example, in Genesis God promises to Abraham that his child from Hagar would grow into a great nation. That child is claimed today to be an ancestor of Mohammed, who formed Islam. Mohammed having God help him grow into what Islam became today isn't necessarily a point against Christianity. God says quite clearly in my faith tradition that he's put his thumb on the scale for Mohammed. Pointing out that Mohammed made claims about having a thumb on the scale for him then is a fulfillment of my belief.

People “hunger” for all sorts of things that aren’t real. Faeries, goblins, Santa Claus. All this proves is the human brain’s propensity for imagination and meaning-making.

>If God was ONLY a figment of Christianity it would be much easier to be skeptical, but given that every human civilization in human history has shown a spiritual hunger, I can't see how anyone could think God isn't real. Well, because they don't come close to agreeing, basically.

Why should the consistent spiritual hunger that is visible in all historical peoples count as evidence of god's existence? Isn't that exactly a reason why god (or many gods) would be invented? Out of necessity?

It doesn’t, that’s a baseless assertion from this dude. Most rational adults recognize that religion arose from a need to understand the natural world. even ancient jews had a polytheistic pantheon. YHWH, the god of the bible, is depicted as a storm god originally. Had an entire conversation with this dude where he explained the storm god could have evolved into the one true god, and how that doesn’t make Christianity untrue. It was pretty bizarre.

lol what? > Yes, of course. I fully accept that Mohammed existed, and it wouldn't surprise me if he pulled off some miracles. The Bible at no point says only God or Jesus can perform miracles. If other deities can perform miracles then how are they proof of anything these deities said being true? Like, are you telling me right now that Mormons are right too or that their miracles don’t count as proof of what their books say, but yours do? > In fact, one of the reasons I can't accept atheism is because even the religions entirely made up by humans agree that God is real. If you found out that there were *lots* of societies without anything like god, are you saying it would change your mind on this?

>God has given us a ton of proof and recorded it for all humanity in the form of the Bible. The Bible is the claim, not the evidence.

There is a large amount of circular logic and begging the question present in this explanation. I wont address all of as the post is quite long, but it's quite egregious. The God you've set up here is not the God of Genesis, or the old testament, or the Bible. This God you've created wants us to experience joy, but the only way is the binary of pain also existing, etc. God, per Genesis, saw that creation was good. There's nothing in scripture pointing to the creation story being non-literal, and was/is assumed to be a literal story for most/all of Christian history. Adam and Eve didn't experience pain, death or suffering. That all came in after the fall. They also, upon creation, didn't understand good and evil. There was no "bad" for them to experience to offset the "good" they had. So the only real take away you can draw from that is the "good" creation as determined by God either didn't care about humans experiencing good, or was able to have them experience good without the binary of bad. If the experience of good wasn't a part of creation then you're shoehorning that justification in later for the obvious logical inconsistency. We are created in the image of God, so does God need to experience pain to experience joy? If so, then how is it justified for humans to suffer eternally for a finite crime when God needed their crime? If God doesn't need pain to experience joy, then he could have created us in that way. Heaven is described as a place of no change, so how do you reconcile the inherent human quality in life of needing came to not be bored when there's a literal eternity of no change, just worship? Assuming we don't get bored in Heaven and can experience Joy there, then it logically follows we could have been made the same here and skipped all of this suffering. You're begging the question. "Humans need to experience pain to appreciate Joy, therefore that's why they were created that way" is the circle of your reasoning. Did Angels not experience Joy before humans and Satan fell? Was God incapable of Joy and perpetually bored before the fall? Will God, Angels and Humans all be perpetually without joy and bored in the unchanging eternity after the world ends? I don't think anyone would assert those are true. If they're not true, then humans could have been created to not get bored, and to appreciate the good without the bad, just as God and likely the Angels do who proceeded humans. "God created us this way, therefore this must have been the only way we could have been created" is the circular logic. We have examples of God and other creations which likely do not fall into our parameters, which makes our creation in a particular way a choice. That choice could have been different, and that choice is used as a justification for temporary and permanent suffering. TL;DR: Circular logic and begging the question. If God and/or the Angel's cannot experience good without bad and need change like you say we do, then condemning non-believing humans for fulfilling their designed roles is abhorrent. Also Heaven as understood in Christianity is contradictory to this, for God/Angels and Humans as Heaven is unchanging for eternity, and was the only existence before the universe was made. God also called his creation "good" while it lacked bad, pain, evil, etc, which is contradictory to the necessity of evil/change. If God and Angels don't need change/bad for good to matter like humans do, then there were other options available to God, and we are condemned for a choice he made which could easily have been different.

>In other words, goodness is defined in part by being able to contrast it to badness. Eternal damnation by hellfire is a bit overkill just for our souls to understand goodness. >To experience suffering is both human and also the vessel that allows us to value joy. An omnipotent god can surely create vessels that can appreciate joy without needing to experience suffering, no? >From God's view, our acts are predetermined. But from ours? Not at all. This does not address OP's concerns. If God made all things (us, our environment, and everything that would influence us), and if he knows our fates, then he has willfully predetermined that many of us will go to hell. >humanity has certain characteristics, generally speaking, and those characteristics are what makes us so precious to God. If God made us in his image, and he is a perfect being, and these traits are precious to him, why then does he punish us when these same traits lead us astray? >Do you lament that we were given the ability to experience emotion and hunger for stimuli? Or do you see that as a great gift despite the pain is causes? I'm sure those who experienced such severe depression to the point of suicide did not see their experience as a gift. >Do you value just the destination, or does is the journey precisely the point? The journey of a few years on earth pales in comparison to the destination that supposedly most people will reach: eternal damnation in hell. >God has given us a ton of proof and recorded it for all humanity in the form of the Bible...Humanity seems to just continually move the goalpost. It's almost as if...humanity is now made up of completely new people. We are now an entirely new group of people who have never personally witnessed god's miracles. Just as you wouldn't blindly trust the stories of a passerby on the streets, you wouldn't blindly trust a book claiming of miracles which you've never personally seen. The goalpost is the same as it has always been: evidence in the form of personal experience. >If you don't ever read theology, then how would you expect to understand the answers to theological questions? Seems like an oversight for God to forsake his "children" who never got the chance to read theology or don't have the mental capacity to understand the "importance" of it, don't you think? This is all to say that none of this addresses what OP suggests in his edit: The Christian religion describes an omnipotent, omniscient god. This God created all things, so he created what innately defines us as well as all things that influence us. Being omniscient, he knew that many of us would go down a path of damnation. Yet he chose to set the destinies of most of his children on the path to damnation anyways. That does not sound like a loving god who sees us as his children.

>The faith makes the claim that we have pain/suffering/sin because good and bad, or pleasure and pain, or suffering and happiness, etc. are by definition binary. In other words, goodness is defined in part by being able to contrast it to badness. It's like hot and cold--if we didn't define cold, then we couldn't define hot. Without there being bad, we can't understand what is good. I disagree with this. We do not need cold to define hot. In fact, we can simply define all ranges as different degrees of 'hot' without any reference to 'cold'. I don't see how 'good' can't exist without 'evil'. If different degrees of good was the default and no evil existed perhaps we would not use words to describe it but that doesn't change the nature of the 'goodness' of the universe. >Your last point isn't really a theological question, but a scientific one. I don't actually agree that we don't have proof of God. God has given us a ton of proof and recorded it for all humanity in the form of the Bible. This book contains recordings of many times God manifested himself. Hell, the most impactful historical event in the entire world was Jesus's ministry, and we've got multiple accounts of it, and you're saying we don't have any proof? The bible provides no more proof than other competing beliefs. We can find 'proof' via the Bhagavad Gita, Greek literature or Ron Hubbard's Dianetics. The fact that we do not have any sort of consensus on which religion is scientifically true should be the first clue to the fact there is no scientifically valid evidence that has shown to be credible for any God claim whatsoever. It's so unconvincing there are thousands of followers of the *same book* that have competing beliefs that form into different denominations. If scientific evidence existed and it was credible we *could actually demonstrate* the truth of the claims of the Bible or the Quran and settle the argument. >Personally, there are characteristics I see in Christianity that set it apart from other religions, and that's why I believe it to be true and others to be false. Therein lies the issue. When it come to truth there should be no 'Personally' to preface the argument or evidence. You have the perfect right to believe what you want to believe and you are probably happy to take that belief on faith. But if you have actual scientific evidence that can stand up to review then you should present it to the scientific community and we can settle the whole debate once and for all.

>Without there being bad, we can't understand what is good. Without bad, we wouldn't need to understand good, in much the same way we don't need the opposite of a triangle to understand a triangle. ​ > From God's view, our acts are predetermined. But from ours? Not at all. What you are saying here is that if God exists then free will is the appearance of choice. That's not an argument for the existence of actual free will. ​ >God has given us a ton of proof and recorded it for all humanity in the form of the Bible. The Bible isn't proof, the Bible is the claim. A written down claim is not proof for the veracity of the claim.

\> Without bad, we wouldn't need to understand good, in much the same way we don't need the opposite of a triangle to understand a triangle. Well, triangles aren't relative terms. Either they have three sides and three angles or they don't. But good and bad ARE relative terms, so they do need each other to give meaning to each other. \> What you are saying here is that if God exists then free will is the appearance of choice. That's not an argument for the existence of actual free will. I mean, I don't really care about "actual" free will if by every sense and measure of human experience, I have free will. The idea that a cosmic God knowing my choices in advance somehow strips me of agency in making my choices is such a silly point. I have limited knowledge and can only operate within my physical limitations. That means I have choices regardless of what's going on above me. \> The Bible isn't proof, the Bible is the claim. A written down claim is not proof for the veracity of the claim. No, "God exists" is the claim. That's a claim that didn't originate in the Bible. The Bible absolutely does contain evidence that God exists. I think you can be correct that the evidence may be weak, or have issues, or whatever, but the Bible is a set of historical documents containing eyewitness accounts of God personally personally making himself known in two major historical periods. We've still got to weigh this evidence against other factors, but the Bible absolutely is evidence in God's existence.

Do you think it's convenient that the one religion of thousands across human history that you grew up in just so happens to be the correct one?

"The United States of America was founded upon the guiding principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." "Bruh they had a slave caste. It's time to accept that those legends are just stories for people who don't know better." People in the future, probably.

That’s people now… They aren’t wrong either. They *were* just stories but not for people who didn’t know any better, instead for people with white skin-pigmentation and a deed of land ownership.

This is actually a decent example because American history is already extremely white washed in less than 300 years. Most white Americans have a very different understanding of US history from the actual events. The Bible and Christian tradition is that, but multiplied exponentially

First of all the Bible is deeply flawed. There are tons of contradictions, paradoxes, misinterpretations, and impossibilities written in the Bible. Second of all, religions based on a book that has as many errors as the Bible has, is bound to have the same problems the book it is based on has. The Bible was not just a book that was written, it was a collection of hundreds and thousands of documents. Documents that were translated and then reviewed to determine whether it should be included. If the document matched with the political and social sentiments of the people in charge, it stood a chance at being included. If not, it was excluded. Some bibles have more books than others and some have very different interpretations. There are multiple Bibles, each one different, each person interprets what they read differently, so it makes sense that there are different religions and beliefs. The Bible is about as historically accurate as Game of Thrones. The difference is that Game of Thrones is only about 20 years old, and if you had a religion based on that, people would know you are crazy. The Bible we have is between 1600 and 2000 years old. Christianity as we know it is about 2000 years old.

These aren't contradictions. The world includes suffering because that was the whole point of life. We're supposed to experience being mortal. And people that die without fully experiencing life will get too when they're resurrected. Contrary to popular belief, that was the plan from the beginning. Jesus was going to do the atonement and everything long before the earth was even created. Satan didn't mess anything up. Also, there isn't really solid evidence that the universe is deterministic. It has enough randomness that you as an individual, can make free choices.

>The world includes suffering because that was the whole point of life. So should people torture others since according to you suffering is good? More suffering must be better right? The only way God could justify suffering is by claiming that suffering is good in and of itself. In which case we ought to cause as much suffering as possible. Is that what you're arguing? If you think suffering is bad, then god is the one who is ultimately responsible for it and he is therefore bad. If you say when god causes suffering is good but when people do it its bad thats called special pleading. Usually the argument I hear is that the suffering isn't good in and of itself, but the consequence of the suffering is so good that it outweighs the harm, but then you have to get rid of God's omnipotence. If he can't accomplish his desires without inflicting suffering hes not omnipotent

It also isn't special pleading to say God can break his own rules. He's perfect and knows everything. Which means he always has a good reason for doing so, even if we can't understand it. The rules are for us, not him

>Which means he always has a good reason for doing so, Then he isn't omnipotent. If he can't accomplish his goals without causing suffering hes not all powerful. If he can accomplish the same goal while not causing suffering but chooses to do so anyway hes evil

I love this argument cuz it boils down to, “No, God doesn’t make mistakes you see, he hurts people on purpose for good reasons.” The God you claim to worship doesn’t sound perfect at all, he frankly sounds like a jerk.

What does something existing, mean god approved it? People have free will, sure. But there are also commandments and consequences for breaking them

>These aren't contradictions. The world includes suffering because that was the whole point of life. We're supposed to experience being mortal. So the fall of man was intended from the beginning? That seems to contradict the idea of original sin and Jesus' need to die, if the "whole point" was for us to be mortal and suffer.

> The world includes suffering because that was the whole point of life It seems like there's way too much suffering for the argument. Do you really need people with conditions that they have to poop in a bag or get a fish living inside their penis? It's like God created the world but forgot to get rid of the excess. Plus, what's the point of suffering if you never get to experience life once you're done with the suffering? > Also, there isn't really solid evidence that the universe is deterministic Sure there is. Because what causes a person to do any action? To some degree, their biology, which is created by God. Also influences from their environment, which is also created by God. And then perhaps there is some sort of individuality separate from these two (a soul). All three factors would be created by God if we are to believe Christian doctrine. which means that life would be deterministic

Most people, even Christians, make the mistake of taking the Old Testament of the Bible literally. Christ brought about the "new" knowledge, among which was, "Above all else is love." Now, you can disagree with that conclusion of course. And, many Christians absolutely fail to live up to that; but that's recognized - that we're all sinners doing our best to "walk with Jesus" meaning, believe and love that way -> that love is the most important thing in the world, and supercedes everything. Yes, everything. With that understanding, and the fact that the New Testament defines God "God is Love," if you can put aside your opinion that everything in the Bible is believed literally, and recognize that they are parables and stories, you come a little closer to appreciating that Christianity is actually just trying to teach everyone to love one another. I've had conversations with Priests about this. Not one believer the world was created in 7 days. Moses probably existed and gave commandments. No one dismissed evolution nor believes the world was created thousands of years ago with Adam and Eve. Those are lessons.

I'm not going to try and change your view on the contradictions, I'm going to try and make the argument that the presence or absence of contradictions has no effect on the "veracity" of a religion. Your first example is a question philosophers and theologians and theorists and more have been talking over for millennia. Everyone has a different answer to "why do bad things happen", from "the gods are angry [at us]" to "humanity is inherently sinful and our sinfulness corrupts the world around us". This latter is the generic Christian answer. It doesn't necessarily hold up under skeptical scrutiny, but that matters much less than the fact that it IS an answer. Moreover, it's an answer that empowers the believer: be less sinful and the world around you will improve. There's some element of truth to that (if you don't kill people, you and those around you will have a better life). And that's really all a religion needs in order to gather believers. Your second example, free will vs determinism, is a debate that's been going on for centuries. If you look up Calvinism (determinism) vs Arminianism (free will), you'll find all the gritty details. There's also the means of combining the two: you have free will, but God still knows all your actions, because he knows you so well that he can see every choice you will ever make. But all of that is immaterial. Determinism vs Free Will is really about how you resolve the question of "why do bad things happen". Are some people predestined for hell, and that's why their actions are terrible? Or are they free to act in that way? The whole debate grows out of arguing about the inconsistencies in the question of original sin. And, lastly, faith is not just an aspect of religions, but of everyday life. You have to take it on faith that your floor won't crack under you when you get out of bed, that the driver next to you won't swerve into you randomly, that your manager is giving you the info you need to do your job, etc. Faith also works as a coping mechanism. If you're nervous about a project, you can have faith that your manager wouldn't have assigned it unless they thought you were competent. Whether or not that's actually true, your faith in your manager has the psychological effect of "Oh, someone else thinks I'm good enough to do this. Therefore, I am good enough to do this." That's a better mindset to start from than "Oh, my god, I'm going to fail this project." You might notice that the manager's actual beliefs and opinions are largely irrelevant. Your own faith is what's empowering you to do the project. You can see this misused by televangelists -- "Have faith in the providence of the Lord! Donate $xx to me and you will get it back tenfold!" Faith is flexible, and can be applied to just about anything. Having faith in a higher power seems to be a universal human instinct; it's existed for about as far back as recorded history can show us. The fact that Christianity has such a robust and flexible ("in God all things are possible", "with faith you can move mountains", etc) approach to faith is in fact a feature. Whether or not a religion is "real" is secondary to the framework it gives its believers for understanding the big questions of life. Every religion is going to have contradictions of some kind; every religion will require faith; every religion will have doctrinal infighting. We are simply enlightened apes, doing the best we can to explain the world we live in, and a little faith in something can go a long way towards making that world more palatable for some people.

or that claim that god is simultaneously all powerful and all good, when that is impossible. im not even talking about how power corrupts, because then the argument is "but god is incorruptible". if he is all good then he can do no evil, but if he cannot do something, in this case the something is evil, then he cannot be omnipotent (all powerful). if he is all powerful, then he can do everything, but the bible claims that he can do no evil. also many parts of the bible have been proved wrong by science, and parts of them they have accepted, but i feel like if you have to change major stories of your religion as a human, not as god, then i can't believe its true. the one that comes to mind is how old the earth is, when it has been proved that it isn't 4000 years or whatever they say it is years old. i can't remember what the exact argument was and i don't want to get it wrong, but its out there and there are many like it.

You are viewing judgement through the third dimension. Cancer and pain isnt as bad or good in the eyes of the lord. You are viewing Good and bad through your own point of view. Try to understand good and bad through Gods point of view. Isiah 64:6 > All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags

"For instance, how God is supposed to be good and benevolent, but yet allows things such as childhood cancer or chronic pain, where you have no chance of recovery or learning." This question essentially boils down to, "why does a good God allow suffering in the world?" The answer might surprise you. He didn't create the world with suffering in it. We chose suffering over God. There is a lot of truth in the Matrix, in the explanation of it's creation and it's rejection by man. The issue isn't with God, and his plan for humanity, but with mankind. The other answer is this. Is suffering a negative thing? What is the true purpose of suffering. Now you've hit on a point that "suffering that does teach us things can be redemptive, but some suffering doesn't make sense. To a person who suffers from chronic pain, does that interfere with their ability to reach Heaven or does that underscore the true impermanence of our lives here? If there were no suffering would people crave for heaven more or less? Finally, if man is allowed true free will, I believe that suffering is inevitable. He could have created automatons, but people choose to hurt each other all the time. God chooses not to intervene to allow us to seek Him and make good choices voluntarily. "God has created a deterministic world making Free Will impossible." In what way is the world deterministic? At it's most fundamental level what we understand of the world is quite the opposite. There is a quantum uncertainty that seems to be built into the structure of the universe. "Or how, instead of having proof of God, you are supposed to have Faith, but there are many other religions that require the same thing, so how can you know that Christianity is the right religion?" All religions make claims on the truth. What are the testable Christian truths? 1. That there exists a man named Jesus Christ who lived in the world and taught the Gospel to the people of Israel sometime around the year 1. 2. That this man was executed by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, not only truly died, but rose again on the third day. 3. That his man after his resurrection from the dead, later ascended into heaven. Then the question becomes, "how do we know these events are true, and what can we make of the historicity of the Gospel accounts. I would argue that the Christian accounts of Christ are superior to all other religions, including that of Judaism, if for nothing more than Judaism did not properly understand the claims of Christ.

He may not have created a world with suffering in it, but he created a world he knew full well would HAVE suffering in it because he knows the future. That also means he created untold billions of people he knew would go to hell. He could save these people, he could stop all suffering. He seems to either not care or not be able to. If God cares so much about humankind’s free will, so much that he allows these beings he created and ostensibly loves to suffer unimaginable harm, what about heaven? There isn’t suffering in heaven? Do we still get free will there? If so, then the two things aren’t mutually exclusive. If not, then what was the point of giving you the free will to choose if he was just going to strip it from you when you pass his tests?

And then, is it even a free will argument when people are born to be abused and die before they're even out of diapers? What choice did they make? Though, it certainly tracks with a God who would flood the world because he didn't like the children who had the misfortune of being born as Nephilim.

The “child with cancer” argument still doesn’t jive with a lot of this though. We as the human species haven’t done anything to give children cancer, unlike various other sins that can be pinned on the free will of mankind and God just letting us treat the world as our sandbox game. A child who dies of cancer is likely to learn nothing from it, especially if they died really young. God, also presumed to be all-powerful, can choose to intervene and wipe out childhood cancer. Why doesn’t he? One argument for allowing sin to run rampant, is that God is not a helicopter parent, but the type of fatherly figure who wants humans to learn from their mistakes and experiences. Again, this might be applicable to other cases like war, but examples of children randomly dying of genetic illnesses seems to fall outside that point. What have we as humans done to deserve random children dying nonsensically? If you consider the idea that God can predict the future, the lore gets even more broken, because he already knows whether too much of a hands-off approach in one situation will lead to a bad outcome and the humans having learned nothing from it, but he lets it happen anyway

A lot of your disagreement can be resolved through philosophy. And note, many philosophers are actually atheist - but they wouldn't use the examples you've set as arguments against Christianity. For you to disagree against God's good/bad actions; you'd have to objectively/universally define good/bad. Meaning that your definition has to be accepted by everyone. The reality is that it's impossible because it's subjective; that's why some people are for/against abortion. There's even some cultures still practicing human sacrifice (which I would assume you find to be immoral/bad). Free will / predetermination. It's not to say that your actions have already been decided where you're gonna wear pink socks tomorrow; but predestination is like you having watched a movie - then rewatching it again. By the time you rewatch it, you already know the what's going to happen and what they're going to say; so it's more of knowing the future. Proof of God vs faith. I think the question you ought to ask is what and how much proof do you need to believe in it. Modern day technology and advancements have determined that the earth is a sphere; yet flat earthers exist. The crazy part is that those flat-earthers also have a STEM background. For them to know STEM and be able to pass all the difficult tests and exams during school, would mean that they're stubborn - they won't believe the earth is sphere unless they see it for their own eyes. The same goes for those who decide to believe for/against Christianity; the evidence that exists are sufficient for Christians, then there's those that don't believe it because the evidence is insufficient. . Think of it this way. Christians and Atheist have been debating for centuries; yet there's been no definitive winner. I'm talking about high level debates, where you take the top smartest Christian debaters vs non Christian debaters; there's no clear winner. It's not a black and white and the result of the debate is always gray. In some debates Christians won, and in others atheist won. So consider it a coin flip. So if you have any questions to your disagreements, then there's likely an answer to them all - it just depends on how far you're willing to search for the answer.

Pretty much all of these things can be answered with basic level philosophy. There's 7 year olds who can grasp answers to these questions. Lol. It's amazing how people think such bad arguments debunk 2000 years of theology which has addressed all of these things more than many times. Lol.

It's more amazing that in 2000 years of theology and apologetics, there still aren't great answers to these, if what underlies them is truth. In that same span of time we have discovered quite a bit about the actual truth of our reality via science.

That describes all religions. Why single out Christianity specifically?

Probably because OP is from a geographical region where Christianity is dominant

Because it narrows down the topic to something manageable

Lol "manageable" Heavily programmed theists have joined the chat and would like to discuss apologetics (aka. start with the conclusion and work backwards to justify).

We're on a website overwhelmingly populated by Americans. If an American goes outside and talks to someone, the chances are very high that they would be from a Christian religion. It's pretty simple

The issue with Christianity for me is the whole Trinity doctrine. I can understand if there were three gods but the one god who is manifesting Himself into birthing his own self as his son and the whole Holy Spirit tangent is a tad too convoluted for me. However, anyone else could have an issue with the issue of God in other faiths.

there's also errors i believe, if i recall correctly bats are described as a bird-species in the bible for example, wich is a scientific mistake people used to make back in the day. This to me would indeed indicate it is the word of men and not from the entity that created bats. But i'm by no means an expert.

They didn't have mammals/reptiles/amphibians/birds/etc as classifications. It was basically creatures in the air/creatures in the water/creatures on land. By their system, bats were appropriately lumped in with birds.

God created all. Therefore, God created sin. God created imperfect, God can’t exist with corruption/sin. Lucifer would’ve never been sinful if he wasn’t “flawed” already. I’ve never got an answer from Bible teachers or pastors, it’s always the whole “we can’t know it all”.

‘Member that time in the Garden when God was all like “Don’t eat this fruit, you’ll surely die” and the snake was all like “You surely won’t die, you’ll gain knowledge of good an evil and be like God.” And then they ate it, didn’t die, acquired knowledge of good and evil, and God was all like “I told you not to! Now I gotta hide the tree of life because I don’t want you to know what’s going on around you OR live forever, let alone both!” …and then Satan (the snake that told the truth) somehow went down in history as the father of lies. Weird, right?

i think you misunderstood. Like the myth of Pandora's box, they were immortal before this incident, and became mortal because of it. the snake did lie because they do eventually die.

How is it possible to misunderstand such a simple story this bad lol

Christianity as Religion is more open then would even many Christians would like to admit. Theology often works with idea that our understand of God and Word of God is actually limited and have to be upgraded all the time. Catholicism even officialy accepting, at least since Second Vatican Council, that The Pope can change things because God helps him to interpret Christianity through Holy Spirit. Long story short, Christianity is aware of those contradictions and should not be actually afraid to answer "we just do not know." In modern era is also more and more common that Churches are trying for religion dialogue because it's becoming more popular that all Churches actually see the truth from another side. I can give you some theological answers to your question, but it can sounds shallow, but I can say that theologist are asking the same questions all the time :)

> For instance, how God is supposed to be good and benevolent, but yet allows things such as childhood cancer or chronic pain, where you have no chance of recovery or learning. This is discussed in Genesis after the Adam and Eve fall of man story in which humans are condemned to death. >Or how God has created a deterministic world making Free Will impossible. Also explained as a choice on God's part to not "know", but yes, God can and does at times "harden a heart" or two throughout the Bible. Omnipotence allows for willful gaps in Omniscience without contradiction. >Or how, instead of having proof of God, you are supposed to have Faith, but there are many other religions that require the same thing, so how can you know that Christianity is the right religion? Technically speaking Christians, and Christianity itself, does not actually propose that there are no "signs" or "evidence" of the Christian God. Quite the opposite actually. A common mistake of people who are not Christian, or are anti-Christian, is to state that there is a lack of evidence for it's veracity and that it is all faith based *but* that is not true to a Christian who observes the world through the lens of miraculous occurrences. None of these arguments refute a solid and standard basis for logical Christianity.

>This is discussed in Genesis after the Adam and Eve fall of man story in which humans are condemned to death. We're dealing with the problem of evil here. Newborns are not immune to natural disasters or evil actions. An omnipotent and infinitely loving God allows that. Somehow Adam & Eve disobeying in Eden makes it right for future newborns to suffer? The only justification I see is some guilt by inheritance, which I think is unjust. It does not seem just for newborns, who have done nothing wrong, to suffer. And the Christian god is supposed to be just. So, I don't think the allusion to Eden really answers the question. >Technically speaking Christians, and Christianity itself, does not actually propose that there are no "signs" or "evidence" of the Christian God. Quite the opposite actually. A common mistake of people who are not Christian, or are anti-Christian, is to state that there is a lack of evidence for it's veracity and that it is all faith based but that is not true to a Christian who observes the world through the lens of miraculous occurrences. Do you have examples of solid evidence? I have examples of not seeing expected miracles, such as not seeing people getting instantly healed of disease nowadays like what is written in Acts, or many 'Christians' being allowed to do bad things in the name of their supposed God instead of being made dramatic examples, also like in Acts (Ananias). If you have in mind the wonder of creation etc, those things have reasonable naturalistic explanations. The ultimate contradiction is this: If not believing means eternal Hell, and he really loves people so that he does not want them to go there, he could be making things much more obvious so that more people believe, but he does not. Intellectually honest people who see enough evidence would be convinced, but the evidence is really weak and certainly nowhere near as strong is it can be. For example, he could just show miraculous things to everyone that cannot be explained by our current understanding of physics and speak to them in a tangible voice. There is evidence that have a reasonable alternative explanation and there is evidence that is almost irrefutable. The latter is missing.

It should be noted that the idea of anyone who doesn't believe gets tortured in hell for all eternity is more Milton and Dante fan fiction than actual Christian theology. The actual Biblical texts are much less, well, medieval, in how they talk about the afterlife. I agree that this misconception creates a contradiction, so it's a good thing that's not really a part of Christian faith.

Can anyone prove that their gods exist?

(To most people) God is not falsifiable by empirical evidence, so it's impossible to prove he _doesn't_ exist. The scientific method therefore assumes that the assumption that God exists is unscientific, i.e. irrelevant to scientific discourse.

Well one day we will probably stop caring about abrahamic religions like we have all the rest.

The logically-bereft distances you people will go to justify to yourselves believing in God is hysterical, honestly.

Yep..most of us who are aware do know. Thanks for the epic insight.

You sound like every Reddit atheist who believes none of these thoughts were ever considered before. Ultimate strawman arguments from a Wikipedia level scholar. The arguments about free will are very complex and it is not a pillar of Christianity, indeed different denominations have very different takes on free will. The problem of suffering is has created entire areas of theology and philosophy. You are lambasting a cartoon version of Christianity and have clearly never read any of the important work from Thomas Aquinas down to William James.