Created with Stable Diffusion
There seems to be a trend going around for atheists, agnostics, and general skeptics to answer lists of “honest questions for atheists” posed by Christian apologists. Invitations to understand one another better seem positive and wholesome imo. I consider the answers atheists gave to be mostly sufficient, and instead would like to pose my own list of questions back to those Christians, and any others interested in answering.
In doing so I’ve made my best effort to avoid some of the more common, eye-rolling, yawn-inducing ones you’ve likely heard before (such as the problem of evil, paradox of omnipotence, etc.) hoping to instead pose questions you may not encounter so frequently. Please pardon their length, the premise of each question requires some contextual information to set up. Without further delay:
1
Suppose there’s a group traveling about your area, led by a charismatic speaker who claims the world is ending soon. He promises he alone can save you, but you must sell your belongings, devote your life to him, and cut off family members who try to stop you.
He may also assign you a new name/identity, advise you to leave your home and job in order to follow him, and says that if you don’t love him more than your own family then you’re not worthy of him. His followers wrote a book about him in which he performs many miraculous feats, but no contemporaneous outside source corroborates these claims. What sort of group is that?
(Keeping in mind, historical mentions of the founder simply existing do not equal documentation of his purported miracles. Allow also the possibility of intentionally dishonest narrators, their potential motive explained in question 2. Also, the specific verses relevant to this question may be viewed here.)
2
Supposing I was to tell you that I’m the greatest human ever to live. Wait, hear me out! I promise that if you believe me, you’ll receive a fantastical reward beyond your wildest dreams. It just happens I cannot show you the reward right now because you receive it after you die.
If you don’t believe me or start believing but then stop, later on, you will suffer a horrific punishment. It also just so happens I cannot prove that to you either, because, like the reward, you receive it after you die.
You can know I’m telling the truth because I’ve made many predictions that came true. For example, back in 1998, I predicted that on September 11th, 2001, terrorists would fly airplanes into the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon.
I correctly predicted the outcome of every presidential election from my childhood up to the most recent one. You can be assured that I predicted these events accurately and well ahead of time because it says right here that I did. There’s no way to fake this, so it proves I have foreknowledge of the future.
I also predicted that there will continue to be wars, rumors of wars hunger, and natural disasters. I predicted that people would mock my claims, and some convinced of them would change their minds and disbelieve. How could I have known any of this in advance?
What’s more, I performed many astonishing feats which defy the laws of physics. You cannot personally see me do this, but rest assured, there were 500 people that witnessed it, they just decided not to write anything down about it and I’m not going to specify their names. There is no way to falsify such incredible feats, so this further proves my legitimacy.
Some people might tell you I’m a liar. They might show you purported evidence contrary to my claims. But that so-called evidence is all fabricated by an invisible trickster who hates you. The trickster wants you to suffer the horrible punishment and doesn’t want you to receive the fantastical reward.
This trickster controls the minds of people who dispute my teachings and call me a liar, so don’t listen to them. Likewise, pre-emptively ignore any supposed evidence contrary to what I have told you that they present because it’s only a sinister attempt to lead you astray. So, trust these writings over your own reasoning.
If you want to ensure that everybody you love receives the fantastical reward along with you and doesn’t instead suffer the horrific punishment, you should go and try to persuade them to believe that I am the greatest person ever to live, and to keep believing that until they die.
There isn’t much time left, because the end of the world is coming. I won’t say exactly how soon though. What I will say is that if there are wars, rumors of wars, hunger, disease, and natural disasters in the world, these are all signs that it’s very close. Perhaps this makes it seem as if it’s always imminent, but that’s just coincidental.
When the end arrives, anybody who still does not believe I am the greatest person ever to live will be automatically condemned to the horrific punishment. So, if you are a good-hearted person, naturally you will want to go out into the world and convince as many people as possible to believe I am the greatest person ever to live, so they can receive the reward instead of the punishment.
Now, do you believe what I have told you? If you say I’m lying, then what might I be trying to accomplish with these lies?
3
Suppose you’re thawed from suspended animation 1,500 years into the future. The first big difference you notice is that all of the western culture including art, music, holidays, etc. are now based on the life and writings of L. Ron Hubbard. Nearly everyone you meet is a Scientologist.
This is regarded as normal. Everyone was raised to believe in Scientology, and because they see it reflected in society all around them, it feels authoritative and credible. L. Ron’s life would’ve been aggrandized in a holy book and everyone would gather at their local church of Scientology for weekly auditing.
Since the only surviving accounts of what L. Ron was like would be the ones written and preserved through the ages by Scientologists, they would all believe he was a brilliant philanthropist and visionary the likes of which have never been surpassed.
This would seem asinine to you, because when you lived, Hubbard was regarded by the public as one of countless similar cranks and cult leaders. Marshall Applewhite, Gene Ray, Michael Travesser, Jim Jones, any one of them could have inspired a following that eventually refocused all human thought and culture around their teachings, it just happened to be L. Ron Hubbard succeeded.
Nobody recognizes that it began as one of many cults and is offended by the observation. Anything you say that even hints that you feel this way is seen as simply calculated to hurt people, and you’re shunned accordingly. This makes it difficult to get or keep jobs, while Scientologists gain opportunities by networking that are unavailable to you.
Those who don’t react to your unbelief with reflexive hostility conclude you were simply miseducated in the wrong sect of Scientology, or haven’t been exposed to enough Scientological materials. They direct your attention to the last 15 centuries worth of sophisticated apologetics written by the greatest Scientologist theologians.
Their reasoning is that if such intelligent men devoted their lives to defending these beliefs, and so much complex literature has been written about them, there must be something to it and you can’t say there isn’t until you’ve read everything Scientologist theologians have ever written.
Now, are you content to remain silent in this world? Letting the status quo go unchallenged? Would you not feel compelled to unravel the deep, old, embedded deceit, even if it means you’ll be hated by the very people you’re trying to help?
4
It may seem arrogant to presume to know better than over 2 billion Christians. But there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world whose beliefs you disagree with, and 16 million Mormons. From outside of their “fold” aka mental state of convinced belief, it’s clear to you that they’re deceived. Yet from the inside, believers in Islam/Mormonism cannot see their religions for what they are and don’t realize their deceived condition.
Is this because you’re simply smarter than every Muslim and Mormon in the world? Or, are successful religions generally designed in such a way as to discourage/disrupt doubts in believing members, efficiently keeping even the smart ones deceived? Appearing from the inside as a sober, self-evident reality? For example a bubble of inward-facing one-way mirror that seems, from within, to extend forever? Or fish not knowing they’re in the water.
Perhaps your answer is that Christ’s early disciples never would’ve suffered torture and death rather than recant unless certain of their master’s divinity. But on October 27th of 1838, Lilburn Boggs, the governor of Missouri, signed Executive Order 44. Also known as the Mormon extermination order.
All Mormons in the state of Missouri were to be killed on sight, and indeed many were. Yet amid this terror, they did not recant. They held to their faith, right to the end. It should be apparent from this (unless you are a Mormon) that men can believe in something strongly enough to die for it, yet still, be mistaken.
Now, what exactly prevents you from being in the same deceived state as Mormons or Muslims, but not being aware of it for the same reasons they aren’t?
5
Memories have been shown to be stored as patterns of neuronal connections, emotions are neurochemical reactions, and personality, i.e. how you react differently from another person to the same thing because of different past experiences, is also neurological. So, what’s left for the soul to do?
If neuroscience is wrong about all this, and the soul actually does all of the things above, then what do we need brains for? They’re awfully complex and conspicuously computer-like to simply be signal receivers. Have you ever seen a radio-controlled toy with a supercomputer onboard?
Alternatively, if our soul is just raw consciousness, but includes no memories, emotions, or personality, aka what makes us distinctly who we are, how can it be said that anybody goes to an afterlife? It’s not them anymore.
6
This one is specifically for moderates who contend that there exist no contradictions between evolution and Christianity. Herein I’ll address first the perspective that the Genesis accounts in fact closely parallel the scientific account of origins. I’ll then address the view that it doesn’t attempt to, being only an instructive, illustrative story about man’s relationship with Yahweh.
The first of those two apologist camps will often claim that Genesis, while not literal, still closely lines up with (and is a metaphorical description of) the actual processes now understood by science to have resulted in the formation of the universe, the Earth, and life on it. (This defense does not extend to the creation stories of other religions, which Christians are often content to simply reject as products of ancient man’s ignorance.)
However, Genesis asserts that the Earth existed before the sun, trees and other land vegetation before sea creatures, and birds before land animals. The Sun and Moon are both created together on day 4 along with all other stars(!). The order itself is wrong (in both versions), and it’s never been explained what is metaphorically conveyed by getting the order wrong which could not have been conveyed while keeping the order accurate.
In Genesis, each day’s worth of creation events is followed by “the evening and morning” of the next day according to scripture, things that literal days have which “indeterminate periods of time” do not. On top of which Genesis 1:4–5 defines what a yom/day is and what distinguishes it from night, making it very clear from the context that they intended ‘yom’ to mean a literal day rather than ‘eon’ or something:
“3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5_ God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day.”
Literal days are light, and literal nights are dark. It can (and does) have additional metaphorical layers of meaning on top of that. Certainly, these kinds of stories in scripture are primarily intended to illustrate some spiritual principle. But that doesn’t preclude such stories from also containing beliefs about nature that were sincerely held in antiquity, impossible to confirm or deny at the time of writing, but which have become investigable since.
Further frustrating efforts to misrepresent Genesis as purely metaphorical, the genealogy provided early in the OT traces all the way back to Adam and Eve. Unless we’re to believe that genealogy is metaphorical (whatever that could possibly mean) this confirms that they believed Adam and Eve were real people from whom mankind descended, and by extension that Genesis accurately describes how humans came into existence.
Indeed, if the Genesis story didn’t occur then Adam never incurred original sin by eating of the tree. This means we did not inherit original sin and Christ died for nothing on the cross, per Romans 5:18: “Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone.”
Luke’s Genealogy traces Jesus’ ancestry back through King David, all the way to Adam, never stopping to tell the reader “Everybody before this was a metaphorical person, everybody after is historical”. If there was no literal Adam, what is the basis for belief in a literal King David? Or Moses, for that matter.
Or, if we throw out Luke’s genealogy as unreliable, what is the basis for Jesus being a descendant of King David (necessary criteria of the messiah foretold by the Torah)? In these and many other ways, a literal Genesis account is a load-bearing pillar, without which the rest of Christian theology collapses.
In 1 Corinthians 15:45, Paul said “The first man, Adam, became a living person.” But the last Adam — that is, Christ — is a life-giving Spirit”. In Acts 17:26, he said, “From one man [God] created all the nations.” This is impossible without a literal, historical Adam.
As for Jesus, in Mark 10:6 he said “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’” This would seem to affirm both creation and a literal Adam and Eve. Concerning the events recounted in the Old Testament, in John 5:46–47 Jesus is recorded as saying “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”
His admonition to trust the events of the OT doesn’t only apply to Genesis: Jesus also seemingly refers to Noah’s Ark as a real event in Matthew 24:38–39: “For as they were in those days before the flood, eating and drinking, men marrying and women being given in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark and they took no note until the flood came and swept them all away.”
Onto the problem of death. According to Genesis, prior to the fall from grace, there was no death in the world. Evolution requires a great deal of death to occur. So even if Adam and Eve are metaphorical stand-ins for our first recognizably human ancestors, how could they have evolved to that point in a world with no death?
In Romans 1:20, the authors of scripture were very clear that they believed nature is obviously the work of a designer. In Romans they express the opinion that there’s no excuse for not believing in a creator because when you look around you at nature, it is unmistakably the handiwork of a vast intelligence:
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
Catholics are, in my experience, the most stubborn about acknowledging these issues. Their usual recourse is to assume some apologist, somewhere, has already addressed the problem and whatever they had to say should be good enough for me, or to refer to statements by the Pope affirming that no conflict exists between evolution and the credibility of scripture.
The basis for this claim is the August 1950 encyclical Humani Generis wherein it is written:
“The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter — for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.”
The encyclical did not actually affirm evolution but portrayed it as unproven at the time of writing while expressing receptiveness to it should the evidence ever rise to a threshold that satisfied the Vatican:
“This certainly would be praiseworthy in the case of clearly proved facts; but caution must be used when there is rather question of hypotheses, having some sort of scientific foundation, in which the doctrine contained in Sacred Scripture or in Tradition is involved.”
However, in this very same encyclical which the Pope references and which Catholics reference indirectly when quoting him, actually agrees with my position: That a metaphorical Adam, either as a mythical figure or as one protohuman ancestor among many, is fatal to the scheme of sacrificial atonement for original sin as described in the New Testament:
“When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which through generation is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.”
This is consistent with the contents of the Catholic catechism which addresses evolution:
“The Church, which has the mind of Christ, knows very well that we cannot tamper with the revelation of original sin without undermining the mystery of Christ.” Catechism 389
“Adam and Eve transmitted to their descendants human nature wounded by their own first sin and hence deprived of original holiness and justice; this deprivation is called “original sin”.” Catechism 417
Now, in light of all this information, can it honestly be said that nothing in the Christian religion conflicts with evolution? If you contend that none of this matters as the Bible is not a science textbook but a spiritual manual for salvation, then how can anybody be fairly damned for concluding Christianity is untrue if the divine revelator of the scriptures allowed it to include obvious errors?
7
Isaiah 40:22 describes Earth as a circle. However, does this mean spherical, or a flat, round disc? There was a Hebrew word for “ball” they might’ve used, but didn’t, which appears in Isaiah 22:18 and a few other verses.
In Proverbs 8:27, Yahweh marks out the boundaries of the Earth. Depending on which translation you prefer, it is either said that he does this by “inscribing a circle upon the face of the deep”, or as in KJV, that he “set a compass upon the face of the depth”. A circle is a flat shape. A compass is used to draw 2D circles, not to sculpt a three-dimensional sphere.
Modern apologists contend that where the Bible speaks of a “firmament”, it simply means the sky. However, Job 37:18 says: “Can you beat out [raqa] the vault of the skies, as he does, hard as a mirror of cast metal?” Raqa is a Hebrew term for the process of beating out a bowl into shape from sheet metal. This unambiguously identifies the firmament as solid.
It is true that Erastosthenes proved the sphericity of Earth nearly three centuries before the NT was written. However, this does not solve the problem, because the flat-earth cosmology is found primarily in the OT. Aka the Torah, which was written ~2,000 years before the New Testament and thus long before Erastosthenes lived. The stubborn persistence of flat Earth belief and young Earth creationism into modern times answers the question of why the authors of the New Testament wouldn’t simply have updated the incorrect cosmology of the Old Testament with more recent knowledge.
William Tyndale (who produced the earliest English translations of the Bible) also had the opportunity to correct those mistakes, and it’s argued he would’ve if they actually were mistakes, in order to make the Bible more defensible against skeptics. But this assumes that Tyndale would’ve been sufficiently impious to make his own independent edits to the holy book of his own religion, even though scripture emphatically says never to do that. It also runs contrary to the tendency of Christians, per the examples of YEC and flat earthers in the paragraph above this one, to reject new information if it contradicts scriptural claims.
You’ll never hear such elaborate excuses for the flat Earth cosmologies of ancient Babylon or Egypt, which neighbored Israel, probably where they got their own cosmological ideas from. Because there are few, if any, remaining practitioners of ancient Egyptian or Babylonian religion left in the world. Christian apologists don’t mount apologetic defenses of ancient Egyptian or Babylonian cosmology, as they’re content for those religions to simply be wrong, their mistakes a product of the relative ignorance of ancient man.
Notably, famous Christian apologist Willian Lane Craig has even admitted during an interview that this model of the Earth as a flat disc covered by a solid dome, supported on pillars, surrounded by water, etc. is indeed what the Bible describes, though he claims it wasn’t believed sincerely and was regarded even at the time of writing as mythical.
However, in doing so, he intentionally misrepresented the works of authority in the field, Othmar Keel, to make a case for an always-mythical OT cosmology. This is a position you cannot possibly mistake Othmar Keel himself for holding if you read the entirety of the book William Lane Craig is quoting.
Now, in light of the information presented above, can it be truthfully, in good faith, claimed that the Bible in fact describes a spherical Earth consistent with modern science? Can it be truthfully, in good faith, claimed that the ancient Hebrew authors of the Old Testament did not have an understanding of the Earth similar to neighbors Egypt and Babylon, featuring a flat Earth enclosed with a solid canopy?
8
Apologists often say, in answer to the thousands of failed predictions of the second coming made since around 200 ad, that “no one knows the day or the hour”. Saying nothing of the month, year, or century, this verse affirms that the date cannot be known with precision. However, for the entirety of Matthew through John, wherever Christ speaks of his return he does it in language that makes it clear he expects it to be imminent. A good example of this is in Matthew 16:27–28, where Jesus says:
“For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
The transfiguration does not resolve this, as at that time Jesus did purportedly levitate into the sky, but did not appear alongside Yahweh or angels, and those alive then were not rewarded according to their deeds. That is clearly a description of the final judgment.
“Some of you standing here” clarifies the meaning of “generation” in Matthew 24:34 that we’re told will not pass away before his return as being literal, not a “metaphorical generation”. The full context reinforces this, Jesus was speaking to disciples who accompanied him to Caesar Phillipi specifically asking how they would recognize his second coming was near.
This is also why Daniel’s visions don’t solve the problem, as although you might construe him as having witnessed the second coming in those visions, he wasn’t among those standing there as Christ spoke in Matthew 16:27–28. So it goes for the long list of other attempts to wiggle out of this problem.
In 1 Corinthians 15: 51–52, it is repeated that not everyone alive then would die before the second coming:
“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”
Further affirmation of a near-term return is found in Revelation 1:7, where it says:
“Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all peoples on earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen.”
Why expect those who pierced him to witness his return, unless it was supposed to occur within their lifetimes? A common answer is that they will be resurrected specifically to witness the second coming, just so that verse won’t be wrong, which must seem like a convenient stretch even to apologists.
In 1 John 2:18, Christ urges the followers he is writing to:
“18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.”
In Matthew 10:23:
“When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”
They long ago fled through all the towns of Israel, so where is Jesus?
Over and over, worded in many different ways, it is stressed to early Christians that the time is near (Rev. 1:3) so they should not make long-term plans (like marriage: 1 Cor. 7:29–31), not go on living in the world as if it will still be here for the rest of their lives, and to look for specific signs that they could expect to see.
A more comprehensive list of these verses can be found here. Notably, there exists a denomination (Preterism) that accepts all of this and reconciles it by concluding Jesus in fact did return within the timeframe he predicted he would, but invisibly.
Now unless you happen to be a Preterist, how do you account for all of this without concluding that Jesus himself made a false prediction? This is, notably, how Jews were instructed to identify false prophets in Deuteronomy 18:22:
“When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.”
9
In the aftermath of the Columbine massacre, you may have heard of Cassie Bernall. A fellow student, Emily Wyant, propagated a narrative to the media in which the shooters asked Cassie if she believed in God, and shot her when she said yes. A book recounting this version of events, titled “She said yes! The unlikely martyrdom of Cassie Bernall” can be found on Amazon.
Just one problem: It didn’t happen that way. Cassie was shot while hiding under a table. The only thing her killer said to commemorate that event was “peekaboo” as confirmed by the 911 recordings. Emily Wyant recanted her story more than ten years later. She and a second student named Craig had heard the exchange but not seen it, wrongly assuming the voice belonged to Cassie.
It turns out an exchange similar to the one they recall did occur, between Dylan Klebold and Valeen Schnurr. She’d dropped to her knees and was praying to God. Dylan asked if she believed in God. She said yes. He asked why. She said, “Because I believe, and because I was raised that way.” He shrugged it off and left, declining to finish her off. She was among the survivors and later confirmed this version of events.
So in fact, not only did the shooters not murder Cassie for being a Christian, they actually spared Valeen, who vocally affirmed her faith and prayed in front of them. If Dylan and Eric were the angry anti-religion maniacs the media account made them out to be, that doesn’t make sense.
But it was too late, a legend was born. A faith-promoting legend that helped a largely Christian nation find a silver lining in a tragedy…and which cast the blame onto atheists, their favorite punching bag. All the makings of an irresistible narrative, which is why Rick Santorum was repeating the myth as if it were true as recently as 2015. Bernall’s family made a bundle speaking and selling books, which they did not recall, and declined to recant the misrepresented version of events in said book.
The next school shooting to be exploited for religious points happened in my home state of Oregon, at Umpqua Community College. Nine were killed; the professor and eight students. This time, the shooter did ask his victims whether they believed in God.
This seemed to be, at long last, a vindication of the Christian martyrdom fantasy. It was breathlessly reported across numerous media outlets that the killer was an atheist who selectively killed Christians. Only once again, as the survivors got their own stories out, that turned out not to be the case.
Only two of the nine victims are known to be Christians. One is known to have been a pagan, and another agnostic. While the killer did ask victims if they believed in God, and if they believed in life after death, the killer responded “I’ll meet you there” if they said yes. That does not sound like an atheist.
Neither does the description of his beliefs found on his Facebook which says spiritual, but not religious. His manifesto was later recovered wherein he condemned black men, expressed the belief that God, Satan, Heaven, and Hell are real, and that the circumstances of his life forced him to ally himself with the “demonic hierarchy” which would reward him for his crimes in Hell.
None of this fit the desired narrative, however, so it went largely unreported. A few of the articles from 2015 have been amended with this information but many remain uncorrected to this day. Christians who readily internalized that narrative have gone on believing in it. Probably even if they saw the corrections at some point, those simply went down the memory hole.
This brings us to the sordid tale of Alex Malarkey, perhaps America’s most aptly named kid. Alex purportedly had a near-death experience on the operating table in 2003 in which he visited Heaven. The book recounting these events was published in 2010.
Just one problem: Alex Malarkey confessed in 2012 to having fabricated his story under his father’s guidance, but not before the book based on his account sold over a million copies in just five years.
Colton Burpo may as well be another Alex Malarkey, as he followed the same formula. NDE on the operating table glimpsed Heaven, his parents got rich writing a book about it in 2010 and then even richer when the movie based on the book came out in 2014. There’s still a ministry named after the book going strong to this day.
Colton differs from Alex only in that he has so far stuck to his guns. At the time of this writing, he still insists he visited Heaven. 2010 saw a spate of what are now called “Heaven tourism books” capitalizing on the popularity of the genre, and there are people who will say with a straight face that Colton’s story is true even if Alex’s isn’t. I once heard during an argument about this topic, “They can’t all be false, and if even one of them is true…!”
Interestingly Alex remains a devout Christian, and there exist numerous Christian books dissecting the claims behind these Heaven tourism books and discounting them on a Biblical basis. But that has done nothing to curtail their popularity. People love to be told what they want to hear and will pay big bucks to anybody willing to do that.
A supposed “living painting” of the Virgin of Guadalupe, reported breathlessly by viral Facebook posts as having been confirmed to possess miraculous properties by none other than NASA, is another good example of an enduringly popular faith-promoting hoax.
Said to have been inspected by NASA, who found that it constantly remained at body temperature, that the pupils expanded and contracted in response to light sources, etc. it should not come as any surprise by now that these reports were completely fraudulent. Lest any Catholics smugly wag their fingers at the Protestant fraudsters on this list, imagining there’s no similarly long, accomplished tradition of faith-promoting fraud in their own denomination. Likewise, Muslims, who have circulated the tall tale that Neil Armstrong heard the call to prayer while on the Moon, witnessed a giant Qur’an carved from lunar stone on the surface and converted to Islam thereafter. But I digress.
To claim NASA has vindicated a miracle was an audacious gamble: Extremely compelling, that a secular institution regarded as pushing the envelope of science would recognize a religious miracle. But also trivially easy to expose as a lie, given the free availability of NASA’s public statements ordered by date.
NASA’s supposed study of the artifact and subsequent statement on its authenticity was said to have happened in 1979. That is easily searchable information and would have been reported on in other publications of the day. No NASA materials to that effect from 1979 can be found, nor any reports from any media outlets at that time corroborating the claim.
The late Ron Wyatt made a long and profitable career as a Christian archaeologist, purporting to have found an extensive list of truly impressive, some would say eyebrow-raising archaeological proofs of the Bible including:
- Fences from Noah’s farm,
- Anchor Stones from Noah’s Ark,
- Noah’s Home and a Flood-inscription at that site,
- laminated Deck Timber from the Ark,
- Noah’s Altar,
- Tombs with Tombstones of Noah and his wife,
- the precise location of the Red Sea Crossing,
- Wheels from Egyptian Chariots involved in the pursuit of the Israelites from Egypt,
- the Book of the Law written by Moses on Animal Skins,
- Gold from the Golden Calf fashioned by Aaron,
- the Ark of the Covenant,
- Tables of the Ten Commandments,
- the Tabernacle’s Table of the Showbread,
- Goliath’s Sword,
- Jesus’ Tomb and the Stone Seal of the Tomb,
- a sampling of Christ’s Dried Blood, proving the doctrine of the Virgin Birth by means of a “chromosome count,” etc.
Notably, he did not at any point assent to independent genomic analysis of the purported blood sample. He has also declined to allow independent examination of the Ark of the Covenant supposedly still in the possession of his family.
Even some Christians scoff at claims this grandiose. Some in Wyatt’s own denomination even bothered to document his frauds. But there are still plenty who swear by this guy, I argued with one right here on Medium not too long ago.
At websites such as Ark Discovery and Wyatt Research, you can read about Wyatt’s career of non-stop relic discovery that would be astonishing and hard to believe even if it were a secular archaeologist finding relics unrelated to the Bible. But because he’s not a secular archaeologist and his discoveries (if real) would validate the Bible, he had no shortage of enthusiastic Christian followers, the wealthiest of whom funded his “expeditions”.
We were shown many of these faith-promoting hoaxes when I attended that fundamentalist Christian middle school, under the pretense that they were legitimate. This includes the infamous purported human footprint inside of a dinosaur footprint, supposed carvings of a stegosaur found in a decrepit Mayan temple, and the partly decomposed remains of a plesiosaur hauled up out of the sea by Japanese fishermen (in fact the remains of a basking shark).
This brings us to “Cdesign Proponentsists”. To make sense of that word salad, you have to understand the events of the Kitzmiller vs. Dover, Pennsylvania court case. The defendants, part of a movement seeking to teach ‘Intelligent Design’ alongside evolution in public school science classrooms, insisted that ID was new science and not in any way related to the religious notion of creationism.
This was a crucial point, as it is still not permitted to present religious teachings as factual in a public school setting. This constitutes the teacher promoting a particular religion to the students, some of whom may not belong to that religious tradition.
So, in order to bypass that rule, creationism received a facelift. The religious language was removed from the textbooks they hoped to use in the classroom to teach Intelligent Design. But because the textbooks were formerly ‘creation science’ textbooks, all instances of words like “creation”, “creationism”, “creationist” and so forth had to be replaced with “Intelligent Design” and “Design Proponents”.
Naturally, since the guy they got to do this was a Christian, he botched the job. Instead of “intelligent design proponents”, it came out as “design proponentsists” as a result of “design proponents” being inserted thoughtlessly into the middle of the word “creationists” by the word processor, replacing only the portion of the word he’d done a find and replace for.
Qanon arguably also belongs on this list. A political hoax that makes extensive use of religious trust language, only effective on people socialized from birth to treat extremely specific, elaborate metaphysical assumptions as if they’re common sense, self-evident reality. The state of suspended hope Qanon believers have perpetually strung along parallels the Biblical eschaton, which by design always appears imminent.
“The Storm”, an eventual glorious vindication of true believers who are rewarded for suffering all this time at the hands of a world that regarded them as madmen is also something very obviously paralleled in scriptures, with apocalypse translating to a “great unveiling”. Believers enjoy their mansions in heaven (NESARA/GESARA) and new, restored bodies (medbeds) while nonbelievers suffer eternal torment and doom (mass vaccine deaths, a wave of political executions, etc.)
These parallels have made Qanon irresistibly attractive to Christians, and not only in the US. It paints a distorted picture of reality that, if were true, would vindicate Christianity, deliver it once again to a position of privilege and authority over our society, and reveal enemies of Christianity such as Jews and liberal atheists to be literal drinkers of baby blood. Anything that, if true, would vindicate Christianity (and doom its enemies) by extent makes for an appealing proposition to Christians, in particular if it’s structured identically to something they’ve already fallen for.
I’m omitting photoshopped images of giant skeletons supposedly having belonged to the Nephilim, as I’m unsure how many Christians actually believe these images to be legitimate. But there’s no shortage of photoshopped images of signs in the sky and whatnot intended to confirm Christian beliefs, which you’ve undoubtedly seen on Facebook.
Now, do you notice any patterns in these examples? Why are faith-promoting hoaxes so common and popular in Christianity? What does it suggest to you about the 500 witnesses to the resurrection that Paul mentions but never names, and whom we never hear from? Is it not demonstrated that Christians certainly lie, and fall for lies, pretty prolifically? What motivates the authors of such hoaxes, and why don’t atheists have their own equivalent?
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The Christian God Yahweh is said to be an undetectable spirit residing in the timeless metaphysical realm outside of our material reality, inaccessible to science. However, suppose that beyond that realm is the pataphysical realm in which a yet greater "Super God" may exist, who created the metaphysical realm and those below it, along with regular God. This is supported by Christian arguments to the effect that something as marvelous and complex as human intelligence requires a creator. If so, then God’s intelligence, which far exceeds that of humans, requires a creator even moreso.
How can there be a "greater infinity"? In the same way an infinite plane exceeds an infinite line. 4D∞ > 3D∞, 5D∞ > 4D∞ and so on. If this seems illogical, know that Super God created logic and thus can break it. His ways are beyond us, and thus it is unreasonable to expect them to make sense to human minds.
If you say God already inhabits all higher dimensions, Super God inhabits yet higher ones not known to regular God. This is supported by many of the existing apologetics for God, such as Aquinas' Fourth Way. Divine hiddenness also applies to Super God, with respect to regular God, and so on. You will find all or nearly all Christian apologetics for God map neatly onto Super God, just as arguments against the existence of Super God also apply to regular God.
Now, how can God ever be sure one way or the other whether the pataphysical realm, further dimensions, and Super God, exist? He’s said to be omniscient, but how could an omniscient being ever verify their own omniscience? He might simply believe himself to be omniscient because he’s in possession of all information available in the dimensions he has access to, not knowing there are more. He may therefore seem omniscient to himself, but nevertheless remain unaware of unknown unknowns. Things he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know.
Since God can't know for sure that Super God isn’t real (and no follower of God can disprove Super God) the smart move is a variant on Pascal's Wager: God should assume he's being watched, and judged, by Super God and behave accordingly. If you hold that nonbelief in God is unreasonable for anyone who cannot disprove God's existence, then nonbelief in Super God is also unreasonable for those unable to disprove Super God's existence. This has some interesting implications:
If Super God didn't create regular God, and (like him) doesn't tolerate any Gods but himself, then Super God must've long ago destroyed regular God. In this case, unless you can disprove Super God, then regular God doesn't exist, and hasn't since infinite timeless history. (As God is said to exist outside of time, thus eternally present in the past, present and future, destruction of God in the present also deletes his existence infinitely far back into the past, thus he would never have existed from our POV.)
If Super God did create regular God and judges him for his actions as regular God judges humans, on an infinite timescale, regular God has either never met with Super God's disapproval even once, or has, and was destroyed for it (thus, as explained before, he would never have existed). In two out of these three scenarios, God is destroyed in past, present and future, thus having never existed from a human perspective. Thus, unless one can disprove Super God’s existence, is it not therefore more probable that regular God doesn’t exist, than does?