Careful Bible Study Shows It’s Not a Divinely Inspired Book

If it is, god must have had a lot of really bad days
 

Especially among evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, this remains a deeply cherished claim: that the Bible is true and trustworthy because it was dictated by god. In Caravaggio’s 1602 painting, an angel directs the hand of Matthew as he writes his gospel. But even the most pious conservative Christians must have their doubts when they come across Bible verses that are alarming, cruel, barbaric. Clergy and theologians—who have perfected the art of making excuses—try to rush to the rescue. Careful Bible study by the curious faithful is probably their biggest fear.

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"How to Become a non-Christian" by James Aames is a Brilliantly Conceived Book!

I met James Aames at the 2025 American Atheists National Convention where I learned of his book. I wish I had thought of such a thing. In it Aames takes believers through the fears they might have--whether real or imagined--that keep them away from rejecting their religious faith. It has 301 pages of good advice using an extremely good approach! It's brilliant! He's allowed me to share the last section in his book, below. Go get it at Amazon! 

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An Honest Sermon about the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 5

More episodes of pious superstition to boost holy hero Jesus

It would seem that one of the primary goals of the author of Mark was to promote the idea that Jesus was a superior being from the spiritual realm. Indeed the Christian church would eventually claim that Jesus is a part of god himself, that is, he is one of the persons in the Holy Trinity. And Mark told stories to make this seem vividly real—stories that are clearly rooted in ancient superstitions. 
 
For people with the least grasp of how the world works—even devout Christians—Mark 5:1-20 has to be an embarrassment. It is a patch of scripture they can do without, because it’s just too deeply rooted in beliefs that can no longer be defended.

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Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives

The devout don’t seem to notice or care

In my article here last week I mentioned the Catholic sacrament known as the Eucharist, in which the wafer and wine—through the miracle of transubstantiation—actually become the body and blood of Jesus. So the church claims, based on really creepy Jesus-script in John 6:53-58. We’re dealing here with magical thinking, that is, the body and blood become magic potions that guarantee eternal life. Holy Water, which supposedly has healing power because it has been blessed by a priest, also reflects magical thinking. Hence baptism also falls into this category: the sprinkling of blessed water on an infant while reciting sacred words, protects the child’s soul. In 1981, following the assassination attempt on Pope John-Paul II, the pope had one of the bullets added to the crown of the Virgin Mary at Fatima. He was sure that Mary, Queen of Heaven, had diverted the bullet to miss an artery. This is crazy, illogical magical thinking: why didn’t the Heavenly Queen Mary divert the bullet to miss the pope altogether?

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On Quoting The Consensus In Order to Support the Consensus

David Pallmann is a young interesting evangelical Christian apologist who is willing to question beliefs based merely on the consensus of scholars. Given that on Facebook he shared a picture of the three big conservative apologists, Gary Habermas, Michael Licona, and William Lane Craig [on the left], I take it he's aiming for them:

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"In any field of research, but especially in biblical studies, be very careful about uncritically accepting something as true just because it is widely assumed to be true within that discipline. Unjustified ideas can become cemented within scholarship and then reinforced by peer pressure within subsequent generations of scholars. What I've found is that many of the individuals within various fields accept the consensus uncritically. When called upon to defend the consensus, they will often just refer back to the consensus to support the consensus. Either that, or they will list some stock arguments for the conclusions of the consensus. But when asked to defend those arguments against criticisms, it often becomes clear that they are incapable of doing so.

This is one of the main reasons why I dislike the modern fad, with which so many Christian apologists are infatuated, where one stresses that their arguments for, say, the resurrection of Jesus, are based upon scholarly consensus. The assumption seems to be that if the arguments are based upon scholarly consensus, then there must be good evidence for the premises. But that's simply a bad assumption. Scholarly consensus is frequency based upon the flimsiest and most vapid reasoning I've ever seen. What's more, scholarly consensus is generally not terribly friendly to Christianity. For this reason (and many more) Christian apologists would do better to challenge the scholarly consensus, when appropriate, rather than constantly cozying up to it."

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I couldn't have said it better. Now let's see some consistency. The whole history of Christianity is basically quoting from one theologian to another, to another, based on theological consensus.  

“He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” Is Fantasy Theobabble

It’s the religious version of “Always look on the bright side of life”

Once god-is-good, god-is-great has been locked into religious human brains, it can be difficult to grasp the world as it actually is: that is, so much suffering and pain are overlooked or minimized. When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed 225,000 people, a Muslim cleric knew that his god was upholding moral standards: he claimed that European tourists wearing bikinis had prompted his deity to exact revenge. How does this square with the boast that “He’s got the whole world in his hands”? –which is meant to be an affirmation of god’s love. Well, it doesn’t, of course. In recent days we have seen horrendous devastation caused by the powerful earthquake that hit Thailand and Burma. The level of human suffering is staggering. The death toll will be in the thousands, and reconstruction will take years. Was god getting even for something here? No doubt clerics will try to put the best possible spin on this tragedy, to get their god off the hook.

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With So Many Flat Tires, How Does Christianity Keep On Going?

Apologists specialize in claiming the tires aren’t flat at all

I can think of at least six Christian tires that have been totally, permanently destroyed. They will be flat forever.  
 
(1)  God is good, loving, and all powerful. Horrendous human and animal suffering—ongoing for millennia—provide abundant evidence that this claim is feeble, indeed ridiculous.
 
(2)  The resurrection of Jesus, that is, god raised Jesus from the dead, thereby rescuing humans—those who believe in it—from eternal punishment. Yet the accounts of Easter morning in the gospels are contradictory and confusing. There are no reports of anyone actually seeing the resurrection happen.
 
(3)  We can be guided and inspired by the god portrayed in the Bible. Anyone who has read the Bible cover-to-cover can see that his claim is baseless. The god described in both the Old and New Testaments is cruel, bad-tempered, vindictive. Apologists deflect attention from this painful truth by quoting feel-good texts…and most churchgoers are none the wiser.

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Christianity and Morality Don’t Work Very Well Together

David Eller, PhD explains why

In earlier articles I’ve mentioned this confession by a devout elderly Catholic—she told it to me herself—but it’s always worth repeating: “Our priests told us never to think about what we had learned in catechism.”  It came to mind when I saw a meme on Facebook this week: 
 
“Want to join me in church next Sunday?”
“Sorry, I’m an atheist. I can’t pretend to have faith in such a misogynistic, homophobic, fear-inducing system.” 
“I don’t want to think about that.”
“That’s why it works.”
 
There is a major disinclination on the part of devout churchgoers to think about the current state of Christianity, the immoral behavior of the church over so many centuries, and the logical fallacies preached from the pulpit.

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A Tiresome Blend of Cult Bragging and Bad Theology

An honest sermon about the gospel of Mark: Chapter 2

Mark 2:1-12 provides a good case study of several things that are wrong with the Bible, despite the fact that the event depicted here ranks as a favorite tale about Jesus. In fact, I fondly remember this story when I heard it as a kid in Sunday school. Jesus is teaching in a house packed with people—so crowded at the door that four fellows carrying a paralyzed man on a stretcher couldn’t get in. They had to make a hole in the roof, so that they could lower the guy in front to Jesus.

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“Faith in God or Gods Is Unjustified, Harmful, and Dangerous”

And calling atheism a faith is lame

This meme popped up on my Facebook feed recently: “When a man creates a god, he can tell you all about him, what he likes and dislikes. That’s how imagination-gods work.” This describes a practice that has gone on for millennia: Humans have indulged in creating, imagining, and describing gods in detail—many thousands of them. The writers of the Bible were committed to this practice, but they disagreed far too much about Bible-god. Hence clergy, theologians and apologists have devoted so much time and energy to diverting attention from the contradictions, making excuses for them, and minimizing the bad consequences. All in the interest of keeping their particular versions of Christianity intact.

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Honest Sermons about the Gospel of Mark: Chapter 1

The clergy know that honesty about the Bible is risky

I was a preacher for nine years, so I do know a thing or two about sermons. And from my perspective now, I will offer my opinion on how honest sermons differ from those intended to keep the folks in the pews believing that Jesus was everything the church has claimed he was. An honest sermon requires that listeners be genuinely curious, and allow themselves to think critically. Preachers, who earn their livings promoting the faith, would prefer that their parishioners trust and accept their interpretations. Please don’t ask questions!

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It Should Be Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Loftus

 

As others have said as well

Carl Sagan once said, “I don’t want to believe, I want to know.” I have encountered so many churchgoers who are satisfied with belief—and they trust that their clergy have taught them correct beliefs. There appears to be so little curiosity about Christian origins, about the complex ancient thought world in which their faith arose. Nor is there much curiosity about how the gospels came to be, and how much they are burdened with flaws, contradictions, and laughable impossibilities. The drama, ceremony, music, and ritual of weekly (or even more often) worship are enough to sustain devotion and commitment. They are happy with believing, not knowing.

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It’s Not Hard to Figure Out What’s Wrong with Christianity

Study, research, and critical thinking are the key

A long time ago I heard it said of someone, “He’s got a mind like concrete: all mixed up and firmly set.” Perhaps the reference was to a fundamentalist, and it certainly applies. In my article here last week, I discussed Janice Slebie’s book, Divorcing Religion: A Memoir and Survival Handbook. She describes the rigid mindset that she was raised to accept and was expected to obey without question. It took a lot of anguish and family crises for her to realize that she had been severely brainwashed. She made her escape, and has devoted her career to helping others who have experienced religious trauma. Selbie’s book is a welcome addition to the publishing boom by atheist/secular/humanist authors in the last two or three decades. The horror of 9/11, a religiously motivated terrorist attack, was a powerful motivator for non-believers to finally step forward to say, “Enough is Enough!”

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A Traumatic, Dramatic Escape from Fundamentalism

Constant reminders of the damage done by religion

“Please don’t ask me, expect me, to think about it.” Whenever a religion has succeeded in embedding this attitude in the minds of its followers, it has a better chance of enduring and thriving. But humanity is not better off because the refusal to think remains a common response to reality. How many people have done enough study and research to grasp our place in the Cosmos? To understand why evolution is true, and how it works? To know why vaccines play a vital role in combatting disease? To realize why ongoing horrendous suffering—ongoing for thousands of years—destroys the idea that a powerful god so loves the world?

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The New Testament: Brought to You by Writers with Creative, Delusional Imaginations

Champions of theology, not history and fact

I have this fantasy: that (1) suddenly all devout churchgoers will become obsessed with studying the Bible, especially the New Testament, and that (2) they will also be gifted with critical thinking skills. Of course, this would be a nightmare for the clergy, who don’t want to be pestered with hard questions about so much in the Bible: “How does this possibly make sense?” “Why would Jesus have said such a thing?” “Is this really what our god is like?” For centuries, the clergy have promoted an idealized version of Jesus and his god, based on carefully chosen feel-good verses. All that would come to an end if the laity took Bible study seriously, and really applied their minds. So much really bad stuff is in full view.

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The Oblivious Devout Keep Christianity Chugging Along

But its god, like thousands of others, will end up on the scrapheap of history

Many years ago I was the pastor of a small church in a small town in Massachusetts. I did the baptisms, marriages, and funerals. When a middle-aged woman in the congregation died, I officiated at the funeral, then at the burial. It was a beautiful day, sunny with a scattering of clouds. I so vividly recall that a sister of the deceased proclaimed, “She’s up there already, pushing the clouds around.” I was struck by the naivete of this comment. Was she just joking? I don’t think so. Here was a woman who apparently accepted the concept of the cosmos embodied in the Bible: we’re down here, and god is up there—somewhere—on his throne above the clouds. And because of this close proximity, the Christian god can keep a close watch on everyone and everything. He knows how many hairs are on our heads, he monitors all of the words we utter, and even knows what every human is thinking (how else would prayer work?) There are Bible verses to back up all of these ideas about god. 
 
But human discoveries about the cosmos have moved us far beyond these naivetes.

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Breaking the Grip of Indoctrination

Brainwashing is a disaster  

It is a common feature of religions that their devout followers are confident that they’ve “got it right.” Because, of course, their leaders have convinced them that they are exclusive custodians of the truth, and there are severe penalties for disagreeing or disbelieving. Since there have been thousands of religions making such claims, we can be sure they’re all pretense and nonsense. On occasion over the years, I have asked a few devout Christian friends to read/critique various chapters of the books I’ve written: I genuinely wanted their perspectives. But they usually refused, because they didn’t want to read anything that might put their faith in jeopardy (which was a big clue that they have major doubts that they don’t want to think about). One Catholic woman did agree to read one of my chapters on the gospels. Her primary reaction was shock: she didn’t know that Jesus was expected to come back. Another was angry to learn that there is Jesus-script demanding hatred of family—and even life itself—for anyone who wants to be his disciple. Several Catholics have told me they were not encouraged to read the Bible, so I was hardly surprised.

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The High Vulnerability of Christian Belief

Why do its faithful followers fail to notice?

How many Southern Baptists drive by Catholic Churches on the way their own churches? And vice versa? Does it never cross their minds that there are major differences in their versions of Christianity? They can’t both be right. Yet these believers trust the priests and ministers who have taught them since their earliest years. When we broaden the perspective, it’s obvious that the problem becomes more extreme: there have been thousands of different religions—and all of them teach as absolute truths their own ideas about god(s). Religions push the importance of taking it all on faith. “Please don’t think about it: you must trust that your priest or minister has a firm grasp of the absolute truth.”

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Why Religion Is Being Held Strictly, Bluntly Accountable

Critical thinking skills have kicked in 

There is perhaps nothing more stunning, more shocking, than clergy who have realized that their religion is false—and decided to tell this truth to the world. There’s the famous cartoon by John Billette depicting a priest getting into costume for worship, and confiding to his assistant: “Every Sunday I’m tempted to tell the congregation that it’s all bullshit, but I’m in too deep now.” John W. Loftus, Dan Barker, and Tim Sledge come to mind: clergy who were in really deep, and found the courage to describe their realization that the Christian religion has far too many flaws. It just doesn’t make sense, and cannot be taken seriously. The three ex-clergy just mentioned have written many books about the shortcoming of their abandoned faiths, but there are others who have published their stories, e.g., Jerry Dewitt, John Compere, Drew Bekius, Kenneth Daniels, Bob Ripley, David Ramsey.  

I describe my own loss of faith in an article I published here last May, How Christianity Disintegrated Right in Front of Me.

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Beware Furious Christians on the Warpath to Defend Their Faith

Christian love shatters into denial, rage and hate

By the time my first book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief, was published in 2016, its Facebook page was up and running. I decided to do paid boosts on weekends to promote the book. I selected my preferred target audiences carefully: atheist, agnostic, humanist, secularist— but was surprised to find out that the boost had also appeared on the newsfeeds of devout Christians. This was not a happy event: there was an outbreak of Christian hate as they responded to the ad. I was called all sorts of names and was accused of never having been a real Christian. I was assured that I was going to hell. After a while I discontinued the paid boosts. The biggest irritant, actually, was that not one—not a single one—of the furious Christians chose to engage in any of the ten issues I raised in the book, any one of which is enough to falsify the faith. They were interested in lashing out, not learning.

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