Bastards are not very well liked in the Hebrew Bible

If you are a child born outside of marriage, there are commands in the Bible forbid you to go to church. (Or perhaps to join the assembly of the people, or the leaders, depending on who is writing the commentary, and how much they are trying to soften this passage for the modern reader.)

“No one of illegitimate birth shall enter the assembly of the LORD; none of his descendants, even to the tenth generation, shall enter the assembly of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 23:2)

This sounds even nicer in the good ‘ol King James:

“A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD.” (Deuteronomy 23:2)

Why would the quality, visibility, and magnitude of supernatural miracles decrease over time?

In the era when 99% of people couldn’t read, write, and didn’t have camera-phones, we had miracles that could were undeniably supernatural, like oceans opening up to make a tunnel.

Today, when such things would be quickly instagramed, we have miracles like: getting a good job and headache relief. Why?

Why would the quality, visibility, and magnitude of supernatural miracles decrease over time?

Giza pyramids were built over two hundred years before the biblical flood purportedly happened

According to a biblical chronology by AiG, the largest and most prominent biblical creationist ministry, the global flood happened in 2348 BC. (1)

Yet, according to historians and archaeologists, Egypt has an unbroken historical lineage from two thousand years before this date of the flood. The evidence of this includes everything from excavated buildings to pottery and paintings to written records. (2)

In fact, archaeologists say the Giza pyramids were built between 2589 and 2504 BC, or two hundred years before the date of the purported global flood. (3)

According to psychologists memory is utterly unreliable

Did you know that memory is very unreliable? We often, edit, and remake our memories without realizing it.

“If I’ve learned anything from these decades of working on these problems, it’s this: just because somebody tells you something and they say it with confidence, just because they say it with lots of detail, just because they express emotion when they say it, doesn’t mean that it really happened. We can’t reliably distinguish true memories from false memories.” (Elizabeth Loftus, cognitive psychologist)

The great Bible hero Samson ended his life as a “suicide bomber.”

Samsons last great act was the destruction of a building that resulted in the death of 3,000 civilians (including women) who were members of a different religion, while they were not engaged in war, but were at a worship service.

“Now the house was full of men and women; all the lords of the Philistines were there, and on the roof there were about three thousand men and women, who looked on while Samson performed. Then Samson called to the Lord and said, “Lord God, remember me and strengthen me only this once, O God, so that with this one act of revenge I may pay back the Philistines for my two eyes.” And Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and he leaned his weight against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other.  Then Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines.” He strained with all his might; and the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So those he killed at his death were more than those he had killed during his life. (Judges 16:27-30)

The great Bible hero Samson ended his life as a “suicide bomber.”

Incidentally, to help us appreciate the number of casualties, the September 11 suicide attack also left about 3,000 civilians dead.

There are seven different version of the “Ten Commandments”

What we know as the “Ten Commandments” actually has more than 10 laws and sayings, (up to 19-25 separate commands) thus different groups of Christians have had to group these many commands into “Ten Commandments” but they have done it differently.

Here are the seven different versions that group these many commands into ten.

S: Septuagint
P: Philo
T: Jewish Talmud
A: Augustine
C: Catechism of the Catholic Church,
L: Lutherans
R: Reformed Christians

Why does God allow mental illness, doesn’t mental state affect our ability to choose obedience or faith?

Why is there mental illness (according to various theologies)?

According to traditional Christian/Jewish/Islamic belief we are placed on this earth to have a chance to accept/reject God (or to be tested if we will obey/disobey God’s laws). It’s postulated that our testing is the best explanation for our existence, our world, free will, moral laws, suffering, the universe, and every other part of the human condition. It’s all so we could accept/reject God.

Yet, there are millions of people who are born with cognitive impairments and are not at all capable of making these kinds of spiritual/moral choices. They don’t have the same mental capacity that you or I have to make moral choices.

Why would God ordain/allow the birth of so many people with such cognitive deficiencies?

The increase of biblical literacy has increased the amount of theological diversity

The more people read the Bible, the more diversity and difference of doctrine and opinion we see.

Since the Protestant Reformation, when individuals were first encouraged to read the Bible for themselves, the amount of denominations has increased exponentially, from the dozens to the thousands.

Conservative Christian pastors, who believed in the Bible, were strong defenders of southern slavery

Holding on to good doctrines doesn’t prevent one from also having despicable beliefs. As recently as 150 years ago, Christian pastors, who affirmed Protestant orthodoxy, inspiration of the Bible, deity of Jesus, substitutionary atonement on the cross, etc, also advocated slavery. Here were their reasons (1):

BIBLICAL REASONS

• Abraham, the “father of faith,” and all the patriarchs held slaves without God’s disapproval (Gen. 21:9–10).
• Canaan, Ham’s son, was made a slave to his brothers (Gen. 9:24–27).
• The Ten Commandments mention slavery twice, showing God’s implicit acceptance of it (Ex. 20:10, 17).
• Slavery was widespread throughout the Roman world, and yet Jesus never spoke against it.
• The apostle Paul specifically commanded slaves to obey their masters (Eph. 6:5–8).
• Paul returned a runaway slave, Philemon, to his master (Philem. 12).

EVANGELISTIC REASONS

• Slavery removes people from a culture that “worshipped the devil, practiced witchcraft, and sorcery” and other evils.
• Slavery brings heathens to a Christian land where they can hear the gospel. Christian masters provide religious instruction for their slaves.

SOCIAL REASONS

• Just as women are called to play a subordinate role (Eph. 5:22; 1 Tim. 2:11–15), so slaves are stationed by God in their place.
• Slavery is God’s means of protecting and providing for an inferior race (suffering the “curse of Ham” in Gen. 9:25 or even the punishment of Cain in Gen. 4:12).
• Abolition would lead to slave uprisings, bloodshed, and anarchy. Consider the mob’s “rule of terror” during the French Revolution.

POLITICAL REASONS

• Christians are to obey civil authorities, and those authorities permit and protect slavery.
• Those who support abolition are, in James H. Thornwell’s words, “atheists, socialists, communists [and] red republicans.”

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SOME BRIEF RESPONCES

FACT: Southern slavery was horrible, violent, sadomasochistic, barbaric, and utterly immoral. Southern slavers, believed all the doctrinally orthodox points modern evangelicals believe, but ALSO used the Bible to support their atrocious act of slavery

RESPONSE: Modern apologists are embarrassed by this fact, so they want to distance the Bible from Southern slavery as far as possible. So they make arguments about “difference.” They want to save face and distance themselves and their religious views as far away as possible from this slavery.

FACT 2: Certainly Greco-Roman slavery was different (Greco-Roman language, law, war, economy, infrastructure, etc was also “different”) however, it was not better. To be a Greco-Roman slave was not qualitatively better than a southern slave. Southern slavery is more known for being race-based (although arguments are made that Greco-roman slavery too was race based, see http://www.yale.edu/glc/events/race/Isaac.pdf). Yet, both types of slavery were utterly horrible for the slave.

In both (a) the slave could be raped, (b) the slave could be beat to death or tortured , (c) the slave was property not person, (d) the slave could be separated from family, children, spouse by sale, (e) the slaves children were born into eternal slavery, (f) the slave could be set free, but usually wasnt.

Bible scholars say Moses didn’t write the Torah, David didn’t write the Psalms

Today’s the vast majority of biblical scholars don’t accept the traditional tales of the authorship of many biblical texts.

“Moses did not write the Torah (The Pentateuch, that is, the first five books of the Bible); David did not write most of the Psalms; Solomon did not write the Song of Solomon or Ecclesiastes; Isaiah did not write the entire book attributed to him; Paul did not write the letter to Timothy or Titus or several others published under his name; and it is unlikely that the apostles Matthew, James, Jude, Peter and John had anything to do with the canonical books ascribed to them.” (1)

(Michael Coogan, from Harvard, one of todays most respected Old Testament scholars, editor of the Oxford Annotated Bible.)

Even many conservatives reluctantly agree on these issues, for example Eardmans Commentary on the Bible, written by 67 Christian scholars including well known conservative theologians James Dunn and Bruce Waltke, states that the authors of the Torah are unknown (2) and it was likely edited on many occasions by different people.