15 issues with Christianity

[Compassionist]

If you want to, you can consider my 15 issues with Christianity. It's ok if you don't want to. Thank you. I am not trying to get you to leave Christianity or cause you suffering or offend you. I respect all of the Human Rights of all humans. One of these rights is to have any religion or no religion. So, please don't feel that I am trying to make you an agnostic compassionist humanist like me.

1. Why didn't God make Adam, Eve, all the angels, all the animals and plants equally omniscient and omnipotent as Himself? If He had done that then there would have been a perfect fellowship of true equals and no suffering and no injustice as it is impossible to victimise omniscient and omnipotent beings.

2. Jesus prophesied the end of the world in the Bible but he was wrong: What the Bible says about The End of the World

3. 99.99% of all species to ever exist on Earth are already extinct because life is so harsh and unjust. Humans have also caused the extinction of some species but most were extinct long before humans evolved. How can a loving and just God make such a world? I would prefer it if there were an omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent God but I am not convinced that such a being exists given all the suffering life consists of. Please consider: Top 20 Evil Bible Stories

4. Why is God's treatment of women so unjust? What the Bible says about Women's Rights God punished Eve and all girls/women with painful childbirth. Many women and babies have suffered and died because of the narrow birth canal and all the complications caused by that. I think men made up the story to blame women who are actually the victims of biology.

5. Why is God's treatment of homosexuals so unjust? The Bible and homosexuality

6. How is predestination by God ethical? Predestination

7. I think culpability is proportional to ability, so, with omnipotence comes omniculpability . Given God's alleged omnipotence, it makes Him omniculpable for all suffering and inustice . Why isn't God being punished by God for all eternity?

8. Jesus behaves in the Bible in ways cult leaders have done. Please see: 50 reasons to be ashamed (and not a fan) of Jesus Cult leaders tend to try to get their followers to put the leader above family and friends and do whatever the leaders want.

9. The genomes of complex creatures reveal a lack of any intelligence or foresight. Your DNA consists of millions of defunct copies of parasitic DNA. The inescapable conclusion is that if life was designed, the designer was lazy, stupid and cruel. " Michael Le Page,New Scientist', vol 198 No 2652, 19 April 2008, page 26. I agree with him. What do you think?

10. I think it is impossible for any sentient being to have free will unless that sentient being is omniscient and omnipotent. Biological beings such as humans are not free from causality, they are prisoners of causality. We are the way we are because of genes, environments, nutrients and experiences. If I or Daniel or our dog or a virus had your genes, environments, nutrients and experiences, then we would be you, reading these words right where and when you are reading these words. We would be identical to you down to all your sub-atomic particles and we would have made all the choices you have made. This is true for all biological beings. All choices arise from the interaction of awareness, values and abilities. If you want to alter your or someone else's choices, all you need to do is alter your or their awareness and/or values and/or abilities. Inevitably, our awareness, values and abilities are determined by our genes, environments, nutrients and experiences. The bottom line is that all our choices are inevitable choices. Of course, we still need to lock up people who kill others, rape others, etc. - not because they are guilty, but because they pose a danger to others. Given this reality, how is it ethical for any God or Gods of any religion to punish and reward people with hell or heaven? Some may say that we are given immortal souls or spirits by God which are somehow free from causality and can make free choices which are not determined by genes, environments, nutrients and experiences. There is no evidence that such immortal souls or spirits exist and that they can make choices free from the effects of genes, environments, nutrients and experiences. Of course, I respect everyone's right to disagree with me, even though I am convinced that what I have said is true.

11. Assuming that the Bible is true (that's a huge assumption, I really don't think it can be true because of numerous contradictions and inaccuracies), how is it ethical of God to punish all humans and all other living things just because Adam and Eve disobeyed God? If the story is true, and if Adam and Eve had free will (I don't think they did), there is a partial justification for punishing Adam and Eve for their error but to punish all humans and all other living things for billions of years is totally disproportionate and completely wrong. Also, both Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, but only Eve and all human females were punished with painful childbirth and being subjugated by men. Why wasn't Adam punished equally? Of course, I am convinced that the whole story is made up by men, to blame women for things which are not their fault at all and to subjugate women.

12. It is claimed that Jesus did not have a human father. Why didn't Jesus or His followers keep some locks of his hair so we could examine his half-divine DNA for evidence which confirms the claim? Since God is both omniscient and omnipotent, He could still do it by materialising locks of hair from Jesus in genetics lab right now but He doesn't do that. Why not? I think it's because God is imaginary and the claim is false.

13. Many miracles were allegedly performed by Jesus e.g. raising the Dead. "Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." - John 14:12, The Bible (New International Version). Why don't Christians raise the dead by the billions given what Jesus said? I have prayed for the resurrection of many good people e.g. Princess Diana, John Lennon, Mohondas Gandhi, etc. but none of them was resurrected.

14. I statistically analysed prayer. No prayers for miracles were ever answered e.g. resurrection of famous good people, regrowing of amputated limbs, ending all floods, cyclones, earthquakes, etc. The prayers that were apparently answered, e.g. praying for parking space in the car park at 7 am were always answered regardless of whether I prayed to God or Zeus or Thor, etc. In fact, there were spaces in the car park 100% of the time at 7 am even when I didn't pray for space. It shows that God is either lying in the Bible or God is imaginary.

15. The Bible says that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. There is no evidence for this. Roman records don't show it. There are some contradictory stories about it in the Bible but these are just stories - not incontrovertible evidence. Tacitus and Josephus did not witness the virgin conception of Jesus, His birth, the miracles of Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus. Surely, an omniscient and omnipotent God who allegedly created everything and can resurrect the dead can prove to us that He is real and good, not imaginary or evil? There is no convincing evidence for the virgin birth, words, actions, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. All we have are contradictory stories in the Bible which were written by anonymous writers many years after the alleged events took place. The four canonical gospels, like the rest of the New Testament, were written in Greek, Mark probably c. AD 66"70, Matthew and Luke around AD 85"90, and John AD 90"110. Despite the traditional ascriptions, all four are anonymous, and none were written by eyewitnesses. Jesus was allegedly crucified and resurrected in AD 30. I think the reason the Gospels were written so many years after the alleged events is because the writers didnt want any actual witnesses to be still alive to challenge the lies being passed off as the truth. Why didn't Jesus write the Bible?

[ttruscott]

If you want to, you can consider my 15 issues with Christianity. It's ok if you don't want to. Thank you. I am not trying to get you to leave Christianity or cause you suffering or offend you. I respect all of the Human Rights of all humans. One of these rights is to have any religion or no religion. So, please don't feel that I am trying to make you an agnostic compassionist humanist like me.

1. Why didn't God make Adam, Eve, all the angels, all the animals and plants equally omniscient and omnipotent as Himself? If He had done that then there would have been a perfect fellowship of true equals and no suffering and no injustice as it is impossible to victimise omniscient and omnipotent beings.

IF HE was able to do that and it was a good thing then I suggest HE would have. Can you imagine an omnipotent creation who had not yet committed itself to GOD's perfect morality? What if Satan had been created omnipotent and then rebelled against GOD's morality?

As it is we believe HE made us able to be the next best thing, ie, able to share a full emotive and communicative telepathic bond with HIM and all others left after this reality has been cleansed from all those who did rebel and chose a different morality than HIS.

[ttruscott]

3. 99.99% of all species to ever exist on Earth are already extinct because life is so harsh and unjust. Humans have also caused the extinction of some species but most were extinct long before humans evolved. How can a loving and just God make such a world? I would prefer it if there were an omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent God but I am not convinced that such a being exists given all the suffering life consists of. Please consider:

This world was not created morally good nor perfect for life. It was made perfectly good for HIS purpose which was to be a perfect mirror for the nature of evil to show those who can repent why they must repent.

Harsh does not equal injustice nor does death and suffering...these things exist they are the natural response to the evil chosen by HIS creation. Evil is the cause of all death and suffering. Once evil is banished, then we get HIS preferred reality, the heavenly state.

[ttruscott]

4. Why is God's treatment of women so unjust?

All people suffer and all people only suffer because of their own sins. There is no group suffering due to being in the group. That being said, there does seem to be room in the nature of creation that those elect who became sinners after the Satanic rebellion by refusing to condemn the Satanic are typified by women (not saying all women are elect) while men typify those elect who refused to come away from their elect loved ones who joined the Satanic rebellion becoming evil also.

This might be the meaning of Eve accepting the serpent as her friend and mentor but Adam not sinning until after she did to stay with her, not trusting her to GOD's mercy.

[ttruscott]

5. Why is God's treatment of homosexuals so unjust?

Sex is the symbol for the perfect heavenly fellowship unity within the heavenly marriage between GOD and HIS creation. This pov is only satisfied with sex between married people so only that union is sanctified.

[ttruscott]

6. How is predestination by God ethical

GOD did not predestine our fates.

We were created ingenuously innocent with the ability to make free will decisions to BECOME either morally righteous or morally evil before the creation of the physical universe. After our society matured, HE proclaimed the gospel to all (reported in Col 1:23) and instructed us to put our faith in the Son and to love each other (1 John 2:7 with 1 John 3:11, 23)

HE promised to elect, ie, to choose, as HIS heavenly Bride, everyone who accepted HIS call to accept HIM as their GOD and who put their faith in HIS Son for salvation from all and any sin if they should ever need it. Any who thought it better to repudiate HIS claims and to reject the Son would be passed over for election to the heavenly marriage and would experience a change in their nature so they would become evil in their nature, unable to cure themselves. Thus, as eternally evil people, they could not be within the scope of the heavenly telepathic communion or it would be forever contaminated which forced their banishment to outside of our reality as inevitable.

Some chose to accept HIS deity and HIS command, and were chosen to be HIS Bride.
Some chose to reject HIS claims, putting their faith in HIM being a false god and a liar.
And some of the elect refused to accept HIS call for the judgement of the rebellious ones, becoming evil themselves and needing the judgement to be postponed until they could be brought to holy righteousness.

Life on earth was chosen as the method to sanctify those elect and cure their addiction to evil and it was their life on earth that was predestined to end with their repentance and sanctification and their being heaven ready.

So, we freely chose our own fates for good or bad and only our lives were predestined as to our end and predetermined to be the best for our sanctification in accordance with how we chose by our own free will.

[ttruscott]

7. I think culpability is proportional to ability, so, with omnipotence comes omniculpability . Given God's alleged omnipotence, it makes Him omniculpable for all suffering and inustice . Why isn't God being punished by God for all eternity?

Acts 15:18 Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world / age. says that HE knows what HE has created, HIS works, and that implies HE does not know what HE has not created.

IF HE did not create the results of our free will decisions but let us create them then HE would not know those results until we created them by choosing them.

The pagan assertion that has crept into the Church that omniscience must mean HE knows all things that can be know from eternity past to eternity future is prove wrong by the blasphemy it implies that therefore HE knew who would end in hell BEFORE HE CREATED THEM YET CREATED THEM ANYWAY! which contradicts any number of scripture verses.

Some Christians quiet their cognitive dissonance over this implication that their righteous GOD creates some just to go to hell by calling it a mystery; others go into double-think by accepting both HIS loving righteousness and HIS creating people just to go to hell as truth and others flat out reject this pagan definition of omniscience, accepting the Bible instead.

HE indeed allowed HIS creation to create evil, though HE did not know who or when but HE did not create evil...HE had no need for it whatsoever. IF every person created in HIS image had chosen to accept HIS deity and put their faith in HIS Son while loving each other THEN the heavenly marriage would have happened at that instant, enfolding everyone ever created!

But without the capability to reject joining HIM in the heavenly marriage there is no free will and neither love nor marriage can exist without their arising from our free will. Therefore to fulfill HIS purpose of the heavenly marriage HE had to give us a free will and allow the creation of evil to be possible.

[ttruscott]

8. Jesus behaves in the Bible in ways cult leaders have done. Please see: 50 reasons to be ashamed (and not a fan) of Jesus Cult leaders tend to try to get their followers to put the leader above family and friends and do whatever the leaders want.

Don't you mean that cult leaders try to act like true religious leaders but for their own good and aggrandizement rather than for our good like the true religious leader did. IF Jesus was our GOD on earth and most of the people He met were His eternal enemies, then how what you want Him to teach?

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 1 by Compassionist]

Every reason you gave in the OP is a sound and serious issue with this religion. There are also literally hundreds of more issues with this religion.

The only thing that I find difficult to understand is how so many people are so ready to defend such an obviously flawed religion. In the case of your OP the first thing they need to do is come up with 15 excuses to apologies for all the objections you've raise. And none of their apologies are compelling.

But they seem to be unable to see the weakness in these apologies. Moreover, these apologies they give are most often old worn-out apologies that have long since been shown to be extremely flawed. They don't even seem to be able to understand when their apologies are flawed. They just keep repeating the same old flawed apologies like as if continually repeating them will somehow give them some sort of merit.

There is no excuse for any supposedly all-wise God to behave as ignorantly as the God of the Bible.

And as someone had already pointed out that as an apology. No decent God would have used evolution as a means of creation. Yet, that apology only works for those who are willing to reject the truth of evolution in favor of believing in a fantasy world that does't even exist in reality.

An easy way to apologize for the God of the Bible is to simply pretend that reality isn't the way it appears to be.

But even then there's the extreme problem of why this God created evil people in the first place. There is absolutely no excuse for that. And the "Free Will" argument fails miserably.

Does their God have Free Will?

If not, he's not much of a God.

And if he has free will, then clearly free will cannot be blamed for evil. Obviously free will does not cause or require that a person choose to be evil.

So they have a religion that has no valid excuses or apologies. Yet they are clearly unable to accept this truth.

[ttruscott]

11. Assuming that the Bible is true (that's a huge assumption, I really don't think it can be true because of numerous contradictions and inaccuracies), how is it ethical of God to punish all humans and all other living things just because Adam and Eve disobeyed God?

Because I believe we all lived and sinned pre-earth in the spirit world before the creation of the physical universe, I do not believe the interpreted doctrine that we are all born sinners due to Adam's sin but rather, I accept the Scriptures that proclaim that a man is only guilty for his own sin, not his father's or anyone else's sin.

If the story is true, and if Adam and Eve had free will (I don't think they did),

No sinner can have free will because he is enslaved by the addictive power of evil which permeates his whole mind all his desires. There are a quantity of interpretations of the garden story that hint that Adam and Eve were sinners before they 'ate' the fruit.

Also, both Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, but only Eve and all human females were punished with painful childbirth and being subjugated by men. Why wasn't Adam punished equally?

The phrasing of the verse: "I will greatly multiply your sorrow AND your conception...and your childbirth will be painful.

IF Eve was the type for those elect who chose to be sinful by siding with the Satanic after they made their choice known, women might be the allegory for those elect who caused a great many of their own friends to follow them into sin, (as Adam followed Eve in the garden), and her sorrow is increased with every birth of a sinful elect that implies she led so many astray.

Their sins are not equal: Eve followed the serpent, Adam followed her. Why would the natural consequences of their sin be the same?

[Compassionist]

[Replying to post 1 by Compassionist]

1 - can God make God? I don't think that is logically possible.

2 - this always ends in opinion. What passage are you talking about?

3 - best explanation of why I am a creationist. As loving God would not use evolution.

4 - The judgement is harsh on both sexes.

5 - Sex in the Bible is a union between opposites a union between heaven and earth. As such homosexuality is a rejection of that union.

6 - Prediestination is not so cut and dry. I agree it is unethical to predestine someone to hell or heaven.

7 - God is responsible but he didn't do it. But he did clean up the mess. I think God did irrevocably change after the cross for all eternity.

8 - I think you underappreciate the prevalence of cult leaders. What I mean is that you think by saying cult leader you imply a fringe element. Also copy the leader is very common in life doesnt make the leader wrong.

9 - And yet we discover more and more junk dna has a use. Its a very debatable topic. I like the redundant junk put into an aeroplane to ensure it doesn't break down or do you call that waste?

10 - if you have no free will then why worry about your destination. Does a character in a book feel pain?

11 - We go to hell for our own sins not for A&Es.

12 - Pass.

13 - none are good according to the Bible. Did you really pray for their resurrection? What works did Jesus expect his followers to do. Bringing someone to Christ is greater than walking on water for example.

14 - Did you?

15 - How would you even trust Jesus wrote the Bible?

Thank you for your reply.

1. I am not asking God to make God, I am asking God to make His alleged creations to be equally omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent and omniculpable.

2. Please see the verses quoted in the link in my original post.

3. I am not covinced that there is a loving God.

4. Men don't have painful childbirth, women do. Not fair.

5. Homosexuality is natural. Lots of other species are bisexual and heterosexual and homosexual.

6. Good.

7. Why not prevent all suffering?

8. You didn't counter the 50 reasons to be ashamed of Jesus.

9. I still agree that The genomes of complex creatures reveal a lack of any intelligence or foresight. Your DNA consists of millions of defunct copies of parasitic DNA. The inescapable conclusion is that if life was designed, the designer was lazy, stupid and cruel.

10. A character in a book is not alive and sentient. I am alive and sentient and I feel pain. If I had free will, I would prevent all suffering.

11. I didn't ask to be created. I would have preferred it if I were never conceived. I am a prisoner of causality doomed to suffer and die. I am not a sinner. I don't have free will.

12. Why pass?

13. Yes, I prayed for the resurrection of many people.

14. Yes.

15. Jesus good have written the Bible with indelible heavenly ink on indestructible heavenly paper as proof but He didn't.