A Concise Case against Christianity

A CONCISE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIANITY
By Miklos Jako

MALE CHAUVINISM – I can’t believe in a religion that does not regard men and women of equal value.
Christian: But Christianity does regard them as equal. The Bible says God created both men and women in the image of God. [Gen 1:27]
That’s nice rhetoric, but the Bible also says a woman who gives birth to a male child is unclean for 7 days, whereas if it’s a female child, she is unclean for 14 days. How is that not male chauvinism?
The New Testament says, “the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man.” That is unequal value to me. [Lev 12:2-5, 1 Cor 11:3]

FALSE PROPHECIES – I think your prophecies don’t hold up.
Christian: Oh, there are hundreds of prophecies that have come true! Very specific prophecies. Like the Bethlehem prophecy. Like the Virgin Birth prophecy.
But the Bethlehem prophecy cannot be valid, because that Messiah was supposed to be a military leader. Jesus was not a military leader. And the Virgin Birth prophecy cannot be valid, because that Messiah was supposed to be a sign unto King Ahaz. Ahaz died 700 years before Jesus was even born.
Ezekiel predicted that the country of Egypt will be uninhabited for a 40-year period. That never happened. [Mic 5:2-6, Jn 7:42; Isa 7:14, Mt 1:22-23; Ezek 29:10-11]

SCIENCE – Shouldn’t a true religion not contradict science?
Christianity doesn’t contradict science. You have to understand that much of the Bible is written in symbolic language.
But even if referring to the “pillars of the earth” is symbolic language, it is incorrect symbolism. The earth is not set on a supportive structure.
And Moses cannot have gone 40 days without water, because man cannot go that long without water. And ostriches described as uncaring parents is scientifically flat wrong. These claims show your Bible was written by man, not by an omniscient deity. [1 Sam 2:8, Ex 34:28, Job 39:14-16]

HOMOSEXUALITY – I think the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality is sheer bigotry.
Liberal Christian: Jesus never said anything against homosexuality.
Oh, I think he did. He spoke out against homosexuality, very loudly, by his silence. Jesus believed in the Old Testament scripture. [Lev 18:22]

PRAYER – Jesus completely oversells the power of prayer.
Jesus promised your prayers will be answered, but sometimes the answer is no, sometimes the answer is wait. But ultimately our prayers are answered in the afterlife, in heaven.
Jesus didn’t just promise prayers will be “answered”; he promised they will be granted. He said, “Whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” And he did not qualify his words by saying “ultimately,” or make any reference to an afterlife when he spoke about prayer. [Mt 21:21-22, Mk 11:24]

JESUS – I can’t believe in Jesus because he taught seriously wrong ideas.
But Jesus is universally regarded as a great moral teacher, even by non-Christians. What was he wrong about?
He taught that belief is more important than behavior. The thief on the cross goes to heaven, after a lifetime of harming people. Yet the good atheist goes to hell, after a lifetime of helping people. I think that is a profound perversion of morality. Kindness is the prime virtue, not credulity. [Jn 3:18, Luke 23:41-43]
He thought the world would end in his generation. It did not. And it makes no sense to warn the apostles, urgently, about the world going to end 2,000 years in the future. [Mt 24:34, Mk 9:1, Mk 13:30]
He taught hell for non-believers. That’s a teaching only a religious extremist can hold. That is what I think Jesus was, a religious extremist. He constantly overstated for the sake of impact, at the expense of truth and reason. [Mk 9:43, Mt 25:46, Lk 16:24]

THEOLOGY – I think Christian theology is irrational.
But Jesus showed his profound love for us by dying for our sins, reconciling us with God.
No one can die for someone else’s sin. We are all responsible for our own behavior. As for propitiating God by a human sacrifice, Christopher Hitchens had it right: “Vicarious redemption by human sacrifice is a very primitive and horrible scapegoating idea that belongs to a barbaric period of human history.”

CONTRADICTIONS – Shouldn’t a true religion not contradict itself?
You’ll find that if you look into passages more carefully, there are really no contradictions in the Bible.
That’s not what I found. I know you have a million “could have been” scenarios to allegedly resolve contradictions. But the fact that so many of these problems exist, is not a good sign. You tell me how David can have committed “only” one sin (Bathsheba) all his life, yet have committed another one (taking a census against God’s will). You cannot “resolve” that contradiction. [1 Kg 15:5, 2 Sam 24:10]

IMMORALITIES – Your God condones deeply immoral behavior.
It may seem to be so, but when you read about the killing of the Canaanites, or about slavery, in the Bible, you have to understand the cultural context of the time.
No, I don’t. Cultural context is irrelevant. These are the specific commands of your God, who orders the Hebrews to slaughter the Canaanites, right down to the very last infant, and animal. And on slavery, he condones the owning of people as “property.” The entire edifice of Christianity falls on that one word, “property.” Human beings are not property. [1 Sam 15:3, Lev 25:44-46]

HELL – I think the doctrine of hell is an unconscionable idea.
Hell is separation from God. And God gives us free will. People put themselves in hell, by their own free-will choice.
That is a dodge. Free will is not the issue. The obscene severity of the punishment is the issue. You Christians are always quick to define hell as separation from God, in order to avoid the specific imagery that Jesus uses, of fire, flame, and furnace. That’s serious, serious pain. And it is forever. [Rev 20:10]
To believe that a God who has a hell, is a loving God, is insanity. That is a God of hatred, not love. Atheist YouTuber “Number One Son”: “All the kind and gentle words of Jesus cannot possibly compensate for the evil that is eternal punishment.”