Questions for Christians

We all know that nothing clouds our judgement more than emotions, and Christianity is often viewed as an emotionally intense relationship. Christians are told stories of how they are all guilty and how much God still loves them, much like a verbally abusive boyfriend conning his “undeserving” victim into believing she is fortunate for his acceptance and “love”. Even the smaller churches also rile the crowd up through rock shows, theater, and overly charismatic spokesmen preaching similar stories.

If you were to discard the theatrics, put aside emotions, and take a deep breath do you think the stories would remain convincing or compelling on their own?

Many don’t question if Christianity is true because so many people believe it is. But most people think dogs are colorblind, that bats are blind, and that cow tipping is a thing. We are just so custom to hearing these myths we assume they true even though dogs are not color blind, bats have better vision than humans, and cows don’t sleep standing up.

And while in some areas it seems most people believe in Christianity it is not actually the majority view. Only 33% of the world believes in it, and that number keeps dropping. Even in that group everyone is divided on what they believe is true or not. Christianity is also split up into a countless number of sects who disagree with each other about what parts are supposed to be real.

If you honestly believe that people don’t cease to exist when they die, but rather just relocate to a new place. And if you also honestly believe the person is being sent to Heaven, shouldn’t you be ecstatic and happy for them? Should you celebrate their reward instead of mourning?

Do you think about each claim in the Bible critically like you would with any other claim? Would you accept your arguments in defense of Christianity if they were applied to any other topic or religion?

For example, some believe that Christianity is true because people have died for the faith, as people wouldn’t be willing to die for a lie. However people have also killed themselves for the UFO religion Heaven’s Gate. Does that mean there really was a spacecraft trailing the comet Hale-Bopp? Obviously not. Just because people are willing to die for a claim does not mean that the claim is true. It just means that they think it is true.

Many Christians excitedly say “Jesus loves you”, but Jesus is said to love everyone. There is nothing significant about being loved by Jesus. Just like a movie review by a critic who gives 5 out of 5 stars to every film, no matter how horrible, Jesus’ love is meaningless.

Love is meaningful because it is something that one has to earn. Jesus just loves people because they are people, with no regard to who they are as an individual. Imagine getting a Valentines card that, instead of saying I love you, said “I love everyone.”

Christianity focuses on the importance of believing in God, but belief is not a choice. A person cannot honestly choose to believe in the existence of God any more than they can choose to believe in the existence of Bigfoot, Santa Clause, or fairies. An honest person can only believe in the existence of something if they are presented with convincing evidence for its existence, that outweighs any evidence against its existence. And obviously you can’t choose to support or follow something until after you honestly believe it even exists.

The question is not why does God allow pain & suffering but rather why did God invent physical pain & suffering in the first place? If God created us then he specifically created us with thousands of receptor cells causing us to feel physical pain.

The actual reason we feel pain is because it’s a warning system evolved from primitive organisms with brains that could only react to primitive warnings. When a worm runs into the tip of a nail, pain will prevent it from continuing its course into the nail. If we were however designed by God there would be no need for a primitive warning system, like pain, in humans who have brains that can respond to more sophisticated signals. This would be like a car manufacture designing a car that jabs a fork into your face to warn you when you’re low on gas, instead of simply using a warning light.

According to Isaiah 45:7 God created evil, which is redundant since the Bible says he is the creator of everything. Even if you insist that Satan created evil, God still knowingly created something that would cause evil.

If faith is your reason for saying something is true then ask yourself why? Faith is only relied on, or even needed, when no evidence exists for something. Claiming that something is true because of faith is in fact the same as claiming that something is true because you want it to be true. Faith is not a reason to believe in something, it is the lack of reason to believe in something. Faith is simply an excuse to avoid giving a reason.

Some argue that God cannot intervene to stop harm to others because it would interfere with a person’s free will. Stopping a murder from murdering a little girl will prevent the murder from utilizing his free will, but what about the little girl’s free will? Isn’t allowing a person to murder her preventing the girl from utilizing her free will? Besides, do you honestly think police officers should no longer intervene to prevent crime because doing so will take away a person’s free will?

In the Bible Jesus only pretended to die, then actually got rewarded for your sins. Jesus actually never died in the Bible, especially not for anyone’s sins. He lived after the crucifixion, rather than dying he was simply made alive in spirit form, which is a supposed upgrade from his flesh & bodily form. (1 Peter 3:18-19)

Death is when one ceases to exist, Jesus never sacrificed his existence. If you wish to call Jesus’ spiritual transition “death” then death would be considered a good thing, a reward, not a sacrifice. He was also rewarded with literal Heaven.

If one seriously believed that everyone, who doesn’t agree with their claims of salvation, would suffer an eternity of torment then morally they wouldn’t “agree to disagree.” That is, assuming the Christian in question has a shred of morality. Any Christian who takes Christianity seriously would spend every available moment in discussion with non-Christians for sake of saving others from eternal torment. Especially if they seriously thought their moments in this life were just a blink in an eternal life.

But this is not the case, virtually all Christians take such a serious claim in an overly casual manner.