Alpha & Omega Quoting Jesus in the bizarre book of Revelations: “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. (Revelations 22:13) Christians gleefully point to a verse in the Old Testament (Isaiah 44:6) and make claims of fulfilled prophecy and proof that Jesus is indeed God.
Using claims, directly copped from earlier claims as evidence is a glaring logical fallacy. Christians claim that only God could make such a statement, therefore this is proof that Jesus is God incarnate. These proclamations are the very essence of circular reasoning.
Baptism In all four Gospels it is stated that Jesus was baptized by John (Matthew 3:14-17). The other three Gospels echo this account. Baptism is controversial, as some religious sects claim that it is an absolute requirement for salvation (Acts 2:38).
Supposedly, baptism was for the full remittance of sins, to cleanse them away, but this raises the question of why Jesus would need this dunking. He was the supposed template for being without sin, after all. There are at least a dozen verses in the New Testament pointing to a Jesus without a blemish (1 Peter 1:19).
Of course, apologists predictably state that Jesus was obviously setting the example. Really? Then what sort of example was killing an out of season fig tree, or sending 2,000 pigs over a cliff to their death?
Crucifixion The crucifixion of Jesus has to be one of the most, if not the most important event in the Bible. For such a crucial event, there are dozens and dozens of contradictions in the Gospels as to what actually occurred during this 3-day weekend. To list even the most glaring of these inconsistencies would require a lengthy rant in itself.
From the trial with Pilate, carrying the cross to Calvary, the actual crucifixion and death, to the burial and claimed resurrection of Jesus, is seemed that no one was paying attention or writing things down. The Romans did not allow the burial of the crucified, but left them there, on their crosses, to rot, and as a warning to other criminals and Jews.
Perhaps the most colossal singular account related to the crucifixion and resurrection was the account in Matthew 27:51-53 (See Zombies). This claim of dead Saints breaking out of their graves, Thriller style, and marching into the city to appear to many is only in Matthew, and never mentioned again. This blockbuster event is not mentioned in any secular source at all. It is just a huge lie. (See: Resurrection)
Devil The Devil is also known as Satan, The Great Deceiver, The Prince of Darkness, and a lot of other unflattering names. The most important encounter that the Devil has with Jesus in the New Testament is when they meet on a high mountain and the Devil makes an offer to supposedly tempt Jesus. The Savior to be is offered ownership to all the kingdoms of the world if he would only fall to his knees and worship Satan.
Jesus, of course, refuses. Even casual analysis of this offer is laughable. Jesus, being God, and his Son, (who is also himself), already supposedly have total ownership of the universe….So, this mythical exchange is totally meaningless. (Matthew 4:8-9)
Satan is the most powerful of all of the Christian Gods, as he is assigned blame for all the evil and mishaps in the world, from The Holocaust to your missing car keys. Even a casual look at the state of this planet indicates that Satan is totally winning the battle of Evil vs. Good.
Easter According to the myth, Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead 3 days later. Like a lot of other things in this holy book, there are contradicting accounts about what happened and how long it took.
Just like Christmas Day, the Christians took the path of least resistance and latched on to a pagan holiday to call their own. And, of course, Easter conveniently falls on a Sunday, for maximum participation at houses of worship. The pagan goddesses Eostre and Ostara are responsible for Easter, celebrating the Spring Equinox and fertility, not the death and re-birth of a Jewish trouble-maker, who got nailed to a Roman torture instrument for his transgressions.
False Messiah According to the Bible itself, Jesus could not have possibly been the Messiah. The prophecy of the Old Testament and verses in the New Testament (Romans 1:3 and Acts 1:30) show an absolute requirement that the Messiah be a descendant of David. This is impossible, however, since Jesus was not sired by Joseph, but by the Holy Spirit via the Virgin Birth.
There are numerous other prophecies and requirements made in the Old Testament, really too many to list here, that Jesus clearly did not meet. It is not surprising that the Jews rejected Jesus as a false prophet, and still do to this day.
Lastly, and most importantly, Jesus made numerous promises and predictions in the New Testament that turned out to be blatantly false. Most glaring were his promises of answered prayers. In several verses, Jesus stated that prayers would not only be answered, but GRANTED. This is clearly not the case, no matter how lamely apologists try to spin it. Nothing fails like prayer. Here are the verses, and there are a lot of them. (Matthew 21:21-22, Matthew 7:7-8, Matthew 18:19-20, Mark 11:24-25, Luke 11:9-13, John 14:13-14, John 15:16, John 16:23-24)
There was also the promise of the return of Jesus from Heaven, where Jesus stated to his followers: “This generation will not pass away before I return” (Matthew 24:34). Of course, since Jesus obviously did not return at all, much less in the generation of his followers, the apologists have predictably claimed that “this generation” does not mean “this generation”, when it clearly does.
Gethsemane After the Last Supper with the 12 disciples, they all went to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus wanted to pray. What happened in this garden is critical to determining the veracity of the New Testament. Predictably, it is just a pack of lies, like The Old Testament.
Jesus supposedly took leave of his disciples and went off to pray alone. He was feeling the anguish, and in his prayers, he begged God to save him from the imminent crucifixion. When he came back, he found all of his crew sound asleep. He was subsequently betrayed, arrested, and hauled off to be tried for blasphemy and sedition.
This all sounds well and good, but there is one glaring question. If Jesus was alone in another part of the Garden, and his disciples were asleep, who recorded his prayers and words? Remember, no tape recorders or iPhones back then. There is an easy explanation for this, in that like most of the claims in the Bible, the story of Gethsemane was completely fabricated. (Matthew 26: 36-44)
Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost is part of the Trinity, which is part of the three-headed God, The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. This concept has always been controversial, bizarre and impossible to understand. Just why? For the Twice Born, you have to have faith and believe! (See: The Holy Spirit, The Trinity and the Nicene Council).
I Will Return No claimed event is more anticipated for Christians than the claimed imminent return of Jesus to conquer and reclaim the Earth. In The Rapture, all the dead Saints and the Saved will be resurrected from their graves and magic’d away to Heaven. Oh, what a glorious day this will be! (See: Rapture).
There have been hundreds of Rapture date predictions, and all have failed miserably. Christians smugly point out that the Bible states that no one knows the time or the place of the Second Coming, but the Bible also states “This generation will not pass away until his return takes place.” (Luke 21:32)
Judas The Bible is fond of scapegoats and even has parables about them in the Old Testament. (Leviticus 16:6-20) According to Christianity, Judas is not the scapegoat, but Jesus is. The whole story about Judas’s betrayal is suspect. I mean, why would the church authorities need an I.D. of such a prominent rabble-rouser as Jesus?
In reality, the “Roman cops”, which were a group of priests and church leaders, would have just pocketed the 30 pieces of silver and told Judas that if he didn’t want a second circumcision from the tip of a spear, he needed to lead them to Jesus and his buddies. This is just another fabricated story in the Bible.
Even the Judas account is contradictory. He was so riddled with guilt after the betrayal that he killed himself. One account is that he hanged himself (Matthew 27:5), but in the other version (Acts 1:18), he bought a field with his snitch money, fell down and burst open with his bowels gushing out.
King Herod The Bible claims (Matthew 2:18-18) that King Herod got word that a new King was born. Because of this, he rounded up and slaughtered all males under the age of 2. Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus fled to Egypt to avoid this inconvenience.
There is no secular account of any such event happening. Predictably, there are many apologists that claim the event happened, but claims are not evidence. Such a massacre certainly would have attracted the attention of historians, but not even Josephus, who extensively documented Herod’s life, mentioned this claimed event. Of course, later forgeries of the writings of Josephus told a different story.
Lazarus was a poor man and a good friend of Jesus. Lazarus had been dead for 4 days when Jesus got word of his passing. According to the legend, Lazarus was resurrected from the dead by the Messiah and appeared outside his tomb in his burial clothes.
There is much more to this story in the form of the Rich Man/Poor Man parable. Jesus said (Matthew 19:23-24) “That it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God”.
This utterance is one of the most controversial, contradictory and ironic concepts in the Bible. It is totally one-dimensional and flies in the face of numerous other Bible verses about requirements for entering Heaven. (See: Salvation) This conditional requirement is laughable when you consider evangelical grifters like Joel Osteen, who makes 55 million dollars a year for his preaching, book royalties, and speaking engagements.
Mary The Virgin Bride Mary, the Mother of God, the Lady of Guadalupe, The Queen of Angels, the birth mother of Jesus, and Theotokus. Mary was a virgin, is a virgin and will forever be a virgin according to the myth, as written in the New Testament of the Holy Bible. She is the only one who shared DNA with Jesus Christ, so in the Catholic Church, Mary has been elevated to a god status, virtually equal to Jesus and God himself.
The “Immaculate Conception” is a concept that Mary was conceived “without the original sin of Eve”. This is just another slam against women, but is not Biblical at all, being invented by Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century.
Poor Joseph must have really loathed Father’s Day, and wanted to divorce Mary, but God sent an Angel to talk him out of it (Matthew 1:18-24)
Nicene Council The Trinity, A.K.A. The Three-Headed-God, or The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit is still somewhat controversial even though it was adopted by the council in 325 CE. St. Nicholas (Yes, Santa) actually got into a fistfight with an African priest named Arius over this tricky and important issue.
While there is not a lot of controversy today over the divinity of Jesus as the second part of the Trinity, there has always been questions about equating the Holy Spirit with the other two gods. In my mind they are all equal, equally imaginary.
Constantine was the one who really saved Christianity from total obscurity with his battlefield hallucinations. A successful religion has to be entertaining and one that promises rewards, but a little luck doesn’t hurt either.
Only The Elect There are around 4200 religions in the world today and within the major ones, there are divisions, sects and cults that interpret scripture differently. One concept is predestination, Election or Calvinism, that states that since God is omniscient, then he has determined and has known, since the beginning of time, who will be going to Heaven.
In one annoying cult, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, it is firmly believed that only 144,000 of the faithful from the Pentecost of 33 A.D. till the present day, will be going to Heaven. So why in the Hell are these monkeys recruiting? There are currently around 8.7 MILLION JW worldwide. This means that by their own criteria, only around 1.5% of their members will make the cut. That’s quite an exclusive and snotty club, and not to mention…What happens to the rest of us?
Paul Formerly known as Saul, the dude who “saw the light” on the road to Damascus. Other than Jesus, Paul is the most important character in the New Testament as he was the founder of Christianity.
Paul did not worship a physical Jesus and never mentioned visiting holy places like Calvary or Gethsemane. It was only later that Christians added the physical Jesus, with attributes borrowed from earlier mythologies, to make the fledgling religion more interesting for new converts.
In addition to founding Christianity, Paul was a notorious misogynist and his writings are responsible for a lot of the present-day relegation of women to second class citizens in the churches. Paul clearly loathed women, and spoke of a sin, a horrible sin of his that he never would reveal. I have no solid evidence, but it is conjectured that Paul was deep in the closet sexually.
Questions? I’m sure by now that there are no questions about all of the claims and promises made in both Testaments. We have endured magical gardens, talking snakes, men living to be 900 years old, a global flood, Jonah surviving in a giant fish’s belly for 3 days, a talking donkey, the Earth ceasing to rotate on its axis for 24 hours, the impregnation of a human woman without the benefit of human male spermatozoa, walking on water, water changed into wine, dead men walking, and we have yet to get to the best part of this crazy, wacky book. (See: Revelations)
Revelations This is without question the most disturbing and deranged book in the Bible. If Ezekiel in the Old Testament was on pot to help him savor his dung bread, John, the author of this book, was on acid and mushrooms.
Not much is written about Heaven in the Bible, but John’s description is not conducive to some place you would want to go. He describes God on his throne where there is lightning and thunder, and the throne is surrounded by four living creatures, covered in eyes. They are continuously chanting “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was…and is…and is to come.” (Revelations 4:2-8). Creepy enough? Just wait, it gets worse, much worse.
Jesus is described as a dead lamb with 7 horns and 7 eyes, who pulls the seals off of scrolls held by God. These seals release calamities on Earth in the form of hail, mixed with fire and blood. Angels from Heaven kill thousands with giant sickles, and every soldier of the False Prophet is killed in Armageddon by a sword-wielding creature named “Word”, and their flesh eaten by birds. (Revelations 4: & 19:)
Had enough? I have. Just bollocks on this crazed nonsense that is the final book of the oh so Holy Bible.
Salvation My favorite question to ask Christians is “Why do I need to be saved?”. This question is impossible to answer adequately without invoking the threat of Hell. Those that attempt to answer this question have to deflect from Hell and give you an answer of why they need you to be saved, not what is in it for me. This is because they need to recruit new members for their cult.
The Bible is clear to me about what is required for this so-called salvation (Acts 16:31), but among various sects and cults, the answer is not so clear. Some say that you must believe in God, believe that Jesus is the son of God, and believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, and was resurrected. Others state that baptism, specifically immersion is required for salvation. Does this sound familiar?
The Salad Bar Christian picks and chooses which Bible verses he or she wants to embrace and enforce. Coincidentally, these verses almost always coincide with the Salad Bar Christian’s own personal, cultural, geographical or philosophical beliefs. Eating shrimp, having tattoos, getting divorced, masturbating and wearing dacron/wool are all practices that are equally forbidden in the Bible.
Ultimately and realistically, Salvation is not a choice given to you by Free Will. It is coercion, a threat of Believe or Else!
Thomas Most of the Disciples in the New Testament were pedestrian ass-kissers and Yes Men, but Thomas was a guy that I could respect. Barely mentioned in the Bible, Thomas was left in obscurity and eventually shot and killed by some near-sighted aristocrat who was practicing his archery on peacocks. No, I can’t make this up. Anyway, Thomas thought that Jesus was a fake and so do I, so he’s at the top of my list of unsung Biblical heroes.
Unitarian Church The Unitarian Church originally flourished in Europe and in its doctrine held that the Bible was the word of God and that Jesus Christ was his only begotten son. This is pretty standard fare for Christianity today. The Bible mentions Unitarianism in (Corinthians 8:6).
The modern-day Unitarians do not hold the scripture as the ultimate truth, but rely on history, human understanding and practicality for guidance. Unitarianism is not Christianity Lite, but more like Christianity Light.
Virgin (See Mary the Virgin Bride)
What would Jesus (really) do? Like Moses in the Old Testament, Jesus is the star of the New Testament. Unlike the unhinged and violent God of the Old Testament, Christians like to characterize Jesus as being gentle, meek and full of love. The actual reading of the Bible does not always support these attributes.
Jesus advocated the destruction of families, and actually instructs parents to abandon their children and follow him instead! (Mark 19:29). The Savior unbelievably criticizes the Pharisees for not killing disobedient children! (Matthew 15:4-7)
He also actually stated that he did not come to bring peace to the world, but a sword. (Matthew 10:34)
Xtianity X is the Greek letter for “Chi”, The Christ, or the Cross. Many Christians are offended by this word, and especially by the abbreviation of Xmas for Christmas, claiming an evil atheist conspiracy to take Christ out of Christmas. Xtians, pick your battles, please.
YHWH The term Yahweh does not appear anywhere in the New Testament. The New Testament was written in Greek, and the word in Greek is “Theos”. Jesus did not speak Greek in the Bible, but spoke in Aramaic. The word for God in Aramaic is “Abba”. Now you know.
Zombies
A search via Google or Bing about zombies in the Bible brings predictable results. All of the religiously impaired sites give a resounding “NO” when asked about them, with all the usual lame apologist excuses. You know, “It says THAT, but it really means THIS”. Oh, those poor, benighted Christians! They are stuck with a load of codswallop in their holy writ, are they not? Also, the apologists have the ironic gall to characterize zombie references as MYTHS!
In the Bible there are legends, myths, inconsistencies galore and then there are eye-bugging whoppers that defy any sort of reality. One of the greatest of the great lies appears in (Matthew 27:51-53). This gut-bursting hilarity occurs only in Matthew, and not in the other 3 Gospels, or certainly not in any secular account. Here are the verses:
51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.
Just, WoW! After verse 53 there is not a peep in the New Testament about these zombies. Who are these “many” that they appeared to? How many brains did they eat? Where did they go after the appearance? Heaven? Back into the graves? Disneyworld? The Bible doesn’t say a word about it.
The apologetics regarding these verses is just downright pitiful! They say things like “Well, we don’t have any secular reports to support these zombies, but we don’t have any discounting it either”. Really! That is not how things work. We don’t have any reports discounting 9-headed Ice Monsters that live on the dark side of the former planet Pluto either. Does this mean by default that they might exist?
These verses in Matthew alone should disqualify the Holy Bible as being any sort of reliable source for anything.
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