2-Minute Christianity

40 Historians Reject the Bible Story: And All Other Supernatural Claims, Too.

Christian apologists will tick off reasons why the gospel story is well evidenced, but historians reject the supernatural. Supernatural tales grew around the great figures of history such as Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. Strip away those tales, as historians do, and we have the biographies of those great figures from history. But strip away the supernatural from Jesus; and you have just an ordinary man.

41 Who Wrote the Gospels? Probably Not Who You Thought.

How do we know that Mark wrote the gospel of Mark? Follow the thread of that claim through history: from decades of oral history to Papias the historian through copyists to Eusebius (another historian) through more copyists to a translation in the ancient language of Syriac written centuries after Jesus. The gospels are often said to have been written by eyewitnesses, but this falls apart—not only for Mark but for the others, too.

42 The Combat Myth: Yahweh and the Gods Who Preceded Him.

The Combat Myth is a tale of order vs. chaos common to many religions of the Ancient Near East. Each story begins with a chaotic threat. No champion among the council of the gods is willing to fight, but an upstart god accepts the challenge, wins, and becomes the new head of the council. The Bible is a product of the Ancient Near East, and we find fragments of this myth here as well.

43 The Crucifixion: The Greatest Story Ever Told Needs Another Draft.

The story of human sacrifice works as Bronze Age morality, but it doesn’t translate well. The gospel imagines both a profound sacrifice and a miraculous resurrection, but you can’t have both. If there’s a resurrection, then it wasn’t much of a sacrifice, and if it is to remain a sacrifice, then you can’t have a resurrection. Anyway, why the sacrifice? If humans need forgiveness, God could just ... forgive. That’s how we do it, and indeed God forgives several times in the Bible.

44 Finding Jesus Through Board Games: Christianity Makes No Sense.

Let’s imagine a chess variant called Superchess. The pieces move the same way, but the object is different: you win when you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior. But this game makes no sense because the game’s motivations—controlling territory and capturing pieces—have nothing to do with the object. The same is true for the game of Christianity. In a world with myriad good and bad things and countless motivations, we’re told that the object is to accept Jesus.

45 Jesus on Trial: Scientist Thinking vs. Lawyer Thinking.

The job of a defense lawyer is to present the strongest possible case, regardless of the defendant’s guilt. There is no give and take with the other side, the two sides are adversaries. This biased approach is an easy one to fall into—and this how many believers think—but the scientist’s approach is much better, openness to new ideas and a commitment to follow the evidence where it leads.

46 God’s Kryptonite: The Almighty Has Weaknesses, Too

The Bible documents the evolution of God from humble beginnings. In one battle, Israel and its allies were defeated when the enemy king sacrificed his son to his god Chemosh. In another, they lost because the enemy had iron chariots. God eventually became omnipotent, but that wasn’t true in his earlier days.

47 Christianity’s Big Promises: An Unbroken Record of Failure

Not one scientific truth was uncovered first in the Bible. Not one disease was eliminated or limb restored thanks to Christianity. Not one Bible prophecy has been fulfilled (as judged by as non-Christian). The Bible has supernatural claims, but that just puts it in the same bin as all the other religions.

48 Religion Reflects Culture: You’d Be Muslim if You Were Born in Pakistan

Ten countries are 99% Muslim. When a baby is born in one of those countries, what’s the likelihood that it will grow up to be Muslim? Similarly ,American Christians almost surely didn’t choose their beliefs after careful study but adopted them from their culture. Religion is a cultural trait, not an interpretation of the truth.

49 Religions Continue to Diverge: What Does that Tell Us?

Imagine that humanity’s thousands of religions were converging on a single supernatural worldview. What would that look like? It would look very different from the cacophony of religions today. Christianity alone has 45,000 denominations, increasing by two every day, and we find the same fertility in other religions. That variety is best explained if religions are manmade.