• Is the bible really the word of God? How do you know for sure?
• Is the bible perfect, or does it contain mistakes, obscenity and alterations?
• Who wrote the bible, and when? How do we really know?
• Does God ever command people to kill children?
• Does the bible say something in one place, and the opposite in another place?
• Does the bible say that people are condemned to hell just for what they think?
• Does the bible say that you should kill people who think differently than you?
• How do you really know that Jesus ever lived?
• If Jesus did live, how do you know he wasn't just an ordinary man?
• Was America really founded on the Christian religion?
• Does the bible specifically forbid abortion, or doesn't it?
• How certain are you that God doesn't exist only in your imagination?
• Aren't your beliefs about religion simply how you wish the world really was?
  

My Message:
It's okay if you don't believe in a god or the bible!
You are not alone.
It's okay to admit that it's stupid!
You have the right to express your honest thoughts.
Be honest and speak up!
You don't have to go along with the crowd.
You don't have to pretend to believe in silly fairy tales and an invisible man in the sky! Those thoughts are delusional, and it's okay that we admit that.

FACT: The bible was not handed down to us through the ages as a whole, perfect and congruous body of text.

Ordinary men decided which books would make up the bible and which should be trashed-- by voting, at Laodicea in 365: a few books were included that would later be omitted, and the Book of Revelation was rejected. Revelation made it in at the Council of Carthage in 397, but the Book of Lammentations was out. Things were still being argued as late as 629. Protestants did not decide on which books should be in their bibles until 1647, at Westminster. Do you seriously call that "holy"? REF

FACT: Since its inception, Christianity has waged a campaign of intimidation, confiscation, torture and murder in order to silence contrary opinions.

This (and Constantine making Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire) is one of the reasons why the Church has held on to to the position of power for two thousand years-- not because it's true. It isn't true. REF

FACT: Church fathers (and the bible itself) say that its okay to lie in order to increase the power of the Church.

That would be Bishops Eusebius, Heliodorous and Synesius-- and Paul in Romans 3:17. Parts of the bible were altered or forged. REF

FACT: The bible is not a revelation to Humankind. Revelation is limited to the first person only, to whom the revelation was made.

If someone writes a book about what he claims was a revelation to him, it is only secondhand hearsay to the rest of us. We have to take his word for it. REF

FACT: There were many historians living during the time of Jesus-- but none of them mentioned him, his miracles or the any of the unique events in the gospels.

That's right-- not one. Nothing was written about Jesus during his alleged lifetime or shortly thereafter. The gospels were written 40 to 100 years after the time of the crucifixion by people who wanted to start a new religion. If Jesus lived, nobody noticed. REF

FACT: The authorship of the majority of the books of the bible is unknown.

Moses did not write the first five books of the Old Testament. The names of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were attached to Greek gospels by the early Church fathers. The bible is a collection of myths, laws and embellished histories of the Isrealites (for the Old Testament) and the teachings of a new religion (for the New Testament). REF

FACT: There were many "Messiah" figures which predate the Jesus story, that are built upon the same pattern of a virgin birth, miracles, healing, capture, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension.

Early Church fathers knew about the dozen earlier messiahs, and said that "Satan created these stories before the coming of Jesus, in order to confuse people". Christ was just one of many common mythological cult figures. REF

FACT: The bible was written in the earliest days of man's ignorance.

People didn't know anything yet. Humanity thought the world was flat, and that disease, hurricanes, earthquakes, thunder and droughts were all caused by gods. It is unbelievable that primitive man guessed wrongly about everything else, but knew "the truth" about the origin of life. It is more believable that god(s) were invented by primitive people for the following reasons:

• to explain natural events that they couldn't understand
• they had an inability to cope with their fears of a death that was final and absolute
• they had a need to provide enforceable laws with divine penalties
• they had a child-like need to feel watched over and protected by a loving, powerful father-figure
• religion provided a means of gaining power and income to those who controlled it. REF

An Open Letter to All Christians (Separation of Church and State) (NEW!)

Rational Thinking Made Easy