It’s funny that whenever I tell a believer that I’m an atheist, they always start asking me questions. I don’t really mind, I realize that I might very well be the first atheist that they’ve ever met, and I’m happy to put to rest some of the church-given notions about us. However, what continues to amaze me, is that these questioners who are VERY happy to question my beliefs, so rarely question their own.

With that in mind, I have drawn up several questions that I would like Christians to ponder. And it’s not for my own edification that I ask them, but for theirs. I hope that if they honestly consider these questions, they might realize for themselves just how much of their own skepticism and rationality they have been sidelining.

So, let’s get started:

1. What, exactly, is your basis for believing that the Bible is true, not necessarily the word of God, but true? Remember, your answer can’t be “Because the Bible says it’s true.” ANY book would be true by that measure, and any religion would be true by that measure. They can’t ALL be true because they contradict each other. Further, if you’ve read it, you know that it’s not a good book.  The Biblical God doesn’t exactly set a good example. He’s a ruthless dictator and the book is full of His atrocities. His single most frequent interaction with “his chosen people” is to kill them (or give them plagues, which kill them).

Is it just because your parents told you that it was true? And that most of the people you know think that it is true? Really, think about it, what real, extra-biblical basis do you have to believe it is the work of a God?

2. In the Bible, in the Garden of Eden, if the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge contains the knowledge of Good/Evil and Right/Wrong, then how could Adam and Eve have known it was “wrong” to eat the fruit before they did? They couldn’t have known what right and wrong meant. Also if God had explained to Adam and Eve what right and wrong were before they ate of the fruit so that they would understand why it was wrong to eat the apple, then wouldn’t He have essentially given them the knowledge that he had just forbidden them to have? Remember; THIS is the Original Sin, this story is the basis for the need for salvation in all of Christianity.

Moreover, why did God put the Tree-of-Knowledge in the Garden of Eden in the first place? Especially if He knew what was going to happen? Isn’t He supposed to know everything that will ever happen? It would have been so easy just to place it on the other side of the world; or on the Moon for that matter. Why does it seem that He was just setting a trap for humanity?

3. How could an all-loving God send ANYONE to hell? Remember, He is supposed to love us more than any parent ever loved their child. Note that He isn’t using hell as a remedial instructional punishment like a parent would. A parent punishes a child in order to teach them to behave better. Here, God is punishing sinners just for the sake of inflicting pain and suffering. There is no lesson to be learned or benefited from this type of punishment.

Which is worse, Hitler killing 8,000,000 people (Jews, homosexuals, atheists, gypsies, etc.) or God keeping hundreds of millions of people alive just to torture them for eternity, some simply for not believing in Him, or even a particular version of Him? According to the teachings of Christianity, all of the Jews that Hitler tortured and killed were then promptly sent to hell for not believing that Christ was the savior; and according to the Bible, these are God’s chosen people!

4. If God is all-loving, how could He allow children to get cancer? Heck, compared to God, ANYONE on Earth would have more love and compassion for children. I can’t imagine a single human that would intentionally give cancer to a child, or even ALLOW them to get cancer if they could prevent it.

Also, in a court of law, if you know about a crime that is about to be committed, and don’t try to report or prevent it, you’re considered an accessory to that crime. That would mean that God and Jesus, who know everything that is about to happen, are accessories to every child-murder, rape or kidnapping that happens anywhere on the planet.

5. Why did an all-loving God create evil? (Isaah 45:7)? Or for that matter, allow the king of evil, Satan, to live amongst us, with super powers to boot! How are we, as mere mortals, supposed to know what is true if Satan is there to plant false evidence and create illusions to fool us? You can’t conclusively say that Satan didn’t create the Bible itself. If you compare God and Satan based just on their atrocities in the Bible, Satan would come out looking pretty good! The only people in the Bible that Satan killed were Job’s family, and then only when God said it was OK.
6. How could God make the eating of shellfish and ham or a woman wearing a man’s clothing abominations? Not just dangerous but abominations! That puts them right up there with homosexuality.
7. How could an all-loving God command his chosen people to kill babies, and children (Hosea 13:16, Isaiah 13:15-18, et al.)?
8. If I only have to have Faith to believe, how do I know what to believe? Every different sect of Christianity says I have to have Faith to believe what they say is true.
9. How could Satan think that he could have a revolt against someone who is all-knowing and all-powerful? How could there even be a war in heaven, when God would know about it beforehand, and could just snap His fingers and wipe out all opposition?
10. Why did God want to kill Moses right after sending him on the mission to free the Jews from Egypt (Exodus 4:24-26)? And THEN why did a foreskin-ectomy by Moses’ wife stop him?
11. For that matter, what’s with God’s obsession with foreskins? Isn’t God supposed to be a perfect being? Why would a perfect being design men with foreskins, then command us to cut them off!?
12. Why did God send Moses to Egypt to free the Jews, and then “harden Pharaoh’s heart” (Exodus 7:3) so that he would not let the Jews leave, thereby making it necessary to set his 10 plagues loose on Egypt? Doesn’t that pretty much negate Pharaoh’s free will in the matter, and punish all the people of Egypt because of it?
13. Why would God condemn his own son to torment and death at the hands of the people that He was planning to forgive anyway? Why not just forgive them? Was that not in His power? Indeed, according to Christianity, what is NOT in His power? He’s omniscient but couldn’t figure out another plan wherein his son wouldn’t have to be tortured and killed but would still achieve His goal of forgiveness?
14. If God is constantly curing illnesses through prayer, and faith-healers, why can’t He regrow an arm or a leg? You never see that happen. The cures that we are told DO happen are always internal, and therefore unverifiable. Also, if He really loved us and wanted us to believe in faith healers, why doesn’t He command His faith healers to go to hospitals and heal those there? Why do you never see faith healers successfully healing people in hospitals?
15. Why does God let Catholic priests victimize children? Do you think that those children are not praying for it to stop? Why doesn’t God do something about it? Tracy Harris of the Atheist Experience out of Austin, Texas said, “If I could stop a person from raping a child I would. That’s the difference between me and your god.” That doesn’t say much for your god, but it stands to reason if god is evil, or not real.
16. Why does God let televangelists take money, in His name, from the old and infirm who cannot afford it, and who will suffer because of it?
17. If God is everywhere, then where the heck was He when the serpent was tempting Eve? Was he just playing a game with humanity at the time of its greatest crisis? What kind of being would do that?
18. If Christians are forgiven, and they know they will be forgiven no matter what they do, why should they refrain from doing evil? Atheists don’t have that expectation for forgiveness, and they don’t go around killing and stealing. They know they have to live with the consequences of their actions, in the real world; and that it’s the only world they’re going to get.
19. How can God blame us for our imperfections when He made us that way? That is, if He didn’t want us constantly fornicating, then why did he make our sex drive so strong? If the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination, why does He create people gay? And NO, it’s not a choice. Their sexual-orientation is no more a choice than yours is. Could you choose to be gay if you’re not? Could you choose to not be attracted to the opposite sex?
20. How can God be surprised or angered by anything we do when He’s supposedly all-knowing? And why does God repeatedly get angry in the Bible and demand vengeance, when we succumb to the weaknesses that He put in us in the first place? This would mean He’s not all loving and that He is subject to human emotions.
21. If God tells you to do something horrible, like he did with Abraham and “Son of Sam” would you do it? Wouldn’t you just think: “This order can’t be from God, God is good, and this is an awful thing to do.”

From If God is dead, is everything permitted? By Elizabeth Anderson

“Kant advances a moral criterion for judging the authenticity of any supposed revelation. If you hear a voice, or some testimony purportedly revealing god’s word, and it tells you to do something you know is wrong, don’t believe that it’s really god telling you to do these things.

“I believe that Kant correctly identified the maximum permissible moral limits of belief in extraordinary evidence concerning god. These limits require that we reject the literal truth of the bible.  My colleague James Tappenden argues that such a liberal approach to faith is theologically incoherent. Perhaps it is. Still, given a choice between grave moral error and theological muddle, I recommend theological muddle every time.

She is in essence saying, If you receive a thought that you believe to be from God, judge it for its moral worth. If it’s not good, then it’s not from god. (Remember to believers, God is not the only supernatural being that has this telepathic ability.) Doing this shows that our own morals prevail over a “revelation” from a supposed deity. And if we judge the Bible by these criteria, it would be shown that major portions of the Bible have to be rejected as the passages could not be from a good God. How much of the Bible would we have to throw out then?

22. If this life is infinitesimally short, and the next one eternally long, then why should we try to do anything other than “praise the Lord” while we’re here? Why go to school or pursue a college education? Why do anything other than just study the Bible and wait? Would you have us all be like the holy men of India or monks of the old world, who do nothing but study scriptures?

If so, you might as well turn off your computer and TV. Park your car and throw away your cell phone. Modern society would soon crumble into dust. The entire world would revert to medieval times (or before). Doctors would no longer have colleges to go to, scientific research would grind to a halt, all production but food and clothing would stop, and all other training would end.

Please, consider these questions honestly. Then, if any of your answers still involve supernatural beings, or where your “soul” will spend eternity, refer to Chapter 4.