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Bible vs. Veda

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HOLY VEDAS VS.

HOLY BIBLE
A COMPARATIVE STUDY
HOLY VEDAS
AND

HOLY BIBLE

A Comparative Study
BY: SOG (SON OF GOD)

Education: PHD. (Logic and reasoning)

AIM: Apply logic and reasoning to all religions


__________
Religions debilitate the mind and intellect of individuals making
them unfit for logic and reasoning. It makes people blind as
they stop questioning the scriptures. This book is an effort to
free a person from the bondage of Hinduism, Christianity,
Islam and all such dogmas.

Read it to set oneself free.

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Contents

Understanding God ................................................................................... 1


The Garden of Eden.................................................................................. 5
1. Vedic Monotheism and Biblical Doctrine of Trinity ....................... 15
2. Biblical God Creates Conflict, Vedic God Precepts Peace ............. 27
3. Obscene Episodes In Bible, Moral Code of Conduct In Vedas ....... 31
4. Bible : Torture Non-Believers, Vedas : Love All ............................ 55
5. Bible Preaches Atrocious Intolerance, Vedas Preach Fraternity ..... 61
6. Biblical God Demands Sacrifice of Animals, Vedic God Saves
Dumb Animals................................................................................. 69
7. Argument # 1: The Bible is the Infallible Word of God. ................. 71
8. Argument # 2: The Bible is inerrant and contains no
contradictions. Its 66 books are harmonious and its 40+ writers
agree on what they wrote. ............................................................... 79
9. Argument # 3: The Historicity of Jesus Argument........................... 99
10. Argument # 4: The Trilemma Argument - Lord, Liar, or Lunatic? 105
11. Argument # 5: The Testimonials and Changed Lives Argument. .. 109
12. Argument # 6: The Miracles and Answered Prayers Argument. ... 117
13. Argument # 7: God is holy and righteous. We are all sinners and
deserve to go to hell. ...................................................................... 129
14. Argument # 8: All other religions are the work of Satan. ............. 133

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UNDERSTANDING GOD

GOD must be at least Omniscient, Omnipresent,


Omnipotent, and Just.

Meaning

Omniscient Means he knows all, he knows all the laws and


rules of this universe. Nothing exists in this universe which he is
not aware of. He is perfect and does not make any mistake. He
does not play games to impart knowledge to human being or any
other species as if he plays games or performs tricks and miracles
to make people understand then it implies that he cannot impart
wisdom directly and he needs to apply strategy. One applies
strategy or tricks only when one is not able to do things directly.

Omnipresent He exists across universes like Holy Spirit, which


means he is inside everything in this universe and the whole
universe exists inside him. Relation of all particles, Sub-particles
in Universe and between him is of Pervader and pervaded. He
pervades all and exists inside and outside everything thing visible
or invisible. With his thought he can change the hearts and minds
of people.

Omnipotent Means he does not need any angel or second GOD


to help him in doing his work. If he needs someone’s assistance or
help then it means he cannot do work by himself, this make him
dependent or weak or lazy. He does not eat food as he has no body
and all fruits and such objects are in him and he pervades all of
them. GOD is inside everything so everything belongs to him but
he does not belong to them. God is pre-consciousness spread
across the universe. If he remains in human body then how all
process across universe will work.

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JustMeans GOD does not do any partiality, his rules are not
changeable, if he changes his rules then it means he was not sure of
his first rule and that is why he modified the rule, this will violate
his property of Omnisciense. Thus he does not forgive any soul for
its sins nor does he forget to award soul for its good deeds.

If God is to forgive the sins, the way it is done in some faith where
person can commit any number of crimes and go to a temple for
repentance. This kind of justice will allow more and more people
to commit mistakes. Moreover if GOD starts forgiving each and
everyone for crime then he is doing injustice with other person on
whom the crime was committed - Such law of justice is of no
logic and will be full of corruption. This violates his property of
Omniscience and Bliss resulting in men and women being sinful.
Knowing that their sins will be forgiven in front of a priest who
makes a call to GOD, people will become fearless and sinful thus
committing more crimes. GOD must be just which means he gives
souls the just fruits of their deeds and does not forgive their sins.
Such a GOD will be impartial, imagine if GOD starts listening to
ISIS -an Islamic militants, fighting in the name of GOD, they pray
5 times in a day, more than anyone else. So, if GOD listens to them
then it means he favors cruelty by punishing other side. On the
contrary imagine if 2 billion Christians ask for killing 1.6 billion
Muslims and vice versa then whom will GOD listen. Such GOD
will go mad as all are crying, shouting with full heart towards
GOD to make their wish true.

One who has done good will bear good fruits but one who in full
conscience has committed a wrong must bear the fruit of wrong
deed. The law of GOD is perfect.

Every action has a reaction; we have to bear what we do. As you


sow so you reap.

Even modern day court gives some kind of punishments to


criminals so imagine why GOD who is full of justice will not do
the same. People rectify the mistake once they suffer and become
more conscious.

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Even after million years we have not forgotten Ravan who was
scholar of four Vedas but committed crime of abducting Sita. This
is an example that even after reading Vedas one cannot improve
until his or her deeds are improved.

This is true love where supreme father does not differentiate


between his sons and daughters. This is the eternal law of Karma.

People do not understand that GOD has no role in forgiving or


punishing anyone. If one considers that GOD has any role then…

 Why people take their wives to Hospital or in ancient days


they used to call obstetrician during delivery when no
doctors used to exist. Why not to sit at home for delivery
and pray GOD?
 Why people take their kids and family members to Hospital
when they are sick, just pray in front of GOD and sit at
home till they become good.
 Why not to study and just pray GOD for passing the
examinations?
 Why work hard for living? Just pray GOD?
 Why not to eat and drink for few days, just pray GOD and
let us see if GOD can keep you alive for a month?

Still, very few exceptions do take place but they are not even 1%
worldwide. If GOD really exists and meet our requirement the way
it is taught by priests and pundits then we must have 99.9% of the
above points as normal cases and 0.1% exceptions, means GOD
must help us in curing diseases, living without food, no poverty,
passing exams by worshipping him and so on. Some of the
followers say GOD is required but we must do Hard work. I will
ask them why do you need GOD for, if you are doing hard work,
your fellow doctor who is human is helping you, your brother is
farming and producing food, your clothes made by humans and
everything which we do in life is done by one or other human
being then why not to love each other and see GOD in one another
rather than searching for someone which does not exist in front of
you and cannot help you.

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It is to be kept in mind that even after death, one has to face the
consequences of his actions so it is advisable to think before doing
or saying anything and be sure that the laws of action and reaction
are eternal. Man acts and God reacts.

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The Garden of Eden
(Big Dilemma)

Start by asking yourself few simple questions.

1. Why did God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil in the Garden of Eden?
2. What purpose did it serve?
3. Did He have to take a piece of the magical fruit now and
again to refresh His memory? Of course not.
4. Did any of the animals of the Garden need the Tree? We
can assume not.
5. How could a tree-- an organism of wood and sap-- contain
the "knowledge of good and evil"?
6. What capacity did it have for storing such knowledge, and
how was that knowledge passed on by eating and digesting
it? Allow yourself to think about that…
7. Why, therefore, among all the useful and decorative trees in
the Garden of Eden, did God deliberately include this tree,
the tree that carries the warning: "In the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die"?
8. Did He put it in the Garden as a temptation for Adam and
Eve? The bible says very clearly that this cannot be the
case. God does not tempt: “Let no man say . . . I am
tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil,
neither tempteth He any man.” (James 1:13) So if God
didn't put the tree in Adam and Eve's home in order to
tempt them, why did he put it there?
9. Did God know Eve would eat the fruit? Of course He
did! We are told by the bible that God knows all things
from the Beginning unto the End. Did He not know Eve
would give it to Adam? Of course He did.
10. Did He not know that the serpent would tempt Eve? He
did, if we are to accept the bible.
11. Therefore, did Eve have any freewill in the matter? Could
she have acted in a manner other than God had foreseen for
her? Of course not! How could she?

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12. How was the serpent able to speak? Did it give itself this
remarkable ability?
13. How does the mouth of a snake, with no lips or proper
teeth, and no articulate tongue, form human words?
14. How did the tiny brain of a snake become wise and
subtle? Did the serpent make itself that way?
15. Who was responsible for putting the principal actors--
Adam, Eve, the serpent and the Tree-- all together in the
Garden of Eden? God, of course. The inescapable
conclusion? That He put all the pieces on the game board
and enacted His own little drama, resulting in the deliberate
and unavoidable eternal damnation of Humankind. In the
words of Robert Ingersoll: "Could a devil have done
worse"?

That leaves us with the following:

We have a magic tree of a nature that we cannot comprehend,


whose fruit is so sinful to eat that it would result in the immediate
and eternal damnation of humankind, placed in a location so
dangerous as to make that outcome inevitable, all apparently for no
purpose whatsoever...yet God knew beforehand that Adam and
Eve would eat of it.

That's like a caring, loving parent leaving a loaded pistol in the


playroom of a five year old child, knowing full well what the result
will be, and watching from a crack in the door as the child blows
his brains out. This is the foundation of the Christian religion. If
you are educated you would have realized the illogical stories
otherwise continue for complete analysis.

But here is another problem. We are told in Genesis 3:14 that after
the speaking serpent had completed the mission for which he had
been placed into the Garden of Eden-- that of tempting Eve-- God
cursed the serpent: "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt
thou eat all the days of thy life." (Does the devil have a finite
life?) Why did God curse the serpent for carrying out the mission
for which he was created? This implies that before the

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transgression, snakes had legs, which would have made them
lizards. But lizards still exist today. So, somewhere out in the
world, the Christian must believe, there is a 6000-year-old talking
snake that eats dust! (And they say that we're the irrational ones.)
So, God's punishment to Satan for the damnation of humanity was
being transformed from a lizard into a snake... so what! That's
pathetic. If Satan was cursed by God to spend the rest of his
existence as a serpent, then how does he reappear later in the New
Testament, and take Christ up to the top of the mountain to tempt
him? How can this be? Did he release himself from the curse of
God by his own power? What about the devil's activities in the
Book of Revelation? If he is slithering around as a serpent, what is
the great danger? Why doesn't someone simply step on him or cut
his head off with a shovel? The whole story is revealed as a
childish myth, to anyone who has eyes to see.

We are told that at their creation, Adam and Eve, like small
children, did not possess the knowledge of good and evil, of right
from wrong. I wonder why God wanted to withhold this from
them... Did He want credulous and ignorant followers? But a far
more important question arises here. Should Adam and Eve be
held responsible for committing an action prior to them having the
Knowledge of Good and Evil? I would not think so. We do not
hold certain people responsible for their actions, such as children
or the mentally handicapped, because they did not know what they
were doing was wrong, or had no conception of the ideas of right
and wrong. Here, Adam and Eve disobeyed an instruction before
they knew it was wrong to disobey. They did not know about good
and evil, right and wrong. They had no idea about the
consequences of their actions (certainly they were ignorant of the
"eternal" consequences for all their decendants). Was this
the Ultimate Sin, for which every human being ever born was to
pay with their eternal soul? I say no! Was that the worse thing that
Adam and Eve could have done? Of course not. They could have
beaten and slaughtered each other, and destroyed their paradise,
burning it to the ground. But they did not do anything so cruel or
barbaric. They ate a piece of fruit, contrary to the will of an
arbitrary god. People disobey God's commands millions of times
every day all over the earth-- from lying and stealing to murdering

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and worshipping other gods… so then why was Adam and Eve's
simple disobedience to carry so heavy a price?

God told Adam that the day he ate of the tree, he would surely die.
What could that have meant to Adam, before he had knowledge of
good and evil? He would have had no idea what death was... he
had never seen anyone or anything die prior.

Would you treat your own children that


way? Would you condemn them to eternal
torture, infinite revenge, never ending intense
pain with no chance of pardon, for taking a
cookie out of the cookie jar before dinner,
after you had told them not to? And would
you condemn your children's children, and all
generations that will come after? What sort
of justice is this? No sensible person can
condone this. All that the Christians can say
is that we cannot understand God's "method of
justice". That is all they can say. But then
what does it mean to say that God is just, or
that God is merciful? Such words no longer
have any meaning.

Why should I be held responsible for Eve's decision to eat the


fruit? Why should you? If your distant ancestor, four hundred
years ago, killed a man in an act of cruel and pointless savagery,
should you be handed a life sentence in prison for it? God Himself
states in the bible that He does not punish the children for the sins
of their fathers. Are we to conclude by this that we have no sin
upon us as the result of our births? No stain of eternal depravity
upon us? Might not the notion of Original Sin be the fabrication of
the Church, in order that they might further their careers and
ensure their survival? For if one does not need to be saved, one
does not need priests and preachers. Christians tell us that without
their religion, all of us are doomed without hope. They try to
convince us of the dilemma they have created for us, then try to

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convince us that they alone have the remedy. Christianity cuts you
and then tries to sell you a Band-Aid.

The Second Half of the Fable

Because of the Fall of Man, we are told that it is not enough that
we are good and caring people, not enough that we do unto others
as we would have them do unto us, not enough that we forgive
those who trespass against us. We must be baptized-- have our
heads wet by a priest-- a meaningless gesture, and proclaim that we
accept Jesus Christ as our personal savior. We must believe the
unbelievable. A Hindu, who happened to be more charitable and
humane than the best Christian, is nonetheless consigned to eternal
damnation, just as the kind and gentle native of some tropical
island who never heard of Jesus and his cross.

If, as the Christian doctrine teaches, the only way to salvation is


through Christ, what became of all the souls of the people who
died before Jesus's appearance on earth? The answer can be found
in Romans 2, where Paul tells us about a system of God's justice
whereby people who lived without the knowledge of God were
judged according to their works. He says: "For when the Gentiles,
which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the
law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves." Then he
says in Romans 4:15, "Where there is no law, there is no
transgression." So what we had before was a fully-functioning
system of justice, and a good one at that-- one in which believers in
Yahweh had to fulfill their end of the Covenant by sacrificing
butchered animals, but where unbelievers, or believers in other
gods, were judged on the virtue of their works. Why then, did God
abandon a fair and perfectly-functioning system of judgment,
replacing it with an unfair and unjust one, one in which “He that
believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not
shall be damned”?

Why do you suppose God waited so long to send Himself down in


the form of Jesus in order to save humanity from Original
Sin? Why didn't Jesus appear in the generation immediately

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following Cain and Abel, when the number of persons on earth
could be counted on one hand? Or he could have come after he
killed nearly everyone in the world with the Flood. The task of
convincing people that Jesus was in fact God would have been
effortless. In such a scenario, every human ever born would have a
much fairer chance of attaining salvation. Because of God's failure
to do this, however, the vast majority of people who ever lived
were doomed without hope.

Christians tell us that Christ died to absolve Original Sin, so that


all who believe in him might be saved. It is written that he came to
earth in human form for the sole purpose of dying. Would it not
then have been just as well if he had died of a fever, or of
smallpox, or of old age, or from any other reason? We all suffer in
some sense, and we all come into the world for the ultimately sole
purpose of dying.

If Jesus Christ was in fact God, and if he came into this world to
suffer for us as Christians tell us he did, then the only real suffering
he could have endured would have been to live. His existence on
earth was a state of exile or banishment from Heaven, the most
perfect place, and the only way back to the paradise that was his
home was to die. Everything in this strange system of Christianity
is the reverse of what it pretends to be.

The sacrifice of Jesus was no sacrifice at all, for a number of


reasons. First, according to the New Testament, Jesus Christ was
God Himself. What possible inconvenience could death represent
for an immortal god? None whatsoever. God would have an
infinite capacity for enduring physical pain. He would also have
the foreknowledge that he would soon be back in heaven, his
original place of residence. Therefore, his sacrifice is no sacrifice
at all. It's all a sham.

Is crucifixion the worst possible way to be put to death? I say that


it is not. It is my opinion that burning to death by a slow
roast would have been far more painful. Did Jesus suffer more
than any person in history? I say no. So, of what special

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significance was his suffering? The Church should know all about
causing pain and suffering, by the way, they did it enough. Their
devices of torture were state of the art. Christ's suffering was
nothing compared to those who disagreed with His Church.

Additionally, Christ supposedly 'came back' three days later. So


just what was sacrificed? It's not a sacrifice if you take it
back. And yet, the Christians claim Jesus made the most ultimate
and perfect sacrifice. Is there anything more absurd than this?

If in fact Jesus was God, and God is all powerful, then Jesus could
have easily stopped his killers at any time. Therefore, the death of
Jesus is more correctly labled as a suicide.

Christians claim that the price for sin was so high that Man could
not pay it-- only God could pay the debt. Like a father who
assumes the debt that his son cannot pay, we are told that God
allowed Himself to be sacrificed on the cross so that he can forgive
us. So, your child has just taken a cookie out of the cookie jar
when he wasn't supposed to. Now, to forgive him, you tell
him: “Take this hammer and these nail, and nail me up onto a
piece of wood until I die. Murder me, perform a human sacrifice,
and then I'll forgive you for taking a cookie.” The basis of
Christianity is to sacrifice the guiltless in order to forgive those
who did no wrong, for a crime that was no crime in the first place.

Imagine that a man had been convicted of murder, and was about
to be electrocuted. The governor watches over the execution. Now
suppose that at the moment the switch was about to be thrown,
someone in the crowd steps forward and says, “I am willing to die
in the place of that murderer. He has a family, and I don’t.” And
suppose further, that the governor replies, “Step up, young man,
your offer is accepted. A murder has been committed and
somebody must be killed, and your death will satisfy the law just
as well as the death of the murderer." Is this situation acceptable
to any civilized person? Yet this is the Christian doctrine of
sacrifice. I say, let the guilty pay for their own crimes, and let the

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punishment fit the crime. If I commit a crime, I will take
responsibility for my own actions.

When is enough punishment enough? How much will the God of


Love inflict upon His children? First there was the Fall from
Grace. That was supposed to be the ultimate punishment, when
mankind became separated from the presence of God and cast out
of the Garden of Eden. When that did not succeed, God sent the
Great Flood, and killed virtually every human on earth. When that
did not cleanse the world of wickedness, Jesus came to earth and
taught mankind about the fires and torments of Hell. This tactic is
obviously failing, and we are told that even Hell is not enough
punishment and suffering; for it is written that Armageddon and
Judgment Day are yet to come. If God's justice was totally satisfied
with the sacrifice of Jesus, as Christian Doctrine teaches, then why
all the horror, torture and killing that is yet to come at
Armageddon, where nearly everyone on earth, Christian and
infidel, will be subject to pain, suffering and death? The reason is
that I suppose that once you have a taste for a certain habit, it is
difficult to stop. And Yahweh has certainly demonstrated that He
has acquired that taste.

It is clear that Christianity is a gilded mansion built upon a


foundation of sand. Its basis is not only inexplicable, but illogical
and immoral as well. But, as people often say when faced with
such conundrums that they can't talk their way out of: "God works
in mysterious ways." We are told that we must swallow this story,
hook, line and sinker. We are told that God gave us the freewill to
believe it or not believe it-- but this gift comes with a deadly threat.
Believe it-- or be eternally damned. What kind of choice is that?
Some people may be convinced that the threat is a very real one,
and so they will believe any story that their preachers tell them.
Under these conditions, some people can be made to believe
anything at all.

Salvation is not awarded by doing good deeds, we are told by the


church, but through belief alone. God can forgive all things, it is
said, except disbelief. God will pardon the murderers of children, if

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they will fall down and beg for forgiveness, and if accepts Jesus
Christ as their savior. But God will not pardon the person who uses
reason and honesty, and who finally decides: "I just can't believe
it." I am told that it doesn't matter how good of a person I am
during my life, because at the end of it, I will be asked: "Did you
believe the one about the Garden of Eden?" I'll have to be honest
and say, "No, I didn't. It was just too far-fetched... sorry."

According to story, God told Adam that on the day he ate the fruit,
he would die. The serpent, however, told Eve that they would not
die if they ate it, but that they would attain the knowledge of good
and evil. Therefore, according to the Bible, the first lie told to
humanity was told by God, and the first truth told to humanity was
told by Satan. For me, I cannot swallow it, no matter how much I
am threatened. I can't help it. It has to make sense to me... that's
the way my brain works. If there is a god floating somewhere up in
the vacuum of space, then God is sure to understand that.

If you do believe that tale, I'd have to ask you: WHY?

I tried searching any such story in Hindu Vedas but no such a story
exists in all the four Vedas. One can see oneself in next few pages.

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1

VEDIC MONOTHEISM AND BIBLICAL


DOCTRINE OF TRINITY

1. VEDIC MONOTHEISM (ONE GOD)

Vedic philosophy revolves round singularity of God. There is no


mention of plurality of God in Vedas. Vedic religion is pure
unadulterated Monotheism. According to Hoy Vedas, God is one,
not many :

Verily He is one
Single, indivisible, supreme reality.
Atharva Veda 13/4/20

Oneness of God is the axis round which the philosophy of Vedas


revolves. None but God alone reigns and rules over the whole
universe. True kingship belongs to Creator of the cosmos. He
alone is the Supreme Sovereign of the universe :

He is the sole sovereign


Of the universe.
Rig Veda 6/36/4

He is one, unparalleled
Through His wondrous, mighty
And formidable laws and deeds.
Rig Veda 8/1/27

Vedic philosophy does not approve of polytheism. There are no


gods except one God, who is the Lord of lords. Only He is worthy
to be worshipped and fit to be adored:

There is only one


Who ought to be adored

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By the people.
Atharva Veda 2/2/1

Holy Vedas declare that God alone is the unchallenged Lord of the
whole creation. All sorts of eulogy, adoration and prayer befit
Him only. Man does not deserve to be eulogised and deified by
man. The deification of man by man is not permitted by Vedic
religion. Therefore, it behoves man to worship the Great Lord of
the cosmos only :

O friends,
Adore none else but Providence
Who is supreme bestower of bliss
And thus thou wilt not suffer;
Eulogise Him in congregation
And sing songs of His glory repeatedly
Sam Veda 242

God is singular, but his names are plural. All the epithets
mentioned in Holy Vedas are ascribed to one God, who is Creator
of the cosmos. Shiva, Shankara, Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh,
Ganesh, Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, Yama etc. are the epithets of
one Supreme Being, who is formless, featureless, birthless and
bodiless. He is unborn, eternal, immortal and everlasting. He has
no agents, no intermediaries, no representatives, no incarnations
and no partners. He has neither father, nor mother. He has neither
wife, nor sons, nor daughters. He has no attachment. But He is
Benevolent Father of all his children, and imparts equal love
impartially to all his creatures. He is kind to all, cruel to,
none. His first name is Om. But He is evoked and adored by
several other names which are written in Vedas

He is One Brahma
The Creator of the cosmos
Who pervades and protects
And enlightens aft beings
He is One Supreme Entity
Whom sages call by various names

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Such as Indra, the glorious
Mitra, the benign friend
Varuna, the greatest, the noblest
Agni, the resplendent, the bright
Yama, the dispenser of justice
Matarishwa, the almighty.
Rig Veda 1/164/46

He is Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient. He is All-


powerful and All-pervasive. He pervades, permeates and
penetrates all things and all hearts

He, the all-pervasive


Pervades all beings
Within and without.
Yajur Veda 32/8

He reigns magnificently and munificently over the whole


universe. He is unparalleled and unequalled emperor of the
cosmos created by Him. He is the One and the sole Sovereign of
all creation, animate and inanimate. He is the unchallenged Master
of. the whole cosmos :

Thou art Lord of lords.


Rig Veda 1/94/13

God does not have face, form, features, signs and symbols. He has
no body. He is formless, featureless and bodiless. He is birthless
and deathless. When He does not take birth, He cannot assume
body. He cannot be seen, He can be felt. Hence no picture or
portrait, idol or statue of God can be made.

God has no image.


Yajur Veda 32/3

The Western scholars, who drank deep from Vedic spring, have
never lagged behind in admiring and appreciating the oneness of
God as revealed in Vedas, from the core of their hearts. Count

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Bjornstjerne, the Norway’s national poet, who was awarded the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1903, observes :

These truly sublime ideas cannot fail to convince us that


the Vedas recognise only one God, who is Almighty,
Infinite, Eternal, Self-existent, the Light and Lord of the
Universe.
- Count Bjornstjerne

Colebrook, the British scholar, states : The ancient Hindu


religion as found in the Hindu scriptures (the Vedas)
recognises but one God.
- Colebrook

Charles Coleman acknowledges in his book Theophany of the


Hindus, the oneness of God as revealed in Holy Vedas as under :

The Almighty, Infinite, Eternal, Incomprehensible, Self-


existent Being, He who sees everything though never seen
is Brahm, the one unknown, True Being, the Creator, the
Preserver and Destroyer of the Universe. Under such and
innumerable other definitions is the Deity acknowledged in
the Vedas.
- Charles Coleman

Livi, the famous Arabic poet, honours and admires the blessed
land of Hindusthan and Holy Vedas as under :

Blessed land of Hind (Hindusthan), thou art worthy of


reverence, for in thee has God revealed true knowledge of
Himself. What a pure light do these four revealed books
afford to our mind’s eyes like the charming and cool lustre
of the dawn ! These four God revealed upon His prophets
(Rishis) in Hind. Those treasuries are the Sama and Yajur
which God has preached. O my brothers, revere these, for
they all tell us the good news of salvation. The next two of
these four, the Rig and the Atharva, teach us lessons of
universal brotherhood. These two (Vedas) are the beacons

18
that warn us to turn towards that goal (universal
brotherhood).
- Livi

Dara Shakoh, the son of king Shah Jehan and elder brother of
Aurangzeb, comes to the conclusion in Persian language as under :

After gradual research, I have come to the conclusion that


long before all heavenly books like the Quran, the Old
Testament and the New Testament etc., God had revealed
to the Hindus through the Rishis of Yore, of whom
BRAHAM was the chief, His four books of knowledge, the
Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the, Samveda, and the
AtharvaVeda.
- Dara Shakoh

2. BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF TRINITY

(i) (a) Doctrine of “three in one” and “three equal to one”

Unlike Vedic religion, which is pure Monotheism, Holy Bible


preaches the doctrine of Trinity, i.e. the existence of three Gods :
God, the Father, God, the Son (Christ) and God, the Holy Ghost
(Spirit). The Christians believe that each God is equal in power
and glory, and that these three are one. Thus Christianity revolves
round the theory of three in one and three equal to one. And they
still call it monotheism ! They claim that their doctrine of Trinity
or Trinitarianism amounts to monotheism.

(b) Three Entities are one

The New Testament says

1.. For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father,
the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one.

- 1 John, 5/7

19
The above text appears on page 1279 of the authorised (King
James) version of the Holy Bible printed by the Gideons
International in U.S.A. in 1979. But, later on it is omitted from the
Bible. In this connection W.P. Ball and G.W. Foote write in their
The Bible Handbook as under :

This verse, being demonstrated a forgery, is omitted from


the Revised Version. It is the only text distinctly asserting
the doctrine of the Trinity, which is really a Christian
invention or development of later date than the Bible.1
- W.P. Ball and G.W. Foote

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of U.S.A. who was the


founding father of secularism In government in the modern West,
exclaimed :

The incomprehensible jargon of Trinitarian arithmetic,


that three are one and one is three. 2
-Thomas Jefferson

James A. Haught states :

In A.D. 385 at Trier. Germany, bishops put to death


Priscillian and his followers for doubting the Trinity and
the Resurrection.3
- James A. Haught

Leo Tolstoy, the renowned Russian writer and thinker, opines:

One may utter words that have no sense, but one cannot
believe what has no sense - one cannot believe that God is,
at the same time, both One and also Three4

1
W.P. Ball, G.W. Foote, John Bowden, Richard, M. Smith : “The Bible Handbook”,
Revised Edition, 1986, U.S.A., p. 96
2
Charles Smith : “The Bible in the Balance”, published in the West, reprinted by Hindu
Writers’ Forum, New Delhi, p.4
3
James A. Haught : “Holy Horrors”, published by Prometheus Books, New York, 1990, p.
53

20
- Leo Tolstoy

(c) Convert and baptize all nations in the name of three


entities

The New Testament instructs the Pope and all Christian


missionaries to go and convert all nations of the world by baptizing
them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Here
is the text :

2. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the


name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

- Matthew 28/19

It is on account of the above text that Christian missionaries


bluntly refuse to stop converting Hindus to their faith. They claim
that it is God’s command to them that they must convert and
baptize all people of all nations of the world. When Shri
Omprakash Tyagi presented a Freedom of Religion Bill in
Parliament, which recommended that there should be no
conversion from one religion to another, more than three lakh
Christians demonstrated in protest against the bill in Mumbai,
Calcutta, Chennai and Delhi. They claimed that under Article
25(1) of the Indian Constitution it was their fundamental right to
convert non-Christians to Christianity. They knocked the doors of
High Courts and even Supreme Court to get their right to convert
upheld judicially. But the then Chief Justice, Shri A.N.
Ray rejected their claim in his judgment. In spite of the judgments
of Supreme Court, the Christian missionaries, under direct and
indirect patronization of pseudo-secular Hindu politicians,
continue to convert the poor, illiterate and innocent tribal Hindus
with political motive on the plea that, it is God’s command to them

4
(i) Leo Tolstoy : “Essays and Letters”, translated by Aylmer Maude, Oxford University
Press, London, 1911
(ii) N.S. Rajaram : “Christianity’s Collapsing Empire and It’s Designs in India”, New
Delhi, 1999, p, 15

21
that they must baptize and convert all persons of all nations on the
earth.

(d) Eternal damnation for blasphemy against the Holy


Ghost

The New Testament declares that the man who blasphemes against
the Holy Ghost will be damned eternally:

3. But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost bath


never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.

- Mark, 3/29

(e) God sent His only begotten Son

The New Testament states that God manifested His love to the
people by sending His only begotten Son to the world

4. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because


that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we
might live through him.

- 1 John, 4/9

(f) Christ in God, God in Crist

The New Testament declares that Jesus Christ is in God, and God
is in Jesus Christ.

5. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me;


- John, 14/11

(g) God and Christ are one

The Holy Bible (the New Testament) confirms oneness of God and
Christ in the following verse:

22
6. I and my Father are one.
- John, 10/30

(h) God gave all powers to Christ

The Holy Bible (the New Testament) mentions that God gave all
powers to Jesus Christ not only on the earth, but also in heaven.

7. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is
given unto me in heaven and in earth.
- Matthew, 28118

8. The Father loveth the Son, and bath given all things into his
hand.
- John, 3/35

(i) Christ was equal to God

The New Testament states that Christ was in the form of God and
that He had full right to be equal to God :

9. Who (Christ), being in the form of God, thought it not


robbery to be equal with God;
- Philippians, 2/6
(j) Foolishness of Biblical God !

The New Testament dubs God Almighty as foolish and weak,


though His foolishness (?) is wiser than men. Here is the verse :

10. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the
weakness of God is stronger than men.
- 1 Corinthians, 1/25

It is nothing but blasphemy to call God Almighty, the Supreme


Lord, as foolish and weak!

23
(ii) Laelius Socinus rejected the Doctrine of Trinity

An Italian scholar Laelius Socinus (b. 1525-d.1582) emphatically


rejected the doctrine of Trinitarianism as irrational and
unacceptable to reason. The theory of three gods in one was not
acceptable to him. He started preaching monotheism, the principle
of one God. Consequently, he was declared a heretic and expelled
from the Church. Any one who preached monotheism was a
heretic, not a true Christian in the estimation of the Church. In
1546, Laelius Socinus joined a Secret Society, which preached
that the doctrine of three gods in one (Trideism or Trinitarianism)
was untenable and that many tenets of the Roman Catholic Church
were repugnant to reason. Consequently the Secret Society was
banned by the Church and its several members were massacred
because of their only fault that they did not believe in the cult of
Trinity. Laelius Socinus had to flee to a foreign place of
safety. While in exile, he breathed his last at Zurich. Even today
when the Church condemns any person for his secular ideas, it
brands him as a “Socinian”.

(iii) Unitarians were burnt alive

In 1662, about two thousand priests were expelled by the Church


under the Act of Uniformity, because they had declined to accept
the doctrine of Trinity and professed “monotheism” which they
called “Unitarianism”. They considered Christ as a mere mortal
and believed in one God. Consequently thousands of Unitarians
were burnt at stakes not only in England but also other
countries. Ultimately in 1813, the Church, under pressure of
public opinion, agreed to accept “Unitarianism” as one of
several “isms” into which Christianity is divided and subdivided
today.

(iv) Rev. William Adam embraced Vedic Religion

Rev. William Adam was assigned the duty of converting Raja Ram
Mohan Roy to Christianity. Raja Ram Mohan Roy was a staunch
monotheist. So instead of being converted to Christianity, he

24
influenced and impressed William Adam to give up his belief in
three Christian gods and embrace Vedic monotheism. Thus Rev.
William Adam, a Christian missionary, who had set out to convert
Raja Ram Mohan Roy to Christian trideism, ultimately became a
Vedantist5. He was, therefore, expelled from the Church and
declared a heretic and a Socinian. His conversion to Vedic religion
was reported in the “Annual London Report of the Missionary
Society” as under :

“We mention with deep regret that Mr. Adam had


embraced opinions derogatory to the honour of the
Saviour, denying the proper divinity of “Our Lord Jesus
Christ”, inconsequence of which the connection between
him and the Society has been dissolved.6
(v) Superiority of the Vedic Religion

Mr. W.D. Brown, the British philosopher, admits in


his “Superiority of the Vedic Religion” as under :

“Vedic religion recognises but one God. It is a thoroughly


scientific religion, where religion and science meet hand in
hand Here theology is based on science and philosophy.”
- W.D. brown

Mr. Count Bjornstjerne, the Norway’s national poet, who was


awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1903, observes :

“These truly sublime ideas cannto fail to convince us that


the Vedas recognise only one God.”
- Count Bjornstjerne

5
Anglo India, Vol. III, p. 238
6
The Annual London Report of the Missionary Society, dated June 20, 1822

25
====================================

“Dharma is the repository of the nation’s soul. If Dharma is


destroyed, the Nation perishes. Any one who abandons Dharma,
betrays the nation – Since Dharma is supreme, our ideal of the
State has been Dharma Rajya – What constitutes the good of the
people, Dharma alone can decide. Therefore a democratic
government Jana Rajya must also be rooted in Dharma i.e.
a Dharma Rajya.

Since in the West injustice and atrocities were perpetrated, bitter


conflicts and battles were fought in the name of religion, all these
were en bloc listed on the debit side of Dharma also. We feel that
in the name of Dharma also battles were fought. However battles
of religion and battles of Dharma are two different
things. Religion means a creed or a sect, it does not
mean Dharma. Dharma is very wide concept. It is concerned with
all aspects of life. It sustains the society. Even further, it sustains
the whole world. That which sustains is Dharma.

- Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya

====================================

26
2

BIBLICAL GOD CREATES CONFLICT, VEDIC


GOD PRECEPTS PEACE

It is an admitted fact that God Almighty, the Creator of the


cosmos, is one, not two. He is the benign Father of all human
beings of the earth irrespective of their caste, colour, creed,
community and country. If it is so, how can we describe Him as
Biblical God or Vedic God ? As a matter of fact, God is neither
Biblical, nor Vedic, nor Quranic. God is God only. He is above
epithets. He is beyond comprehension. Yet He is described
differently in different scriptures. What is required that His main
characteristics must remain unchanged in all the holy
books. When His main characteristics as described in different
scriptures contradict each other, it is the duty of scholar to point
out where truth lies. Biblical God here means God as described in
Holy Bible. Similarly Vedic God signifies God as described in
Holy Vedas.

1. BIBLICAL GOD CREATES CONFLICT

(i) Biblical God : “I came not for peace, but a sword.”

In the New Testament, Biblical God declares that He came to the


earth not for peace, but to wield a sword :

16. “34. Think not that I am come to send peace on earth ; I


came not to send peace, but a sword.”
- Matthew, 10/34
(ii) Biblical God’s mission : to create rift in family

In the New Testament, Biblical God reveals His mission


categorically. He says :

27
17. “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father,
and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law
against her mother in law.”

- Matthew, 10/35

2. VEDIC GOD PRECEPTS PEACE

Vedic God bestows peace and harmony on all the members of


family. Vedas are harbinger of love and light, peace and
prosperity, sweetness and serenity. The first learning centre of
man is family. If there prevail peace and love, respect and
reverence, dignity and decency, affection and integrity in each
family, the citizens will build a strong nation. That is why God
precepts in Atharva Veda lesson of love, harmony, sweetness and
unity in each family :

Let no brother hate his brother,


Let no sister hate her sister,
Mayest thou speak and behave
With harmony and sweetness,
Mayest thou be unanimous
With one accord.
- Atharva Veda 3/30/3

How fine ideal of family concord is set in following mantra of


Atharva Veda

May son follow


The footsteps of his father,
May he have unity of mind
With his mother
May wife talk to her husband
In gentle words, as sweet as honey.
- Atharva Veda 313012

28
Unlike Bible God, who Himself declares in Bible that He has come
to create rift in families, Vedic God declares in Atharva Veda that
He has bound all men with common bond, so all should sit
together, eat together, drink together and pray together.

Let your drinking place be common


Let the share of your food be common,
I bind you together
With common bond;
Just as all spokes (rods) of a wheel
Are united at its hub
From all directions,
So should you remain united
To pray together to glorious God.
- Atharva Veda 3/30/6

Vedic religion ordains men to remain united having common


minds, common aims and objects, and common goal.

March together, speak together


Let your minds be united,
Like sages of yore, being of one mind,
Accept your share of fortune.
- Rig Veda 10/19/12

Vedic God, unlike Biblical God, urges men to assemble on


common platform to think together, plan together and work
together with one aim, one object, one purpose, one mind, one
intention, one determination, one mode, one goal and one
destination.

May your counsel be common,


May you belong to one fraternity,
May your minds move
With one accord.
May your hearts work in harmony
For one goal.

29
May you be inspired
By common ideal.
May you offer worship
With common oblation
- Rig Veda 10/191/3

May you resolve


With one accord.
May your hearts be in unison
May your thoughts be harmonious,
So that you may live together
With happiness and hilarity.
- Rig Veda 10/191/4

====================================

“The world is not prepared to listen to the philosophy, however


sublime, of the weak.”

- Guruji M.S. Golwalkar

====================================

30
3

OBSCENE EPISODES IN BIBLE, MORAL


CODE OF CONDUCT IN VEDAS

1. OBSCENE EPISODES IN BIBLE

(i) Noah drank wine and remained naked

The Holy Bible states that Noah, the hero of righteousness, drank
wine, and was so much intoxicated that he made himself naked in
his tent. Ham, the son of Noah, saw the nakedness of his father
and informed his two brothers Shem and Japheth, who took a
garment and covered the nakedness of their father. Here is the text
:

66. “20. And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted


a vineyard.”

- Genesis, 9/20

67. “21. And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he
was uncovered within his tent.”

- Genesis, 9/21

68. “22. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of
his father, and told his two brethren without.”

- Genesis, 9/22

69. “23. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it
upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered
the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward,
and they saw not their father’s nakedness.”

31
- Genesis, 9/23

70. “24. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his
younger son had done unto him.”

- Genesis, 9/24

71. “25. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants


shall he be unto his brethren.”

- Genesis, 9/25

(ii) Reuben’s sexual intercourse with his father’s concubine

72. “And it came to pass, when Israel dwelt in that land, that
Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine; and
Israel heard it.”

- Genesis, 35/22

(iii) Onan’s sexual intercourse with his brother’s wife

Holy Bible mentions that Judah instructed his son Onan to marry
(have sexual intercourse with) his elder brother’s widow Tamar
and produce children in the name of his brother (not in his
name). Onan did not like that the children produced by his sperm
might be called the progeny of his brother; hence he slept with his
brother’s widow, had sexual intercourse with her, but spilled his
sperm (semen) on the ground, because he did not want to produce
children out of his sperm for his brother. This action on the part of
Onan displeased Biblical God, and the Lord killed him. Here is the
text :

73. “8. And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s
wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.”

- Genesis, 38/8

32
74. “19. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it
came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he
spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his
brother.”

- Genesis, 38/9

75. “10. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord;
wherefore he slew him also.”

- Genesis. 38/10

Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, the famous orator and statesman of


U.S.A., who popularised the criticism of the Bible on the basis of a
humanistic philosophy and scientific rationalism, observes :

“The believers in the Bible are loud in their denunciation


of what they are pleased to call the immoral literature of
the world, and yet few books have been published
containing more moral filth than this inspired word of
God.”7
- Col. Robert G. Ingersoll

(iv) Judah’s sexual intercourse with his widowed daughter-


in-law

The Holy Bible states that when Tamar, the widowed daughter-in-
law of Judah came to know that her father-in-law was to go to
Timnath to shear his sheep, she put off her widow’s garment,
wrapped herself in veil and sat on the way to Timnath. When
Judah saw her, he, not knowing that she was his widowed
daughter-in-law, requested her to allow him to have sexual
intercourse with her. She said to him. “What will you give me for
having intercourse with you ?” Judah replied, “I shall send one kid
out of flock of my goats.” She said, “Till you send the kid to me,
you may keep with me your tokens like signet (seal), bracelets and

7
Brahm Datt Bharti : “The Vedas and the Bible”, New Delhi, 1967, p. 38

33
your staff (stick) which is in your hand.” Judah gave these things
to her and had sexual intercourse with her, and she conceived by
him. Read the Biblical text :

76. “13. And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father in
law goeth up to Timnath to shear his sheep.”
- Genesis, 38/13

77. “14. And she put her widow’s garments off from her, and
covered her with a vail, and wrapped herself, and sat in an
open place, which is by the way to Timnath;”

- Genesis, 38/14

78. “15. When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot;


because she had covered her face.”

- Genesis, 38/15

79. “16. And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I
pray thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she
was his daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give
me, that thou mayest come in unto me?”

- Genesis, 38/16

80. “17. And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And
she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it?”

- Genesis, 38/17

81. “18. And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she
said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine
hand. And he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she
conceived by him.”

- Genesis, 38/18

34
(v) Biblical God caused his prophet Isaiah to walk stark
naked for three years

Holy Bible narrates that God caused his prophet Isaiah to walk
stark naked for three years. The Lord said that it was a sign for the
people of Egypt and Ethiopia, and the king of Assyria will heap the
same type of shame upon Egypt by displaying the Egyptian and
Ethiopian prisoners, young and old, naked and barefooted, even
with their buttocks uncovered. Read the following three verses :

82. “2. At the same time spake the Lord by Isaiah the son of
Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins,
and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking
naked and barefoot.”

- Isaiah, 20/2

83. “3. And the Lord said, Like as my servant Isaiah bath
walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder
upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia;”

- Isaiah, 20/3

84. “4. So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptian
prisoners, and the Ethiopian captives, young and old, naked
and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame
of Egypt.”

- Isaiah, 20/4
Count Tolstoy, the renowned Russian writer and thinker, opines
unambiguously :

“The very foundations of this religion (Christianity)


admitted by all and formulated in the Nicene creed, are so

35
absurd and immoral, and run so counter to right feeling
and to commonsense, that men cannot believe in them.”8
- Count Tolstoy

On February 22, 1901, Leo Tolstoy was proclaimed an enemy of


the Church and was ex-communicated9 on account of his candid
statements about Christianity. He wrote :

“With me, life makes religion, religion does not make


life.”10
- Leo Tolstoy

(vi) Castration recommended by Jesus Christ

85. “12. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from
their mother’s womb; and there are some eunuchs, which were
made eunuchs of men; and there be eunuchs, which have made
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that
is able to receive it, let him receive it.”

- Matthew, 19/12

The early Christians faithfully carried out the afore-mentioned


divine injunction. A Christian sect in Russia long practised
castration as an act of obedience to Christ’s command.11

Origen, (c. 185-c. 254), the most influential theologian of the early
Greek church, castrated himself so as to work freely in instructing
female catechumens.12

(vii) The daughters’ sexual intercourse with their father

8
(i) Count Tolstoy : “What is Religion ?”
(ii) Brahm Datt Bharti : “The Vedas and the Bible”, New Delhi, 1967, p. 41
9
Victor Shklovsky : “Lev Tolstoy”, translated by Olga Shartse, Raduga Publishers, Moscow,
1988, pp. 572-573
10
Ibid., p. 406
11
W.P. Ball and G.W. Foote : “The Bible Handbook”, Revised Edition, 1986, U.S.A., p. 245
12
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 16, U.S.A., 1967, p. 1094

36
The two daughters of Lot, who was the nephew of prophet
Abraham, made their father drink wine at night, slept with him,
had sexual intercourse with him and gave birth to two male
children by their father. The elder daughter gave birth to a son
named Moab. He is called the father of Moabites till today. The
younger daughter gave birth to a son by her father. He was named
Benammi. He is called the father of the children of Ammon till
today. Here is the full text consisting of seven verses :

86. “32. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will
lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.”

- Genesis, 19/32

87. “33. And they made their father drink wine that night; and
the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived
not when she lay down, nor when she arose.”

- Genesis, 19/33

88. “34. And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn
said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my
father; let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou
in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.”

- Genesis, 19/34

89. “35. And they made their father drink wine that night also;
and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not
when she lay down, nor when she arose.”

- Genesis, 19/35

90. “36. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by
their father.”

- Genesis, 19/36

37
91. “37. And the firstborn bare a son, and called his name
Moab: the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day.”

- Genesis, 19/37

92. “38. And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his
name Ben-am-mi: the same is the father of the children of
Ammon unto this day.”

- Genesis, 19/38

If the readers peruse chapter 19 of Genesis fully, they will come to


know that Lot was not one of those whom Biblical God
abhorred. He was dearer and nearer to God. That is why God,
being merciful to him, saved him by bringing him and his family
out of the city through two angels, before the city was destroyed by
God.

Here some questions arise : Do the educated Christians of modern


civilized era approve of and believe in the afore-mentioned verses
which narrate sexual intercourse of daughters with their father ? If
they don’t, why do they not raise voice against the said immorality
and incest and compel the Pope to delete this text from the Holy
Bible ? Why do they not openly profess that they dislike the said
text ? Why do they say that each verse of Bible is holy and true ?
How do they claim that Bible contains all the answers to all the
problems of life ? They call the non-Christians as infidels, but
actually an infidel is he who pretends to believe in what he does
not actually believe. Thomas Paine, the famous thinker and
innovator, expresses the same idea. He says :

“I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who


believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief
as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of
man, that he be mentally faithful to himself Infidelity does

38
not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in
13
professing to believe what he does not believe.”
- Thomas Paine

Ronald Reagon, the President of the United States, who had


power to control the weapons that could obliterate all life on earth,
once remarked about Holy Bible as under :

“Within the covers of that single book, are contained all


the answers, to all the problems that we face today.”14
- Ronald Reagan

Almost all educated persons, who read the above verses regarding
sexual intercourse of the two daughters with their father, will
surely scoff at Ronald Reagan’s above remark.

(viii) Lot offers his two daughters to a riotous mob of


sodomites

Lot, the nephew of prophet Abraham, offers his two daughters to


a riotous mob of homosexuals in order to save two angels who
visited him.

93. “8. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not
known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and
do ye to them as is good in your eyes; only unto these men (two
angels) do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow
of my roof.”

- Genesis, 19/8

(ix) The prophet Abram’s illicit connection with maid


servant

13
Thowas Paine : “The Age of Reason”, published by Watts and Co., London, 1796, p. 1
14
“Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio”, dated November 5, 1984

39
Holy Bible states that Abram’s wife Sarai was barren. So she
gave her Egyptian maid, Hagar, to her husband Abram to be his
wife. When the Egyptian maid conceived, Sarai felt that she was
despised in the eyes of her maid, so she (Sarai) drove her to
wilderness with the consent of Abram. Hagar gave birth to a son
named Ishmael. At that time Abram was 86 years old. Read the
following five verses :

94. “3. And Sarai Abram’s wife took Hagar her maid the
Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of
Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.”

- Genesis, 16/3

95. “4. And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived; and
when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was
despised in her eyes.”

- Genesis, 16/4

96. “5. And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee; I
have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she
had conceived, I was despised in her eyes; the Lord judge
between me and thee.”

- Genesis, 16/5

97. “6. But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy
hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt
hardly with her, she fled from her face.”

- Genesis, 16/6

98. “16. And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when
Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram.”

- Genesis, 16/16

40
Is it morality that Abram, the prophet, debauches his maidservant
and later on drives her along with the child produced by her of
him, to wilderness ?

Count Tolstoy, the renowned Russian writer and thinker, remarks


:

“Really no religion has ever preached things so evidently


incompatible with contemporary knowledge or so immoral
as the doctrines preached by Church Christianity.”15
- Count Tolstoy

(x) The prophet Abram marries his sister

The Holy Bible states that Abimelech, the king of Gerar, took
away Sarai, the wife of the prophet Abram, and kept her in his
palace. Abram, the prophet, himself admitted to king Abimelech
that Sarai, his wife, was his sister, the daughter of his father. Read
the following verse :

99. “12. And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of
my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became
my wife.”

- Genesis, 20/12

(xi) Abram, the prophet, barters his wife’s honour

Holy Bible mentions that when Abram, the prophet, along with his
wife Sarai went to Egypt, he said to his wife, “You look beautiful;
when the Egyptians will see you, they will kill me and will allow
you to remain alive, hence you may announce that you are my
sister. In this way I shall be saved.” Here is the text

15
(i) Count Tolstoy : “What is Religion ?”
(ii) Brahm Datt Bharti : “Max Muller - A Lifelong Masquerade”, 1992, p. 218

41
100. “11. And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter
into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I
know that thou art a fair woman to look upon;”

- Genesis, 12/11

101. “12. Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians


shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife; and they will
kill me, but they will save thee alive.”

- Genesis, 12/12

102. “13. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister; that it may be
well with we for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of
thee.”

- Genesis, 12/13

When the princes (officers) of Pharaoh saw Sarai, they


commanded her before the king Pharaoh, and she was taken into
Pharao’s palace. The king Pharaoh kept Sarai in his palace and
pleased Abram by giving him gifts of sheep, oxen, asses, camels,
male servants and maidservants. Thus the prophet Abram passed
on his beautiful wife Sarai, calling her as his sister, to Pharaoh and
allowed her to remain in his royal palace by receiving in return the
afore-mentioned gifts. The readers are advised to peruse the last
ten verses of chapter 12 of Genesis to understand this episode
fully. However for the sake of brevity, here two verses are cited :

103. “15. The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and


commanded her before Pharaoh; and the woman was taken
into Pharaoh’s house.”

- Genesis, 12/15

42
104. “16. And he entreated Abram well for her sake; and he
had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and
maidservants, and she asses, and camels.”

- Genesis, 12/16

The Holy Bible continues saying that when God plagued Pharaoh
and his house with great plagues, he (Pharaoh) sent her back to her
husband, Abram, who, however did not seem to have returned the
gifts which he had received from the king.

The prophet Abram played the same trick with Abimelech, the
king of Gerar, and received from him the gifts of sheep, oxen,
male-servants, maidservants and one thousand pieces of
silver. Here is the Biblical text

105. “14. And Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and


menservants, and womenservants, and gave them unto
Abraham, and restored him Sarah his wife.”

- Genesis, 20/14

106. “16. And unto Sarah he said, Behold, 1 have given thy
brother a thousand pieces of silver;”

- Genesis. 20/16
Joseph Lewis, the president of Free Thinkers of America and the
editor of “The Age of Reason”, writes :

“The writers of Bible had slight concern for the principles


of morality. They were more concerned with rape, murder
robbery, slavery, licentiousness, brutal ignorance and
derogatory superstition. If the ministers of the Gospel are
too dense and stupid to realise the moral mischief resulting

43
from the perverse teachings of the Bible, then it is about
time to bring them to their senses.”16
- Joseph Lewis

(xii) Abandonment of women was a covenant with God!

The Holy Bible mentions abandonment of women and their


children, and it is called a covenant with God ! Will the feminists
of the world like it ? Will women of the globe approve of it ? Here
is the verse :

107. “3. Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to
put away all the wives, and such as are born of them”

- Ezra, 10/3

(xiii) David locked up ten concubines

108. “3. And David came to his house at Jerusalem; and the
king took the ten women his concubines, whom he had left to
keep the house, and put them in ward, and fed them, but went
not in unto them. So they were shut up unto the day of their
death, living in widowhood.”

- II Samuel, 20/3

(xiv) Moses : Keep alive virgins for your enjoyment and kill
non-virgins

The Holy Bible states that Moses, one of the towering figures in
Bible, instructed his soldiers to kill all boys and all those girls who
had lost their virginity by sleeping with males, but to keep alive for
their enjoyment those virgins, who did not have sexual intercourse
with males. Read the following five verses :

16
Brahm Datt Bharti : “The Vedas and the Bible”, New Delhi, 1967, p. 45

44
109. “17. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones,
and kill every woman that bath known man by lying with
him.”

- Numbers, 31/17

110. “18. But all the women children, that have not known a
man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

- Numbers, 31/18

111. “32. And the booty, being the rest of the prey which the
men of war had caught, was six hundred thousand and seventy
thousand and five thousand sheep.”

- Numbers, 31/32

112. “35. And thirty and two thousand persons in all, of women
that had not known man by lying with him.”

- Numbers, 31/35

113. “40. And the persons were sixteen thousand; of which the
Lord’s tribute was thirty and two persons,”

- Numbers, 31/40

The afore-mentioned verses indicate that thirty two thousand


virgins were captured as booty and distributed among the
congregation and the Lord.

Mark Twain, the great American humorous writer, throws light


on the above passage as under :

“Their naked privacies were probed to make sure they had


the hymen intact. After this humiliation, they were sent
away from the land that had been their home, to be sold

45
into slavery; the worst of slaveries; bed slavery; to excite
lust and satisfy it with their bodies; slavery to any buyer,
be he gentleman, or be he coarse and filthy ruffian.
(Letters From the Earth)”17
- Mark Twain

While commenting upon the afore-mentioned five verses, Thomas


Paine, the great thinker of America, remarks :

“Among the detestable villains that in any period of the


world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to
find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is
an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and
debauch the daughters.”18
- Thomas Paine

Charles Smith, the editor of “The Truth-Seeker”, states wrathfully


:

“Which is the wrose, the Old or the New Testament ? If


bad books are burned, the largest bonfire should consist of
Bibles.”19
- Charles Smith

(xv) Sale of daughters for sexual gratification

Will the members of Human Rights Commission approve of sale


of daughters as mentioned in the following verses of Holy Bible ?

114. “7. And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she


shall not go out as the menservants do.”

17
Colin Maine : “The Bible : What It says ?”, reprinted by Voice of India., New Delhi, p. 15
Mark Twain died in 1910, but the letters were suppressed by his daughter,
Clara Clemens Samossoud, for a long time for their irreverent tone. They were published
half a century later by Harper and Row, New York
18
Thomas Paine : “The Age of Reason”, published by Watts and Co., London, 1796, p. 42
19
Charles Smith : “The Bible In the Balance”, first published in Europe, reprinted by Hindu
Writers’ Forum, New Delhi, p. 20

46
- Exodus, 21/7

115. “8. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to
himself, then shall he let her be redeemed; to sell her unto a
strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he bath dealt
deceitfully with her.”

- Exodus, 21/8

One must question to Christian missionaries : Is woman like a toy


? As long as you enjoy sexual satisfaction, you may keep her with
you, but when she ceases to satisfy you sexually, you may throw
her ! Is it morality ? No civilized states would tolerate such
infamy.

The Britishers often boasted that they were the civilized nation for
centuries. Will they dare deny that sale of daughters was practised
in England for seven hundred years, after the introduction of
Christianity ? Ms. Matilda Joslyn Gage, renowned American
writer, corroborates the above statement as under

“While the sale of daughters was practiced in England for


seven hundred years after the introduction of Christianity,
we note that by the ancient law of India, a father was
forbidden to sell his daughter in marriage, or receive the
smallest present there for In mediaeval England the
daughter was held as a portion of the father property to be
sold to the highest bidder.”20
- Matilda Joslyn Gage

(xvi) Killing male enemies, and marrying their females

Holy Bible allows and justifies killing of male enemies, then


marrying their beautiful females from among the captives, and

20
Matilda Joslyn Gage : “Woman, Church and State”, New York, 1893, reprinted by Voice
of India, New Delhi, 1997, p. 301

47
abandoning them later on if such captive wives do not give sexual
satisfaction. Here are five Biblical verses in this connection :

116. “10. When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies,
and the Lord thy God bath delivered them into thine hands,
and thou hast taken them captive.”

- Deuteronomy, 21/10

117. “11. And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and
hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy
wife;”

- Deuteronomy, 21/11

118. “12. Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and
she shall shave her head, and pare her nails;”

- Deuteronomy, 21/12

119. “13. And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from
off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father
and her mother a full month; and after that thou shalt go in
unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife.”

- Deuteronomy, 21/13

120. “14. And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then
thou shalt let her go whither she will;”

- Deuteronomy, 21/14

Can it be called marriage or rape ? No civilized man will approve


of marrying captive women by force and throwing them away
when they cease to give sexual satisfaction.

48
Here is another passage in Holy Bible, which allows and justifies
killing all male enemies, and taking away their women folk for
sexual gratification

121. “13. And when the Lord thy God bath delivered it into
thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge
of the sword:”

- Deuteronomy, 20/13

122. “14. But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and
all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take
unto thyself., and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies,
which the Lord thy God hath given thee.”

- Deuteronomy, 20/14

Note : “Spoil of war” means plundering of the possessions


(including women and children) of enemies in war after they are
killed.

With all this, the Christian missionaries claim that only the religion
of Christ and Holy Bible will lead men and women to moral
progress. The readers, after having read the afore-mentioned
instances, will themselves judge whether the religion of Christ and
Holy Bible will lead men and women to moral progress or
retrogress. In this connection the remark of Bertrand Russell, the
renowned philosopher, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for
literature in 1950, is worth quoting. He says :

“The Christian religion as organised in its Churches has


been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in
the world.” 21
- Bertrand Russell

21
Bertrand Russell : “Why I am not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion”, latest
seventh edition, 1996, London, p. 25

49
Thomas Paine, one of the founders of the U.S.A., opines :

“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous


debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the
unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the
Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it
the word of a demon; than the word of God. It is a history
of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalise
mankind,- and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I
detest everything that is cruel.”22
- Thomas Paine

2. MORAL CODE OF CONDUCT IN VEDAS

Holy Vedas consist of complete moral code of conduct for men


and women of the world. It is not possible to cite here all
instances. If the readers want to acquire Vedic knowledge in toto,
they are advised to go through my book “Philosophy of Vedas”
authored by me in 1982.

Holy Vedas, being practical guide to mankind, emphasise upon


pure and pious life full of pure and pious deeds.

Be pure and pious


O worshippers !
- Rig Veda 10/18/2

Purity is the key of spiritual treasure. It elevates and exalts


man. Prayer without purity is as useless as body without soul. Not
only purity of body, but that of mind is required. He who is pure
and pious in thoughts, words and deeds, can alone tread on path of
spiritualism. Those who are pure within and without, hold the
passport to enter the kingdom of God. Vedas emphasise upon
piety and purity. Hence man should pray to Providence not for
personal power, position and prestige, but for purity and piety.

22
Thomas Paine : “The Age of Reason”, published by Watts and Co., London, 1796, pp. 7-8

50
May the omniscient Lord
Make me pure and pious.
- Yajur Veda, 19/39

Vedic message is divine message which inspires and elevates man,


exalts and uplifts him, invigorates and ennobles him, infuses and
enthuses him to soar high to achieve immortal bliss. Vedic
philosophy admonishes us never to descend but to ascend and
ascend to sublime thoughts and deeds. Holy Vedas precept us to
live with dignity

O man, elevate thyself,


Ascend high, do not descend low,
I endow thee
With vigour and wisdom
To live with dignity.
Come, enter the divine chariot Of immortal bliss,
And impart thy knowledge
To assembly of people.
- Atharva Veda 8/1/6

Prof. Emerson, the American essayist and poet, states :

“Vedas exalt our life. All philosophies and science of


Europe appear insignificant before Vedas. All men of the
earth must return to Vedas.”
- Prof. Emerson

Prof. Pall Thema, the great thinker of the West, appreciates Holy
Vedas in the following words :

“The Vedas are noble documents, documents not only of


value and pride to India but to the entire humanity,
because in them we see man attempting to lift himself
above the earthly existence.”
- Prot Pall Thema

51
Holy Vedas condemn and criticise lustful life in the form of
unrestrained looseness in sex. To indulge in sexual conjugation
with wife of another person is nothing but immorality and
intemperance, debasement and debauchery, lewdness and
lechery. The lewd and lecherous man as well as woman is not
entitled to participate in yajna according to Rig Veda :

The licentious persons are not fit


To participate in yajna.
- Rig Veda 7/21/5

He who indulges in debauchery loses his energy and strength,


vision and vitality, memory and manliness, dignity and
decorum. His age is tremendously reduced. Shri Manu
corroborates the statement as under

In the world,
There is no other sin,
Which reduces age so quickly
As that of sexual intercourse
With wife of another man.
- Manu, 4/134

Vedas therefore emphasise upon purity and piety, chastity and


sanctity of body and mind which enables us to lead healthy life full
of healthy thoughts and healthy deeds to serve God and guide,
father and mother, saints and seers, country and community. This
is the only way to enjoy life and gain admiration and immortality.

Ye enlightened pious souls,


May we hear with our ears
What is good,
May we see with our eyes
What is good,
May we enjoy
Full span of our life
With pure limbs and pure body
And full satisfaction of mind

52
In the service of supreme Lord.
- Rig Veda 1/89/8

Holy Vedas emphasise on upliftment and elevation of all


beings. The good of an individual lies in cumulative progress of
all persons. That is why Vedic religion precepts man to purify not
only himself but also others.

Begin to lead pure life


To attain universal splendour,
Purify thyself,
And make others pure,
Cross over the troublesome paths
Along with all heroes,
And live cheerfully
For a hundred autumns.
- Atharva Veda 12/2/28

====================================
“Bharat is one nation with only one culture. Culture is the soul of
Bharat. It is only our culture that can protect and develop Bharat.”

- Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya


====================================

53
4

BIBLE : TORTURE NON-BELIEVERS, VEDAS


: LOVE ALL

1. BIBLE : TORTURE NON-BELIEVERS

(i) Torture non-believers, but don’t hurt trees


123. “4. And it was commanded them that they should not
hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither
any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of
God in their foreheads.”
- Revelation, 9/4

According to Holy Bible, the value of a man’s life is less than that
of the grass, and the trees !

(ii) Don’t kill non-believers, but torture them

124. “5. And to them it was given that they should not kill
them, but that they should be tormented five months; and their
torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a
man.”

- Revelation, 9/5
Thomas Jefferson, the third President of America, admits
candidly :

“It is between fifty and sixty years since I read the


Apocalypse (Revelation), and I then considered it merely
the ravings of a manac.”23
- Thomas Jefferson

23
Charles Smith : “The Bible In the Balance”, reprinted by Hindu Writers’ Forum, New
Delhi, p. 2

55
Joseph Lewis, President of “Free Thinkers of America” and editor
of “The Age of Reason”, states :

“The Bible is not a divine revelation from God. It is not


inspired; on the contrary, it is a wicked book .... It has been
responsible for more suffering and torture than any other
volume ever printed”24
- Joseph Lewis

Ms Matilda Joslyn Gage, an American writer, states

“Boiling heretics and malefactors alive, commonly in oil


but occasionally in water, was practised throughout
Europe until a comparatively late period.”25
- Matilda Joslyn Gage

According to James A. Haught, Pope Innocent IV authorised


torture in 1252 A.D. to eradicate heresy. The efforts to eradicate
heresy led to the establishment of the Holy Inquisition. He states :

“Efforts to stamp out heresy led to the establishment of the


Holy Inquisition, one of mankind’s supreme horrors. In
the early 1200s, local bishops were empowered to identify,
try, and punish heretics” — “Pope Innocent IV authorized
torture in 1252, and the Inquisition chambers became
places of terror.... Swiss historian Walter Nigg recounted :
The thumbscrew was usually the first to be applied : The
fingers were placed in clamps and the screws turned until
the blood spurted out and the bones were crushed. The
defendant might be placed on the iron torture chair, the
seat of which consisted of sharpened iron nails that could
be heated red-hot from below. There were the so-called
‘boots’, which were employed to crush the shinbones.
Another favorite torture was dislocation of the limbs on the
rack or the wheel on which the heretic, bound hand and

24
Brahm Datt Bharti : “The Vedas and the Bible”, New Delhi, 1967, p. 34
25
Matlida Joslyn Gage : “Woman, Church and State”, New York, 1893, reprinted by Voice
of India, New Delhi, 1997, p. 267

56
foot, was drawn up and down while the body was weighted
with stones. So that the torturers would not be disturbed by
the shrieking of the victim, his mouth was stuffed with
cloth. Three-and-four-hour sessions of torture were
nothing unusual. During the procedure the instruments
were frequently sprinkled with holy water.”26
- James A. Haught

Lord Acton, himself a Catholic, wrote in the late 1800s:

“The principle of the Inquisition was murderous: The


popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they
also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church
and a condition of salvation.”27
- Lord Acton

2. VEDAS : LOVE ALL

The divine knowledge of Holy Vedas dawned on four Rishis,


named Agni, Vayu, Aditya and Angira directly from the Creator
of the cosmos. Schopenhour, the renowned German scholar,
admits candidly :

“This goes to confirm the popular belief that the Vedas are
eternal and not answerable to any human agency and that
they emanated from Brahm, the creator himself.”
- Schopenhour

Holy Vedas believe in brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God.


According to Vedic philosophy, all men of the earth are brothers to
one another. God is the kind Father of all. In the eyes of the Lord
none is superior or inferior. He treats all alike bestowing divine
bliss and benediction on all, irrespective of caste, colour and
creed. Vedic religion is based on universal brotherhood. The

26
James A. Haught : “Holy Horrors”, published by Prometheus Books, New York 1990, pp.
61-63
27
Ibid., p. 68.

57
philosophy of Vedas revolves round fraternity and equality of all
men of the globe. All men have equal rights on the earth. All
belong to Nature and Nature belongs to all. If Nature is kind to all,
why should men hate one another on the pretext of difference of
religion ? Holy Vedas. therefore, emphatically urge all men of the
earth to love one another from the core of their hearts.

Love one another


As cow loves her new-born calf.
- Atharva Veda 3/30/1

In the year 1869 a Frenchman, Louis Jacolliot, who had been a


chief judge in Chandernagore (erstwhile French India) wrote a
book, “La Bible dans I’Inde”, in French which was translated the
following year into English. Jacolliot had said

“Land of ancient India Cradle of humanity, hail Hail !


revered motherland, Whom centuries of brutal invasions
Have not yet buried Under the dust of oblivision. Hail !
Fatherland of faith, Of love, of poetry and of science, May
we hail a revival of thy past In our Western future !”28
-Louis Jacolliot

====================================

28
(i) Bhagavad Datta : “Western Indologists - A Study in Motives”, p. 6
(ii) Brahm Datt Bharti : “Max Muller - A Lifelong Masquerade”, 1992, p. 198

58
“It behoves us all to lovingly devote ourselves with all our heart,
with all our wealth and even with our lives, to the good of our
country, the land of our birth, the land that nourishes us and will
sustain us in future.”

- Swami Dayanand Saraswati

“Mother and Motherland are dearer than heaven itself. Gods and
cows, Brahmins and the faith, these are to be protected. When
faith is dead, death is better than life.”

- Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj


====================================

59
5

BIBLE PREACHES ATROCIOUS


INTOLERANCE, VEDAS PREACH
FRATERNITY

1. BIIBLE PREACHES ATROCIOUS INTOLERANCE

(i) Kill your own brother and son, if they entice you to serve
other gods

Holy Bible ordains : “Kill your own brother, son, daughter, wife, if
they entice you to serve other gods”. Here are five Biblical verses
in this connection :

125. “6. If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy
daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as
thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve
other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;”

- Deuteronomy, 13/6

126. “7. Namely, of the gods of the people which are round
about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one
end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;”

- Deuteronomy, 13/7

127. “8. Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto
him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare,
neither shalt thou conceal him;”

- Deuteronomy, 13/8

61
128. “9. But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first
upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all
the people.”

- Deuteronomy, 13/9

129. “10. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die;
because he bath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy
God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the
house of bondage.”

- Deuteronomy, 13/10

The above verses indicate categorically that Holy Bible does. not
allow freedom of thought as well as freedom of worship. It is a
matter of agony and amazement that Holy Bible ordains a father to
kill his own daughter, son, wife for a difference of religion !

H.G. Wells, the renowned English novelist, who was father of


modern science fiction, opines candidly :

“You can no more trust a devout Catholic in your


household and in your confidence than you can risk
frankness or association with a Nazi spy.”29
- H.G. Wells

Thomas Paine, the great thinker and religio-political reformer of


America, opines :

“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented,


there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more
unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more
contradictory in itself, than this thing called
Christianity.”30
- Thomas Paine

29
Peter Kemp : “H.G. Wells and the Culminating Ape”, London, 1996. p. 156
30
Thomas Paine : “The Age of Reason”, published by Watts and Co., London, 1796, p. 87

62
Roman emperor Constantine, a man who had his own son
executed and his wife boiled alive,31 saw in Christianity a
pragmatic means of bolstering his own military power and uniting
the vast and troubled Roman Empire.32

One cannot restrain oneself from shuddering at the wickedness of


the man who commits atrocity and ascribes it to the command of
God ! Is it not sheer blasphemy to tarnish the holy name of God by
unholy deeds ? Thomas Paine corroborates the point

“People in general know not what wickedness there is in


this pretended work of God.... it is a book of lies,
wickedness, and blasphemy,. for what can be greater
blasphemy than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the
orders of the Almighty ?”33
- Thomas Paine

(ii) Kill all non-believers of your town

Holy Bible says : “If any man or woman in your town serves and
worships other gods, like the sun, the moon etc. which God has not
commanded, kill them with stone”. Here is the Biblical text
consisting of four verses :

130. “2. If there be found among you, within any of thy gates
which the Lord thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that bath
wrought wickedness in. the sight of the Lord thy God, in
transgressing his covenant,”

- Deuteronomy, 17/2

31
(i) Riane Eisler : “The Chalice and the Blade”, Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1987, p.
131
(ii) Helen Ellerbe : “The Dark Side of Christian History”, U.S.A., August, 1998, p. 17
32
Ibid
33
Thomas Paine : “The Age of Reason”, published by Watts and Co., London, 1796, pp. 42-
43

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131. “3. And bath gone and served other gods, and worshipped
them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven,
which I have not commanded;”

- Deuteronomy, 17/3

132. “4. And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and
inquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing
certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel;”

- Deuteronomy, 17/4

133. “5. Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman,
which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even
that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till
they die.”

- Deuteronomy, 17/5
St. Bernard of Clairvaux had declared in launching the Second
Crusade :

“The Christian glories in the death of a pagan, because


thereby Christ himself is glorified.”34
- St. Bernard

(iii) Slaughter of infants and ripping of pregnant women

Holy Bible states in “Hosea” that infants of Samaria shall be


dashed into pieces, and pregnant women shall be ripped up.

134. “16. Samaria shall become desolate; for she bath rebelled
against her God; they shall fall by the sword; their infants shall
be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped
up.”

34
James A. Haught : “Holy Horrors”, published by Prometheus Books, New York, 1990, p.
26

64
- Hosea, 13/16
(iv) Killing infants by stoning

Should the infants be dashed against stones, even if they are born
of enemies ? Not at all. But Holy Bible makes mention of it in the
following verse :

135. “9. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little
ones against the stones.”

- Psalms, 137/9
Note : Here “thy” stands for daughter of Babylon.

(v) Peaceful citizens of Laish massacred

Holy Bible narrates that the descendants of Dan assaulted Laish,


massacred its peaceful citizens and burnt the city :

136. “27. And they (children of Dan) took the things which
Micah had made, and the priest which he had, and came unto
Laish, unto a people that were at quiet and secure; and they
smote them with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city with
fire.”

-Judges, 18/27
(vi) Kill each being that breathes

Holy Bible ordains the followers not to save alive any one in the
cities conquered by them. Each one that breathes must be
slaughtered. Here is the text :

137. “16. But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy
God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive
nothing that breatheth;”

- Deuteronomy, 20/16

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2. VEDAS PREACH FRATERNITY

Holy Vedas preach fraternity and equality of all men of the


earth. When Nature treats all equally, why should men
discriminate and quarrel with one another ?

Oxygen and Hydrogen combined in proper proportions will surely


produce water, whether the person who combines Oxygen and
Hydrogen, is Hindu or Muslim or Christian. When a person feels
hungry, is it Hindu hunger or Muslim hunger or Christian hunger ?
It is human hunger. You have to put forth efforts to satisfy the
hunger. When a person is slain in communal riot, his blood spills
on the ground, can you identify the blood as Hindu blood or
Muslim blood or Christian blood ? It is human blood. When an
orphan sheds tears at the loss of his parents in communal riots, can
you label the tears as Hindu tears or Muslim tears or Christian tears
? These are tears of a human child.

The sun illuminates all places whether it is cottage or castle,


whether it is a Hindu residence or a Muslim residence or a
Christian residence. The rose gives equal fragrance to all, Hindu
as well as Muslim, Christian as well as Jew. If Nature imparts
equal treatment to all, why does man discriminate ? William
Wordsworth, the famous poet of English literature, expresses the
same view when he laments :

“If this belief from heaven be sent If such be nature’s holy plan
Have I no reason to lament What man has made of man?”
- Wordsworth

If birds flock together, ants crawl together, sheep move


together, cows graze together, why can’t human beings live
together ?

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The Creator of the Cosmos has created the lovely earth with
fascinating phenomena of nature and beautiful boons for
enjoyment of mankind. But instead of enjoying life in toto on this
alluring earth, men have created chaos, conflicts, controversies and
calamities on the petty pretext of different modes of
worship. They do not know what worship means. Worship does
not consist of rites and rituals, nor of uttering and muttering of
prescribed religious syllables only. According to Hindu
philosophy, worship signifies love - love for not only human
beings but also birds and beasts. Samuel Coleridge expresses the
same idea in his poem, “Ancient Mariner” :

He prayeth well, who loveth well, Both man and bird and beast, He
prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For
the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.
- Samuel Coleridge

Vedas emphasise that souls of all men, birds, beasts and insects
have the same Divine lustre. None is devoid of Celestial grace,
grandeur and glory. All beings originate from the Supreme
Being who is the Father of all His children. If it is so, why to
despise one another ? Providence permeates all beings, whether
high or low, pauper or prince, sinner or saint

“He, the All-pervasive


Pervades all beings
Within and without.”
- Yajur Veda 32/8

He wo comprehends the afore-mentioned golden doctrine of


omnipresence of Almighty, and realises glimpse of God in all
beings of the earth, never hates any creature. He whose eyes look
at all persons as equal brothers having same Celestial spark, which
he feels in his own self, is free from malice, hatred and
fanaticism. The following mantra of Yajur Veda illustrates the
idea :

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“He who sees all beings
In his own self
And finds the reflection
Of his own self in all beings
Never looks down upon any body.”
- Yajur Veda 40/6

Thus, Hindu Philosophy (Vedic Philosophy) hinges on equality


and fraternity. It is based on universal brotherhood - brotherhood
of not Hindus only but all human beings of the earth, because all
hearts are the abodes of Almighty

“O Arjuna
Supreme Being dwells
In the hearts of all creatures.”
- Gita 18/61

Prof. Heeren, the renowned Western scholar, writes :

“The Vedas stand alone in their solitary splendour serving


as beacon of divine light for the onward march of
humanity.”
- Prof. Heeren

Lord Morley admits unambiguously :

“What is found in Vedas, exists nowhere else.”


- Lord Morley

====================================
“Solution of world’s problems lies in Hinduism and not in
socialism.”

- Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya


====================================

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6

BIBLICAL GOD DEMANDS SACRIFICE OF


ANIMALS, VEDIC GOD SAVES DUMB
ANIMALS

1. BIBLICAL GOD DEMANDS SACRIFICE OF ANIMALS

(i) Biblical God demands sacrifice of cattle from Israel’s


children through Moses

138. “1. And the Lord called unto Moses, and spake unto him
out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying,”

- Leviticus, 1/1

139. “2. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, if
any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord, ye shall bring
your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock.”

- Leviticus, 1/2
(ii) Sprinkling of bullock’s blood on the altar

140. “5. And he shall kill the bullock before the lord; and the
priests, Aaron’s sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the
blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation.”

- Leviticus, 1/5

2. VEDIC GOD SAVES DUMB ANIMALS

Holy Vedas teach that souls of all men, birds, beasts and insects
have the same divine lustre. None is devoid of celestial
radiance. All men, birds and beasts originate from the same

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Supreme Being who is kind Father of all His children. If it is so,
why to slay dumb animals, which are brothers and sisters of men ?

Man is so frail and feeble creature that he cannot grant life to any
one. He who cannot give life, has no right to take it. The tongue-
tied dumb animals, who are unfailing friends and faithful
companions of man in weal and woe, are so ungratefully
slaughtered by faithless flesh-eaters just to fill their stomach and
by superstitious sacrificers to make an offering at the altar of God !
How can God, being Father of all creatures, wish the slaughter and
sacrifice of His children ? He, who demands animal sacrifice, must
not be real God !

Vedic God admonishes all men of the earth to love not only human
beings, but also birds and beasts. To slay innocent dumb animals
is the most heinous sin, which can never be pardoned under any
circumstances.

It is the greatest sin


To slay the innocent animals.
-Atharva Veda 10/1/29

====================================
“The cow happens to be the archstone of Bharat’s economy.”

- Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya


====================================

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7

Argument # 1: The Bible is the Infallible


Word of God.

This is the first and most fundamental claim that Christians make
when Evangelizing. It is just taken for granted that it is true, but if
you analyze the weight of the evidence for this doctrine, you find
that it is in actuality both weak and nearly non-existent. First of
all, the first sentence of this argument, that the “Bible is the word
of God” implies that the text in the Bible books are God’s words
verbatim. However, we all know, including the Christians, that
humans wrote those books. The only difference is that Christians
believe that the humans (the identity of many of them are
unknown) who wrote the Bible were guided by God the Holy
Spirit, and therefore, they are God’s words verbatim and without
flaw. The question then becomes, were they? Furthermore, they
argue that since we would assume that God would protect his own
word, that the Bible has remain unchanged.

Now these are huge assumptions for one thing. It would take A
LOT to prove or even demonstrate such outlandish claims
literally. However, not only do Christian Evangelists make these
assumptions, but they just assume it to be true as well without any
real basis. In general, the issue is not questioned or analyzed in the
church as to whether the Bible is God’s word or not. It is simply
ASSUMED to be so. It’s a GIVEN. And it rests on a very shaky
foundation, much more so than they could imagine. What most
Christians don’t realize and never think about is that God
himself never actually told them directly that the Bible was his
word. Fallible imperfect human beings did!

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To demonstrate this, here’s an interesting and simple test that you
can try. Go to a church, and ask ten people the question “How do
you know that the Bible is God’s word?” From most of them
you’ll get a look of confusion or puzzlement, and some of them
will just say “Because it says so.” offering no other reason. Of
course, a few more knowledgeable ones will use some of the
arguments in this book that I refute. But what you can learn from
this experiment is that most Christians don’t know why they
should believe that the Bible is God’s word. You see, they’ve been
socially and psychologically engineered to assume that it’s a given
fact that it is. They’ve been unconsciously taught that it’s a simple
fact just like the sky is blue and the grass is green. That’s why in
their normal line of thinking they would never question why they
should believe that the Bible is God’s word.

You may wonder why Christians never questioned the inspiration


of the Bible upon first being introduced to it. Well I think that one
of the main reasons they don’t question the Bible’s divine
inspiration upon their initial conversion into Christianity is due to
the incredible promise of eternal life that they are promised upon
conversion. They are so overjoyed and amazed at the offer of
eternal life in heaven, offered to them for free just for believing,
that their left brain never stops to analyze what they’ve been
preached. Another reason is that preachers and evangelists often
use sentiment, emotion and touching stories to convert people,
rather than reason. Or if they were raised by Christian families,
then of course as a child they wouldn’t initially question their
religious theology, since children generally assume that what their
parents tell them is true.

Now, here’s the big shocker. What followers of Christian


fundamentalists don’t know and never realize is: NOWHERE in
the Bible does it claim that all 66 books are God’s word
orinfallible. The doctrine of Biblical inspiration and infallibility
was made up by Christian fundamentalists to create an artificial
foundation for their faith. Fundamentalists love to cite 2 Timothy
3:16; however, the “Scriptures” referred to in that verse refer to the
Old Testament, and the term “inspiration” does not mean “word of

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God” either. (i.e. if a tree inspires me to write a poem about it, are
they my words or the tree’s words?)

In any case, the Bible itself does NOT even claim that all 66 books
in it are infallible. Nowhere. Period. That’s something Christians
say, not the Bible or God. In fact, many of the authors of the Bible
had no idea that their books would be canonized into an
“infallible word of God” book. Even in Paul’s epistles, he made it
clear that he was writing personal letters, not dictating infallible
words from God. He even says literally in three verses in his
epistles that these are his words, and not God’s! (see the examples
below)

But even if the Bible did claim to be God’s word or infallible, that
wouldn’t make it so either. I could take any of the millions of
books in the world, and write in somewhere, “This book is the
word of God. It is infallible.” But would that make it so?

There are two vague verses though, that Christians use to attempt
to prove that the Bible is God’s word. These two verses though,
pose problems and raise more questions that preachers don’t
address, cause they can’t. Let’s look at them now. Here’s the first
one.
2 Timothy 3:16
“All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”

1) First of all, the term “All Scripture” could easily and logically
refer to the Old Testament or the Ten Commandments because a)
Jesus used the word scripture many times to refer to the Old
Testament canons, so to be consistent we must assume that here as
well, and b) at the time this verse was written, the New Testament
as we have it today was not even put together yet! Now, since
modern Evangelical Christian theology is based mainly on the
teachings of the New Testament of course, that means that this
verse doesn’t really support the core Christian theological
teachings of today!

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2) Second, just because someone was “inspired” by something to
write does not mean that that which caused the inspiration wrote it
directly verbatim. That’s not what the word “inspiration” even
means. For example, if a beautiful sunset inspired me to write a
poem, that doesn’t mean that the sunset itself wrote the poem, only
that the sunset motivated me to write it. The definition of the word
“inspire” obviously is not that the “inspirer” is dictating their
words verbatim as if it were their own. Here is the definition of
“inspire” from the American Heritage Dictionary:

1. To affect, guide, or arouse by divine influence.


2. To fill with enlivening or exalting emotion: hymns that inspire the
congregation; an artist who was inspired by Impressionism.
3a. To stimulate to action; motivate: a sales force that was inspired by
the prospect of a bonus. b. To affect or touch: The falling leaves inspired
her with sadness.
4. To draw forth; elicit or arouse: a teacher who inspired admiration and
respect.
5. To be the cause or source of; bring about: an invention that inspired
many imitations.
6. To draw in (air) by inhaling.
7. Archaic a. To breathe on. b. To breathe life into.

3) Third, no matter what this verse referred to, one verse out of
over 33,000 Bible verses does not make all the verses divinely
inspired, especially the verses of the other books of the Bible
which don’t always even agree with each other. So the idea of one
verse out of one book proving divinity in all 66 books is
completely absurd and non-sensical. And as we know, words are
just that - words. They don’t create reality or fact. Therefore, just
because a verse like this implies that the Bible is the word of God
doesn’t make the whole Bible the word of God. In fact, the
majority of the books of the Bible do not even claim to be the word
of God. Not even Paul claimed that his letters and epistles were
the word of God. But nevertheless, even if hundreds or thousands
of verses in the Bible said that they were the word of God, that still
wouldn’t make it so either. I could take any book in the world, and
pen in them somewhere the words, “All words in this book are
given by inspiration of God…..” but would that make them
God’s infallible word?!

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Although the Bible claims to contain the words of God when it
says “The Lord spoke” or “Thus sayeth the Lord”, even if God
really did say those things, that doesn’t mean that when Paul said
“I say” this and that, that it is the same thing. Nor does it mean
that all the verses where God speaks directly reflect what he
actually said either.

Now, here’s the other verse they use to claim divine inspiration of
the Bible.

2 Peter 1: 20-21
“Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any
private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the
will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the
Holy Ghost.”

Again, it obviously is referring to the prophecies of Old Testament


prophets and perhaps scriptures, not to the whole Bible. Therefore,
the three problems above apply to this verse as well. And as
mentioned, Christian theology and teaching is based primarily on
the Church’s interpretation of the New Testament.

Three verses that say the Bible is NOT the word of God

Now, here’s the kicker. There are THREE verses in the New
Testament that claim that the Bible is NOT the exact word of
God! Here let me show you!
1 Corinthians 7:12
“But to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that
believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put
her away.”

The Apostle Paul clearly says here in the first sentence “speak I,
NOT the Lord”. He is saying that these words he is about to say
are from him and not God! It’s in plain language. This alone
technically invalidates the fundamentalist doctrine that every word
in the Bible is uttered directly by God. It alone shatters this

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absolute claim of theirs. There is no defense. However, there are
two more similar verses like it to shatter the doctrine even further
beyond what’s necessary. Later on in the same chapter, Paul says:

1 Corinthians 7:25
“Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: yet
I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to
be faithful.”

You see here how Paul is saying that he is using his best personal
judgment, and that what he’s saying is not directly from God? He
is telling you that he is writing his own opinion. Then, in Paul’s
next letter to the Corinthians, he says:
2 Corinthians 11:17
“That which I speak, I speak it not after the Lord, but as it were
foolishly, in this confidence of boasting.”

Again, the same claim by Paul.

Christian apologists, when countered with these verses, usually


respond by claiming either that:

1) Paul was adding to Jesus’ commands, or


2) Paul was being inspired without himself knowing it.

Now those are very bizarre explanations indeed, which don’t even
address this issue. Either way, even if those two explanations are
true, they still shatter the doctrine of Biblical infallibility. And
furthermore, in regards to the second explanation, why would God
“inspire” Paul to say that his words were NOT from God?!

Now add up the score. ONE verse versus THREE! This extreme
doctrine is shattered three times over. It’s been disproven by 300
percent! Game over.

In addition, all one has to do is to take a look at the opening line of


the epistles in the New Testament by Paul and other writers, and
you will easily notice that the author is addressing his “letter” to a
specific church or group of people at the time. This means that it

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is obvious in clear language that they were writing a letter for
certain people or congregations, to either instruct them or give
them encouragement, and not writing some infallible scriptures to
be placed in a Bible to represent God’s word verbatim to all
mankind!

What is odd is that while the Evangelists and Apologists


emphasize this doctrine of Biblical infallibility so strongly and
obsessively as if it were the central issue, the Bible itself doesn’t
even do that. In fact, these Apologists only have two vague verses
they use to justify this core doctrine of theirs. If this doctrine of
Biblical infallibility was so central and core to Christianity as they
claim, then why are there only two vague verses about it, out of
over 33,000?

As mentioned before, the doctrine of Biblical infallibility was not a


central tenet of Christianity until early in the 20th century when the
theory of evolution began to be taught as fact in classrooms. It was
then that the Christians countered with this doctrine. Not only did
it protect Christian tenets from the danger of Darwinist teachings,
but it served other purposes as well. You see, without the doctrine
that the Bible is infallible and that every word of it is of God, it
would put question marks on every verse. Anyone could then pick
and choose which parts of it they wanted to be God’s word and
which they didn’t, and that would greatly undermine the authority
of it. So this doctrine is necessary to keep the religion
intact. Otherwise, Christians themselves would not be able to feel
secure and confident that every verse in the Bible could be trusted.

For eloquent dissertations about the Bible, see the following


articles:

About the Holy Bible (1894) by Robert Ingersoll, a religious critic


from the 19th century.

Some Mistakes Of Moses (1879) by Robert Ingersoll. An extensive


article by Ingersoll that lists discrepancies and absurdities in the
books of Moses.

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The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, a great eloquent religious
critic and freethinker.

The Argument from the Bible (1996) by Theodore Drange.

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8

Argument # 2: The Bible is inerrant and


contains no contradictions. Its 66 books are
harmonious and its 40+ writers agree on
what they wrote.

This doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is the central claim of Christian


fundamentalist apologists. Though extreme, it is necessary to
support their extreme doctrines and preachings, giving them
unquestionable authority. Without it, their doctrines would not
have the foundation required to keep the faith going. However,
despite the Fundamentalists’ obsession regarding Biblical
inerrancy, the fact is that the books of the Bible are nowhere near
as adamant about it. In fact, most books of the Bible don’t even
claim to be God’s word. Davis D. Danizier made some excellent
bottom line points about this in Putting the Bible in Perspective:

http://www.wordwiz72.com/bible.html
“But the real question is: What does the Bible itself say about its own
“infallibility”? Actually, it says nothing. The Bible in its current
compilation didn’t even exist until several centuries after the last
book was written. Why are religious zealots so quick to claim
divine authorship of a book that doesn’t even claim it for itself (with
the exception of specific portions of law and prophecy such as “Thus
sayeth the Lord...,” but not to the modern Bible as a whole)? The
Bible was a collection of separate writings (laws, plays, poems,
songs, histories and letters) by individual religious commentators
who never imagined their writings would ever be considered divine.
They are just like modern writers, making commentary and
analysis, who just happened to have their works assembled and voted
on by later believers who then canonized their words. They refer to
the sanctity of sacred scripture (the body already canonized before
their time -- such as the Law of Moses and the writings of the Old
Testament prophets) never imagining that someday THEIR writings,

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letters, or whatever will be added to the canon. Paul the Apostle, who
clearly believed that the established scripture of his day was inspired
(see 2Tim 3:16), also clearly acknowledged that some of his own
writings were NOT, as when he wrote in 1 Cor 7:12 ”But to the rest
speak I, NOT THE LORD...” (emphasis added); and 2
Cor 11:17 ”That which I speak, I speak [it] NOT AFTER THE
LORD...” (emphasis added).

It is not necessary for good Christians to accept the Bible as the


infallible Word of God in order to understand and believe in Jesus’
teachings of universal compassion. After all, the early Christians
themselves did not have an “infallible Bible” to carry around with
them -- it wasn’t even compiled until centuries later. Just as we
gain insights and understanding from modern writers and
commentators of today, without claiming that they are divine and
infallible, we can gain insight and understanding from ancient
writers, as long as we consider their works for what they are, with
critical thinking and common sense -- not just blind faith.
We should accept the Bible for what it is: often wise and
inspirational, but many times filled with error and cruelty. It is an
important historical relic, and the original seed from which much of
ethical theory in the Western world has developed, but its words
must be discussed, analyzed and evaluated on their merits -- as the
writing of men, not of God. It does not claim to be anything more.”

Christians are also fond of adding that “The word of God cannot
have contradictions because God cannot contradict
himself.” Again, it’s done with the a priori belief that it must be
so since it was divinely inspired by God. Despite all logic and
reason, fundamentalists will hold steadfast to this doctrine. The
book Fundamentalism: Hazards and Heartbreaks explains well
why this doctrine is so appealing to the believers and their faith:
(page 26-27)

“Fundamentalists normally do not treat the doctrine of inerrancy as


simply one explanation among others for the nature of the
Bible. Rather, to them, the doctrine of inerrancy is more like an
unquestionable law than an explanatory theory. So treated, the
doctrine leads most fundamentalists to feel confident that each
Biblical verse can be easily understood and applied to life’s

80
problems. Fundamentalists view the Bible as the final authority on
all matters of important in their life, and many believe that it is
reliable only if it is entirely inerrant… It is, then, the apparent
simplicity of Biblical inerrancy that is appealing to many
fundamentalists, and that simplicity is basic to their approach not
only to the Bible but also to the world around them. To many
people, the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy and the fundamentalist
system of thought in which it is embedded are enormously
attractive... Systems of thought that generalize about the world, then,
can simplify, or at least seem to simplify, an otherwise chaotic
world... A system of thought that denounces all alternative ways of
thinking is often enormously attractive, especially in times of
widespread moral and religious uncertainty. It offers an anchor in
the whirlpool of cultural change. By requiring uncritical acceptance
of black-and-white definitions, such systems of thought can appeal to
millions of people, who find ambiguity and ambivalence
disturbing.”

It also describes the drawbacks that such thinking can have on


people as well:
“The intellectual difficulties associated with the doctrine of Biblical
inerrancy lie not in its adherents’ generalizations per se but rather in
the unwillingness of its adherents to abandon certain generalizations
in the face of contrary evidence. (page 28)

The major hazards in Christian fundamentalism, and thus the major


causes of the doubts and frustration that many fundamentalists feel,
are woven into the fundamentalists’ approach to the Bible. People
who hold the presumption that all the Bible must be ‘perfect’ may
sacrifice the ability to recognize Biblical implausibilities and
inconsistencies, and that is a fundamental hazard. For when they are
unable to detect a biased statement, a fantastic story, an unjust act, an
implausible feat, or a contradictory law, they place their faith in God
in a precarious position. (page 149)”

While such ways of thinking can be emotionally comforting to the


believer, there are big obvious drawbacks as well. For one thing,
it closes one’s mind drastically, making them see the world in
black and white, ignoring the real complexity and diversity of the
world. It gives the believer a mentality that puts everyone in the
world into two categories – believers and non-believers, or the

81
light vs. the dark. And it also stunts any intellectual growth or
learning, because anything that doesn’t fit within the belief system
is rejected as unwholesome or evil. In addition, this also leads to
the inability to relate to those who don’t share your belief system,
thus alienating them from you. Here’s an example of what this
kind of thinking could lead to in the worst case scenario:
(Fundamentalism: Hazards and Heartbreaks, page 28)
“Indeed, by overgeneralizing and not questioning assumptions
and definitions, entire systems of thought can inadequately describe
the world and fail to do justice to its complexity. Perhaps the most
tragic example of oversimplified thought is Naziism, which relied on
uncritical definitions of Jews and the uncritical acceptance of the
idea of the Germans’ being a chosen people.”

In addition, here are some examples using foolish historical quotes,


of what religious fundamentalist closed system thinking can do to
people’s minds. It’s kind of scary, but it’s real.

“The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those


who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that
mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the
spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.”

- St. Augustine

“The Roman Church has never erred, nor will it err to all eternity. No
one may be considered a Catholic Christian who does not agree with
the Catholic Church. No book is authoritative unless it has received
the papal sanction...”

- From the Dictatus of Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085)

“We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears


white is really black, if the hierarchy of the Church so decides.”

-St. Ignition of Loyola, Exercitia Spiritualia

“If the Bible had said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would
believe it.”

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- William Jennings Bryan

“To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to
claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.”

- Cardinal Bellarmine, during the trial of Galileo in 1615.

“When the non-Christian scientist or philosopher begins to reason in


the field of philosophy or theology, the very nature of the subject
matter, dealing as it does with the ultimate causes of the universe,
makes it impossible for him to reason correctly. The distortion
brought about by the fall of man into sin completely blocks the
intellectual channels of the non-Christian thinker and prevents him
from reasoning correctly.”

- Floyd E. Hamilton,
The Basis of the Christian Faith, 1964,
Harper and Row, New York, page 14.

(Now the one above clearly shows a tenaciously circular, closed-


loop system of thinking!)

Now let’s begin and look at the facts here.

1) No one who looks at the Bible objectively without any bias or


beliefs to defend would think that it is totally harmonious and
without errors or contradictions. The book Fundamentalism:
Hazards and Heartbreaks put it well on page 86:

“Any person who reads the whole Bible, without being told I
advance that it is a work that is supposed to
be entirely true, entirely in agreement, and nowhere contradictory,
would have to conclude that it is a collection of strands of thought
that sometimes conflict. The books of the Bible were written over
more than a thousand years, and reflect the views of various cultures
and numerous writers.”

However, that is to be expected, since the Bible is not really


one book, but 66 books written by over 40 authors. If you
picked out 40 different books at a library or bookstore, would
you expect their claims and ideas to all be harmonious and

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without contradictions? Of course not. And you should expect
no less from the Bible, though it may contain words of
wisdom.

2) Second, if the Bible were truly God’s word verbatim, then why
would there be stylistic differences among the different
authors? (in addition to differences in content and ideas) Even
Christians acknowledge the individualistic differences in
writing styles of the authors of the Bible. But in doing so, they
face a contradiction that they don’t even realize. While they
acknowledge that the 40+ writers of the Bible were using their
own style of writing in their books, they are at the same time
saying that every word in the Bible comes directly from
God! But if every word of the Bible were from God, there
wouldn’t be different styles and points of view. How can God
have different styles of writing?

Now even if the Bible writers were “inspired” by something


such as some higher wisdom, higher consciousness, or even a
part of their own spirit, they still are interpreting the
“inspiration” that they’re getting with their own minds, which
makes them fallible still. They would be using their own
human minds to interpret their feelings and inspirations (no
matter what the source of them) in the same way that artists,
sculptors, writers, poets, etc. are doing as well. What this
means is that since their own minds are doing the interpreting
of their “inspirations” we can only view most if not all of the
Bible as symbolic or allegorical rather than literal. They
become like the stories contained in Aesop’s Fables and other
parable stories, which are symbolic allegorical tales with
lessons and morals to learn from.

3) Third, if the Bible was God’s word and an accurate historical


account, then it would not use literary techniques such as the
following used by fictional writers.

Use of foreshadowing

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The Bible often uses a technique called foreshadowing, which
is used by literary fiction writers, not by writers of historical
documents. Here are some examples.

a) They say that Moses’ deliverance of the Israelites is a


symbolic foreshadowing representation of Christ’s
deliverance of the believer’s from the world of sin.
b) They say (Jesus says it in the New Testament too) that the
story of Jonah being in the belly of the whale (or fish) for
three days is a symbolic foreshadowing of Christ’s descent
into hell after his crucifixion for three days and nights
before he rose again.
c) They say that Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac to
God as a test of his faith is a symbolic representation of
Christ’s sacrifice thousands of years later.

These are just some of the examples of foreshadowing used in


the Bible. Now, just why would God need to foreshadow
Christ’s sacrifice in the New Testament with events in the Old
Testament? What practical value would that serve? We’ve all
been taught in English class that foreshadowing is a technique
used by writers of fiction and literature. It’s not a technique
used to write historical or actual accounts though.

Furthermore, we have no reason at all to believe that the


writers of the Old Testament originally intended to make their
stories foreshadow Christ’s crucifixion. The New Testament
writers seemed to just use those Old Testament stories to suit
their purpose obviously.

Literary dialogue

The dialogues in the Bible are all structured and in complete


sentences, which is the way people talk in dramatizations, but
not the way people talk in real life. If you read the dialogues in
the Bible, you’ll find that people in it talk in complete
sentences, without interruptions or phrases. Each line spoken
is in response to someone or something. Now that’s obviously
how plays and dramatizations are written. People in real life

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don’t talk like that. In real life, people talk in phrases and get
interrupted. They use informal language, and don’t have such
a logical and clear purpose behind everything they say. Also,
the dialogues and the plots in the Bible just seem kind of
wooden and contrived, it doesn’t flow the way real dialogue
does.

Contradictions and discrepancies

4) Fourth, the Bible may contain good and bad parts, true things
and false things, etc. but it is definitely not inerrant. In fact, the
Bible is not only full of contradictions too numerous to list, but
also contains differences in theology between the Old and New
Testaments, a series of unfulfilled prophecies, prophecies in the
New Testament which don’t exist in the Old Testament, false
scientific facts, deliberate manipulation by the New Testament
writers, etc. (We will go into these more later.)

The list of Bible contradictions is too vast, tedious, and beyond


the scope and purpose of this book to get into, but if you wish,
there are many websites which get into them. Here are some
examples:

Biblical Errancy - The most comprehensive list of Bible


contradictions, by Dennis McKinsey

A List of Biblical Contradictions by Jim Merritt

Biblical Errancy by Jim Merritt

The Argument from the Bible by Theodore Drange

New Testament Contradictions by Paul Carlson

A list of Biblical Errancy links can be found


at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/er
rancy.shtml

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To see how tedious debating Bible contradictions can become,
see these transcripts of public debates on the issue.

Is The Bible The Word Of God? (Debate)

Asa and Archer: Does the Bible contain errors?

Paul Tobin, a former Christian, has put up an excellent site


debunking Christian fundamentalism that exposes critical
errors and contradictions in the Bible: The Rejection of
Pascal’s Wager: A Skeptic’s Guide to Christianity.

For books in print about this subject and that counter


fundamentalism, you can find a list of them at Books about
Biblical Errancy

A review of the above articles will show you that the debate
over Bible contradictions is a never-ending tedious battle over
semantics and translations that never really gets anywhere,
with each side seeing what it wants to see. That is why I do not
need to get into it here. They usually devolve into a tedious
debate over the correct translation of the meaning of Hebrew or
Greek verses of Bible transcripts. Without a background in
Hebrew, Greek, or a study of ancient Bible manuscripts, one
cannot even engage in such debate. But even amongst
themselves, Christians will debate differences in theology or
doctrine in the same way, arguing their different interpretations
of various verses, and over correct translations of Hebrew or
Greek manuscripts.

One way Christians attempt to resolve alleged Bible


contradictions is by stating a common guideline that you have
to look at each verse in its context, meaning that any
interpretation or conclusions you draw from the verses must be
consistent with the verses in the rest of the Bible. However,
the problem is that one can easily choose their own
interpretation of a verse, and reinterpret all the other conflicting
verses to agree with it, or vice versa. For example, one dispute
among Christian denominations is the issue of whether water

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baptism is required for salvation. Those who believe that water
baptism is required for salvation will quote John 3:5 which
says:

“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be


born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into
the kingdom of God.”

They take the word “water” literally to mean H2O water. On


the other hand, those who believe in a salvation purely by faith
and not of works (they consider the act of water baptism to be
of “works”) will cite Ephesians 2: 8-9

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of


yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man
should boast.”

The proponents of the grace through faith salvation will claim


that the “water” in John 3:5 must be interpreted as referring to
the word of God, because elsewhere in the Bible, the term
“water” has been used to refer to the word of God. And
furthermore, since the verse in Ephesians said that salvation
was purely through grace and faith, then that’s the definition of
“water” that must be used in John 3:5. In addition, the “grace
through faith” believers will cite the example of the salvation
of the thief on the cross (Gospel of John), who was given
immediate salvation by Jesus while they were both crucified,
without being water baptized. However, believers in water
baptism as a requirement will claim that since the thief did not
have the chance of being baptized by water, that God made an
exception in his case but that in normal cases it is still a
requirement. Another verses dealing with this same issue is:

Mark 16:16 ”He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but
he that believeth not shall be damned.”

The water baptism people say the word “baptized” above refers
to water baptism while the grace through faith proponents

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claim that it refers to the spiritual baptism of the Holy Spirit
when one becomes saved.

There are thousands of other verses like this which are disputed
within the Christian community between believers and
denominations. And it can often get a lot more elaborate than
in my example above. You see how tedious and pointless this
kind of debate over Bible interpretation gets?

Another way Christians attempt to resolve a contradiction is by


looking for any loophole they can find to harmonize
contradictory verses. In the New Testament, for instance, we
have two accounts of Judas’ death. In one account, he kills
himself by hanging himself. In another, he dies of a fall.

“And he cast down the pieces of silver into the temple and
departed, and went out and hanged himself.” (Matt. 27:5)

“Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and
falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his
bowels gushed out.” (Acts 1:18)

Christians attempt to resolve this contradiction by claiming that


Judas hung himself at the top of a hill first, and then somehow
the rope broke and he fell down a slope. They will go to any
extreme to resolve a contradiction, as you might expect.

In any case, the fact is that there are countless of contradictions


in the Bible. Of that there can be no doubt. Even Christians
themselves admit that if you take the Bible literally, then of
course there will be contradictions in it. Therefore, they
maintain that some of it is literal and some symbolic or
figurative. But of course, which verses are literal and which
are symbolic is a source of constant doctrinal debate among
Christians, and has always been. The thing they do is try to
rationalize away any contradictions or discrepancies to
maintain the belief that it is divinely inspired and
harmonious. They have many ways of doing this, one of which
is to label any verse that contradicts a doctrine you hold as

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symbolic and therefore not literal enough to cause a
contradiction. Another is to reinterpret the meaning of any
contradictory verses which doesn’t support the doctrines you
believe in. As you might have guessed, the variety of ways
they can do this is countless and never-ending. (It is not in the
scope of this book to address every single doctrinal issue and
verse being debated in the Christian community though.)

Some of the most significant discrepancies and theological


differences in the Bible are:

a) The Old Testament writers tell of a coming messiah (the


Jews like to use the term “Moshiach” though,
see http://www.jewfaq.org/moshiach.htm) who will
establish a political national kingdom in Israel and bring it
to become the center of world government and power
(Jeremiah 23:8; 30:3; Hosea 3:4-5; Isaiah 11:11-12; 2:2-4;
42:1) whereas the New Testament writers claimed that their
messiah, Jesus Christ, is a messiah of a spiritual kingdom
(spoken of often in Matthew 9-13) rather than an earthly
one, consisting of the body of believers and their
churches. Therefore, the central figure of the Bible, the
messiah, is portrayed as having a completely different
mission in the Old and New Testaments. And this
difference is a huge one. So much for harmony. (See the
section Why Jesus could not be the Messiah of the Old
Testament)

b) During most of the Old Testament era, followers of God did


not believe in a literal heaven and hell. You can check this
out easily by simply looking at the books of the Old
Testament itself, as the concept is not mentioned until about
the book of Daniel. And that book was written in the era
when Israel was enslaved by the Persians. The Persians’
religion was Zoroastrianism, which was the first religion to
preach the concept of heaven and hell. See the connection
now? And that, according to secular historians, is how the
concept of heaven and hell came into the Bible. It was
adopted from the Zoroastrian theology. This is the

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consensus of secular history. Only the Christian apologists
and Evangelists don’t seem to know about this,
conveniently. Now, if the Bible is the infallible verbatim
word of God, whose word is unchanging throughout all
time, then how could it be privy and changeable according
to such cultural influences and timelines? (See the
section Evolution of Heaven and Hell in the Bible from
Zoroastrianism – Good news for the fearful)

c) The writers of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke


clearly teach and believe in a salvation by works, while the
writer of the Gospel of John, written much later, preaches
that salvation is by faith and belief on the cross and in the
atonement. For example, in Matt. 19:16-18, Jesus is asked
how one can go to heaven and have eternal life.

“And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master,
what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?
And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there
is none good but one, that is,God: but if thou wilt enter
into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him,
Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt
not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt
not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy
mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
The young man saith unto him, All these things have I
kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto
him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast,
and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven: and come and follow me.”

Now that was a simple rule to follow for going to heaven,


loving your neighbor and God, and keeping the
commandments. However, it evolved into much more later
when we get into the book of John, which was written much
later. In fact, both Christian and non-Christian scholars
agree that John is very different from the other three
Gospels, known as the Synoptic Gospels, in its emphasis of
the doctrine of Atonement, which is that one must be saved
through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Rather than just loving

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your neighbor and God, the doctrine now was that you had
to believe that Jesus died for your sins in order to be
saved. Our modern Evangelical Christianity is based on the
Gospel of John, and that’s why if you look at a Christian
Gospel tract or literature, you will see it always quoting
verses from the Gospel of John. For example:

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten Son, so that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life.”

John 8:24 ”I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your
sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your
sins.”

John 11:25 ”Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and


the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet
shall he live:”

John 14:6 “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and
the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

And then of course, the Apostle Paul reinforced this


doctrine of Atonement in his letters (some theorize that
Paul created the version of him in organized Christianity).

Romans 10:9 “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the
Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath
raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

(See the section entitled Evolution of the Salvation


Doctrine in the Four Gospels)

And with regard to the four Gospels describing Jesus’


ministry, there are key contradictions and discrepancies as
well. For instance:

1) Mark is regarded by Biblical Scholarship to be the


oldest of the Gospels, followed by Matthew and Luke,
and finally John. It is agreed that Matthew and Luke

92
took Mark’s narrative and expanded on them, and using
another source which scholars believe to have existed
and label the “Q Gospel”. Then John then took the first
three Gospels and added even more to them to create
his comprehensive Gospel. Now, if these Gospels are
the word of God, why does God have to expand on his
own words over and over again? Why can’t an all
knowing omniscient God write the perfect final draft
the first time, instead of making so many rough drafts
first? Also, if the gospels are eyewitness testimony,
then why is 91 percent of Mark contained in
Matthew? Why would anyone need to copy their own
eyewitness testimony from someone else?

2) In John’s Gospel, Jesus talks about being “born again”


in order to enter the Kingdom of God. In chapter 3
verse 3 it says: “Jesus answered and said unto him:
verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born
again he can not see the kingdom of God.” However,
the other three Gospels never mention anything about
being “born again.” Since John was written long after
the other three Gospels, we can logically conclude that
the Church decided to add a tenet of salvation that
would require belief in order to control its followers
perhaps. Such describes how Christianity evolved and
changed from its original form, rather than stay the
same constantly as fundamentalists would have you
think.

3) Nothing in the Gospel of Matthew and Luke describe of


any kind of salvation by faith. And nothing in them
warns about the consequences of not believing in
Jesus. The last chapter of Mark which states: “He that
believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that
believeth not shall be damned.” (Mark 16:16) has been
shown to be an interpolation since many of the earliest
manuscripts of Mark don’t contain that verse in the last
chapter, so Mark probably didn’t say anything about
salvation by faith as well.

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4) In Mark Jesus goes around everywhere and casts out
demons. In John he never does this once.

5) Matthew says there were forty-one generations from


Abraham to Jesus. Luke says there were fifty-six. The
names in their genealogies are also completely
different.

6) Matthew says Jesus was born when Herod was King of


Judea. However, Luke says he was born when
Cyrenius was Governor of Syria. Both can’t be true
though. Herod died in the year 4 BC, and Cyrenius,
who in Roman history is known as Quirinius, did not
become Governor of Syria until ten years
later. Therefore, Herod and Quirinius are separated by
the whole reign of Archelaus, Herod’s son. Between
Matthew and Luke, there is, therefore, a contradiction
of at least ten years as to the time of Christ’s birth.

7) According to Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus’ ministry


covered about one year. But according to John, Jesus’
ministry covered about three years.

8) John tells us that the event where Jesus drives out the
money-changers from the temple occurred at the
beginning of his ministry, while Matthew, Mark and
Luke tell us that it occurred near the end of his
evangelization ministry.

9) There are also three types of Christs in the


Gospels. According to Mark, Christ was a
man. According to Matthew and Luke, he was a
demigod, while John insists that he was God himself.

10) Matthew says that Jesus was born


in Bethlehem. However, Jesus is known as Jesus of
Nazareth. The Encyclopaedia Biblica, a work written
by theologians, the greatest Biblical reference work in

94
the English language, says: “We cannot perhaps venture
to assert positively that there was a city of Nazareth in
Jesus’ time.”

Rather than rationalizing them away or ignoring them, perhaps the


best way to understand these contradictions and discrepancies is
given in Fundamentalism: Hazards and Heartbreaks: (page148)

“There is a satisfactory explanation for many of the


inconsistencies and implausibilities found in the Bible; it
requires acknowledging that the Biblical authors were influenced
by the beliefs prevalent in their culture and the historical setting
in which they wrote.”

The “read the Bible in its context” argument

A popular counterargument by Christians against those who point


out discrepancies in the Bible is to claim that one has to “read the
Bible in its context”. They even use this argument against other
Christians when doctrinal disagreements arise. This rule states that
any interpretation drawn from any Bible passages should take into
account the verses and chapters around it, and in the rest of the
Bible too.

What this Christian solution falsely and naively assumes is that


everyone who honestly reads the whole Bible in its context will
come to the same conclusions. Anyone who isn’t deluded or
deprived of common sense knows that this is the most unrealistic
expectation they can have. It also assumes that there exists a
single true and exact interpretation of the Bible.

They couldn’t be more wrong. Even if one exercises perfect


logic in reading the Bible, one can still come up with differing
interpretations on many issues and passages. Especially when the
verses, chapters, and books of the Bible contradict or don’t make
sense when taken hyperliterally, one still has to make judgment
calls on which verses to emphasize, and which to reinterpret to fit a
particular conclusion. As mentioned earlier in the water baptism
issue, one can easily choose their own interpretation of a verse, and

95
reinterpret all the other conflicting verses to agree with it, or vice
versa.

Sometimes, they try to claim that the Holy Spirit in the true
believer will correctly interpret the Bible for him/her. The obvious
problem with that is that lots of “true believers” do not agree on
their interpretation of the Bible, even within the same
denomination. And of course, they can easily claim that the other
“true believers” who disagree with them are either not true
believers or not being guided properly by the Holy Spirit. But that
is just getting insane.

As one reader of mine commented on this issue:

“Wu,

I agree with you completely, as do 4.5 Million Orthodox


believers.

First, consider how 10,000 different “literal” interpretations of


the same Bible (a minimalist one, since these groups do not
accept various books included in the traditional Scriptures) can
be! There cannot logically be more than one out of the myriad
of disagreeing interpretations which is correct--and there doesn’t
have to be even one! Each group claims that it has got the right
set of (literal) interpretations--however non-literal much of what
they interpret is and of course ignoring that the Bible was finally
assembled and canonized by the Orthodox Church--and not until
in the latter fourth century.

Second, if you reject the interpretations set forth by the disciples


of the authors of the Gospels and Epistles and their successors in
the first two centuries of Christianity, and if you permit everyone
to interpret the Scriptures according to one’s individual whims
(Luther’s “sola scriptura” and the “universal priesthood of
believers”) instead of being guided by the holy patristic tradition,
it follows that “Scripture alone” is for all practical purposes a
consummately empty slogan--there being no objective way to
select the fittest interpretation from the different individualistic
opinions on each point. This leads to moral reletavism and a
sense that “God will sort it all out in the end.”

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The Holy Apostle Paul said, “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and
hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by
word, or our epistle.” 2 Thessalonians 2:15. One must
understand and experience the patristic tradition of the Church to
experience the fullness of Christ. The epistles alone will never
do it.

Modern Fundamentalist lack control--like the holy tradition--


which, having tried out every possible answer to every mooted
point, sifts them and selects (to hang on) the only one that does
no harm to the entire system of belief inherited from the
Apostles and their disciples. These traditions, given by word
and by epistle, have stood the test of two millenniums. The
Orthodox believe that the Church was guided by the all-holy
Spirit (John 16:13)--that the Spirit was not dormant for a
millennium and a half till Luther came along, as a
Fundamentalist must assume.

John”

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9

Argument # 3: The Historicity of Jesus


Argument.

Sometimes stated as: “There is more historical evidence for the


existence of Jesus Christ than even for Julius Caesar.”

This is a strange argument that is very lacking in evidence and


seems to be more of a rhetorical mantra than anything
else. Nevertheless, I have heard this argument uttered by
preachers, Youth Pastors, Christian authors, etc. The only
supporting evidence given for this argument is that there are more
manuscript copies of the Bible than for any other book in
history. However, just because many copies exist for a particular
book or story doesn’t mean that the original copy is a factual
historical account. Anyone should be able to deduce that. For
example, there are millions of copies of the movie ”Star Wars” on
video tape and DVD, but that doesn’t mean that the story itself is a
true story. Therefore, this is a very silly argument.

Also, the existence of Julius Caesar is documented by many


historical documents, accounts, and the writings of secular
historians of his time. On the other hand, there is no such evidence
for the existence of Jesus, so the two analogies are not
even comparable in the slightest.

Despite Christian rhetoric, here are the facts regarding the


historicity of Jesus:

1) His existence has not even been historically proven. None of


the secular historians of Rome or Israel between 1 AD and 33
AD even mention Jesus. He is not mentioned in any historical
documents or accounts of that time period either.

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(See Did Jesus Christ Really Live? by Marshall Gauvin,
and Did a historical Jesus exist? by Jim Walker. For a
scholarly analysis of the subject, see The Jesus Puzzle by
James Doherty.)

2) The historians Christians usually cite as evidence for the


existence of Jesus, such as Josephus, Tacitus, or Pliny, lived
long after Jesus lived and never even met him, so they were
only going by what they heard. Also, Josephus’ famed passage
citing Jesus in his works of Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18,
has been hotly contested among scholars. Here is the passage
in question:

“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful
to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a
teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew
over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He
was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the
principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those
that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to
them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had
foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things
concerning him. And the tribe of Christians so named from him
are not extinct at this day.”

There are three scholarly positions on this passage. Some


scholars believe it to be a genuine passage of Josephus. Others
believe it to be interpolation or a forgery added in by
Christians. The third group considers the passage to be
genuine in a simpler form, with the words in italics
above added in later by Christian copyists. But there are many
problems with this, and I will only list the main ones. First,
Josephus did not live in the time of Jesus nor did he meet
him. He was simply writing what he had heard from others
that was passed on. Second, this passage was not even
mentioned by the Church fathers until 300 years after Josephus
lived! The Church fathers were fond of quoting passage that
supported the Christian faith, so it would be odd that they never
mentioned this one for 300 years, if Josephus had indeed

100
written it. The first Church father to mention is was Eusebius,
and this man also said that it is permissible to lie for the
Christian faith! Therefore, it is feasible that Eusebius could
have embellished or forged this passage. In addition, Church
fathers such as Origen quoted Josephus often but never this
passage, which would indicate that it didn’t exist at the time,
since it would have had enormous apologetic value had it did.

For a more in-depth analysis of this passage and others claimed


to support the historicity of Jesus, see Historicity Of
Jesus and Josh McDowell’s “Evidence” for Jesus -- Is It
Reliable? Also check out Earl Doherty’s Josephus Unbound:
Reopening the Josephus Question. Archarya S, author of The
Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold also has a
helpful page on this subject: The Jesus Forgery: Josephus
Untangled

For a list of articles and books on the subject, see these


compilations:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/hist
oricity.shtml
http://www.truthbeknown.com/christcon.htm

3) Despite all this though, the consensus of most non-religious


historians is that there was a historical Jesus Christ who lived,
but that he was probably not the same Jesus as described in the
Gospels. In other words, the Jesus of the Gospels may have
been based on a real Jesus, but most likely the historical Jesus
was not the legendary Jesus of the Gospels. That conclusion
was also made by the famous Jesus Seminar as well, which
consisted of hundreds of Bible scholars from around the
world. In spite of this objective historical view of Jesus, most
Christians have no knowledge of its existence. In fact, this
historical view of Jesus is not even acknowledged by the
Christian community, and is never even addressed or dealt with
in Evangelistic books and literature, oddly enough.

More on the Jesus Seminar’s research and findings can be found


at: http://religion.rutgers.edu/jseminar/jsem_b.html and also

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at http://www.jesusseminar.com/Jesus_Seminar/jesus_seminar.htm
l

(To learn about the secular historical view of Jesus, see the
website of PBS’s Frontline series, From Jesus to Christ: The
First Christians at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/ or
you can check your local public library to see if the video of
this series is available for rent. I have seen all episodes and
found it a great informative program filled with vivid pictures,
scenery and music.)

Some non-Christians who believe in a historical Jesus maintain


that the historical Jesus may have just been an executed criminal or
martyr, and that it was Paul who created and promoted the legend
of him as a risen savior. (See Paul and Christian Origins) For
example, George Bernard Shaw said:

“The conversion of Paul was no conversion at all: it was Paul


who converted the religion that has raised one man above sin
and death into a religion that delivered millions of men so
completely into their dominion that their own common nature
became a horror to them, and the religious life became a denial
of life.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Although most historians and scholars believe that a historical


Jesus existed, there is a growing number who now argue for his
non-existence. Though they are in a minority, one cannot discount
their arguments honestly, because the arguments and evidence they
cite is quite convincing and thorough. One proponent of this new
theory on the leading edge is a woman who goes by the
pseudonym Archaya S (http://www.truthbeknown.com/) Her book
The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold is very
acclaimed, scholarly, and informative. It argues that the Jesus
story was created from ancient Pagan myths with dying savior
themes and motifs. From its book description on Amazon.com:

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“Controversial and explosive, The Christ Conspiracy marshals
an enormous amount of startling evidence that the religion of
Christianity and Jesus Christ were created by members of
various secret societies, mystery schools and religions in order to
unify the Roman Empire under one state religion! This powerful
book maintains that these groups drew upon a multitude of
myths and rituals that already existed long before the Christian
era and reworked them into the story the Christian religion
presents today-known to most Westerners as the Bible.
Author Acharya makes the case that there was no actual person
named Jesus, but that several characters were rolled into one
mythic being inspired by the deities Mithras, Heracles/Hercules,
Dionysus and many others of the Roman Empire. She
demonstrates that the story of Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels,
is nearly identical in detail to those of the earlier savior-
gods Krishna and Horus, and concludes that Jesus was certainly
neither original nor unique, nor was he the divine revelation.
Rather, he represents the very ancient body of knowledge
derived from celestial observation and natural forces. A book
that will initiate heated debate and inner struggle, it is
intelligently written and referenced. The only book of its kind, it
is destined for controversy.”

Another great work out there is Earl Doherty’s The Jesus Puzzle.
Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?: Challenging the
Existence of an Historical Jesus. It is also very scholarly and
informative. The publisher’s introduction on Amazon.com raves:

“During three years of exposure on the World Wide Web, where


he has presented convincing evidence, on a half a million word
website, that no historical Jesus existed, to enthusiastic (and not
so enthusiastic) reaction from around the globe, Earl Doherty’s
first published book has been eagerly awaited. The wait will not
disappoint. In a highly attractive product (the cover itself is
stunning), the author presents all the details of his argument in an
immensely readable and accessible format.”

One of Doherty’s shocking discoveries is that Paul never even


referred to Jesus as a historical figure, but only in spiritual form,
and therefore the idea of a historical Jesus didn’t exist until
later. Therefore, Paul may not have even believed that Jesus was

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ever a real man on Earth!

Here are some colorful-looking sites on this topic as well:


http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/
http://www.jcnot4me.com/

Whoever Jesus was, and whether he existed or not, he is definitely


one of the most controversial figures in history. In fact, there are
more interpretations and views on who Jesus was than you can
imagine. They range from the tradition Christian version of Jesus,
to the secular version where he was just a great moral teacher or
executed criminal whom Paul deified somehow, to the New Age
version where Jesus was a self-actualized being who achieved
cosmic consciousness but his words were twisted around to mean
other things. There are even theories that speculate on Jesus being
an ancient astronaut or extraterrestrial. (e.g. Erich Von Daniken’s
“Ancient Astronauts Theory”) Perhaps a CNN program on Jesus I
saw entitled The Mystery of Jesus put it best at the end when it
concluded: “There is so little known about who Jesus was that
everyone sees what they want to see.”

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10

Argument # 4: The Trilemma Argument -


Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?

This is one of the favorite arguments of Evangelical literature,


posing a Trilemma for the non-believer. It was made popular by
Christian authors such as C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, and
apologist William Lane Craig. This situational trilemma is
basically stated like this:

“Jesus claimed to be God in the flesh, that he died for your


sins, and that your eternal destiny depends on whether you
accept him as your Lord and Savior or not. Now, for
someone to make such cosmic claims to deity, you would
have to conclude that he is either 1) Lord – who he says he
is, 2) Liar – a deceiver, or 3) Lunatic – an insane man. He
could not just be a great moral teacher. All of us have to
make the decision of what to do with Jesus’ claim to our
eternal souls. We have to choose from one of these three
choices. This is a very serious matter, the most important
decision of your life, because your eternal destiny hangs on
it.”

C.S. Lewis states it like this in his book Mere Christianity:

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus
said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be
a lunatic-on the level with the man who says he is a poached
egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your
choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else
a madman or something worse.”

He then goes on in the same book to elaborate as to why you could


not view Jesus as just a great moral teacher:

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“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish
thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept
Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be
God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the
sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He
would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is
a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must
make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God:
or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for
a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can
fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come
with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human
teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

The apologist claims that we cannot just say that Jesus was a great
moral teacher because he claimed to be God and that the eternal
destiny of our souls was in his hands. No moral teacher would
make such claims, they argue. Only a lunatic, liar, or God himself
would say such things. Those are the only three choices they
claim. The Christian apologist tries to logically rule out the Liar
conclusion by claiming that everything Jesus said came true, so he
was honest, especially in his claim that he would rise from the
dead. And also that Jesus showed high impeccable morals as well,
which a liar wouldn’t do. He then tries to rule out
the Lunatic conclusion by claiming that no insane man could utter
such words of wisdom that are out of this world, such as the
Beatitudes and other teachings of love. Therefore, they claim, a
sensible man could only accept that he is Lord and God, like he
said he is.

What they are trying to prove, is this:

1. Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord.


2. Jesus was neither a liar nor a lunatic.
3. Therefore, Jesus is Lord.

However, there are some HUGE problems with this.

1) First of all, these apologists do not successfully rule out the Liar
or Lunatic choices. Their attempts to do so are based on

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shabby conjecture. One can say wise things and be honest, yet
still be insane in some of their beliefs, for example. Also, just
because someone is generally honest doesn’t mean that 100
percent of everything he said must be honest as well. It can
even be argued that not everything Jesus said came to pass,
since as mentioned in Argument # 3 he stated many times that
he would return in the lifetimes of the First Century Christians,
to rapture the end of the world, and he didn’t. Furthermore, the
apologists do not rule out the possibility of Jesus being a great
moral teacher either, since a) being crazy does not make one
immoral, and b) you can lie and still preach great morals in
principle (US Presidents and politicians have done that
throughout history in fact).

2) Second, again there is no evidence or reason to believe that


the Gospel accounts are historical facts. The term “Gospel”
means “good news” and were written for an
agenda. Therefore, we have no basis for assuming that what
the New Testament claimed about Jesus’ life and ministry ever
even happened.

3) Third and most importantly, the Trilemma argument


TOTALLY IGNORES a fourth and more likely explanation
than the other three, which is that the Jesus of the Gospels is a
legend. In fact, as mentioned earlier (in Argument # 6), that
fourth explanation is the official position of most secular
unbiased historians and of the Jesus Seminar. But
the Trilemma argument completely ignores it altogether! How
convenient.

For an indepth analysis and debunking of the Trilemma argument,


see the following articles:

Chapter 7-- The Trilemma-- Lord, Liar or Lunatic? By Jim Perry

Lord, Liar or Lunatic? An Analysis of the Trilemma By James Still

Beyond Born Again-- Chapter 7: A False Trilemma By Robert


Price

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11

Argument # 5: The Testimonials and


Changed Lives Argument.

Evangelical Christians usually declare that regardless of all their


intellectual arguments to support the validity of the Bible and their
faith, the best evidence lies in the wonderful inspiring testimonials
of born again Christians. They are proud to say that Jesus changes
lives and transforms them for the better to produce good fruit, and
that’s the real evidence.

Now, that’s all fine and dandy. I don’t dispute that there are many
such cases where people’s lives were changed by the Christian
faith for the better, given fulfillment and meaning, made happier,
and given kinder hearts and improved morality, etc. In fact, I was
such a case myself, for when I was a Christian fundamentalist, my
life was made more meaningful and gave me a sense of strong
inner purpose as well. I also agree that there seems to be some
supernatural power behind these changed lives, answered prayers,
and miracles.

However, those who use this argument almost NEVER consider,


acknowledge, or take into account the following facts which are
just as true as the premise of the argument.

1) First, just because a religion or belief system has changed


people’s lives for the better doesn’t mean that the teachings
or doctrines of the system must be true and infallible. Nor do
they erase all other similar testimonials of all other religions
and belief systems. Richard Carrier in his article Why I Don’t
Buy the Resurrection Story put it well when he stated:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrecti
on/

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“Any belief system that involves a radical break with past belief
toward a positive acceptance of new hope or wisdom will have a
powerful transformative effect on a person, whether their new
belief is true or not. I myself “converted” from an all-but-
areligious childhood to Taoism, and its effect on me was
certainly profound. Am I so ignorant of the world that I would
actually claim that “only the true Tao could have such a
transforming power in a person’s life”? No. I am more honest
than that, and more aware of the ways of the world. I was
overcome by the genius and beauty of a belief, and the hope and
wisdom it granted in a shining moment of revelation. But after
long examination I found it was not the correct world view, that
there were flaws only visible to careful study.”

2) Second, what these Christians also NEVER acknowledge or


even realize is that there are also MANY people whose lives
were changed for the better through other religions or systems
of belief. I could EASILY bring up the SAME kind evidence
of changed lives and testimonials from other belief systems,
religions, pop psychology fads, self-help groups, Alcoholics
Anonymous groups, New Age sects, Wiccans, even from
Atheists/Agnostics, etc. I have known practitioners of
Buddhism, Islam, New Age, alternative non-organized
spirituality, etc. who can testify that their lives had been
changed for the better in many ways as a result of their
beliefs/practices. Anyone who wants to find such testimonies
can easily do so by walking into the worship buildings of other
religions, seeking testimonies over the internet, reading about
them from books in the library/bookstore, etc. However, just
because those testimonials are true and sincere does not mean
each of those belief systems and practices are right for
everyone. The same goes for the Christian faith too.

However, Christians prefer not to factor this in. And if


confronted with these testimonials of other religions, belief
systems, and spiritual practices, their response is to claim that
they mean nothing if not based on the Bible, and that Satan
could be behind them because he can appear “as an angel of
light” and is the “father of lies” according to the Bible
(implying that even religions that do good are still inherently

110
evil since they do not acknowledge Jesus as the only way to
God).

The problem for them is that claiming that Satan is behind the
testimonials of other religions/spiritual practices DOES NOT
erase or invalidate them. They seem to think that claiming
that Satan is behind it is some kind of a “magic eraser” that
can delete all contrary evidence! Not only is it a total cop out,
but it’s insulting to others as well. I would ask them how they
would feel and how they would like it if I used the “Satan is
behind it” explanation to explain away their evidence of
Christian testimonials too?

3) Third, many people throughout history have sincerely tried


the Christian faith, found it lacking or unfulfilling, and then left
it too. Many of these deconverts were sincere, believed in and
loved Jesus with all their heart, etc. Yet, for one reason or
another, the faith failed them. It either didn’t live up to its
promise, was too closed-minded for their evolving minds
which sought to broaden itself, didn’t make sense, had too
many contradictions/discrepancies to continue rationalizing
away, etc. Although there are no exact statistics for the
number of people who convert and deconvert from Christianity
each year, I would say that the number of deconverts is nearly
as many as the converts. They are so common in fact that I
have met them everywhere. This is to be expected though,
because in reality, no single belief system or religion is right
for everyone. People are different in many ways and on
different levels of intellectual/spiritual evolution. Therefore,
there are going to be some people are just not compatible with
the Christian religion, for any number of reasons. In other
words, it’s not for everyone, contrary to what Christians
think. This is not only true for religion, but for career paths,
organizations and social groups as well. No one is compatible
with everything, and no group/organization/belief is suited for
everyone. That’s the reality.

Now, to be fair, this should count as evidence against the


validity of Christianity as well. Yet, the Evangelical Christians

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NEVER seem to count it as points against them, nor do they
acknowledge this fact at all! Instead, if someone has fallen
away, they are considered “backsliders” and presumed to be
lovers of sin and pleasure, or else were deceived by false
religion, secular passions, or Satan. It’s never the fault of the
Christian religion of course. It’s another classic case of
blaming the victims (much like Amway and multi-level
marketing companies blame those who fail the “business
system” rather than the inherent flaws of the system).

Nevertheless, I am not an Atheist and so unlike them, my position


is NOT that the change in people’s lives after committing to a
religion is purely psychological or due to delusion or
imagination. Not at all. Such a materialistic view does not fit all
the evidence and accounts on the matter. My view on this is much
broader than that, and will be expanded on in the next section
involving answered prayers and miracles. I have reasons for
believing in metaphysical components of these phenomena,
because physical conventional explanations are insufficient to
account for the total body of evidence.

In any case, my conclusion about this is that yes there is something


supernatural going on here with the Christian faith, evidenced by
the testimonies of changed lives, answered prayers, miracles,
etc. However, just because there is some supernatural force or
power behind it, doesn’t mean that all other beliefs and religions
are false, don’t lead to God, and are of Satan and lead to hell, for
there are supernatural things going on in other religions and
spiritual practices as well. That is what Fundamentalist Christians
don’t get.

Related argument: All non-Christians are empty and unhappy


without Christ

A related argument to the above is that everyone without Christ is


empty and unhappy deep down inside. But the truth is, there are
many non-Christians, both secularists and people of other faiths,
who are just as happy as Christians if not more. And there are
many Christians who are unhappy and find their faith lacking and

112
nonsensical, so much that many of them end up deconverting.
Obviously since this doesn’t fit in with the Christian paradigm, it is
ignored through cognitive dissonance. One time, I had a discussion
with two Christian missionaries in Moscow who brought up this
argument, which proved to be highly circular. It went something
like this:

Missionaries: Everyone is empty deep down inside with


Christ, for only he could fill that human emptiness that we
all have.

Me: But I know many people who are happy and fulfilled
in other beliefs and religions.

Missionaries: They are only pretending to be happy and


fulfilled. Without Christ, there is no true inner joy, peace,
or fulfillment.

Me: For example, the movie star Richard Gere claims to be


happy in his Buddhist beliefs.

Missionaries: Richard Gere is not truly happy. He just


tells everyone that to keep up his image.

Me: I also know and can name many former Christians


who were unhappy or empty in their faith, and found
fulfillment and meaning in other religions or belief
systems, such as Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, Islam,
Hinduism, Wiccan, New Age, or even
Atheism/Agnosticism. Many of them have emailed me to
share their stories before, and my site has links to forums
and support group sites dedicated to them.

Missionaries: Then they were never true Christians to


begin with. No one who is truly “born again” would fall
away permanently. They may have thought that they were
truly born again, but were mistaken. Nothing compares
with being born again and having a relationship with
Christ, which is completely satisfying.

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Me: But many of these were honest devout Bible thumpers
who gave their whole lives for their faith, evangelizing all
along the way, just like you!

Missionaries: Again, not all who claim to be Christians


are. Having a mere intellectual belief in Jesus doesn’t
make one born again. It requires God to open up their eyes,
and their complete surrender to him. A lot of people who
think they are saved, are not. Remember that Jesus said
that on Judgment Day, many will come to him and claim to
be his followers, but he will say that he never knew them,
and throw them aside.

The circular nature of their reasoning is apparent here. Those two


missionaries rationalized away whatever didn’t fit in with their
beliefs and theology. Rather than updating their beliefs to fit the
facts, they twisted and adjusted the facts around their beliefs,
sometimes even denying them altogether. Essentially, they ignored
what proved them wrong. Do you really think an honest belief
system would require a complete ignoring of evidence against it
like that? (See the addendum of this book for my formal written
response to their arguments)

(For a similar example of Christian circular reasoning in dialogue


format like the above, see Robert Ingersoll’s The Talmagian
Catechism on Infidels.org.)

The problems with this argument are:

1) Even if I concluded that my life is empty and unsatisfying, it


doesn’t mean that the Christian faith is the answer that would
satisfy my life, especially since I have tried it for years
before. Though they would disagree, the fact is that no one
religion or belief system is right for everyone. I feel that due to
my metaphysical views, other religions and spiritual practices
are more suited for me. I have too many problems with
Christian doctrine, theology, mentality, etc. In fact, I would

114
even find more fulfillment and meaning in Buddhism than
Christianity, as it makes far more sense and is far less
controversial.

2) Many non-Christians do claim and do have generally happy and


fulfilling lives. Though Christians don’t believe them and
deny it, that does not make these other testimonials untrue or
erase them.

3) Many former Christians (some fervent too) felt empty,


incomplete, unhappy, and restless in their faith,
thus deconverted and went to other belief systems. Christians
often attempt to claimdeconverts were never real Christians in
the first place, but that is a total cop out. Every zealot and
fanatic says the same about the deconverts of their beliefs. It’s
nothing new.

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12

Argument # 6: The Miracles and Answered


Prayers Argument.

Some Christians like to tout the widely reported occurrences of


supernatural phenomenon such as miracles and answered prayers
give credence to their faith. There are countless stories and
testimonies (both published and unpublished) of people
experiencing miracles happen, faith healing, or answered prayers
in such a convincing way that it could only have been God or some
force out there doing it. Many of them are from people who are
very honest and sincere too.

So do these stories, even if true, count as evidence that Christianity


is true? Well my answer is yes and no. I will explain why later,
but first of all, I’d like to say that just as in the previous section,
again Christians NEVER seem to acknowledge the fact that
miracles and answered prayers also happen in OTHER
RELIGIONS too! Yet they never count that as evidence for those
other religions. (Nice double standard) Instead, the only
explanation they will offer is that Satan and his demons used their
supernatural powers to perform miracles and answer prayers in
other religions, because they aren’t of the true God, so that’s the
only explanation. Yeah right. Again, it’s a copout to cheaply
rationalize away what they don’t wish to acknowledge or
understand.

Now, let me deal with the other side for a moment.

Analysis of the Atheist explanation for miracles

The usual Atheist explanation for miracles is that they either 1)


don’t happen, or 2) are the result of spontaneous remission, or the
body’s ability to sometimes cure itself spontaneous of an

117
ailment. They feel that they are impossible because they defy
everything we know about science and anatomy.

This claim is based on an a priori assumption that our known


physical laws are all there is. After all, the Atheist has no right to
say what is and isn’t possible in this area, and it would be very
closed minded to reject out of hand something that doesn’t fit into
their world view. How would they know all that is possible and
impossible? Our natural laws are our interpretation of how the
universe works. These laws are subject to change as new
discoveries are made, which is how science has always
been. Current scientific principles only reflect the current
knowledge that has been tested and replicated, not all that is or can
be. In fact, what is considered to be miraculous or supernatural at
first has often turned out to be natural once it’s
understood. Dean Radinelaborates on this in his book The
Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena:
(page 19)

“But a few hundred years ago virtually all natural phenomena


were thought to be manifestations of supernatural agencies and
spirits. Through years of systematic investigation, many of these
phenomena are now understood in quite ordinary terms. Thus, it
is entirely reasonable to expect that so-called miracles are simply
indicators of our present ignorance. Any such events may be
more properly labeled first as paranormal, then as normal once
we have developed an acceptable scientific explanation. As
astronaut Edgar Mitchell put it: “There are no unnatural or
supernatural phenomena, only very large gaps in our knowledge
of what is natural, particularly regarding relatively rare
occurrences.”“

History has shown that those who use the word “impossible” are
usually proven wrong one way or another. Many things that were
said to be impossible at one point were later proved to be possible
such as flight, travel into space, relativity, quantum theory, etc. As
Arthur C. Clarke, inventor of the communications satellite and
author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, states:

118
“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something
is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that
something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
- Arthur C. Clarke’s First Law

In either case, miracles do happen. Many doctors and nurses can


attest to this. The question is, and skeptics like to point this out
too, in how you define a miracle. Skeptics will usually accept
miracles such as the miracle of life and science, or miracles due
to flukes and rare chance occurrences such as spontaneous
remission, but not if they involve supernatural forces or divine
intervention. Several possible explanations of miracles are
supernatural forces, divine intervention, psychic abilities, unknown
powers and healing abilities of the mind, spontaneous remission of
illness, chance, or natural causes not yet understood. Whatever the
case, the “miracles are impossible” argument is illogical because
miracles have happened already. There is ample evidence of this
both from anecdotals and hard evidence from X-Rays of the
affected region of the patient’s body that were taken before and
after the miracle.

In fact, according to a Newsweek poll, described in the May 1,


2000 issue, 84 percent of adult Americans say they believe that
God performs miracles and 48 percent report that they have
personally experienced or witnessed one. Three fourths of
American Catholics say they pray for miracles, and among non-
Christians, and nonreligious people, 43 percent say they have
asked for God’s intervention. Now, 48 percent of Americans is a
huge number, about 150 million people. And that can’t all be due
misperception, mistake, or flukes on the probability
curve. Common sense tells us that statistically, such widespread
reports probably points to a real phenomenon, whatever it may be.

One famous documented case of a miracle is the case


of Vittorio Michelli. Michael Talbot in his book The Holographic
Universe describes the case:

“Perhaps the most powerful types of beliefs of all are those we


express through spiritual faith. In 1962 a man

119
named Vittorio Michelli was admitted to the Military Hospital of
Verona, Italy, with a large cancerous tumor on his left hip (see
fig. 11). So dire was his prognosis that he was sent home
without treatment, and within ten months his hip had completely
disintegrated, leaving a the bone of his upper leg floating in
nothing more than a mass of soft tissue. He was, quite literally,
falling apart. As a last resort he traveled to Lourdes and had
himself bathed in the spring (by this time he was in a plaster
case, and his movements were quite restricted). Immediately on
entering the water he had a sensation of heat moving through his
body. After the bath his appetite returned and he felt renewed
energy. He had several more baths and then returned home.

Over the course of the next month he felt such an increasing


sense of well-being he insisted his doctors X-ray him
again. They discovered his tumor was smaller. They were so
intrigued they documented every step in his improvement. It
was a good thing because after Michelli’s tumor disappeared, his
bone began to regenerate, and the medical community generally
view this as an impossibility. Within two months he was up and
walking again, and over the course of the next several years his
bone completely reconstructed itself (see fig. 12).

A dossier on Michelli’s case was sent to the Vatican’s Medical


Commission, an international panel of doctors set up to
investigate such matters, and after examining the evidence the
commission decidedMichelli had indeed experienced a
miracle. As the commission stated in its official report, “A
remarkable reconstruction of the iliac bone and cavity has taken
place. The X rays made in 1964, 1965, 1968 and 1969 confirm
categorically and without doubt that an unforeseen and even
overwhelming bone reconstruction has taken place of a type
unknown in the annals of world medicine.” (O’Reagan, Special
Report, p. 9.)”

Some skeptics claim that miraculous healings are due to flukes in


the probability curve. Their reasoning goes like this:

“Most people who are seriously ill are prayed for or


seek divine intervention. The ones that don’t make it are
considered tragedies and forgotten cases. The few cases

120
that result in a sudden complete recovery or go into
spontaneous remission are then noticed and attributed to
prayer or divine intervention. These cases of course, are
the ones that get media attention.”

However, this explanation is a lot like saying that anything we


don’t understand must be due to chance. Sure spontaneous
remission happens as well, even to those who are Atheists and
those that haven’t been prayed for. But even so, who’s to say that
spontaneous remission is solely the result of chance and luck? The
bottom line is that miracles do happen, that is a fact. How we
interpret them is the issue.

Analysis of the Atheist explanation for answered prayers

Now, the explanation for answered prayer given by Atheists,


debunkers, and scientific materialists is the psychological theory
of selective memory and perception. It basically means that
prayers are answered by coincidences or events that would have
happened anyway, but the believer’s mind only remembers and
focuses on the prayers that were seemingly answered, while
forgetting or ignoring the times when prayers weren’t
answered. While this theory may be true in some cases, it does not
explain every account of answered prayer. Just because skeptics
can’t see how a God could exist or how thought intentions could
affect external reality doesn’t mean that any claim of answered
prayer is merely the result of chance. There are several counter-
arguments to this and compelling evidence that prayer works as
well. I will also give my own theory on how prayer works.

1) First of all, we don’t even know what a coincidence really is or


even if it really exists. It’s just a term to define something that
behaves unpredictably or doesn’t behave according to a pattern
that we can see. According to physicist David Bohm, there
may be two kinds of order in the universe, implicit and explicit.
(See his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order) Things that
appear random may in fact contain a higher degree of order
that we can’t perceive.

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2) Second, as I heard one preacher said “If answered prayer is
coincidence, then there sure are many more coincidences that
come up when I pray than when I don’t pray.” For spiritual or
religious people, praying results in a higher rate of
coincidences that help manifest the desire or wish, often higher
than by ordinary chance. Of course, there are countless
anecdotal accounts of prayer answered in miraculous or
sometimes humorous ways. As Theology Professor Greg Boyd
of Bethel University told me in an email:

“My wife prayed that God would honor a “deal” with her about
who she would marry (this deal included her future husband
saying a certain particularly unusual phrase), and despite all my
frustration with knowing she had made such a deal, I said what
was “included” in her deal with God without ever actually
knowing what the phrase was, not only that, it was the last thing
I said to her, several times, immediately before I distinctly felt
God leading me to propose to her.”

“The phrase was “It’s good to be alive.” This seems like a fairly
unusual thing to say since it is so obvious at one level. Anyway,
it is not something that I would be likely to say on an average
day. On the day of our “engagement” I said it several times at
just the right moment (during a prayer about our relationship)
and actually the prayer (we were praying together) immediately
followed a longish conversation about why I didn’t believe in
engagement periods at all. It seems God has quite a sense of
humor at times.”

Amazingly, there are those who get almost every prayer


answered because their motives come from a pure heart that is
in tune with the values of their faith. What this means is that
Christian prayers seem to get answered a lot more when they
ask for things that a Christian is supposed to want. Same with
prayers from those of other religions. This has been the case in
my own experience as well. When I was a devout Christian at
14, I was the only Christian in my family and had no one else
to share my faith with or go to church with. I felt lonely and
incomplete about this. So one night I prayed and asked God to

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send me some Christian friends. Two nights later, I got a call
from an old friend that I hadn’t spoken to in over a year. He’s
not the type of person to make phone calls either, so neither of
us knew why he just decided to call me. After talking a few
times, we got to the subject of church and religion. We were
surprised to find out that we were both devout
Christians! When I explained to him that I had no Christian
friends or church to go to, he warmly invited me to an outing
with his Church Youth Group which he attended on a regular
basis. That Friday night, we went to his Youth Group for an all
night outing. We went haystack riding, played miniature
golf, charades, Pictionary, kick-the-can and had a lot of fun. I
liked the people in his Youth Group, they were sincere and
didn’t have attitudes or pre-judgments. I felt very comfortable
around them. From that point on, I started attending the Youth
Group regularly. Now a skeptic could argue that the friend
called me out of coincidence, but I don’t buy that because it
was strange how this friend I hadn’t talked to in over a year
suddenly out of nowhere kept calling me a few times. Not
even he knew why he did that. Yet it led to my prayer for
Christian fellowship being answered.

3) Third, based on conversations with some Christian friends of


mine, I have found that God doesn’t just answer prayer through
coincidences. There is a more amazing type of answered
prayer. Often, as in my own case above, a prayer is answered
with the help of other people who themselves don’t know why
they are doing what they’re doing. (as if they’re
hypnotized) Nick, a Christian friend of mine, related to me a
fascinating faith-transforming account in his life. After turning
away from his Christian faith for years, one day his fishing
boat went down in deep waters and nothing he and professional
divers did could get it out. After months of failed attempts, he
and the divers gave up. Then a friend of his told him “You will
get your boat back. God will see to it.” Soon after, some
stranger called Nick and offered to help raise his boat for
free. This guy said that he heard that Nick needed help and
went to great lengths to find Nick’s phone number to contact
him. As we all know, strangers don’t tend to go to great

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lengths to find you just to help you out for free and for no
reason! That does not seem like an ordinary coincidence. This
stranger even offered to pay all the expenses of lifting the boat
out! (I’ve heard of random acts of kindness, but this is
phenomenal!) It turns out that he barely got it out and it almost
sank again after it was lifted, but the rescuer saved it just in
time. The next day, a short story about his boat (the boat’s
name was mentioned in the headline) being “resurrected” from
the sea appeared at the top of the front page headline, even
above the story of Pope John Paul’s arrival in
town! Astonished, Nick called the newspaper to find out how
his trivial story appeared on the front page headline since it
was not a significant event to the public. However, no one
there seemed to know why it was there or how it got there.
(Very strange!) This served was such a powerful sign from
God and testament of faith to Nick, that from then on he led a
faith-based life in God. Many other Christians have personal
accounts of answered prayer similar to this of course. It would
seem that God somehow hypnotizes people (for lack of a better
word) into answering someone else’s prayer, since these people
don’t know themselves why they’re doing something that
results in another’s answered prayer. But this happens
nevertheless, and my own example in the above paragraph
attests to this as well.

4) Fourth, recent studies on prayer done by Duke University and


others have revealed the effect that the power of prayer has on
those who are critically ill. Double-blind tests done have
shown that those who were prayed for recovered much more
quickly and at a higher success rate than those not prayed
for. As one of Duke’s own articles summarized:

“In a feasibility study conducted by the Duke University and


Durham Veterans Affairs medical centers, angioplasty patients
with acute coronary syndromes who were simultaneously prayed
for by seven different religious sects around the world did 50
percent to 100 percent better during their hospital stay than
patients who were not prayed for by these groups.”

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While we don’t know for sure whether God himself is
answering these prayers, or if they are being answered by the
psychic abilities of those praying, the bottom line is that prayer
does seem to work in ways that ordinary coincidences can’t
explain.

5) Fifth, In my experience with prayers, it seems that prayers from


a selfish nature tend to get answered less than when they come
from a desire for what is right and best for all. One
metaphysical explanation for this that I’ve heard is that when
desires come from an altruistic motive, they reach the energy
from higher astral planes or levels of consciousness. These
higher planes are supposedly where more advanced spiritual
beings reside, including Gods, Jesus, Buddha, etc. Perhaps
prayers of a selfish nature cause a separation from you and
your higher self that is attuned to the higher planes. This inner
separation leads you to down the path of ego and illusion rather
than unification and wholeness. After all, a divided kingdom
falls, even if it’s an inner kingdom. This theory is subjective
and can’t be proven scientifically at this point, but it’s one
possibility to consider which would explain why purer
altruistic motives for prayer tend to result in a higher rate of
success.

My own theory on how and why prayer works

Now, you may be wondering how prayers and miracles could be


real supernatural phenomena, yet the religions behind them not be
true. How could you harmonize that? Well there are other
explanations that theoretically harmonize them.

I have a theory which I call metaphysical societies. A Canadian


colleague helped me formulate it. We were talking about religion
and answered prayer, and how and why they worked. I mentioned
that I had some amazing stories of answered prayer that I knew
weren’t just coincidence, when I was a Christian. Yet, the beliefs
and doctrines of Christian fundamentalism have obviously been
proven false for me in the literal sense, so I was trying to make
sense of how prayers could still be answered. Aaron, the colleague

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I had these discussions with, then started explaining to me about
“metaphysical societies.” It made a lot of sense to me and
provided a unified theory.

Here is how it goes. As we all know, in New Age quantum theory,


“thought creates reality” in a universal sense, even though in our
dimension, this principle is reflected much more weakly and
slowly than in other dimensions. Therefore, when a group of
people gather for a single purpose, they create a certain energy
field between them that makes their power stronger. And that’s
especially true with organized religion. And in Christianity’s case,
with a billion followers, that energy field would be very powerful
indeed. Therefore, when one is indoctrinated into Christianity,
he/she also becomes part of this massive group energy field, and is
governed by its principles, values and beliefs. As a result, when
that person lives according to the values of this energy field, that
energy field works to help that person in many ways, including
answering its prayers. That is why, when I was a Christian, I
found that when I prayed for things that I was SUPPOSED to pray
for, that a good Christian should want and desire, it had a very high
probability of manifesting and coming true, smoothly and
easily. However, when I prayed and asked for things of a purely
selfish nature, it had a very low probability of manifesting. I
noticed this pattern. And when prayers came true, whether for me
or others, it would obviously not be ordinary day to day
coincidences or selective perception and memory, because the
answered prayers would come about my seemingly impossible
odds of things that never happen, all SYNCHRONIZED to
manifest the result. Sometimes, in manifesting the prayer, people
would be involved who did odd things and later claimed that they
had no idea why they even did it, but what they did brought about
the answered prayer. These kind of things tell anyone that it was a
real answered prayer, and not coincidence or selective memory.

This same “metaphysical society” effect happens in other religions


as well, since people in other religions get prayers answered as
well, as long as they are in accordance with the values of their
metaphysical society. I have even heard that with Wiccans, when
they make a pledge to a goddess and then break it without asking

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permission of that goddess, they often reap bad or disastrous
consequences, until they go back and ask permission of the
goddess to leave. Perhaps, these goddess that Wiccans pledge to
are also metaphysically created, either in some other dimension or
the mind of the believers, so that they do exist in a metaphysical
sense, having power and influence in our lives, physical world and
dimension.

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13

Argument # 7: God is holy and righteous. We


are all sinners and deserve to go to hell.

This argument presupposes that all non-Christians are evil and bad,
just because the Bible says so (which is not a good or logical
reason). Now I don’t have to tell you this is a potentially dangerous
belief. It is also very black and white as well. I could name many
wonderful, kind, honest, caring, moralistic non-Christians to
debunk this, but as the circular reasoning of the related argument
of Argument # 10 demonstrated, they will simply rationalize it
away and say that by God’s perfect standards, even the nicest,
kindest people on Earth are sinners, and that’s that.

This doctrine is also inherently unfair. Why should everyone suffer


just because Adam and Eve decided to eat a tempting fruit off the
wrong tree? That’s silly. Yet people take that seriously. Imagine
being born into this world, and then told that you are a sinner and
evil in the eyes of God, and that you deserve to go to hell, just for
being born, even if you did nothing wrong. That would be the most
F-ed up thing in the world, yet that’s literally what these Christians
believe. It’s insane.

Furthermore, the evidence does not suggest that God is righteous


and fair. He lets countless animals, insects and plant life die every
second. And he allows wars, famines, poverty, disease, hunger,
greed, and evil to kill people everyday, and does nothing to stop it.
He lets evil people prosper and good people die young. He allows
the strong to take advantage of the weak, and the “might is right”
principle to rule the world. Why would a good God allow
injustices, tragedies, and peacemakers to be shot and taken out?
Also, in the Bible are many stories where God and his followers
kill innocent children, infants, pregnant women, carry out a mass
execution of captives, etc. (See the Biblical Atrocities section) If

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God himself has no morals, what makes humans so bad? It doesn’t
make sense.

Christian evangelists, especially fire and brimstone preachers, are


fond of telling us that we are all sinners. Though they would add
that we all deserve to go to hell too, they have learned not to say
that in front of non-believers because it tends to turn them off and
lowers the chances of converting them. However, that is what they
believe. They love quoting these famous verses to support this
doctrine of original sin:

Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of
God.”

Romans 3:10 “There none righteous, no not one.”

Furthermore, they like to portray their God as holy and


just. Therefore, since God is righteous and fair, eternal punishment
for sinners and non-believers must be fair and just as well. They
may not like this idea deep down, but since that’s what God and
the Bible says, it must be so and no one can argue with it.

Anyone with common sense though, who isn’t blinded by


fanaticism, knows that this just isn’t so. Rather, it’s the biggest
oxymoron and contradiction in the world to try to reconcile a just
and fair God with endless torture and eternal never-ending
punishment.

1) First of all, no one deserves a literal eternal punishment without


end. No killer or murderer could ever deserve such a
thing. Not even Adolf Hitler. Therefore, there are huge moral
and philosophical problems with this concept. But the Bible
says that we deserve it not for anything we did, but simply
because the first humans, Adam and Eve, took a bite of the
wrong fruit off the forbidden tree, thus infesting all
humans throughout history with “original sin” which damns
them by default. (Gee, that sure makes a lot of sense doesn’t
it?) As a result, all humans are born spiritually dead in
depravity and destined for eternal damnation, whether they

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lead good or bad lives, since it makes no difference. It’s no
different than damning zebras for being born with stripes or
damning turtles for being born with shells. It’s not only unjust
and psychotic to do such a thing, but completely nonsensical
too. In fact, that one act of original sin brought death, disease,
and suffering into the world. How just and fair, isn’t it? (See
the Imponderables section for a philosophical evaluation of this
whole concept.) In a great book on
fundamentalism: Fundamentalism: Hazards and Heartbreaks,
page 70-71, the authors raise a good point on this issue:

“It is difficult to see the point and the morality of endlessly


torturing people. Pain is presumptively bad, and it is desirable
only when the infliction of it is necessary for a greater good,
such as reforming criminals or deterring potential criminals from
crime. Endless torture, however, is not designed to reform
people, nor is the threat of it necessarily effective at deterring
people from harming others. Torture, war, corruption, and
murder were rampant, for example, throughout the Middle Ages,
when people were filled with the belief in, and fear of,
Hell. Indeed, the belief in Hell has, in itself, often yielded
persecution, torture, and murder... Morally speaking, almost any
other treatment of the wicked is preferable to endless torture, in
which finite crimes receive infinite punishment. Even the
annihilation of the unsaved would be less morally objectionable
than an endless Hell.”

2) Second, a loving, just God simply wouldn’t do such a thing as


send people to an eternal damnation without end. We all know
that deep in our hearts (though Christians deny it due to their
religious fanaticism). Furthermore, the Bible lists many
incidences where God and his followers kill innocent children,
infants, pregnant women, carry out a mass execution of
captives, etc. (See the Biblical Atrocities section) These
things are indefensible. Would a good God do those kind of
things? I don’t think so.

Christians like to respond to these charges by iterating that we


have no right to judge God’s morality or reasons, since after
all, God says ”My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your

131
ways My ways” (Isaiah 55:8). Therefore, they argue, how can the
created judge the creator? Besides, they say, since those are God’s
rules, and he is the creator and master of the universe, we have no
choice but to abide by them. And since it’s better to be safe than
sorry (especially when it concerns your eternal destiny) it’s best to
accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior and become saved.

However, they simply have no basis, evidence, or good reasons to


assume that, other than “it’s just so”, which isn’t good enough, not
for the unbrainwashed. The arguments I presented in this book
more than prove that to be the case.

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14

Argument # 8: All other religions are the


work of Satan.

Christians automatically assume that since Jesus said he was the


only way (John 14:6), and God said there was no other Gods (1st of
the Ten Commandments), that therefore all other religions, faiths,
and spiritual practices must be of the devil Satan. Not all
Christians are so quick to assume this, but some are. No matter
what arguments there are for other religions or spiritual practices,
Christian fundamentalists will always quote these verses:

John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh
unto the Father, but by me.”

1 Timothy 2:5 “For there is one God, and one mediator between
God and men, the man Christ Jesus;”

And since the Bible says that Satan is the “Father of lies”
(John 8:44) that explains away anything good or credible about
other religions.

While the average American Evangelical Christian knows almost


nothing about other religions, this argument is still hard to disprove
to them. Those that are more versed in other religions though, tend
not to use this argument. Instead, they just consider other religions
to be inaccurate and not reflecting of the true God. However, I
can pose some questions for Christians to think about.

1) If all other religions were the product of Satan, then why have
they improved the lives and attitudes of their followers? Why
have they helped them to be better people? Would Satan do
such things?

2) Why can’t God work through other religions too? Wouldn’t


that be more effective to reach the most people on Earth? Why

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should God limit himself to working through only one
religion? It wouldn’t make any sense. Did it ever cross your
mind that those New Testament verses you are so fond of
citing, such as John 14:6 could just be possibly wrong? Why
can’t you believe in Jesus and God without the Bible being
inerrant?

Amusingly, some Protestants also consider the Roman Catholic


Church to be another religion as well, thereby condemning it to be
false and of Satan too. Take a look at these Christian comic tracts
on Chick.com, for example, which attempt to argue why Catholics
are not true Christians:

Are Roman Catholics Christians?


Is There Another Christ?
Why Is Mary Crying?

There are also Christian tracts against other denominations such as


the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, explaining why
their doctrines are false. Here are some that you can read online:

Crisis, The (preaching against Jehovah’s Witnesses)


Visitors, The (preaching against the Mormons)

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