On Creationism

Revelation says: Rev 21:13 There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. 14 The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Does that mean one gate has the name "Judas Iscariot" over it? Also, Jesus made this prophecy: Mat 19:28 Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Did Jesus get is wrong? Or is Judas sitting on a throne right now, judging the Jews? Some contend that Matthias will have replaced Judas, but was Matthias one of the Twelve Jesus was speaking to in Mat 19:28? I do not think so. I have also seen Paul cited as the twelfth apostle, but it would be many years later before he converted, and some of those years he spent as an enemy of Christianity, so surely Jesus was not talking about hi...

 This is a response to an article, Science, Evidence, and the Resurrection, by S. Joshua Swamidass. https://peacefulscience.org/prints/excerpts/science-evidence-resurrection/ He is a scientist, but nevertheless starts by making a poke at science. Science is full of trust-like faith. We believe grand, counterintuitive things because we trust the accounts of trustworthy sources. Okay, sure, science does rely on trust. So does sitting on a chair; you are trusting that chair to take your wait. So does driving; you are trusting your fellow drives to stick to their side of the road. What it comes down to is whether that trust is warranted . I think it is in these examples. Swamidass wants us to think we can trust that the resurrection happened with a similar degree of confidence, and I really do not think that is the case. What is the evidence from which grew my trust? A brief and incomplete outline is included here. This evidence is not an answer, but it raises the question. All we need...

This is a claim that is used a lot, but is not actually true. There is a paper in Nature that came out just a few weeks ago and goes into a comparison of the genome of the Great Apes in detail. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08816-3 It uses some abbreviations that might not be obvious (and I hope I got right): HSA - Humans (Homo sapien) PTR - Chimpanzee (Pan troglodyte) PPA - Bonobo (Pan paniscus) GGO - Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) PPY - Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) PAB - Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) Turns out the differences are significant - rather more than 1% - but it very much fits the evolutionary model. "Our analyses dated the human–chimpanzee split between 5.5 and 6.3 million years ago (Ma; minimum to maximum estimate of divergence), the African ape split at 10.6–10.9 Ma and the orangutan split at 18.2–19.6 Ma ... Consequently, we estimated that the human–chimpanzee–bonobo ancestral population size (average Ne = 198,000) is larger than that of the human...

This is specifically about modern, mainstream Christianity. Some may not apply to certain fringe beliefs. In no particular order. Different beliefs Different Christians have significantly different beliefs. By significant, I mean differences worth going to war over. If Christianity was true, and its adherents were really in daily commune with God, they would all have the same understanding of their religion. Contradictions in gospels Contradictions indicate the stories are at best heavily embellished, and at worst simply made up. The women who saw the empty tomb told no one in one account, and ran to tell people in another account. The risen Jesus went on ahead to meet the disciples in Galilee in one account, and appeared to them in Jerusalem and told them to stay in the city in another. Plus, two wildly different nativity stories. No trinity The trinity is a fundamental tenet of Christianity, but is missing from the Bible except in the most obscure verses. Why did Jesus never make it ...

Four Metal Kingdoms This was a vision Nebuchadnezzar had and Daniel interpreted.  Dan 2:31 “Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. 34 While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. This is understood to be four different kingdoms. It is likely this is derived from Hesiod's ages of mankind; golden, silver, bronze, and iron. This can be seen in the fourth Sibyll...

The myth is that Israel was established by Abraham, a man who worshipped one God, and later saved from slavery in Egypt by Moses, who also worshipped this one God. But what if these were stories made up later, after the Israelites became monotheistic. And perhaps David was an anomaly, like Akhenaten in Egypt... The reality is that Yahweh was originally considered a part of the Canaanite pantheon, which was headed by El. Traces of this are still present in the Bible. For example, here we read about El, the Most High, assigning the various tribes to his sons, with the Israelites assigned to Yahweh, the Lord. Deut 32:8 When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,​ when he divided all mankind,​ he set up boundaries for the peoples​ according to the number of the sons of Israel.​ 9 For the Lord’s portion is his people,​ Jacob his allotted inheritance.​ The Bible was written by the priests of Yahweh. They wanted the people to worship Yahweh, not the other gods. How many kings of Is...