Some ex-Christians have problems with hypocrisy in the church, or changes to the text as it was copied (how can we know what the originals said?)
These things never bothered me. Here are some of the biggest ones for me, though, in no particular order.
#1 – Lack of Details After the Resurrection (Especially in Mark)
All the gospels focus on narrating Jesus’ life and passion week with almost zero detail of what happened after he rose again.
I suspect this is b/c Jesus really did live and said and did a lot of stuff which passed down in oral tradition which the gospel writers could lean on as sources, but he really didn’t raise from the dead so there is little tradition the gospel writers could use as sources, so they couldn’t say much about it. All they knew was his life and that he had apparently risen.
The earliest gospel of Mark ends with the women running away from the tomb scared, telling no one. End of story. By the time the later gospels were written, some more details to the resurrection had circulated through legend and addition, so Matthew/Luke contain more narrative after the resurrection than Mark, and by the time we get to our latest gospel, John, it has the most detail.
#2 – Changes/Additions to the Gospel Accounts
In Mark, you have a Jesus who seems very human.
Jesus seems to know who he is but doesn’t want anyone to know and tells everyone to be quiet about it. He goes to the cross in silence, he doesn’t seem to know what’s happening to him. He cries out “My God, why have you forsaken me?” before he dies.
By the time we get to Luke, Jesus isn’t worried about his life. He knows why he is dying. He knows where he’s going afterward. He tells the thief on the other cross they’ll be in paradise together that day. He dies by giving up his spirit. This is a more deified Jesus.
By the time you get to John, all bets are off. Jesus is God all the way through and says so. “I and the father are one.” “Before Abraham was born, I am.”
Compare the passion narratives of Mark and John and you’ll be blown away. My favorite part in John is where the soldiers come to arrest Jesus in the garden and upon Jesus’ revealing that he is Jesus, they all fall flat on their backs. Unlike anything in any other gospel.
Oh… and utter BS too.
#3 – BS Prophecies in the OT Pointing to Jesus
I used to think Isaiah 53 was about Jesus. But it never says “the messiah will do these things.” Christians are just looking for Jesus in the OT.
Matthew was the worst. He literally went back and found any reference in the OT he could that sounded like anything he had heard about Jesus and said it was a prophecy about Jesus. I’m sure he also added some of his own too.
#4 – I Won’t Praise the Christian God
Let’s see, God creates humans and sentences them to an eternity of suffering if they disobey one thing he commands.
Eve makes one mistake and he curses women forever with pain in childbearing.
God destroys the entire earth killing women and children in a flood. He empowers the Israelites to wipe out the Amalekites. That’s called genocide.
He also oversees hunger, poverty, natural disasters, and all sorts of human atrocities (war, slavery, murder, rape, etc, etc).
If God is real, I hope he’s not the God of the Bible. If he is, I will not be praising him. Best case scenario is there is a God who created all of this but has no power over what happens.
# 5 Disagreement Among the Earliest Followers of Jesus (Especially between Peter and Paul)
We all know Christians have argued over theology for two Millenium. But I remember being shocked to learn that the very earliest of Jesus’ followers disagreed. Paul tells us in Galatians about a disagreement he had with Peter. Paul had to put Peter in his place.
This never sat right with me.
Paul never met Jesus, whereas Peter was his right-hand man, but PAUL is gonna tell Peter what to do or believe? What a bunch of BS.
Some Christians think Mormons are dumb for believing Joseph Smith had a new testament of Jesus revealed to him 1800 years after Jesus. But here we have Paul changing things the disciples believed when Jesus has been dead for about 2 seconds. It’s very odd.
Paul doesn’t seem to care what the disciples learned about Jesus. He’s a stubborn, egomaniac who will not budge in his beliefs because no man taught him what he knows. He learned it directly from God. Paul also talks about people teaching “another gospel” to his churches. So already, maybe just 10 to 20 years after Jesus’ death, there are Christians going around telling the churches that Paul set up that Paul is wrong.
That’s just crazy. Paul wrote like 1/3 of the NT.
My guess is Peter and the Jerusalem church disliked him, but put up with him because he collected money for the church and sent it back to Jerusalem.
#6 – We Have Proof that Early Christians Made Up Stories about Jesus
We have gospels that claimed to be written by Thomas and Peter and many others. These were widely circulated and some early Christians read and believed them. The problem is they weren’t really written by their authors, and every Christian today would agree with that. They contain fantastic stories about Jesus, but that doesn’t mean they were written to deceive. They were written to convert people to their beliefs. It’s just proof that this sort of thing happened in the early church and fooled early Christians.
Who is to say the NT books that made it into the canon were not also embellishing/changing the stories they knew of to convert their readers?
Of course, they did!
Look no further than John. By the time John is writing, Jesus is now thought to have been God. The problem is none of the other gospels make it seem this way, so John sets out to clear this up. And boy does he with the “I AM” statements that most historians agree Jesus never said. John even changed the day of Jesus’ death to make a theological point – he wanted Jesus to die while the passover lambs were being slaughtered, so John has him die on the day of preparation whereas Mark states he dies on passover. (Even Xtian apologists Mike Licona and Daniel Wallace concede on this).
It wasn’t malicious.
All these writers just wanted people to believe in Jesus (and sometimes THEIR version of Jesus). But it leaves us in a tough place where we don’t really know most of the time what the historical Jesus said and did, making it hard to trust the New Testament.
#7 – Evidence Points to Few of the Disciples Actually Believing in Jesus’ Resurrection
We have the strongest evidence that Peter, James, and Paul were the most convinced that Jesus had risen.
Acts only really talks about these 3.
The apostolic fathers pretty much only mentioned these 3.
The indication is that of the original 12 disciples, only two of them were active in the early church.
In Galatians, Paul says he went to Jerusalem. How awesome would it be if he said he spoke to several of the disciples and they all corroborated the resurrection story?
Instead, he says he only saw Peter and James.
When you add this to the traditions that many of Jesus’ followers did not believe, I think we can assume that only a couple of Jesus’ followers believed and “started” saying he had risen. Hey, I’m not saying Jesus didn’t appear to Peter and James, but Christianity would be a lot more convincing if we had proof that ALL the disciples converted and were active in the early church rather than just 2.
#8 – I’m Not Impressed by Biblical Miracles (or Modern-day Miracles)
A lot of people point to the miracles and signs Jesus did. I’m just not impressed. Even educated people today are morons and believe in all sorts of whacko things. How easy would it be for a bunch of 1st century, uneducated peasants to be impressed by Jesus the healer? Or Jesus, the guy who drives out demons? This is how he got his reputation, no doubt, and these types of “miracles” were a dime a dozen back then, just like they are today. Some Christians might think God has done miraculous stuff in their life. I’d ask them to do a bit of research on the miracles God does for Mormons, and JW’s, and Muslims. Bottom line, people have a low bar for what they consider miracles. It’s true today, and even more so 2000 years ago.
#9 – I’m DONE Trying to Defend It
I spent years trying to save my faith.
I know way more than any non-believing person should know about this religion and should have ditched it years ago. I kept trying to find evidence for it because I wanted it to be true so badly.
In the end, the truth has led me elsewhere. I won’t believe simply because it’s convenient or what I want to be true.
This thing is supposed to be so easy a child can understand it. Yeah, well sorry God, it ain’t! I’m riddled with doubt and tired of fighting. I’m done.
#10 – It All Seems Rather Childish
If you just look at the whole thing with an ounce of skepticism, you see stories that no 21st-century adult would or should believe… a talking serpent, talking donkey, a flood that covers the world, Adam and Eve, Jonah and the whale, etc.
But because some of us are born into it, or have a bunch of friends or family who are believers, some people still believe. Maybe it’s a “tribal” thing. Maybe it’s because we desperately want to believe something, but I know I am personally done.
To those people, I would say:
“Imagine someone telling you these stories about another religion and asking you to convert. Then judge your response. You might laugh or even snicker. So what makes the Bible stories so special that you can’t see how ridiculous its stories are too? It contains errors, contractions, and additions to historical truth that were passed on through storytelling and legend. It is very much a book written by men, not God.”