By Wertbag ~  S ome religious folks will say their belief is due to them feeling the presence or actions of their particular God in their lives. The immediate problem raised by this claim is that it is universal across competing religions. Christians will say Mormon's are following false teachings, and yet Mormon's have experiences that they attribute to God as well. Muslims, Hindus and Jews all have similar experiences, but each religion believes the others are incorrect. Of course, any such experience is something that only the claimant can experience, and as their experience is not repeatable or testable, it is valueless as evidence for their claim. It can certainly be a powerful motivator of belief, with many people putting personal experiences as the foremost reason they believe. Many, such as William Lane Craig, will say it is more important than any other evidence, and if the bible was shown to be completely wrong, they would still believe based on the witness of ...

By Wertbag ~  M any apologists will quote several bible verses where it says that God wrote His moral code on our hearts. Verses such as Hebrews 8:10 "This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people." or Romans 2:14-16  "For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus" seem to say this is the case, although there are Christians who read this as metaphor rather than fact. The problem with this often-repeated idea that we have morals on our hearts, is th...

By Wertbag ~  F irstly, it must be said that Ron Wyatt is a scam artist who lies to make money. Any of his many claims should be considered false until such a time as more reputable sources can double check his work, as every time this has happened Ron has been shown to be wrong or lying. Ron was the one who claimed to have found the remains of Noah's Ark , which when checked by experts was found to be nothing more than an oval rock formation. He claimed to have found chariot wheels at the bottom of the Red Sea, but when checked it turned out they were train wheels (the metal train wheels survived the time under the sea, while wooden chariot wheels would have long rotted away). He also claimed to have found the Ark of the Covenant under the Temple Mount, but mysteriously his camera failed and others checking the same tunnels failed to find any trace of it. The Ark of the Covenant was said to be the golden casket in which the ten commandments were kept. The bible talks of...

By Wertbag ~  I n the modern western world, most people would have no problem saying slavery in all its forms is evil. This is a non-controversial position to take, but one which runs counter to the laws of the bible. Due to this, apologists have had to find ways to justify slavery and condone the laws laid out in the bible. Really, at the point that your worldview puts you in the position of having to justify slavery, it should make you question that worldview. The most common way this is done is by trying to claim that the slavery in the bible is purely indentured servitude, that is an employment contract where the person is temporarily put under the ownership of the person owed a debt so that the servant can work off that debt. The apologists will often try to paint this as a happy time of sunshine and rainbows, saying it could well be volunteer and the best thing for the servants. This line of argumentation ignores several glaring problems, firstly the bible outlines mu...

By Marlene Winnell ~ R ecently in our online  Release & Reclaim support group  (which has multiple monthly meetings over Zoom as well as a large community of deconstructing folks in our forums) we had a conversation about existential panic.  One member posed this simple question: “Is anyone else hitting the existential crisis part of this recovery process?”  And from there, an incredibly nuanced discussion ensued. Jocelyn  (*all names have been changed to protect the identities of members, and all who are quoted gave their permission)  expressed a nagging, post-religion feeling of dread, that “nothing is real, and there would be no reason for living if there is no life after this one. I know this is due to a loss of Christian identity, but the fear and pain of this loss is enormous.” Andres agreed: “It’s been difficult accepting that there isn’t some grand cosmic purpose to this life.” Kara said the struggle to find meaning and worth feels similar to ...

By Wertbag ~  M ost modern Christians will look at the more extreme examples of believers as following false teachings or being led astray, but with numerous different interpretations and significant differences in what is taught, it is often not hard to see how the teachings and bible can lead to some extreme results without having to drift far away from what is written. A mild version of this are the many convents around the world who preach a fallen world. The nuns in these closed off communities will often pray for death, believing that Earth is a test and heaven in the reward, so once you die your worries are over and you'll be in paradise forever. They see the world as full of sin and temptation, but if you are locked away then you avoid drinking, smoking, drugs, anger, lust, stress, magic and anything that could let a demon enter your life. From an unbeliever's view this is just sad, with the people wasting their lives, achieving nothing and adding nothing to the w...

By Wertbag ~  H umans are bad at determining reality. We have limited senses, limited views and imperfect minds. Our memory, even short term, can be horribly wrong, while long term we struggle to remember even important details of events. The Mandela effect is an example of how groups of people can all be convinced that something was different historically to how we can show it to be. Some Mandela effect proponents will even refuse to believe that they are wrong, instead claiming that the universe has changed around them. We see thousands of people being defrauded by scam artists, falling into cults or believing crazy ideas like reptile overlords or a flat earth. It almost doesn't matter what crazy idea is floated; it seems thousands will accept it as true. We have people like Ron Hubbard starting Scientology, Joseph Smith starting Mormonism or Sai Baba convincing millions that he had supernatural powers. While outsiders can look at these people and the religions they ...

By Wertbag ~  A pologists will often point to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia as examples of atheistic societies, showing what will become if atheists take control and apply their terrible morals and lack of God to running a country. This of course is a ridiculous claim, one that many believers will pick up and repeat having never looked into such claims. Firstly, let's look at Hitler, a strong candidate for the worst person to have ever lived, having caused both the holocaust and World War 2, his actions lead to the greatest loss of human life ever. But was he an atheist? Hitler was raised in a Catholic family and throughout his rise to power repeatedly said Christianity was the basis of the Nazi party "Today Christians ... stand at the head of [this country]... I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit" or "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain...

By Wertbag ~  B lood is an important part of life and seen throughout history as a source of life and power. Medically people have tried leeches and bleeding to remove bad blood, human and animal sacrifice has been used to spill blood to please various Gods and even our language has developed to consider the heart the source of emotions and various phrases like "make your blood boil" or "there's bad blood between them" being common. This was no different back in ancient days, where blood sacrifices were common and in Christianity's case was topped off by Jesus being the ultimate blood sacrifice. However, looking back at what was considered normal and described as pleasing to God is quite horrific to our modern morals. Imagine this scene playing out in a modern church service, Exodus 29 "You shall slaughter the bull before the Lord at the doorway of the tent of meeting. You shall take some of the blood of the bull and put it on the horns of the ...

By Wertbag ~  A pologists love to say we see signs of design in nature and design requires a designer, however this is usually done by cherry-picking a couple of examples and ignoring the many terrible or strange designs that we find. One of the most commonly raised examples is the laryngeal nerve which connects from the brain to the voice box but takes a long detour around the heart before coming back up the chest. In human's this means its 3-4 times longer than it needs to be, but the extreme example is the giraffe where the nerve is 5 meters long! The left-hand nerve is 3-4 meters longer than the right, as only the one side loops down in this way. This is precisely the kind of thing we would expect from a natural evolutionary standpoint, but not from an intelligent designer. Perhaps the apologist will point to Earth being designed for life, while we see the majority of the water in the world is undrinkable, vast swathes are frozen wastes or blazing deserts, all sat atop m...

By Wertbag ~  T he Christian God is claimed to have all of the omni traits, that is that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, all-good and all-loving. It is only this insistence of omni traits that leads to many of the problems with the claims. There is no problem of evil if God does not care (many other religions have either apathetic or evil Gods) or if God is limited in His ability to achieve what He wants (many other religions put such limitations on their ideas of God, with pantheons of Gods who are given specific portfolios), but to claim He is both all-loving and all-powerful leads to the idea conflicting with the suffering we see in the world. It also conflicts with Him being all-knowing, as this means He knew that Hitler was going to exterminate 6 million of His followers centuries in advance and yet having all that time to change that outcome, He failed to take any steps to prevent that horror. If you know a crime is going to be committed and it is within y...