Christianity's Core Doctrine Makes No Sense

The basic premise of the Christian religion is so ingrained in people (either through childhood indoctrination or cultural ubiquity) that we rarely stop to think about whether it actually makes sense.  

Let's recap the core theology of mainstream Christianity:

1. God made the universe, humans, heaven, and hell (creation).
2. Though God supposedly made humans to be "perfect", they "fell" at the very first test. 
3. As a result, humans are now so depraved that every human born thereafter deserves eternal suffering in hell. This is called "original sin".
4. God needs continual blood sacrifice in order to forgive sins (usually animals though occasionally human). 
5. In order to save humanity from hell, God sent Jesus to be the last sacrifice. 
6. To achieve salvation, all a human must do is believe in God and Jesus.

There are so many reasons why this does not make sense. We'll explore them below.

If the creation story didn't happen, then there is no original sin and no need for a savior.

Nothing about the creation story aligns with the reality of the universe. There are heaps of evidence for evolution--just look at all the fossil record, transitional species, DNA evidence, and the various human species that existed thousands of years ago. So, evolution happened. We evolved from a primate ancestor.

That means there were no two "first people".  Humans evolved so gradually over thousands of years that there is no "line" you can draw that would demark "the first humans". This means you cannot identify a point at which these creatures became morally-responsible human beings.  Meaning...no original sin and no need for a savior.

Human beings are a mixture of bad and good because that is what you would expect from a naturalistic worldview. It's not because of original sin. There is nothing wrong with you.  You are not a poor, miserable sinner.  Babies are not inherently corrupt simply for being human.

(Theistic Evolution attempts to accept evolution into Christian theology. Someday I will have a post about this--but for now I'll leave you with a quote by Richard Dawkins: theistic evolution is an attempt to "smuggle God in by the back door".)

God wanted us to fail

Imagine that I built a house. It looks great from the outside, and I step back and see everything I made, and that it was very good. Except, a few nights later there is a storm, and my house gets absolutely obliterated. Instead of admitting that there was something wrong with my house design, I instead blame the house. Not only do I blame the house, but I gather up what is left of my house, take it to the furnace, and burn every last bit of it in a vengeful rage.

I know that we already established the creation story didn't happen, but for the sake of argument, let's pretend it did.  

God MADE us.  At the very first test, we FAILED, because that is our human nature, designed by God.

And it's not as if he didn't know how this would all end up.  The God of the Bible is omniscient (all-knowing).  So let's recap:

1. God supposedly made us perfect, but we ended up falling, because of our inherent imperfection.  We are imperfect because of how God made us.
2. God placed a "life or death" tree right smack dab in the middle of the perfect garden* (and also invented the crafty snake).
3. The humans (predictably) fell for it.
4. God gets so angry that he creates hell (or did it already exist?) as eternal torment for eating from the tree.
5. But don't worry, just believe in Jesus and we can be saved from God's eternal torment. 

Before Step 1 even happened, God knew that Steps 1-5 would unfold exactly as above. And he did it anyway.  This was his plan all along.  He is offering a solution to a problem that he caused.

*In the words of Yzma, "Why do we even HAVE that lever?"

God is saving us from himself

Christians like to say that God doesn't send people to hell. He doesn't want to see people burn! 

If that were true, God would just forgive everyone--no strings attached.  He wouldn't need a human sacrifice, he wouldn't need to send his son to die-and-then-not-die. You wouldn't need to believe that the aforementioned human sacrifice had happened in order to attain salvation (based on a convoluted, ancient, contradictory, confusing, mistranslated and tampered-with book).  You would simply inherit the salvation, much like we inherit original sin.

God made the rules. God made hell. God made us deserving of hell. God is saving us from himself.

 

This God is too small

The universe is horrendously big.  It's so large that we can't even see all of it: the billion trillion stars, 100 billion galaxies, anti-matter, dark-matter, gravitational waves, black holes, nebulas, neutrino particles, and dark energy.

Have you ever wondered why the amazingly wise creator of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE requires blood sacrifice?  Why does God care so much about cutting off the end of little boys' penises, and wearing mixed fabrics?  Why did God even MAKE shellfish if we are forbidden from eating them?

Does that sound like a God who designed the cosmos?   Or does that sound like the concept of a God invented by a group of superstitious, ancient desert-dwellers attempting to make sense of the world around them?

Look at the Big Picture

Think critically about the big picture of Christianity and the God of the Bible.  Does the core doctrine really make sense? Does the God described in the Bible align with what we know about the cosmos? Once we "zoom out" and start looking at the big picture, we need to ask ourselves, "Does this sound right?"