Thou Shalt Not Believe

By John Ubhal

"A Refutation of the Basic Premises, Core Teachings, and Common Arguments in Defense of Christianity."

Written by a former Christian fundamentalist, this book thoroughly and succinctly examines the basic premises and core teachings of the Christian faith and refutes the most common arguments that Christian apologists use to justify belief in these teachings. Unlike many other works of ex-fundamentalists who have rejected their former faith, this book focuses on the reasons that the basic teachings of Christianity are false and do not warrant belief by anybody, rather than on the author’s own negative experiences with Christianity, though these are discussed as well.
The book systematically demonstrates the untenability of specific teachings concerning God, salvation, and the world contained in the Bible and mainstream Christian traditions, showing not only that these teachings are false, but that they are also fundamentally cruel, antihuman, and psychologically harmful. The author contends that the teachings of Jesus, the apostles, and the most prominent defenders of the faith are the primary reason that these negative features of Christianity exist, not any supposed distortions introduced by later theologians and opportunistic Christians.
The book also includes refutations of the most common apologetic arguments in defense of Christianity, including those based on alleged fulfilled prophecies, the supposed inerrancy of the Bible, the miracles attributed to Jesus, the Shroud of Turin, the virgin birth, the historicity of Jesus, the Trilemma, Christianity’s supposed positive influence on Western Civilization and the world in general, the martyrdom of many of Jesus’ early followers, the power of faith, and near-death experiences. It also addresses apologetic arguments for theistic belief in general, including the ontological argument, the argument from design, the moral argument, and Pascal’s Wager.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Ubhal
• Release date: Oct 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370573875

John Ubhal

JOHN UBHAL is a former Christian fundamentalist and dedicated proponent of intellectual honesty, even when it requires stating unwelcome truths. He also has a degree in religious studies.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

My Reasons for Writing this Book

I was motivated to write this book as a result of my belief not only that the basic premises and core teachings of Christianity are false, but that simply believing in these premises and core teachings can cause great psychological harm. I myself experienced severe mental anguish as a direct result of my Christian faith while I was a believer, as have many Christians I have known. However, while I still feel the effects of the mental and emotional damage Christianity caused me, I do not reject the claims of Christianity because of my own negative experiences. My negative experiences do not prove that the basic premises and core teachings of Christianity are not true. Only reason, empirical evidence, and a refutation of the arguments proffered by those who believe in these key ideas are capable of demonstrating their untruth.

Still, I have included an account of my personal experience with Christianity in order to provide some context for the arguments that follow. That account thoroughly explains my motivations for writing this book. Those who are interested in my personal story can begin there rather than with the arguments if they wish. It is at the end of the book.

The Structure of the Book

This book features arguments against the claims of the Bible, the basic doctrines of Christianity developed after the codification of the Bible, apologetic defenses of Christianity in the contemporary Western world, general philosophical arguments in favor of theism, and some ideas from other traditions that are relevant to my critique of Christianity.

My arguments against Christianity are against those varieties of Christianity that attempt to interpret the Bible literally, or at least make a good faith effort to base their beliefs on the intentions of its authors. Latitudinarian interpretations of the Bible only interest me where they are useful for indicating what the Bible does not teach. The reason for this is that such interpretations invariably distort the Bible’s teachings, usually in order to make them compatible with the way self-identifying Christians lead their lives in the present. (I make no judgment as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.) It is worth noting that latitudinarian interpretations of the Bible are not limited to theological liberals. Even theologically conservative Christians, including most Evangelicals and many self-proclaimed literalists and restorationists, interpret some passages in the Bible in a way that justifies their present way of living and thinking over and against the clear intentions of the writers and speakers of the Bible. In other words, even theologically conservative Christians ignore or distort biblical teachings for their own ends on a regular basis.

For my part, I have endeavored to represent the teachings of the Bible and the central doctrines of the Christian religion as faithfully and accurately as possible. While I researched some Greek and Hebrew words in order to prepare to write the present work, my interpretation of the Bible is based primarily on English translations thereof.

For the purposes of the arguments that follow, theism refers to those traditions which hold that a personal being created the universe, intervenes in it from time to time, and cares about what his (or her) creatures do. In contrast, deism refers to the belief, based on reason and observation of the natural world, that an intelligent being created the universe or put the universe into motion but does not now interact with or intervene in it. This book includes a refutation of some common arguments for theism but is agnostic as to whether deism is true.

The Approach of the Book: Conversational Intolerance

Sam Harris, one of the famous so-called New Atheists, advocates what he calls conversational intolerance (2005). This is a standard of intellectual honesty that requires all people to back up their views with actual evidence or good reasons for believing in their validity. If one accepts this standard, as I do, then no beliefs, including religious or spiritual beliefs, can be tolerated intellectually just because they are religious or spiritual. For example, it is not necessary to accept the teachings of such venerated figures as Jesus of Nazareth and Siddhartha Gautama merely because they are the teachings of Jesus and Siddhartha, even if some people regard those teachings and the individuals who taught them as sacred. While this approach holds that all beliefs should be tolerated as a political matter (i.e., there should be no legal penalty for holding any beliefs, even those that are deeply unpopular and potentially harmful if carried out—a policy known historically as toleration), there is no obligation to tolerate beliefs as an intellectual matter just because some people cherish them.

This approach to discourse has multiple benefits. First, it serves the interests of truth. When ideas are made immune from rational analysis, truth is injured. Reason, although limited, is the only way for human beings to truly arrive at or create knowledge. Knowledge is rooted principally in reflections upon experiences, not in experiences themselves. These reflections must utilize a sound method of logic or reasoning in order to be convincing to the person doing the reflecting (if he or she is rational) and those to whom the reflecting person communicates his or her ideas. In other words, ideas cannot be communicated in a persuasive way between people in public discourse except by the use of reason. Thus, to make certain ideas or people immune from the public use of reason, whether officially or through unofficial rules of discourse, is to hinder the quest for truth or knowledge.

Under the above standard, no religion, philosopher, teacher, or teaching is automatically entitled to open-mindedness, respect, or assent. All ideas must be subjected to rational analysis or criticism, then accepted or rejected on the basis of their perceived internal consistency/coherence and their perceived agreement with people’s prior beliefs and experiences. Only then can their probable truth or probable falsehood be discerned with any degree of confidence.

Nonetheless, it is often prudent to be open-minded to new (or old) ideas at first, but if and when one determines they are not supported by the weight of the evidence or by any evidence at all, it is not only appropriate but prudent to reject and become close-minded to those ideas. This is what I understand conversational intolerance to mean.

Again, I firmly believe in toleration (which differs from tolerance in that it refers to permitting things one disapproves of rather than a non-judgmental acceptance of differences), as well as freedom of speech, the free exercise of religion, and freedom of expression, even for the most fringe beliefs and ideas. All people ought to have the right to hold whatever views they wish and to publicly advocate them. But that does not mean that baseless beliefs and ideas should not be criticized and ridiculed. There should be neither official rules nor unofficial taboos against criticizing and ridiculing these or any ideas, including mainstream religious or spiritual ideas. I acknowledge that my perspective on the public use of reason is rooted in the philosophies expounded by thinkers of the Western Enlightenment, but in my view it is one that should be adopted and upheld by all cultures.

CHAPTER 1:

THE BASIC PREMISES AND CORE TEACHINGS OF CHRISTIANITY

There are many ways to describe the nature of Christianity, since people understand it in different ways within and between different cultures. However, there are some indispensable elements of the religion that are not culturally relative. These indispensable elements are all based on teachings found in the Bible.

In brief, a redeemer is not necessary if sin does not exist. Some Christians believe that all people are now bound to be hopeless sinners as a result of the original sin of Adam and Eve. Others deny the doctrine of original sin, but still affirm that [t]here is no one righteous, not even one and that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:10, 23). But in either case, Christianity invariably teaches that sin exists and that people need to be saved. After all, if people do not need to be saved from sin, then they do not need a savior. If people do not need a savior, then they do not need Jesus. And if people do not need Jesus, Christianity has no relevance for humankind.

Some liberal or non-literalist Christians may object to this line of reasoning, but it is difficult to see any benefit to believing in Christianity unless these basic teachings about human nature and salvation are true. If one sees value in the more humanistic teachings of Jesus and the books of the New Testament, why not embrace Enlightenment humanism instead? This philosophy holds that human life is the standard of values and all people are entitled to basic respect and dignity merely by virtue of existing, which is similar to the viewpoint that liberal Christians apparently find expressed in the teachings of Jesus and the books of the New Testament, at least after they are stripped of their supernatural elements. However, without these supernatural elements, Christianity is not only a hollow shell of its former self but completely pointless.

The Primordial Couple and the Origins of Sin

According to the Bible, God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh (Genesis 1:1 – 2:3). Some biblical apologists and scholars contend that these days may refer to seven indefinite time periods, but the Hebrew word for these time periods in Genesis, yom, literally means day or days (as in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement) whenever a number is included with it in the Hebrew Bible.

According to most Christian traditions, God created the world ex nihilo, out of nothing. After God had created the heavens and the earth, he created Adam, the first man, and placed him in the Garden of Eden in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and Syria) (Genesis 2:4-25). God then told Adam he could eat from any tree in Eden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). God then created Eve out of Adam’s rib, to be Adam’s wife (Genesis 2:21-22). A snake, who is identified as Satan in almost all forms of Christianity, tempted Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which she did and then persuaded Adam to do (Genesis 3:1-6). This act was the original sin, which condemned all human beings to physical death (Genesis 3:19). For it, Adam and Eve were banished from Eden; as a result, Adam and all other men must toil all day in order to survive, while women must suffer great pain in bearing children (Genesis 3:16-24). Additionally, this original sin made personal sin, or each person’s particular violations of God’s will, possible. According to all major Christian traditions, sin condemns all human beings to eternal death or damnation. The view that sin results in damnation rather than just physical death is not the only possible interpretation of this passage, but it is the only interpretation that fits Christianity’s internal logic, outlined above. The alternative, that physical death and not damnation is the result of Adam and Eve’s sin, does not make a redeemer (i.e., Jesus) necessary.

Some Christian thinkers, such as Augustine of Hippo and his followers, have held that original sin is sufficient to condemn people to eternal damnation, while others hold that it is one’s personal sins that lead to damnation. However, all major historical traditions of Christianity agree on the most important point: that the teaching of sin, if it is true, and regardless of the precise language used to formulate it, means that all human beings are condemned to both physical death and spiritual death or damnation unless they are saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. Paul taught that the sin of Adam brought death for all of his descendants (Romans 5:12-21), though whether he was referring only to physical death or to both physical and spiritual death cannot be easily ascertained from the passage. However, taking the Bible, specifically the New Testament, as a whole, it seems that the overall teaching is that both types of death are the result of sin. In the end, the teaching of sin, whether original, personal, or both, is the starting point of Christianity. If it was not, Christianity would, by its own internal logic, lose its necessity for human beings.

Christian Sacred History in the Old Testament and the Role of the Jewish People

In order for the central narrative of Christianity outlined here to be true, the Bible must be revealed by God. And in order to be revealed by God as God is understood by Christians and taught to exist by the Bible, the Bible has to be entirely free of error. If the Bible is not entirely free of error, it could not have been revealed by a creator who is both all-knowing and all-loving, for an all-knowing creator would not make any mistakes in transmitting messages to his or her creatures if that creator loved those creatures. Because the Bible purports to teach that God is both all-knowing (Psalm 147:4-5; Job 37:16; Hebrews 4:13; 1 John 3:20) and all-loving (John 3:16; Romans 5:8; 1 John 4:10), any error in the Bible would also entail a self-contradiction. (To clarify my claim that the Bible merely purports to teach that God is all-loving and all-knowing: while God is presented as all-loving in the New Testament, the actions attributed to God there, especially in the books supposedly written by John, show a God who is in fact infinitely cruel towards many people. Similarly, there are several places in the Old Testament, particularly Genesis, where God is not portrayed as all-knowing, even though the Bible teaches that God is all-knowing in many places.)

The Genesis accounts upon which the Christian creation story is based have some elements that contradict later Christian theological traditions. For example, God walks in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:8), making him sound like a corporeal being, but the standard Christian view is that God is an incorporeal being (except, of course, in his incarnation as Jesus Christ). In the passage concerning the fate of the snake for its role in Adam and Eve’s sin, in which the snake is forced to crawl on its belly (Genesis 3:14), there is not the slightest indication that the snake is Satan, Lucifer, or any other being with which it was

later identified.

Adam and Eve are the first significant figures of Christian sacred history in the Bible. The second is Noah. According to the Bible, God flooded the earth, killing all living things, but saved Noah and his family because he was righteous (Genesis 6-8). Thus, according to the Bible, all human beings on earth are descendants of Noah and his wife, and further back, Adam and Eve. God also saved two of every kind of animal when he saved Noah from the Great Flood (Genesis 6:19-20). God made a covenant with Noah, the whole human race, and all animals following the flood, promising never again to destroy every living thing (Genesis 8:21, 9:11, 9:15).

The third significant figure of Christian sacred history in the Bible is Abraham (or Abram). Practitioners of the Abrahamic traditions regard Abraham’s son Isaac as the father of the Hebrew people, while Arab Muslims consider Abraham’s son Ishmael the father of all Arabs. According to Genesis, God gave Abraham the land that now forms the present state of Israel, as well as territory in several other modern Middle Eastern countries (Genesis 15). In a sequence that prefigured God’s sacrifice of his only son (according to Christian interpretations of the passage), God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a sign of his faith (which in this case means trust in and steadfast devotion to God rather than the more common definition of belief in the absence of evidence— most references to faith in this book have the latter meaning, but some have the former meaning; it will be clear from the context which sense of the word is meant). But just as Abraham was about to kill his son, God, in the form of the Angel of the Lord, stopped him, and Abraham sacrificed a ram instead (Genesis 22).

The fourth significant figure of Christian sacred history in the Bible is Moses. The Bible teaches that God revealed the law to Moses, starting with the Ten Commandments but including hundreds of other commandments as well. (These commandments were later synthesized as the 613 Mitzvot in the Jewish rabbinical tradition.) According to the book of Exodus, God also used Moses to lead the Hebrew people out of their 400 years of slavery under the Pharaohs of Egypt.

The significance of these four in the analysis of Christianity—as well as prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, and the kings David and Solomon—is that, like Jews, Christians hold that God chose one specific nation (the Jewish people) to receive messages from him after humans had been cut off from him by sin. According to all major Christian traditions, after Adam and Eve were banished from Eden, nobody besides the Jewish people knew God and his will at all prior to the first coming of Jesus Christ. But since Jews also sin and fall short of the glory of God (according to Christianity’s internal logic), they too need Jesus Christ as their savior.

This is one element of the traditional Christian understanding of the significance of the Jewish people in relation to Jesus. Another is that the figures listed above paved the way for the Messiah and unique Son of God to be born as a Jew. In other words, God spoke to and through some Jewish individuals because he planned all along for his son to be born among their people. That is why they are in the Old Testament. This portion of the Bible represents the way God related to humankind prior to sending his son. In Christian reckoning, God’s relationship with the human race was provincial prior to God’s incarnation as Jesus Christ, while God’s relationship with the human race was universal after the incarnation.

(Note that the term Old Testament is actually a condescending label for the books of the Hebrew Bible, as it is rooted in the Christian belief that the covenant that Jesus literally embodies according to the New Testament supersedes or matters far more than all the covenants described in the Hebrew Bible. It is also worth noting that the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament are organized differently. The Hebrew Bible is organized by book-type, into the books of the Law (Torah), Prophets (Nevi’im), and Writings (Ketuvim), while the Old Testament purports to be organized chronologically.)

Jesus

According to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus was born to a virgin who was directly impregnated by the Holy Spirit, without any intercourse, and his birth was accompanied by an astrological portent called the Star of Bethlehem. This sign indicated to three Persian Magi (Zoroastrian priests) traveling nearby that a king had been born. (Later, I will discuss some of the other deities and heroes allegedly born in a miraculous manner in other religious and mythological traditions, as well as the meaning of the Hebrew word almah, which is the word translated as virgin in Isaiah 7:14. Most biblical scholars believe this word refers merely to a young woman or woman of childbearing age, not necessarily a virgin.)

Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River at around 30 years of age, at which point the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove and a voice from heaven said, This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17). After that, Jesus was tempted by the devil for 40 days and nights in the wilderness. However, he resisted these temptations and subsequently began his ministry.

Jesus taught multiple sermons concerning morality and devotion, used many parables to explain his message, and performed many miracles. The miracles performed by Jesus are one of the major sources of the power that Christians believe their religion has, but, with the exception of the resurrection, are not among the most important events of the story. The most important events in Jesus’ earthly ministry for all mainstream Christians are the crucifixion of Jesus and his miraculous resurrection three days later. To understand the significance of these alleged historical events in Christian reckoning, which cannot be overstated, we must recall what was previously said about sin.

In the Christian understanding of the world, every human being is cursed with both physical death and the second death of eternal damnation because of sin, of which all people are guilty and must repent. According to this line of thinking, as long as people remain in sin, they remain separated from God. In other words, by sinning, people choose to separate themselves from God and what is sinful cannot enter God’s holy presence.

Famous Protestant theologian John Calvin believed all people are born into total depravity, meaning they simply cannot save themselves from sin. Augustine believed something very similar. Both held to doctrines of predestination or election, or the idea that God chooses who is saved (according to both) and who is damned (according to Calvin, but really this is just the corollary of Augustine’s notion of single predestination) from before the foundations of the world and nobody has any control over his or her eternal fate. Thus, according to them only God can choose whether we are saved or damned. In contrast, the Dutch Protestant theologian Jacobus Arminius held that people have a quite limited, but still real, choice as to whether they accept Jesus and his saving grace or reject him. (The Arminian view is the primary one in Evangelical and Pentecostal circles in the contemporary United States.) In any case, all of them agree that only God can save humans from the consequences of their sins.

This is exactly what Christians believe Jesus did when he died on the cross (as recounted in Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, and John 19). Based on the Old Testament, Christians believe that God’s sense of justice can only be satisfied by means of a sacrifice and that God’s sense of justice must be satisfied in order for sins to be forgiven (Romans 3:25-26). In Old Testament times, animals were sacrificed to atone for the collective sins of the Jewish people, as well as to atone for individual sins (see, e.g., Leviticus 4-7). However, none of those sacrifices could bridge the gap between God and humanity, since none of them were capable of removing or overcoming sin (Hebrews 10:1-14). Christians believe that Jesus, on the other hand, was the only person who could atone for the sins of all humankind. Christians believe that only the sacrifice of Jesus brings forgiveness of sins, and only for those who have faith in Jesus, specifically in the atoning power of his blood (Hebrews 10:15-18; Romans 3:22-25).

There are other possible interpretations of Jesus’ crucifixion, but theories of substitutionary atonement, which hold that Jesus was killed in place of sinners, are by far the most popular today and have the most biblical support. Other theories, such as the ransom theory (the belief, supported by such passages as Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45, and 1 Corinthians 6:20 and 7:23, that Jesus’ death was a payment for the debt that all people owe to Satan, death, or even God himself), the moral influence theory (the belief that the primary purpose of Jesus’ death and resurrection was to bring positive moral change to humanity, supported particularly by passages like 1 Peter 2:24), the theory that the crucifixion represents the ultimate triumph of good over evil, and the Universalist theory of atonement (the belief that all people without exception are saved by Jesus’ death and resurrection), while they have been advocated by some notable theologians and apologists, are minority viewpoints, and are not as well supported by the Bible as the various theories of substitutionary atonement. There is also a debate among different Christian denominations over whether the atonement is limited or unlimited, that is, whether Jesus’ death was a propitiation only for those predestined for salvation or whether his death was a propitiation for all people, who are then free to accept or reject it.

Under the theory of substitutionary atonement, since he was a member of the human race, Jesus was eligible to be the sacrifice for the whole race (C.S. Lewis explained this notion in a straightforward way in Mere Christianity at 53-59). Yet while Jesus’ humanity made him eligible, he was only worthy of being the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the human race because he was the only person in the history of the world who was divine and therefore without sin (1 John 3:5 and 1 Peter 2:22). Thus, Jesus was uniquely eligible to truly atone for the race and all of its individual members, according to the internal logic of Christianity. When Christians speak of Jesus being a gift, this is what they mean: humans had fallen into sin, become separated from God, and continue to separate themselves from God through their own sins, but Jesus bridged the gap between humankind and God by clearing the debt owed by the human race collectively and by each individual member thereof for sin. Now, through Jesus, people may come to know God the Father. According to the traditional forms of Christianity, one can only do this through Jesus, whether he and his saving grace are mediated by church officials and sacraments, as is taught in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, or whether a person can have a direct personal relationship with Jesus, and thus with God, as is taught in most forms of modern Protestantism.

Just as Jesus’ death bridged the gap between God and humankind, so his alleged resurrection from the dead paved the way for the resurrection unto eternal life in the presence of God for all believers, or in other words, for all those who are filled with the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:10-11). According to the New Testament, Jesus died on the Friday after Passover (Good Friday), then rose from the dead the following Sunday (Easter). One of the major selling points of many Christian apologists is that, according to them and their religion, Jesus was the only person in the history of the world to actually conquer death and return to life, body and all. It was not rebirth in the Hindu or Buddhist sense, i.e., the soul taking on a new body or the impermanent components of an impermanent and ever-changing self reorganizing themselves in a subsequent lifetime. Rather, it was a case of a person actually dying and then coming back to life as the same person. Jesus’ resurrection also introduced the possibility of the deification of humans by sharing in Christ’s nature through the Holy Spirit. God became man, so that man could become God, according to Athanasius and several other prominent theologians. Not only did Jesus’ crucifixion bridge the gap between God and humankind; his resurrection fulfilled the promise of eternal life.

The Holy Spirit, the Early Church, and the Spread

of Christianity

Reviews for Thou Shalt Not Believe

[Mark Cherian · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The author is refuting Christianity on the basis of his studies and logic. But God is beyond what our human mind can comprehend. If the author or anyone who does not believe that Jesus Christ is the ONLY Saviour, he/she needs to ask God Himself to reveal the truth.
I had an encounter with the Holy Spirit in Jan 2016, which changed my life and I know for sure that God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - The Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the only true and living God.