The ‘Rant' Claims

Short Answer Responses

Christianity is not a religion that is worth believing in if one wishes to maintain any kind of moral integrity.

A strange claim as Christians are some of the most ‘integrity-conscious' people of any society. Assuredly this may not include every believer but it does include a very large number for whom the integrity of their faith is of great importance.

After all it is based on a book which has so many contradictions in it that no one with any intelligence would believe it.

In reality it is very difficult to find anything which could be considered a contradiction. That one person records certain pieces of information at one specific event, and another person at the same event records different pieces of information does not mean a contradiction unless it is in the form of A saying a certain thing happened and B denied it happened.

The Bible is very biased as it is written by people who already believe that God exists and so they have made up stories which support this idea.

The only problem with this assertion is that there are so many people believing he exists, many of them with a very high level of integrity. You may argue with what they believe they experienced but not that they did experience something. So many people (in a non-word processor age) bothering to write with such uniformity demands attention.

There is little proof that Jesus lived so once again we have a collection of stories written by people who wanted to stir up a rebellion against the Roman government of the time.

Although the evidence outside the Bible is limited it is there and no serious historians today deny the existence of the person of Jesus Christ as a genuine historical figure.

Miracles cannot be proved scientifically so therefore probably have other explanations

To deny the possibility denies the scientific approach which is always open to investigate with an open mind whatever phenomena occur. Theologically, if there is an all-powerful Creator God then there would be nothing to stop Him stepping in and changing the things we call laws of nature.

Also if the God who is described in the Bible existed there wouldn't be any suffering.

The Bible shows God giving mankind free will. To overcome the actions of evil, bad, or even slightly bad people to prevent them inflicting suffering on others would mean we would require Him to deny us our free will. We can have it only one way or the other.

Also the God of the Old Testament appears to be a very different God from the God of the New Testament.

This assertion is born out of ignorance of the two Testaments and ignorance and lack of thinking in respect of specific things that occur in them both.

More people are atheists than believers which is another good reason to support Atheism.

Actually this is completely false. The number of those following some form of religious belief outnumbers those who declare they are atheists, thousands to one.

Lots of highly intelligent people have written books about the non-existence of God e.g. ‘The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins, which is another good reason not to believe he exists.

Actually a limited number of people have so written. A considerable number of equally intelligent people have written of their certainty that he exists.

Science has proved that the earth was created by a Big Bang – so where was God in that?

Science believes in the theory of the Big Bang but accepts that they are no further than a millisecond after such an event. The biggest problem that science has is that it believes that something cannot come from absolutely nothing.

You can't prove God exists scientifically so therefore it is meaningless to talk about his existence.

There is a sense by which you cannot ‘prove' anything that occurs in history but you can weigh the clear evidence and draw reasonable conclusions. The historical evidence that shows that in the Bible we have reliable testimony to what actually happened is overwhelming. Indeed it vastly outweighs the historical evidence for any other ancient documents. It is also reasonable to examine the lives of Christians throughout the last two thousand years and draw some very logical and valid conclusions that point towards the existence of God.

Which brings me to another point – why ‘His' existence and not ‘Hers'?

The Bible conveys the picture of God as a loving Father figure but there are also instances where ‘He' in shown as having feminine characteristics also.

Where are dinosaurs in the Bible?

The simple answer to that is almost certainly in an era before mankind and therefore before the Biblical record.

How could a boat fit all the animals in the world on it?

Whether it was of “all the world” or of just the Middle East has always been a question mark. Whichever the answer, the enormous size of the ‘ark' would accommodate two of each species according to a number of scientists.

What about 9/11? What about the Holocaust?

What about “man's inhumanity to man” you are asking. You simply reinforce the point that God has given us free will and we so often choose to use it hurting other people – not only in big wars or terrorism, but also in our families. We need help!

As already stated, Christianity is only for weak-minded, non-thinking people.

Quite to the contrary, Christianity is for those who will really think about the human situation and the clear evidence for a Divine Being and all that that implies for us. There have been millions of very intelligent people who have acknowledged the existence of God and come to know Him through the means of Jesus Christ.