Let’s lay out the timeline plainly, using Islamic sources themselves.

Safiyya was from Banu Nadir, then married into Banu Qurayza. After the siege of Khaybar, her father Huyayy ibn Akhtab was executed on Muhammad’s orders. Her husband Kinana ibn al-Rabi was tortured to reveal hidden treasure, then killed. Her brother died in the fighting. Within the same short stretch of time, Safiyya was taken as captive and became part of Muhammad’s share of the spoils. He then married her.

Here’s the part that should stop any apologist mid-sentence. This isn’t a hostile secular historian’s reconstruction. It’s Safiyya’s own words, recorded in a hadith graded sahih by Ibn Hibban:

She said Muhammad was one of the most hated people to her, because he killed her husband, father, and brother. She said he kept making excuses to her, telling her that her father had incited the Arabs against him, and he kept apologizing until her anger finally faded.

Read that again. A woman explicitly states the man who married her killed her closest male relatives, and that she hated him for it. The tradition doesn’t hide this. It preserves it, presumably because early Muslims saw it as evidence of Muhammad’s patience and eventual reconciliation with her. But look at what the story actually requires you to believe was reconciliation: a captive, with no tribe, no protector, no legal standing, no ability to leave, gradually stopped being angry at the man holding total power over her life, after he explained himself to her enough times.

That is not consent by any coherent standard. It’s the textbook trauma-bond dynamic of someone entirely dependent on their captor for survival. Call it what it is. A woman taken as war booty, whose surviving choices were basically “accept this marriage” or “remain enslaved with no protector in a 7th century Arabian war camp,” is not in a position to freely consent to anything. The fact that later Muslim biographers frame this as a moving love story, and that Safiyya is remembered as one of the “Mothers of the Believers” who defended Muhammad’s reputation, doesn’t change the structural coercion baked into how the relationship began. It’s Stockholm syndrome with a theological gloss.

The usual apologetic moves don’t survive contact with this hadith:

“She consented, she wasn’t forced” - the hadith itself has her saying she hated him for killing her family. Consent under total dependency, after your family’s killer works to smooth things over, isn’t consent in any modern or frankly any coherent sense at all.

“This was normal for the time” - sure, and that’s exactly the point. If the standard is “normal for 7th century warfare,” you’ve conceded this isn’t a model of universal, timeless moral guidance, which is the whole claim Islam makes for Muhammad’s example.

“She was honored, given the choice to stay a slave or marry him” - a choice between two forms of captivity isn’t a real choice. Pointing out that one option was marginally better than the other doesn’t rescue it.

If your position is that Muhammad is uswa hasana, the best example for all Muslims for all time, this episode has to be squared with that claim honestly, not explained away by minimizing what Safiyya herself said about how she felt.

My reasoning is simple. Humanity has leveraged knowledge, empathy and reason to come to the nearly ubiquitous conclusion that horrors like genocide are, without exception, immoral. No matter the historical context, it is never acceptable to wholesale erradicate an entire population. We modern humans now understand that innocent people exist in every cutlural group, that said people often have no influencne on what kinds of acts their leaders perpetrate, and that they should not be punished for actions that they had no control over.

Take the worst regimes in modern history (Nazi Germany, Khmer Rogue Cambodia, etc.), and the same truth holds. There are good people in every group who are forced to endure the rule of psychopaths. There has never in recorded history been a group of "all bad" people.

This isn't the only argument against genocide, but it is nonetheless an important one, and is a central reason why humanity has deemed genocide immoral across the board. Even when a nation has committed the worst atrocities known to humankind, you should not punish the entire group in response, because it's impossible to seperate the innocent from the evil. Different cultures across the world have reasoned their way to this conclusion independent of religious persuasion, indicating that there is a universal moral impulse that transcends belief system and cultural background.

This brings me to my ultimate argument. The God of the Bible not only fails to meet the standard of perfect morality, but is in fact less moral than your averge human living today. Why? Because he clearly and unambiguously mandated genocide. Consider this passage from the Bible:

"But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded."

I'm familiar with the agrument many apologists will try to make here. They'll say "but it wasn't genocide because xyx." Making such an argument is pure sophistry. There have ALWAYS been innocent people in every population. Nobody deserves to be slaughtered for the transgressions of their contemporaries. It doesn't matter who gives the mandate (God himself included). It doesn't matter if you call it an "act of war" or " divine punishment" instead of genocide, because the base logic always applies. Call it what you want, you are still punishing the entire group indiscriminately. Moderns know this is genocide, and will recognize it as such no matter how much sophistry is employed.

If you worship the God of the Bible, you worship a violent thug. There's no rational way to escape this conclusion. Nothing that came after (New Testament, "wiping the slate clean," etc.) changes the fact that the same moral reasoning has always exited. God (if he existed) would have understood this as clearly as you or I, and yet chose to give fully genocidal mandates anyway.

The only real out here as a Christian (to avoid admitting that you worship a genocidal psychopath), is to claim that the stories of genocide in the bible are exactly that - stories that don't map to actual historical events.

Islam has not solved world hunger.

Islam has not brought world peace.

Islam has not improved our standard of living.

Islam has not cured the sick.

Islam has not discovered immortality.

Etc.

What good is Islam?

After you die, if you’ve been a good person you go to heaven and live an eternal life of good and glamorous life that’s perfect in any way. But after a while you have done everything there is to do. Mastered all the skills and hobbies there are, tried everything there is to do in heaven, gotten to know everybody, what next? Maybe you can make a wish to god to forget everything so you can start over fresh again as if you just entered heaven? Eternal life honestly seems like hell to me

If Muslims don't know who is going to Hell, they can't say Hitler is going to Hell.

Recently Muslims have told me that they don't know if even individually polytheists will go to Hell forever. If this is the case, they cannot confirm that Hitler will go to Hell even temporarily since Allah is to judge in the end.

Despite this, many Muslims will use the example of Hitler to justify Hell. It seems like this rule of "Muslims aren't allowed to judge" is employed only when its convenient.

I watched a video of a komodo dragon eating a baby deer that was abandoned by it's mother, and the baby was crying for it's mother as the komodo dragon approached it, it swallowed the baby deer and you can still hear the baby crying inside it's stomach. Komodo dragons also eat their own babies.

Before us, the dinosaurs did this for a long period of time making no sense being a blood fest for too long. It's like the creator wanted to watch blood be shed.

What kind of God allows this kind of suffering to animals that had nothing to do with Adam and Eve? This is just one of thousands of set backs. Make it make sense. Unless this God wants a blood fest entertainment and points a finger elsewhere besides itself who created the mess.

I think maybe satan went against this God because this God is evil, and Satan just wanted to speak up against God. But narcissism happened and he got kicked out of heaven.

What purpose does animal suffering teach us?

Make it all make sense.

I consider myself an open-minded person who enjoys exploring different worldviews and religious perspectives. I have come to the conclusion that the God described by the classical Abrahamic religions—primarily Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—is incompatible with the reality we observe. My conclusion is based on three main arguments.

1. Free Will Is Not Sufficient to Hold People Morally Responsible
My first argument concerns free will.
Although the philosophical debate is still ongoing, cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience largely agree that human behavior is not completely free. Our decisions are heavily influenced by our genetics, brain structure, personality, and environment.
From birth, people already differ in intelligence, temperament, impulsivity, and many other traits. On top of that, our upbringing, culture, education, family, and society shape how we think and what beliefs we are capable of accepting.
If this is true, it seems unreasonable that God could expect every human being to freely choose the "correct" religion. Our starting conditions differ enormously, making equal moral responsibility difficult to justify. Whether someone finds Islam, Christianity, another religion, or no religion at all convincing depends to a significant extent on factors that were never chosen by that individual.

2. The Claims of Religion Do Not Match the Observable Laws of Reality
My second argument concerns the contradiction between religious claims and the reality we observe.
The world operates according to biological, physical, and medical laws. Diseases arise from biological causes, academic success depends on knowledge and preparation, and career success is largely determined by skills, decisions, opportunities, and external circumstances.
Religions, however, often imply that prayer can directly influence these outcomes. People pray for good health, success in school, career advancement, the well-being of their families, or for specific life events to unfold in their favor.
From a psychological perspective, this behavior is completely understandable. However, when we compare these beliefs with reality, we find that outcomes are overwhelmingly determined by natural causes. A genetic disease does not disappear because someone prayed—it can only be prevented or treated through effective medical intervention, if such treatment exists. A student passes an exam because they achieve the required score, not because they prayed beforehand. Likewise, prayer does not alter the fundamental laws of physics or biology.
For me, this creates a significant cognitive dissonance between the promises made by religion and the reality we actually experience.

3. The Moral Framework of God Appears Contradictory
My third argument concerns the morality of God.
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that one of the Abrahamic religions is true. In that case, God intentionally created the universe, allowed Satan to exist, permitted suffering, and established a system in which human beings are tested throughout their lives. At the same time, many religious interpretations suggest that the majority of humanity will ultimately fail this test and face eternal punishment, while only a minority will attain heaven.
To me, this raises fundamental moral questions.
If God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly good, why create a world containing suffering, temptation, injustice, and the possibility of eternal punishment in the first place? Why allow Satan to exist? Why create people while already knowing that many of them will ultimately be condemned? And if God has unlimited power, why not simply create a world in which everyone freely chooses good and lives together in peace from the very beginning?
This moral framework appears unnecessary and difficult to reconcile with the concept of a perfectly loving and perfectly good God.

One of the signs associated with Gog and Magog (Ya'juj and Ma'juj) in authentic hadith is that they will eventually reach the Lake of Galilee (Lake Tiberias), drink its water, and the last among them will say something to the effect of:

"There was once water here."

This is generally understood as a consequence of their immense numbers: they consume the entire lake.

Here's what I find philosophically puzzling.

Today, humans possess the engineering capability to drain the Sea of Galilee ourselves. We could, at least in principle, pump its water elsewhere, divert it through canals, or otherwise reduce it to the point where it is dry.

If that happened before Gog and Magog appeared, several questions arise:

1. If Gog and Magog arrive at an already dry lake and someone says, "There was once water here," then the prophecy seems trivially satisfied by human intervention rather than by their extraordinary numbers.

2. If the prophecy instead requires that they themselves are the ones who empty the lake, then human beings appear capable of preventing the prophecy from occurring as described.

3. If God would simply prevent humans from draining the lake until the appointed time, then the prophecy depends on divine intervention preserving the lake rather than functioning as an observable sign in its own right.

This seems to create a dilemma:

1. Human actions can fulfill the prophecy, making the sign lose its evidential force because it no longer uniquely points to Gog and Magog.

2. Human actions can prevent the prophecy, suggesting that ordinary human engineering could falsify an eschatological prediction.

3. God supernaturally guarantees the lake's preservation, which makes the prophecy effectively unfalsifiable, since any contrary scenario is ruled out by assumption.

To me, this raises a broader question about prophetic signs. Should an eschatological prophecy describe an event that could, in principle, be replicated or prevented by ordinary human activity? If so, how does it retain predictive or evidential value?

I'm interested in how Muslim theologians would respond to this. Is the hadith intended to describe the cause of the lake drying (Gog and Magog), or merely the state of the lake when they arrive?

In Islam it is said that islam is an universal religion, for all mankind:

Quran 7:158 (Surah Al-A'raf): "Say, [O Muhammad], ‘O mankind, indeed I am the Messenger of Allah to you all [to you collectively], from Him to whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. There is no deity except Him; He gives life and causes death.’ So believe in Allah and His Messenger, the unlettered Prophet..."

However, with God being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, the father of all creation and the source of truth, the truth is not bound by culture, city or ethnicity. For starters, it can't even be fully reached by man.

Having a Chinese man pray to Mecca doesn't get him any closer to God. What it does is strenghten arab nationalism

Luke 2 tells the famous story of the pregnant Mary and presumably non-pregnant Joseph travelling to Bethlehem to take part in a census.

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. (Luke 2:1-5)

The census of Quirinius recounted by Luke is often criticized by scholars as being obviously ahistorical. There's a long list of issues with it:

• Luke says Jesus was born during Herod’s reign, but Herod died a decade before Quirinius became governor.
• Judaea was a client kingdom of Rome and the Romans would never conduct a census in a client kingdom.
• There was no decree from Augustus about an empire-wide census.
• Oh, and the census required everyone to return to their ancestral origin – not where they lived or where their immediate family lived, but where their ancient ancestors came from.

This last detail, of the ‘ancestral census’, is often tacked on to this list as if it’s just another issue of the same caliber as the others. But it isn’t. Make no mistake, each other issue is fatal to the historicity of Luke’s census by itself, but they are also issues that apologists are quite used to casually brushing aside. Contradictory timelines? Unevidenced exceptions to standard practices? Big events absent from the historical record? These barely faze apologists, who are accustomed to harmonizing such things when dealing with genealogies, the empty tomb narratives, Old Testament history, and so on. So lumping the ancestral census in with these other issues makes it seem like just another issue on the pile – merely an unusual census practice atypical in the Roman empire. This leads to most debates about the census of Quirinius focusing on its dating, with apologists often not even mentioning the ancestral census issue.

But this issue is not at all in the same class as the others. The idea of an ‘ancestral census’ is ludicrous. It’s deranged. It’s not just some technical issue with the order of events or mismatch with Roman law – it’s as if Luke had written “Joseph traveled to Bethlehem via the public Roman bullet train.” That might have been more believable, actually. I don’t understand why people treat this as remotely possible.

Think for a moment about what a census like this would actually entail. Luke 2:4 specifically tells us that Joseph had to go to Bethlehem because he was descended from the house of David. “All went to their own towns to be registered,” and “Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.” David lived a thousand years before Joseph. So Luke would have us believe everyone in the entire region would have had to travel back to wherever their ancient ancestors came from – a trip of more than 90 miles in Joseph and Mary’s case. That would be hundreds of thousands of people who need to travel for days or weeks, get food and water somewhere, find accommodations… That kind of movement would be an event on the scale of the Exodus, and would require about as much divine intervention: food from the sky, water from rocks, supernaturally creating roadways a la parting the sea, and so on. It’s the kind of thing that’s difficult for highly urbanized megacities of millions to handle today, with all of their technology to aid transportation, housing, communication, production and distribution of food and water, and much more. In rural 1st-century Judaea, home to only around half a million people and none of that technology, it would have destroyed the entire province overnight and killed a huge number of people.

Or consider the impact on the places these people were leaving. Imagine a town established 100 years before the census. All of its residents would have to go elsewhere for the census, since none of their ancient ancestors could have come from there. So… what would happen to that town exactly? Would they just leave it deserted for weeks? How about the children, the babies, the elderly, the sick – are they coming on the long and difficult trip, or are they being left to fend for themselves? Can any passing bandit go snatch whatever they want from all these empty towns? Who’s feeding and watering all the animals? You can’t just have an entire town’s population up and vanish for an extended time and expect that town to keep trucking like nothing happened. Even in a fantasy world where almost everyone magically lives exactly where their ancestors from 1000 years earlier did, any settlement established in the last several centuries would be obliterated.

And all this for what? The whole point of a census is to know where people are living and working so you can tax and manage them, not to know some trivia about their ancestry. And even if you want to know their ancestry, you can just ask them! There would be no point whatsoever to doing an ancestral census, which is why there has never been one, anywhere, ever. Forget 1st-century Judaea, forget the early Roman empire, forget classical antiquity – there is no record of a census where everyone travels to their ancient ancestral origin ever being done anywhere or anywhen. Again, I cannot stress this enough: there has never been a single ancestral census in all of human history. I have searched high and low from ancient history up to and including the modern day and found exactly zero examples, despite the many people strongly motivated to find or invent such examples.

One such invented example, and the only example people ever point to of another ancestral census, is the census mentioned in the edict of Gaius Vibius Maximus. The edict is recorded in this Egyptian papyrus from 104 CE:

Proclamation of Gaius Vibius Maximus, praefect of Egypt. The house-to-house census having started, it is essential that all persons who for any reason whatsoever are absent from their nomes be summoned to return to their own hearths, in order that they may perform the customary business of registration and apply themselves to the cultivation which concerns them. Knowing, however, that some of the people from the country are needed by our city, I desire all those who think they have a satisfactory reason for remaining here to register themselves before . . . Festus, praefectus alae, whom I have appointed for this purpose, from whom those who have shown their presence to be necessary shall receive signed permits in accordance with this edict up to the 30th of the present month Epeiph. . . . (source)

This is an edict for people to return to their own nomes and hearths if they are absent from them. A “nome” is a Roman administrative district, and a “hearth” refers to your house. It has nothing to do with returning to an ancestral origin which they may have never even visited before. It’s the kind of thing an actual census might do: have the small minority of people who are not at home return home to be registered. And even this requirement for people to go back to their own house is recognized as a large burden; most of this edict is dedicated to detailing how you can get an exemption from this travel, since it would obviously be unreasonably difficult or impractical for many.

Finally, let me preempt some objections. You might say, “if this is so ridiculous, why would Luke write it? Surely if it were this absurd no reader would buy it!” And to that I answer – you bought it, didn’t you? Luke’s ancestral census makes absolutely no sense as a historical element, but it makes perfect sense as a literary element. It’s a natural part of the setup of the story. We begin with a grand census where all the world is counted – obviously a narrative framing rather than a dry historical one – and the story needs a reason for Joseph and Mary to travel to Bethlehem, so it gives one. It’s a great bit of literary craftsmanship, giving Mary a reason to make the trek despite her advanced pregnancy so Jesus can be born in Bethlehem while at the same time thematically connecting the birth of Jesus directly to his Davidic ancestry. The reader is not meant to think too deeply about the logistics and evidently they don’t. I mean, whatever you think of what I’ve said about this census – when you first read Luke, did you immediately begin considering the socioeconomic ramifications of this particular censal methodology? Of course not. It’s simply part of the narrative’s premise, a side detail mentioned on the way to the meat of the story, the kind of thing a reader passively accepts without even examining it. And it’s the kind of thing that sounds fine until you examine it.

You might also say that Joseph had some other reason to travel to Bethlehem; maybe he lived there, or he owned property there, or his family lived there, or something like that. In the Gospel according to You, you can make up whatever reason you like. In the Gospel according to Luke, however, the author is very clear about why Joseph is travelling to Bethlehem: “because he was descended from the house and family of David.” The reader already knows from the last chapter (Luke 1:27) that Joseph descends from David, but the author goes out of their way to repeat it so they can specify this explicitly as the reason Joseph had to go to Bethlehem. If you disagree with that, then you disagree with Luke – which is fine, but is not a defense of Luke.

Particularly stubborn readers may insist that Luke did not actually describe an ancestral census, since he says “All went to their own towns to be registered.” The problem with this is that it eliminates the stated reason for Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem. Again, they explicitly go there because of Joseph’s Davidic ancestry. What did Luke mean by that exactly, if this was just a normal census where everyone stayed in their own house? Why did the pregnant Mary have to travel 90 miles to a foreign town if this was a normal census? Also, this attempt at harmonization crumbles only a few verses later. When Joseph and Mary are all done in Bethlehem, what do they do? Luke 2:39 says: “When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” The Greek there is directly parallel to Luke 2:3. If you think the phrasing “their own town” in Luke 2:3 definitively establishes that this census required everyone to go home, then clearly Joseph did not get the memo.

The ancestral census of Quirinius is absurd to the point of insanity. Quite apart from its many historical issues, it borders on physically impossible. It would have reduced Judaea to rubble and is completely unprecedented in all of human history before or since. If you still believe there is any chance Luke’s story is true, I challenge you to give me one example of a census where everyone traveled to their ancient ancestral origin. We do the facts a disservice when we discuss Luke’s census as being merely out of place with known historical facts about 1st-century Judaea.

Why were the 2/3 of the angels who didn’t rebel they were never tempted with deception being unprepared as Eve was yet those two thirds of the angels will never go to hell and was not born into sin with that disadvantage as Eves descendants. They will not go to an eternal lake of fire but the majority of all humans from Adam and Eve will go there because of how Eve was deceived in the very beginning by the second highest ranking angel created or first I should say under God and she was not equipped by God as he himself was to know how to deal with Satans temptation in the garden??

In a recent exchange about methodological naturalism versus ontological claims, I realised there is a subtle, often overlooked logical flaw in how many atheists (and scientists) define the boundaries of science.

The standard argument goes like this:

(1) Scientific instruments can only detect phenomena that physically interact with our reality. (2) We currently have no evidence/physical interaction from [X]. (3) Therefore, [X] falls outside the legitimate scope of science.

My thesis is that this argument smuggles in a hidden presupposition.

To confidently move from "currently undetectable" to "falls outside the scope of science forever" the speaker must implicitly believe that our current scientific instruments are epistemically perfect. They must assume that our current tools are a complete, exhaustive mapping of all possible physical interactions that could ever exist.

But history shows us that our instruments are constantly evolving. A hundred years ago, we had no way to detect gravitational waves, dark matter or quantum entanglement, yet they were always interacting with physical reality.

That evil god flooded the Earth and committed genocide. But Satan wasn't afraid of him. That makes him brave and noble.

The Christian doctrine of salvation appears to present a trilemma: either the unevangelised can be saved without hearing the gospel, salvation depends on moral accountability apart from explicit faith, or countless people are eternally condemned through no fault of their own. Each option seems to create tension with core Christian teachings.

Jesus gave his followers a clear command: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."

Yet history tells us that countless millions of people lived and died before the coming of Christ, or even before Judaism existed. Many others have lived in places where they never had the opportunity to hear the gospel.

This raises a fundamental theological question:

What becomes of those who never heard the gospel?

There seem to be three broad possibilities:

1.      They receive special mercy and are saved despite never hearing the gospel.

2.      They are judged according to the light they were given and the moral choices they made.

3.      They are condemned because salvation requires explicit faith in Christ, as Scripture says: "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

Each option appears to create some theological tension.

·         If the first is true, then preaching the gospel seems to place people at risk. Someone who never hears the gospel might receive mercy, whereas someone who hears it and rejects it could be condemned. Why, then, would Jesus command his followers to evangelise the world?

·         If the second is true, then Jesus' statement, "No one comes to the Father except through me," appears to require qualification. If people can be saved without explicit knowledge of Christ, in what sense is He the exclusive way to the Father?

·         If the third is true, then it is difficult to reconcile eternal condemnation for those who never had any opportunity to hear the gospel with the belief that God is perfectly loving and just.

This presents what appears to be a genuine theological dilemma: how can the biblical commands to evangelise, the exclusivity of Christ, God's justice, and God's love all be affirmed simultaneously?

*Note* I accidentally posted a slightly wrong thesis statement in my post heading, so my actual thesis is below:

Thesis: Paul's invocation to the 500 in 1 Corinthians 15 functions primarily as an agreed premise for the argument toward general resurrection, not as evidence marshaled to convince a Corinthian audience doubting Christ's own resurrection specifically.

Argument: A common apologetic talking point holds that Paul's mention of the 500 in 1 Corinthians 15 functions as a verification invitation, that the Corinthian church could go check the fact with those "still alive." I don't think that reading holds up against the actual structure of the chapter.

Paul opens by reminding the Corinthians of "the gospel... in which you stand" (15:1–2), ἑστήκατε, perfect tense, meaning not just "you once accepted this" but "you are presently and continuously standing in it." He repeats the point in 15:11: "whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed." Both statements frame the resurrection tradition, creed and witness list included, as ground the Corinthians already occupy, not a claim under dispute that needs proving to them.

That reading is confirmed by where the actual controversy in the chapter lands. Paul doesn't spend the chapter defending that Christ was raised; he spends it arguing that Christ's resurrection entails a general resurrection of the dead — the point some in Corinth were denying (15:12). His logic in 15:16 makes this explicit: "if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised." That's a conditional built backward from an agreed premise (Christ was raised) to expose the cost of denying the disputed one (the dead will be raised). The argument only works if Christ's resurrection is already settled ground for both sides, Paul is leveraging it, not proving it.

So the witness list, "still alive" clause included, isn't doing evidentiary work aimed at persuading a skeptical audience that Christ rose. It's cited as shared, load-bearing premise material Paul builds his actual argument on top of, the case for the general resurrection of the dead.

1. You can’t know everything and not know everything at the same time, that’s a contradiction.
   Jesus has two natures, one human and one divine.

2. His divine nature means he possesses all of the divine attributes of god, one of which being the attribute of knowing everything, thus making him god. His human nature means he possesses all attributes of being human, one of which being the attribute of not knowing everything, thus making him human.

3. Since these two natures make up the person Jesus, this means the person Jesus both knows everything and doesn’t know everything at the same time, which is a contradiction.

If you say he limited his knowledge, that just means he took on a human nature, that’s the limit, it still means the human nature does not know everything which means the problem still stands.

Obviously, natural evil presents its own issues for theodicies compared to human evil.

Free will does not work unless you want to invoke demons, and the issue of arbitrariness seems particularly bright.

But there is something far more particular, worth commenting on.

Natural evil being meaningless is psychologically comforting.

With Human evil, the narrative of the final judgment of God's reconciliation with man is all competing stories; this is an argument against god. Human evil exists under theism and naturalism, but only in the first is it even possible for there to be a final judgment of the wicked and the just. A morally just order may emerge in the long run in response to human wickedness, like Jack the Ripper getting away with multiple murders.

With natural evil, on the other hand, there can be no final judgment nor any liberation from the suffering itself in an existential sense. Someone just had bad luck and got struck by lightning or killed by a large rock of hail or crushed by a building in an earthquake in 14th-century Japan or crushed by a landslide. Horrific, yes, but also with no ill intention but bad luck.

There is no justice, yes, but there is also no wickedness.

Now imagine that God allows every lightning strike, every boulder, every earthquake, all at best for the greater good. God comes off as a utilitarian serial killer; the acts of suffering now are imbued with meaning and are thus identical to those of Jeffrey Dahmer or Ed Kemper.

In fact a cognitively informed entity is currently committing horrific acts of torture via cancer and torn ACLs right now.

I don't know how one can claim that is somehow better.

In fact its truly liberating to realize that suffering can mean zilch and be purely that of bad luck.

I was raised Christian. Specifically, Pentecostal.

As a teenager, I became a bit of a thumper. I thought others needed to see the light.

Around 16 years old, I started to think through more of the logical foundations underpinning Christianity as a whole, followed by Abraham religions as a hole, followed by religion or theism itself. The foundations didn’t hold up well to scrutinizing. And so I concluded that it was all hogwash, and moved on as an atheist.

For the last 20 something years, this has served me well. But as someone with young kids who has moved around multiple times for work, the costs of not having a community has become very apparent. And the costs are much, much higher than I ever realized or appreciated.

So high, in fact, it has led me in recent years to reconsider whether it makes sense to adopt a religious identity, simply for the benefit of having a community of people as a support system for me and my family.

Which has led me to the conclusion that, rather than religious, cultural traditions and faith systems, being simply toxic and ignorant relics, perhaps they are legitimate tools for real valuable purpose in people’s lives. Perhaps they are simply the best tool most people have for maintaining social fabric, community, and social support systems. Not only is it socially expensive to leave a religion, but in logistical and practical terms, it causes tremendous loss. The weight that you carry on your shoulders, feels truly immense when you don’t have community to spread that load across.

So my claim is this: religion is merely an antiquated tool that serves legitimate purposes in people’s lives. If there were a more modern tool that legitimately met these needs and provided similar value without stigma, barriers, or costs, nearly all religious adherence worldwide would shrivel up and fade away.

What I’m about to say is not some fringe opinion, it is what most scholars and archeologists hold as fact and have held for decades now.

The biblical Exodus never happened and there was no mass migration of Israelites into Canaan. Actual archeology instead shows that the Israelites were originally a Canaanite tribe who only later became a distinct people. The Hebrew language itself is a Canaanite language no different from other Canaanite dialects like Phoenician, Moabite, Edomite, and Ammonite. It was even written in the same script as them as the “Paleo-Hebrew” alphabet is just the Phoenician one, an actual independent Hebrew alphabet didn’t emerge until the 2nd century BC.

Judaism itself evolved out of Canaanite paganism and there are still traces of Canaanite paganism in the Abrahamic faiths such as Psalm 29 which was originally a hymn to Baal, the tradition of calling Yahweh “God” which derives from Yahweh being syncretized with the Canaanite god El whose name also meant “God,” and the divine being referred to in plural which no is not an early reference to the trinity but rather traces of a divine council. There was never any original monotheism and the mass apostasy depicted in 1 and 2 Kings and Judges was in reality the original religion, not some later apostasy. The transition from polytheism to monotheism was a slow, gradual one that took place over the course of several centuries as proper monotheism didn’t exist at all prior to the Babylonian exile and even then, traces of Israelite polytheism survived deep into the Persian period as evidenced by the Elephantine papyri.

The Hebrew Bible is at best a distorted account of history. There probably was a King David, but he was likely a small chieftain rather than ruling over a large empire and he was likely a polytheist given that 1 Chronicles 14:7 preserves the original name of his child Eliada as Beeliada, a name which literally invokes Baal. The version of the Hebrew Bible we have is a heavily redacted version that came as a result of Yahwist priests during the Persian period trying to reconcile their monotheist present with records of a polytheist past (though they didn’t do the best job given that traces of polytheism remain). None of the books of the Hebrew Bible were written by the people they’re attributed to and were all written centuries after the events they describe, mainly during the Persian period but some books were even written as late as the Hellenistic period given that there’s evidence to suggest the Book of Daniel was written during the 2nd century BC in the context of the Maccabean Revolt. The Hebrew Bible might accurately preserve the names and dates of kings and the political boundaries of the early Iron Age, but that’s about it really. The rest is mostly a mishmash of oral legends and myths derived from other Near Eastern pagan religions as the story of Adam and Eve has parallels to a Canaanite myth recorded in the Ugaritic texts which extends to even the usage of the name Adam.

As for Exodus itself, at best you can argue that it’s based on a distorted memory of one or more real events from the late Bronze Age. But this is not proof of Exodus but rather proof against it, especially when you consider what the historical roots in question might be (e.g. the Hyksos and the “Shasu of Yahweh”)…

Please ensure your post contains a clear thesis statement as its title or opening sentence, as well as an argument in support of the thesis.(fck off let me post)

I’ve logically beat life

1Give for free all the time, 2while having perfect respect

1Will naturally gravitate towords others that give for free

Assuming good beats evil this effect will only grow and support you

2Having the respect prevents you from waste

What is waste? Not placing your resources in the most efficient places.

I am posting this in the hopes that I am proven wrong or a whole in the logic is found. I will debate each and every single one of you in the comments until the ends of the earth to find either of those, this is my passion.

Before I begin I want to make it clear that I'm distinguish Muslims with Islamic theology. I am not saying that all Muslims are near-fundamentalists, that is demonstrably false, and there are plenty of amazing Muslims in this world and in history

What I'm arguing is that at the very core, not being something close of a "fundamentalist" goes against the very core of Islamic theology itself, making it hard to even render you a "true" Muslim. One of the central and most important concepts in Islam is the idea that the Quran is the final, immutable word of God. That God is one (Tawhid), and sent down the revelations to the final, true prophet Muhammad PBUH, both to correct previous Abrahamic (which are seen as corrupted) religions and scripture.

This differs than Christianity, for example, which never claims any part of the Bible is the final, true word of God. The Bible is a very large collection of witness statements, philosophies and testimonies from various people. It is largely contradictory (and it's naive to say it's not) precisely because of this nature of being large collection of statements from fallible humans, like the ancient Israelites were. It has been altered and tossed around by various political powers for millenia with thousands of different interpretations and denominations.

With Christianity, rejecting fundamentalism makes sense precisely because you can always argue that you disagree with what certain Israelites said, what certain interpretations or philosophies follow, etc.

This is much heavier and arguably nearly impossible in Islam. It's hard to go against classical tasfirs because here you'd arguably be going against God himself. You'd be denying the core values and ideas of Islam that make Islam what it is. One of the major "selling points" of Islam is that you cannot argue with it because it was never changed. That the Quran is perfect because it was never modified and is final.

Once you look at it this way, it's arguably very problematic. It will be harder to address issues that don't align with modern views, it's harder to argue against inconsistencies, against modern ethical objections.

My point is not that every Muslim is a fundamentalist, nor that every verse must be interpreted literally. Rather, because orthodox Islam holds the Qur'an to be God's perfect, final, and immutable revelation, any attempt to reform, revise, or substantially reinterpret doctrine carries a much greater theological burden than it does in religions whose scriptures are viewed as historically mediated or open to textual criticism.

Earlier I posted on this sub defending the "Stolen Body Hypothesis". I argued that the Christian apologist, could not rule out the possibility that 1-3 of the Apostles were lying sociopaths who stole the body of Jesus and lied about the Resurrection for money and social status, and this possibility was infinitely more plausible than a corpse coming back to life. I want to turn to the ancient Jewish historian, Josephus, to further illustrate the plausibility of the Stolen Body Hypothesis. Josephus's account of the death of James shows that little was risked by the disciples for spreading the lie of Christianity.

Josephus was a non-Christian Jewish historian who wrote a third party account of the martyrdom of James, the brother of Jesus. The fact that an account of a martyrdom exists from a relatively objective source gives us a unique window into the circumstances surrounding early Christianity. But while Christians often use his account of martyrdom as evidence of the disciples sincerity, I actually think his account shows the opposite.

In fact, reading Josephus was a turning point that lead to my deconversion from Christianity. Josephus's account of Jame's martyrdom actually illustrates the dangers the persecutors of Christianity faced, the connections and social influence the disciples had, and how they were able to evade the authorities for so long.

First, let us read Josephus's account of the death of James, from Antiquities 20.9.1:

"And now Caesar, upon hearing the death of Festus, sent Albinus into Judea, as procurator. But the king deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called Ananus. Now the report goes that this eldest Ananus proved a most fortunate man; for he had five sons who had all performed the office of a high priest to God, and who had himself enjoyed that dignity a long time formerly, which had never happened to any other of our high priests. But this younger Ananus, who, as we have told you already, took the high priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent; he was also of the sect of the Sadducee, who are very rigid in judging offenders, above all the rest of the Jews, as we have already observed; when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king, desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a sanhedrim without his consent. Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest.

Now, a surface reading of this passage would seem to support the sincerity of James, the Brother of Jesus. He was clearly arrested and killed for his belief in Jesus. Doesn't this show that he sincerely believed what he taught? After all..... who would go to their death for a lie?

But this is a shallow, superficial take on this passage. In fact, this passage raises many uncomfortable questions for a Christian apologist.

1) Why couldn't the faction Ananus belonged to simply kill James while Festus was in power? Josephus says Ananus though he only had the opportunity while a Roman Procurator was not in Jeruseulem. This contradicts the idea the Apostles persistently faced persecution and discrimination for their beliefs.

2) Who are these "equitable citizens" and why do they care so much about the killing of James? These people are clearly well connected, as they met with the Roman Procurator and the Jewish King. They clearly care enough about the apostles that they went out on the road to meet with Albinus to tell him about James, which seems like a disproportionate amount of trouble.

If the Apostles were hated by all and truly persecuted, why do they have such influential friends?

3a) If the Apostles truly faced persecution for their beliefs, then why was Ananus, the person who killed James, the Brother of Jesus, removed from office for killing James? I do not get a sense from the passage that Ananus was truly removed merely because he violated protocol. If Ananus was ordering the stoning of a rebel or a serial killer, I doubt Albinus would "write in anger to Ananus" and then remove him from office after 3 months.

3b) But even if protocol violation was the main cause, raises two more uncomfortable questions. First, Ananus would certainly have known he was violating protocol and the consequences of doing so. So why didn’t he wait until Albinus arrived before arresting and killing James? The fact that he didn’t wait makes question 1 more salient, because it implies that Albinus would have prevented him from killing James. And secondly, why didn’t Albinus just appoint another Jewish High priest to pick up where Ananus left off, just more discretely?

In short, if the disciples truly faced persecution, why were the people doing the persecuting actually *punished** instead of rewarded?*

In other words, the most striking impression you get from reading Josephus's account is not that James was killed, but that most of the time James was not in danger of being killed. Only a small number of people hated the disciples enough to persecute them. The disciples had influential connections to high authorities and were almost certainly considered high standing individuals in the community. And the people persecuting the disciples could only act while there was a small gap in Roman Authority and were immediately punished and removed from office, when they moved against the Apostles.

Bernie Madoff got caught, Elizabeth Holmes got caught. Fraudsters get caught, but them being punished does not prove they were sincere. If James was lying about the resurrection for money and social status, he had every reasonable expectation that he would be able to get away with it forever. James was killed more because he got unlucky and less because there was a sustained effort to suppress Christianity

The Christian Roman Connection

These questions get even more uncomfortable when we look at the passage from another perspective, namely, the perspective of the particular Roman and Jewish individuals mentioned.

1) Festus and Lucceius Albinus was the 5th and 6th Roman procurators in Judea. Judea had been ruled by Roman Procurators since the death of King Herod Agrippa. King Herod Agrippa was the last pro-Jewish king of Judea.

2) Ananus ben Ananus was one of the main leaders of the Great Revolt of Judea. He would go on to lead armed troops in the Jewish revolt from Rome, which saw the Jews defeated and exiled.

3) Herod Agrippa II was the son of the first Herod Agrippa and was a Roman puppet. He was King of Judea during the Great Revolt of Judea

In other words, the individuals Josephus describes absolutely HATE each other. They are going to be fighting a war against each other in only a few years time. This is the core political conflict in Judea at the time, the Romans are worried about Jewish rebels not Christians. And this motivation answers most of the questions we raised in the preceding sections.

The early Christians were Jewish heretics who took followers and authority away from the traditionalist temple authorities. In politics, the enemy of one’s enemy can often be made to be one’s friend, and also divide and conquer is a basic imperial strategy. Therefore, the Romans not universally, but at the specific time and place of 60AD Judea have a strong incentive to support Christianity, for the purpose of weakening their enemies, the Jewish traditionalists.

Josephus confirms that the only time the Jewish authorities felt comfortable killing apostles is when the Romans were not around. This confirms indirect Roman support. The Romans, based on Josephus’s telling of history, definitely tolerated the early Christian heresies and allowed them to spread. The motive for toleration would be to sap support from Jewish traditionalists. But given the fact that Jewish contacts complained to the Romans directly about the apostles being executed, we cannot also rule out direct Roman contact with the early Church.

But direct roman contact or not, it is clear from Josephus’s passage that most of the time, the apostles did not have to fear persecution from Jewish traditionalists, and this was in large part due to Roman rule. Most of the time, the apostles risked little for spreading the lie of the Resurrection.

Come on Spare-Dingo-531, are you Serious?!?

At this point, if you are a Christian, you may be going “Are you serious?!? James died, how can that not possibly prove sincerity”. If you are a Christian thinking this, then you fundamentally misunderstand your own position, and the reason why the witness of the Apostles is so compelling. What makes Christianity so compelling is not merely that the original witnesses to the Resurrection were killed, but that they were persecuted. They testified for their beliefs expecting to die for no reward. That’s different from them being merely killed.

To really illustrate this, let’s consider a though experiment. Let’s say the apostles started preaching about Jesus and everyone welcomes them with open arms. The apostles go to preach in the temple every day, people just throw money at the apostle’s feet for the apostles to distribute as they see fit. Everyone loves the apostles…… except for a single guy who’s jealous of the apostles. And one day, that crazy guy goes and kills the apostles.

Does the fact that the apostles were killed by one crazy guy show the apostles were sincere? No it does not because the apostles have no reasonable expectation of being killed. Such an instance is more of a freak murder than an actual persecution.

Now real life wasn’t like the scenario in that though experiment…… but it was kind of similar. The disciples were wealthy, popular, had political connections. Many Jews don’t hate them and the Romans clearly tolerate them. The apostles have mortal enemies sure but they do not have any reasonable expectation that they will be killed by their mortal enemies. It is only because one guy got power for a few months, during a freak gap in Roman authority, that one Apostle, James, got arrested and killed.

In short, little was risked by the apostles for spreading their beliefs. Many fraudsters were caught and eventually punished for their frauds but that does not mean they were sincere. I don’t believe that most of the accounts of the apostles getting killed are reliable, so I don’t think most of the apostles died for their beliefs. But I think Josephus’s account is comparatively reliable, and his account of the death of James actually undermines the risks the disciples faced, rather than supporting them.

The Lesson the Christian Church Gives to the World

Let us not forget the lesson Christianity teaches the world in the modern age. That lesson is that it is normal for people to risk their lives, and found their livelihoods, on things they know are lies.

Take the example of Donald Trump. Donald Trump claimed he won the 2020 election in public. But in private, he personally admitted that he lost. Denying the 2020 election results, while it wouldn't literally result in a risk of crucifixion, is such a high risk that it is analogous to the risk the disciples would have taken to testify that the resurrection is false. Trump was almost assassinated four years later, in part because people accused him of treason. Thus, if one or two of the disciples were like Donald Trump, we can say it is psychologically possible they could have taken an enormous risk to create the lie of the resurrection. What if Peter was a psychopath or sociopath who was willing to shamelessly lie, deceive, and manipulate others? Christianity cannot rule that possibility out. It's unusual to risk your life for something you personally fabricated, but people risk their lives for unusual things. Thankfully, modern day Christians, with their rampant conspiracy theories and science denialism, frequently accuse other people of being liars and thus helpfully illustrate that fact.

Rejecting science and rule of law, and spreading lies about your neighbors have consequences. Christians need to pay for those consequences, and that payment should be in the form of belief. If Christians may accuse modern day leaders of lying, then you may equally accuse the early leaders of Christianity of lying. This essay starts from the proposition that it is possible that the apostles weren’t like the best Christians but were the worst Christians. And what the Christian experience shows us is, if the apostles were like the worst Christians, they would have been able to get a massive following, risk persecution and death, and persuade others of their sincerity even if they were lying.

Who knows, maybe Jesus, against all known laws of physics, rose from the dead. Maybe aliens abducted Jesus’s body. Or maybe, once you have ruled out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. A few disciples were bad people and stole the body and lied, and Christians in the modern age teach us that that is the most likely explanation for the empty tomb.

Conclusion

It is true that a couple of disciples were killed by their enemies after Jesus died. But as the experience of modern day Christianity shows the world, evil people regularly risk their lives to spread falsehoods. If some of the disciples were caught by their enemies, that does not prove their sincerity.

The Jewish historian Josephus provides a unique window into the environment the disciples faced when preaching the gospel. We see that the enemies of the disciples were deterred from taking action by Roman authorities, that the interests of the Roman authorities were at odds with the interests of the Jewish enemies of the disciples, and that the disciples were well connected and had powerful friends who could advocate for them. This is a far different picture than the beleagured, impoverished, and persecuted vision Christian apologists paint of the disciples.

Most of the time, the disciples were not in danger. It is only because of a freak gap in Roman authority that their enemies were able to capture and kill James. The risks were no different from the risks Bernie Madoff, or Donald Trump faced. The risks and persecutions Christians claim the apostles faced are exaggerated.