Top Five Contradictions in the Bible

[Music] hi I'm Dan Barker I'm co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and I'm any Laurie Gaylor the other co-president of FFRF and I'm Andrew Seidel FFRF specter of strategic response welcome to FFRF ask an atheist today we're gonna talk about bible contradictions i'm going to give you my top five picks and then we will ask you if you have any that you would like to add or if you have a question about what we're talking about today well and there is a lot of bible contradictions out there and you can make your comments or ask a question right here on the facebook comments or you can send an e-mail to ask an atheist at FFRF org but before we get to bible contradictions we have wonderful news we have breaking news three hours ago we won a lawsuit and Andrew you were one of the co-counsel following that all along can you tell us what that was sure so this was our case in Morris County New Jersey we took this under the New Jersey State Constitution which says that no taxpayer funds shall go to repair a church and Morris County was giving more than five million dollars away to churches to repair them so it's a pretty clear violation of the exact language in the Constitution we just heard a decision from the New Jersey Supreme Court seven to zero unanimous opinion that we won and we lost it at the first level and the second level so when you win at the Supreme Court level this is the state took its jubilation it was very exciting when we actually they actually skipped the second level they were just so excited to take it yeah that's right and they probably regretted that this is a bit like bashing McCallum she lost lost lost loss and at the highest level she won the case and then can you tell us a little bit more about this is in state court why it's in state court so this was in state court because we brought it specifically under this State Constitution article 1 section 3 of the New Jersey Constitution which has what we call a no aid clause and this is a little bit of a it's more strong it's stronger language than the Federal Constitution it says that that taxpayer funds will not go to religion basically that's that's this little bit and we had a excellent plaintiff there David's ducati who was really diligent about keeping this case on track I started on it shortly after coming to FFRF so it's been in the works for what seven or eight years now that we filed three years we filed three years ago yeah we wanted to get all of our ducks in a row and make sure we really had all the facts as clear as they were as the clears they could be and it turned out to be really important to the case the the facts that we alleged so it's a good win so congratulations to David's deck of tea and to you and all the other counsel on it and I just want to say it's very important because of the Trinity Lutheran case where we see the state constitutional prohibitions against forcing citizens to be compelled to is the Penn supported attend direct a church to be under attack so Wow to get this very unanimous decision saying you cannot force taxpayers to repair churches and that that that law that constitutional provision means what it says this was really huge and one of the things we really pushed and argued very hard was that secular tax payers like David's decades-- have a religious liberty right not to be funding religion and churches want to twist that around and say no no no we have a right to get taxpayer money that's that's the real religious liberty right involved here and the court pushed that aside and agreed with our interpretation of that which is a big big win and something to kind of help stop the redefinition of religious liberty that we saw under the Trinity Lutheran decision so it's a it was a big win Ryan Jane here in house did a lot of work on it and Paul Gross Walt was our attorney in New Jersey very very excited about this which is really exciting and it's also something that this is a freedom of conscience provision that predates even the Federal Constitution that Thomas Jefferson wrote about in the Virginia statute for religious liberty absolutely it's when the 1776 New Jersey it's foundational to our concept of separation of church and state that you can't tell people you have to come in and pay to repair my church exactly and the state was or the county was arguing that this is secular because there's a historical reason to you know check to make the old churches look good but the court in the decision pointed out that these are active churches with active congregations who say they that money will help them further their ministry absolutely so this was a grant program and in some of the grants that we actually looked at the applications that the church is made they specifically said without this we won't be able to continue worshiping we need it to we need the money to keep worshiping in our church so that means the money is going to religious uses and that is where where the violation occurs and that would be like asking Catholics and Mormons and Muslims and whatever to pay for our studio here mm-hmm to propagate atheism well let's go to their collection basket next to take the money out so we can pay for the today's show how about that and there's a substantial amount of money involved you know we're talking about about five million dollars are they three years they'd already went that were given out and that's just one County and that's just the money that went to churches so you know I think it's fair to say over the course of a decade we're probably saving New Jersey taxpayers tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars so it was you and Ryan Jane and other FFRF attorneys we were the two main FFRF attorneys though a number of attorneys have worked on it over the years and then Paul Gross Wald was our attorney in New Jersey and Davis David Steketee was our plaintiff very important plaintiff very hard-working you really set it all up so congratulations to to David and and we're just very thrilled but now after that breaking news we're going to talk about Bible contradicts because they read the Bible in those churches they do it they should know what's in the Bible so yeah today's show is about Bible contradictions and there are hundreds of Bible contradictions there are there are a lot of mistakes in the Bible there's historical mistakes there are scientific mistakes could even say there are some moral mistakes but a contradiction exists when the Bible says one thing here and another thing here where the Bible actually contradicts itself and our show is titled the five greatest or the five leading contradictions but before we get to those five that I think are my choice and you might have a different choice for me first let's talk about these little tiny contradictions that are in the Bible that to us free thinkers don't seem like much but they actually mean a lot to the inerrant is because if the Bible is perfect it has no mistakes that even little tiny errors should not exist and those are the little numerical mistakes that appear in the Bible for example the first one is about when Jehovah kiemce how old was he when he became the king and you can see right there in second Kings it says he was eighteen years old when he began to reign but in 2nd chronicles which is another telling of the same story it says Jehoiakim was eight years old when he began to reign so that's a mistake it seems kind of trivial it seems like well okay so 8 or 18 typos a typo yeah in fact some Christians argue that while it was a scribal error you know once at eight once at 18 but surprisingly and I've debated who did ID Beit Rankin on Bible contradictions he was more bothered by these little numerical mistakes than by the big theological ones because with the theological ones you can find a way to interpret okay you know but with a number of numbers a number right it's harder to worm out of its concrete yeah you're 18 which is it yeah which one is it so it is a mistake that appears in the Bible with itself and some Christian apologists say well it was not a mistake in the original document but we don't have the original and in which and then which one is the original how did they pick so are there some more there's a few more of numerical mistakes that before we get to the big ones here's another King Ahaz ayah however you say that was 22 years old when he began to reign or telling the same story in second chronicles he was 42 years old when he began to reign and he reigned for one year so that's a big difference was he 22 or was he 42 when he reigned so there's a couple more contradictions of numbers what's another one we have up there so how many stalls did King Solomon have for his horses one verse says he had forty thousand another verse telling the same story said he had four thousand so which is a forty thousand or four thousand these are our numbers of biblical proportion you notice they seem so exaggerated yeah do you think a king ever had forty thousand stalls for his horse as well who knows when they were retelling the story and then I think there's one more numerical Solomon built this big huge like a huge swimming pool thing made out of iron which was a molten sea it was like a big fountain that he had in his temple and in first Kings it said that this held two thousand baths of water a bath is about as much water as you would need to take a bath so what how many gallons eight or ten gallons or something but in second chronicles telling the same story said it held three thousand baths so how big was that thing it's a small mistake but it's a mistake right so are there any versions of the Bible any interpretations out there the kind of modern interpretations that actually change any of those yeah well the biggest culprit is the NIV the New International Version of the Bible which in its preface admits that it was translated by evangelicals for evangelicals it's a very evangelical Bible and today the NIV is very popular with evangelicals if you will read some of their verses they change one of them so they both match but to their credit a little tiny footnote at the bottom it says in the original this actually says three thousand so they're just altering the Word of God they're altering it because they need it to match so you if you look at your own Bible whatever you prefer you might see different things about it if they're honest they'll put a footnote that says in the original manuscript or earliest manuscripts this is a mistake but we know better we know what God actually so Danis is that called an interpretation versus a translation is that is it there a distinction made like that no the NIV is a translation but it is a evangelical biased translation there's some other versions of the Bible which are called paraphrases like the good news Bible you know or the Living Bible those are paraphrases that are not attempting to be exact translations they're just telling it in modern English and you can tell you can tell by looking in the preface is this an actual translation or a paraphrase the NIV is a translation but it's a biased translation so now let's get to some of the big ones yeah okay so these are my choices you might have better choices than this but probably the person who's most responsible for the growth of Christianity is the Apostle Paul and you know the story about the Apostle Paul he was persecuting Christians and he was involved in the death of Stephen and he hated Christians but on the road to Damascus he had this conversion experience and a lot of the pictures you see have him riding a horse and he falls off his horse because there's this lightning it hits him and people that say maybe that was an epileptic fit well it could have been it looked like an epileptic fit actually the Bible doesn't mention a horse but he did fall and he did and then he heard a voice in heaven and he met Jesus Jesus this is like what 25 years after Jesus supposedly died suddenly his body's up in this cloud and he's talking down to Paul Paul you know and then Paul becomes a Christian because he met Jesus right well did he or didn't he well the contradiction that happens is that in the book of Acts let's see it on the screen here when Acts is writing about the story he tells the story says the men who were traveling with Paul stood speechless because they heard the voice but they saw no one but then later quoting Paul himself in acts 22 it says now those who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me that's kind of a contradiction so they heard the voice and so so which is it who's telling the truth Luke or Paul that's a contradiction and I have a whole chapter in my book losing faith in faith and in godless a whole chapter devoted to that one contradiction because it bugs the believers so much they've come up with all these elaborate explanations for why it would say one thing in one and one thing in another what are some of those did it I mean did it bother you when you were in evangelicals you know preacher traveling around it was this one of the ones that kind of got you I never saw the contradiction okay it never dawned on me until later in fact a lot of people read the Bible and they don't put pieces together because these are like what 10 chapters apart so Oh had they said he heard the voice but then they said they didn't hear the voice so knowing you never hear the contradictions from the pulpit yeah but there's two basic approaches they take the first approach is that in one of the verses that they meant here but in the other one that meant understand they didn't they heard the voice but they didn't understand the voice and there's a little bit of weight to that argument because even in English we say do you hear me I mean do you does here actually mean just physical hearing the Greek word in both verses is a cool where we get the word acoustic hearing its physical hearing in the air but I'm not either but that's the argument they use it that they when it said they didn't hear the voice I'd actually meant they they didn't understand the voice and you can pretty much tear that apart they try to say that the verb is followed by a different case in the Greek because of verb because of noun declensions but it can be shown and I show very clearly that that makes no difference at all they're grasping at straws the other approach they make is to say that the word voice the word voice meant voice in one but it just meant sound in the other so the men heard the sound right but then but then they didn't hear the voice they try to make that trip right to say that that's what it means but you can pretty much dismantle that as well with looking at the actual Greek words which if if you take their argument seriously that it means this here and this there what that does is it creates a dozen other contradictions in the Bible that would not exist but now do because of the differences in their words so so they're making were sometimes they're actually making it worse by trying to solve this little problem so what is the real momentous contradiction why is this so important to the Christian story yeah well it's a lot of Christians are liberal Christians really don't care they know that the Bible is written by human beings they know the human beings make mistakes then they say so what's the big deal whether they heard the voice or not because Jesus came to Paul but it does show if you're being critical about the Bible that there is some reason to doubt the reliability of what's being said we don't actually know what's being said to some degree there is some doubt about the meaning so that's why fundamentalists are really bothered by these contradictions liberal Christians they don't care like who cares if there's some little differences in the detail like for people examining an elephant will come away with different stories right but maybe they should care because the liberal Christians by their seeming to be more rational give credence to the fundamentalist Christians and I don't know if you remember our friend who was a former Episcopalian clergyman who used to say it's really the duty of the liberal Christians to be more upfront about the problems with religion because when they don't they're letting the fundamentalists win or at least say from the pulpit our faith is based on faith and there are mistakes in the Bible in minutes there's mistakes but fundamentalist Sandero just can't admit that if there's one little tiny mistake in the Word of God to them the whole thing falls right so that's the way I used to say you have another one where the whole thing Falls what's your second well so now the next four are these a fiber from the New Testament the next four deal with Jesus and and I think I think the question of Jesus is pretty important the birth of Jesus what's the next one we have here so when was Jesus born I think this is a biggie and there's an awful lot of ink that has been spilled over this one contradiction in Matthew we see that Jesus was born in the time of King Herod and Luke in his first chapter even says he's introducing the story of the birth of Jesus in the days of King King Herod of Jude Judea but then Luke in the next chapter says this was the registration in the census I'm using the NRSV here but the census was taken while Kyrie Gnaeus was governor of Syria now we know from history that Herod died in the year four BC we know that from a lot of sources some say it was one BC but four BC we also know from history that Kyrie Gnaeus became governor of Syria in 6 ad so Jesus was born while Herod was the king who died in 4 BC and yet he was born when Kyrie Gnaeus took this census which was in 6 ad 9 years later actually because there was no year 0 sorry so Jesus was 9 years old when he was born this is well I mean why not well ok well if he existed at all whether they existed or not we have a discrepancy in the text now Luke was writing this what he wrote around the Year 80 to 85 which is about 50 years after the supposed death of Jesus and about 80 years after the supposed at birth of Jesus so he's writing from a long distance in what he was thinking about the past obviously he kind of goofed the numbers King Herod and Kyrie Gnaeus were about the same period of time but there is a discrepancy there so and a rather significant because this is the Messiah yeah the birth if you win was Jesus born we know it wasn't in the year 1 or 0 so how do believers deal with that one so they do a number of things one of the most common things they do is they try to say well Kyrie Gnaeus was governor twice Kyrie Gnaeus was like this was his second governorship when he took this census and they and there's all this apologetics that go into details about why the Roman says no he wasn't and we know we know very well from many sources including Josephus and others we know Chiron is his entire career and in the Roman career was pretty structured when you became a general and you became this and you became work and we know what wars he was he wasn't even in the during the time when Herod was king Kyrie Gnaeus was still a lower-ranking military person who was working up and we also know that Syria was not part of the Roman Empire until six AD which is why they needed to take the census there was no reason for them to need a governor of Syria before six ad yet you'll find all these apologetics sites that try to argue well this could have been in this could admit and we found a piece of a stone in southern Turkey that looks like it has the word Kyrie Gnaeus on it see that proves if he was and you'll mean you can go on and on and they there's books and books written about all this but on its face at least and with good argument there's a mistake in the Bible now Luke 2 has one of my favorite contradictions also it's not maybe it's not maybe it doesn't qualify as a contradiction but isn't that where it talks about Jesus being born when the Shepherd's are out in the field with their flocks oh the flocks at night yeah that story yeah so I mean I guess that's not a Bible contradiction because the Bible doesn't say that Jesus was born in December but it contradicts they don't understand yeah it contradicts Christianity it contradicts Christmas I mean you could say that really the Bible fires the first shot in the war on Christmas now that would be a good show we did one about the war of course but I'll have to do another one but but yeah because the Shepherd's would have been watching their flocks in the early spring you know about that time and of course in December they wouldn't have been doing that oh yeah that does contradict church history at least church traditions so well we can't say right now is there has not been a reasonable defense to this contradiction and if you're looking it up online look at more than just one side look at a bunch of different sites on that to see that this is still it still stands as a contradiction in the Bible unless they come up with something that unless somebody finds wow there was another guy named Kyrie Gnaeus who took besides why would Luke go to the trouble to say this was the first census another defense that some apologists make is that that word first here's here's how far they go the word first protoss in the Greek sometimes can mean before not first like this was the first we even do that in English but you know before I did this first I did that which doesn't mean it was the first thing you did it means you just did it before then and they try to argue that what Luke was saying is that was before Kyrie Gnaeus took his census Jesus was born well then why mention Cyrenius at all what's the whole point of any of that I mean that's the links they're going to to try to explain away a Bible contradiction that's awfully poor writing - all right well I'm ready for number three so but birth of Jesus again what do we got here for number three okay so this is a kind of a lightweight one but we all hear about peace on earth in Luke the birth of Jesus it was heralded by the angel singing on earth peace goodwill toward man and Jesus himself even said in John peace I live I leave with you my peace I give to you and Luke writes that the Word of God was preaching peace by Jesus Christ so peace be we talk about Christianity as the religion of peace writes with peace he's the Prince of Peace right is the Muslims do the same thing with their religion yeah peace and yeah when we look at Jesus's very own words in Matthew 10:34 here's what Jesus said do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth I have not come to bring peace but a sword for I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and one's foes will be members of one's own household that only that not only doesn't look like peace but he very explicitly said I did not come to bring peace on earth and also he wants to break up families because if unless you believe he's the Messiah forget about you know your family no I mean very cultish kind of Jim Joan Joan it Jones's it which is how Jim Jones acted - yeah I'm more important to you than your children and your every you know your brothers and sisters that you actually want to divide families yeah yeah so that's a that's a big one I think so and it's it's a it's a theological contradiction as well was he a man of peace that's what everybody says that's what I used to preach but Jesus in his own words think don't think that I've come to bring peace I didn't come to bring peace on earth but a sword so how do they possibly try to worm out of that because that it seems as clear as it can possibly be well I suppose maybe the second commandment was it was the second amendment you'd the right to bare swords I suppose that the Christians have that idea that we can be militaristic well is it also that they just ignore it they gloss over it you know peace on earth goodwill to all is as what you hear at Christmastime they're just going to ignore it well and so of course even we can think of some kind of a semi plausible explanation to try to explain away contradictions peace on earth he really came to bring peace in heaven we're all going to go to heaven and have peace in it while his message is so controversial and Christians are going to be so persecuted because of this radical message they're going to be fighting and so in order to defend yourself you poor Christians have got to defend yourself you better go he even told the disciples sell your cloaks and buy a sword so it's not our fault we have a funny cartoon one of my friends made of the naked men right cast aside their cloaks and running with their swords so the apologists will say it's not Jesus fault that his message was met with violence and that Christians have to defend themselves against all this persecution it's just I mean self-defense is justifiable isn't it so when he said I came not to send peace but a sword what he meant was the effect of me coming was actually going to cause such a outcry in the world that there would be violence it was not my fault it's the fault of these evil non-believers but it seems to say more than that I didn't come here to be peaceable it's not just that the reaction to me may meant may not be peaceable yeah even that seems a little bit rationalistic there again yeah and in this pure word just like you were talking about this the wording of the Supreme Court of New Jersey the clear words are there Jesus said in his own document his own words don't think that I have come to send peace on earth I came not to send peace what else could that possibly mean but that I came not to send peace right it's admirably clear for once yeah so are we number four so what's coming up next year number four of my choices you haven't before so back to the birth of Jesus who was Joseph's father in other words who was Jesus's paternal grandfather so mad Optive right well according to the Bible adoptive or not who was I mean Joseph Joseph was not his real father but who was Joseph's father that's the question whether he was Jesus while there or not who was Joseph's father so Matthew when he gives his big genealogy going all the way back to David said ends it by saying and then jacob begat joseph the husband of mary of whom was born jesus so we see from Matthew that Joseph's father's name was Jacob but Luke also gives his own genealogy he goes in a different direction they're both trying to prove that Jesus came from David you know because the seed had to come from the line of David right so then Luke says and Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age being as was supposed the son of Joseph which was the son of Eli not Jacob so which is it is he is is Jacob his father or is he like his father there's a contradiction there it's actually a deeper contradiction then we can go into now because the two genealogies that Matthew and Luke give contradict themselves even and what we see is he life from the the supposedly also descended from David supposedly yeah so there's two different persons who were descended from David Lamy was the grandfather of Jesus exactly so and we don't know who he light was it's just a name it's just a name in a list we do know that Matthew was fond of making up stuff and in his big genealogy he breaks it up into 14 generations here from here to here then he says 14 more from here to here and then 14 more from here to Jesus and even makes a point of saying see each of those in groups of 14 but if you look back through the Old Testament if you look back through the Old Testament you'll see that he left out names that are ox obviously there he left out name so that he could make it 14 14 what was the significance of 14 well 7 is the number of God and 14 was an important Jewish number or something just to show how miraculous it was and so Matthew was Matthew was probably a lot more guilty than Luke of monkeying with the facts he would go through the Bible and find stuff and make stuff up and so we do see that these genealogies don't match but the argument that a lot of believers give for why they don't match is they say that well Luke was talking about the maternal line through up til Mary and that Matthew was talking about the paternal line they both came through the line of David and they both ended in these two people Joseph and Mary who were both of the Davidic line and that's why the genealogies don't match that's the argument they gave although there's no evidence for that nowhere does anyone say or prove even if it was through the maternal line it's all men's names yes that's gonna say this whole thing is so sexist only the men count only the father's count the patriarchy yeah there's also there's also the question of if Jesus is born of a virgin and the whole point is to show that he's the son of God what does it end and he's from the Davidic line what does it matter what does Joseph's heritage matter at all because it's a legal thing you know an adoptive person inherits the legal rights of the parents that they've used that argument in Jewish law and even though Joseph was not the blood father he was the legal father of Jesus as he was a child therefore Jesus through even through his adoptive father so then anyone in David's line could have adopted anybody anybody and they would all be yeah okay you could do that I mean the father is supposed to be God or the Holy Ghost which is it or both or both I'd like to see the DNA of Jesus I mean what would that have look like you know if he didn't have a natural father but getting back to these two genealogies so Matthew has one in Luke has one right these genealogies coming down to Jesus right one supposed to be the father of the mother they don't agree with each other but they do actually right in the middle of those two genealogies there's three names that are exactly the same Zehra babble and she'll tail there's these three names they're exactly the same it's a miracle so here's these two lineages like this they overlap for three needs which were commonly known names from the time of the Babylonian captivity these are these three names everybody knew those four names and then they diverge off again so what sense does that make here's the father's line here's the mother's line they come together why would they diverge off again so obviously they're monkeying with things to make it have a veneer of historical they're trying to make it look like Jesus was a you know from David another approach they take to deal with that contradiction is to say well Joseph's father just had two names people sometimes have two names he was Jacob and he was also snowing it was also known as he lie so I mean what's there's no contradiction here people are often you know Paul and Saul we're two different names right so but that's that's just sort of ad hoc that's just an out of the blue well maybe that you could say about it any two people then could be the same people in the but so that's significant because it touches on the birth of Jesus and the reliability of the people who reported about the birth of Jesus if you can't get parentage right yeah why should you birth right it's not to say that everything in the Bible is wrong there can be some truth there was a King Herod I mean we know that there was a Kyrie Gnaeus who was governor of Syria we know that there was a census taken so there are some facts in the Bible but when you look at how those facts are put together you see the discrepancies but it's kind of like saying gee James Michener set Hawaii there's real people that mentions but then there's all these fictional characters the setting might be true or historic but that doesn't mean the plot line it is reality yeah historical fiction versus historical nonfiction yeah and a lot of the Bible just seems to be hanging on nothing so when we critics point out that there are contra addictions in the Bible we're not saying that the entire Bible is alive we're just saying there's an awful lot of lie in the Bible that should be you should take note of and you should wonder about it and be concerned about if you want to believe in it that it's literally true now what number are we on so that was the birth I think we're on the death now so let's move to the dead I just wanted to say though that in a court of law the reliability of the witness is important look at what they said look at what they said before you would Inc you would factor that into your verdict and also the most unreliable kind of evidence yeah so the last one I picked has to do with the resurrection of Jesus supposed resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection story in my book godless and losing faith I have a whole chapter that shows seventeen contradictions in the resurrection story of Jesus in fact the resurrection of Jesus is the single most contradictory part of the entire Bible because it's given four different times four and a half different times by different writers you can compare their accounts and you can see all sorts of mistakes so I picked just basically one of the first ones to show the mistakes of the resurrection was Jesus tomb opened before or after the women arrived look at Matthew 28 which has happens on Easter morning which we hear about on the pulpits on Easter all the time Matthew's writing he said after the Sabbath as the first day of the week was dawning Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb and suddenly there was a great earthquake for an angel of the Lord descending from heaven came and rolled back the stone and sat on it so these women are coming to the tomb and then when they get there there's this earthquake and then their stone moves away and there's this angel right so you can see the time sequence of what's happening here but look at the others look at what John says John early on the first day of the week while it was still dark Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb before she got there and Mark says the same thing when they looked up they saw that the stone which was very large had already been rolled back and in Luke telling the same story says they found the stone all the way from the tomb so which is it when the women got there was the tomb already rolled away or was it still in place which do you pick so I'm trying to do what you've been doing I I don't and I don't know how you Square this one they visited it a couple different times I don't know what the answer is that's one answer is it that's one exit they come up with although they have to really squirm yeah the women came twice because and the way it's written though it doesn't suggest anything about that it said they happened upon it and it was already open and you'd think that an angel coming down the first time and you seeing an angel opening the tomb would be worthy of mention and then you came back and it was already open yeah well this isn't written by four different authors at different times in their own words and so obviously there's some goofs they made some mistakes here about the ordering of the events the most common one is that there were two visits to the tomb and some people go to great lengths to say that the first visit actually happened the night before which was actually the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath happens at sundown right so that the first visit they actually went there on Saturday night to visit the tomb and then that's when it was rolled away but then they realized what are we going to come back again Sunday morning let's point out then they failed to mention all of this yeah they failed to mention Oh fill in any of this why why would you leave if an angel opened the door for you I mean it would seem that it would indicate that you're supposed to walk through it or into it well they come up with all these creative they forgot to bring the spices oops but this angel knew that though well here's a side note to the whole story an earthquake that's big enough to roll a huge boulder away from us from a tomb it's a pretty big earthquake right we were just reading about San Francisco what happened in 1906 right huge destruction so if that earthquake hit it really happened that would have been massive destruction to the construction there would have been deaths there would have been people hurting there would have been people bleeding there would have been nobody would have had time you hear these women are just casually strolling to the tomb as if all this mayhem had not happened besides the fact that there's no evidence geologically that there was an earthquake in that part of the world at that time of history either so it's obviously a plot device how did that stone move well a big earthquake in an angel that explains another defense that some of them put up is to say that well when Matthew was writing it the Greek didn't really have like the past perfect tense to say they had to happened although you can you can do that in a lot of languages the Russian doesn't either you can do that in different languages so that Matthew actually met when it says that they angel came enrolled they meant that they had rolled it away literary but if you look at the verse in they came they did this they did this and then the angel and then suddenly this and then it rolled away you can see that in in context and they're always telling us to take things in context you can see that it was not in the past purview it was happening right there in real time now you have something called the Easter challenge that kind of goes along with this yeah so every year my Easter challenge some people have tried it actually take the four gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus it's not that many you can read it's like a hundred and fifty verses total you can read it in a pretty short period of time plus take the account in the book of Acts and then take in first Corinthians where Paul wrote has the actually the first thing actually mentioning the so-called resurrection take those accounts and then put them all together and write one single coherent narrative you don't have to prove what happened just tell what happened take all of those accounts and don't leave anything out just make sure you include everything in there and then just write a history a basic story what actually happened here they you know Sunday morning and then the tomb and then the angels and then they went to and then they went to between the resurrection and the Ascension did the lake of Galilee and the fish story all that stuff just write one single coherent narrative about what happened no one's been able to do that even Christian apologists have admitted they can't do without leaving something out or without invoking something like time travel or you know or you know be me up spotty kind of Scottie stuff kind of you know really weird stuff to how they got from here to there so no one's been able to do that and that's my Easter challenge just tell what happened you don't have to prove what happened just tell us what happened that you think happened on that day and it can't be done it can't be done and I quote a whole bunch of believing Christian scholars who admit it can't be done at the end of the that's it my top five now you might have another top five but those are the ones I wanted to talk about today well my favorite one is Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 the two different creation stories that and there's a bunt there's a lot of discrepancies between the two creation stories but the big one I think is God creates man and woman at the same time and then the second one God creates a woman as a subsidiary for them yeah man's rib yeah and I like I like that because the Bible is telling you right off the bat it is a completely unreliable book and all you have to do is pay attention to these first two chapters and you know that this is not a good guide for anything else contained in the pages it can't even get this story right so but I appreciate you choosing that because of course that contradiction is very important for women's right yeah it is because when the women's movement started Elizabeth Cady Stanton you never they were always preaching from the second version that had women being created as a an afterthought and a help and from the rib and and they never talked about the egalitarian or more Galit Aryan verse which also sheds some doubt on whether the gender of God and I think you need it the egalitarian one is first yeah yes and it would be totally ignored in the churches and then even today I don't think most people are you know in more liberal churches they may be aware of it but I don't think the fundamentalists are what did you learn well we read both of them but I was taught and I used to preach that Genesis 1 was telling a historical narrative but Genesis 2 was telling a poetic version of it so poetry poetry doesn't have to follow strict chronological yeah it's just a different view and if you look at the two versions they're obviously written by two different authors not the same author and they're obviously I'd have a different God in each one of those so somebody who back then redacted these things and what we got these two different traditions let's put them together and put them side-by-side and if you're a true believer like I was those things don't bother you because God has a purpose and obviously I thought that the numbers and stuff bothered fundamental well but the numbers are actually contradicts you but these are not because they're just in my mind these are just different ways of telling the same story even though it says in one of them trees were created first and then humans were created and in the next one humans recruit eight were created and then trees were created so there's a whole big difference there's something with light to being created and then the Stars yeah well that the cosmology back then was the the firmament you heard that word firmament I always thought it meant the skies but a firmament was actually this big metal dome upside down bolt like a big salad ball a firmament wood that had holes punched in it the firmament is this big kind of canopy thing and you can see the light through the holes that's what the light of God is shining through these little holes at us it was covered over this flat earth they thought those were the stars yes our light the Starlight was there so there was a fro there was the waters above the firmament and the waters below the firmament very primitive notions of science and understanding of the universe so that contradicts science obviously doesn't necessarily contradict the Bible itself but still there's all different kinds of contradictions that you find in the Bible well so do we have any questions we do we have some questions a willow Bell asks whenever someone talks about the Old Testament canceling out the New Testament does that mean that the Ten Commandments no longer the Christians no longer have to follow those rules yeah it's a good question because they will often say that Jesus came and it's a New Testament and he's fulfilled the law and without the law we would not be aware of sin and we needed the law to tell us that we are sinners but now Jesus is fulfilled now it's a New Testament and then we you point out some of the genocides and ugliness and horribleness of the Old Testament times they say well that was four then that was back during war time and if they don't apply to us today and yet you're absolutely right they still post the Ten Commandments in their churches and illegally in their City Hall sometimes or in their schools as if that was still relevant that to them today so that's a good question and also Jesus said that not one jot or tittle of the law would fail he came to - what was the word they fulfilled to fulfill the law meaning the the original law and the Old Testament or the Jewish the Hebrew Bible so that is a contradiction it isn't Dan I think you told me I think you told me this a while ago that jot and tittle is actually from Greek like how it's it's like cross because the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet was the aorta the little things so not even the littlest littlest jot and in English we say jot for Yoda and tittle in Spanish they say tilde the little mosaic riddle mark above that you know so not even the tiniest thing of the law will be passed away you know dot your i's and cross your T's and what I used to preach was that Jesus was saying without that law his death would have been meaningless he had to have something to die for and that law shows us that we are all sinners that we're all deserving and there's no remission of sin without the shedding of blood and so that law had to be in place to make us all guilty so that therefore now Jesus can come along say not one jot or tittle dad has changed but now I am fulfilling it now I have died and I paid the price my blood was shed instead of yours and now you get to be free praise God so we have another question from Brian Christopher who says perfection is a static condition incapable of change why then does a perfect deity go from jealous and vengeful conveniently human and petty to forgiving and compassionate yeah and you'll find you'll find verses in the Bible that say that would have been another good contradiction by the way to bring up where God says I changed not my ways are eternal he never changes his mind but then there's a bunch of verses in the Bible where God did change his mind for example arguing with Abraham over the over the city of Sodom or Moses arguing with God about who should be killed or who shouldn't and then eventually God says okay I agree Moses is right so there's examples in the Bible where God did change his mind from what he had previously announced that he would do well also the whole story of Noah he created people and then he got mad about it yeah and the King James the King James says it repented to God that he had made man right oh boy I sure blew that one well you know what he repents me that man made God but I guess to answer his question the word perfection can mean one thing to one person and one thing to another you could say that a perfect human is free to change their mind about stuff right so I would have argued well God's perfection includes the power to change his mind if he wants to well this reminded me of an maybe maybe another contradiction let's see what you think we're I mean judeo-christianity is violently monotheistic but in the Ten Commandments itself it says there are other gods I am THE LORD thy God you shall worship know what their gods before me so it doesn't say those other guys don't exist it says they exist you just can't worship them so is that is that a contradict would you qualify that as a contradiction or is that just the sort of Bible contradicting theology verses yeah well I think critically yes it's a contradiction but I used to believe that God was saying anything that's not me as a God these idols that you're building the Canaanites are building these idols those gods aren't real but you're worshipping these quote-unquote gods and the early Hebrew didn't have quote-unquote Marx right so when he says you shall not worship any other God but they do talk about other gods yeah a lot yeah they talk about BHEL Belfiore and worship of trees yeah they do talk about that because that's what that's what the Israelites knew that the stupid Canaanites believed in these other gods that didn't exist and so it was a poetic way of saying you shouldn't worship from sunday-morning pulpits across America you'll hear sometimes preachers say you shouldn't worship the God of money or the God of power or the God of fame as if these these aren't really real gods and I shouldn't put anything above me couldn't you make the argument that what andrea is saying is that he was acknowledged this God was acknowledging other gods you shall have no other gods before me seems to be acknowledging exactly and I think that's what the original writers meant yes I did believe in other gods but modern preachers have to interpret it whatever they believed there were other gods but they didn't want to worship them yeah I wanted to worship shouldn't worship Yahweh yeah now before we get to the questions I mean one of the very obvious contradictions which might be bothering your fundamentalists is the number of animals that know we're supposed to bring onto the ark because in one version it's two of every every coming clean and I don't remember how many unclean and then one is seven yeah very clean and two of every unclean correct yeah and I could have put that up there but I was sticking with five but yeah there's the story of how many animal how many of each kind of animal was allowed in one case is two in another case it's seven and apologist tried to say things like well it was two of the clean and seven of the young clean oh you know the other way around or the other way yeah so but they're just trying it's a rationalization they're trying to find some ad hoc way to make the Bible in fact if you read a lot of these books by apologist or look at some of the websites of people who are confidently defending the reliability of the Bible they almost always start off by saying since we know God is perfect in the Bible has no mistakes in it therefore here's the explanation they're already assuming our priori that there's no mistakes in the Bible so they have no choice but to come up with some kind of an answer and they do they have very creative answers which will convince a lot of the people in the pews while they thought it through but they're admitting in advance that they have a foregone conclusion that the Bible is perfect and we're gonna make a waste find some way to make it perfect no matter what the distinction between clean and unclean animals isn't that for sacrificing the animals yeah so basically Noah put animal on an ark for a year so that when they were done with the flood he could kill them some of them yes I would have bred that sounds really nice carry on the sacrifice well and then see the whole thing about Jesus then is that he became the final sacrifice because God so mad that blood has to be shed so you see in the Bible all this killing of animals and and Solomon left tidings Solomon loved God so much that he sacrificed a thousand cows to him I mean that's that's that's how they showed their devotion see it's so primitive but then Jesus came and you're supposed to sacrifice your best animal that you're clean is with no blemish with no spots and since Jesus didn't have any sin he was unblemished he became the perfect final sacrifice and when his blood was dripping on the cross then he is he was he was finally told anger of God was appease because the because he was that sacral Lamb of God and I wrote I wrote a musical about that for children his fleece was white as snow I wrote a shoulders mystical about that yeah and it's got this really pretty music and the words ain't that damn do you still get any royalties I'm still getting royalties forever and I actually kill off the lead character in this children's musical his name was snowy obviously snowy the white the white for no blemishes the little kids are carrying on this play one of them is gonna is plain snowy get their help who gets killed what course decision so this is the insensitivity of religion it's embarrassing but so we have a question from Sam Grover who is an attorney downstairs and Sam says during the Halloween feast in the first Harry Potter book when the troll is let in Professor Dumbledore sends the students to their dormitories but the troll is said to be in the dungeons and that is also where the Slytherin dormitories are meaning that Dumbledore has put them directly in harm's way by sending them there how do you explain that contradiction it's not a contradiction if you look in the original Greek the word dormitory meant living facility which could have included the entire building see don't you understand or Dumbledore doesn't like the Slytherin we have a real question Sam from sama Cruz who says today an article came out about Pope Francis he told a child that his atheist father was in heaven because he was a good person the Pope obviously doesn't care about the dogma that the Catholic Church espouses so why would Christians care that the Bible is full of contradictions yeah exactly that's a good point why should you even care because God's going to do what he does and that's the same question that is asked what about people before Jesus all of these people did they all go to hell and yet a Christian theology allows for some of them to go to heaven because they were good people and they would have accepted Jesus if they'd known about it that's what they say and that's the way you interpret that too is if the Pope genuinely believes in Hell which you would think he would as the Pope that means he's lying to this little boy because his religion is sending his father to this awful place he's lying to make his religion seem better than it really is see more human or the Pope doesn't really know his religion very well and he's better than his Dogma a little bit yeah I mean it is mushy or he thinks that if that kid's dad had been a bad person he would indeed be that's the implication but at least there there would have been a lot of narrow-minded religious people who just think if you're an atheist doesn't matter all the good you did in the world tough you're gonna be tortured eternally so I guess you have to give the Pope a little credit yeah a little bit Pope fluffy yes he's been cold right so we have one final question from Lawrence dangle I always wondered according to the Bible humans are a product of incest first through Adam and Eve and then through Noah and his family how do Christians justify this doesn't the Bible Express that would expressly prohibit incest okay so I used to teach I used to deal with this one so according to Christian theology there is no such thing as a sin until after the law was given so when Moses brought down the Ten Commandments and now we actually had the law now we know what is the sin and that's why Jesus said it's the laws fulfilled to me so no jot or tittle will be now the law is telling us what is a sin and what isn't so before that time they're actually technically was no such thing as sin and incest back then would not have been a wrong thing in fact it was a necessary thing it was only later that incest became an actual crime or a sin well if so then what about Eve's original sin if there was no such thing as sin and women are supposed to be punished with painful childbirth and being subservient to men what about that well yeah in God's eyes it was a sin but it was not a legal sin it was not because the word law means legal right so it wasn't an actually spoken commandment that made it an illegal sin well there's another hole with that too though because as soon as Moses comes down off the mountain he murders three thousand of his friends brothers and neighbors for worshiping the golden calf which wouldn't have been a sin because they didn't know about it until he came down from mountains so yeah there you go you can find out you can find a lot of contradictions in the Bible the first well you know you've studied the taking em was a lot the very first thing he did wasn't murdering those people it was murdering a bunch of animals yeah yeah the first thing they did was thanking God and they had this huge bloodbath and even talks about they dipped their fingers in the blood and all twelve of the tribes came they built this big alter altar thing that did they say it couldn't have been out of stone because you're not supposed to now they know you're not supposed to make an image right so they mailed this mound of Earth and then they piled all these animals and they killed them all and then they had to speak celebration they just it wasn't a beer party was a blood party is what they were having after which it was just this gory example so according to God's anger things got to die blood has to shed people have to hurt animal living things have to be snuffed out yeah you know terrorized in tortured and snuffed out well not a god I would want to worship Him and if you did exist well I think that we have covered at least the top five and a few more and we appreciate your watching FFRF Sask an atheist and what's going to come up next week next week we're showing some of Dan's debate at Oxford yeah we want to preview that a little bit well yeah so I was invited to Oxford in Nova 20:12 to do a debate three three two three debate by the Oxford Union and on the other side was Christopher Hitchens who's the brother of Peter Hitchens he's a believing Christian brother no I'm sorry Peter Hitchens who's the brother of Christopher Hitchens and Christopher had just died and also John Lennox he's a very well-known famous Christian apologist who is a actually very highly respected mathematician he was he was the only person who said anything interesting he was the third the third was an Anglican priest a woman named Joanna Caldecott who when she was talking none of us took any notes we took notes when Lennox was talking but she didn't actually say anything it's been 15 minutes and we're going huh so we just yeah sermonizing something but we did John Lennox was probably the best in Christopher Peter Hitchens scuse me Peter Hitchens basically didn't debate he just attacked atheist it was an ad hominem are you so you were one of three and who were the other two on yourself Michael Shermer the skeptic and then the philosopher who teaches at Oxford Peter Milliken are the three of us and in fact the three of us got together ahead of time and we planned a strategy you cover this you cover this you cover this right the three of them didn't they just came and were just totally blah blah right so we had a good strategy and and next week we're going to hear my opening statement basically but and then shouldn't we say that they literally asked people to vote with their feet yeah okay one's next next week is the punch line who won the debate at Oxford University and then the week after that we're going to talk about religion in high school graduations at public schools so that's have a timely and you change I was talking about that so please tune in next week same time same place central time on Facebook live and thanks for joining us [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: FFRF

Views: 124,915

Rating: 4.5585413 out of 5

Keywords: The Bible, Christianity, Biblical Contradictions, Atheism, Atheist, Dan Barker, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Dogma, Catholic Church, Apologetics, Top five contradictions in the Bible, Leaving religion, Learning about the Bible, Bible Study, Book of Paul, God is not the author of confusion, Corinthians

Id: r7kOEkv1fp8

Length: 60min 8sec (3608 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 18 2018