Text and history
- The Bible contains hundreds of contradictionsMainstream biblical scholarship has documented hundreds of internal inconsistencies in the Bible, from numerical disc...
- Biblical prophecies rely on postdiction and selective readingMainstream biblical scholarship shows that prophecy claims rely on postdiction, vague language, selective reading, re...
- The Bible contains significant historical errorsMainstream archaeology and historical scholarship show that while the Bible contains some historically corroborated m...
- The Bible reflects ancient Near Eastern cosmologyThe Bible reflects the ancient Near Eastern cosmology of its authors, including a solid firmament, a flat earth on pi...
- The Gospels are anonymous and written decades laterMainstream biblical scholarship holds that the four canonical Gospels were originally anonymous, composed decades aft...
- The Bible contains hundreds of thousands of textual variantsThe claim that the biblical text has been transmitted without alteration is contradicted by hundreds of thousands of ...
- The Exodus lacks archaeological evidenceThe scholarly consensus holds that the biblical Exodus, as described in the Torah, did not occur as a historical even...
- Geology contradicts a global floodGeological, biological, and archaeological evidence overwhelmingly contradicts the claim of a global flood. The Genes...
- Non-Christian sources do not corroborate the GospelsNon-Christian sources like Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny confirm that Christians existed and believed certain things a...
The resurrection
- Martyrdom proves sincerity, not truthThe argument that apostle martyrdoms prove the resurrection faces serious challenges: limited historical evidence for...
- Paul never mentions the empty tombAn empty tomb, even if historical, proves nothing about resurrection. Paul never mentions it, the Gospel accounts con...
- The 500 witnesses claim is uncorroboratedPaul's claim in 1 Corinthians 15:6 that the risen Christ appeared to more than 500 people is a single, uncorroborated...
- Paul never met the living JesusPaul's dramatic conversion from persecutor to apostle is cited as proof of the resurrection, but the argument relies ...
- The criterion of embarrassment does not prove reliabilityThe criterion of embarrassment is a scholarly tool for evaluating individual traditions, not proof of overall Gospel ...
- The Shroud of Turin dates to the medieval periodThe Shroud of Turin has been radiocarbon dated to the medieval period (1260-1390 CE), centuries after Jesus's death. ...
Apologetics
- Morality predates and transcends religionThe claim that morality requires God faces serious philosophical problems, including the Euthyphro dilemma. Cross-cul...
- The Dead Sea Scrolls reveal significant textual variationThe Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate remarkable preservation of some biblical texts while simultaneously revealing that m...
- The Book of Daniel was written after the events it describesThe Book of Daniel's 'prophecies' about successive empires are remarkably accurate—up to a point. The scholarly conse...
- The Synoptic Gospels copied from each otherThe Synoptic Gospels share extensive verbatim material because Matthew and Luke copied from Mark, not because they in...
- Linguistics explains language diversity without BabelModern linguistics explains language diversity through well-documented processes of gradual change, migration, and di...
- The cosmological argument does not establish the biblical GodThe cosmological argument, even if its premises were sound, establishes at most a first cause or necessary being—not ...
- Pascal's Wager fails as an argument for beliefPascal's Wager, the famous argument that betting on God's existence is the rational choice, faces serious objections ...
Key concepts
- The Bible's original text is uncertainTextual criticism is the scholarly discipline of analyzing ancient manuscripts to reconstruct the most likely origina...
- Moses did not write the PentateuchThe documentary hypothesis proposes that the Pentateuch was composed from multiple independent sources written over c...
- The biblical canon was assembled by committee over centuriesThe biblical canon was not established by a single divine decree but emerged through centuries of debate, negotiation...
- Biblical inerrancy is a modern doctrineInerrancy and infallibility represent distinct theological positions on biblical authority. The modern doctrine of st...
- The King James Bible contains known translation errorsMainstream biblical scholarship has documented hundreds of internal inconsistencies in the Bible, from numerical disc...