Yesterday, the public learned about the discovery of a document dating from the early days of Jesus worship, the Gospel of Judas . This manuscript raises a host of fascinating questions for those who care about the origins of the Christian faith. Almost all Americans, about ninety percent, either were raised in or currently practice some form of Christianity that is rooted in Catholic orthodoxy. (Protestants draw their core doctrines from the orthodox Catholic tradition.) Steeped in these teachings, it is easy to see the Judas manuscript as a curious outsider and to ask how it compares to the true histories recorded in the more familiar gospels named after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This question misunderstands history, and so it is a false question. During the first centuries of Christianity, the cult or worship of Jesus took many forms. Some groups taught that Jesus only appeared to be human, others that he was one of many divine intermediaries between God and humanity. Some ...

The following is a transcription of the podcast made available HERE . Welcome to the ex-Christian monologues, a podcast from the webmaster of exchristian.net. I’m Dave, the webmaster, and it’s March 26, 2006. Here’s a comment someone posted on ExChristian.Net just this morning: “May I ask you a question?” writes the poster. “How are you so sure that there is no god. I think I understand well the position of agnostics. But I am curious about your conviction of no god. Anybody tell me?” It is both frustrating and fascinating the number of times I’ve seen this question. The people asking are usually sincere, or appear sincere – they believe they are asking a pretty good question, one the requires a pretty good answer. Some people think that by simply asking that question, or some variation of it, that they’ve made a good point, or proven something. Another version of the “how can you be sure there is no god” question, would be: “what is your evidence that there is no god?” Okay, let’s con...

by Valerie T In light of this week's massacre of apparent children. Lesson II: Child-ness A good Evangelical must be able to recognize children on sight. This is because God loves children and every one is precious in his sight. He watches over them and protects them from harm, just like an all-powerful shepherd watching over his lambs. The Bible says so. Although this may not seem obvious in the world around us, when you understand the difference between a child and not-a-child everything becomes clear. You know who to take care of and how to keep from getting distracted by child-like creatures that don't merit your attention. It also becomes obvious who God wants you to vote for - politicians who prioritize children over not-children. After studying the following series of photos, you will be able to differentiate between children and not-children almost as well as God himself — though not quite, because, as the photos illustrate, God is infinitely wise and you are not. The b...

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by Deamond ORDINARY THEIST oh, look, there's the King! AGNOSTIC Is... is he... is he wearing skin-colloured clothes or something? ATHEIST Oh, god, he's naked. SCIENTIST "Pardon us, your majesty, may we feel your sleeve for a moment?" "Why, certainly." (Whispers to coleague) "He's naked" NONPRACTICEING THEIST I'm bored, I'm going home HEATHEN your King is naked, not like our King. PHILOSOPHER Maybe the clothes are there and the King isn't. CULTIST (Streaks in front of parade, gets arrested, no one gets the irony) CREATION SCIENTIST Well, obviously you can't feel it, either. FANATIC (Actually sees clothes) LUCIFERIAN Wooo! Shake it! TELEVANGEALIST We'll send you the bill for the robes, your majesty.

By Wayne O Gen.1 [1] In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. [2] And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. [3] And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. [4] And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. [5] And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. …. [14] And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: [15] And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. [16] And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. [17] And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, [18] A...

© 2006 Tim Simmons Most people know that a light year is not a measurement of time but a measurement of distance. It is the distance light would travel if it was allowed to travel unabated for a year. Even grade school children learn these types of things by the sixth grade but apparently science wasn’t one of Johnny Hart’s favorite subjects in school. In a recent cartoon, he exposes his complete ignorance (and apparent disdain) for science by having a flower pop up from the ground and ask a rock, “Hi! How many light-years old are you?” Then he goes on to belittle the scientific community and its desire to explore the universe in which we find ourselves. Much like any other Christian writer, he writes things so as to misrepresent the “opponent’s” stance and thereby attacks merely a strawman. He has a preacher in the cartoon ask a doctor why scientists are always looking for life elsewhere in the universe. Then, in classic Christian fashion, he puts words in the scientist’s mouth ...

Here's a video that was produced to promote Creationism, but I thought it interesting, and sad. The players? Mike Shermer & Kent Hovind. The location? The Physical Sciences Lecture Hall on the campus of the University of California, Irvine. The date? April 29, 2004. Over 500 people jammed into a 400-seat venue. Shermer was there at the behest of Pastor Jason, of the OMC Youth, a campus Christian organization For those who don't know, Mike Shermer is the chief editor of Skeptic Magazine (website: www.skeptic.com ) and Kent Hovind is a Christian Apologist (website: www.drdino.com ). Disclaimer: Be warned, there is a big fundie salvation pitch at the end of the video. For Shermer's comments following this debate, click here: LINK

by Mike This is a challenge to any christians reading this. Lots of you think that the ex-christians on this site are either running from God or have given up because they want to be 'in the world' in order to sin. You just can't get your heads round the fact that the Bible is full of holes, and that we haven't 'chosen' to disbelieve. Instead we disbelieve because once you read the Bible you realise that it is full of holes. I have three types of problems with the Bible, and I challenge the Christians to explain them, without resorting to personal attacks such as "If you were a real christian, you wouldn't need to ask these questions". Problem 1: There are many, many passages that clearly contradict each other. E.g. how many men were healed in the region of the Genesarenes, where the pigs hurtled down the bank into the water? How many angels were present at the empty tomb? Was the stone rolled away before anyone came to the tomb or while some were ...

sent in by Daniel As a Christian, I used to think that God defined what was good -- or at least that if he declared something good, then it must be good, or analogously, if he declared something bad, then it was bad. Hence by definitional fiat he could both be perfectly good, and at the same time do things like punishing people in hell which one might otherwise think of terribly cruel and evil. More recently I have questioned that way of seeing God and found it lacking. The following is a short article I wrote on the question. I'm interested in people's thoughts. Is God Good? Introduction Christians frequently proclaim the goodness of God. But what exactly do we mean when we say God is good? We have a general idea of what it means for a person to be good, but do the same or different criteria apply to God? Once we can determine what it means for God to be good, then does he satisfy the criteria? One answer is to ignore the evidence and claim dogmatically that God must satis...

For centuries there have been claims that the world was going to end. I was in a church that firmly believed that Y2K would signal the end of life as we knew it. In this episode of Bullshit , Penn and Teller will take a look into these claims and predictions. Thank you Penn & Teller

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film review by Charles G. Lambdin Intelligent design (ID) is a dressing up of the old “argument from design,” with technical jargon added to lend a thin veneer of scientific credibility. ID advocates’ opportunistic tactics, which have more in common with politicians than scientists, have been described as the “wedge” strategy — an attempt to gain academic acceptance by maintaining a presence in academic and scientific venues. A prime example of this is the film The Privileged Planet , a contemporary classic of pseudoscience. The film was produced by the Discovery Institute, a conservative think-tank whose expressed goal is the promotion of Intelligent Design. The film gained a degree of notoriety when the Discovery Institute boasted that The Privileged Planet was screening at none other than the Smithsonian Institute itself, with the implied endorsement of that august body. In fact, the Discovery Institute donated $16,000 to the Smithsonian, which by policy allowed the Discovery Instit...

A video lesson by Reginald Finley: For the comprehensive text version of this topic, click here .

by Salvatore This past Christmas Eve (2005) I was awaiting the arrival of a friend for a lunch date. He was running about thirty minutes late so I sat in my car listening to some talk radio (as I am wont to do). I switched over to an AM station and caught Paul Harvey ("The Rest of the Story") launching into a Christmas tale. (The following is my own paraphrased rendition.) As the story goes, there was a family all preparing to go to church at midnight on Christmas Eve. The father, an unbeliever, was reluctant to accompany but promised to stay up until their return. So the family set off to their service leaving the faithless father behind. As the night drew on, the snow started coming down pretty hard. After some time, he began to hear a thumping commotion on the front porch; something akin to snow balls being lobbed against the door. In curiosity, he opened the front door and noticed a small assemblage of birds that had sought refuge from the snowy tempest. Feeling compassio...