The Mistakes of Christianity

Let me start out by saying that I am an atheist. I do not share any religious viewpoint with any single religion. And with that said, I do not mean to single you out. But in this case, I am doing just that.

The thing is, Christianity in America has evolved over the years in such a strange and outlandish way. But with so many different offshoots and sects of the same religion, they all tend to have the same set of beliefs that are actually wrong, based on the very book that they worship.

What do I mean by that? Good question. Lets see some of the highlights.

1. The Ten Commandments. I'm sure everybody knows them, right? Wrong. Thou Shalt Not Kill. Thou Shalt Not Steal. Yeah? Only problem is that those are NOT the ten commandments. Don't believe me? Read your bible.

You see, in the Bible, Moses was given two stone tablets on which were inscribed the real ten commandments. But when he came down Mount Sinai in Exodus 32:19, he found many of his followers worshipping a golden calf idol. So he smashed the tablets. So he was sent back up the mountain with two fresh tablets to get the ten commandments again. In Exodus 34:13 the real ten commandments are listed which go something like this:
1. Don't worship any other Gods. For I am a jealous God.
2. Don't make treaties with those who live in the land.
3. Don't make any idols. (like, say a dead guy hanging on a cross)
4. Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread
5. The first born of every womb belongs to God. And you must redeem them by sacrificing a lamb.
6. Rest on the 7th Day.
7. Celebrate the Festival of Weeks and Festival of Ingathering.
8. Do not offer God a blood sacrifice with Leavened Bread.
9. Bring the best of your first crops to the house of the Lord.
10. Do not cook a young goat in it's mother's milk.

Great stuff, right? Those commandments end at Exodus 34:27 which reads:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.

What else do Christians usually get wrong? How about:

2. Jesus is not named Jesus.

Wait, what? That can't be right. Can it? Yes it can. For the last several centuries, Christians have been worshipping Christ under the wrong name. His real name was Yeshua. The name Jesus came from the Greek translation of the New Testament in the first century in which they wrote the name as Lesous due to a difference in phonetic pronunciation. And in the medieval era, Lesous became Jesus.

I could go on, but I get his nagging feeling that some of the less rational members of this forum may get a little butt hurt. So I'm just going to end this article right here. I could point out a few more of these items if you like. But we'll see how these two go before we continue.

reply to post by allenidaho


I enjoyed reading what you have to say...I find it very interesting and thought provoking. I would like to read more of what you have learned....

Very interesting. I had no idea what the real 10 Commandments were. What do the conventional ones come from, though?
I wouldn't mind seeing the rest of your Mistakes.

Ill take a stab at it.. Like Adam & Eve, The Flood and Exodus many new(er) age Christians who are also realist's will focus mainly on the NT. Singling out Christians for believing that is also unfair. And yes Jesus[English] was Yeshua[Hebrew] as he was Lēsous[Greek]. Like Allah[Arabic] would be to God[English].

In Exodus 20 the first ten commandments were given AND the LORD spoke other commands to Moses (v.23 -26). In Exodus 34 v1 the Lord told Moses that He would write on the new stones the words that were written before AND he told Moses to write the covenant He spoke to him. Two separate things- fail.

As far as the name of Jesus- it is English variant of the Hebrew name Yashua. Big deal. Same guy.

Oh yeah, I forgot, this thread does not single out Christians either.

The Jews have 613 commandments in the Torah which include- you guessed it -the ten commandments.

Muslims also observe the ten commandments as they are included in the Quran.

Should have done a bit of research before trying to point out the mistakes of Christianity, maybe?

Right. Except the English translation of the Hebrew Yeshua would be Joshua.

And while we are on the subject of Jesus / Yeshua, let's talk about how he is depicted. In fact let's make that:

3. Jesus would not have looked like he is always depicted.

By that, I mean the European and American depiction of Jesus. That tall, white male with clean robes and a neatly trimmed beard. The bible takes place in the middle east. Meaning he would have been darker skinned with brown hair and eyes. He would have been on the shorter side, averaging around 5'10". The bible is fairly vague on any physical description aside from saying he was pretty much average looking.

Anthropologists believe he would have looked something like this:



And speaking of appearances, let's talk angels.

4. Angels in the Bible looked nothing like how they are depicted.

I'm sure everyone has that image in their mind of some armor wearing, flaming sword waving dude with wings. That image isn't even close to how they are presented in the bible.

Take a Cherubim, for example. A type of angel which is described in Ezekiel 10:14 as a multi-headed monster with the face of a man, a lion and an eagle.

Or a Seraphim which was a birdlike creature with six wings, used to cover it's entire body because looking at it's body would blind or incinerate you.

It wasn't until the Renaissance that the human shaped angel that we know today came into popular culture.

5. The Antichrist is not any one person.

How can that be? That image most people have about the antichrist opposing the second coming of Jesus in the later chapters of the bible aren't actually IN the bible. In fact, 2 John 1:7 describes it as such:

"Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the Antichrist"

So every time somebody says that Obama or Tom Cruise or whoever is the Antichrist, it turns out they are probably technically right.

Click here for more information.

I know a mistake. They are part of a murderous cult. There was the the Medieval Inquisition, then the Spanish inquisition, then they started calling people witches and started killing them. And there is what happened in the Americas. Now I guess you can't directly blame the church for the hundreds of thousands of Myans and Aztec killed, but they sure did destroy of their places of worship and erected their own. And now the only thing I about Christians or Jews or Muslims is that they keep killing each other or want to. I don't know, but to me organized religions don't seem like good thing in the past or present. Why can't people think for themselves? Having some one tell you what life's all about and how to behave seems like the easy way out. To me life is actually about figuring everything out for your self. How to act, how to interact with people, who to love, what to eat, your spirituality, those are all things one needs to venture out and figure out for them selves. Not sit and be told how to.

And for some laughs I leave you with this.
Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree... yeah, makes perfect sense.

Originally posted by allenidaho
Right. Except the English translation of the Hebrew Yeshua would be Joshua.

And while we are on the subject of Jesus / Yeshua, let's talk about how he is depicted. In fact let's make that:

3. Jesus would not have looked like he is always depicted.

By that, I mean the European and American depiction of Jesus. That tall, white male with clean robes and a neatly trimmed beard. The bible takes place in the middle east. Meaning he would have been darker skinned with brown hair and eyes. He would have been on the shorter side, averaging around 5'10". The bible is fairly vague on any physical description aside from saying he was pretty much average looking.

Anthropologists believe he would have looked something like this:



And speaking of appearances, let's talk angels.

4. Angels in the Bible looked nothing like how they are depicted.

I'm sure everyone has that image in their mind of some armor wearing, flaming sword waving dude with wings. That image isn't even close to how they are presented in the bible.

Take a Cherubim, for example. A type of angel which is described in Ezekiel 10:14 as a multi-headed monster with the face of a man, a lion and an eagle.

Or a Seraphim which was a birdlike creature with six wings, used to cover it's entire body because looking at it's body would blind or incinerate you.

It wasn't until the Renaissance that the human shaped angel that we know today came into popular culture.

5. The Antichrist is not any one person.

How can that be? That image most people have about the antichrist opposing the second coming of Jesus in the later chapters of the bible aren't actually IN the bible. In fact, 2 John 1:7 describes it as such:

"Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the Antichrist"

So every time somebody says that Obama or Tom Cruise or whoever is the Antichrist, it turns out they are probably technically right.

Why not rebut the debunking of the first point? Or are we just brushing over that?

On the name translation, it is simply semantics. It takes nothing away from Christians worshiping the person depicted in scripture.

Points 3&4 are basically you calling out a bunch of European Renaissance artists for their interpretations of the forms of Jesus and angels. What does that have to do with the mistakes of Christianity? I have literally met hundreds of thousands of Christians in my 50 years on this rock and have yet to meet one who truly believes Jesus was blonde haired and blue eyed. Also never met one who thinks angels are little fat winged kids with bow and arrow.

Point 5- there were many antichrists throughout history but there will be one person who is the antichrist that will become the abomination that brings desolation. Study scripture- it helps.

ETA: This is what 2John 1:7 actually says For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and AN antichrist. (caps added for emphasis)

6. No one will ever be able to read the full version of the Bible.

That's right. Even if you've read the King James Bible from cover to cover, you have not read the full version of the bible. And it is now impossible to do so.

For the last several centuries, several books of the bible have been removed by the church and lost to history for one reason or another.

Take the Gospel of Eve, for example. It was a book of the bible which was removed during the 4th century, mainly because that particular part of the bible had a lot to say about sex. At the time, a sect of the church was using that part of the bible to justify free love outside of marriage, coitus interruptus and the eating of semen as a religious act. The church officials at the time did not agree with the practice so the Gospel of Eve had to go.

All the good stuff taken out. And they wonder why I'm an atheist.

Point 6- The books that were omitted from the canon were done so because of Textual Criticism. This statement stands as the rebuttal of your point or do you believe that you possess more knowledge than the scores of textual criticism scholars that have dedicated their lives to authenticating writings from antiquity?

Originally posted by micmerci

Why not rebut the debunking of the first point? Or are we just brushing over that?

Sure. Let's talk about the "debunking" for a moment. I was right. He was wrong. That about sums it up.

If you have read Exodus 20:1, you would know that this part of the bible is not what was transcribed onto tablets. At this point in the story, God has appeared at the top of Mount Sinai to speak to the Israelites. God starts with the first ten items that are commonly mistaken for the ten commandments. But he doesn't stop there. He goes on with even more rules about how to treat your servants, how to treat personal injury, how to protect your property, what your social responsibilities are and so forth all the way to Exodus 23:19.

After the speech ends, Moses builds an altar and spends the next 40 days on Mount Sinai where God made a couple of tablets for Moses and said here, take these with you. But Moses never read them aloud. He smashed them.

So God hits a few folks with the plague and Moses scurries back up the mountain where God tells him to chisel out two more tables. At Exodus 34:10, he says:

Then the Lord said: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you. 11 Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 12 Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. 13 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles.[a] 14 Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

15 “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. 16 And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.

17 “Do not make any idols.

18 “Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread. For seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Aviv, for in that month you came out of Egypt.

19 “The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or flock. 20 Redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem all your firstborn sons.

“No one is to appear before me empty-handed.

21 “Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.

22 “Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year. 23 Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel. 24 I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the Lord your God.

25 “Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Festival remain until morning.

26 “Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.

“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

27 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.

Originally posted by micmerci
Point 6- The books that were omitted from the canon were done so because of Textual Criticism. This statement stands as the rebuttal of your point or do you believe that you possess more knowledge than the scores of textual criticism scholars that have dedicated their lives to authenticating writings from antiquity?

Please see the first post in which I already had a good idea of what your response would be.

I could go on, but I get his nagging feeling that some of the less rational members of this forum may get a little butt hurt.

Originally posted by micmerci
Point 6- The books that were omitted from the canon were done so because of Textual Criticism. This statement stands as the rebuttal of your point or do you believe that you possess more knowledge than the scores of textual criticism scholars that have dedicated their lives to authenticating writings from antiquity?

Wait a minute, wait a minute! I thought the bible was written with the holy spirit guiding the pens of the authors? And, this god-approved book was edited by man, with parts of it removed?

Originally posted by allenidaho

Originally posted by micmerci

Why not rebut the debunking of the first point? Or are we just brushing over that?

Sure. Let's talk about the "debunking" for a moment. I was right. He was wrong. That about sums it up.

If you have read Exodus 20:1, you would know that this part of the bible is not what was transcribed onto tablets. At this point in the story, God has appeared at the top of Mount Sinai to speak to the Israelites. God starts with the first ten items that are commonly mistaken for the ten commandments. But he doesn't stop there. He goes on with even more rules about how to treat your servants, how to treat personal injury, how to protect your property, what your social responsibilities are and so forth all the way to Exodus 23:19.

After the speech ends, Moses builds an altar and spends the next 40 days on Mount Sinai where God made a couple of tablets for Moses and said here, take these with you. But Moses never read them aloud. He smashed them.

So God hits a few folks with the plague and Moses scurries back up the mountain where God tells him to chisel out two more tables. At Exodus 34:10, he says:

Then the Lord said: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you. 11 Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 12 Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. 13 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles.[a] 14 Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

15 “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. 16 And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.

17 “Do not make any idols.

18 “Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread. For seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Aviv, for in that month you came out of Egypt.

19 “The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or flock. 20 Redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem all your firstborn sons.

“No one is to appear before me empty-handed.

21 “Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.

22 “Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year. 23 Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel. 24 I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the Lord your God.

25 “Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Festival remain until morning.

26 “Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.

“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

27 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.

No, sorry, reading comprehension is an important thing. In the first verse of Exodus 34, the LORD said that HE (the LORD-still with me?) would write what was on the first 2 stones. Then, the LORD told Moses to write the covenant in verse 27 which you so kindly referenced above. Still two different things- still fail.

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by micmerci
Point 6- The books that were omitted from the canon were done so because of Textual Criticism. This statement stands as the rebuttal of your point or do you believe that you possess more knowledge than the scores of textual criticism scholars that have dedicated their lives to authenticating writings from antiquity?

Wait a minute, wait a minute! I thought the bible was written with the holy spirit guiding the pens of the authors? And, this god-approved book was edited by man, with parts of it removed?

There has never been a bible with books removed. They were writings that were put together

Originally posted by allenidaho

Originally posted by micmerci
Point 6- The books that were omitted from the canon were done so because of Textual Criticism. This statement stands as the rebuttal of your point or do you believe that you possess more knowledge than the scores of textual criticism scholars that have dedicated their lives to authenticating writings from antiquity?

Please see the first post in which I already had a good idea of what your response would be.

I could go on, but I get his nagging feeling that some of the less rational members of this forum may get a little butt hurt.

This is your response to educated debate?

Originally posted by micmerci

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by micmerci
Point 6- The books that were omitted from the canon were done so because of Textual Criticism. This statement stands as the rebuttal of your point or do you believe that you possess more knowledge than the scores of textual criticism scholars that have dedicated their lives to authenticating writings from antiquity?

Wait a minute, wait a minute! I thought the bible was written with the holy spirit guiding the pens of the authors? And, this god-approved book was edited by man, with parts of it removed?

There has never been a bible with books removed. They were writings that were put together

Not put together with divine inspiration? If no help came from above to put this book together, then it is just a book put together by man. That said, this is the Christian bible. Not just parts of it, but ALL of it. If Christians don't believe in one part (even if they doubt just one word in it), then they aren't Christians and must doubt ALL of it. You can't believe in the Jesus story in the bible and not believe the part of the bible that declares that all homosexuals get thrown into hell. If you don't believe in any part of the bible, then you need to start a whole new religion with a whole concept of god in a whole new bible. Preferably one where god doesn't kill anyone.

reply to post by jiggerj


I am interested in where it says all homosexuals are thrown into hell. Can you provide a reference?