Why I'm Sure Enough to Risk Eternal Damnation

(By Stephan)
Disclaimer: I believe a person is better off spiritually and mentally as a Christian than as an Agnostic/Atheist, so I suggest getting a good foundation in rational belief in G-d before going through this.  My favorite source is Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb’s Living Up to the Truth.  Easy/free to download, not that long, packed with useful info, and from an Ivy League philosophy professor turned Rabbi.

The purpose of this is to give a short (under 8 pages), clear, biblical summary of the most notable evidence against Christianity that I know of, which I would have loved to have had when I was evaluating the truth of Christianity.  The positive evidence for Christianity, which I’d like to write about later, is out of scope for the purpose of this article.  If you want to learn about that, you can find answers from Rabbi Singer or Skobac.  All quotations are from the most literal, honest Christian translation that I know of (ESV).  I think most Christians can settle on the following statements as essential to the truth of Christianity:

1) Jesus is a part of G-d Himself, not created by G-d the Father, not lower than G-d the Father in any way, and placed into the womb of a human mother, and born into human form
2) Jesus' sinless death alone paid for the sins of all of mankind, and acceptance of this sacrifice is the only way to obtain forgiveness of sins
3) The Christian scriptures ("New Testament") are flawless works written by holy men, but inspired and/or authored by G-d, being absolute truth (Protestants Only; the Catholic church admits many flaws, and has its own authoritative structure to compensate)
4) The Jewish scriptures ("Old Testament") are flawless works written by holy men, but inspired and/or authored by G-d, being absolute truth

Since these 4 beliefs are part of the foundation of Christian beliefs, then if any of these beliefs are independently false, then Christianity as a whole is false.  Also, if any one of these implies that another is false, then at least 1 fundamental belief is false, and therefore Christianity as a whole is false.

Jewish Scriptures vs. Christian Scriptures
I’m going to skip the textual and factual contradictions, and just skip to the major theological contradictions.

Is the Torah eternal, wonderful, delicious, and achievable?  Or is it an impossible, worthless burden to be thrown away?

Deut 5:29) Oh that they had such a mind as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their children for ever!

Deut 30:9-14) For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, when you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that are written in this Book of the Law, when you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

Psalm 119) This is the longest chapter in all of the Jewish and Christian Bibles.  The entire thing is an intense love song for the Torah (law).  This is an excerpt, but seriously, you should read the whole thing.

Therefore I love your commandments
    above gold, above fine gold.
Therefore I consider all your precepts to be right;
    I hate every false way.
Your testimonies are wonderful;
    therefore my soul keeps them.
The unfolding of your words gives light;
    it imparts understanding to the simple.
I open my mouth and pant,
    because I long for your commandments.

It’s very clear in the prophetic writings (especially the 3 main later prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) that the Temple will be rebuilt, and the Torah will be kept, intact, even in the messianic age:

Isaiah 2:2-4) It shall come to pass in the latter days
    that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
    and shall be lifted up above the hills;
and all the nations shall flow to it,
   and many peoples shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
    and shall decide disputes for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war anymore.

Ezk 37:24-28) “My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.”

As a bonus, even Jesus confirms this teaching:

Matt 5:14-20) “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that[b] they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.  Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Matt 19:16-17)  And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”  And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.”

Now, let’s see what Paul and Peter have to say about this wonderful Torah:

Gal 4:9-10) But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years!

2 Cor 3:5-8) Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that he Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory?

Heb 7:18-19) For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness (for the law made nothing perfect); but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God.

Rom 4:15, 5:20, 6:14, 7:5-11, 10:4) For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression…  Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more… For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace… For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”  But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.  The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.  For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me… For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

1 Peter 1:18)  knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold

So Did G-d give us a wonderful way of life that brings us righteousness, prosperity, and life forever, like the the prophets and G-d Himself said?  Or did He give us a weak, futile, slavemaster to kill us with and then throw away, like Paul and Peter claim?


Common Sense vs. Sacrifice of Jesus
If there’s one central idea to all of Christianity, and the original thought that separated the earliest Christian groups (who were still completely Torah observant) from mainstream Judaism, it’s the idea that Jesus’ death was the final atonement for the sins of all mankind.

Rom 3:23-25) for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith…

Heb 9:24-26; 10:14-18) For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself… For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,” then he adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”  Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

What a gift, right?  Let's see how well off people were before and after Jesus, according to Christianity.  To keep this short and obvious, I’m going to skip the whole concept of the Levitical sacrificial system, and just focus on the non-Jewish world.   "Without blood there is no remission of sin" is a Christian idea (Heb 9:22), not Jewish.  Before Jesus, every non-Jew in the entire world could be forgiven for their sins and considered righteous by merely turning away from obvious evil and idol worship, with no obligation to follow the Torah or any sacrificial system, just like Adam, Noah, Enoch, Melchizedek, and even the people of the wicked city of Ninveh [Jonah 3:4-10] (Judaism still holds this view, and values righteous non-Jews greatly).  After Jesus, every person had to either believe in Jesus, or burn in hell for eternity (John 14:6; Matt 25:30; Mark 9:44; 2 Thes 1:9).  So why would G-d, if He loves the world so much, go from letting good people of the world be forgiven, to condemning the good people of the world to eternal damnation?  Take Lee for example.  Lee was born in 10 BCE in ancient China.  He had never heard of Jews, or Jesus, but he recognized that there was one Creator in the world, who he appreciated.  Lee was a good husband and father, worked hard, fed the poor, and was always nice to others, and said his own prayers every day thanking G-d for everything he had.  He died around 35 CE after living a good life.  He goes to hell to burn in agony in a lake of fire forever.. and ever... and ever...  If only he had died 5 years before, he would have been fine!  This is not love - just a threat added to make people afraid to question Christianity, or leave if they are questioning it.


Jewish Scriptures vs. Sacrifice of Jesus
G-d specifically forbade human sacrifice (Lev 18:21), and said that nobody will die for another's sin - each person dies for his own sin (Jer 31:29; Ez 18:2-4).  Pretty much everything about the concept of Jesus being a sacrifice that enables forgiveness for the sins of other people goes against what G-d says about sacrifices and forgiveness in the Jewish scriptures, but this gets a pass in Christianity somehow.  What would be the real killer of this idea that Jesus’ death was the final sacrifice, and there “is no longer any offering for sin” though?  How about if all of the longer prophetic writings describe not only the Torah being kept, but the Temple being rebuilt in the end times with sacrificial system being re-established by G-d’s direction, and accepted for atonement of sins, exactly how things were before Jesus’ death?

Zech 14:9,16, 20-21) And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be one and his name one…  Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Booths…  And on that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “Holy to the Lord.” And the pots in the house of the Lord shall be as the bowls before the altar.  And every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the meat of the sacrifice in them. And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.

Jer 33:10-11, 17-18) “Thus says the Lord: In this place of which you say, ‘It is a waste without man or beast,’ in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man or inhabitant or beast, there shall be heard again the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing, as they bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord…  For thus says the Lord: David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel, and the Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to make sacrifices forever.

Ezk 44:9, 11, 24) “Thus says the Lord God: No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the people of Israel, shall enter my sanctuary…  They shall be ministers in my sanctuary, having oversight at the gates of the temple and ministering in the temple. They shall slaughter the burnt offering and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall stand before the people, to minister to them. ... In a dispute, they shall act as judges, and they shall judge it according to my judgments. They shall keep my laws and my statutes in all my appointed feasts, and they shall keep my Sabbaths holy.

Maybe these are just Jews offering sacrifices in vain out of ignorance of Jesus’ sacrifice.  According to Christianity, surely G-d could not accept these sacrifices, since they go against the very core of Christianity!  Isaiah would agree with Christianity, right?

Isaiah 56: 6-7) And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant — these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

Since G-d approves of these sacrifices, maybe they’re just memorials for the sacrifice of Jesus, as the original sacrifices were, and not meant to actually atone for sins?

Ezk 45:13-20) This is the offering that you shall make: ... And one sheep from every flock of two hundred, from the watering places of Israel for grain offering, burnt offering, and peace offerings, to make atonement for them, declares the Lord God. All the people of the land shall be obliged to give this offering to the prince in Israel.  It shall be the prince's duty to furnish the burnt offerings, grain offerings, and drink offerings, at the feasts, the new moons, and the Sabbaths, all the appointed feasts of the house of Israel: he shall provide the sin offerings, grain offerings, burnt offerings, and peace offerings, to make atonement on behalf of the house of Israel.  Thus says the Lord God: In the first month, on the first day of the month, you shall take a bull from the herd without blemish, and purify the sanctuary. The priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering and put it on the doorposts of the temple, the four corners of the ledge of the altar, and the posts of the gate of the inner court. You shall do the same on the seventh day of the month for anyone who has sinned through error or ignorance; so you shall make atonement for the temple. 

Not only will the Torah be kept in the end times by the Jewish people, but they will continue to offer sin sacrifices for atonement in the final Temple, which G-d commands of them, and accepts.   Since the future Temple sacrifices perform the exact same function before and after Jesus’ death, then Jesus’ death either didn’t have any value at all, or had some value that doesn’t overlap with Temple sacrifices (which is the best defense of this that I have found).  Unfortunately for the Christian view, the author of Hebrews states “Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin” (see above), explicitly stating that Jesus’ death supersedes the Temple sacrificial system, not that it adds to it.  In addition, the NT overall states many times that the Torah overall is to be done away with (see above).  To make matter worse, he also quotes Jer 31 as the basis of his ideas, even though Jeremiah says that the Temple sacrificial system will be reinstated only two chapters later (see above).  This completely ruins the idea that Jesus’ death had any lasting sacrificial significance, undermining the very core of Christian belief and purpose.


Common Sense vs. Divinity of Jesus
One thing about the nature of G-d is obvious to Jews and Christians alike - there is no explicit, obvious mention of a god-man, or a trinity anywhere in the Jewish scriptures.  No amount of verses that could be suggested as hints can add up to an explicit statement.  He described extreme details about what to do with skin lesions, and which kind of bugs were ok and not ok to eat, so why in the world would G-d would not let the Jewish people in on this trinity idea?  Instead, Christianity claims that G-d only told them ⅓ of the story, then sentenced them to eternity in hell once Jesus came for the crime of actually listening to what He had told them earlier.  This is a much smaller scale atrocity than arbitrarily sentencing the vast majority of humanity into an eternal lake of fire, but a much more tragic betrayal.


Jewish Scriptures vs. Divinity of Jesus
The Jewish Scriptures are actually very clear that G-d is alone (Nehemiah 9:6; Psalm 83:19; Psalm 136:3-4), that there is no one beside Him (Isaiah 45:6,21-23), and even that He is not a man (Num 23:19; 1 Sam 15:29; Hosea 11:9)!  What else could G-d have added beside explicitly stating “I’m also not divided into pieces either, in case you were wondering”?  There is no limit to the number or severity of contradictions and meaningless words that mainstream Christianity has been willing to accept on behalf of deifying Jesus over the past 2 millenia, so I don’t see the point in going into detail on passages about the unity of G-d or that the Messiah is supposed to fear G-d (Is 11) in detail, since they can be swept under the rug as “divine mysteries”.  There are some things that I think most Christians would be completely unwilling to accept and still believe in the divinity of Jesus though.  Fortunately, Ezekiel clarifies these things for us.  For some background, the establishment of a final Temple with a king of the Davidic dynasty (A.K.A. “the messiah”) leading the Jewish people is common through all the longer prophetic writings.  Ezekiel refers to him as a prince:

Ezk 34:22-24) I will save my flock, and they will no longer be plundered. I will judge between one sheep and another.  I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them. I the Lord have spoken.

Ezk 37:25) They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob, the land where your ancestors lived. They and their children and their children’s children will live there forever, and David my servant will be their prince forever.

A few chapters later, he makes reference to “the prince” during his vision of the final Temple, as if you should know who this prince is already, since you should have read the previous chapters by this point:

Ezk 44:3,26-27) Only the prince may sit in it to eat bread before the Lord. He shall enter by way of the vestibule of the gate, and shall go out by the same way…  After he has become clean, they shall count seven days for him. And on the day that he goes into the Holy Place, into the inner court, to minister in the Holy Place, he shall offer his sin offering, declares the Lord God.

Ezk 45:21-23) In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you shall celebrate the Feast of the Passover, and for seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten. On that day the prince shall provide for himself and all the people of the land a young bull for a sin offering.  And on the seven days of the festival he shall provide as a burnt offering to the Lord seven young bulls and seven rams without blemish, on each of the seven days; and a male goat daily for a sin offering.

Twice, Ezekiel describes the messiah as offering an animal sin sacrifice for himself.  G-d does not sin, and according to Christianity, Jesus was also sin-free.  This is more than just the theological problems and nonsensical ideas that can be tolerated with enough blind faith.  This is the messiah sacrificing an animal for his own sins, completely destroying at the same time, the idea that the messiah will be G-d or even without sin, and that Jesus’ death was a final sacrifice for all sin.

The authors of the New Testament have relied on the ignorance and fear to get their followers to believe a religion that goes completely against its own roots in Judaism, and even common sense.  In the Internet age, ignorance of these texts can only come from apathy, and the only fear of Christian hell comes from ignorance.  Why am I sure enough to risk eternal damnation?  I decided that truth is more important than comfort, and lost my apathy, which led me to read the Bible in context and listen to debates between disagreeing viewpoints.  This made me lose my ignorance, and the NT writings were no longer able to twist the meaning of the original Jewish texts for me, so I lost all fear of the threat of burning hellfire.  This lead me to look for the objective evidence of all major religions and see that Judaism, the parent religion of my original belief, stands far apart from the rest.