Human evolution
1.1 Sahelanthropus tchadensis
Discovered in 2001 in the Djurab Desert of Chad and dated to approximately 7 million years ago, Sahelanthropus tchadensis is the oldest known potential hominin, represented primarily by a near-complet...
1.2 Orrorin tugenensis
Discovered in 2000 in the Tugen Hills of Kenya, Orrorin tugenensis is dated to approximately 6 million years ago and provides the earliest postcranial evidence of bipedal locomotion in the ho...
1.3 Ardipithecus
The genus Ardipithecus includes two species, Ar. kadabba (5.8-5.2 Ma) and Ar. ramidus (4.4 Ma), both discovered in the Middle Awash region of Ethiopia, representing some of ...
1.4 Australopithecus anamensis
Australopithecus anamensis is the earliest unambiguous member of the genus Australopithecus, known from fossils dated between 4.2 and 3.8 million years ago at sites in Kenya and Ethi...
1.5 Australopithecus afarensis
Australopithecus afarensis lived in East Africa from approximately 3.9 to 3.0 million years ago and is represented by hundreds of fossils, including the famous "Lucy" skeleton, the juvenile "...
1.6 Australopithecus africanus
Raymond Dart's 1924 identification of the Taung Child as a bipedal human ancestor from Africa was rejected for decades by scientists who expected human origins in Europe, partly because the Piltdown M...
1.7 Later Australopithecus species
Three late australopithecine species — A. garhi, A. sediba, and A. deyiremeda — demonstrate that the period from 3.4 to 1.98 million years ago saw a diverse radi...
1.8 Kenyanthropus platyops
Kenyanthropus platyops is a 3.5-million-year-old hominin from Lomekwi, Kenya, distinguished by an unusually flat face and small molars that set it apart from the contemporaneous Australop...
1.9 Paranthropus
The genus Paranthropus comprises three species of "robust" hominins—P. aethiopicus, P. boisei, and P. robustus—characterized by massive jaws, enormous molars, an...
1.10 Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis
Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis, dating from roughly 2.4 to 1.5 million years ago, represent the earliest members of our genus and document a significant increase in brain size ove...
1.11 Homo erectus
Homo erectus is the longest-surviving human species, persisting from roughly 1.9 million to 108,000 years ago across Africa, Asia, and Europe, with brain sizes ranging from 546 to 1,251 cubic...
1.12 Homo heidelbergensis
Homo heidelbergensis is a Middle Pleistocene hominin species known from fossils across Africa and Europe dating from roughly 700,000 to 200,000 years ago, widely regarded as the last common a...
1.13 Homo naledi
Discovered in 2013 in South Africa's Rising Star Cave, Homo naledi is represented by more than 1,550 fossil specimens from at least 15 individuals, making it the largest single-species homini...
1.14 Untitled
Homo floresiensis, discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, stood roughly one meter tall with a brain volume of about 380 cc, yet manufactured stone tools and hunted cooperative...
1.15 Neanderthals
Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) were a cold-adapted human species who occupied Europe and western Asia for over 300,000 years, with average brain volumes larger than those of modern huma...
1.16 Denisovans
The Denisovans were an archaic human population first identified in 2010 from a single finger bone through ancient DNA analysis, making them the first hominin group discovered primarily through geneti...
1.17 Early Homo sapiens in Africa
The oldest known fossils attributed to Homo sapiens come from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, dated to approximately 315,000 years ago, demonstrating that our species did not originate exclusively in East Af...
1.18 Homo sapiens: out of Africa
Fossil, genetic, and archaeological evidence converge on Africa as the homeland of Homo sapiens, with multiple dispersal waves beginning at least 210,000 years ago and a major successful expa...
1.19 The earth is 4.5 billion years old
Multiple independent radiometric dating methods—uranium-lead, potassium-argon, rubidium-strontium, and others—consistently yield an age of 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years for the Earth, a...
1.20 Evolution is both fact and theory
In science, a "theory" is not a guess but a well-substantiated explanatory framework supported by extensive evidence—placing evolutionary theory alongside germ theory, atomic theory, and the the...
1.21 Genetic change creates new functions
The majority of mutations are selectively neutral—neither helpful nor harmful—and accumulate at a roughly constant rate that serves as a molecular clock for dating evolutionary divergences...
1.22 Natural selection builds complexity
Natural selection is not merely a filter that removes the unfit; acting on heritable variation over many generations, it accumulates beneficial changes that build complex structures incrementally, as ...
1.23 The origin of life is a chemical problem
Abiogenesis (the origin of life from non-living chemistry) and biological evolution are distinct fields: evolution explains how life changes once it exists, while abiogenesis investigates how life aro...
1.24 Evolution is unguided but not random
Evolution operates through four mechanisms—mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow—that together produce adaptation without foresight, plan, or purpose.
1.25 Human chromosome 2 is two fused ape chromosomes
All great apes—chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans—have 48 chromosomes (24 pairs), while humans have only 46 (23 pairs). Human chromosome 2 is the product of an ancient head-to-head fusi...
1.26 Humans carry broken vitamin C genes
Humans and all other simian primates lack a functional copy of the GULO gene, which encodes the enzyme required for the final step of vitamin C biosynthesis. The remnant of this gene—a pseudogen...
1.27 Human embryos develop and lose tails, gill arches, and lanugo
Human embryos develop pharyngeal (branchial) arches that are homologous to the gill arches of fish; in humans these structures are remodeled into the jaw, middle ear bones, and throat cartilages rathe...
1.28 Shared endogenous retroviruses
Approximately 8% of the human genome—roughly 98,000 ERV elements and fragments plus their associated solo LTRs—consists of endogenous retroviral sequences: the remnants of ancient retrovir...
1.29 Human DNA is 98.7% identical to chimpanzee DNA
The 2005 Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium found that human and chimpanzee genomes are 98.77% identical at aligned nucleotide positions, confirming chimpanzees as our closest living relati...
1.30 Evolutionary leftovers in the human body
The human body contains dozens of vestigial structures—anatomical features inherited from ancestors in which they served important functions but which have lost all or most of their original pur...
The Bible
2.1 The Bible contains hundreds of contradictions
The Bible contains passages that directly negate each other on the same subject: God tempts people and God does not tempt people; God can be seen face to face and no one can see God; children are puni...
2.2 Biblical prophecies rely on postdiction and selective reading
Many biblical "prophecies" were written after the events they describe, a well-documented literary technique called vaticinium ex eventu; the Book of Daniel, the most cited example, is dated ...
2.3 The Bible contains significant historical errors
The Bible contains some historically corroborated material, particularly for the later monarchic, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian periods, but many of its central narratives—including the Exod...
2.4 The Bible reflects ancient Near Eastern cosmology
The Bible describes the cosmos in terms consistent with ancient Near Eastern cosmology—a flat earth on pillars, a solid dome (firmament) holding back waters above, and a geocentric universe&mdas...
2.5 The Gospels are anonymous and written decades later
The four canonical Gospels are formally anonymous: none of them names its author in the text, and the titles "According to Matthew," "According to Mark," etc. were added by later copyists and church t...
2.6 The Bible contains hundreds of thousands of textual variants
The New Testament survives in over 5,800 Greek manuscripts containing an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 textual variants, more differences than there are words in the text itself.
2.7 The Exodus lacks archaeological evidence
The scholarly consensus holds that the biblical Exodus, as literally described in the Torah, did not occur as a historical event; there is no archaeological evidence for a mass migration of millions o...
2.8 Geology contradicts a global flood
There is no geological evidence for a global flood in the Earth's history; continuous records from ice cores, tree rings, lake sediments, and coral reefs extend tens of thousands of years with no evid...
2.9 Non-Christian sources do not corroborate the Gospels
Non-Christian sources such as Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger confirm that Christianity existed in the first century and that followers believed Jesus was executed under Pontius Pilate, but t...
2.10 Martyrdom proves sincerity, not truth
Historical evidence for apostle martyrdoms varies dramatically: only the deaths of James the son of Zebedee, James the brother of Jesus, Peter, and Paul have early attestation, while accounts of most ...
2.11 Paul never mentions the empty tomb
Paul, the earliest Christian writer (mid-50s CE), never mentions an empty tomb despite listing resurrection evidence in 1 Corinthians 15; the empty tomb narrative first appears in Mark's Gospel, writt...
2.12 Morality predates and transcends religion
The claim that morality requires God faces a devastating logical problem known as the Euthyphro dilemma: either moral goodness is independent of God (undermining divine command theory) or morality is ...
2.13 The Dead Sea Scrolls reveal significant textual variation
The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate remarkable preservation of some biblical texts, with the Great Isaiah Scroll approximately 95% identical to the later Masoretic Text, but this still means over 2,600 t...
2.14 The 500 witnesses claim is uncorroborated
The claim that 500 people witnessed the risen Christ comes from a single source—1 Corinthians 15:6, written by Paul approximately 20–25 years after the alleged event—and is not corro...
2.15 Paul never met the living Jesus
Paul never claims to have seen a physical, resurrected body; he describes a vision or revelation, which he explicitly equates with later mystical experiences available to any believer.
2.16 The criterion of embarrassment does not prove reliability
The criterion of embarrassment is one of several scholarly tools used in historical Jesus research; it was never designed to prove overall Gospel reliability, and leading scholars have extensively cri...
2.17 The Book of Daniel was written after the events it describes
The Book of Daniel's "prophecies" about successive empires (Babylon, Media, Persia, Greece) are remarkably accurate—but only up to the year 164 BCE; from that point forward, the predictions fail...
2.18 The Synoptic Gospels copied from each other
The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) are not independent: Matthew copies approximately 90% of Mark's content, often verbatim, while Luke copies about 50%—a pattern of literary dependence, ...
2.19 Linguistics explains language diversity without Babel
Modern linguistics explains language diversity through well-documented processes: gradual sound changes, dialect divergence, geographic separation, language contact, and creolization—all observa...
2.20 The Shroud of Turin dates to the medieval period
Radiocarbon dating in 1988 by three independent laboratories dated the Shroud to 1260-1390 CE with 95% confidence, placing its creation over a millennium after Jesus's death.
2.21 The cosmological argument does not establish the biblical God
Even if the cosmological argument succeeds in establishing a first cause or necessary being, it does not establish the existence of a personal, trinitarian, morally perfect God who inspired the Bible,...
2.22 Pascal's Wager fails as an argument for belief
Pascal's Wager argues that believing in God is the rational bet because the potential infinite reward outweighs any finite cost, but this reasoning applies equally to thousands of mutually exclusive r...
2.23 The Bible's original text is uncertain
Textual criticism is the scholarly discipline of comparing ancient manuscripts to reconstruct the most likely original text of the Bible, since no original manuscripts (autographs) survive.
2.24 Moses did not write the Pentateuch
The documentary hypothesis proposes that the Pentateuch (Torah) was compiled from at least four originally independent written sources—J, E, D, and P—composed over several centuries by dif...
2.25 The biblical canon was assembled by committee over centuries
The biblical canon—the authoritative collection of books recognized as scripture—was not established by a single divine decree but emerged through centuries of debate, gradual consensus, a...
2.26 Biblical inerrancy is a modern doctrine
Inerrancy claims the Bible is without error in all matters including science and history, while infallibility holds Scripture is reliable only in matters of faith and practice.
2.27 The King James Bible contains known translation errors
The King James Version (1611) was a landmark English translation, but it was based on late medieval manuscripts now known to be inferior to earlier witnesses discovered in the 19th and 20th centuries.
God
3.1 God drowned every child on Earth
According to Genesis 6-9, God deliberately drowned virtually all life on Earth, including infants, children, pregnant women, the elderly, and animals who could not have been morally culpable for human...
3.2 God killed every firstborn child in Egypt
Exodus 11-12 explicitly states that God killed every firstborn in Egypt in a single night, from Pharaoh's heir to the children of prisoners and even livestock, as the tenth and final plague.
3.3 God commanded the slaughter of entire cities, including children
The Hebrew Bible explicitly records God commanding the Israelites to commit herem (total destruction) against the Canaanite peoples, specifying that they must kill every man, woman, and child and "not...
3.4 God ordered the killing of infants and nursing babies
In 1 Samuel 15:3, God explicitly commands Saul to kill Amalekite "infants and nursing babies" (Hebrew: olel v'yoneq), a specific enumeration that cannot be dismissed as metaphor or collateral damage.
3.5 God commanded the killing of all boys and non-virgin women
Numbers 31 describes Moses commanding Israelite soldiers to kill every male child and every woman who had sexual relations with a man, while keeping all virgin girls "for yourselves."
3.6 God killed 70,000 people to punish their king
According to 2 Samuel 24, God sent a plague that killed 70,000 Israelites to punish David for conducting a census, yet the text explicitly states that God himself incited David to take the census in t...
3.7 God sent bears to maul children for name-calling
According to 2 Kings 2:23-24, when youths mocked the prophet Elisha by calling him "baldy," he cursed them in the name of the Lord, and two she-bears emerged from the woods and mauled 42 of them.
3.8 God killed a man for trying to stop the Ark from falling
According to 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Chronicles 13, when the oxen stumbled while transporting the Ark of the Covenant, Uzzah reached out to steady it and was immediately struck dead by God for touching the s...
3.9 God told Abraham to kill his own son
Genesis 22 describes God commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering, a test that Abraham obeyed without protest until an angel intervened at the last moment.
3.10 God killed a woman for looking over her shoulder
According to Genesis 19:26, when Lot's family fled the destruction of Sodom, his wife looked back and was instantly transformed into a pillar of salt.
3.11 God hardened a man's heart, then punished him for it
The Exodus narrative explicitly states that God hardened Pharaoh's heart to prevent him from releasing the Israelites, then punished Pharaoh and all of Egypt for the very refusal God caused.
3.12 God had a man executed for picking up sticks on Saturday
Numbers 15:32-36 describes an Israelite man found gathering sticks on the Sabbath who was brought before Moses, detained, and then stoned to death by the entire congregation at God's direct command.
3.13 God killed David's baby for David's sin
In 2 Samuel 12, the prophet Nathan declares that David's newborn son will die as punishment for David's adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband Uriah, and the child dies after seven days of ...
3.14 God killed Job's ten children to settle a bet with Satan
The Book of Job opens with God initiating a conversation about Job's righteousness, and then giving Satan permission to destroy everything Job owns, including killing all ten of his children, to test ...
3.15 God killed two priests for burning the wrong incense
According to Leviticus 10, Nadab and Abihu, Aaron's sons and newly ordained priests, offered "unauthorized fire" before the Lord and were immediately consumed by divine fire on what appears to have be...
3.16 God opened the ground and swallowed entire families, including children
Numbers 16 describes Korah, Dathan, and Abiram leading a rebellion against Moses and Aaron, after which God caused the earth to split open and swallow the rebels and their entire households — wives, c...
3.17 God sent venomous snakes to kill people for complaining
According to Numbers 21:4-9, the Israelites complained about lack of food and water in the wilderness, and God responded by sending venomous snakes that bit and killed many of them.
3.18 God sent a plague that killed 14,700 people
After God killed Korah and his followers by opening the earth to swallow them alive and burning 250 men with fire, the Israelite community protested these killings, and God responded by sending a plag...
3.19 God sent a plague that killed 24,000 people for intermarrying
According to Numbers 25, God sent a plague that killed 24,000 Israelites because some Israelite men had sexual relations with Moabite women and participated in worship of Baal of Peor.
3.20 God killed Ananias and Sapphira for lying about a donation
According to Acts 5:1-11, Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property and secretly kept back part of the proceeds while claiming to give the full amount to the apostles. Both were struck dead by God...
3.21 God had seven of Saul's descendants hanged to end a famine
2 Samuel 21:1-14 describes God sending a three-year famine on Israel because of Saul's earlier massacre of the Gibeonites in violation of a 400-year-old treaty. When David asked the Gibeonites how to ...
3.22 God stopped the sun so Israel could keep killing
Joshua 10:12-14 describes God halting the sun and moon in the sky specifically so the Israelites could continue slaughtering fleeing Amorites, presenting divine intervention in the service of extended...
3.23 God's angel killed 185,000 soldiers in a single night
The Bible claims an angel killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers overnight during Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem in 701 BCE, but Assyrian records tell a different story: Sennacherib claims victory, extrac...
3.24 God sent a lying spirit to deceive a king
In 1 Kings 22, the prophet Micaiah describes a vision of God's heavenly court in which God asks who will entice King Ahab to go to battle and be killed; a spirit volunteers to be "a lying spirit in th...
3.25 God sent an evil spirit to torment Saul
According to 1 Samuel 16:14, after God rejected Saul as king, "the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him." The Hebrew phrase "ruach ra'ah me'et YHWH" ex...
3.26 God cursed all women with painful childbirth for Eve's sin
Genesis 3:16 declares that God increased the pain of childbirth for women as a consequence of Eve eating the forbidden fruit, applying this punishment to all women throughout history for one woman's a...
3.27 God threatened to smear feces on the priests' faces
Malachi 2:3 records God threatening to smear the dung (feces) from the priests' sacrificial animals on their faces and throw them onto the dung heap. The Hebrew word "peresh" unambiguously means excre...
3.28 God permits buying and owning people as permanent property
Leviticus 25:44-46 explicitly permits Israelites to purchase slaves from foreign nations, own them as permanent property, and bequeath them as inheritance to their children. This is chattel slavery by...
3.29 God allows beating your slave as long as they don't die
Exodus 21:20-21 explicitly permits slave owners to beat their male or female slaves with a rod, stating that if the slave survives for a day or two, the owner faces no punishment "since the slave is h...
3.30 God set a price for a father to sell his daughter
Exodus 21:7-11 provides detailed legal regulations for when a father sells his daughter as a servant, assuming the practice was legitimate and needed only to be regulated rather than prohibited.
3.31 God requires a rape victim to marry her attacker
Deuteronomy 22:28-29 mandates that a man who seizes and lies with an unbetrothed virgin must pay fifty shekels of silver to her father and marry her, with no right to ever divorce her.
3.32 God prescribed stoning for adultery, blasphemy, and homosexuality
The Mosaic Law prescribed death by stoning for adultery (Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 22:22), blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16), and male homosexual acts (Leviticus 20:13), among numerous other offenses.
3.33 God prescribed death for disobedient children
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 prescribes death by stoning for "stubborn and rebellious" sons who refuse to obey their parents. The parents bring the accusation to the elders, and the entire town executes the c...
3.34 God declared women unclean for menstruating
Leviticus 15:19-30 declares that menstruating women are ritually unclean for seven days, during which anyone who touches them or objects they sit or lie on also becomes unclean.
3.35 God commanded that a non-virgin bride be stoned to death
Deuteronomy 22:13-21 mandates execution by stoning for a bride who is found not to be a virgin on her wedding night, with the execution carried out publicly at her father's house as a community act.
3.36 God permitted soldiers to take captive women as wives
Deuteronomy 21:10-14 explicitly permits Israelite soldiers to take female war captives as wives after a one-month waiting period, during which the woman shaves her head, trims her nails, and mourns he...
3.37 God forbade disabled people from approaching the altar
Leviticus 21:16-23 explicitly prohibits priests with physical disabilities from approaching the altar or offering sacrifices, listing conditions including blindness, lameness, disfigurement, limb defo...
3.38 God permanently excluded men with crushed testicles from the assembly
Deuteronomy 23:1 states that "No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD." This exclusion applied to the religious community and was permane...
3.39 God commanded a woman's hand be cut off for grabbing a man's genitals in a fight
Deuteronomy 25:11-12 commands that if a woman seizes a man's genitals while defending her husband in a fight, "you shall cut off her hand" and "show her no pity." The command prescribes permanent muti...
3.40 God punishes children for their parents' sins to the third and fourth generation
The Bible explicitly states in multiple passages that God visits the sins of the parents upon the children to the third and fourth generation, most notably in the Ten Commandments and other foundation...
3.41 God calls himself jealous
The Bible explicitly states that God is jealous at least fifteen times, using the Hebrew word qanna, which appears exclusively in reference to God and is related to the word for zeal or passion.
3.42 God says he creates calamity
Isaiah 45:7 explicitly states: "I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the LORD, do all these things." The Hebrew word for calamity, "ra," is the same word used through...
3.43 God hates people before they do anything bad
In Romans 9:10-13, Paul states that before Jacob and Esau were born or had done anything good or bad, God declared "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated," quoting from Malachi 1:2-3.
3.44 God regretted making people
Genesis 6:6 states that God "regretted that he had made man on the earth" before the flood, using the Hebrew word nacham which means to regret, repent, or grieve. The same word appears in 1 Samuel 15,...
3.45 God takes credit for making people deaf, blind, and mute
In Exodus 4:11, God explicitly claims responsibility for making people deaf, mute, and blind, saying "Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD?"
3.46 God says I will laugh at your calamity
Proverbs 1:26 depicts Lady Wisdom declaring "I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear comes," and this Wisdom figure is closely identified with God himself in the text.
3.47 God chose one nation and rejected all others
The Bible explicitly states that God chose Israel as His treasured people from among all nations, entering into an exclusive covenant relationship with them while other nations remained outside this c...
3.48 God predetermined who would be saved and who would be damned
The New Testament explicitly states that God chose certain people for salvation before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-5) and predestined them to adoption as his children, while vessels pre...
3.49 God deliberately deceives people so they will be condemned
According to 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12, God sends "a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie" in order that "all will be condemned who have not believed the truth." The Greek text explicitly...
3.50 Most people go to destruction
Jesus explicitly taught that the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and many will enter by it, while the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and few will fi...
3.51 God prepared a place of eternal fire
The New Testament explicitly states that God prepared eternal fire as punishment before creating humanity, describing it as a place where "the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched."
3.52 Everyone dies because of one man's mistake
Christian theology teaches that all humans inherit both the consequences and, according to many traditions, the guilt of Adam's sin in the Garden of Eden—a doctrine known as original sin.
3.53 Women must be silent
1 Timothy 2:11-15 explicitly forbids women from teaching or exercising authority over men, requiring them to "learn in silence with full submission" and justifying this prohibition by appealing to the...
3.54 Slaves should obey their masters
The New Testament contains at least five separate passages explicitly instructing slaves to obey their masters, including directives to obey even harsh and unjust masters.
3.56 Jesus said he came to turn families against each other
In Matthew 10:34-37, Jesus explicitly states "I did not come to bring peace, but a sword" and says he came to turn family members against each other, quoting Micah 7:6 about household enemies.
3.57 Jesus said you must hate your family to follow him
In Luke 14:26, Jesus explicitly states: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my d...
3.58 Jesus compared a Canaanite woman to a dog
When a Canaanite woman begged Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter, he initially refused and said, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs" (Matthew 15:26), compari...
3.59 Jesus cursed a tree for not bearing fruit out of season
Mark and Matthew both record that Jesus cursed a fig tree for not bearing fruit. Mark explicitly states "it was not the season for figs," yet Jesus punished the tree anyway, causing it to wither and d...