Three problems for Christians

Matthew 16:27-28:
*"For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”*

Christ predicted his second coming would occur very soon after his death. That never took place. Revelations was a metaphorical prediction of the fall of Rome, written as metaphor because Christians could not openly criticize Rome at the time for fear of persecution. Everywhere in the New Testament that Christ discusses his second coming, it is explicitly said to be imminent, not 2,000+ years later.

*"…he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else. It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible."*
—C. S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1973), 98. (Post-conversion)

**Pre-emptive answers to common objections:**

1. “No one knows the day or the hour” means that the date cannot be known precisely. However, that does not stop Jesus from repeatedly giving a general timeframe of several decades within which to expect his second coming.

2. It can't be interpreted to mean you and I as metaphorical apostles because he specifically says "some of you standing here", as in the people he was talking to at that time. The full context reinforces that, he was speaking to disciples who accompanied him to Caesar Phillipi who wanted to know how they would recognize the second coming.

3. It can't be interpreted as referring to the transfiguration because the events described in verse 27 don't happen at the transfiguration (Jesus, God and angels coming from the clouds, judging mankind according to their deeds).

4. Daniel's visions don't satisfy the claim either because while they depict seven apocalyptic creatures (representing kingdoms that ruled over the Jews up to that point) nowhere does Daniel's vision describe Christ's return.

5. The 666/616 gematria code known as the number of the Beast must mean Nero/Neron, because only that name fits both 666 (Nero) and 616 (Neron). Source: http://www.math.harvard.edu/~elkies/mp666.html.  This is because the book of Revelations was intended to metaphorically describe the fall of Rome, in a time when Christians could not openly predict it.

6. It's true that some of the events Christ said must occur before his second coming have not yet occurred. However, submitting this as proof that Christ must have meant something else in the verses supplied above presupposes that he actually was clairvoyant, instead of simply being wrong about those predictions too, because he was a regular human being without the ability to see the future.

7. For those who say that no Christian tastes death but lives on forever, it is clear Christ meant bodily death by other verses wherein he tells his traveling companions which signs they may personally expect to witness as his second coming approaches. They, according to Christ, should anticipate those signs within their lifetimes and would know by those signs that his second coming was imminent.

8. Jesus’ resurrection does not fit the criteria supplied by the verse because he did not, on that occasion, “come in his Father’s glory with his angels, andl reward each person according to what they have done.” By that description it’s clear he is referring to his second coming, as explored more thoroughly in Revelations.

There's more than just that one verse confirming it, there are several which all say the same basic thing in different wording. One example is Matthew 24:32-34: "Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near; at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place."

Those are just the verses that spell it out explicitly. The entirety of Matthew through John, wherever Christ speaks of his return he does it in language that makes it clear he expects it to be IMMINENT. (A good example of this is in 1 John 2:18, where Christ urges the followers he is writing to: “18 Children, ait is the last hour, and as you have heard that bantichrist is coming, so nowcmany antichrists have come. dTherefore we know that it is the last hour.”) Over and over he stresses to them that they should not to make long term plans, not to go on living in the world as if it will still be here for the rest of their lives, and to look for specific signs that they specifically can expect to see shortly after his crucifixion.

This was committed to writing a few decades after Christ's death by people who still believed they were living in a window of time that was consistent with what Christ predicted for his return. Then it just never got changed, because of the freezing effect of orthodoxy on preserving the contents of a holy text. It was just continually reinterpreted in a way to make it seem like Jesus wasn't wrong.


**Section 2**

It is sometimes claimed that Genesis is not meant to be taken literally, and in fact closely matches up with (and is a metaphorical description of) the actual processes now understood to have resulted in the formation of the universe, the Earth and life on it.

However, Genesis asserts that the Earth existed before the sun, the sun before all other stars, trees and other land vegetation before sea creatures and birds before land animals.

It’s also very telling that each day’s worth of creation events is followed by “the evening and morning” of the next day according to scripture, things that literal days have which “indeterminate periods of time” do not. On top of which Genesis 1:4-5 defines what a yom/day is and what distinguishes it from night, making it very clear from the context that they intended 'yom' to mean a literal day rather than 'eon' or something.

Further frustrating efforts to misrepresent Genesis as metaphor, the geneaology provided early in the OT traces all the way back to Adam and Eve. Unless we're to believe that geneaology is metaphorical (whatever that could possibly mean) this confirms that they believed Adam and Eve were real people from whom mankind descended, and by extension that Genesis accurately describes how humans came into existence. It can (and does) have additional metaphorical layers of meaning on top of that, but they aren't free license to dismiss the fact that the literal meaning underneath is factually incorrect, yet supposedly the product of divine revelation.

To recap: Yes, the Hebrew "yom" can mean an indefinite period of work, but it can also mean a literal day. To figure out which was meant, we should examine the context. In the context of Genesis 1:4-5 where God creates separates day (yom) from night, and the evening and then morning of the first day follows, it's quite clear the authors were referring to literal days which have evenings and mornings rather than indefinite work periods which don't:

"3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day."

To expand on the fourth paragraph, the genealogy provided later traces back to Adam and Eve as literal ancestors. This by extension confirms that the story of Adam and Eve in the garden is something ancient Jews and later Christians sincerely believed to have occurred. Indeed, if it didn't occur then Adam never incurred original sin by eating of the tree. Which means we did not inherit original sin and Christ died for nothing on the cross. A literal Genesis account is a load bearing pillar, without which the rest of Christian theology collapses.

Moderate Christians are lying to themselves about the intended meaning of Genesis because the obvious errors in it embarrass them. Anything possible to flatly disprove is “strategically reinterpreted” as metaphorical.

**Section 3**

...If memories are stored as patterns of neuronal connections
http://www.livescience.com/32798-how-are-memories-stored-in-the-brain.html

...And emotions are neurochemical reactions
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-05/aps-lai053105.php

...and personality, i.e. how you react differently from another person to the same thing because of different past experiences, is neurological
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100622142601.htm

Then what does the soul do? Or, if neuroscience is wrong about everything, and the soul does all of the things above, then what do we need brains for? If our soul includes none of what makes us distinctly who we are, how can it be said that anybody goes to an afterlife?


From these arguments we can conclude:

1. The Bible makes claims about nature which the authors meant literally, but which have since been disproven by science.
2. There is no soul, or afterlife that anybody will go to in any meaningful sense.
3. Christ was not divine. As Christian theology holds that Christ and Yahweh are one in the same essence, by extension, Yahweh does not exist.