Questions for Catholics

What is the evidence that a single, infinite, supernatural, all-powerful, unmoved, intentional agent exists and created the universe for a purpose?

What is the evidence that a personal god exists, created the universe, and acts in the world on a daily basis to serve our interests and respond to our pleas?

What is the evidence that the god described in the Bible exists, created the entire universe in six days for the sole purpose of being worshipped by human beings on Earth, changes, does not change, punishes children for their parents' sins, does not punish children for their parents' sins, tempts people, does not tempt people, cares whether you believe in it, does not care whether you believe in it, wants people to be killed, does not want people to be killed, supports slavery, opposes slavery, loves gay people, hates gay people, is good, creates evil, can be seen, cannot be seen, dwells in the light, dwells in darkness, demands human sacrifice, does not accept human sacrifice, knows the future, has free will, supports war, supports peace, feels transient feelings, exists outside of time and space, can do anything logically possible, cannot defeat Satan or people who have chariots made out of iron, cannot have multiple sons, makes no mistakes, regrets mistakes, has a face, has a right hand, gets jealous, cares about the condition of the testicles of sacrificed animals, cares about how to make curtains and underwear for priests, hates foreskins, chose a method of incarnation common throughout mythology, reads your thoughts and judges you for them, has a master plan, responds to our pleas, loses its temper, acts in the world on a daily basis to serve our interests, and defined, by direct, transcendental inspiration of many different, unrelated, anonymous human authors, the rules, rewards and penalties for our behavior in precisely those ancient texts chosen out of many candidate texts by a particular group of primitive, fallible human clerics for inclusion in the Bible?

If God exists, wants everyone to know it, is able to provide convincing proof to everyone, and was willing to provide such proof to a few ancient Jews, why is non-belief in God and mistaken belief in the wrong gods so widespread? Why isn't God's existence obvious to everyone? If God was once willing and able, why did it stop doing obvious miracles like pausing the Earth's rotation and parting the sea? Does God remain concealed and uncertain to us in order to not compromise our free will? How can Satan have both free will and certainty of God's existence?

If God made the universe, what made God? Is the complexity of a thing compelling evidence to you that a creator created it? Must something be more complex than the things it creates? Would a creator of the universe be more complex than the universe? If it's possible for God to lack a beginning, why can't the universe? If one unmoved, uncreated god can exist, could twenty-seven thousand two-hundred and forty-one of them also exist?

If there is a bulletproof argument for the existence of God, why is it not the very first thing every apologist says when debating for the existence of God?

What is the evidence that Hell, Satan and Purgatory exist? How did "Satan" transform from a conceptual inclination to do evil in ancient Jewish times to a theatrical comic relief character in the Middle Ages to a cunning and terrifying tormentor in modern times? If Satan likes evil and you do evil things, does it make more sense that it would punish you or reward you? Is it evil to kill people with floods, plagues and armies? How many people did Satan kill with floods, plagues and armies? How many people did God kill with floods, plagues and armies? If Jesus was God and knew it and Satan as a fallen angel also knew that Jesus was God, why would Satan tempt Jesus with offers to give him some of the things in a universe that Jesus himself had entirely made and therefore already possessed? What is the benefit of torturing a soul in a lake of fire (Matt 18:8) for eternity? Who receives the benefit? If Hell is outside of space and time, then how can someone suffer in Hell for an infinite amount of time?

What is the evidence that Jesus of Nazareth existed? What is the evidence that he performed miracles? Do you support the mainstream, independent scholarly consensus that Jesus existed? Do you support the consensus of these same scholars that Jesus was an ordinary mortal and that no prophecies were fulfilled? What did Philo of Alexandria, Epictitus, Martial, Juvenal, Pliny the Elder, Seneca, Gallio, Justus of Tiberias, Nicholaus of Damascus, or any other non-Christian contemporary of Jesus say about him? Why didn't any non-Christian contemporary of Jesus report the resurrection of more people during the time of the New Testament than were said to have been resurrected in the entire Old Testament?

What is the difference between a thing for which there is insufficient evidence and a non-existent thing?

Do you care whether the things you believe are true?

If faith can lead different people to reach different, conflicting conclusions about what is true, how can faith be a reliable method for determining what is true?

In determining what is true, do you value faith or reason more? Are feelings or intellect more important to you as personality traits? How can a matter be resolved between two people when their positions on an issue are based only on feelings and their feelings are different? What does "faith transcends reason" mean? How is "transcending reason" different from "evading reason"? What are you able to reliably predict using religious truth claims that you cannot reliably predict using science and reason?

How is sincere faith in the characters of an ancient text more legitimate than sincere faith in a jug of milk?

What is the difference between faith and superstition? between a religion and a cult? between miracles and magic?

Do you value reason and evidence? Can you name anything that poses a greater threat to a rational, evidence-based worldview than religion?

Why does God want to destroy wisdom and cleverness (1 Cor 1:19), and forbid knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:9) but there is nothing written in the Bible in praise of human intelligence? Did the originators of the Bible stories have anything to gain if their listeners just followed them without thinking critically? How could God create a scientific marvel like the universe and create us in its image but discourage scientific inquiry?

Do you agree with Jesus that people who believe something without proof are blessed (John 20:29)? When is it best to accept something without proof and when is it best to require proof before accepting something? What is evil and adulterous, as Jesus claimed, about people who ask for evidence (Matt 12:39)? Every one of the Eleven and Paul believed only after perceiving something extraordinary. What is wrong with the rest of us insisting on seeing clear evidence? Do you believe that God will reveal itself to anyone who sincerely asks?

If faith means believing things without sufficient evidence and gullibility means believing things without sufficient evidence, what is the difference between faith and gullibility?

Do you think you can handle snakes and drink poison safely if you have faith (Mark 16:18)?

Is it virtuous for you to accept dogma without asking questions and obtaining evidence? Is it virtuous for a suicide bomber to accept dogma without asking questions and obtaining evidence?

If God wanted more than anything else for people to believe things without evidence that are in fact true, why would it create people with the credulity to believe charlatans who claim to speak for God but do not and other people whose critical thinking skills make them skeptical of the existence of God? How can you choose to believe something? If you pretend to believe in God would God know that you are just pretending? If you believe you are Napoleon on no evidence should you be institutionalized?

What is the difference between believing something and believing it in your heart? Why do people believe things in their hearts and not their small intestines which contain more neurons than any organ other than the brain? How are you able to tell in which organ your believing is happening? Does Jesus speak to your heart? How do you know which organ he is talking to? Do your ears hear it too? Why do religious instructors speak in metaphors when using plain language is possible and would be clearer?

How can Jesus be in your heart? What does "Jesus is in your heart" literally mean? How can priests and holy people suffer heart attacks while Jesus is in there with his healing powers?

If your feeling is the proof of Jesus speaking to you, is a Hindu's identical feeling proof that Ishvara is speaking to her?

If religious texts were all lost and teachings forgotten would their truth claims return in a thousand years? If science books were all lost and teachings forgotten would their truth claims return in a thousand years?

Throughout history people have unanimously credited things to God that were later explained by science - everyone knew that the earth was flat, that disease was caused by demons, and that thunder happened because the gods were angry. What is different about the things that you credit to God? Why has the opposite never happened - something is first given a scientific explanation that is later replaced with a supernatural explanation? Why isn't our understanding of the supernatural world any better today than it was millennia ago?

Why are you so sure that Christian beliefs are true and other beliefs are false? Why are you so sure that Roman Catholic beliefs are true and those of the other 30,000 Christian sects are wrong? The vast majority of religious adults follow the religion of their parents. If your parents had been a different religion and you were born in a country of predominantly that religion, do you think you would be Christian or that other religion? If Osama bin Laden had had your parents instead of his parents, would it have been more likely that he be Christian?

Thousands of people reported eyewitness testimony that Guru Sathya Sai Baba, born in 1926, could walk on water, raise the dead, fly without technology, materialize objects, read minds, and foretell the future. He claimed to have been born of a virgin. A million people showed up for his birthday party. Do you believe the supernatural reports about him? Do you believe that Apollonius of Tyana had a miraculous birth, was the son of God, could cast out demons, heal the sick, and raise the dead and that he ascended into Heaven? Do you believe that Guru Sri Yukteswar came back from the dead and appeared to his disciple Paramhansa Yogananda?

Do you believe in the existence of the god of the Bible (Yahweh/Jehovah/Allah)? Why don't you believe in Thor, Ra, Vishnu, Zeus or the other 6,000 gods?

If people did not make up their gods, why are there multiple religions?

Why is there no example of the same religion arising independently in two different places?

If God's nature is incomprehensible and God's ways are mysterious, then why bother trying to comprehend/solve them? How can any fallible human be trusted if he claims knowledge and comprehension of God's nature? or God's plan? or what God likes? or what God wants you to do? How can you believe in something without even comprehending what you believe in?

Does God know everything? If there is something God does not know, how would it know about it? Why would an all-knowing god not know where Satan came from (Job 1:6)? or where Adam was (Gen 3:9)? When God bet Satan that Job would turn against him, did God know in advance that Job would remain loyal, meaning that God ruined Job for no reason? Why would an omniscient god need to conduct any tests of loyalty at all? Why didn't Jesus know that the fig tree did not have any figs (Mark 11:13)? How can God know what the future holds but also have the option to change things that affect the future? Does it know in advance which future-affecting changes it will choose to make? If the future is knowable, how is free will possible?

Is God everywhere? If God is everywhere how is it possible to be separated from God in Hell? If you can't see, hear, smell, taste or touch God, how would you know whether you are separated from it?

Is God due credit for everything good? Is God due blame for everything bad? If a soldier steps on a landmine and loses a leg, should he blame God for not protecting the leg or should he thank God for protecting the other leg? If a pandemic takes 3 billion lives should God be blamed for the deaths or thanked for the survivals? Did God make flowers? Did God make the Ebola virus? If you work really hard and achieve a goal, does God deserve any of the credit? If you fail to achieve the goal, does God deserve credit for that?

Why would a god that insists that the only route to eternal salvation is through it only reveal itself to a small group of people in one geographical area, at a time when worldwide communication wasn't possible, meaning that millions of people all over the world were doomed to Hell or Limbo through no fault of their own?

Who wrote the Bible? Who wrote the canonical Gospels? When? Where? Do you think that the Gospels were written by the Apostles, eyewitnesses or associates of eyewitnesses? Why don't most Biblical scholars think so? Why are the Gospels written in the third person and not the first person? Why does the author of John admit to not being an eyewitness (John 21:24)? Why didn't Jesus himself just keep a journal that clearly condemned ethnic cleansing, slavery, and using torture to extract heresy confessions, and then put it somewhere that he knew it would be found? If you were an omniscient deity with a message to spread to the world and you were incarnate at a time after the establishment of written language, would you let decades pass before your message was written down? Would you inscribe it onto fragile rolls of leather and leave its compilation into a single volume up to the fallible forces of human argumentation? Why does the Catholic Church wait until seminary rather than Sunday School to teach the Bible recension?

Why would God choose to reveal itself, not in literate, civilized China where people could have an intellectual evaluation of the evidence, but to the most illiterate, superstitious desert people in the Middle East? Why would God wait for 100,000 to 250,000 years of human history to reveal itself but not wait another 2,000 years for the invention of video and audio recording devices?

What does "the Bible was inspired" literally mean? What makes you think the Gospel of Mark is the inspired Word of God? What makes you think the Gospel of Peter is not the inspired Word of God?

Do you think that God actually spoke to the people who say so without any corroboration? Do you think that God actually dictated ten rules to someone named Moses who lived thousands of years ago? Do you think that God actually told George W. Bush to invade Iraq as he claims? Do you think that God actually told George W. Bush, Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee, Herman Cain, Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, Ben Carson, and Rick Perry to run for president as they claimed? Do you think that God actually speaks to televangelist Pat Robertson and televangelist convicted of felony fraud Jim Bakker as they often claim? Do you think that God actually told former South Carolina Republican Party leader Todd KinCannon to strangle, stab to death and mutilate his mother's beagle as he claimed? If someone you personally knew told you that the voice of God told him to kill and burn his own son, would you believe him? Would you believe this claim more if you instead read it about someone you didn't know in an ancient book of unknown origin?

Do you think that God actually told Ezekiel to lie for 430 days tied up in rope on his side in front of an iron pan in front of a brick with a drawing of Jerusalem on it, lay siege to the Jerusalem drawing, cook barley cake over a fire of human dung, and switch to cow dung because he had never eaten something that had died of natural causes or was killed by another animal (Ezekiel 4:1-15)?

Is it more likely that the creator of the universe took the time to immortalize in the most important book of all time how annoying a nagging wife is, or that this was written by an annoyed husband without any divine inspiration (Proverbs 27:25-26)? Is it more likely that humans invented swords in the Bronze Age and included their invention in their creation myth or that God created the first sword at the beginning of time (Gen 3:24)?

Do you think that the adulteress story, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her”, was part of the original Bible (John 8:1-11)? Why don't most mainstream scholars think so?

Which do you consider a more credible source - peer-reviewed, reproducible studies published in scientific journals, or tales from ancient goat herders (at a time when demons caused epilepsy, burnt offerings made it rain, medical cures included mandrakes and dove blood, angels and ghosts appeared to people in dreams and supernatural beings abounded and not infrequently crossed over from their world to ours) mutated through centuries of the telephone game, sexism, illiteracy, homophobia, racism, translation, manual transcription and political opportunism, and recorded, redacted and edited decades or centuries after the fact by people whose superstition had them burying babies in construction sites for good luck?

Does the inclusion of embarrassing stories in the Bible mean that it is true? Is the inclusion of the embarrassing castration of Attis in stories about him proof that this god is real and those stories are true?

Does the inclusion of some novel components of the Biblical stories prove that they are true? Do the novel ideas of magic underwear and golden tablets prove that Mormonism is true?

Do you find it compelling evidence that the Bible reports 500 anonymous people seeing a resurrected Jesus? Do you find it compelling evidence that there are signed affidavits from 12 known Mormon eyewitnesses stating that they saw the Golden Tablets, three of whom state that they saw the angel Moroni? Do you find it compelling evidence that an ancient book reports that 3,000,000 ancient Jews heard Yahweh speak to them at Sinai and tell them that He would never take the form of a man?

If any one statement or story in the Bible is impossible is everything in it questionable? Who recorded the private conversation in Job between God and Satan, or the private conversation between Pilate and Jesus in which Jesus said that his kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36)? How could the exchange have happened between Jesus and Nicodemus over the ambiguous idea of being "born again" (John 3:3-8) when the dual-meaning Greek word "anothen" cannot be retroverted into Aramaic with the same confusing double-entendre? If it is too cold in Jerusalem for date palms to grow, how did the crowd get palm branches to greet Jesus (John 12:13)? What distinguishes what is questionable from what is not?

If God was able to create the universe by itself why did it need help from people to write a book? to evangelize? to get pregnant mothers to view prenatal sonograms? to torture accused heretics in order to extract confessions? Why would the creator of the universe need to stick fingers into someone’s ears to magically heal his deafness (Mark 7:33), or put mud on his eyes to make him see (John 9:15)? Why didn't Jesus just expel the demons directly into oblivion without putting them into innocent pigs that then fled into a lake and drowned (Matt 8:28-34)? Are these stories more likely to be factual accounts or literary flourishes? Why would God need people to put blood on their door frames in order to know which of them are Jewish so that it didn't murder the wrong innocent, firstborn children (Exodus 12:13)? What good came from killing the innocent firstborn sons of non-Jewish Egyptian slaves? Instead of killing all the innocent firstborns and sending all the plagues, why didn't God just kill the Pharaoh, or better yet - persuade him with a dream, or even better yet still - simply not harden his heart and just allow him to free the Israelites as he would have otherwise done (Exodus 4:21)?

If oral tradition was so high fidelity in ancient times, why didn't God just include the unambiguous details of foretold events instead of using vague language of a short-lived literary genre that could be interpreted many different ways? If scriptures are definitively interpretable by modern day clergy who communicate their accurate interpretations to their followers, why didn't God's authors just write the scriptures so that they didn't need to be interpreted? Does God like poetic manners of expression and sectarian violence more than peace and clear understanding?

If it was able to find unambiguous words, why would God inspire the Bible authors to use vague riddles that predictably led to conflicting interpretations? Where did God say which parts are factual and which are symbolic or that any of it is symbolic? How can one of many conflicting, subjective, symbolic interpretations of something count as proof of anything at all? If newspaper writers use third-grade level words to ensure that most readers can understand their meanings, why would God inspire a book to be written in a way that can only be properly understood with the help of many other books, functional literacy in Greek, years of theological training and guidance from religious professionals? Why don't Catholics read the Bible as much as Protestants do? Why for the majority of the history of Christendom were ordinary Christians forbidden by the Church from reading the Bible?

How do you decide which parts of the Bible to interpret literally and which are metaphors? Was the Bible interpreted metaphorically before the rise of literal Fundamentalism in the 20th Century? Did Christians prior to that time interpret the resurrection, virgin birth, walking on water, and water-to-wine transformation stories metaphorically too? Why is "eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood" (John 6:53) interpreted so literally that the transubstantiation is actually a doctrine and the Eucharist is the most important thing in a Catholic mass? Do you think cannibalism is fundamentally disordered? Throughout the history of the Catholic Church people have taken extraordinary Bible passages literally that were later interpreted symbolically. What is different about the extraordinary Bible passages that you take literally?

If the Bible is the inerrant word of God and if oral tradition was so high-fidelity in ancient times, why are there so many contradictions? See bibviz.com. Did Jesus die the day before the Passover (John 19:31) or the day after the Passover (Mark 14:12)? Was Mary Magdalene informed of the resurrection by an angel (Matt 28:5) or by Jesus (John 20:14)? Was Jehoiachin eighteen (2 Kings 24:8) or eight (2 Chron 36:9) when he became king? Was Ahaziah twenty-two (2 Kings 8:26) or forty-two (2 Chron 22:2) when he began to reign? Did Paul's companions hear the voice (Acts 9:7) or not hear the voice (Acts 22:9) during Paul's conversion experience? Was the stone rolled away before (John 20:1) or after (Matt 28:1-2) the women arrived at the tomb? Do you consider the inconsistencies in holy books of other religions to be good arguments against their claims of divine authority? For example, in Surah 1:1 of the Qur'an, Allah is called most merciful. In Surah 24:2 Allah gives no mercy to pregnant women. Do you find this contradiction a good argument against the divine inerrancy of the Qur'an? If the fallibility of lowly human scribes could produce inaccuracies in the Bible, why trust that powerful and motivated Satan did not likewise doctor it all up?

Do you think the Sermon on the Mount was scribed verbatim decades after the event by someone who wasn't there? Do you think that anyone could in 2018 without any notes, records or personal memory of the event accurately write down Gerald Ford's first State of the Union address?

Does the Bible contain a single sentence that could not have been written by ancient humans without supernatural help? If the Bible is the inspired word of an all-knowing God, why is there nothing mentioned about electricity, or places beyond the Middle East or germ theory or flush toilets or anything that we now know to be true thanks to our modern capabilities but would have been impossible for primitive people in the Middle East to know without modern scientific methods or insight from an all-knowing god who doesn't want people to suffer? To the contrary, why does the Bible make claims, such as: seeds die before becoming a plant (1 Cor 15:36), the world is flat (Matt 4:8) and is covered by a big metal colander (Gen 1:6-8) and was created before the Sun (Gen 1:1-16), bats are birds (Leviticus 11:13-19), insects have four legs (Lev 11:20-23), rabbits chew the cud (Leviticus 11:6), mustard seeds are the smallest (Matthew 13:32), ants are fully autonomous (Proverbs 6:6-8), the value of Pi is 3.0 (2 Chronicles 4:2-5), stars are smaller than the Earth (Rev 6:13, Rev 8:10), and Earth is a quadrilateral (Rev 7:1) that we now know are not true but were believed in ancient times? Why did Jesus defend his disciples' failure to wash hands before eating when he had the opportunity to teach the world about germs and save millions of lives (Mark 7:15)?

If a person doesn't ask to be born, and he only sins in order to meet needs that result from being born, what is the justice in his eternal torture? Why would an omniscient, loving god create a soul it knows will suffer in Hell for all eternity?

If Hell exists, and odds are that you are going there (Matt 7:13-14) to spend eternity burning in its lake of fire (Matt 10:28, Matt 13:50, Matt 18:8, Matt 25:46, 2 Thes 1:9, Rev 21:8, ...), or even a greater than zero chance, why would you risk it and do anything other than pray during every waking moment of your entire, brief life on Earth? If there were even a remote chance that it would help, why would you not sell all of your possessions and give the money to the poor (Luke 12:33)? Why would God make the evidence of the existence of Hell so weak that nobody does this? How much sleep have you lost worrying about suffering for eternity in Hell for not worshipping Allah in the manner mandated in the Qur'an?

If Hell exists and eternal damnation is highly likely or even just possible, how can you justify having children? Should non-Christians stop having children if the probability of their conversion is less than 10%? less than 1%?

Is life primarily just a test? With eternity being so much longer than the average human lifespan, is the goal of every action you take during your short time on Earth ultimately to secure for yourself a heavenly eternal afterlife? If it were proven that there is no afterlife, how would you live your life differently? How well would society function if the only things anyone did were to pray and worship?

Without the Bible's foundational threat of eternal burning in a lake of fire (Matt 18:8, Rev 21:8, ...), how would you treat people differently?

Why is there only one eternal reward and one eternal punishment even though there are as many different degrees of moral rectitude as there are people? If someone has committed a mortal sin, what is his incentive not to commit a million more mortal sins? Why are judges in courts of law given any discretion in sentencing? If two people take the Lord's name in vain and then one of them dies before she has time to ask God for forgiveness and the other asks for forgiveness the next day and then dies, does the first one go to Hell to be tortured in a lake of fire for all eternity (Matt 18:8, Rev 21:8) and the second go to Heaven for all eternity? Are souls in Hell liberated to Heaven when the Church leaders revise Catholic doctrine to declassify mortal sins?

Do you think that Einstein, Gandhi, Malala and everyone who does not pledge allegiance to Jesus are tortured for eternity in a lake of fire (Matt 18:8)?

Do you think that Charles Manson who repented before his death and every serial killer who pledges allegiance to Jesus go to Heaven?

Do you believe in a god that punishes honest atheists who take the question of its existence seriously enough to reject it when they don't see it supported, and at the same time rewards insincere religionists who profess belief in order to avoid eternal personal suffering?

Is God good? How can you use human standards of morality to establish that God is good if God cannot be judged by human standards of morality?

How can God serve as a model for morality if it starved people, sent plagues, created drought, caused military disaster and killed people to get them to worship it (Amos 4:6-11)? Should we do the same to people in order to get them to like us?

If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to the defense of her husband, and she reaches out and seizes his foe by the private parts do you think the morally appropriate thing is to cut off her hand (Deut 25:11)?

Why would a loving god allow 8,000 children to die of starvation every day? create childhood leukemia, malaria, viruses, epidermolysis bullosa (an affliction that makes your skin so fragile that it tears at the slightest touch causing a child to suffer constantly and die young), appendicitis (a deadly malfunction of an organ that we do not need), and trachoma (a disease that causes your eyelashes to grow on the inside so they scrape your eyes every time you blink until you are blind)? command people to throw stones at their loved ones until they are dead (Deut 13:7-12)? kill the guy who was helping transport the ark of the covenant because he grabbed it to keep it from falling when the oxen stumbled (2 Samuel 6:1-7)? curse the Anathoths to die by the sword or starvation (Jeremiah 11:21:23)? help Joshua to utterly destroy every man and woman, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys in the city of Jericho, but to keep all the gold and linens (Joshua 6:1-27)? smite 50,070 men of Beth-Shemesh for looking at the ark of the covenant (1 Samuel 6:19)? curse someone's innocent children to wander in the wilderness for forty years (Numbers 14:33-34)? ruin a good man for no reason (Job 2:3)? curse someone to eat their own family members (Lev 26:27-29, Deut 28:53, 57, Ezekiel 5:10, Jeremiah 19:9, Lamentations 2:20)? raise up evil against David (2 Samuel 12:11)? bless those who dash children against rocks (Psalm 137:9, Hosea 13:16, )? demand human sacrifice of firstborn sons (Exodus 22:29)? give people rules that they could not follow and make them sacrifice their first borns so that they knew that it was lord (Ezekiel 20:25-26)?

Why would a loving god order an army to kill all the boys and every woman who has slept with a man, and to save for themselves every girl who has never slept with a man (Numbers 31:17-18)? How did they find out which girls had slept with a man? How does God feel about child sex slavery? If God said to spare the virgin girls, not for use as sex slaves, but out of concern for their well-being having just had all their caregivers murdered, why not spare all the disabled people, little boys and seniors too? Is it evil for ISIS or Boko Haram to take sex slaves? How about Moses or Joshua?

Why wouldn't a loving god protect the 11 million people killed in the holocaust? the 75-200 million people killed by the Black Plague? the 50 million people killed in the 1918 influenza? the 10,000 to 100,000 worshipping men, women and children killed in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, tsunami and fires that struck on All Saints Day? Why, on a bet, would a loving god allow Satan to kill Job's whole family and then make him destitute (Job)? Why would a loving god help Jephthah slaughter the Ammonite men, women, children and babies in exchange for his murdering his only daughter (Judges 11:29:40)? Why didn't this same loving god send Gabriel to Jephthah with a last-minute order not to kill his child, as it did with Abraham? Why would a loving god want its followers to hate its enemies (Psalm 139:21-22)? Why would a loving god make people speak different languages to keep them from being able to work together (Gen 11:7)?

Why would a loving god deny entrance to the temple to anyone who is blind, lame, disfigured, deformed, crippled, hunchbacked, or dwarfish (Leviticus 21:17-23)? Why were men with damaged testicles or missing penises forbidden from entering congregation (Deut 23:1)? How does God feel about the disabled?

Why would a loving god for the first 100,000 to 250,000 and last 2,000 years of human history sit idly by and watch as people suffered? Do you think that the universe was created just for human beings, but for the first 14+ billion years and over the expanse of billions of billions of billions of cubic light years, save Earth, was devoid of these creatures for which it was expressly made?

Are moral right and wrong whatever God says they are or is morality determined independently of God? Would you kill or enslave someone if God told you to do it? Was the Nazi genocide of non-Aryans moral? Were the God-ordered Israelite genocides of the Amalekites, Girzites, Geshurites, Midianites, Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, including all of the children, moral (Exodus 23:23, Deut 20:17, 1 Sam 15:3)? Were these slaughtered people created by and loved unconditionally by God?

If right and wrong are whatever God says they are, why would Abraham have to teach God that it is not right to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah so long as there are at least ten righteous men there (Gen 18:25)? Why did Moses need to teach God that it's not right to murder all the Israelites who worshipped the golden calf instead of God (Ex 32:11-14)? Were God's initial plans (to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and murder the golden calf worshippers) mysterious ways or errant ways? Why did God destroy all the golden-calf worshippers before they had heard the commandment to not worship anything other than God? If morality precedes religion, then what value does assigning authorship of morality to a deity add to the morality that comes to you automatically by just dealing with people in life without being a psychopath? Is belief in Santa Claus necessary for children to behave kindly? Can you see any evolutionary advantage to being nice to people? If morality is objective and revealed by God through particular books, why do god-believers using the same books fall on both sides of moral issues like abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty? Can two people both be morally superior to each other if they take opposite moral positions on controversial issues?

Why do bonobos, babies and illiterate tribesmen in Papua New Guinea act kindly without having read the Bible? Why do atheists act kindly?

When the Gentile Canaanite woman asked for his help in curing her daughter, why did Jesus first ignore her then compare her to a dog in contrast to his followers whom he considered beloved children (Matt 15:21-26)?

Why did Jesus give tacit consent to the murder of people who refused to be his subjects (Luke 19:27)? If Jesus is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), why did he not come to bring peace but a sword (Matt 10:34), and why did he tell his followers to sell their cloaks and buy swords (Luke 22:36)?

Why did Peter magically murder the couple in his Christian commune for disobeying his order and keeping some of the proceeds when they sold the property that they owned (Acts 5:1-11).

If Jesus IS God, and not just a close begotten associate of God (John 10:30), how can this single, eternal, immutable character have at different periods of history such diametrically opposite positions on genocide, rape, tolerance, compassion, indifference to human suffering, war and peace?

Is it more moral for a society to recognize five genders as the Native Americans did before Christian colonization, or for a society to recognize only two genders and leave people who don't feel like either of them to live lives of persecution, self-loathing and alienation? Why do men have nipples?

Which of these is more virtuous: a person helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or a theist doing so because he thinks the creator of the universe wants him to do it, will reward him for doing it and will punish him for not doing it?

Which is morally worse: sending millions of people to labor and die in concentration camps for up to five years or sending hundreds of billions of people to Hell to suffer the most excruciating torture imaginable for eternity? Are all of the Jews who prayed to God every day and died in the holocaust but never pledged allegiance to Jesus currently burning in Hell for eternity?

Why is there indiscriminately-visited suffering in the world? Is it a punishment for sin (Amos 1:3, Isaiah 1:4), one of God's mysterious ways that is mysteriously in the best interest of the sufferer (Job 1:22), the action of forces of evil (Daniel and Revelations), or an unfortunate consequence of giving people free will? If we suffer because of The Fall, why do some suffer so much more than others when everyone was equally (not at all) responsible for The Fall? Do the souls in Heaven have free will without sinning or the possibility of a Fall? How and why is God able to make that work there, but not here on Earth? If the souls in Heaven don't sin because they don't have free will, and if making people on Earth robotic without free will would have been cruel during their short time on Earth, is it also cruel for God to do that to robotic, heavenly, unable-to-sin souls for all eternity? If there were no evil in the world, would you take that as evidence against the existence of God? Why does God allow children to suffer before they have reached the age of reason when a person is able to take responsibility for their decisions? Are you able to imagine a bigger-picture, God-view of reality in which thousands of children dying in a tsunami actually can be a good thing? Is anything possible with God? If it became possible to administer a vaccine without pain, would it still be moral to administer this vaccine with pain?

Is "God works in mysterious ways" an acceptable answer to critical questions? Is "Zalmoxis works in mysterious ways" an acceptable answer to critical questions? When a kindergarten is massacred by a white, Christian gunman, is that one of God's mysterious ways? Are you offending God by praying that kindergartens not be massacred anymore, in defiance of God's mysterious will?

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? If so, how can it be omnipotent? Is it able, but not willing? If so, how can it be benevolent? Is it both able and willing? If so, then why is there evil in the world? Is it neither able nor willing? If so, then why worship it?

Does God ever give us more than we can handle? Does God give people who die more than they can handle?

If you could either prevent child rape or punish the rapist afterwards (unless he repents), which would you do? Which does God do? If you could allow someone to suffer but make it up to her after she dies, or just prevent her suffering in the first place, which would you do? Which does God do? If you have an unpleasant life will your experience of Heaven be more pleasant than that of someone else who had a pleasant life? If you believe that all suffering will be offset after death, why bother working to reduce suffering during this life? Do you support the just-world hypothesis? On what evidence? Is it justice for 8,000 children to die of starvation every day?

Which US states have the highest percentage of believers? Which US states have the highest incidence of violent crime and lowest levels of education?

Which US states have the lowest percentage of believers? Which US states have the highest levels of education?

How many hate groups recognized by the Southern Poverty Law Center openly identify as Christian? How many identify as atheist?

Which countries have the lowest percentage of believers? Which countries contribute the highest percentage of their wealth to social welfare and foreign aid, and have the lowest CEO-employee pay disparities?

Do churchgoing Catholics spend more time and money on church attendance or helping the needy? Which is more important to God: stained glass church windows or well-fed veterans with safe places to sleep?

What benefit comes from the Church's ownership of billions of dollars worth of artwork? Who receives this benefit?

If priests take vows of poverty, why do they have rectory chefs, housekeepers, cars, paid international travel, retirement plans, and an overall higher standard of living than the poor and homeless?

Why did Pope Urban II launch the first of a series of crusades, pillaging, torturing, and murdering Jews and Muslims throughout Europe and the Middle East? Why did Pope Innocent IV officially authorize the creation of the Inquisition torture chambers where the children of heretics were burned or flogged while being forced to watch their parents burn? Why did Christian fanatic and Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne slaughter 4,500 pagan Saxon nobles in the Massacre of Verden? Why, after the Nazi decree of involuntary sterilization of minorities and the mentally ill and with knowledge of the Nazi death camps, did Pope Pius XII (then Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli) not speak out against the Nazis, but instead sign the Concordat treaty with them? Why did the Church require bishops to pledge loyalty to Hitler and celebrate Hitler's birthday? Why didn't the Catholic Church excommunicate Hitler? If Hitler wasn't religious, why did the belt buckles of Nazi uniforms display the words "Gott Mit Uns" (God with us)? Why did Hitler outlaw the German Free Thinkers League and convert its meeting hall to a Christian outreach center?

Why did the Catholic Church wait until 2000 to apologize for the Crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of Jews, injustice to women and the forced conversion of indigenous people? until 1999 to apologize for public square burning of Czech reformer Jan Hues? until 1995 for the African slave trade? until 1992 for the persecution of Galileo? until 1995 for the legalized torture during the counter-reformation? until 2016 for the incitement to murder by priests and nuns in the Rwanda genocide of 1994?

When will the Church apologize for signing the Concordat treaty with the Nazis which dissolved the Catholic opposition party? for signing the Lateran pact with Mussolini that pledged the Pope's perpetual neutrality in international relations? for the rule of Father Jozef Tiso in the Nazi puppet state in Slovakia and his aid in deporting Jews to extermination camps? for harboring Ante Pavelić, the banished fascist Ustaše Croatian leader and orchestrator of terror against Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-Fascist Croats and Bosniaks? for supporting Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and Portuguese president Antonio Salazar in their brutal authoritarian takeovers? for helping to provide free legal defense for Saddam Hussein's right-hand man and spokesman Tariq Aziz?

In 600 BCE, philosopher Thales said "Never do ourselves what we blame in others." In 500 BCE, Confucius said "Do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you"? Do you think that Jesus invented the Golden Rule? Is it better for a masochist to treat others as she would like to be treated or as the others would themselves like to be treated?

If you see someone respond peacefully to violence would you consider him to be acting in a "good Christian" manner or in a "good Jain" manner?

Do you think that apologizing to a priest reduces the debt to a person's victims? Do you think that waving a chicken over your head according to Jewish tradition does this? If God can hear your silent thoughts, why do you need to confess your sins to a priest? What business of a priest is it what sins you have committed? If a priest rapes a child and then goes to confession, is he back in a state of grace? If a raped child has an abortion and then goes to confession, is she back in a state of grace? If you commit a sin, why would you ask for forgiveness from God instead of the person you hurt by committing the sin? If your sin did not hurt anyone, what is the point of asking for forgiveness at all?

If Jesus were a living American voter would he be a Democrat or Republican? Liberal or Conservative? Based on his positions on which issues? What did Jesus, not Paul or anyone else who never met Jesus or anyone writing letters under the name of someone who never met Jesus (2 Thes 3:10) say about lazy poor people? What did Jesus say about greedy rich people (Mark 10:25)?

Can you name a wicked thing done by a moral person in the name of God? Would that person have done this thing anyway without religious motivation? Can you name a wicked thing done by a moral person without following a religious direction? What's something you can say or do that you couldn't say or do without believing in God?

If acceptable Catholic behavior from different times and places has varied so wildly that it has been used to justify atrocities, how can such a variably-interpretable thing as the Bible be a better eternal guide to moral conduct than the universal, timeless, unambiguous alternative concept of consent? Do you consider St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas to be bad theologians for having supported torture and murder, respectively, of heretics?

How could someone justify slavery if their morality were based on the principle of consent? How could they do it if their morality were based on a book containing a curse by God's chosen one of an entire lineage to a life of servitude (Gen 9:25)?

How could someone justify persecuting mixed race marriage if their morality were based on consent? How could they do it if their morality were based on a book containing a story of a loving, mixed race couple being skewered together with a spear and God's blessing (Numbers 25:8)?

How can someone justify punishment of a descendant for the actions of his ancestor if their principles of justice are based on personal accountability? How can someone do this if their principles of justice are based on an ancient book containing multiple instances of heritable covenants and curses?

Does lack of belief in god cause human suffering? Can you name an instance of suffering that was caused by excessive rational thought, skepticism or rejection of claims found to be unsupported by evidence? Can you name an instance of suffering that was caused by strict observance of ancient religious teachings?

In Timothy 6 of the official Catholic New American Standard Bible, Paul said that "slaves" (not "servants") should respect their masters and serve especially well if the masters are believers. Do you agree? Do you agree with Jesus that slaves should get more lashes if they knew what their masters wanted (Luke 12:47)?

Why did God prohibit eating shrimp (eight times), approve of slavery (Lev 25:44), and sanction beating slaves so badly that they die in three days (Ex 21:20)? And by fulfilling and not abolishing the law (Matt 5:17), a law that is harder to make go away than Heaven and Earth (Luke 16:17), why did God (as its Jesus person) reaffirm its support for slavery, not eating shrimp and all the rest of the Old Testament rules?

Why do African Americans embrace Christianity, a religion foisted upon their ancestors by white slave masters who used the Bible to justify slavery (Gen 6:9, Gen 7:1, Gen 9:25, Gen 24: 35, Gen 17:12, Gen 16:8, Gen 26:12, Deut 24:27, Ex 21:7, Ex 21:16, Ex 21:20, Ex 21:32, Ex 22:2, Ex 12:44, Ex 20:17, Lev 22:11, Lev 19:20, Lev 25:39, Lev 25:44, Deut 15:12, Deut 20:10, Deut 20:14, Joshua 9:23, Luke 12:46, Luke 17:7, 1 Cor 7:21, Eph 6:5, Col 3:22,, Col 4:1, 1 Tim 6:1, Titus 2:9, 1 Peter 2:18)?

Why did the Jesuit priests of Georgetown University own 272 men, women and child slaves until selling them in 1838?

Why is Jesus depicted as a white person in most art?

How could a loving god tell the Levites to kill everyone including their brothers, friends and neighbors (Exodus 32:26-29)? How could a loving god order the killing of old men, young men, maidens, little children, and women (Ezekiel 9:6)?

Why did Jesus demand that each of his followers "hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters" (Luke 14:26)? Why did he "come to turn a man against his father" (Matt 10:35)? Why did he say "anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me" (Matt 10:37)? Why did he promise rewards to those who abandoned their families (Matt 19:29)? How is this different from similar anti-family directives of death cult leader Jim Jones?

How can you love an undetectable character from ancient Jewish literature more than your own child? Do you in fact love Jesus more than your own children? Do they know? Do you have enough faith to murder your own child at God's request? Would you like your faith to be strong enough that you could murder your children at God's request?

Why would a loving god threaten that people will be forced to eat their own offspring, but not share any of the flesh with their wives, brothers or other children (Deut 28:53)?

Is it moral to demand love from someone on penalty of eternal torture (Mark 12:30)? How is compulsory love possible?

What evidence links homosexuality and pedophilia? When a male priest rapes a boy, does homosexuality cause him to do it? When a male priest rapes a girl, does heterosexuality cause him to do it? Is it more dangerous to leave a child alone with an openly gay stranger in a satisfying relationship or with a single stranger of unknown sexual orientation who lives alone, regards sex as potentially wicked, holds a unique position of power in the community, has an iron-clad cover story for why he doesn't have a girlfriend, and works for an organization with a limitless pardoning policy that has more to lose from a public scandal of extreme immorality than other organizations due to its self-identification as the authority and guide to morality? After the laity of Boston demanded his resignation for covering up the abuse of children by priests, why was Cardinal Bernard Law given the post of Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maggiore in Rome? Should priests in South Australia obey the law and report confessions of child sexual abuse or not do this and disobey the law as directed by their archbishop? Why hasn't the pope ordered Catholics to report abuse to secular authorities? to advocate for the extension of statutes of limitations? to advocate for reform of the RICO law? Why are pedophile priests only defrocked and not excommunicated?

What is the benefit of a priest taking a vow of celibacy? Who receives this benefit?

Does God think homosexuality among sheep is disordered and unnatural? How are the morality and physiological motive of homosexual attraction different for humans and for sheep?

8 - 12 percent of people are left handed. 3 - 20 percent of people are attracted to people of the same sex. Is left handedness disordered and unnatural? Is homosexuality disordered and unnatural? Is the celibacy of priests ordered and natural?

Throughout history, have homosexual people been severely persecuted for their sexual orientation? Do you think that being gay is a choice? Did you choose to be straight?

Do you share the GOP's official support for unlimited parental control over what therapy, including gay conversion therapy, is provided to children? Do you agree with Ben Carson and Rick Santorum that homosexuality is like bestiality?

What is the evidence linking sexual orientation to parental fitness? Did the Vatican do anything when the Kansas Catholic Conference and US Conference of Catholic Bishops rallied the faithful to support laws in Kansas and Oklahoma permitting discrimination against gay adoptive parents?

Do you think the 2007-2016 tripling of the teen suicide rate in Utah and its fifth in the nation ranking in teen suicides are related to the strict Mormon doctrine against homosexuality?

Why is religious outrage over homosexuality greater than religious outrage over eating shrimp?

What did Jesus say about homosexuality? Why was the disciple whom Jesus loved reclining on Jesus's bosom (John 13:23, John 21:20)?

What is the evidence that masturbation causes harm? What is the harm? Is it okay for anyone at all, ever to masturbate? What about soldiers who are deployed away from their spouses? What about people who have trouble meeting partners or who live in remote places without very many other people? How often do you masturbate? Is it worse for someone to masturbate or to force himself on another person when his urges become unbearable?

Is the use of artificial contraception as evil as abortion?

Are you among the 72% of Catholics who think you can use contraception and be a good Catholic?

Are you among the 98% of non-virgin Catholics who have used artificial contraception?

If one spouse in a married couple has AIDS is it okay with God if they use condoms?

What did Jesus say about birth control?

How many children must a couple have to prove their openness to having children?

Is it ever possible to be so poor that using birth control to prevent unaffordable children is better than having a child who will lack all basic necessities?

What is it about Natural Family Planning and condoms that make one an acceptable way, without STI protection, to intentionally prevent fertilization and the other an unacceptable way, with STI protection, to intentionally prevent fertilization? What did Jesus say about NFP and condoms? What evidence supports the idea that human beings are able to employ Natural Family Planning as effectively as other methods of birth control?

Did you support Mother Teresa's campaign against condoms in Africa where over 20 million people live with HIV? Was beatified Pope John Paul II right in opposing condom use in Africa? Was Pope Benedict right that condoms cause HIV to spread?

Do you think that God actually said "be fruitful and multiply" (Gen 1:22, Gen 9:1), “Where are you [Adam]?" (Gen 3:9), "Let Us make man in Our image" (Gen 1:26), and "dust you [the snake] will eat. All the days of your life" (Gen 3:14)? How do you decide which, if any, words in the book of Genesis are true God quotes and which are not? How fruitful and multiple is fruitful and multiple enough? Why don't snakes eat dust?

Where did God clearly state that all activities that are sometimes unitive and procreative must not be done by unmarried people? Why do priests wear clothes made of mixed fibers when God clearly states that this is prohibited (Deut 22:11)?

What did Jesus say about having sex without being married? Was it a sin to have sex before marriage existed?

Is it okay with God if unmarried male and female adults have consensual sex? What is the evidence? Is it okay with you? Do you think that "Thou shalt not commit adultery" means "Thou shalt not have sex without being married to the other person regardless of your marital statuses"?

Is it okay with God if unmarried male and female adults hold hands? kiss? kiss with tongue? touch each other's genitals? touch each other's chest? sleep naked in the same bed? have oral sex? have anal sex? What is the evidence? Is it okay with you?

Is it okay with God if adults of the same birth gender have consensual sex or marry? Is it okay with you?

Is it a sin for the Dutch to provide taxpayer-funded sex workers to the disabled who would otherwise go their entire lives without ever having sex?

Up until a hundred years ago, women frequently died in childbirth, there were no cures for sexually transmitted diseases, and about 1 out of 4 kids died by age 9. There were also no paternity tests for securing property rights that used to go entirely to firstborn sons. Since then we have made huge advances in obstetrics, pediatrics and cures for sexual diseases, and 50 years ago we got effective birth control. Is it more likely that ancient societal sex rules had to do with spiritual purity or public health and property inheritance? Is it more likely that the creator of the universe cares what people do with their genitals or that the originators of the Bible prohibitions wanted to control people with threats of eternal torture?

How important is sexual compatibility to the health of a marriage? Do people divorce because of sexual incompatibility? Without having sex before getting married, how can two people determine their sexual compatibility?

If a young woman has a hysterectomy or an old woman goes through menopause so that pregnancy is no longer possible, is it okay with God if she has sex without being married? Is it okay with you?

Is it okay with God for adults to marry anyone at all if they are sterile, transsexual, hermaphrodites, have Klinefelter's syndrome, or don't want kids? What is the evidence? Is it okay with you?

Which gender can someone marry who went through Guervedoces (born female and became male at puberty)?

Should people only have sex in order to make babies? What's wrong with sometimes doing something just for fun and sometimes doing it to make a baby? Is it okay to sometimes take a joy ride and other times drive to work?

What benefit does the inclusion of negative consequences add to certain types of pleasure? Which types of pleasure should and ought to include negative consequences and why? Who receives this benefit? Do you agree with Mother Teresa after losing her faith that suffering is a gift from God?

Why did God give humans year-round interest in sex rather than just seasonal interest like most other species have?

Campaigning in Ireland for the preservation of its Catholic-based law against divorce by all citizens Catholic and Protestant alike, Mother Teresa of Calcutta helped ensure the continued conflict between these two groups and the perpetuation of spouse abuse. Does divorce cause greater harm than perpetual Irish conflict and wife beating? What is the harm and who is harmed? Would you like divorce to be illegal in the United States as it is today in Vatican City and the Philippines?

Should people stay married if they hate each other? What if one of them beats the other? What if one of them beats the children? What if the husband has syphilis and the wife does not but would pass it on to children if she did?

Does God value the life of a 150-cell blastocyst more than, less than or the same as the life of a sixteen-year-old person? If you could save the lives of either one sixteen-year-old person or a million blastocysts in a test tube what would you do? Why does God value people under one month old at zero shekels, boys from one to five years at five shekels and girls one month to five years at three shekels (Lev 27:6)?

If fetuses are human beings, why didn't God want sons younger than one month old to be counted in a census (Numbers 3:15)?

Is in-vitro fertilization ten times as bad as abortion if ten embryos are lost in the process? Should a woman who does that be sentenced to ten times as many years in prison?

What is the evidence that abortion might cause breast cancer as clinicians in Alaska, Kansas, Mississippi, Texas and West Virginia are required by law to tell women seeking abortions? Do you agree with information given to pregnant women by "pro-life" "crisis pregnancy centers" that 35% of suicidal behavior among women may be attributable to abortion?

How can life begin at conception if the sperm and egg are both alive before conception? What is the difference in a sperm cell before and after it dies? What about a cat? a person? an engine?

Is an acorn an oak tree?

If heartbeats are the official markers of human life, why did God never say so in the Bible but rather said at least six times that breath is the marker of life (Gen 2:7, Gen 7:22, Psalms 33:6, Ezekiel 37:7-10, Job 33:4, Job 34:14-15, Isaiah 42:5, John 27:3)?

Why until the 1800s, did God, as understood by the Catholic Church, approve of abortion before the ensoulment occurred - 40 days for boy fetuses and 80 days for girl fetuses? What made God, as understood by the Catholic Church, change its mind?

If God wants it to be a crime to have an abortion, why did it design the human reproductive system such that 50% of all fetuses, embryos and zygotes are spontaneously aborted?

If God wants it to be a crime to have an abortion, why did it drown pre-born babies in the flood (Gen 7:17, Matt 24:37), incinerate them in a fire (Gen 19, Gen 38:24, Matt 11:24), cause women suspected of adultery to miscarry (Numbers 17), execute pregnant women by Moses's army (Numbers 31), have no mercy on the fruit of the womb (Isaiah 13:18), cause miscarriage (Hosea 9:14), rip open women's wombs (Hosea 13:16, 1 Kings 15:16, 2 Kings 8:12), curse unborn children (2 Samuel 12:14), publish an abortifacient recipe for adultery suspects (Numbers 5:24), and damn unborn babies along with the rest of the unrighteous (Revelations 20:11-15)?

Do the souls of miscarried or aborted fetuses automatically go to Heaven? If so, why do you want to stop abortion and prevent these souls from automatically going to Heaven? Is there any greater act of heroism than to bring eternal suffering upon yourself so that another soul can go to Heaven?

Do these souls automatically go to Hell? If they never had the chance to try and be good Christians, why would a loving, just god send these souls to be tortured in Hell for all eternity, especially given that most of them died by miscarriage at the hand of God who alone determines the birth of every human being? Why would anyone take the chance of ever getting pregnant when it is very possible that she could miscarry and cause a soul to spend eternity in Hell?

Which is morally superior: 1) to bring to term a fetus that will go through life without the basic necessities and then, in trying to meet unmet needs, sin and burn in Hell for eternity, or 2) to cause a soul to automatically go to Heaven for eternity?

If a woman miscarries should she be allowed to have the dead fetus removed or should she have to wait for it to come out somehow on its own? Should she be forced to have a funeral service for it? at her expense?

What has the Catholic Church done to reduce the deaths by miscarriage of 20% of all wanted fetuses? What does it do to keep out of prison women in El Salvador who are imprisoned for miscarrying fetuses they wanted? What does it do to support any women who miscarry fetuses they wanted?

How many late-term abortions involve fetuses that are healthy and nonthreatening to the mother but just unwanted? How many involve fetuses that are dead, dying, or threats to the life of the mother?

How long should a woman be put into prison if she chooses not to quit her job or school and donate bone marrow to save the life of a son or daughter she has never met?

Would you like things to return to how they were before Roe v. Wade? Would you like to reopen "The Home", a place for ostracized unwed mothers run from 1925 to 1961 in Ireland by Catholic Bon Secours nuns where remains of 800 children were found in a septic tank and never given proper burials? Would you like to reopen the Bethesda Home for Girls where, as recently as 1980, parents sent their disobedient and pregnant daughters who were censored, beaten, imprisoned and forced to give up their babies for $250?

The 2011 World Health Organization study found that 11 percent or at least 2,000 women who had illegal abortions in El Salvador between 2005 and 2008 died from them. Amnesty International found that suicide now accounts for 57 percent of deaths of pregnant females ages 10-19 in El Salvador. Would you like the US abortion policy to be the same as that in El Salvador? Would you like the government to monitor women's menstrual cycles as they did in Romania?

If your 200-lb adult child threatens your life, would you be morally justified in killing him or her to save your life? If a 2-lb fetus is threatening your life would you be morally justified in killing it to save your life? Is the risk of dying ever zero in any pregnancy?

What should a woman in Arkansas today do if she has a life threatening ectopic pregnancy and the nearest abortion provider is hundreds of miles away? What should a pregnant mother do if she has cancer and the only treatment would kill her developing fetus?

Would you like stillbirth and miscarriage to be crimes in the US punishable by 30 years in prison as they are today in majority Catholic El Salvador where abortion is illegal in all situations including rape of girls? What official statements have the popes made about this legislation?

If a woman in El Salvador attempts to abort her pregnancy illegally by herself using a coat hanger, would you prefer for her to be okay or to be harmed/die in the process?

How many unwanted babies have you adopted?

Do you think a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks? Do you think a baby boy can feel the pain of circumcision and recovery at 9 months? Do you support mandatory pre-abortion sonogram viewings? Do you support mandatory viewings of circumcisions by parents considering that procedure?

What did Jesus say about abortion? Where in the Bible are fetuses held as equal to human beings? Where does the Bible prescribe penalties for abortion?

After millions of years of humans and pre-human species having non-procreative sex how well do you think effectively criminalizing it will work to eliminate this practice? If Argentina has laws against abortion, how can 500,000 abortions still happen there every year?

How have laws against narcotics kept people from getting these drugs that make you feel good for a few minutes? How well do you think legal prohibitions would keep people from getting RU 486 that prevents the complete destruction of a young woman's dreams and potentially frees her from poverty? or anti-ulcer medicine Misoprostol which can also be used to abort a pregnancy? or Estrogen for birth control which can be made at home?

Should it be illegal for men to buy viagra if they are not in a proper Christian marriage?

After they enacted a needle exchange program in Washington DC new HIV cases dropped 70%.

In every city where Craigslist offered an escort services site, female homicides dropped.

The war on drugs has cost 60,000 lives in Mexico alone in only the last ten years.

Before abortion was legal, 17 percent of all deaths due to pregnancy and childbirth were the result of illegal abortion. Today, less than 0.3 percent of women undergoing legal abortions sustain a serious complication requiring hospitalization.

After enacting the Volstead Act (Prohibition), 10,000 people died from drinking unsafe industrial alcohol.

In Colorado they enacted a program of low cost, long acting, reversible contraception. After five years the birth rate and abortion rate for Colorado teens aged 15-19 had fallen 48 percent. Canada did the same thing and it dropped 40 percent. During the same period, the overall US rates dropped only 25 percent.

Can you name a time when criminalizing consensual vice for adults reduced harm overall or a time when providing a means to engage in the activity more safely or cheaply increased harm overall? In your prayers to end abortion, do you ask God to expand the Colorado program that reduced abortion by 48% in five years?

When should you base decisions on empirical data and when should you use feelings?

How many abortions has Planned Parenthood prevented? How many abortions has the Catholic Church prevented? How many unwanted pregnancies has Planned Parenthood caused? How many unwanted pregnancies has the Catholic Church caused?

Does a soul enter flesh at the moment of conception? How many souls are there right before and after a human embryo divides to form twins? How many souls are there right before and after two human embryos combine to form a chimera?

Do people have immortal souls? Do chimpanzees have mortal or immortal souls? What kind of soul did Australopithecus have? What about Homo Habilis? Homo Erectus? Neanderthals? Asparagus? Bacteria? What is the evidence? If scientists someday produce a human-chimp hybrid would it have an immortal soul? How many souls would two human clones have?

If a soul can think, choose, form words, retain memory and process stimuli without a body or brain, then why do we need the parts of our brains that serve these functions?

If the right and left hemispheres of someone's brain are severed and one half professes belief in God and the other does not, does the person have one soul or two? Which of the two belief systems will determine whether the person goes to Heaven or Hell when they die?

How can bodies and souls be reunited on judgement day if the matter of one body decomposes and then makes its way into another body? What if you are eaten by a cannibal? What about organ donors and recipients? If you get a nose job, will your old, ugly nose be restored? Do you get a body aged to your age at death? Do short, fat, and disabled people, siamese-twins and miscarried fetuses get the same bodies? How can a body be reunited with its soul and also replaced by a different, better body?

Do you think you will be reunited with lost loved ones in pre-rapture Heaven? How will you recognize each other without having eyes and bodies? Do you think you will meet up in post-rapture Heaven? Would you be able to enjoy Heaven knowing that some of your friends and family are burning in Hell for eternity? If in Heaven God wipes your memory of your condemned loved ones but leaves the rest of your memory in tact how would you understand the gaps? Would you still be you? What about lost pets? Wouldn't Heaven be better with pets? What about people who have snakes for pets? If dogs and cats make it to Heaven, do pigs and cattle too? If livestock are slaughtered at 100 times the rate that humans die, will Heaven be overrun with chickens? If there are only human souls in Heaven, wouldn't that make it a very dull, horrible place? If two people in Heaven want mutually exclusive things, what do they do? For example, if I want to be with someone but they don't want to be with me, or if we both want to live on the same stretch of heavenly beachfront property what do we do?

Would you like to live in North Korea and spend your life worshipping and thanking someone? Would you like to go to Heaven and spend eternity worshipping and thanking someone? Do you consider Donald Trump's insatiable need for praise to be a virtue or a vice? Is a demand to be worshipped a characteristic of a "good" person? How could the creator of the universe crave love from its creatures? How can the creator of the universe be jealous (Deut 6:15)?

What good is Mutually-Assured Destruction as a nuclear war deterrence to people who believe in an afterlife that is better than the current one?

How can someone who believes in an afterlife in paradise value life as much as someone who believes that this life is all we get?

Do you think that saying certain words causes bread and wine to change into flesh and blood? What do the words "flesh" and "blood" mean? How can something material change into something immaterial? How can the whole substance of the eucharistic species change into something else while the outward characteristics of it remain unaltered (CCC FAQ 283)? What does the word "whole" mean? What does "change" mean? Which part or parts of Jesus's body does the bread turn into? Does it turn into the same part(s) for everyone who eats it? If so, how can Jesus have so many of the same parts of his body? How is Jesus able to function while his body is being eaten and his blood is being drunk? Does the resultant mass of Jesus equal the initial mass of bread? What happens to Jesus's body when it is pooped out? How is the transubstantiation process affected when food is consumed within one hour before mass starts? What is God's opinion of ritualistic cannibalism? If you think that saying a few words over your pancakes is going to turn them into the body of Elvis Presley, should you seek psychiatric treatment? If the eucharistic miracle stories are bona fide miracles, why are they published on the website of some guy in Milan and not the official Vatican website? Why did the pope turn down offers by scientists everywhere to test and publish whether consecrated hosts and wine are indeed Jesus's body and blood? Why do bars and restaurants wash their glasses instead of just wiping the edges of each one with the same section of a dry cloth? Do you think that Dionysus's followers could achieve communion with the god through omophagia by symbolically consuming flesh (meat) and blood (wine)? If you don't think that bread and wine actually turn into the body and blood of a first century Jew can you still be a priest?

What evidence is there that something changes about water when a priest says particular words while standing in front of it? If blessing water improves it, why don't priests just bless an entire ocean? How many gallons of water can a single priest bless in a single blessing? Does the blessing benefit to water decay over time? How long is the half life of water blessedness? If there is no decay, then why does water still need to be blessed after all these centuries of doing it and water recirculation? Do you think it is a good idea to put on your face water that has been in contact with hundreds of unwashed hands and contains E. Coli, enterococci, Campylobacter and fecal matter? Should parents who direct their children to do so be liable to prosecution?

Why would God answer a prayer for good weather at a picnic but not an end to suffering? How does God decide which football team's prayers to answer? Is God responsible when poor people win lotteries? Is God responsible when rich people win lotteries?

If God has a plan, what is the point in trying to influence its behavior through prayer? What is the benefit of singing songs of praise to God? Who receives this benefit?

If God can read our minds, doesn't it already know what we want? Why would we need to tell it what we want? Does it already know whether we will tell it what we want?

Can God hear us when we pray? Can God see us when we poop? Is God able to hear your prayers better when your hands are folded and your head is bowed? Does a prayer still reach God's ears if you don't say "amen" at the end? How does kneeling help you communicate with God? Why didn't Paul need to be kneeling for God to reveal itself to him on the road to Damascus? Do you need to pray over main courses? over appetizers? over salads? What are the consequences of not doing that?

Do you think prayer helps heal people? If faith healing works, why don't faith healers spend all of their time in hospitals? Why do Catholic hospitals have prayer rooms but not faith healing rooms?

Does prayer drive or substitute for more action?

Why has God never cured an amputee? Why does God only effect cures that can be explained by coincidence? Was Jesus lying when he said, "all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours" (Mark 11:24 and moreover Matt 7:7, Matt 17:20, Matt 21:21, John 14:12-14, Matt 18:19 and James 5:15-16)?

Why are there churches if Jesus said to pray alone in our rooms (Matt 6:5-6)?

What does "playing God" mean? How is playing God different from practicing medicine? What did Jesus say about biotechnology, gene therapy and embryonic stem cell research?

If God didn't actually have a special plan for you and therefore it was entirely up to you whether your life turned out okay, how would you live it differently?

Does God have a special plan for each of the 8,000 children who starve to death every day?

If you help a friend fight cancer but God still takes her, have you crossed God for obstructing its plan? When should you ask God for forgiveness for obstructing its plan?

If someone thinks that climate change is part of God's will would she be more or less inclined to take action to fight it? Should she be punished for fighting it?

If a person doesn't buckle up and dies in a car crash according to God's plan, should we stop using seat belts?

If God keeps us from all harm and watches over our lives, why should we take any precautions (Psalm 127:7-8)?

How do you know when the death of a person, fetus, embryo or zygote is part of God's plan and when it is not? How can things happen that are not part of God's plan? Was the sinfulness that lead God to regret having made man and subsequently destroy the world by a big flood part of God's plan? If God regretted making Saul king, does that mean God makes mistakes (1 Samuel 15:11)?

If every human birth is the will of God and a rape results in human birth does that mean that the rape was the will of God?

If every human birth is the will of God and consensual sex between unmarried people results in human birth does that mean it was God's will for them to have sex?

If two people are unable to have children after three IVF attempts, does that mean it is God's will that they should not have children? If they are able to have a child after eight IVF attempts does that mean it is God's will that they should have children?

What is the scriptural basis for the claim of Mary's immaculate conception?

What is the evidence that Mary was a virgin? Do you believe that Caesar Augustus was born of a virgin too as reported in an ancient book?

How could Jesus be in the tribe of Judah or David if Jesus had no human father and tribal affiliation was patrilineal? Did Jesus descend from David through his son Solomon (1 Chronicles 22:9-10) or through his son Nathan and then Judah and then Mary (Hebrews 7:14)? Why does Luke’s genealogy record list 14 more generations than Matthew’s?

Which is more likely: a temporary suspension of the natural order or a lie about how someone got pregnant? Who besides Mary witnessed Gabriel's prophetic visit to Mary (Luke 1:35)?

In their birth stories, both baby Moses and baby Jesus are hunted by an evil king who seeks to destroy them; both narrowly escape this evil king's attempt to kill them, but many other Jewish male babies are slaughtered. Wise men warn the evil king that a marvelous Hebrew/Jewish male has been born who will save his people. Do you think there is anything fishy about this coincidence?

If God was able to create Adam from dust, why did it have to create Jesus by impregnating Joseph's wife, a method that any reasonable, modern family law court would ascribe to simple infidelity, not anything supernatural? Of all the ways God could have incarnated itself - fashioned from mud, blinked into being, zapped down from the sky in adult form, etc - why did it choose virgin birth when that was a method used in countless previous mythologies of god incarnations, and therefore would lead reasonable thinkers to conclude that the whole thing was just a fiction fabricated out of the other similar stories?

How could Joseph have put a nine-month-pregnant Mary on a donkey for a 5-day trip from Nazareth to report in Bethlehem for a Roman census that could not have happened until at least 6 CE during the Syrian governorship of Quirinius (Luke 2:2) who didn't take office until then after the Romans deposed Judean king Archelaus, given that Roman censuses never counted any women, and a census of Judea would have only included Galileans if they were rich and owned property in Judea? How could Jesus have been born during this census of no earlier than 6 CE and also during the reign of King Herod who died in 4 BCE?

Seeing clearly that Mary was pregnant, wouldn't Mary's family or the Jewish authorities in her town insist on knowing who the father was in order to establish tribal affiliation? If they were told Joseph was the father, wouldn't they insist that he marry Mary before the birth?

Why is there no mention of virgin birth in Mark or John? Why was the Hebrew word for "young woman" (almah) translated into "virgin" (bethulah) instead of "young woman" in the Greek translation of Isaiah 7:14 used by the writers of Luke and Matthew?

Do you think that Isaiah prophesied the virgin birth of Jesus (Isaiah 7:14)? Why, in 700 BCE, would God promise to deliver Jerusalem to Ahaz through the birth of a messiah that he would give as a sign to Ahaz 700 years later, long after he was dead and could therefore not receive signs (Isaiah 7:1-16)? Is it perfectly common for virgins to have babies by first having sex and then getting pregnant? Where does it say that the virgin to bear the child will do so while remaining a virgin? If you can't tell by looking at her whether a mother is a virgin, how can virgin birth be a sign? Is it more likely that the prophesied child was that of Isaiah in the next chapter or Jesus 700 years later? Was the child of Isaiah the product of a virgin birth? If Jesus fulfilled the prophecy, why was his name Jesus (Greek), or Yeshua (Hebrew), and not Immanuel? How can a prophecy be trusted if it was written down after the predicted event happened? How can the report of a prophecy fulfillment be trusted if the reporter of the fulfillment was aware of the prophecy at the time he reported its fulfillment? Does the greater number of connections people find in the Qur'an compared to the Bible convince you that the Qur'an contains true prophecies?

How can someone be his own son? What does the word "son" mean?

Why would an omniscient god intervene in the world in a manner with so many identical antecedents in mythology? Why have twelve disciples when the number twelve was so steeped in mythology and astrology and would therefore lead a reasonable person to conclude that this was just another mythology based on older mythologies?

How were the attendees to the First Council of Nicea selected? If some of those who voted in support of Jesus's divinity had gotten stuck in traffic and missed the vote leading it to a different outcome, would you still consider Jesus to be divine? What were the arguments on each side of this debate? What qualifications and experience do you respect most about each of those who voted in favor of divinity? Do you know any of their names?

Under what circumstances does a vote taken at a council have divine providence? Who makes those determinations of providence and how do these people acquire the qualification to make them?

According to the Old Testament prophecies, the messiah must 1) bring about world peace, 2) bring about worldwide recognition of God, 3) redeem the Jewish people spiritually and physically and return them to the nation of Israel, and 4) restore the temple (Isaiah 2:1-4). How can Jewish Jesus be the messiah without doing any of these things? Where in the Old Testament does it say that the messiah will die to atone for sin?

How did the Church forefathers decide which books to include in the Bible? Do you think that there being four corners of the Earth is a good reason, as given by Irenaeus of Lyons, for having four Gospels?

Is it more likely that the doctrine of the Christian trinity from the fourth century is an accurate characterization of God or an adoption of the convention of threes from nearly every nation of antiquity such as: Sumeria (Sky god Anu, Earth god Enlil, and water god Ea), Babylonia (three-headed god and equilateral triangle symbology), India (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva), Egypt (Amun + Re + Ptah and Isis + Osiris + Horus), Phoenicia (Ulomus, Ulosuros and Eliun), Germanic nations (Wodan, Thor and Fricco), etc?

If the case for the Trinity is so strong, why is it necessary to recite a creed every week in unison pledging belief in it? Why do tyrants require their subjects to recite creeds declaring their loyalty? How would you feel if your loving parents asked you to recite a loyalty pledge to them every week? Why don't scientists recite creeds professing their belief in evolution and gravity?

Which Old Testament scriptures support the doctrine of the Trinity?

Jesus said "My Father is greater than I." (John 14:28), "My Father is greater than all." (John 10:29), "…I cast out devils by the Spirit of God…." (Mathew 12:28), "…I with the finger of God cast out devils…." (Luke 11:20), "I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgement is just; because I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." (John 5:30), “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone." (Mark 10:18). If Jesus did not identify himself as God, why do you identify him as God? If Jesus did identify himself as God (John 10:30), why didn't the authors of Mark, Matthew or Luke mention it? If Jesus is God then to whom did he pray in the desert for forty days?

Why would one member of the triune godhead (Jesus before his crucifixion) beg another member of the triune godhead (the father) to be released from doing something he really does not want to do (Matt 26:39)? When criticized for claiming the God-exclusive power to forgive sins, instead of saying he was God, why did he say, "Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" (Mark 2:10)? If Jesus had the power to forgive sins, why did he ask the father to "forgive them for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34)?

What new evidence did top theologians use in 2000 to overturn the prevailing Church teaching that unbaptized babies go to Limbo? Do you support the still prevailing canon law that you may baptize a baby without its parents' consent? If the Church once again had police power would you support the seizure of secretly baptized children from their non-Christian parents as happened to Edgardo Mortara in Italy after his nanny secretly baptized him in the 1850s? Do you support the decision of Pope Pius IX, beatified by Pope John Paul II, who rejected pleas from the parents of Edgardo Mortara to return him to them? Was it okay for the Spanish nuns and priests during the Franco dictatorship to take away babies from their dissident parents by the tens of thousands so that they could be raised by Catholic parents without ever knowing who their real parents were?

If Jesus performed miracles before thousands of witnesses, each with many personal contacts, why did he only have about 120 followers at the time of his death? Why didn't Josephus report these events that were more amazing than anything done by Elijah or Elisha? Why, in Acts or the Epistles, is there no mention of great churches of miracle witnesses established throughout Judea?

If God ordered that the decisions of the Levitical priests be abided by, and the priests sentenced Jesus to death then why did the Catholic Church charge Jews with deicide until 1964 (Deut 8:13)?

Do you believe Jesus died for our sins? What would have been the consequences if he hadn't? If original sin caused suffering and death, and Jesus died to atone for our sins, why is there still suffering and death?

Which Old Testament scriptures support the notion that sins are forgiven by the atoning death of the messiah? When did Jesus say that he was dying to atone for sins?

What does "Jesus died for our sins" literally mean?

If Jesus died to pay for our sins, then exactly whom did he pay? And how did the recipient of this payment benefit from this payment?

How exactly does one person dying have anything to do with the sins committed by other people? Do you think that sending a live (scape)goat into the wilderness to die had some effect on anyone's sins? Do you think that Jesus dying on the cross had some effect on anyone's sins? How does a system of vicarious redemption promote moral accountability? Should people be allowed to substitute themselves for convicted murderers on death row?

How was Jesus's death a "sacrifice" for God if God can do anything and Jesus didn't stay dead? How is it possible for God to permanently lose (sacrifice) anything?

Do you think someone who just happened to have the name Barabbas, meaning "son of the father", was really set to be crucified next to Jesus or is it more likely that this was just allegory for the Yom Kippur ritual where one scapegoat carried sins into the wilderness and another was a perfect sacrifice?

How could Pontius Pilate, with his overwhelming military might, give in to the requests of an unarmed group of civilians and release Barabbas when acting with such acquiescence would have been grounds for his own execution, and when apart from the Gospels there is no record of Paschal pardons even happening? How was it possible for a solar eclipse to take place during the period of the full moon of Passover? How could the high priests of the Sanhedrin have condemned Jesus if they were not allowed to meet during Passover? Why would Pilate do what the high priests asked and order his guards to watch the tomb?

Do you think Jesus really said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?) (Mark 15:34, Matt 27:46)? Why wouldn't the authors of Luke and John record these last words of Jesus? If the Gospel of Mark had been written by John Mark, carefully recording the memoirs of the Apostle Peter, how is it possible that Aramaic-speaking Peter could come up with a story about fellow Aramaic-speaking Jews confusing "Eloi" with "Elijah" ("Elias" in Greek) while standing at the cross and report that those present thought Jesus was calling out for Elijah?

If whether we spend eternity with or apart from God depends on how we exercise our free will, then what was the point of Jesus dying? If this is up to God and God loves us, then why didn't God just admit everyone into Heaven straight away without Jesus or anyone dying? If it is not up to us and not up to God, then what is it up to? Who created Hell?

Was it barbaric for the Aztec gods to require human sacrifice? Was it barbaric for the Judeo-Christian god to require human sacrifice?

If Jesus died for our sins, what difference does it make how we behave?

Is it virtuous for God to sacrifice itself to itself to appease itself in order to save us from itself. Is it virtuous for a soldier to throw himself on a grenade whose pin he pulled himself?

Do you believe the passion story is a historical account? Why wouldn't the soldiers and police of the high priest arrest Simon Peter after he cut off the ear of the high priest's slave (John 18:10)? Rather than maximizing deterrence through gore and humiliation as usual by letting the body rot on the cross and then casting it into a common grave, why would the Romans grant a proper Jewish burial to someone they executed for the serious, seditious crime of claiming to be a king in a Roman controlled land? Why didn't the anti-Jesus Sanhedrin just take the body and dump it into a dirt grave? Why did the priests and Pharisees wait until the next day, the Sabbath, to ask Pilate to post a guard at the tomb (Matt 27:62)? Do you believe the story that Dionysus was arrested and tried on charges of claiming divinity? What evidence is there that the Romans used a t-shaped cross for public executions?

Why did James and the other Jewish Christians continue to Keep Torah (keep kosher, circumcise one's children, and worship in the Temple with animal sacrifices) after Jesus died (Acts 21:26)?

How many eyewitnesses saw an angel push away the stone and saw Jesus rise from the dead and exit the tomb? If resurrected Jesus was able to walk through locked doors (John 20:26) and if he shortly after their arrival appeared to the women to prove his resurrection, why did an angel need to push away the stone in order for Jesus to exit the tomb or allow the women to enter it and believe the resurrection (Matt 28:2)? Why would the women bring spices to anoint the body if they knew the tomb was sealed and guarded (Matt 2-10)? Is a miraculous resurrection the most probable explanation for an empty tomb? Is it more probable than a raid of the tomb of wealthy Joseph of Arimathea? Is any explanation less probable than a miracle? Why would Joseph of Arimathea, a rich member of the Sanhedrin, choose for his personal family tomb a place next to Golgotha, a Roman execution site (John 19:42)? Do you believe the account in the apocryphal Gospel of Peter that three Heaven-tall people and one talking, ambulatory cross exited the tomb? Do you believe that Dionysus died and rose from the dead? Do you believe that Mythra had twelve disciples, a last supper and was resurrected?

If Jesus was crucified for only 6 hours (Mark 15:25, Luke 23:44) instead of the usual several days is it more likely that he really died and then break from all known experiences of nature to rise from the dead or that he just went into a coma and then came to?

Why is there a great earthquake in the resurrection story of Matthew (Matt 28:2), but not the story in Mark that was written earlier? Do you believe the reports of great earthquakes when Caesar and other Romans died? How did an earthquake strong enough to roll away a giant stone from a tomb not cause massive collateral damage or knock women at the epicenter off their feet?

Do you believe that Jesus was greeted by crowds of thousands on Palm Sunday as the next King of Israel; that his trial before Pilate and Herod brought the city to near revolt; that upon his death the earth shook, the sky went dark for three hours, and dozens of dead saints wandered out of their graves to walk the streets of a major city; that hundreds of people in Palestine began seeing a resurrected, walking, talking, teleporting dead corpse; that these sightings continued over a period of 40 days; that at least a dozen eyewitnesses watched this resurrected corpse levitate into the clouds; and only weeks later, the "eyewitnesses" to these miraculous events preached to crowds of thousands in the Temple, on Pentecost, causing thousands of devout Jews to convert to the Christian movement... yet no one bothered to record the date of his death or alleged resurrection?

When Jesus took three of the disciples up on the Mount of Transfiguration, and they "saw" Moses and Elijah, had these ancient prophets been resurrected (Matt 17:1)? How did the disciples know that these guys were Moses and Elijah? Did they have bodies of flesh and bones or were they just visions? If they were flesh and bones, did they walk around Judea and then eventually die again? If they were just visions, then was resurrected Jesus likewise just a vision?

If resurrected Jesus was recognizable to people who knew him does that mean that resurrected bodies are very similar in appearance and age to earthly bodies? What about those who die as 150-cell blastocysts, siamese twins and feeble senior citizens? If resurrected Jesus had holes in his side, hands and feet, does that mean we will retain all our injuries for eternity? Do all resurrected bodies in Heaven appear to be age 33 as Jesus was? Is it possible to starve or suffocate in Heaven? Of what use in Heaven are the organs and features of an earthly, human-like body naturally selected for land-based life on a planet with the mass and environment of Earth where an immune system is required to fight off disease, a digestive system is required to process life-sustaining food and a pulmonary system is required to process life-sustaining oxygen?

Why didn't Jesus appear to the scribes and Pharisees after his resurrection as proof and to keep his promise to them that he would give them this sign (Matt 12:39)?

If Jesus was God, why did he not raise himself from the dead but rather depended on God to do it as reported by Paul (Col 2:12, 1 Cor 15:16, 1 Cor 6:14) and Peter (Acts 2:24)?

Do you believe the resurrection stories of Adonis, Romulus, Zalmoxis, Dionysus and Inanna from as far back as 1700 BCE?

If Jesus had truly appeared to his followers in a flesh and bones body, why didn't early Christians memorialize the sites of this?  They memorialized practically every other site from the Gospel stories, including the location of his baptism, his birth, and some would allege, his grave.  So why not the site of Jesus' first post-resurrection appearance or of any of his alleged appearances?  Why is there no shrine at any of these locations?

Does the purported martyrdom of apostles convince you of their reported personal encounters with a resurrected Jesus? Does the castration and suicide of Heaven's Gate leader Marshall Applewhite convince you of his reported personal encounters with aliens? Why is there nothing in the Book of Acts, likely written around 85 CE, about Peter's or Paul's execution around 65 CE? Do you believe the report in Cassie Bernall's mother's book that Cassie professed to her killer her belief in God before being shot at Columbine High School, or the report of a student present during the event that she did not do this? Do the countless, similar alien abduction reports convince you that alien abductions are really happening?

What's the difference between resurrected Jesus and the Holy Spirit? How can you have an intimate personal relationship with someone who is invisible and doesn't talk? How can so many people claim to have personal relationships with Jesus but report different positions Jesus takes on issues like Hell, abortion, homosexuality, and conditions of salvation? What is the difference between the intimate personal relationship someone has with Jesus and the intimate personal relationship someone has with Lord Vishnu?

Given that almost everyone has a vivid dream while asleep, and that people do indeed have hallucinations while awake, and that scientists are able to induce spiritual experiences with brain electrodes and psychedelics, which is more likely: an abnormal release while awake of DMT - the psychedelic naturally produced in the brain and released when you dream, or an actual supernatural experience with characters from the religious stories you happened to have been taught as a child through the accident of your birth? How can someone tell whether they are hallucinating or having a supernatural experience? whether the voices in their head are internally or externally sourced? Why don't people in one culture ever have visions of deities from other cultures? Why did everyone claim that the Emperor had clothes on? Why do men, women and children members of the 600-million-member Pentecostal churches regularly speak in gibberish and writhe around in mass fits of spastic convulsion during services? Do you believe alien abduction reports? Do you believe the reports of Jesse Duplantis, Louisiana television pastor and owner of three private jets, that he saw aborted fetuses hugging Jesus and that he needs a fourth private jet? Do you accept the placebo effect as a natural phenomenon or a supernatural phenomenon? How do you distinguish between inordinate credulity and strong faith? Do you accept the near death experience reports by Hindus of seeing their deities?

Why don't atheists ever get possessed by demons, but theists in undeveloped, illiterate cultures so often do? Why doesn't God reveal itself to any of the prominent and famous atheists with millions of admirers?

Do you believe the eyewitness testimony that Muhammad flew to Heaven on a winged horse? Do you believe the eyewitness reports that Romulus vanished into the clouds on Campus Martius and ascended into Heaven? Do you believe the testimony of the author of Luke, who was neither an eyewitness nor an associate of one, that Jesus floated up into the sky in a manner never seen before or since or was even reported in any other Gospel?

Do you believe the Biblical creation story? How was there light before the stars existed? If God didn't make the sun until the 4th day, how could it count the days? When did God make the planets? If God is perfect, why would it need to create a universe? If God created the universe so that it could be worshipped by us in Heaven for eternity and it knew which of us would and would not make it to Heaven, why not just create these elect few in Heaven in the first place and skip the material universe part?

If God created the universe for the sole purpose of having a relationship with humans, why did it choose a design whose vastness is almost entirely unsupportive of that purpose and is reasonably explained to scientists and skeptics as the product of natural forces indifferent to human life? Why didn't God just implement it all in an undeniably supernatural way that could not be so easily and universally misunderstood by very intelligent people as purely naturalistic?

If God is perfect, then why would it need to create a universe? How can a perfect creator make an imperfect creation? Wouldn't a creator that makes perfect creations be more perfect than one that makes imperfect creations? If plants and animals are intelligently designed why have 99% of all species had designs that were not good enough to keep them from going extinct?

If land animals did not evolve from fish, why does the left recurrent laryngeal nerve run all the way from the brain down to the heart, around the main artery and back up the neck to the voice box only a couple of inches away from where it started, an efficient path for neckless fish but one that creates a fifteen-foot detour for giraffes? Why do whales have flipper bones similar to those of hands and hind quarter bones similar to hips, thighs and shins of land animals? Why does the urethra, a conduit that must not be constricted, pass through the prostate gland, an organ that's prone to swelling? Why does the optic nerve pass through the retina creating a blind spot? Why do human males have vulnerable external testicles instead of internal ones like elephants and birds have? Why are the trachea and esophagus of a human so close together that choking is a serious hazard, and not like those of a whale that doesn't have this problem? Why do human have appendixes like what other animals use to digest wood but we do not need and can explode and kill us?

Do you think that human beings were created about 6,000 years ago in their current form? How can the universe be only 6,000 years old if we can see more than 6,000 light years away from Earth and we can date organisms from more than 6,000 years ago? How can fossils turn into oil in only 6,000 years? How did the tectonic plates move to their current positions in only 6,000 years?

Do you think that dinosaurs and people lived at the same time?

Do you think that the creation story was just allegory and the universe was not actually created in 6 24-hour days? Where does God say that the story is allegory? If God really meant that creation happened in periods of time different from 24-hour days would it have been able to find the words for saying so?

Do you think there really was an initially naked Adam, an initially naked Eve created from Adam's rib, and a talking snake? If people were immortal before The Fall, why did they need to breathe life-sustaining oxygen or consume life-sustaining food and water in order to continue living? Did they have fully evolved digestive and pulmonary systems? Did they need reproductive systems to reproduce? If beings reproduced and did not die wouldn't the planet have been overrun with ants? Why can't snakes talk anymore? Is this story (true or allegorical) one of your reasons for opposing gay marriage? for subordinating women? for being so bothered by genitals, female nipples and sex? How is a child harmed by the sight of an adult female nipple?

Why would a loving god put the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden at all? Was it all a set up? Where was God when the snake was tempting Eve?

Why would God want Adam and Eve to be good but not be able to tell the difference between good and evil (Gen 2:9)? When choosing whether to obey God or the snake, how could fallible Adam and fallible Eve know which was the great deceiver and which was the benevolent, loving master? Is it more likely to you that this is a true story or that someone wanted to control people by scaring them into blind obedience? Was it virtuous for the guards at Auschwitz to obey orders to murder strangers? Was it virtuous for Abraham to obey an order to murder his son? Was it virtuous for Jephthah to murder his only daughter?

Why are blind obedience and ignorance so important to God that it chose as the mother of all sins a combination of exercising free will through disobedience and the pursuit of knowledge through consumption of fruit from the tree of knowledge? Isn't hurting someone worse than asserting personal autonomy and knowing things? How could Adam and Eve have known that disobedience was wrong before eating fruit from the tree of knowledge of right and wrong? Is anything more important to tyrants than obedience and ignorance?

Who was the mother of Cain's children? How does God feel about incest?

Do you think the Eden story was a myth? Why did Jesus not think it was a myth (Mark 10:6, Matt 19:4)? or Paul (Romans 5:14, 1 Cor 15:22, 1 Cor 15:45, 2 Cor 11:3, 1 Tim 2:13-14), or Jude (Jude 1:14)? Where in Luke's genealogy from Adam to Jesus does the myth end and the historical record begin (Luke 3:23-38)?

If you regard the Eden story not as factual but only allegory and you accept evolution, but you believe that Jesus really did die to save us from the punishment for an actual original sin, then what was the actual original sin? Which prehistoric species committed it? How do you reconcile a gradual evolution of the cognitive capacity to sin with an instantaneous commission of a single original sin before which suffering and death did not exist? Where are the immortal creatures who were born before this event? Were there deadly earthquakes and envy in Paradise before the Fall of Man? How were the tectonic plates able to stay put? How was the problem of mutually exclusive ownership overcome?

Why do non human species suffer? Does each species of creature that suffers have an ancestral original sinner?

Do you think the Biblical creation story should be taught to children in public schools? Should it be taught in literature class along with Greek and Roman mythology or in science class along with evolution? Should all of the thousands of religious creation stories be taught as well? Why is chemistry taught in public schools but alchemy is not?

If the books of the Pentateuch are 1) regarded among learned Catholic theologians as not literally true, and 2) serve when read literally as the justification for countless horrible atrocities, why has the Catholic Church not removed them from the officially accepted translations or at least labeled them clearly as fiction? Why are entire Catholic Bibles not color-coded according to which words are, per official decision, to be read literally and which symbolically?

Is it consistent to you that a person's eternal disposition should be determined by her own choices, but her suffering on Earth should be consequent to the choices of an ancestral original sinner?

Do you support punishing children for acts of their parents (Isaiah 14:21)? How can one person's guilt transfer to another person? Why would Jesus kill Jezebel's children with pestilence (Rev 2:23? What did they do wrong? Are the 8,000 daily child deaths by starvation due to Adam and Eve's disobeying God's order?

Given any other set of genetic, temporal, environmental, political, geographic, and socioeconomic birth circumstances, would you have made the same moral life decisions? Did you determine your own birth circumstances? Did the saints determine their birth circumstances? Did Hitler? In other words, if someone does not determine her birth circumstances and her moral decisions are dependent on them, how can she receive credit or blame for them?

Do you think there really was a worldwide flood, and a man named Noah who really made an ark by hand and lived to be 950? How do you explain the striking similarity between the Noah story and the older Assyrian Epic of Gilgamesh mythology? How did they fit 5 million pairs (or sevens) of animals including all the dinosaurs plus all their food and water on a boat that size, and keep them from eating each other? How did insects and worms which don't breathe through nostrils survive if they were not brought aboard the ark (Gen 7:22)? How did all the species survive such intense inbreeding during the post-flood repopulation period? How does God feel about incest? How did the different races evolve from Noah's family and the different species evolve from the ark ones in only 6,000 years? How did they stay afloat in rough seas on a wooden boat for two months? How did the penguins and tree sloths who live thousands of miles from the Middle East get to and from the ark? Why are there continuous records from that time from thriving Chinese, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Sumerian and Peruvian civilizations with nothing about a worldwide flood? Why didn't anyone else in the entire world have a boat? What happened with the freshwater fish? Or the saltwater fish that die of shock in reduced salinity? How did any aquatic life survive in brackish water much worse than what kills it in modern day floods? Why isn't there a worldwide layer of sediment from this period containing fossils of organisms from different periods and containing the same amount of material used in radiometric dating methods? Where did the 800 million cubic miles of water go? How was Noah able to sort the animals based on the dietary law (clean vs. unclean) that hadn't been given yet and before people ate meat? How bright was it for God to kill everyone sinful without changing anything about human nature so that sin just came right back anyway? Why didn't God just snap his fingers and annihilate everyone without all the drowning and theatrics and without killing the animals? If, in the beginning, God was able to create all the animals why did it need to make a big flood and save pairs of them in Noah's time? Why not just create them the same way it did the first time? What did everyone eat after the flood ended and all the plants were dead? How can a perfect, eternal, incorporeal, infinite being be pleased by the soothing aroma of burnt animals and presumably become more perfect than before it was pleased (Gen 8:21)? If rainbows did not exist before the Noah flood, how did optical refraction of sunlight in water droplets work back then? Do you think that slavery for all of his descendants is a fair punishment for Canaan whose father Ham saw his father Noah naked (Gen. 9:20-22)? If Noah's ark landed in a single location, freeing all the species, then how and why did every single species of kangaroo (red kangaroo, tree kangaroo, wallaby, etc.) migrate all the way across the ocean to Australia/New Guinea? Why did all of the guinea pig variants (chinchillas and the like) all go to South America? How could eight people reproducing generate in only 150 years a population big enough to build a city and impressive tower (Gen 11:1-9)? or in 100 years a civilization in Egypt great enough to build the pyramids? Can you imagine a 3-day old baby slowly drowning in a great flood intentionally caused by a loving god? Why did Jesus believe in the story of Noah (Matt 24:36-41)? Why do the Catholic Sunday School teachers present the ark story to credulous children as historically true before they have reached the age of seven, the officially Church-accepted age of reason, when they still think that Santa Claus is real?

Do you think there really was a man named Moses who was as a baby set adrift on a river in a basket, was favored by God, really parted the Red Sea and really killed people by the hundreds of thousands with God's help and blessing? Do you believe the story from 1500 years before the story of Moses that Mesopotamian King Sargon of Akkad was as a baby set adrift on a river in a basket, was adopted and rose to power?

How can the unborn descendants of Moses and Noah be parties to covenants between these biblical characters and God? How can a contract be valid when either party is under duress? If these characters did not actually exist, can they have any descendants?

Do you think that there really was an exodus of Jewish slaves from Egypt and that they wandered in the wilderness for forty years to get from Egypt to Canaan which is only about a six day trip on foot? Why have the majority of Israeli archaeologists agreed that there was no such exodus? If God was able to drown Pharaoh's army, why did it not stop the armies of Moab? What difference would it make for the Israelites to avoid capture by Pharaoh's army if they were still in areas of Egyptian political influence? Why is there no historical record of a loss of 33% of Egypt's population among the records of Egypt or its enemies who would have easily conquered them because of it? Why is there no archaeological evidence of a mass Israelite migration but there is for Viking sagas and Homeric epics? If in fidelity to their heritage the enslaved Israelites avoided Egyptian cultural assimilation for 400 years why did they assimilate Canaanite culture?

Do you think that the story of Jonah living for three days in the stomach of a big fish is a true historical account? Why did Jesus think that it was a true historical account (Matt 12:40)?

Is the Old Testament the inspired word of God with its characterization of God as a genocidal, narcissistic, petty, misogynist, jealous, vain, sadistic, pyromaniacal, nationalist tyrant? What good is the Old Testament? What makes the New Testament any more credible and inerrant than the Old Testament? If the concepts of thought crime (Matt 5:28) and eternal torture in the afterlife (Matt 13:50, Matt 18:8, Matt 25:41) were not introduced until the New Testament, how is the New Testament kinder and gentler than the Old Testament where you were free to think with impunity and God's vengeance ended at death?

Does Jesus love all of us unconditionally? What does the word "unconditionally" mean? Do you think that someday Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead (CCC 678)? What does the word "judge" mean? What do you think will happen to those on whom Jesus renders an unfavorable judgement? Why would Jesus choose to render a judgement on someone he loves unconditionally that sends them into a lake of eternal fire (Matt 18:8, Rev 21:8) if he could instead render a judgement that doesn't? Why not just cause the bad souls to not exist anymore instead of subjecting them to eternal torture or a presumably very unpleasant separation from God that doesn't benefit anyone?

How can a god love you unconditionally but bring upon you eternal hellfire unless you have some water splashed on your forehead as a baby and have a prayer said over you on your deathbed? Aren't splashed water on foreheads and deathbed prayers conditions?

If you have been baptized, what difference does it make how you behave in life? If being baptized makes no difference then what's the point of doing it?

Do you believe the events described in the Book of Revelation will actually happen? in the next fifty years?

Why hasn't the world come to an end yet even though Jesus said that it would happen before the end of a generation (Matt 24:34)?

If we should take no thought for tomorrow, as Jesus says (Luke 12:34), why do we have to plant trees, recycle, care for the planet, go to school and learn job skills?

Do you think Jesus will return and there will be an apocalypse? Do you look forward to it? Would you like it to happen during your lifetime? How can you be a true believer without hoping for the ultimate destruction of the world and death of all living things? Why didn't any Old Testament prophet say anything about a Second Coming?

From Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli between the United States and Libya, drafted by George Washington and signed by John Adams "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion..."

From Jefferson to Adams: "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

And more recently, Catholic president John F. Kennedy said, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”as2qw

Was it an American president or Adolf Hitler who said, "The National government regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality" in a speech delivered in Berlin on Feb. 1, 1933?

Do you think the United States is a Christian nation? Why isn't God mentioned anywhere in the US Constitution? Did they say any prayers at the first constitutional convention? Do you think the founding fathers would have faced any consequences political or otherwise for having openly denied the existence of any gods? Where does the Bible teach democracy, freedom of speech, habeas corpus, separation of powers, innocence until proof of guilt, protection from self-incrimination or gender equality? Why wasn't "under God" in the pledge of allegiance until 1954? Why wasn't "In God we trust" on the back of dollar bills until 1956? How many Bible quotes and Christian images are contained in architecture in Washington D.C.? How much pagan imagery is there?

What's more important to you - Christianity or democracy? Ideally, would you like Christianity to be the official religion of the United States? Ideally would you like the United States to be a Christian theocracy with a leader from the clergy? Do you think laws from an ancient book supersede laws established through the processes of democracy? Do you agree with Peter and the apostles that we must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29)? Do you think Wahhabi Muslims in Saudi Arabia must obey God rather than men? Do you agree with St. Paul and Jeff Sessions that everyone needs to submit to the authorities (Romans 13:1)? Do you think there should be civil laws against adultery, masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual acts as prescribed in the Catholic Catechism and enacted in majority Catholic Philippines? What is the Vatican doing to keep out of prison Filipinos convicted of these things? Do you think bacon should be banned with civil laws because it offends Muslims?

Do you think that the Bible should be the basis of laws? What about the Qur'an? What about the Hindu Epics?

How do you decide which Bible rules to obey and which not to obey? Do you wear clothes made of two different materials (Lev 19:19)? eat shrimp (Lev 19:12), trim the hair at your temples (Lev 19:27), plant crops with two different kinds of seed (Lev 19:19), have any tattoos (Lev 19:28), have any contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev 15:19), work on Saturday (Exodus 35:2), or approach the altar without having 20/20 vision (Lev 21:20)? If you are female, do you sacrifice two doves before entering church after your period (Lev 15:19)?

Where did God say that the law of the Old Testament was only temporary?

Why did God give different sets of commandments (Exodus 20, Exodus 23, Exodus 34, Deut 5 and Deut 27)? Did God make a mistake the first time? Why was the graven image commandment removed from the Catholic set (Ex 20:4-6)? Did God make an error when stating that it would visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations?

Is it more likely that the creator of the universe had exactly ten distinctly important rules or that ten was good round number to put into a story?

If there is only one god, then why does the first commandment acknowledge existence of other gods that ought not be worshipped? Why did it not just say that there are no other gods in existence to worship?

Should respect and obedience be automatic or earned?

God thinks taking its name in vain (prohibited) is worse than rape and slavery (not prohibited) (Ex 20:1-17). Do you think taking God's name in vain is worse than rape and slavery? Are God's feelings hurt when its name is used in vain? Why did God list taking its name in vain (2nd or 3rd) before killing (5th or 6th)? Do you think that taking God's name in vain is worse than murder? If the United States was founded on the Christian religion, why is the lesser offense of murder a crime but taking God's name in vain is not a crime even though it is listed higher in the Ten Commandments? Would you like for the punishment for taking God's name in vain to be more severe than the punishment for first degree murder?

God thinks boiling a goat in the milk of its mother (prohibited) is worse than rape and slavery (not prohibited) (Ex 23:19). Do you think boiling a goat in the milk of its mother is worse than rape and slavery?

Why would the creator of the universe care which day of the week we take off? If God's true meaning was for us to take any day of our choice off, would God have been able to find the words to say so? Why would an omnipotent god need to rest on the seventh day? Is the Sabbath to be kept holy because God rested on the seventh day (Exodus 20:11), or because God freed the Israelites from Egypt (Deut 5:15)? Why wasn't Jesus stoned to death for performing miracles on the sabbath?

Is not honoring your parents (prohibited) worse than rape and slavery (not prohibited)? Should a girl honor her father if he rapes her? Do you think you should beat disobedient children (Proverbs 13:24, 20:30, 23:13-14) or kill them (Ex 21:15, Lev 20:9, Deut 21:18-21, Mark 7:9-13, Matt 15:4-7)?

If someone strikes you on the right cheek should you offer the left one (Matt 5:39)? Why is it okay to kill in self-defense but not to end suffering of a person who asks you to do it? Why did God deliver a command to not kill then command Moses to command the Levites to slay 3,000 of their brothers, friends and neighbors (Ex 32:27-28)? Did people think that it was okay to kill people before they received the commandment to not kill?

Why wasn't king David stoned to death for committing adultery with his general's wife (2 Samuel 11:4)?

Is it okay to bear false witness against someone who is not your neighbor?

How is it possible to not be attracted to a married person you find attractive? How would the species survive without people looking lustfully at other people? Do you agree with Jesus that if you look lustfully at someone the best thing to do is to gouge your eyeball out (Matt 5:29)?

How is it possible to not covet another person's property? What would economic development be without the desire to have things that other people have? Why are wives allowed to covet their neighbors' spouses but husbands aren't? How can the Ten Commandments be regarded as applicable today and forever if its regard for women as chattel is no longer acceptable in modern culture? Why is coveting your neighbor's house prohibited before coveting your neighbor's wife?

How is it possible to love others as much as or in the same manner as yourself (Mark 12:31)?

God thinks that the value of a woman is 60% the value of a man and the value of a girl is 50% the value of a boy (Lev 27:1-8). Do you think so too?

Why is female virginity so important in the Bible but male virginity is not? Why is sex between men against God's law but not sex between women (Lev 18:22)? If a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night should she be stoned to death on her father's doorstep (Deut 22:20)? If a man is not a virgin on his wedding night should he be stoned to death on his mother's doorstep?

Why is sexless God referred to using masculine pronouns?

Do you agree with Toledo Archbishop Braulio Rodriguez that "The majority of cases of domestic violence happen because the woman's partner does not accept them, or rejects them for not accepting their demands"?

God thinks that husbands are the heads of households as Christ is the head of the Church and wives should submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-23). Do you think husbands are the heads of households too?

If a traveler is staying in your house and the locals come by to have sex with him, should you give your concubine to them and let them rape her all night instead of the traveler (Judges 19:25-28)?

Why do male slaves get freedom after six years but if you sell your daughter into slavery she can only be bought back if she doesn't please her master (Exodus 21:7-8)?

Why didn't God include Sarah in the discussion about murdering her son Isaac?

Paul thought that it was improper for a woman to speak in church and if she wanted to learn anything she should not ask in church but should ask her husband at home (1 Cor 14:34-35). Do you think so too?

Do you agree with God that women should be stoned to death if they do not scream loudly enough when they are being raped (Deut 22:24)? Do you agree with God that you can sell your daughter into slavery and allow her master to rape her (Exodus 21:7-10)? Why would a loving God allow masters to rape their female slaves and then order the slaves to be punished (Lev 19:20-22)? Do you agree with God that if you rape a virgin you will be forgiven if you pay her father and marry her (Exodus 22:16-17)? Why did God promise to pull up the Israelites' skirts over their faces to expose them (Jer 13:22-26)? Why do women choose to obey the Bible?

Why can't women be priests?

Do you support genital mutilation of girls?

Do you support genital mutilation of boys? Why did God intelligently design foreskin that it wanted to be cut off? Why did God make men with nipples?

Do you support presenting unsupported, extraordinary religious claims - eternal torture, talking donkeys and bushes, unicorns, living in a whale stomach, virgin birth, resurrection, invisible, surveilling angels, an invisible boogeyman living at the center of the Earth, etc - as truth to impressionable children at their most credulous, imaginative time of life, who have not yet developed the critical thinking skills, experience or brain physiology necessary to judge truth? If the official Catholic doctrine for the age of reason - when someone is able to discern right and wrong - puts it at age seven, why do churches begin religious education at age three? Is it moral for Muslims to lie to children about very serious things? Is it moral for Christians to lie to children about very serious things?

Do you support telling children stories of parents willing to murder their children at God's request or eating their children or claims that a child's friends of other faiths will be tortured for eternity because they never had some water splashed on their foreheads as babies? Do you think terrifying children is a form of child abuse?

Do you think religion would exist today if it were not presented to people as children? Why do you think that Hitler made his Nazi camps for children?

Do you think that every religious person should or should not ask these questions of their religious instructors and religious parents? Why did the University of Notre Dame grant club status for Jews and Muslims but not atheists? If something is true, what does it have to lose by being challenged? If something is not true, what does it have to lose by being challenged? Do you agree with Peter that you should always be prepared to explain why you believe what you believe (1 Peter 3:15)?

Do you agree with 58% of Republicans that colleges and universities have a negative impact on the US? Do you agree with 72% of Democrats that colleges and universities have a positive impact on the US?

Do you think that the followers of cult leaders Jim Jones, David Koresh and Marshall Applewhite should or should not have asked them questions?

What kinds of questions should Christian students ask and not ask? What kinds of questions should Muslim students ask and not ask?

Do you agree  with Jesus that people who give kids a list of questions that lead them to doubt Christian teachings ought to have a stone tied around their necks and drown (Matt 18:6)? Do you think that followers of Poseidon should not put their god to the test? Do you think that followers of Yahweh should not put their god to the test (Deut 6:16)? Should insulting someone's religion be a crime in the US like it is in majority Catholic Philippines? Do you agree with Paul of Tarsus that you should prove all things and only keep what's good (1 Thes 5:21)?

Do you think that the Devil put these ideas into my head? Can someone make a valid argument if you do not like the person (ad hominem fallacy), if they are a hypocrite (tu quoque fallacy), if lots of people disagree with them (ad populum fallacy), or if you can find one expert who disagrees with them (appeal to authority fallacy)?