God is Dead (Redux)

This topic is near and dear to my heart, as I was a Creationist for over a decade. Good luck to them. To jump right into the issue, I hope to dispel some common misconceptions and shed light on blaring inconsistencies surrounding the Bible and Christianity. The focal points of my argument can be summarized thusly: Contention 1: -The Bible is a self-contradicting book of mythology and war crimes that goes against historical records, so for anyone to take it as some kind of authority is not reasonable. -The historical veracity of the Gospels, as well as the life and deeds of Jesus are shrouded in serious doubt. -The definition of God agreed to by Christians (a righteous, all loving creator) is fundamentally at odds with the God depicted in the Bible. -Christianity's claim to authority is weakened by its pagan origins. Contention 2: -Science offers evidence-based accounts of our origins, Christianity offers mythology-based accounts of our origins. Our job is to go with the better answers. -The premises of Christian theology defy common sense, which lends credence to the notion that it was created by a very young, very superstitious, tribal species of aggressive primate. I'm going to have to cover each of these points only briefly, but I'd be happy to clarify further in the Q&A. Contention 1- Biblical Fallibility and Morality That the Bible contains mythology should be a topic beyond reproach. I'm not talking about the occasional miracle or two, but consistent denials of science and common sense that can only be performed by the ignorant shepherds that were the ancient Israelites. This is nothing against them - they simply didn't know better. Are we to seriously believe, as Genesis tells us, that two of every animal species on earth fit on a boat that was 450 ft long? Or that the whole planet (presumably including plants) was underwater for a full year? Or that demons gave birth to giants (this is actually found throughout the Bible)? Or that rainbows didn't exist until after the Flood? Or that Methuselah lived to be 969 years old? And before my opponent says that the Myths of the Old Testament deserve to be separated from the New, consider the words of Jesus in Matthew 24: "For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. " Why would the son of God spread what he knew to be a lie? Why not call it a myth? Maybe it's because he was an illiterate peasant with Bronze Age ideas of the world, like everyone else. War crimes and historical inconsistencies are to be found with equal efficiency. Deuteronomy 13 says all nonbelievers are to be murdered while Leviticus 24 says a priest's sexually active daughter is to be burned alive. Numbers 31 sees Moses commanding the mass rape and murder of thousands of children, while Exodus 12 has God smiting all firstborn children in Egypt. Christians believe their God rained fire on two cities because it was full of gays, delivered unimaginable plagues on an empire because of it's stubborn ruler, and drowned a planet because it angered him; all within the first two books of the Bible. In what way is this character the all-loving source of righteousness looked up to today? Moving forward to the well-known scene of Christ's birth in the book of Luke, we are told that Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem because it was the home of Joseph's ancestor David (who lived a thousand years earlier), and the Roman empire supposedly had a tax that required families to move back to the town of their ancestors. The problem with this is that no such tax ever occurred. We have good records from the reign of Caesar Augustus, and nowhere does any historical source besides Luke say anything about a tax that required people to go to the town of their ancestors from a thousand years earlier. How could such a tax be implemented? Joseph kept a thousand years of family records? Is this at all believable? The author of Luke most likely lied about the tax to 'fulfill' a prophecy in the book of Micah, which said a savior would come from Bethlehem. Not to mention the shaky ground Jesus stands on as it is. Bible scholars like Richard Smoley and Bart Ehrman have pointed out that we really know nothing about Jesus. Though many people believe that the Biblical Gospels were written as first person accounts (by people who saw and knew Jesus) Ehrman shows that the Gospels were really written decades after Jesus died. The language spoken by Jesus and his followers was Aramaic, and he lived at a time when very few people could read or write, and even fewer could read or write well. The Gospels were written in Greek by several different authors who were clearly highly educated. The theology department at Boston College says: "the vast majority of researchers believe that Mark was the first Gospel to be written, sometime around the year 70. " That's forty or so years after Jesus died. National Geographic says: "The New Testament Gospels were written between AD 65 and 95. " This reduces the likelihood that they were written as first person accounts down to almost nothing. In a previous debate, my opponent used a device that I believe he adapted from William Craig, a theologian and apologist for biblical genocide. I'd like to dismantle this tactic before it even enters the debate. It consists of several points that supposedly no historian can disagree with. Four such points were: -He (Jesus) was buried. -The tomb was empty. -The disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus. -The disciples were transformed from doubters to bold proclaimers. The first two points are flat out false, while the second two have absolutely no bearing on the validity of the resurrection. We know that the Romans liked to feed the crucified to animals after they died, to ensure the humiliation of the convicted. Only the most prestigious victims under the most lenient Governors were allowed to be buried. Jesus was convicted of high treason and records show that Governor Pontius Pilate was exceedingly cruel. There's almost no chance that Christ had a burial, let alone his own tomb! My opponent hasn't read up on his biblical history, as this is common knowledge within theology departments. The Bible has heavy influences from the paganism of the Near East. In Genesis, God says "Let us make mankind in our image" because the Hebrew word used here is "elohim", which literally means "many gods". They stole this myth, and others, from the pagan Babylonians. In many ways Yahweh is just a rehashed form of the god Marduk; much like Zeus and Jupiter. If you don't believe me, google a goddess named "Asherah", who was worshipped as Yahweh's wife for several hundred years. Contention 2- We Don't Need Christ Instead of building a strawman, I'm going to let my opponent argue against evolution in his opening, and then combat his assertions with all available biological, geological, and cosmological science-unless of course he wants to concede that evolution is an established fact; as concrete and well supported as any war or the life of any historical figure. To end, let me illustrate the absurdity of Christian theology. Assuming evolution is true (which it is), the Almighty waited 9 billion years for the earth to form,1 billion years for the first life to appear,and 3 billion years for archaic homo sapiens to evolve. Then this God of love waited 200,000 years, during which time 99% of all species to have lived went extinct, to send his son (who was also himself) to be tortured to death in Bronze Age Palestine so that he could forgive humanity for a mythical man and woman eating an apple. The genius who created the laws of physics and quantum mechanics couldn't think of a less convoluted way to forgive people who never lived? Seriously? Thank you.