I am not a religious person, but I was raised Catholic and I remember having a lot of questions about things when I went to church and to classes when I was growing up.
Things that just didn’t seem to make sense to me…
But I guess it’s pretty normal to question your faith.
Let’s see what “plot holes” AskReddit users think exist in their religions.
1. A lot of issues.
“I could live my entire life, adhering completely to the Christian moral compass, save millions of lives, treat every person with the utmost respect and dignity, refuse all toxic thoughts and actions, and yet (according to most Christian dogma) I would still burn in hell for eternity if I didn’t believe the Christian God exists.
That sentiment alone tells me that morality, and the course of our lives in general, is irrelevant in the end. All that matters is that the Christian God gets recognition. That God, to me, sounds more narcissistic than benevolent and loving. And therefore, is not a God I wish to worship.
There’s also issues such as, if God is truly omnipotent and omniscient then he could have purged the world of all suffering and pain. But he hasn’t because… he loves us? Because somehow the gift of free will, and therefore the gift of imperfection is more important than letting your children suffer and experience pain?
Some children are born into poverty, beaten, starved, and killed before 10 years of age, without ever seeing kindness. What’s the lesson there God? Why must you treat the creations you love with such disdain solely to “make a point.”
I could go on. There’s so many issues I have with that belief system and narrative.”
2. Explain that one.
“I’ve always found it funny how in the bible, God made the sun on the fourth day.
How could there have been any days before that?”
3. Wow.
“Jehovah’s Witness over here.
This would probably be the longest comment on this post because I’ll go into specific details.
They’re hypocrites: JWs laugh at other religions for predicting when the world would end. But the founder of our religion and other very influential members of our religion had made several predictions in the past, none of which came to past. I hate hypocrisy with passion.
They think they’re the ‘true religion’, but on the other hand, all other religion thinks the same of their own religion, which is absolutely fine by me. The problem with me about this claim is that, JWs think that only faithful members of their religion would be saved.
This is actually a blasphemy against the image of God. How would a loving God kill billions of people and only save a very few millions of people? Such ‘God’ is not compassionate and doesn’t have love in his heart.
They claim that our religion is full of unconditional love, and you cannot find such love outside the religion. This is a blatant lie, directed to mislead the public and/or interested members. The love they have is highly conditional on the fact that you remain one of their members.
If you stop being a member, you’ll be highly shunned, even by your family members who are JWs.
They try to make pre-teens and teens baptize (clearly deviating from Jesus’ example, by baptizing at 30 y/o) with the guise of ‘surviving’ Armageddon.
They know it’s a huge responsibility on the path of teenagers, one that can be likened to marriage, but feels it’s completely right for pre-teens and teens, who have little or no idea to get baptized.
They cover up for pedophiles. There are reports of child s*x abuse in the organization than meets the eye, but they cover this all up under the guise of “Protecting the name of Jehovah”. To them, child s*x abuse is no crime at all, it is rather a sin.
Majority of the people are depressed and utterly fed up on the religion, but cannot stop being a member because once they do, they’ll lose all their friends and families who are members. Worst case scenario is that, all your friends are witnesses, so if you disassociate yourself, you would be friendless.
They say God gave us the free will to do whatever we want, and as they strive to be Godlike they follow this rule. FALSE! They snitch on you, stalk you (they are very good at stalking), and monitor your whole life to see when you’d make a small mistake, and then form a Judicial committee just to ruin your life.
They don’t like dissenting voices. If you ever try to question/criticize any of their teachings, you’ll be viewed as an apostate, and then shunned for the rest of your life.
They discriminate big time, especially when you are no part of their religion.
They advice against higher education. This is because we’d gain more knowledge by furthering our education and then see that most of their teachings are false, and not based on fact or nonsensical.
There are pretty much many other things I’m disgusted at, which aren’t mentioned here in my religion, but I’d stop here.
Advice to non-members: If they ever try to recruit you, please, do not ever give in. It would be the worst mistake to make in this life.”
4. Does that add up?
“Horses were not on the continent at the supposed time of the prophet.
After some backpedaling, the church tried to say the writings were about tapirs, thought to be horses.”
5. Conflicting accounts.
“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all have different conflicting accounts of what happened regarding the empty tomb.
Did just Mary go alone or did the other Mary go too? Was there an earthquake or did the stone instantly move away or was the stone already rolled away? Did one or two or no angels show and talk to them? Did they go and tell everyone or were they too afraid to?
Did they find Jesus was gone and then called the disciples to come see or did the angels tell them to go tell all the disciples? Did Jesus appear in the tomb and talk to Mary?
This is one of the plot holes that led me from being a firm believer fundamentalist to an agnostic wishy washy whatevs guy 😀
Now my Christian belief system has to come to terms with the Perfect Word of God and the imperfect accounts in the Old and New Testaments.”
6. Satan.
“If Satan punishes those who sin, wouldn’t he be considered a good guy?
Alternatively, if Satan is a bad guy, why would he punish other sinners?”
7. You better learn.
“I’m my religion when you die, you wake up in Dark Souls.
Even if you’re a good person.
I don’t know how to use swords though.”
8. A betrayal?
“That Judas betrayal of Jesus doesn’t make sense.
Jesus wasn’t hiding. He rode into Jerusalem in broad daylight.
Everyone knew he was coming. Judas’ help wasn’t needed to catch him.”
9. Mormons.
“I was raised Mormon, and I could write a whole book of plot holes/inconsistencies found within.
A big one I will note though is polygamy. Yes, the central Mormon church in Utah is infamous for polygamy back in the day, but in the Doctrine & Covenants (companion piece of scripture unique to the religion) there is a verse that more or less states “Even though there are rampant rumors that we take on more than one wife, it’s all BS. We’re against polygamy.”
That section was written before polygamy was openly practiced and widely known by membership… but at the same time Joseph Smith (founder of the religion) and his inner circle were marrying up multiple women left and right.”
10. A different perspective.
“So I’m Christian but never got why there was more than one race, I’m not being racist, but I’m guessing Adam and Eve were the same race and the genetics don’t make sense.”
11. BIG plot holes.
“God loves everyone equally!
He doesn’t punish people for the sins of their forefathers! Except, you know, black people are cursed because their ancestors sinned. That’s why they have dark skin. Oh, and women suffer through periods, pregnancy, and birth because Eve ate the apple first.
But, you know, he doesn’t punish people for things they didn’t do!
I left the religion because of racist, s*xist sh*t like this so yay.”
12. Sounds a little fishy…
“Jesus supposedly came to Earth in 1919 and declared my former religion (the Jehovah’s Witnesses) to be the one true religion, even though there’s no proof of this happening…”
13. As simple as that.
“Virgin birth and a talkin snake to start.”
14. Noah’s Ark.
“Most of the Bible stories but the whole Noah’s Ark thing is so bizarre.How can all of those animals fit on the boat? How did they get all of those animals from all around the world?
And how do they feed the animals, do they give the lions a leg of one of the zebras?”
15. A big contradiction.
“No longer religious, but one of the biggest contradictions in Christianity is that human beings by nature are morally imperfect beings. Yet a necessary component for the forgiveness of sins includes having the right sort of beliefs toward Jesus.
How does it make sense that a person’s eternal destiny relies solely on an imperfect being having a specific belief. I think we can all agree that human beings are morally imperfect, but I’d argue that they’re far more imperfect when it comes to having true beliefs (assuming Christianity was true).
It seems entirely unfair that that is the thing that people are judged on. People would have to be epistemically perfect to be judged on their beliefs.”
What do you think?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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