I wrote an e-book titled Disagreements I Have with Christianity. It details my gradual move away from the faith and several ethical and philosophical concerns about the central doctrines. Parts of my critique against Christianity essentially come down to plausibility or probability, not possibility.
Do I think it is possible that the Bible is true? Yes.
Do I think it is plausible or probable that the Bible is true? No.
There are many ways that the veracity and historicity of the Bible can and have been challenged. Here are some questions that are among the most important to me:
What is the likelihood that an all-powerful god that knows far more about science, psychology, and morality than humans could ever know would set up a universe that is full of ambiguity, pain, confusion, and suffering for sentient creatures—and then blame this system upon the most sentient of those creatures?
What is the likelihood that a god who knows the deepest and most effective forms of human flourishing, social planning, and governmental systems would have promoted the ideas of autocracy and theocracy in its sacred texts instead of democracy and republicanism?
What is the likelihood that an intelligent and compassionate god would include barbarisms such as permanent slavery and colonial warfare as part of its chosen people group’s divinely sanctioned behavior, which would inevitably be imitated by future nations that wanted to follow God’s ways?
What is the likelihood that an intelligent and compassionate god would provide virtually no information (especially compared to modern knowledge) about hygiene, biology, and disease to the first humans 100,000+ years ago and very little of this to his chosen people 3,000+ years ago through Old Testament revelation?
What is the likelihood that a compassionate god would build natural elements such as devastating comets, earthquakes, disease, tsunamis, predation, hurricanes, and birth defects into the universe’s normative functionality?
Would not a caring and wise god be sure to resist the idea of making a universe like this one because so much profound agony for sentient creatures is built into the way that nature operates?
What is the likelihood that a fair and compassionate god would include things such as the following in its morally perfect books of the Law?
However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44–46 NLT)
All who curse their father or mother must be put to death. They are guilty of a capital offense. (Leviticus 20:9 NLT)
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. (Exodus 21:7 NLT)
What is the likelihood that a fair and compassionate god that designed nature and thoroughly understands science would include things such as the following in its morally perfect books of the Law?
But if this charge is true [that she wasn’t a virgin on her wedding night], and evidence of the girls virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her father’s house and there her townsman shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against Israel by her unchasteness in her father’s house. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst. (Deuteronomy 22:20–21 NAB)
What is the probability of a god that passionately supports the dignity and worth of each human being on earth directly commanding its chosen people to murder and enslave thousands of individuals from other nations?
When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 20:10–18 NIV)