Religions are very, very complex. And in order to truly understand them, one has to really devote themselves to learning. But no matter how hard they try, some people just can’t wrap their heads around some of the oldest teachings in the world.
So, in order to spark a discussion that would make sense of it all, Redditor u/sebastian-yrigoyen asked people to share, as they put it, the ‘plot holes’ they have noticed while practicing their religion. From Jesus’ teenage years to the lack of dinosaurs, here’s what’s bugging everyone the most.
#1
I don’t know if this is considered as a plot hole:
Judas Iskariot was essential to Jesus’ plan. If he didn’t sold Jesus out then the prophecy will not come true.
Why then is he considered a villain? He should be at the top! He got the job done!
#2
I would say about 3/4 of hardcore Christians think being LGBT is wrong and against their god, but then also say that “God created everyone exactly how he wants them to be” like ?????
#3
“In the beginning there was Adam and Eve” Ok, I’m following that. 2 people on the planet.
They had 2 sons named Cain and Able. Yep, still with it. 4 people on the planet.
Cain killed Able. Ok, thats down to 3 people on the planet.
Cain took a wife. Wait, wut?
#4
What happened to Jesus in his teen years tho?
#5
This isn’t my religion, but I always found it hypocritical that the gods punished Oedipus for sleeping with his mother without realizing it, despite the fact that Zeus married his own sister while being fully aware that they were siblings.
#6
God is perfect and cannot sin. There exists “the wrath of God.” Wrath is one of the seven deadly sins.
#7
God teaches us that it is a sin to be envious, and to be prideful, and that we must have compassion and understanding for others. And yet he will literally condemn someone to an eternity in hell for not worshiping him, even if said person has literally never heard of him.
#8
Virgin Mary had a child. Glances suspiciously at churches/catholic schools stating abstinence is 100% effective in avoiding a pregnancy.
#9
If Adam and Eve were the first two people on Earth and are responsible for the birth of all people ever, than the entire human race is the product of incest.
Although, to be fair, that does explain quite a lot.
#10
What happened to all the fresh water fish in the flood
#11
Plot hole: there are hundreds of other religions that also claim to be the only true one
#12
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.
#13
The lack of dinosaurs.
#14
If God is the all knowing intelligent being that created everything, what was his reasoning around making foxes mating noises, if Humans are his children and he loves us why make us suffer every night listening to screaming of little horny foxes.
#15
Adam and Eve had 3 sons…
#16
An omnipotent being is used to explain the origin of everything in this universe, but there’s no explanation for the origin of said omnipotent being.
#17
I used to be Catholic; I’m now an atheist.
But, if Jesus came to save everyone from sin 2,000 years ago, what about all the other human beings who lived and died 150,000 years before he showed up? Why weren’t they saved? Christians will tell you that God saved them anyway, but why do we then have to deal with the can of worms Jesus opened and we have to follow the Ten Commandments and go to Church and tithe and everything else when they didn’t have to?
There are about 100 billion galaxies each with about 100 billion stars; the odds are very favorable that intelligent life exists elsewhere containing civilizations who will rise up and go extinct before we ever even get CLOSE to finding them. Are they saved? Why didn’t Jesus go to them?
The Bible is an arbitrary collection. Works were edited, things were lost in translation, books of the Bible were accumulated over time and voted on by councils; some made it in, some didn’t. Given that it’s basically held together by centuries of drafts and edits and additions and subtractions, how can we trust it? Yet, it’s supposed to be THE word of God.
…I could go on.
There’s nothing like being raised Catholic to make you a nonbeliever lol
#18
Incest. The Garden of Eden was the Garden of Incest.
#19
I want to know why so many Christians say that murder is wrong but ignore all the killing that God did in the Bible. Like, how do they justify drowning everyone except Noah and his family?
#20
Why would satan punish humans for rebelling against god, something that he himself once did. I’ve always thought of it as hypocritical, and that satan would reward the human for exercising their free will and living a life free of religious constraints.
#21
Evidence.
#22
It’s harder to believe than fiction.
#23
Former catholic.. still waiting for somebody to explain Jesus’s DNA situation is.. is he haploid? Where does his Y chromosome come from? So many questions.
#24
why doesn’t Sleipnir have the same sentience as his half siblings when they’re all children of Loki? where does all the extra mead from Heiðrún go? and that’s only the beginning.
#25
If man is not perfect, but man wrote the Bible how am I supposed to trust what I’m reading from the Bible. How do I know they didn’t mess anything up?
#26
That the earth way created in 3 day. How tf were there days before the earth existed? Was God measuring ‘days’ based off another planet he created?
#27
The concept of eternal peace and joy in heaven sounds very psychologically degrading long term. It sounds like living like a pet dog.
#28
Not really a plot hole in the Christianity , but a plot hole in the interpretation of it.
Christianity was originally highly Jewish based and they didn’t like Romans, a few centuries later it was Roman/ European based and they heavily discriminated Jewish people. Wut
#29
Why do Christians think the characters in the bible are white or very caucasian looking?
#30
If you’re god and you need to split off part of you to send to earth to die for the sins of mankind, wouldn’t it just be faster to like…forgive them yourself? I mean you aren’t scoring points from me for this convoluted story of some Virgin getting knocked up by you to give birth to a form of you that I’m supposed to feel bad about when they die for my sins even though that was their whole purpose.
#31
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.
#32
Late to the party, but in Islam there’s the belief that God knows everything you will do before you’re even born. Meaning that we don’t control our own actions. At the same time, to get into Heaven, you need to– of your own accord– pray 5 times daily, read the Quran, etc. So my thing is this: If God knows what everyone is gonna do beforehand, and He knows people aren’t gonna do what it takes to get into Heaven (cause he is omniscient); doesn’t this then mean that God has already decided who goes to Heaven and who gets Hell? Cause there’s no possible way in any Abrahamic religion (cause they all operate under the “do this to get into paradise” thing and all have God knowing everything before it happens) that we’d be able to try to get into Heaven. And this is just the tip of the iceberg on questions
#33
I am a Christian and a thing that has really puzzled me is that if Adam and Eve ever gave birth to a child wouldn’t it be a sin even if marriage wasn’t a thing back then? Like despite marriage not being a thing back then it would still technically be a sin in the future. Or did God make marriage a thing in the future and just brush it off since Marriage wasn’t a thing back then? I am confusion.
#34
Why did they roll a big rock over the the entrance of the cave where Jesus’s body was taken to after he died? It seems like something that was insanely impractical for people to do at the time. Was it common practice to throw bodies in a cave and then seal it? If so, was Jesus the last body to be put in? To a non-believer, it just seems like something the story added to make the story more convincing, but it doesn’t really make sense outside of the set up for a resurrection story.
On the same subject, I’ve heard a preacher talk about how Jesus basically teleported out of the cave after the resurrection, but god apparently sent an angel to sit on the boulder which was moved out of the way (for no reason). That implies that not only was there a resurrection, but god thought it wasn’t miraculous enough and had to add a dash of showmanship to the whole coming back from the dead thing. What’s up with that?
#35
Surprised I scrolled down this far to find this, but this was a problem that I raised a lot in my religious classes a child. Never got an answer, usually I was met with a strict scolding.
About the closest I ever got to an answer was that in heaven everyone will be so perfectly happy it will be as if our connections from earth won’t matter. Obviously they didn’t know and were speculating but that actually made me feel even worse.
#36
We can read Egyptian hieroglyphics. They kept extensive records. No mention of using Jewish slaves to build the pyramids, them revolting, a royal named Moses or a Red Sea parting.
#37
It’s not my religion but
“I love everyone no matter what” followed by “You better love me back or I’m gonna hate you forever and torture you for eternity” followed by “I don’t love those people neither should you, what you should do is make their lives a living hell”.
#38
I don’t believe in any kind of God but 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?
#39
Literally every biblical story. The more I read it, the less sense it makes.
Also the fact that we have to listen to some men who were “supposedly inspired by God” to write misogynistic crap and give stronger grounds to their own selfish need for power.
#40
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?
#41
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.
#42
Idk about plot holes in my religion, but I like one thing the most in my religion, it mentions a third form of life (apart from a man and woman) and I realized ancient India was very gender fluid, in fact even today whenever a baby is about to be born or is just born, Transgender people go to the new baby’s house to give the baby blessing, it is considered auspicious. But ever since Britishers left India, LGBTQ+ community has been looked down upon. I hope they get the same recognition like the ancient times.
I am not that religious, I just was more curious about hinduism in quarantine coz boredom was eating me up so I thought let’s try the spiritual way what my parents do lmao.
#43
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.
#44
I’m a lapsed catholic. Idolatry is one of the biggest “plot holes.” If you worship the virgin Mary or any other saint you are as a matter of fact doing blasphemy. Don’t come with the argument of them being a “middle man.” Speak to god directly. The worship of saints is pretty much polytheism with yahweh (christian god) being Zeus’s equivalent.
#45
Bring on the downvotes bc I know I’m going to get them.
No bible is the word of God written by man. They are the words of MEN written by MEN.
FFS there are over 1,000 denominations of Christianity alone, each knowing their version is the right one and all others are blasphemy.
Not to mention every bible from each religion is packed with contradictions…
#46
Why has there been no “holy magical” moments in our time like there’s nothing to actually show gods presence. And that’s why I’m secretly unreligous(my parents are religious)
#47
Christians claim that the people in the Bible lived to be absurdly old. For example, they say that Noah was around 650 years old when he built the ark and didn’t die until he was older then 900. How could this even be remotely possible? It doesn’t make sense because they would have lived much shorter lives then we do in the present. They wouldn’t have had access to modern medicine or anything.
#48
Oh boy I got some good ones
Christian here
So we all know that Jesus is the main focus of the new testament, but my biggest question is, what happened to him between the ages of 12 and 30
In the entirety of the bible itself,a number of immaculate creatures were named (such as the Behemoth, Leviathan,etc.) but not heard of after being mentioned and no one has ever interacted with them ever since
(Although I’ve read other christian texts, this is going to be one for people have not) where did giants come from, and even more astonishingly, where did they go
#49
Fun fact the bible has a few verses in it describing monstrosities that could be dinosaurs. Even dragons.
#50
Although interestingly Moses is actually a fairly common Egyptian name but the guys who wrote the Bible didn’t seem to know that. They made a different story about the name’s origin (She named him Moses (Moshe), saying, ‘I drew him out (meshitihu) of the water’.)
It’s very weak, of course, but it’s a hint that there might be some truth to the Moses was in Egypt story.
#51
If Jesus’ mother was told by an angel that she was going to bear the messiah in the book of Luke, why did she and the rest of the family go chasing after Jesus telling everyone he was out of his head in the opening pages of Mark?
#52
Humans just invented religion to have a little more sense in life and how everything is the way it is. For humans everything must have a meaning, since all the things we invented make a sense and have a function, even we people ourselves need to have a function, but that’s maybe not how the world is built, we are not here for any reason, it’s only a happenstance that we exist, that life on our world exists. That’s why I believe more in aliens than I believe in any kind of god. Sorry for the bad english by the way.
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