Problems of Christianity

Some of the problems of Christianity strike me as being so blatantly rational-belief-destroying that there is almost a sense of farce in seeing its devotees trying to wriggle from under them. Chief among these is the problem of explaining how somebody’s death two thousand years ago can wash away my sins. When you combine this with the doctrine of the Trinity and the implication that the sacrificial lamb is God Himself (or Itself) and that this therefore makes things all right with this self-same God, the rational mind boggles.

Michael Ruse, professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph, Ontario, who was raised a Quaker, in “From Belief to Unbelief and Halfway Back, Zygon, Vol 29, March 1994, p. 31