Answering Atheist Arguments #2 - Bible Contradictions?

The Reason Rally has inspired me to write a new section on my blog. Every Tuesday I plan on looking at a common atheist argument and responding to it in a quick paragraph to show why it doesn’t work in the argument against Christianity or the belief in God. Atheists, especially the ones I met at the Reason Rally, use a lot of strong and angry rhetoric. Quite often it is just to score a rhetorical point, but can be easily refuted. These are not arguments for Christianity, these are just simple refutations of arguments against Jesus or the belief in God.

When I was at the Reason Rally last week I sparked up a conversation with man who got animated and loud about his atheism almost immediately.  I barely got my opening question of, “What is the best argument you have heard for the existence of God?”, when he jumped in;

“How can you believe the Bible?  It’s full of contradictions!”

Having heard this claim many times before, and being ready with a response inspired by my Pastor, Mike Doyle, I quickly retorted, “Name one.”

He clearly wasn’t expecting me to ask, so it took him a good 20 seconds to think of a good one.  He grinned, signifying that he thought he had me right where he wanted me, “One of God’s commandments is “Thou Shalt Not Kill” right?  So then how can Christians be in the military, and how does God then command Israel to take military action against other ancient nations in the Bible?”


Now when someone claims there are contradictions in the Bible, 90% of the time they are just bluffing.  They have heard there are contradictions, but have never actually read one.  5% of the time they have a specific apparent contradiction in mind.  I say apparent because it’s never a real contradiction, it just appears that way on first glance.   The last 5% involves not really knowing the Bible, and thus making up your own contradiction and claiming it’s a Biblical one.   It is in this last category, that my new atheist friend’s statement falls into.

The problem for my friend is that nowhere in the Bible does it say “Thou shalt not kill”.  It says, “Thou shalt not murder.”   The difference between killing and murder is vast.  By the way, where it says “thou shalt not murder”, it also goes on to talk about when killing is justified, or at least when it is not considered murder.

Notice also that the first part of his “contradiction” involved something that is not a Bible contradiction at all.   Even if it were true that serving in the military was contrary to the Bible, that’s not a Biblical contradiction, it would just show that the Christian was being hypocritical.  Atheists do this a lot, as if showing that a Christian wasn’t perfect somehow proves Christianity false.   This is silly of course, and we should point out this faulty logic when we hear it.