There’s a lot of discussion raging right now about the faster-than-light neutrinos that supposedly have been observed at the CERN laboratories. Will this discovery disprove parts of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and radically change the way we view the universe? Or is this just another case of experimental error?

Whatever the outcome, the one thing that is completely clear from the caution of the CERN scientists about their findings is the vast difference between the ways Science and Religion try to make sense of the universe. Here it is in summary:

(You can click on the image to see a larger version, or read a transcript of the text below.)

On god, holy books, and faster-than-light neutrinos

RELIGION
“Here’s this ancient Holy Book that contains the divinely-inspired words of God, the Creator of the Universe himself.

It tells you how you must live and how you must behave, what you can do and what you cannot do. If you think some parts of the book contradict other parts, remember that your human mind is too small to understand God’s mysterious ways.

Should you not obey our interpretation of this Book, you will suffer excruciating pain and torment for all eternity, after you die.
All this is absolutely true. How do we know? It’s written right there in the Book. DUH!”

SCIENCE

“We’ve apparently detected neutrino particles traveling faster than the speed of light, which means we are going to have to re-think a lot of things we thought we knew about the universe and how it works.

This is extremely exciting, but, even though we have actually observed this phenomenon tens of thousands of times, there is still the possibility that there was something wrong with our experiment.

So, to be as sure as we possibly can, we want other scientists to conduct their own experiments to independently reproduce and verify these results before we can accept them.”

Faith vs. evidence. Who you got?

So… you get into a discussion with some Christians, assert that the Bible is full of contradictions and get asked for evidence. What do you do?

Try 10 minutes of Bible contradictions conveyed as cute animated quiz show. No guarantees you’ll be more persuasive, but this excellent vid just might sweeten the pill a teeny weeny bit. Enjoy!

I have always wondered how can anyone read the Bible and not get a headache from all the errors and contradictions, let alone still believe in Christianity (or Judaism for that matter).

And it’s not just about different books in the Bible contradicting each other. Take a look at the story of Jesus and the Short-Term Memory Loss, for example. You’ll find it in the Gospel according to John, but I’ve put together a quick comic to save you the trouble.

(Read about how I found out about this story below)

Jesus and the Short-Term Memory Loss comic

Stocked up with a little packet of pain-killer tablets, I’ve just started reading biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman’s latest book called Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them).

As you may know, Bart D. Ehrman was a passionate and committed Evangelical Christian who began to lose his faith while studying the original Greek and Hebrew Bible texts at Princeton Teological Seminary.

Anyway, I’m still only on the first chapter, and thoroughly enjoying it. No sign of any headaches yet! I guess that Prof. Ehrman’s easy writing style and the sheer funniness of it all has mitigated the expected negative effects.