We get a strong taste of Paul’s bad theology in one of the earliest Christian documents, his first letter to the Thessalonians. In the fourth chapter he promises them a meeting with Jesus in the clouds, in which both living and dead Christians will take part. This is fantasy theology, based on his hallucinations. Comic book writers who create flying super-heroes know they’re making up stuff for good fun, but Paul was serious. He failed at reality-based thinking.

Every religious fundamental you take for granted: try to find out where it came from. Who thought of it first? What can you do to verify it? All priests and preaches ask their followers to accept received beliefs on faith. But serious research and study usually uncover the human origins of “sacred truths.” Reliable, verifiable, objective evidence is missing.

No matter how much preachers stress feel-good Bible verses, the vengeful God of the Old Testament didn’t get a makeover when Jesus came along. He’s right there in the words of Jesus, some of which are really bad.

We're out of luck trying to find substantial moral teachings about marriage in either the Old or New Testaments. In fact, both Jesus and the apostle Paul are a disappointment.

Close scrutiny of the Sermon on the Mount reveals that it was not preached by Jesus. It is the literary creation of Matthew, to compensate for the lack of moral teaching in Mark; Luke decided to modify and abbreviate it, and the author of John’s gospel ignored it altogether.

The gospels are supposedly about the “good news,” but the letters of the apostle Paul are actually bad news. He wrote too much bad theology, had bad attitude, and was given to magical thinking. What a shame his writings ended up in the New Testament.

The scene of Baby Jesus in the Manger is so familiar, but take a close look. The Matthew and Luke birth stories fail the test of history, and cannot be reconciled: the Jesus story gets off to a bad start.

Jesus gets demerits for scolding the disciple who was skeptical. It’s a virtue to be skeptical: Don’t settle for anything other than objective evidence. Always be suspicious of claims made by holy heroes.

We’re actually lucky that so many Christians have better value systems than what they find in the Bible—and thus ignore so much in scripture, even in the teaching of Jesus.

Religions offer the pious version of “…when you wish upon a star.” There is no substance to the claims made, and devout Christians—so many different brands!—Jews, Muslims, and Mormons have never agree about what God wants, or how he expects to be worshipped. So we can be very suspicious that their “truths” come from God.