Honestly, the mark of the beast in Revelation 13 is just silly, and the way people have utilized this text to point to contemporary figures is even sillier. But this intensely misinterpreted part of Revelation has a significant enough effect on people today that it's important to use this as a great example of Biblical ignorance allied with power can lead to great harm.

Virtually no one in a heterosexual relationship in America practices the sexual ethics of the Bible. Heterosexual couples have allowed a massive departure from what the Bible says about hetero relationships because they are archaic and oppressive. Yet, when it comes to same-sex relationships, the Bible is utilized as the "end-all, be-all" of what a relationship should be. In today's episode we don't just talk about same-sex relationships in the Bible, but more importantly, how relationships were organized in antiquity across the board in order to see that the Bible doesn't reference homosexuality at all.

There is a great assumption that because Jews, Christians, and Muslims today are monotheistic that ancient Jews were monotheistic. However, from the beginning of the Bible to the end it becomes clear that ancient Jews believed in a plethora of gods, but the supremacy of their god. In today's episode we not only go over the scriptural references to these other gods, but we even look at a time when ancient Israelites believed in a god who was even above their own.

The Devil is as consistent as God if you ask a large swath of Christians. However, while God is clearly a part of the Biblical narrative from beginning to end, the same cannot be said about the Devil. Most of what our culture believes about the devil doesn't come from scripture, but has been spun from legends and misinterpretations long after scripture was completed. Today we look at the evolution from the innocuous satan figure, to the Devil we know today.

Abortion is not just a hot-button topic in society, it's a single-issue area for a lot of Christians who vote. But does the Bible condemn abortion? In this episode we look at what the Bible says about the practice. I will share an important disclaimer: this episode is not about a moral stance on abortion. It is explicitly about what the Bible says on abortion. What becomes clear in this episode is not so much on what the Bible says on abortion, but how people leverage authority using the Bible without knowing what the Bible says.

This episode is a bit of a controversial one as it starts off quickly the well established assertion that in the Fall story of Genesis, God absolutely lies to the first people. We go through the implications of this story as well as a story of deception in 2 Kings and what this means for us today.

This may seem like a pretty benign topic, but overlapping the long held assumption that God created the universe from nothing is the justification that people have maintained throughout time that since their God is all-powerful, they can do to outsiders whatever they want. We will be looking historically at the creation story and the origin of the doctrin creatio ex nihili in an attempt to create much needed humility.

Just the creation of what we know today as the Bible is full of assumptions informed by dogma and doctrine. And the truth is, scholars know quite a bit about how the Bible not only came to be compiled, but how it's been edited and revised over the last 1700 years. Today's episode gives a brief overview of how the Bible came to be and it's enough to help us realize how human this book truly is.

In this episode we lay the groundwork for the start of our new series on scholar Dan McClellan's new book, The Bible Says So. Today we go through the dilemmas of Christianity being so dogmatic, even in the face of contradicting scholastic data. Throughout this series we'll be tackling some big misunderstandings that have come from a more dogmatic approach in a the hopes that Christianity can speak up in new, yet very original ways.

We've all grown up hearing the Bible used as a moral authority for various arguments. Some of the big ones in our society revolve around sexuality, status of women in society and household, and homosexuality. However, the people that wield this moral authority are rarely versed in the context of the bible, and all of them conveniently rely on moral changes our society has made to the Bible without acknowledging such changes. Today we delve into several of these topics to think through how the Bible has been used wrongly, and to help us open conversations to using other sources of morality.