All Sources

Sources by page

The Tower of Babel

1. Wikipedia, Tower of Babel: etiology; Etemenanki; Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta; documentary-hypothesis dating; the conflict with Genesis 10:5; literal Babel origins of languages described as pseudolinguistics.
2. The "night" word comparison reflects standard historical linguistics (Indo-European family); a dedicated citation is still to be added.

Verses That Disagree

1. Wikipedia, Genesis creation narrative: differences between Genesis 1 (Priestly source, largely 6th century BCE) and Genesis 2 (non-Priestly/Yahwist; dated variously, 10th–9th century BCE under the classic documentary hypothesis, later by some scholars).
2. Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, Contradictions in Genesis? (a conservative case that the accounts are complementary).
3. Alisa Childers, Do the creation accounts in Genesis one and two contradict each other? (the "fly-over / zoom-in" and past-perfect arguments; a commenter disputes the pluperfect reading).
4. Bart Ehrman, Guards, Visitors, & Angels: Does the Story of Jesus' Tomb Contain Contradictions?
5. Karlo Broussard, Catholic Answers, Biblical Resurrection Reports Are Not Hopelessly Contradictory.
6. Bart Ehrman, When Was the New Testament Written?: Mark c. 70, Matthew and Luke c. 80–90, John c. 95 CE; Paul's earliest letters c. 49–51 CE. Dates are debated.
7. Items in section 3 are standard textbook examples; the "common harmonization" column reflects widely given explanations. Verse links go to BibleGateway (NRSV).

The Bible's Flat Earth and Dome

1. Paul H. Seely, "The Firmament and the Water Above, Part I: The Meaning of raqia' in Gen 1:6-8", Westminster Theological Journal 53 (1991); journal listing. Concludes the raqia is "a solid sky"; cites ancient Near Eastern parallels and Origen, Ambrose, Augustine.
2. Michael S. Heiser, "The Ancient's Guide to the Galaxy: How the Israelites Viewed God and the Universe", Logos Bible Software (2017): three-tiered universe, solid vault, pillars, windows of heaven, Sheol.
3. Christian Resource Institute, "The Circle of the Earth": chug does not imply a sphere; it's a circle or horizon on a flat-disc cosmology.
4. Hebrew text and word data on this page come from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (public domain) and the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (CC BY 4.0), shown in the verse pop-ups.

What the Big Bang Really Says

1. CASRAI explainer, Big Bang theory; and HowStuffWorks, Big Bang theory: "It doesn't attempt to explain what initiated the creation of the universe, or what came before the big bang."
2. Big Think (Ethan Siegel, "Starts With A Bang"), The Big Bang wasn't the beginning, after all, which includes the Alan Guth quotation.
3. Universe Today, What is the evidence for the Big Bang?: Slipher (1912), Hubble (1924), Penzias and Wilson, nucleosynthesis; age ≈13.8 billion years.
4. The other side's case, in their own words: Reasonable Faith, Debate on the Kalam argument; and Cambridge University Press, Kalam cosmological arguments for atheism (Cambridge Companion to Atheism).

The Big Picture

1. Universe Today, What is the evidence for the Big Bang?: age of the universe ≈13.8 billion years.
2. Smithsonian Magazine, Göbekli Tepe: The World's First Temple?: site dates to about 9000 BCE (≈11,000 years ago); builders were hunter-gatherers; no one can confirm what the carvings meant.
3. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, The first of our kind: oldest Homo sapiens fossils at Jebel Irhoud: fossils about 300,000 years old.
4. UNSW Sydney, Earliest signs of life: microbial remains in ancient rocks (2019): ≈3.5 billion-year-old stromatolite remains, Dresser Formation, Pilbara, Western Australia.
5. Cleaves et al. / PMC, Factoring Origin of Life Hypotheses into the Search for Life in the Solar System and Beyond (Life, 2020): vents, hot springs, RNA world; no in-situ experiments yet at an actual vent.
6. Universe Today, Astronomers See a Newly Forming Planetary Disk…: ALMA observations of BHB1, a ≈1-million-year-old star with a ≈70 AU gap in its disk.
7. Sci.News, Astronomers Create Catalogue of Habitable-Zone Rocky Exoplanets: 45 rocky exoplanets in the empirical habitable zone, 24 in the narrower 3D zone; over 6,000 exoplanets known.
8. CASRAI explainer, Big Bang theory; HowStuffWorks, Big Bang theory: the theory doesn't attempt to explain what initiated the universe or what came before.
9. USGS, Age of the Earth: 4.54 billion years, uncertainty under 1%.

Borrowed Stories

1. World History Encyclopedia, Eridu Genesis: the oldest Mesopotamian text relating the Great Flood, found at Nippur.
2. John Day (Oxford), TheTorah.com, The Mesopotamian Origin of the Biblical Flood Story: list of parallels, and the case that Genesis depends on Atrahasis rather than directly on Gilgamesh.
3. HistorySkills, The ancient story of Noah's Ark that is older than the Bible itself: George Smith's 1872 discovery, K.3375, Andrew George's view that few scholars doubt a connection, and Irving Finkel's round-ark tablet.
4. Evidence Unseen, Did Genesis Borrow the Creation and Flood from Mesopotamian Myths? (Christian apologetics; source of the differences table and the "shared memory" and "polemic" arguments).
5. Science Meets Religion, Are Noah's ark and flood literal scientific facts?: regional floods including the Black Sea inundation c. 7500–5500 BCE.
6. BioLogos, Genesis 1 and a Babylonian Creation Story: parallels, differences, discovery in Ashurbanipal's library (668–627 BCE), and the shift away from "pan-Babylonianism".
7. Wikipedia, Genesis creation narrative: dating of the Priestly and Yahwist sources and Near Eastern parallels (Enuma Elish, Atrahasis, Gilgamesh, Memphite Theology, Baal Cycle).
8. Marked for a second source: the Zoroastrian-influence and early-Israelite-religion statements are mainstream scholarly views but are debated, and still need a linked citation.

How Dating Methods Work

1. Science Meets Religion, How reliable is radiocarbon dating?: half-life ≈5,730 years; ≈50,000-year limit; calibration since 1969; 2009 coral curve; Lake Suigetsu (70 m, 52,000 years, 651 samples, 2012); luminescence range; calibrated dates 10–20% older. Also: Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Calibration.
2. G. Brent Dalrymple, Talk.Origins Archive, Radiometric Dating: methods, half-lives and ranges; Juvinas meteorite; Morton Gneiss.
3. USGS, Age of the Earth: 4.54 billion years; meteorites 4.53–4.58; zircons up to 4.3; Moon rocks 4.4–4.5.
4. Marked for a second source: the "heat problem" acknowledged by young-earth researchers, and tests of decay-rate stability under extreme conditions.

Is Earth Perfectly Placed?

1. Wikipedia, Earth's orbit: perihelion 147.10 million km; aphelion 152.10 million km; eccentricity 0.0167; ≈7% more solar energy at perihelion.
2. NASA Earth Observatory, Milutin Milankovitch; and NASA, Milankovitch (Orbital) Cycles and Their Role in Earth's Climate.
3. NASA (same article): cycles cause variations of up to 25% in incoming sunlight at mid-latitudes; Hays et al. (1976, Science) matched the cycles to ice ages in deep-sea cores.
4. Astrobites, Finding the Edges of the Habitable Zone (on Kopparapu et al. 2013): 0.99 to 1.70 AU for the Sun; earlier Kasting et al. (1993) estimate was 0.95 to 1.67 AU.
5. Sci.News, Astronomers Create Catalogue of Habitable-Zone Rocky Exoplanets.
6. Catholic Answers Focus, The argument for God atheists fear the most (a theist-side discussion that mentions Barnes and Lewis's book A Fortunate Universe).
7. Colyvan, Garfield & Priest, Problems with the argument from fine tuning, Synthese 145 (2005).
8. Bentham's Bulldog, 11 Brief Objections to Fine Tuning (an argued-for skeptical case; it cites Adams's 2019 review and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
9. Manson, The Fine-Tuning Argument, Philosophy Compass (2009): multiverse and normalizability objections.
10. Hawthorne & Isaacs, Misapprehensions about the fine-tuning argument (2017): the argument "is legitimate".

Flat Earth vs. Science

1. Live Science, 7 Ways to Prove the Earth Is Round (Without Launching a Satellite): ships, stars, lunar eclipses, elevation, circumnavigation, weather balloons, Eratosthenes.
2. More DIY tests: PBS NewsHour, 7 DIY experiments to prove the Earth is round; Star Walk, Proof the Earth Is Round; Big Think, Ask Ethan: how do we know the Earth isn't flat?.
3. Earth radius (6,371 km) and the horizon formula are standard geometry. Refraction effects and the 157.5 m stadion are noted on the page. The "spotlight Sun" reply is a simplified summary; a linked scholarly source is still to be added.

Glossary

1. Definitions of fact, hypothesis, theory, law and belief follow UC Berkeley's Understanding Science. Other terms are explained, with sources, on the pages where they appear.

How We Got the Bible

1. Jimmy Akin (Catholic apologist), "The Woman Caught in Adultery": missing from many early manuscripts; earliest Greek copy containing it is Codex Bezae (400s); accepted as canonical by the Catholic Church. Also: BibleHub, Why is John 7:53 missing in some texts?
2. Bible texts in the pop-ups: Westminster Leningrad Codex (public domain) with Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible morphology (CC BY 4.0); Robinson–Pierpont Byzantine Textform 2013 (public domain); BSB, KJV and YLT (public domain), via the scrollmapper bible_databases project; Strong's dictionaries (Open Scriptures, CC-BY-SA).
3. Marked for a second source: the Leningrad Codex date (c. 1008), the Aramaic sections of Daniel and Ezra, and the absence of Mark 16:9–20 from Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are standard facts of textual scholarship; individual citations still to be added.

How This Site Teaches

1. Lewandowsky, Cook, Ecker et al., The Debunking Handbook 2020 (22 researchers; also at sks.to/db2020; DOI 10.17910/b7.1182). "Misinformation is sticky—even when it seems to have been corrected"; "provide detailed refutations"; semantic aids help.
2. Tom Stafford, Evidence based debunking: only those given a plausible alternative could let go of the misinformation; backfire effects pick up strength when you have no reason to trust the speaker.
3. Skeptical Science / CSSN announcement, Debunking Handbook 2020 release note: the backfire effect "occurs infrequently."

Where Do Atheists Get Their Morals?

1. Pew Research Center, Religious "Nones" in America (2024): 83% cite wanting to avoid hurting others; 82% cite logic and reason; vast majority say one can be moral without God.
2. NPR / Science Friday, Searching For The Roots Of 'Right' And 'Wrong' (interview with Frans de Waal on The Bonobo and the Atheist, 2013). Also WAMC's transcript with his "reluctant to call a chimpanzee a moral being" remark.
3. Big Think, 95% of your behavior is primate behavior (Frans de Waal); NPR, Frans de Waal: Do Animals Have Morals?
4. Wikipedia, Golden Rule: dated examples from Egypt, Thales, Buddhism, Confucius, Mahabharata, Leviticus, Matthew and Luke.
5. 1000-Word Philosophy, Ethics and God: the Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma (the page is a summary that introduces the dilemma and links to the full essay).

Noah's Ark and the Flood

1. Science Meets Religion, Are Noah's ark and flood literal scientific facts? (2022): ark dimensions, animal mass estimates, special diets, missing evidence, regional floods.
2. John Day (Oxford), The Mesopotamian Origin of the Biblical Flood Story: the J and P strands of the flood story and their parallels.
3. Wikipedia, Durupınar site: 164 m limonite formation; Wyatt; 1960 expedition; Collins and Fasold (1996); Snelling; Atabey (2025).
4. Hal Ostrander, Baptist Standard, 5 reasons Noah's flood doesn't explain a young Earth.
5. Comparison lengths (747 ≈ 71 m, blue whale ≈ 30 m), Everest's height (≈8,849 m), Earth's surface area (≈510 million km²) and ocean volume (≈1.33 billion km³) are standard reference values; individual citations still to be added.

Paul vs. Jesus on the Law

1. Bart Ehrman, When Was the New Testament Written?: Paul's undisputed letters c. 49–57 (Philippians/Philemon possibly later); Mark c. 70; Matthew and Luke c. 80–90; John c. 95.
2. Bart Ehrman, "Jesus, Matthew, and the Law": in Matthew the Law stays in force until heaven and earth pass away, and followers must keep it better than the scribes and Pharisees.
3. Jay Carper, "Is Christ Useless to the Circumcised?": a believer's harmonization using Acts 15 and Acts 16:3.
4. Marked for a second source: the "New Perspective on Paul" summary and the debate over the genitive/accusative reading of Acts 9:7 and 22:9.

The Big Arguments, Both Sides

1. Reasonable Faith (William Lane Craig), Debate on the Kalam argument.
2. Cambridge University Press, "Kalam cosmological arguments for atheism", The Cambridge Companion to Atheism.
3. Hawthorne & Isaacs, Misapprehensions about the fine-tuning argument (2017).
4. Colyvan, Garfield & Priest, Problems with the argument from fine tuning, Synthese (2005).
5. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Hiddenness of God: Schellenberg's argument (1993 and later versions) and theistic responses.
6. Marked for a second source: the ontological argument history (Anselm, Gaunilo, Kant), the logical/evidential problem-of-evil summary and its replies, and the Epicurus quotation are standard philosophy; individual citations still to be added.

Did Jesus Fulfill Prophecy?

1. Bart Ehrman, When Was the New Testament Written?: Mark c. 70, Matthew and Luke c. 80–90, John c. 95 CE. A Christian blog post notes that Matthew has about 60 formulaic Old Testament quotations, and that evangelical and liberal scholars alike question whether he respects their original context: Redeemer Bible: Was Matthew Right?
2. Wikipedia, Isaiah 7:14: context with King Ahaz; almah and the Greek parthenos; "most modern Bible translations use 'young woman'".
3. PeacefulScience forum, Did Jesus fulfill messianic prophecies? (a long debate between believers and nonbelievers; covers Jeremiah 23, Isaiah 53, Isaiah 7:14 and the dispute over whether the gospels were shaped to fit prophecy). Believer-side arguments on Isaiah 7:14: Brian Chilton, "Is Isaiah 7:14 a Messianic Prophecy?"; Matthew Bowen, BYU Studies (2023).
4. Catholic Answers, Some Jewish Objections to Jesus: lists the objections (world peace, regathering of tribes, Torah, death of the Messiah) and gives the Catholic responses. A Catholic source, so its summaries of Jewish positions come second-hand.
5. Marked for a second source: the Hosea 11:1, Zechariah 9:9 (two animals), Psalm 22 (ka'ari vs. the Greek "dug") and Micah 5:2 (Matthew vs. Luke on Bethlehem) points are standard in biblical scholarship but are stated here from the texts themselves; a linked scholarly citation is still to be added.

How Science Works

1. UC Berkeley, Understanding Science, Correcting misconceptions: no single "Scientific Method"; theory, fact, belief vocabulary; science can't support or contradict the supernatural; a 2005 survey found over 48% of scientists had a religious affiliation.
2. Neil deGrasse Tyson, "The Perimeter of Ignorance" (American Museum of Natural History), excerpted at The Panda's Thumb.
3. Retraction Watch, Sodom comet paper to be retracted (April 2025).
4. Science Meets Religion, How reliable is radiocarbon dating?
5. The historical examples in the "shrinking pocket" model (lightning, disease, planets, the diversity of life, the age of the Earth) are standard history of science; individual citations still to be added.

Sodom, Gomorrah and the Pillar of Salt

1. Retraction Watch, Sodom comet paper to be retracted two years after editor's note (April 2025); also Criticism engulfs paper (2021).
2. Wikipedia, Lot's wife: etiological legend; Frumkin (2009); Josephus and early church writers; pillars in Israel and Jordan. Also Amos Frumkin, "How Lot's Wife Became a Pillar of Salt", Biblical Archaeology Review (2009), whose notes cite W. E. Rast (1987) linking the Sodom saga to Bab edh-Dhra.
3. SERC, Carleton College, Salt Karst: Mount Sedom diapir: rock salt as the most soluble common mineral; one large salt pillar, "Lot's Wife," preserved by its caprock.
4. Marked for a second source: the scholarly view that Genesis 19:30–38 functions as a hostile origin story for Moab and Ammon; Dead Sea elevation (≈430 m below sea level).

Thinking Tools & Fallacies

1. Lewandowsky, Cook, Ecker et al., The Debunking Handbook 2020: explaining the fallacy behind a false claim, and offering an alternative explanation, makes corrections work better.
2. Definitions follow standard logic textbooks; plain-language versions are in the Glossary.

The Giant Timeline

1. Smithsonian Magazine, Göbekli Tepe: The World's First Temple?
2. Wikipedia, Golden Rule: Egyptian Eloquent Peasant c. 2040–1650 BCE; Thales, Buddha, Confucius, Mahabharata.
3. Britannica, Rigveda: composed c. 1500 BCE; written down c. 300 BCE.
4. Biblical Archaeology Society, The Merneptah Stela: Israel Enters History: c. 1208 BCE, earliest known reference to Israel.
5. BioLogos, Genesis 1 and a Babylonian Creation Story: Ashurbanipal's library, 668–627 BCE.
6. Wikipedia, Genesis creation narrative: Priestly source largely 6th century BCE; Yahwist 10th–9th century BCE (documentary hypothesis); Persian-authorization theory.
7. Bart Ehrman, When Was the New Testament Written?: Paul 49–63 CE; Mark c. 70; Matthew and Luke c. 80–90; John c. 95.
8. John Day / TheTorah.com and World History Encyclopedia on Atrahasis and the Eridu Genesis (see Borrowed stories).
9. Marked for a second source: earliest writing (c. 3400–3200 BCE), the Old Babylonian date of Atrahasis (c. 1700 BCE), the Babylonian exile and Persian period dates, the Buddha's and Confucius's life dates, and the start of Islam (c. 610 CE) are standard reference dates not yet individually linked.

Watch & Listen

1. Wikipedia, Matt Dillahunty.
2. Boston University, "Religion for Breakfast on YouTube" (2018); Wikipedia, Andrew Mark Henry.
3. Bart Ehrman, bartehrman.com.

The Virginity Test and Other Laws on Women

1. World Health Organization, Interagency statement calls for the elimination of "virginity-testing" (17 October 2018); also UN News, "'Virginity testing': a human rights violation, with no scientific basis".
2. Mishori R, Ferdowsian H, Naimer K, Volpellier M, McHale T. "The little tissue that couldn't – dispelling myths about the Hymen's role in determining sexual history and assault". Reproductive Health 16 (2019). DOI 10.1186/s12978-019-0731-8.
3. Wikipedia, Hymen: "In one cross-cultural study, slightly more than half of all women self-reported bleeding during first intercourse" (citing Loeber 2008); also Rogers & Stark, "The hymen is not necessarily torn after sexual intercourse," BMJ (1998).
4. Rewire News Group, Myths & Realities of Bleeding with First Intercourse: describes a 1998 informal survey by Dr. Sara Paterson-Brown in the BMJ (at least 63% reported no bleeding; sample size not stated). Treated here as a lower-quality data point.
5. Bart Ehrman, When Was the New Testament Written?: the Pastoral Epistles (1–2 Timothy, Titus) dated 80–120 CE and widely considered not written by Paul.

The Young-Earth Story

1. USGS, Age of the Earth: 4.54 billion years, uncertainty under 1%; lead isotopes in the Canyon Diablo meteorite; oldest Earth rock (Acasta Gneisses) 4.03 Ga; oldest zircons up to 4.3 Ga; Moon rocks 4.4–4.5 Ga; meteorites 4.53–4.58 Ga.
2. Talk.Origins Archive, G. Brent Dalrymple, How Old Is the Earth?: radiometric dating "atomic clocks within the rocks", agreement between Earth, Moon, and meteorite ages. (A 1980s-era FAQ, so decay-constant details are dated; the overall result is consistent with the USGS figure.)
3. Science Meets Religion, Are Noah's ark and flood literal scientific facts?
4. Hal Ostrander, Baptist Standard, 5 reasons Noah's flood doesn't explain a young Earth (relying on geologists Carol Hill and Stephen Moshier).
5. Talk.Origins Archive, Young-earth claims and responses.
6. BioLogos, an organization of Christians who accept evolution and an old Earth: Genesis 1 and a Babylonian Creation Story (an example of the old-earth Christian view of Genesis).
7. Uranium-238 half-life (≈4.47 billion years) is a standard physical constant; the decay demo is a teaching simplification.