Fifty-Five Questions for Skeptics: 2025 Edition
About this ebook
The book was written as follows:
* It begins with an apparently outlandish biblical claim, followed by a series of straight-forward, unbiased questions you can use to prove or disprove the claim. No answers are fed to you. The questions are not worded in such as way as to try to sway your answer apart from where your research leads. You provide your own answers and your final conclusion, based only on your own research.
* Other apologetics books rely on philosophical or logical arguments, or they provide answers from second- or third-hand sources that you may not trust. This book relies only on real-world, objective evidence that you investigate and prove using purely secular means. No information is fed to you.
* You are free to use any method, source, or tool you trust to do your research: subject-matter experts, first-hand experience, magazines, news articles, internet, encyclopedias, artificial intelligence, etc..
* Since the book is about testing Bible claims, you have to read various scripture passages. You may do so in any Bible of your choosing. No interpretation or commentary is provided because the meanings are obvious: you are intelligent enough to interpret them on your own.
* Since it is fair to demand only hard evidence for the existence of God, it is also fair to only allow hard evidence against His existence. Therefore, all answers to the questions must be backed-up by secularly-acknowledged or personally investigable evidence. Any theory with no evidential support is not allowed.
* After doing the research and answering the questions, you are free to accept or reject the claim, based solely on the evidence you have found.
* The questions are suitable for research by an individual or a group. The questions work whether you sincerely want to know the truth, or you want to disprove it.
This book begins with a seemingly ridiculous and unprovable claim: that God restored the nation of Israel in 1948, as He promised in Bible prophecies written thousands of years earlier. These prophecies also predicted in detail what the conditions would be like in the restored nation. The questions test the claim to see if it is true or false. They are also used to calculate the combined mathematical probability of all of the fulfillments, to show they didn't happen by chance. This claim was chosen to show the following skeptical objections do not apply:
* “The prophecies were written after the events happened.”
* “The prophecies were written vaguely. They can be interpreted to mean anything.”
* “The fulfillments were coincidental, the result of random chance.”
* “The prophecies were purposely fulfilled to make the Bible seem true.”
* “The Bible writers lied about the fulfillments.”
If you’re an atheist, I challenge you to take a look at the book, do the research, and give honest answers to the questions. You can only refute the claim if you do the research.
2025 Edition: This edition adds an appendix containing AI chatbot GROK's unedited answers and reasonings to the first eleven questions. These questions are non-theological in nature and based on unbiased sources. This is the only AI content in the book, and it is provided for the convenience of those who are unable to research the answers on their own. You are free to verify the answers by asking GROK yourself, asking some other AI chatbot the questions, or you can ignore the appendix altogether.
Andrew Bernhardt
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About the author
Andrew Bernhardt lives in Beatty, Nevada with his wife, Wanda. He is a retired electronics technician, likes to study his Bible, read, hike, listen to Christian and classical music, play piano, blog, and spend time with his wife. He is also active in his local church.
