I have asked the question "why do you believe in God?" as many times as I have been asked "Why don't you believe in God?" and have received many, many different responses but there have emerged two themes of which I would like to address separately. The latter, which I will talk about in a later blog is:
"I want to go to heaven." Or many replies to that effect.
The first theme, which I will talk about now, is:
"Because the bible tells me so." Once more, there are many replies to the same effect but it all comes down to the same thing. The Bible. There is a saying that goes "The easiest way to become atheist is to read the bible." So that is where I will start and the best place to begin is in the beginning!
GENESIS 11 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.2 The earth was barren with no form of life, it was under a roaring ocean covered with darkness. But the spirit of God was moving over the water.
Simple question. Says who? Let's not even check the bottom of the bible for all the footnotes on how to interpret each word, I mean it's a good idea as the translation was from ancient scrolls and is iffy at best, but for now lets just answer the first question. Who wrote these first two verses? If we were to pick up the bible and just start reading it without some guy on stage telling us how to interpret the writings, what would we take from this? As I said, says who? Am I to take this on faith from an unknown author that what is written here is the truth? NO.
The first verse is, in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth.
OK, how? I can understand that around 2000 years ago we had a huge lack of understanding about the universe and everything in it so anybody that stepped up to the plate was going to hit a home run by answering the question on every bodies lips.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, God did it."
Awesome. That solves that problem.
Actually, no. Lets not even start with the fact there is no evidence, lets ask the question about who actually wrote this and where did that inspiration come from. The truth is that nobody really knows who wrote Genesis. Some say Moses but according to Bible scholars this is wrong. Moses was no more inspired by God to write Genesis than my cat can drive a car. I don't own a cat.
We may never know the truth but from said scholars the best guess is a mash up of all the stories told through the ages up to the point of Moses who put it all together in somewhat of an abridged version.
Spoiler alert - God turns out to be omnipresent. Wouldn't that make the second sentence of the second verse redundant? Although some try to explain this by saying the spirit of god is a mighty wind... is that something lost in translation or just a post hock rationalization?
Onward, or we could be here all day...
The First Day3 God said, "I command light to shine!" And light started shining.
4 God looked at the light and saw that it was good. He sepereatted light from darkness
5 and named the light "Day" and the darkness "Night." Evening came and then morning - that was the first day.
There is a great take on this by Ricky Gervais so I wont steel his line but you should really have a look. It's in his DVD "Animals" http://pogpog.com/v/ricky-gervais-explaining-the-bible/ so go see it and have a laugh.
The Second Day
6 God said, "I command a dome to separate the water above it from the water below it."7 And that's what happened. God made the dome
8 And named it "Sky." Evening came and then morning - that was the second day.
There is some stone age thinking for you. It is clear from here on out that if there was a God who created everything he would have explained to whomever wrote that passage what the sky actually is. Saying it is a dome is an ignorant observation perpetuated by the god of the gaps argument.
The Third Day
9 God said, "I command the water under the sky to come together in one place, so there will be dry ground." And that's what happened.10 God named the dry ground "Land," and he named the water "Ocean." God looked at what he had done and saw it was good.
11 God said, "I command the earth to produce all kinds of plants, including fruit trees and grain." And that's what happened.
12 The earth produced all kinds of vegetation. God looked at what he had done, and it was good.
13 Evening came and then morning - that was the third day.
OK, so we are half way through the creation of everything and I know what you are thinking - something about "according to their kind" right? Well, let me remind you that I'm working from the "Contemporary English Version" of the bible and the publishers have tried to make an unreadable jumble make a little more sense. We shall continue.
The Fourth Day
14 God said, "I command lights to appear in the sky and to separate day from night and to show the time for seasons, special days, and years.15 I command them to shine on the earth." And that's what happened.
16 God made two powerful lights, the brighter one to rule the day and the other to rule the night. He also made stars.
17 Then God put these lights in the sky to shine on the earth,
18 To rule day and night, and to separate light from darkness. God looked at what he had done, and it was good.
19 Evening came and morning - that was the fourth day.
So now we know that God did not write this, just ordinary mortal hands with ordinary mortal observations of the observable universe wrote this clap trap. First of all, the moon (also known the lesser light) is NOT a light. The moon is the earths satellite which, because of it's surface, reflects the suns light. It is NOT a source or light. Secondly, the nearest observable star by the naked eye is over four light years away (Alpha Centauri) meaning from earth we would not have seen the light from that star for just over four years after creation. Let that roll around your brain space for a while. If everything was created this way it would have taken thousands of years to see all the stars we see today... interesting, no?
Almost there...
The Fifth Day
20 God said, "I command the ocean to be full of living creatures, and I command birds to fly above the earth."
21 So God made the giant sea monsters and all the living creatures that swim in the ocean. He also made every kind of bird. God looked and what he had done, and it was good.
22 Then he have the living creatures he blessing - he told the ocean creatures to live everywhere in the ocean and the birds to live everywhere on the earth.
23 Evening came and morning - that was the fifth day.
And this is why creationists find it so hard to understand evolution. This creates all those arguments from personal incredulity but they are just logical fallacies.
At this point it seems as God has become a little bipolar "and they will look like us. We will let them rule..." what the hell is the "us" and "we". Up until this point God has been God, where did the plural come from?
The other thing I notice is that we are all herbivorous but our anatomy tells us something completely different. Just ask a biologist, better still, ask a Paleoanthropologist.
As any naturalist will tell you there is a food web (aka food chain) and without it nothing really makes sense in the natural world. Lets formulate a "what if" shall we. If God created all animals to eat leaves then the lion, which God also created, would have starved to death because it's oral tools nor it's digestive system are not equipped to handle that kind of food so the lion we see today is obviously not the lion that God created therefore the lion must have evolved. That would mean two things, firstly many more thousands of years have past since creation than what the young earth creationists tell us and secondly, what God created was not perfect. There is, of course, another explanation - God did not create the heavens and the earth but is a made up deity to fill in the gaps of our ancient knowledge or lack thereof.
Evolution, which is a proven scientific fact, now starts to make a little more sense and creation starts to sound more and more like man made bullshit.
The Conclusion: Some guy (probably Moses) sat down a couple thousand years ago with no scientific knowledge whatsoever and looked at the world around himself and wrote half a page of what he thought happened. Basically, God did it. That was good enough for him and for millions of people. Wow.
I write this blog because it is a passion of mine to explore the myth of god and along the way even I learn some cool stuff but it takes a lot of time and energy to write this blog. If you enjoy reading this blog please make a donation by clicking the DONATE button on the right so I can put more time into creating a better blog.
Thank you all
Justin
The Sixth Day
24 God said, "I command the earth to give life to all kinds of tame animals, wild animals, and reptiles." And that's what happened.
25 God made every one of them. Then he looked at what he had done, and it was good.
26 God said, "Now we will make humans, and they will be like us. We will let them rule the fish, the birds, and all other living creatures."
27 So God created humans to be like himself; he made men and women.
28 God gave them his blessing and said, "Have a lot of children! Fill the earth with people and bring it under your control. Rule over the fish in the ocean, the birds in the sky, and every animal on earth.
29 I have provided all kinds of fruit and grain for you to eat.
30 And I have given the green plants as food for everything else that breathes. These will be food for animals, both wild and tame, and for birds.
31 God looked at what he had done. All of it was very good! Evening came and then morning - that was the sixth day.
At this point it seems as God has become a little bipolar "and they will look like us. We will let them rule..." what the hell is the "us" and "we". Up until this point God has been God, where did the plural come from?
The other thing I notice is that we are all herbivorous but our anatomy tells us something completely different. Just ask a biologist, better still, ask a Paleoanthropologist.
As any naturalist will tell you there is a food web (aka food chain) and without it nothing really makes sense in the natural world. Lets formulate a "what if" shall we. If God created all animals to eat leaves then the lion, which God also created, would have starved to death because it's oral tools nor it's digestive system are not equipped to handle that kind of food so the lion we see today is obviously not the lion that God created therefore the lion must have evolved. That would mean two things, firstly many more thousands of years have past since creation than what the young earth creationists tell us and secondly, what God created was not perfect. There is, of course, another explanation - God did not create the heavens and the earth but is a made up deity to fill in the gaps of our ancient knowledge or lack thereof.Evolution, which is a proven scientific fact, now starts to make a little more sense and creation starts to sound more and more like man made bullshit.
The Conclusion: Some guy (probably Moses) sat down a couple thousand years ago with no scientific knowledge whatsoever and looked at the world around himself and wrote half a page of what he thought happened. Basically, God did it. That was good enough for him and for millions of people. Wow.
I write this blog because it is a passion of mine to explore the myth of god and along the way even I learn some cool stuff but it takes a lot of time and energy to write this blog. If you enjoy reading this blog please make a donation by clicking the DONATE button on the right so I can put more time into creating a better blog.
Thank you all
Justin
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