Tag Archives: God

God is not the author of the Bible

The Good Book is not the Word of God.

Clearly, God inspired the Bible.  Whether or not God exists, this statement is true.  God inhabits our imaginations.  There, in the minds of men, God dwells.

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Some Christians are under the misconception that the Bible is the unerring Word of God.  Before I argue that Jesus did not die for our sins, I must first dispel the false notion that God is speaking to us through the Bible.  

If the Bible were the word of God, then the Bible would not contain any contradictions.  So, in order to demonstrate that the Bible is not the word of God, we will go to the beginning of the very first book of the Bible, Genesis.

Genesis opens with a story of creation.  This is immediately followed by another creation story.  The first story of creation is the seven-day account, where God worked for six days, and then rested on the seventh.  It spans all of the first chapter of Genesis, and ends in the first three verses of the second chapter.  The second shorter story of creation begins with verse 4, chapter 2.  We are only looking at the two stories of creation.  The second account of creation forms the beginning of the story of Adam and Eve and their fall from grace. We won’t get into Adam and Eve today.  We are only looking for contradictions and other illogic within the creation stories.  If the Bible is the word of God, we will not find any.

We begin with the seven days of creation. 

On day 1 God creates light and darkness, day and night.    (These five verses are pure poetry.)

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Genesis 1, 1-5, KJV.

On day 2 God creates the firmament of heaven, which is referring to the skies above, and not literal heaven.

“And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Genesis 1, 6-8.

Definition. Firmament: The sky or the vault of the heavens, viewed as something solid.

The people who wrote Genesis described the world very differently than we do.  We know that the sky is not solid.  But they had no idea.

On day 3, God creates dry land and plants.

“And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

Genesis 1, 9-13

On day 4 God creates the stars, the planets, and their moons.

“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Genesis 1, 14-19

On day 5, God creates birds and sea life.

“And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

Genesis 1, 20-23

On day 6, God creates land animals, including humans.

“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Genesis 1, 24-31

Then, on day 7, God rests.

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

Genesis 2, 1-3

Before we cover the second story of creation, let’s try to make sense of this first story.

On the first day of creation, God creates light and darkness, day and night.  On the second day, God creates the sky.  On the third day God creates dry land covered with living plants.  And then on the fourth day, God creates the Sun, the moon, and every other thing that glitters in the night sky.  Does any of this make sense?  

First, on day 1, did God create actual light?   How did day and night exist without the sun, which God only created on day 4?  And why did God create plants, on day 3,  before sunshine on day 4?  And back on day 2, did God actually need to create the sky?  The sky is not an actual thing.  The sky is just what we see when we look up at the celestial objects created in outer space on day 4.  (Did I say, ‘outer space’?  I meant to say, in the firmament of heaven.)

Now we will consider the second creation account. 

“These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 2, 4-9

This beautiful little story explicitly contradicts the first story.  In the first story, God created plants on day 3, and humans on day 6.  In this story, man is created before there were plants.

Contradictions are not possible.  Both stories cannot be true.  It is impossible for plants to precede humans, while at the same time, humans preceded plants.  It is one or the other.  But it can’t be both.

The contradictions and the other logical absurdities are not words from God.  These are the words of ancient Jews, written about 3500 years ago.  

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Note that we didn’t have to go far to find contradictions in the Bible.  They start to show up on the first page of the book!  And we didn’t even discuss all of the contradictions in these accounts.  We just covered enough to convince a reasonable person that the Bible is not the literal word of God.  God would not contradict God’s self in the first pages of God’s own book! 

God is my pronoun for God

The concepts of he and she are embedded in human language, because we are biological beings.  These concepts only make sense within a biological sex-based context.  Outside of biology, we still assign sex to inanimate objects.  A ship is a she, for instance.  But assigning gender to God?  It is absurd to call God by gender-based pronouns if God is only one God.  God does not have reproductive organs. Why would the one and only true God reproduce? 

Sprouts

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Not sure what sprouting has to do with God.  However, assuming that God does exist, and that God is the life force of the universe, then sprouting must have something to do with God.

Keeping a garden is a good use of time.  There is nothing like caring for your own food.  Only you can ensure that you are eating the freshest most nutritious food possible.

The system keeps us alive.  The machine.  95% of us in cities.  The rest growing our food.  The system works.  But the food is not the freshest nor the best-est.  It can’t be.   The system has to provide for everyone.

Muscular dystrophy now prevents me from keeping a garden.  I can hardly move around, let alone dig clay.

My gardening efforts have been reduced to a few potted plants, and kitchen counter-space, enough for a few sprouting-jars.

I used to work hard in the yard, digging soil.  Planting seeds.  Weeding.  Watering.  Making compost.  In the lower deserts of Arizona it was possible to eat something home grown every day, if you were willing to work for it.  Now i live in North Carolina.  I wish i could start a garden here.  It should be possible to eat year round here too, with some winter protection.

Fruit trees are some of my favorite plants.  I love planting them.  I love to tend to them.  I loved raking leaves around the base of the trees in the fall.  Pruning trees in winter is a joy.  Lots of work.  Generally, about two or three weeks of eating.  Then, wait for next year, or grow something else.

Some lessons are learned the hard way.  Now that i can hardly move anymore, I grow sprouts because that’s about all I can do.  But, sprouting seeds is almost effortless.  As a food, sprouts are more nutritious than the adult vegetables.  Now I eat better, and with less effort than ever, by eating sprouts.  It took a lifetime of gardening to figure this out.  It took losing the ability to work as hard as i used to love working to figure this out.

What does this have to do with God?  I don’t know.  But sprouting is an easy way to keep a garden.  Gardens do have something to do with God.

Salvation

Christian salvation makes no sense.  Supposedly, because we are all sinners, none of us gets to heaven, except through Jesus.  In order to be forgiven for our sins, we first need to accept Jesus into our lives.  He died on the cross for us.  We should be grateful for this act of love.

But is this how a loving God would treat us?  After all, God could have simply forgiven us for our sins.  So, why does He require an unblemished human male to be sacrificed, first?  And if he sends his only begotten son to his death, does he love His Son? If He loves his Son, and if He loves us too, why would He be pleased by this crucifixion?

Should we be angry at Pontius Pilate because he sentenced Jesus to die?  Pontius Pilate is portrayed in Christian lore as one of the bad guys.  But, in order for God’s plan for salvation to actually work, someone had to kill Jesus on our behalf.  If I accept salvation from Christ, does that make me an accessory to His murder?  Why would I want to be a part of that?

Christian theology is wrong.  God does not require a human sacrifice before forgiveness can be granted.  Christianity is based on a primitive and brutal understanding of God.  The path to salvation does not begin with the murder of Christ.

God and Time

Someone once said that we should think of God as the set of all true statements.  If that is all that God is — an infinitely large set of true statements — then I believe that God exists.  Because I believe in true statements.  I can’t argue with that.  But I am not sure that we should worship God either, if that’s all He is.  Don’t get me wrong.  I hold truth as the highest virtue.  And the set of all true statements would be of the utmost importance in society, especially if we could somehow tap into it.  But I don’t believe that a mere set of true statements can hear prayers.

There are different levels of infinity.  Some infinite sets are countable, in the sense that each member of the set could be associated with a unique counting number.  Other sets are uncountably large.  There are many more members in the uncountably large set than we have numbers to associate with each of them.  The set of all true statements is uncountably large.  If there are an uncountably infinite number of points between 0 and 1 ( — and there are —), then there is an uncountable infinity within set of statements that could be made about just those points between two consecutive integers.  Now extend that to how many true statements could be made about any given point within the space-time continuum.  Try to imagine a mind with a total and comprehensive awareness of everything.

I can’t do it.  I cannot imagine it.  I do not believe that such a mind could exist.  What is the mind of God made of, if everything that exists came after God?  How could the mind of God exist before anything that does exist was actually created?  How could a mind with no physical substance think everything that would need to be thought of in order to make the universe a reality?

If God had thoughts before the universe existed, then thoughts predate existence.  How can thoughts predate existence?  Before the existence of time, how did God think?  Thinking is a form of processing.  Processing is an action.  What changed in God’s thinking that caused Him to create the universe, if He had always existed before He created time itself?  What is the nature of a timeless eternity?  Why did God’s timeless mind suddenly change?  That would have had to have been the starting point of time itself.  That point where God’s thoughts were set into motion.

A new direction

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What I originally envisioned as a book has instead become a project to occupy me until my death.  Instead of a book, I have decided to begin publishing papers and articles.  The last few years left me with a lot of time to think about what I wanted to write.  I have so much more than a simple book.  Eventually, (hopefully), a book will come.  But my goal at the moment is to stir the cultural pot.  I seek to challenge conventional religious thinking.  I am convinced that Christians and Muslims see the world incorrectly.  I am convinced that for many, faith has become an obstacle to thinking.

Without rationality, we are socially controlled by a dynamic system of opinions.  Without knowledge to compare with our beliefs, we cannot know whether our opinions are actually true.  A correct understanding of the world allows to make correct decisions.

My goal is to marry rationality with our collective spiritual practices, by challenging the idea that Christians and Muslims speak for God.  I am an atheist who believes in God.  My goal is to demonstrate that within Christianity and Islam, a false understanding of God is being taught.

The Limits of Faith

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This has been in the making for some time.  I was inspired to write a book.  I was disturbed enough to try.  For the past few years I have been hard at work developing the themes and concepts I wish to discuss, and integrating them into a model of the book.  The book itself was too complex to write in one go.  I had to build a model of it, to help me see what I was trying to say.

In some ways, the book has been a healthy diversion from life’s problems.  I have a form of muscular dystrophy that makes things quite challenging.  Several years ago I was forced to quit the working world, and deal head on with this.  It took a lot of effort to learn how to live with failing strength.  But I have.  Recently I moved from Arizona to North Carolina.  Soon I will move from an apartment into a home.  This was unthinkable three and four years ago.  But think it I did and now here I am.

Last year, at the beginning of summer, I made my first road trip, on my own.  I went to the 29th annual Pima Writers Workshop, in Tucson.  I submitted a manuscript to be critiqued by an agent.  First time doing that.  The guy likes my writing, but not as a book.  This did not stop me.  But it got me thinking about the scope of what I am trying to describe.  I have an awful lot of material that contradicts our understanding of ourselves.

One of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of this year was to write for an audience.  Begin publishing.  This blog has been on and off the back burner since its inception.  It has been difficult to keep this up while dealing with everything else.  But when I found the home, it occurred to me that I had achieved a goal I had set when I first could no longer work.  I had gotten myself out of one living situation I could no longer handle physically, and into one that I could.  A couple weeks ago I met at the house with a contractor to get a quote on a wheelchair ramp and a front deck, to replace the wooden staircase leading to the front door.  Afterwards, getting back in my van, I had to pause for a vision.  Something was telling me that I could finally pick up the blog again, and sustain it.

We live in a world gone mad.  I have been following the problem of radical Islam with intense disturbed fascination.  My writing interests have converged with world events.  I have spent my life finding the words to describe a phenomenon that regularly now is making the news.  Then, in the past few days, news broke of the pending executions of 14 pro-democracy demonstrators in Saudi Arabia.  As a writer, I feel a need to do something.  It is time to put an end to this madness.

My goal is to stop these executions from happening, by bringing attention to their plight.  But this is a short term goal.  Long term, my goal is to challenge our understanding of God, so that radical Islam loses its power.  My method will be to counter the narrative of radical Islam by describing it in new terms.  Religions like Islam and Christianity present a false view of God.  I am building a case.  We need a new understanding.  Something rational.  Because we have reached the limits of faith.

Progress in Three Paragraphs

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When free versions are available, why did I pay good money for this translation of the Quran?  Some of the value is in the English-language translation itself.  But much of the book is commentary from experts on Islam.  I paid for that.  Initially, I made a good faith effort to read the entire book, page by page.  But by the time I made it through the introduction, through the first surah and into the second, I realized that the commentary was bogging me down.  Most of this book consists of commentary.  For now, it distracts me from my purpose.

So I have spent the week reading the Quran, but focusing on Mohammed’s words exclusively.  It is slow but rewarding work.  I take the time to copy passages into my journal so that I can better argue with the ideas themselves.  When I read, I argue.  If I don’t argue, I am not engaged.  The fact that I am arguing much with the Quran means that I am very engaged by what it says.  When I get to the end of the 114th surah, I will have the basis for my for the article I am writing.  I won’t be done.  But I will be on my way.

I want to explain why I cannot embrace Islam.  Idealogical differences motivate me.  More than a quarter century ago, I left the Catholic church.  My reasons for rejecting Christianity were just as valid then as they are now.  But they apply equally well to Islam.  I am convinced more than ever that religion misrepresents God.

ISIS

Last night I dozed to sleep listening to the radio.  At one point, the voice behind the microphone expressed thoughts and prayers for the people of Nice, France.  That was my first realization that ISIS had reared its blasphemous face again.  What is ISIS?  A collective for moral zombies.  They have surrendered their minds to a blasphemous interpretation of Islam.  They have surrendered their souls to an anti-human ideology.  Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel left this earth as a mass murderer for an evil illusion.  He does not deserve a grave.  He has already claimed his place on the trash heap of wasted lives.