Why I Don't Believe In The Bible
This article is to merely explain my position to the curious who have asked me with a look of contempt already assuming I am going to hell or pity me when they ask why I don't believe the Bible is the word of God or in Christianity in general.
This is not about converting any believers into my nonbelief status nor is it any subtle outcry for help or an invitation to debate, this is merely what I believe.
If you are a Christian and believe strongly in the God of the Bible and the book itself, more power to you. I am not out to attempt to destroy your faith, although I wish you would not demand laws that I must follow based on your faith. I am not interested in receiving e-mails from those trying to convert me in any way whatsoever! I do not believe in your fairy tales!
This is not about you. This is about explaining why I personally don't believe in such things and to let others who may be questioning the Bible an insight into the mind of an unbeliever and give them the okay to doubt. When I was seeking answers, I was always told to believe the Bible as the literal word of God, to be unquestioned but taken as truth by your faith. Things just didn't make sense the way the religions were talking about the Bible and it was frustrating. Then someone told me to read the Bible without having anyone tell me what it said, to use my God given powers of reason and my mind to determine what it said. I did. I no longer believe the Bible because of it.
If the God in the Bible were true, He is not the type of being who would garnish any respect from me. The long tales weave a picture of a jealous being who abuses power and dishes out justice unevenly to the masses of the imperfect helpless population. From the beginning, I have a problem with the whole Biblical God.
He creates a "perfect" man. So far so good. He makes a "perfect" garden with plenty of food, animals that behave, weather that is steady and gives him simple tasks to perform throughout the day such as naming animals. Okay, now the first crack into God's imperfection. Then He discovers His creation is lonely because through whatever lack of insight, He creates male and female in all the animal and plant kingdom, but doesn't think about making a female human for the male human until he becomes lonely.
WTF?? This is an all knowing God, correct? The same Being who created light on day one calling the light day and darkness night, then on the fourth day created lights to seperate night from day and the seasons - moon and sun. Logic alone is enough to kill this myth, but in case you miss it let me spell it out. The light of day is lit because of the sun. The seasons are marked because of the position of the sun and the moon and the moon does not generate light on its own, but is reflecting the sun. Ironically, plant life was created before the sun was invented according to the story. Did God create light twice or is the blighted sight of a human's perspective?
Did He not know the results beforehand of creating a man without a woman as He already deliberately created male/female units in the rest of His world? Now God wants to come off as loving and caring for His human male by giving him a female. How? Let's see, God created Adam from the soil of the earth. He can't possible do the same to make a female, so he performs the first surgery by taking a rib from Adam to create a woman. This same God who can create something out of nothing but dirt is stumped when it comes to creating a woman. Through this act, he forever binds and lords the men over the women. Lovely, isn't it?
But we aren't even at the best part that makes God's downfall for me. God's requirements were simple. He set up this perfect place where He wants the two earth residents to obey Him and His rules and to populate the earth. His big rule, don't eat the fruit in the middle of the Garden. One tree will allow you to become like God [I guess just as imperfect as this God] and will lead to your death. The other tree will allow you to live forever. Simple rule. Don't touch the trees and you can continue living in perfection.
Anyone can see Genesis is merely a myth filled with many allegories within as long as they take off the blinders of faith and see it logically. There is so much symbolism, a good versus bad storyline and a moral to the story much like the other ancient myths of other civilizations around the same time. The fact that the believers take this as an actual event as dictated by God to be 100% true and then to base their lives and the lives of everyone else around them on this foundation is what is outrageous and needs to be looked at in a rational frame of mind. As a story, it has all the elements of drama that would make a good screen picture. If it were real, someone needs to save us from God.
So far, we have the all powerful and all knowing God who created a nice place for His creation to live and set up simple rules. And God has these two trees sitting in the middle of the garden which has no other obvious purpose than to serve as a temptation and test of loyalty to God. Woman is forever bound to man who is to always be in charge of woman. Then the story gets worse, if it were real.
A talking serpent approaches Eve [and note the story says her protecting husband was with her] and is talked into eating the fruit of the wrong tree. I guess the serpent must also not see the whole picture if this were real instead of just a story because anyone who wanted to cause the most trouble would have had her eat the other wrong tree. She was one of those helpless women who can't possibly think or reason and was deceived into eating the fruit which is why the need for men to guide their out of control women. Adam, who was with her, ate the fruit. His action was deliberate. He didn't try to stop Eve or reason with her why you can't eat the fruit, he merely let it happen and joined her.
Then this all knowing God goes wandering about asking where Adam and Eve are hiding. Either He really isn't all knowing or He just loves to play mind games with the lesser beings. Adam and Eve realized they were naked and hid themselves. Obviously the fruit didn't give them much wisdom because they felt a need to cover up their nakedness in front of a God that created them as naked as the rest of His creations in the first place. God has seen it all before.
God finds them and asks what they have done. Mock trial or not really all knowing God? Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent, the talking serpent is silent and doesn't present an excuse. God puts a curse on the serpent who must forever crawl on the ground and eat dust. The woman's curse is the painful childbirthing process and dependency on a man. The curse of the man is hard toil for the rest of his life until his death sentence. And through this story, all mankind inherits the stain of sin. He closes off this perfect garden and kicks out the duo so they don't try to grab the other tree to stop them from dying.
Instead of destroying this garden so they can't get back in, He taunts them further by keeping it there and out of reach.
Wow! God knows His creation has been poisoned and is denying them the antidote. What a great heavenly Father! If a parent tells their child not to drink from the can with the skull and crossbones and puts it up in a high place so the kid won't reach it, what does a loving parent do when the child disobeys? Everything they can to save the life of their child. What does this God do? Turns His back on them and lets them die.
This is where I lose respect of the God of the Bible. They made a mistake and for generations to come, all mankind who did not commit this act of treason against God must suffer and die. This so-called powerful God cannot be magnanimous enough just to forgive their "sin", yet expects His imperfect creations to always be forgiving.
He has to lord his petty feelings over the rest of mankind until something comes along to appease Him. A God who creates everything needs a blood sacrifice of a perfect being in order to overlook sinful man. This act alone puts Him on the same level of humanity. Only the sacrifice will appease the angry God. God's nature is starting to sound very similar to other mythology legends.
And about this "sin" we were born with due to the act of Adam and Eve, is it coated into our genetic cells due to an action of the fruit itself or is it just a mere brush off from God saying, "Now I not only dispise you, but all of your offspring as well."?
A loving God, which is what Christians accuse the God of the Bible to be, is not in this story. If God were loving and created everything [and obviously has no problem in destroying His own creations,] He could merely forgive or overlook the sin or change what it is internally that makes one be in sin. Or since this duo has doomed humanity erase them from the face of the earth and start again. If God is all powerful and can do anything that defies logic, as religionist will say in trying to explain the unexplainable, why can't God just erase the sin in Adam and Eve's offspring? No, instead God decides to let the rest of the generations of mankind suffer because of one mistake and not allow the solution to come for a few thousand years.
Christianity in general has to accept this story as true, although some of the more liberal paths concede to calling it an allegory. It is this account which makes up the very core foundation of the Judeo/Christian/Muslim beliefs. God made man. Man failed God. Man needs God. Man needs to do something to become right with God again.
These religious paths offer no other explaination for the downfall of man other than it started in the Garden of Eden. Without this story, the rest of these Biblical accounts are meaningless. Why would anything Jesus did matter? What would be the purpose of the Hebrew people seeking to make things right with God? Why would Islam need the prophets to guide them back to God as God's people slide into apostasy?
If the whole Genesis account of God creating the earth and the Adam and Eve were merely stories, then we could already discount the rest of the Bible as stories which are nothing more than Hebrew mythology. The whole history of the Hebrews and early Christianity were based upon what happened in the beginning. They lived their lives and told stories of what happened based upon the beginning. These religions must hold it up as real events or there is no purpose to using this Bible as the writings of God. These religions offer no other reason for the fall of mankind. They need a reason for man being seperated from God so they can set the rules in place to become united with this same God.
Rules gleaned from the stories from Abraham, Issac and Jacob are the foundation for all the major religions of Judiaism, Islam and Christianity. And we do find rules in the Bible [Torah and Qu'ran]! Mankind sinned and these rules were to help mankind become right with God. So what if some of the stories pick and choose rules that could get one killed by disobeying them and other times could be ignored.
Take the account of Noah. I have already explained my position of Noah's Ark elsewhere, but take note of what happened when they got off the ship after a hellish 40 days of rain and 150 days of flooding. They built an altar taking some of all of the clean animals and birds and made a burnt offering to God. God then creates the first rainbow to remind Him of His vow to never destroy all living creatures as He did during the flood, but now things would change.
Noah gets drunk and Ham sees his drunken father naked and told his brothers. The story doesn't say Ham did anything but see his father naked and drunk, but religionist will claim Ham did vile things to his father that were not recorded anywhere. The account I read merely says Ham saw a drunken father, told his brothers, and his brothers protected their eyes and cover up the father's nakedness - seeing their father naked was more of a sin than the father being drunk. Noah blesses the sons who did not look on his nakedness and cursed Ham who did. No punishment for drunken Noah.
A similar fate went to Lot. Lot goes his seperate way from Abram with his wife and daughters. He dwells in the regions near Sodom and Gomorrah. God sends a messengers to warn Lot to get out so he can destroy the area. The horny men-boys club sees the visitors and want to sex them up, so Lot offers them his daughters to rape instead.
After fleeing Sodomites who were being destroyed by God. The daughters thought there was no one left alive to help populate the earth, [as Lot's wife was now a permanent salt pillar of the community]. So they get their father drunk and rape him to get children. Why not, after all, their father was willing to let them get raped? [How many levels of disgust go through you at that story?] No punishment for the daughters and their sons were blessed. Man is yet again at the mercy of woman.
Prior to the flood, mankind was all vegetarians. God now allowed them to eat meat. Animals and birds would now be in fear of man. God is yet again never changing! Now the innocent animals must suffer for the survival of mankind? Or is it merely that meat is delicious and they somehow got it into their minds to deprive oneself from meat and sticking to vegetation is somehow more holy?
This group of 8 from the ark were ordered to populate the earth because the Bible literalist say this flood covered the entire earth and was not a local event, so they would have to really get busy.
If one were to say, perhaps this was just a local flood and from the point of view of this family who landed in a remote area and assumed no one else survived, I could swallow this tale as a good story. But it is the foundation of such stories by which fanatics try to coerse laws for people to live, to this I object.
Considering this flood, which allegedly carved the Grand Canyon did not touch the thriving metropolis of other civilizations or their huge historic structures built before the flood would tell me the story is not literal. However, this story is crucial to further propel why this book is the central doctrine of the major religions and must be taken as the word of God and not the mere viewpoints of men who were inspired to write such things and credit this inspiration to God.
I feel inspired to write all the time. It doesn't mean this inspiration comes from an all perfect, all knowing God. I call things as I see them and that does not make it perfect and to be unquestioned. People attributed many things to the gods back then. It doesn't mean there was a literal God which inspired people to write down things as a boss to a secretary. They saw things and felt compelled to write about it as if God were forcing their hands. These accounts reek of a mere human point of view.
Keeping in mind the Bible which says God is never changing and consistent when you look at the rules. If God created such rules for mankind to live by and never changes, then we must still be under the same rules. Smite me now for wearing clothing of mixed materials or laying with a man during my monthly cycle. I have had a hamburger at McDonald's and washed it down with a milkshake. As a kid, I went behind my parent's backs and did things I was told not to do so I must be stoned. Come on, these are things we do all the time. These are so offensive to God that He could recommend banishment and death? Talk about petty! Read Exodus 20 all the way through to the end of Leviticus 27:34 where it says "These are the commands the Lord gave Moses on Mount Sinai for the Israelites." This includes the 10 Commandments. [Please note, the 10 Commandments are not the law of the US, just the law to the Israelites.]
There you have a man, Abram, who wants to get right with God. God asks him to leave his country, his people and his father's household and God would bless him and make him into a great nation. God has picked out His chosen people and given them laws to live by if they want to be His people. They merely have to follow all of God's rules and regulations in order to be blessed or be punished harshly for breaking the laws. If the story wasn't set up from the beginning, there would be no need for Abram to get right with God.
God, who merits death for liars, sends Abram and wife to Egypt so they won't starve during a famine. Abram wants to protect himself from death when they see his barren, but beautiful wife. He lies and tells them she is his sister. They take Sarai into their household and shower Abram with gifts. Due to Pharaoh's actions towards the already married Sarai, God inflicts a serious disease on Pharaoh's household. Abram lies and the Pharaoh acts based on the lies he was told and gets punished for it? Abram gets the riches of the Pharaoh and suffers no wrath for telling his lie. Yes, that's justice!
Sarai is an old barren woman. God promised Abram to turn him into a great nation. The woman goes off thinking for herself instead of trusting in God or consulting the wisdom of her husband asks a big favor of Abram, go sleep with Hagar to give him children. Obviously, just as in the garden or Lot in the hands of his daughters, the man goes along with the woman's plan without question. Abram did not put faith in God, but relied on the logic of a woman and he was not condemned for all eternity as was Adam.
So Abram agrees to sleep with another woman. What man wouldn't jump at the offer made by his wife that he can have sex with another woman?
Abram gets Hagar pregnant and Sarai is jealous. It was her brilliant plan and now she regrets it and mistreats Hagar. Abram went along with the plan and enjoyed his role in getting Hagar pregnant, but does nothing about Sarai abusing Hagar and she flees into the wilderness to raise her son Ishmael as a single parent. This event setting up the reason for why people of the Middle East tribes hate each other, at least from a religious aspect. Sarai promotes the idea of adultery, Abram commits the sin, and Hagar gets the short end of the stick, but they are all blessed by God.
The God of the Bible who frowns upon imitation of the "pagans" in nearby tribes orders Abraham to do something that resembles worship in the nearby "pagan" tribes - he must sacrifice his only son with Sarah. Imitating religious rites of pagans could get you killed according to the rules and sacrificing children was one of the things the pagans did. Yet, God can feel free to toy with this religious ceremony to test Abraham. The test would only be failed if he did not attempt to offer his son up as a burnt offering and act like the pagans. Would you do anything God told you to do even if He told you to break one of His rules or is God putting you in double jeopardy?
Yes, the God of the Bible loves to play mind games on his followers! What kind of egomanic is He? It's not enough that he has to hold the "sin" of mankind against them and cannot be big enough to merely forgive them, but is He so needy that He has to test to see how far mankind will grovel for His love and approval? Job was really screwed by that logic.
Continuing on with the stories...
Jacob has many sons, but favors Joseph. The brothers were jealous and plot to get rid of him. They sell him into slavery and lie to their father, whose name becomes Israel, and tell him Joseph was killed.
After Joseph is gone, they still behave badly and are unpunished by God. Even Judah's daughter-in-law must take the law into her own hands when Judah and sons refuse to do right by her and she has to dress up like a prostitute to trick Judah into fulfilling his obligations to her. Judah sins by visiting the shrine prostitute and leaves her with his staff, seal and cord until she gets the promised payment from him. Judah later finds out that his daughter-in-law is guilty of prostitution and wants her burned to death for her sin, until he realizes he slept with her as the prostitute. God looks the other way.
Joseph, meanwhile is being seduced and refuses Potiphar's wife which lands him in jail. Joseph uses his great powers to interpret dreams and word gets back to the Pharaoh who needs his help with a dream. Joe saves the Egyptians from famine and becomes one of the most powerful men in Egypt...Although there are no records anywhere, other than the Bible, of Joseph being in such a position in Egypt.
Thankfully, the brothers are effected by the drought and have to put up with Joe's mind games to test his brothers and worry his beloved father. They pass the test and all are allowed to live in Egypt. Yet again, no real records anywhere, other than the Bible, that this tribe ever resided in this area. No archeological remnants, no travellers passing by Egypt accounts from other civilizations. Egypt was a hub and would have had many different people coming through and would have taken note somewhere that these people lived here, if this story were true.
Anyway, the group becomes too numerous and the Egyptians get paranoid and turn them into slaves under the most harsh, extreme conditions. Due to a prophecy, the Pharaoh orders all baby boys to be killed so a leader does not rise up among them and tries to destroy the Egyptians.
In spite of the orders given by the Pharaoh to kill all newborn Hebrew children because any one of them could be the cause of trouble, Pharaoh's own daughter suddenly shows up with child when she was not pregnant and passes it off as her own. She even has the Hebrew mother nurse the infant which would tell anyone with a reasoning mind this is probably a Hebrew child she rescued from Pharaoh's wrath. It was not like Cecil B DeMille's movie, Moses knew he was Hebrew all along and it was Pharaoh's daughter and not his sister who broke the command. Yes, the Bible makes good material for a movie.
Anyway, Moses goes to Midian, meets his wife, and has at least one son. He sees the burning bush and finds it is God calling him and telling him he must lead His people out of Egypt giving him nothing more than a magic rod and the name of a God that has no name a man can say. He goes back to Egypt and meets up with his siblings while forever turning his back on his family. Obviously, the case for divorce was okay for him.
The Pharaoh laughed at the request to let the slaves go free and God commences to make life a living hell for all Egyptians, including killing the firstborn children who were innocent of defying God. Pharaoh then lets them go, regrets it, sends his men after them and they all get killed. The religionist claim the Egyptians erased all historical records of the Hebrews being in their land so they would not look like the losers of history. Yet other civilizations would have gladly told of such a tale of woe on a rival, if it indeed happened.
No record of the Hebrews roaming in the desert for 40 years, either! The trek from Egypt to the promised land was not that far, but having to roam around it for that long, they would have had to leave artifacts behind [dead bodies, pottery, clothing...]. And I don't believe for one minute that the Hebrews waited down the mountain for a long time and believed that Moses came back down with the laws of God. That's enough time to make up a good story, however, I don't even believe the whole incident took place.
And now for the story to lead to many of the problems in the so-called Holy Land. God promised the area now known as Israel to the Hebrew people. Other people already lived there, but they were not God's chosen people. The people who were there already thought God gave them that land as they have been living there for many generations already. The mass population was largely illiterate and relied on verbal tales as their history. Tell a story long enough, it becomes fact. After all, they didn't have the resources to reason out if the story told was real or made up.
The Hebrews had to wait on God to help them get the land. Once God helped them get the land, they lived in peace and had a prosperous life, as long as they followed the rules. When they got out of line, God punished them and eventually let outsiders take over the land. They had to get right with God and wait on Him to give the land back again. They behaved then misbehaved again and lost the land. They have been waiting ever since for a Messiah to come back and get them their blessed land God promised to be for His chosen people. We in the US have stirred up many a trouble by forcing God's hand and giving the Hebrew back their land. After all, our Christian society has a lot at stake by making them get the land back.
From a merely historical perspective, people have been always trying to overthrow existing civilizations for more power. It is no different in this region. Both sides feel God is with them and have won and lost this land countless times. The Roman Empire lost most of its power, does it mean they should try to reclaim their God-right and take over most of Europe again? Should the Native Americans reclaim the lands they feel is their God-right?
Around the time of Jesus, the Romans were in control of the Holy Land. This was destroying the control of the religious Hebrew people who wanted God to bring in a Messiah to save them from losing thier land. Many Messiahs rose up and were executed. Jesus was one of them, according to the Christians. According to the Hebrews, a threat to the very core of the Hebrew faith. This Jesus was not about saving the Holy Land which was doomed to defeat. This Jesus knew this land was a lost cause and gave His followers a new hope with a Kingdom in the heavens by God, His Father. Without the path that led up to a Jesus, there would be no need for a Jesus to come to earth, live a perfect existence and die for our "sins".
The Bible consists of many stories, but it was never created as a one book journal. What we have today as the Bible is due to a meeting of Catholic holy men who decided which of the books of the legends should be followed and which should be discounted. If a work did not agree with what this Church wanted its believers to follow, it was eliminated. Later on, the Protestants combed through books of the Bible and eliminated anything that did not follow their path. God did not speak only in King Jame's English. That version is just as accurate a translation as every other copy and is still as highly imperfect as the men who wrote it in the first place.
If I were to write a story about Bill and Hillary Clinton living in the White House in 1996 in Washington DC when miracle of miracles, a space alien landed and sucked out Bill's brain and turned him into an evil robot. In a thousand years, historians will note there actually was a Bill and Hillary Clinton and they did indeed live in the White House during 1996. Does that mean we also have to believe space aliens sucked out his brain turing him into an evil robot because many of the details are historically accurate? Believers do the same with the Bible.
Many people tell stories based on real people, places and events. It doesn't mean the stories told surrounding these people, places and events are true.
I encourage you, if you are really have doubts about the Bible and feel guilty about it, read the whole book and use your mind. The religionist have a vested interest in protecting this fiction by claiming if you don't see things their way, you are merely not bright enough to understand how to read the Bible. That is a crock! Just read it and you will understand it. You may also come to the same conclusion that many others have seen - the Bible is not the word of God. Then you feel the power of freedom from the curse of this book.
What is hard for some to understand is although I do not believe in the Bible nor the Christian/Judaic/Islamist view of God, I do believe in a Higher Power. Some of the scriptures contain words of wisdom which I do not discount, but it is not from the "God" author to whom most believers credit. The Bible is responsible for a lot of good and bad throughout our history and this cannot be ignored. Due to the flaws and the history of how this book came to be, I cannot take it as the literal word of God and refuse to let it be the law of my life.