The Yorkshire Atheist

Discrediting the Bible - Genesis Pt.1

I am often asked “why do you attack Christians?”, the truth is I don’t, I attack the faith itself not those who believe in it…well, most of the time. The question then becomes I suppose “why do you feel the need to attack the religion”, I have explained in one of my previous posts why I think religion is a divisive force but this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s false, the reason I attack religion is because it is so demonstrably ludicrous, that the fact it segregates our communities, impacts education and hinders scientific development is sickening.

In an attempt to try and show how ludicrous the bible is I intend to go through several sections, and highlight the ridiculous nonsense within. This piece can only really have any impact if you consider the bible to be literal and not allegorical, therefore all you non-fundamentalists out there can stop reading if you so wish (however the dubious morality may be of some interest to you).

I’m going to skip over the first few chapters pertaining to the creation of heaven and earth, as it is so ridiculous, simply due to the fact that there are two separate versions that are entirely contradictory, that spending any time on it would be pointless. We shall therefore jump straight to Genesis Chapter 2 Verses 16 & 17:

16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

One thing always bugged me about this, as a Christian I could never fathom why it mad me uneasy, now when I read this passage it is apparent, why the fuck would God put the tree there? If God created man, and thereby mans nature, and if God is omniscient then surely he is already aware that (**spoiler alert**) Eve will eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge; God is already aware that man will sin and that “the fall” will occur, so why not just remove the tree then and there? God then goes on to create Eve (yes after he told Adam about not eating from the tree…don’t you just hate continuity errors) and we move into Genesis chapter 3.

Eve almost immediately gets duped by a talking snake into eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge and giving it to Adam. Another question arises, If your very creator, who you have seen and spoken to tells you something will kill you, but a talking snake tells you something else, who would you believe? Would you risk death because a random animal tells you something contradictory to your understanding? Nobody in this position would listen to the snake. Having said this supposedly Adam and Eve had no concept of good nor evil as God had created them without this knowledge, taking this into account can Eve be blamed for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge if she was not created with the knowledge of right and wrong? In addition if God is omnipresent wouldn’t he have known this was happening and have been able to stop it?

This aside, God basically throws a temper tantrum and casts Adam and Eve out of Eden and gives them a selection of various punishments to go with their eternal exile. The next point is interesting to note; God then places angels and a flaming sword in place to prevent Adam and Eve from eating of the fruit of the tree of life and thereby gaining immortality…why didn’t he do this with the tree of knowledge in the first place? I have discussed this with fundamentalist theists before and there answer has generally related to the removal of free will; however if the tree of life was barred from Adam and Eve after the fall is that not still a removal of free will?

So we now move onto Genesis 4: which starts out with the birth of Cain and Abel, one kept sheep the other tilled the ground. Then for no apparent reason Cain becomes wroth and kills his brother, no further explanation is given which I tend to find somewhat bizarre.

After the death of Abel God throws another temper tantrum and labels Cain a fugitive and a vagabond, claiming anyone who finds him should slay him, which again is a bizarre idea, surely the only three individuals in existence were Cain, Adam and Eve right? but wait we get to Genesis 4:17-22 which depicts Cain “knowing” his wife(?) and the ancestry of his family line. All this seems to indicate to me that there are other humans already existing on earth who were not created by God (as they were never previously mentioned in the story of the creation).

When looking over these passages of the bible it appears to me that this is merely a tribal creation myth; basically saying this is how OUR* civilization and OUR people came to be as opposed to this is how ALL of man was created, when viewed in this light the story of Genesis becomes far less significant, but still makes no more sense.

These segments do not seem to describe God as an all knowing, wise and kind Creator but more a fallible being with limited presence and a dubious moral structure; and that ladies and gentlemen is the kind of knowledge we can gain from the scriptures.

*when referring to “our” I was indicating from the view of the creators of the myth and not as in a personal “in-group”.

Leviticus…WTF

If you have never read the bible I want you to go and read Leviticus (it’s available online here), possibly the scariest book in the bible. You might want to jump past the first few chapters which are just explanations on how you should sacrifice animals (surprising how few fundamentalist women sacrifice doves after their periods…heathens).

It’s once you get to Leviticus 11 that things start to get interesting. Leviticus 11 is probably the most frequently ignored segment of the bible (list of clean and unclean animals). According to these passages you should not eat pork or shellfish…own up fundies, have you ever had bacon? 

Let’s move onto the fundie favorite Leviticus 18 which outlines the list of sexual perversions, most of which I actually agree with (due to the fact they nearly all relate to some form of incest) and some I do not (homosexuality and having sex with your wife whilst she’s on her period). My question here is do you really need 12 different explanations about your family members you can’t have sex with, especially considering the first point basically says don’t have sex with family members. 

Then we get to leviticus 19 which is essentially just a big list of rules including some of my favorites which I can pretty much guarantee nearly every fundamentalist has violated:

-You must observe my Sabbaths

-Do not lie

- Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material

-Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard

-And a few others that some might have violated like not getting tattoos and not seeking out mediums.

You might be wondering why I’m writing this diatribe about Leviticus, it’s simple, Leviticus is the only place in the Bible that homosexuality is considered a sin and yet many fundamentalist Christians despise homosexuals for their “sins” whilst carrying out other “sins” described in this book, and failing to complete ritual sacrifices as described by this book, the hypocrisy is immense. I want these people to read their damned bibles, not for good morals or anything like that, rather once they realise that they are “sinning” on a daily basis they may actually start to leave others in peace to live their own lives.

And hopefully after reading Leviticus they might realise exactly how bizarre and messed up their “divine” book really is.

Is God an Idiot?

I grew up christian, I was raised by a very religious family and, as a child, I thought God was an amazing, loving, wonderful being, yet I had never read the bible. I had been to church and the reverend would tell us what was in there so why did I have to bother actually reading it…then I turned 12, and upon contemplation I thought that as a good christian boy I should read the bible.

That ladies and gentlemen is how I started to become an atheist; upon reading the bible even my young mind could see that the bible was not good evidence for the existence of a greater being; I started to see more and more contradictions, and more and more immorality than I ever could have imagined. I thought to myself, if this is the word of God, God is an idiot.

As I grew older I started to wonder more about the origins of the bible, who wrote it, when and where. For all my searching I could not find a clear answer anywhere; from what I could gather the bible was written by numerous different authors over centuries, though who those authors are is in most cases completely unknown. I then heard of the council of Nicea; a group of religious leaders gathered to separate out what they believed to be the divinely inspired word from what they thought was of questionable origin.

All my searching lead me to the conclusion that the bible cannot be accepted as any form of evidence; if you found a book in a library today which:

- had no listed authors

- had clear evidence of multiple translations and editing

- contained literally hundreds of moral and literal contradictions

- claimed to be the divine word of a higher power

What would you believe? Would you think the entire contents were true? Of course you wouldn’t, you would but it back on the shelf and probably laugh to yourself at how stupid it is. 

Now, if you were an all-powerful, all-knowing creator of everything, what evidence would you give your creations to make them aware of your existence? Personally I think I would just give all humans the innate knowledge of my existence from birth, I sure as hell wouldn’t give them an ancient book full of contradictions of an unknown origin because that would be plain and simple idiotic.