I’ve had a lot of people ask me why I became an atheist. Well, that’s a long story and most don’t really care when they ask. I became an atheist shortly after I read the Bible from cover to cover. I was told if I wanted to know what God wanted of me, I should read his word. So, I did. And I was disgusted at what I read about the loving, caring god I had devoted my life to. As soon as I started reading the Bible, I found problems with it. Not just the fact that my seemed to a bully, but the stories didn’t add up to me. At first, I thought I was the only that felt this way. I didn’t even know there was a name for people that didn’t believe in god then.
I think the biggest problem I have with this book is the first two chapters of it. This is the starting point for the rest of the Bible. This is the book that is supposed to tell how this god created everything. It’s supposed to provide an explanation to the big question of how we came to be here in the first place. This book has a lot riding on it and within the first two chapters there’s a contradiction. The first contradiction of the Bible is in the first two chapters of the first book of this holy book and people wonder why others question it.
Could the editors not see how this would affect a person’s faith? Did they not see it? Did they see it and just ignored it? I just can’t see how people can read it and not question it. It tells two versions of the same story. If this is the word of the one true god, there should only be one version of how he created everything. This is supposed to be what the one true god spoke to his people to write down for him. If they got this story straight from their god, why are there two versions of how everything was created by him? There shouldn’t be. There should only be one version of the creations story from the one god they serve, the god that’s telling them what to write.
The first version the female was equal to the male. They were both made out of dirt. I really didn’t have a problem with that. Then I got to the second chapter and things started to change and my doubts begin. The female was no longer equal to the male; she was now made from his rib. Not only was the male created before the female, but he was created before the fruit trees and the animals and the creation of the fish isn’t even mentioned in the second version.
The Bible also has god saying “us” when he’s creating things. To this day, I still don’t understand why that is. If he’s the only being he wouldn’t be saying “us”. That leads me to believe that he is speaking to at least one other being. Or he has a split personality. That wouldn’t be good, although it would explain a lot. Either way, I’d really like to know who the others were when he said that. Is there two gods instead of just one? That could be why there are two different versions of the creation story. Did this god have help from someone?
When this god says, “Let us make man in our image,” is he asking for permission from someone, maybe his parents? Was he giving someone his opinion, a suggestion as to how we should look? Or did the author make a mistake and really meant to say, “Let us make God in our image.”? That one would make more sense if this god is supposed to be the one true god and there are no other gods but him. I really don’t think the authors put much thought behind their words. I would have thought the editors would have fixed that when they were picking which books would go into the Bible. Or at least take the out the instructions on how to sell your daughter.
It bothers me that this loving god would put a tree in the garden to tempt them, tell them not to eat from it, and not give them the knowledge to know right from wrong. How can you punish someone that doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong? That’s like putting candy in a baby’s reach and then getting mad because they ate it. They don’t any better, so why put something in their reach if you don’t want them to have it? I can’t think of any loving parent that would kick their kids out of the house because they ate the wrong fruit and punished their entire offspring like this god did.
The question that first came to my mind when I first read this was why did he get so mad at them? They didn’t know any better, but he got so mad at them that he kicked them out of the garden. That, to me, sounded a bit harsh. Could he not just forgive them for eating the fruit and give them another chance? It was of this god to test them (as my pastor told me) when they didn’t know right from wrong before they ate from the tree. In order for them to know right from wrong they had to eat from the tree. Couldn’t he have given the knowledge to know right from wrong and then see if they would eat from the tree? If they had eaten from the tree, with the knowledge that they were doing something wrong, then punishment would be required. But since they didn’t know any better, shouldn’t their god have told them that what they did was wrong, give them a warning, before going off the deep end?
Or was he really mad because they now had something that only he had before? They now had knowledge of right and wrong, which means they could now think for themselves. The Bible does say that after they had eaten from the tree this god said that they had become, “as one of us”. Could it be that he didn’t want them to be like him? To me, it sounds like he’s man because they got something that he wanted to keep for himself. I see my kids ban each other from their bedrooms when one does something the other doesn’t like. I guess what I’m saying is that this god is acting like a child. But like I said before, if he had given the knowledge to know right from wrong before they ate from the tree then he could punish them because they knew better and they did it anyway. But that didn’t happen.
Here’s something to think about. Was the punishment right what they did? They were thrown out of their home because they ate from the wrong tree without even know that it was wrong. This god not only punished them, but punished their entire offspring for eating from the wrong tree in the garden. Their kids didn’t do eat from the tree and yet they were punished as if they had. Would the court send a murder’s child to prison with the parent even though the child wasn’t born when the crime was committed? I don’t think so. The child didn’t do the crime and had no part of the crime. So, the child doesn’t get punished for the crimes of the parent. It would seem that this god doesn’t think like that, though. According to the Bible, this god is punishing everyone because two people ate from the wrong tree. How can anyone think of this as a good thing?
Here’s something else to think about. If Adam and Eve were the first two people and everyone came from them, where did Cain find his wife? Did he find her in the land of Nod where he moved to? The Bible doesn’t say anything about him taking a sister with him to be his wife and it doesn’t say anything about God making him a wife. So, where did she come from? These are questions that the Bible should have an answer for, but it doesn’t say anything about it. Where did the wife come from? Isn’t that something to check into?
Then there’s the part that really freaks out my Christian friends. This god gets mad because his sons take human females for wives and punishes their offspring. Those children become the giants. I don’t know about you, but I can’t see punishing my grandkids because I don’t like who their mother is. Most of the time when I talk about this I get told that I’m making it up. After all Jesus was God’s only son. How can Jesus be God’s only son if the sons of God married human females and had their offspring cursed? I can’t really blame them. They’ve never read that part of the Bible. They go straight from the creation story to the Noah building the Ark.
Then there’s the time when God didn’t know if should hide his action from Abraham. I thought this god knew everything. Why ask a question like this if you know everything there is to know? But if he really knew everything then he would have known if the people of Sodom had done what he had told them to do. He wouldn’t have had to send his angels to check it out for him. But if he was really the loving god his followers claim he is then he wouldn’t have destroyed two cities and turned a woman into a pillar of salt.
What about when this god closed Rachel’s womb because her husband loved her more than his other wife? That’s not fair to Rachel, now is it? She couldn’t control her husband’s feeling towards her. Nobody can control how they feel about another person, and yet this god is punishing Rachel’s for her husband’s feelings. Not her own feelings, but her husband’s. A person should be punished if their actions have done something bad, not if they don’t have the right feelings.
Here’s something I never heard in church, men that had more than one wife. They never talk about that in church because it may change our outlook on marriage and sex. We may not take marriage seriously if we hear our preachers and pastors talking how Solomon had 500 wives. I really don’t think many Christians take marriage too serious anyway seeing as I can’t count on both hand the number of Christians couples that have gotten a divorce, some more than one. If having more than one wife is a bad thing, then why is the Bible full of men having more than one?
Then we have the story of God killing a man because he didn’t get his dead brother’s wife pregnant. The brother was also killed by this same god because he was evil. Now, the Bible doesn’t say what he did to make him be labeled as evil and I really wish it did. Personally, I think more men need to do as this man done. There would far less parents that don’t want kids, but get pregnant and end up mistreating the child some way in their life.
There are more things in the book of Genesis that I have a problem believing or disagree with, but I don’t think I need to go through them all. I think you can see the type of things I have a hard time with. I’m sure I’m not the only one that read this book and started to question and doubt what this book has to say about how we live and treat other people.
This book controls people by fear of hell. Most don’t stop to think about why they don’t believe in other gods. I know some Christians that didn’t even know that were other gods. I was one of them before I started to read this holy book from cover to cover. I see no reason why a person should live in fear because they agree with a 2,000 year old book as to say about life.
The main problem I have with the Bible is that well known stories, like parting the Red Sea, raising people from the dead, have nothing to support it. There is evidence to support evolution. I’m not in any way saying that isn’t any way a supernatural being couldn’t be real. I’m saying that I don’t see any evidence to support the claim that this god is the one true god. Just like Christians don’t see how any god, other than their own, could be real.
No comments:
Post a Comment