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Chapter Two: Problems with God
Section 1: In the Bible
Contradictions in the Bible do not disprove the existence of God, but
they suggest that the Biblical version of God does not exist.
The Bible is a wonderful document, full of colourful characters and events. It's also full of inconsistencies and embarrassing revelations about the nature of the Jewish / Christian God.
2.1a Contradictions and queries
We have seen some of these inconsistencies already. Christians and Jews recognise only one God, but according to the Bible Yahweh is only one of several gods at the dawn of time (Chapter One, Section Five). And there is a yawning contradiction between the petty, vengeful Old Testament God and his New Testament incarnation as Jesus.
This section explores a few more of these discrepancies; anyone with a spare hour or two can easily find others.
At this point we are not trying to prove whether or not God exists.
All we are doing is looking at one scripture - the Bible - to see if it is
internally consistent. Does the picture it provide of God make sense?
We may come to the conclusion that the Bible is waffle, but that does not mean it proves the non-existence of God.
Start with the muddled creation story in Genesis. In Genesis 1: 24-27 God ("the Gods" in the original Hebrew) creates man and woman on the sixth day after he has created all the other animals. In Chapter 2 , however, God first creates man (Genesis 2:7), then the animals (2:19); finally he creates woman (2:21-22). So which came first - man or the animals? Take your pick.
Then the story of the Flood (Genesis chs 6 - 8) has enough holes in it to sink Noah's Ark long before it was launched.
What cause the sudden conversion of humanity from giants to wickedness? How did Noah build a boat without the help of others? How did he gather the animals? What did the animals eat during and after the flood? And how did the animals return home after the waters subsided? (For a closer look at the Flood read
How did the koala get to Australia?)
2.1b This is your God speaking
Let's move on to the Ten Commandments.
They appear twice in the Bible - in Exodus Chapters 33 -34 and Deuteronomy 5.
Problems with God
Chapter One showed us that if there is a God, we cannot be certain about his nature. So let's look at the question from another perspective: Is there a form of god that can exist?
We start by looking at the god described in the Bible and Quran; does the information there support or reject the idea of God? Then we look at general concepts of God and see if they make sense.
2.1:In the Bible Do inconsistencies in the Bible make it irrelevant?
2.2:The Jesus myth Biblical evidence suggests that the Son of God never lived
2.3:Other scriptures What do other scriptures tell us about God?
God does not have to be the creator of the universe; in some religions the world comes first and then the gods apprear.
In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, however, God is the
creator of the universe. How does he do it?
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Dictated by God, they appear to have been thrown together quickly rather than created with some thought (and there are actually fourteen or fifteen commandments depending how you count.)
Because they were written at a time when Yahweh was struggling for control of the Jews, who were still tempted to worship his siblings Asherah and Baal (Chapter One, Section Five), the first commandments (have no other gods, make no idols, bow down to no other gods, don't misuse my name, keep the Sabbath holy) are the equivalent of martial law. They are all about God, not humanity - and the more they go on the more they remind us how insecure this powerful deity feels.
The remaining commandments are devoted to human morality. Four are admirably short (no killing, adultery, theft or false witness) and two (honour your parents and don't covet your neighbour's possessions) are unnecessarily long. These tell us that God may be perfect, but he's a poor editor and incapable of writing a simple list of rules. He also forgot something; although adultery (where a husband or wife has a sexual partner outside the marriage) is condemned, fornication (where neither partner is married) is not mentioned. Christian teenagers of the world, take note!
2.1c This is the divine rear
When Moses collects the Ten Commandments, God grants him a vision of Himself. However, because the view of God's face would be more than a human could stand, the deity offers Moses a glimpse of the divine backside - the Bible does not confirm whether the posterior was covered or bare. This is another strange passage - since God is all-powerful and he appears to others in the Bible without scaring them out of their wits, why can he not modify his appearance for Moses?
2.1d Snakes in the grass
Once back in Palestine, the Jews, repeatedly told that they are Yahweh's chosen people, ask him to remove all snakes from the land. God's response is curious. He could do as asked - his follower St Patrick apparently rid Ireland of snakes centuries later - but he decides not to do so. Nor is he interested in alternatives that would protect the people under his care, such as making snakes venomless or people immune to snake bites. Instead, he tells Moses to make a brass serpent that will cure any man who looks on it after a snake has bitten him. That’s fine for those in the vicinity, but unfortunate for anyone who happens to get bitten on the wrong side of a sand dune.
(Numbers 21: 6-9)
Believers put forward many arguments in response to the contradictions
and inconsistencies in their scripture. These arguments usually require
either complicated explanations or the statement "God did it, but it
wasn't written down."
But such arguments undermine, not strengthen, the case for the Biblical
God. If the Bible is God's word, why does it make so many apparent mistakes
or require so much explanation? And if God is perfect, why does his
personality continually come across as imperfect?
2.1e Make up your mind, Allah!
There are many other such stories in the Old Testament (we look at the New Testament in the next Section).
The Quran has fewer inconsistencies, but they still exist. The most glaring examples are the contradictory passages about the Jews. On the one hand, as "people of the book", Jews are as honoured as Muslims (eg The Smoke 44:30-33); on the other hand they are also reviled and described as apes and pigs (eg The Dinner Table 5:60). Although less frequent, there are similar contradictory references to Christians.
God is perfect, remember? So why can't he make his mind up? Why does he keep making mistakes in his narrative? Yes, the human beings who take down God's word are imperfect and get it wrong, but a perfect God would be patient and would help the poor prophet or scribe sort it out. Yet this doesn't happen. Ask yourself why.
2.1f The agnostic's best friend
Reading the Bible, an open-minded observer with no preconceptions about religion or the existence of God can only come to the following conclusions:
a. the text is contradictory and frequently inconsistent or inexplicable;
b. the God of the Bible is imperfect, petulant, violent, obsessive and controlling.
These in turn suggest that
c. the Biblical God exists - but he is not an admirable character; or
d. God may exist - but he is not as described in the Bible; oror
e. God does not exist.
It is not surprising that so many rational people begin their journey towards
atheism after reading the Old Testament. It is indeed the agnostic's best friend.
In conclusion,
contradictions in the Bible do not disprove
the existence of God, but they suggest that the Biblical version of God does not
exist. The same principle can be applied to the Quran.
Some of the issues in this section were covered in earlier articles on this site:
The crumbling Bible and
Good news for atheists,
which both examine discrepancies in the Old and New Testaments, and
In the beginning,
which looks at the accounts of the Creation in Genesis.
Moving on
Three choices for further study . . .
Read the Old Testament as history. To understand it in the light of
broader events in Palestine in the first millennium BCE, watch this series of videos from the Discovery Channel. It becomes
particularly interesting around sections 4,5 and 6.
Review the Bible in detail (or Book of Mormon or Quran), to see
its inconsistencies and contradictions.
Read the next chapter on this site on the evidence - or lack
of evidence - for Jesus' existence.
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If God existed, he would...
admire the beauty of a universe that he did not create
recognize that eternity is meaningless
deny both heaven and hell
disown all men and women who speak in his name
denounce the harm caused by religious "morality"
help the human race to thrive without him
If God existed, he would be an atheist.
What is the difference between science and faith?
science is certain of nothing and requires proof of everything
faith is certain of everything and requires proof of nothing
Which do you trust?
"I know there is no God"
or
"I believe there is no God"
???
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