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God would be an atheist...
A rational look at religion, morality, politics and daily life |
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HOME / This Week About GWBAA WEEKLY COLUMNS Previous Print column Why subscribe? Schedule Terms & Rates Subscribe Online column Subscribe BASICS Definitions Atheism Faith God Religion etc Analysis The meaning of life Morality etc NEXT STEPS Buy Discuss Join Read REVIEWS CONTACT Link to this site All Rights Reserved World Copyright © Martin Foreman PREVIOUSLY... Because I wasn’t ready for sexual abstinence, total vegetarianism and being nice to everyone 24-7, I kept postponing the moment when I would sit down and learn by heart the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path. A would-be Augustine, I suggested to the God-who-didn’t-exist to make me Buddhist, just not yet. Make me Buddhist... "Surely no theist would choose to stay on this polluted, violent planet when offered eternity in paradise? Foolish me. It takes little effort to find articles on the web where believers tie themselves into tight intellectual knots in the vain effort to prove that delaying entry into God’s kingdom is something that God Himself would approve of." I want to live forever (not) "The fact you do not like something does not mean you can wish it away. I am afraid of violence and cancerous disease but they will not magically disappear if I do not believe in them. Reality exists irrespective of my personal desires. Similarly, the fact that Reich wants God to exist – to protect him from “emptiness, the disconnectedness…” and so on – does not mean that there must be a God." Helping stranded motorists "No further proof of an emotional response is needed than the banning of same sex marriage in the states where such an initiative was on the ballot. This was democracy in action, but it was the same democracy that formally deprived African-Americans of their civil rights for eighty years and informally continued to do so for another century. (Some would say that denial continues today.)" Who won? "Time passed. I believed in God but he did not return the favor. With no confirmation of his existence, the pendulum began to swing back. By the time I left school, I was an atheist again in all but name." The swing of the pendulum |
Column 93: Good news for atheists The Bible is not the word of God By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 798 words Publication date: January 21, 2007 Print publications wishing to syndicate the column should click here. Individual subscribers wishing to receive columns by e-mail should click here. In a rational world, it would take the average member of the public little more than an hour to conclude that the Bible was not the genuine, unedited, complete word of God. The Old and New Testaments offer a mish-mash of good stories, ccommonsense advice, appalling violence and occasional romance. In some translations, they reach heights of poetry. Considered as a literary work by a single author (God), however, the Bible is no more than a very rough first draft. No self-respecting human author, far less an all-knowing, all-powerful deity, would suggest that it was worthy to be considered a Holy Text. Look at the evidence. Anomalies and contradictions abound. The very cornerstones on which believers are supposed to base their faith – the Creation and the Birth of Christ – are muddled and uncertain. Since God was at the center of events you’d think he’d remember what happened, but all too often he doesn’t. In Genesis, light appears long before its source, the sun. At one point we are told that animals were created before Adam and Eve; later section we are told the opposite. Genesis VI: 4 tells us that the human race was full of mighty men of reknown; the very next verse tells the reader that men were wicked and with hearts full of evil. What happened in the interim? Much more information is missing in this prelude to the Flood. How were the animals gathered from all over the earth? What did the carnivores eat on board? How did everyone get home after the waters had receded? The New Testament is no clearer. Where exactly were Joseph and Mary living before Jesus’ birth? What is the exact lineage between David and Christ? And so on and so on. What are we to make of God’s portrait of himself? Does he think we will warm to a deity who is proud to slaughter his creation – men, women and unborn children – and who encourages his favorite tribe to murder and enslave in his name? And why, when he claims to be the One and Only God, does he repeatedly remind us of the rivals – Baal, Asherah and El – he has overthrown? Despite these and dozens of other defects that litter the Bible, millions of people are convinced that it is the literal word of God. Many have not read the book in detail. Others have years of practise explaining away each anomaly they see. But as they focus on the details, fundamentalists miss the overarching point – taken in its entirety, the Bible is too weak a scripture to have been written by a perfect God. (You would expect all those who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible to want to get the basics, but unlike Jews and Muslims, Christian fundamentalists seldom study their scriptures in the original language. The fact that God can only write in dead languages – Ancient Hebrew, classical Greek, early Arabic – is another indication to us that the scriptures come from men and not the deity. A true miracle would be to create a text that could be understood by all people, in every language and at every point in history. Or would that make worship too easy?) While fundamentalists perch on their own precarious limb, rational Christians argue that the Biblical text was inspired, rather than written, by God. This offers a more creditable explanation for the all-too-human errors that creep into the scriptures again and again. The interpretation is our fault, not God’s. But this solution still begs the question, why does a perfect God allow an imperfect book to represent him? Yahweh has updated the Bible once. He allowed his son to be tortured and killed to tell humans that “love thy neighbor” had replaced the Old Testament theme of vengeance. But it’s time for a new edition. (I’m discounting the 19th-century book of Moron, sorry Mormon, which is no more than a badly-written pastiche of the first two Testaments.) Without a new Bible, churches will continue to tear themselves apart over issues such as contraception and homosexuality. And we need a new ethical code to cover over-population, new recreational drugs and global warming. Muslims offer the Koran, but disinterested readers quickly see that its bouts of bloodthirst interspersed with homilies about desert life differs little from the Old Testament. So we’re stuck with the Bible and little likelihood of it being updated. That’s good news for atheists. Reading God’s Word with an open mind is one of the most effective ways I know of curing people of their Christianity. I recommend people ask themselves every time they open the Bible: “does this story indicate the existence of an all-powerful loving supernatural God?” The answer is always no. The Bible itself proves that it is not the word of God.
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If God existed, he would... If God existed, he would be an atheist. It remains true, however, that the creationist book Grand Canyon: A Different View, by Tom Vail, promoting the idea that every layer in the Grand Canyon can be explained by Noah’s flood, is sold in the Grand Canyon bookstore, but it is apparently displayed under the "spirituality" section. GWBAA.. apologizes for any harm and inconvenience caused. Further information and contact details to protest on www.skeptic.com |
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