An Introduction To Biblical Nonsense
This book
is not about enforcing human limitations on the Christian perspective of God.
Instead, it’s about rendering a verdict on the
possibility of the Bible being a divinely inspired representation of such an
incredible being. If the Bible is, in fact, the word
of the universe’s omnipotent creator, the abilities of this being to alter
science and logic would seemingly supersede the legitimate questions posed upon
these pages. Thus, in order to derive an unbiased conclusion on such an
important matter, we must read the Bible from an impartial perspective and
carefully decide if we can truly attribute the book to such a magnificent
entity.
If one can successfully demonstrate the
accuracy of the Bible, the opinions expressed within this book disintegrate
into mere rubbish. If, on the other hand, we can deduce that the possibility of
the Bible having a link to this god is exceedingly remote, the book must be
able to stand on its own merit to maintain its freely given credibility. If the
Bible cannot be self-sufficient in this manner, it’s
not entitled to the aforementioned leniencies of breaking multiple rules set by
science and reason. With this balanced paradigm in mind, you should discover
one recurring theme while reviewing the upcoming chapters: the link between
divinity and the Bible is simply nonexistent. This idea is anything but novel
since thousands before me have demonstrated the abundant biblical complications
that establish the logical impossibility of a supernatural force ever dictating
or influencing it.
People often ask me why I spend a great
deal of time denouncing and disproving the Bible. Although I can’t
offer an exact reason, my passion is probably driven by the salient danger
created by Christianity and its subsequent influence on nearly two billion
people every day. While the evil forces of certain deceitful religions have
somewhat subsided in more recent times, the hatred inadvertently generated by these
belief systems remains the greatest threat to humankind’s continued existence. In the past 2000 years, Christianity has been guilty of initiating
several wars and crusades resulting in thousands of needless deaths, blatantly
oppressing women to the point of worthlessness, abhorrently justifying the
enslavement of Africans and perpetuating cruelties upon them we would rather
just forget, shamelessly driving its followers to hang or burn alleged witches,
nearly exterminating the entire Native American population, and inconspicuously
robbing billions of people of countless man-hours that could have been much
better spent on improving our planet. Someone certainly needs to address
these issues, and the book most of the Western world swears by demands a thorough
critical analysis.
I was born agnostic,
as are all children, but both of my parents were Christian. Naturally, my mom
enrolled me in church at a young age because she wanted to do what she felt was
best for me. Having also been enrolled in church at a young age, however, she’s never had the opportunity to see the religion from an
honest and impartial perspective.
By the age of seven, I acquired the
typical boyhood interest in dinosaurs. As a result, I wondered how the divine
creation of man could have preceded the existence of these creatures. I learned
in school and from my outside reading that dinosaurs had been around for
millions of years; Adam and Eve, on the other hand, were divinely created
during the earth’s first week only about six thousand years ago. No matter how
many scenarios I considered, I couldn’t think of a way
to resolve this important incongruency. I asked my
mom for an answer, but she didn’t have one either.
Instead, she advised me to ask my Sunday School
teacher. The shameless answer I received the following Sunday was, “We don’t
know there were dinosaurs.” It was then that I realized the religion had
fundamental flaws if it resorted to such claims in order to explain scientific
discrepancies. As time went on, however, cognitive dissonance drove me to
justify further scientific contradictions as “explainable in some way” while
holding onto the word of “absolute truth.” Please
don’t read this book and prejudicially justify the
Bible’s problems in the same incredulous manner.
A great inspiration struck me while
sitting in church one Sunday that made me realize billions of people who didn’t accept Jesus as their savior were imminently bound
for Hell. Even so, they were over on the other side of the globe thinking the
exact same thing but with the roles reversed. However, what if they were right
and we were wrong? Exactly who decided that
Christianity was true while Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism were demonstrably
false; and how did this individual make these determinations? I remember justifying
this interesting perplexity by burying my head in the sand and declaring
Christianity to be a morally superior religion. I’m
patently ashamed of ever forming such a notion.
By the age of seventeen, I began composing
a list of all the absurd Old Testament rules and regulations that God and Moses
suppressed upon us. Soon after, I gained the courage to disregard the Old
Testament as fiction due to the cruelty and scientific errors that it
relentlessly presents. The Bible was no longer a perfect book, but Jesus and
the New Testament were still solid proof of a god to me.
By the age of twenty, I finally undertook
an unprejudiced analysis on the prerequisites of entering Heaven. They simply weren’t fair. If the New Testament is true, so was my
original realization that members of other religions are going to Hell because
their teachers mentally conditioned them to believe their respective religious
systems. These individuals were simply doomed from the beginning; they had no
chance. After I factored in the lack of evidence for any of the events
surrounding Jesus, the exception being a handful of contradicting accounts
written decades after the alleged events, it was just a little too convenient
that God decided the fate of the world in a highly superstitious age void of
testable records. Because of this painfully poor choice, no one could know for
sure what really happened in Jerusalem 2000 years ago. All the while, he
supposedly watches us in total silence as we continue to kill each other over
who has the correct religion.
When I was twenty-two, I browsed the
increasingly popular Internet out of interest in seeing if there were others
who had made similar discoveries. I was amazed to find that there were millions
of these freethinking individuals in America alone. Using enlightened rationale
in conjunction with the enormous amount of counterevidence, hundreds dedicated
their time to freeing others from lives of conditioned thought. In fact, a
select few had an understanding of the Bible far beyond what I ever
realistically hoped to ascertain. As for the Christian defense of these
findings, I could see a lot of straw
grasping. Their best representatives, having obtained bogus doctorates from
self-accredited paper mills, stretched and twisted biblical text in order to
make it fit with their predetermined agendas. Besides, how objective can one
honestly remain while analyzing evidence that’s
contrary to the belief system in which an enormous emotional investment has
already been made? After a long childhood journey, the ultimate answer had
finally become obvious to me. If you undertake an honest, dispassionate, and
emotionless analysis of the Bible, you can easily conclude that it’s not the word of a supreme being. Contrary to what many
Christians would like the world to believe, certain facts can’t
just be absolute truth.
Once I completed my minor in psychology, I
had a better grasp on how religious systems tend to work. As
a general rule, individuals exhibit their desire to be in groups by
surrounding themselves with those who hold similar interests in order to
reinforce the perceived appropriateness of their beliefs and opinions. I
recognized that I, too, underwent a near-universal conditioning process and
tried to recruit/assimilate others into my group because that’s what I was told
God wanted me to do. I also realized that many Christians don’t
even know what they believe because
they never take the time to read the whole Bible. Because of this shockingly
lazy choice exercised by the vast majority of Christians, they’re
mentally unequipped to answer challenges to their belief system. As a result,
the common response to presented complications is usually this: “The Bible says
it. I believe it. That settles it.”
When it comes to religion, the mainstream
believers exhibit no more in-depth thinking than the cult members everyone
watched burn in Waco, Texas not too long ago. Christians are normal people in
the outside world, but their brains seem to switch over to standby mode on
Sunday. Cult members usually exercise the ability to live normal lives, too.
Regardless of the actions such religious people take, I could never deem them
as evil because I understand that they’re victims of
an unfortunate destiny misleading them down a path of ignorance and unwitting
gullibility.
Agnostic once again, I began to realize
the full impact of Christianity on our society just a few months before the
completion of this book. I was particularly interested in the wealth of
scientific evidence against the occurrence of a global flood. Using common
sense and knowledge from my scientific background, I decided to compile my own
list of reasons why Noah’s flood couldn’t have
feasibly taken place as told by the Bible. A Christian friend of mine who
always asked to hear about biblical problems was fascinated
by my research. I later decided to convert my list into a publishable essay in
hopes of being acknowledged as a beneficial
freethinker. In the process, a few additional topics worthy of discussion came
to mind. While scholars, historians, and philosophers have thoroughly covered
these issues, they scribed most of their material on an extremely sophisticated
level. Even with a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate in the sciences, much of
it went over my head. For this reason, I decided to write on a level that
everyone could enjoy and comprehend. After the first few essays were completed,
I knew I had more than enough ideas to write a book.
You’re not
holding an exhaustive scholarly study into the issues covered, but rather a
brief introduction to the facts we have and analyses we can make concerning
pertinent biblical issues. By no means did I intend for this manuscript to be
an exclusively novel, methodically referenced, meticulously comprehensive
volume of perplexities plaguing the Bible. I designed this book to be my own
careful summation of these discoveries, occasionally accommodating some
innovative philosophical questions that the findings should naturally provoke.
Since the presented conclusions of a single individual shouldn’t
be the only component incorporated with your personal judgment, you owe it to
yourself to investigate the points raised in this book by reviewing some of the
recommended reading material and subsequently considering the arguments offered
by both sides. After doing so, I hope you’ll realize
how disappointing it is that this book, in a scientific age of progressive
thought, still needs to be written.
Seemingly countless volumes of work have been written on
each subject I cover, but an extensive review of a lone topic is rarely the
best place to direct someone’s curiosity. Alternatively, I hope this
introductory condensation of biblical perplexities will be of some foundational
use to doubting Christians and beginning freethinkers. If you already consider
yourself a biblical scholar, you probably won’t find
any groundbreaking or earth-shattering ideas in this book. However, I think it’s a wonderful overview of one of the world’s greatest
problems: Christianity.