Somehow I don't feel so special anymore!
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Perspective
It seems that most relgious types believe in one form or another that God gave significance to the Earth and his creation (man) and made it the center of the universe.If this was true, then why would Gods most important and valued creation be one of the smallest and insignificant things in the universe?Just consider the following animation to give you a better idea of our place in "God's" creation.
Somehow I don't feel so special anymore!
Somehow I don't feel so special anymore!
Monday, December 17, 2007
Was Jesus Homosexual?
Sounds like a strange question to ask considering the far right religious stance that homosexuality is sinful.
Before any one starts to froth at the gills and their blood boils at the sheer suggestion, lets just establish that this is my opinion based on what the bible or other spiritual source tell us about Jesus and not by any means absolute fact, but how the facts appear to point in the gay messiah direction.
First we must consider the times in which Jesus lived and the community in which he was brought up and the culture he belonged to.
Jesus predominantly lived his life in and around Galilee which is in the Middle East. Conditions would be hard and life harder, men would need be tough if they were to survive.
He was Jewish and a Rabbi and as such would be expected to act and conduct himself in a certain manner.
So lets look at who, or what Jesus actually was.
Jesus was perhaps the most “gentle” soul that walked the face of the earth, In a world were men were rugged, battered and as masculine as John Wayne dipped in testosterone and rolled in gladiator sweat, Jesus minced around as effeminate as camp could be. In modern society he would be called a bit of a limp wrist, in his time he was practically a full blown girl.
He rejected the established code of masculine valour. He frowned on the violent nature of men’s role that was the accepted norm of the time. If he was alive today, he would be called a queer.
He was a Rabbi, but refused to marry. Now for a Jewish male this was peculiar at best, for a rabbi it would be unheard of. You had to be married to be a rabbi so it was doubtful he ever could be a Rabbi. To be in his 20’s and not married was just screaming their was something “different” about him.
Jesus had plenty of opportunity to have sex with women, he was flocked by them, but he always avoided it. If a modern man did the same, we would assume he was gay.
He spent the majority of his time hanging around with people of ill repute, such as prostitutes, former thieves, sodomites and all manner of other lowly sinners. In this day and age Jesus would be looked at as being a tad peculiar at best, especially with his close connection with sinners and sodomites.
He was physically intimate with other men. He surrounded himself with other men of a similar disposition as his. There are accounts in the bible where they place their heads in each others lap whilst dining. Now today in a more tolerant society this would be deemed a “bit gay”. Back then it was probably very nearly a crime punishable by stoning.
Jesus and his chums often were seen to kiss each other
Jesus’s "groupies" competed, each claiming to love Jesus the most, often declaring their love for him quite openly.
John 13:25 tells of John lying with his head on Jesus’s breast. Straight men don’t do that, at least not in our culture, and it would have been unheard of in their day and culture.
Ok, so that is my opinion based on nothing but what I can see for myself in the bible.
So now for some “evidence”.
In 1958 a Scholar from the University of Columbia, named Morton Smith discovered a fragment of manuscript in Mar Saba Monastery in Jerusalem which was, according to local scholars and records, excised and edit out of the original Gospel of Mark.
The passage read: "The youth, looking upon him (Jesus), loved him and beseeched that he might remain with him ... they went into the house of the youth ... And after six days, Jesus instructed him and, in the evening, the youth came to him wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God."
This passage would fill the gap in Mark 10:46 which has Jesus and his chums making a journey to Jericho and then as soon as they got there, they left again. There seems to be a whole episode in Jericho that vanished with in one sentence. Later on Jesus was caught in a park with a naked young man dressed, or rather undressed, in the same manner as the one mentioned in the missing text. See Mark 14:51-52.
During the Last Supper before Jesus' execution, the authors/editors of the Gospel of John describes how the "beloved" disciple laid himself on Jesus' inner tunic – which to us is another word for his undergarments. See John 13:25 and 21:20.
There is a story recorded in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10. where a Roman centurion came to Jesus and asked him to heal his Servant. Seems innocent enough, but the ancient Greek word for Servant was “pai”, which also happens to be the same word used for same sex partner (the Greek had no qualms about homosexuality) so the Centurion would have asked Jesus to come heal his boyfriend. You have to remember that Roman soldiers of the time were not permitted to marry and it was not unheard of for Centurions and higher ranking soldiers to have young (often teenage) male servants that were also used to satisfy sexual needs. This may sound shocking now, but the culture of the time was different and these things were, if not exactly acceptable, were known and tolerated. So the Roman could have been asking Jesus to heal his lover.
Matthew 19:11-12 has a statement from Jesus about “Eunuchs”, which announces “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can” Again this may sound a relatively harmless statement about eunuchs, but let’s examine the use of the term eunuch. The latter part of the statement speaks of those who made themselves eunuchs, which means those who forego marriage and children to better serve God, such as nuns and priests. Jesus also mentions the made into eunuchs, which was a common practice of the time. The unusual one is the one where Jesus speaks of those who were born Eunuchs. Medical the chances of being born a eunuch (with a penis but no testicles) is extremely slim, but consider other literature of the time that uses the term “Born Eunuchs” as a veiled euphemism for homosexuality.
In the ancient world, including ancient Jewish culture (as reflected in the Talmud), “natural” or “born” eunuchs were not associated with missing testicles. Rather, they were associated with stereotypically effeminate characteristics and behaviours such as that of homosexual desires.
The bible does not denounce same sex relationships, in Ruth 1:14 the same Hebrew word is used to describe Ruth’s love for Naomi, as used to describe Adams love for Eve e.g. as a partner or lover. In II Samuel 1:26 David declares that he loved Jonathan more than any woman. This is just one of several Bible passages that describe and celebrate an intense love between these two men that went well beyond friendship
Although there is no mention of Jesus being directly homosexual in a physical sense, there is no proof that Jesus was heterosexual in a physical sense, either. He never claimed to be heterosexual. He never denounced homosexuals either. There is no Biblical evidence that Jesus ever had sex with anybody, though in his times, celibacy was considered abnormal and a little queer!
Before any one starts to froth at the gills and their blood boils at the sheer suggestion, lets just establish that this is my opinion based on what the bible or other spiritual source tell us about Jesus and not by any means absolute fact, but how the facts appear to point in the gay messiah direction.
First we must consider the times in which Jesus lived and the community in which he was brought up and the culture he belonged to.
Jesus predominantly lived his life in and around Galilee which is in the Middle East. Conditions would be hard and life harder, men would need be tough if they were to survive.
He was Jewish and a Rabbi and as such would be expected to act and conduct himself in a certain manner.
So lets look at who, or what Jesus actually was.
Jesus was perhaps the most “gentle” soul that walked the face of the earth, In a world were men were rugged, battered and as masculine as John Wayne dipped in testosterone and rolled in gladiator sweat, Jesus minced around as effeminate as camp could be. In modern society he would be called a bit of a limp wrist, in his time he was practically a full blown girl.
He rejected the established code of masculine valour. He frowned on the violent nature of men’s role that was the accepted norm of the time. If he was alive today, he would be called a queer.
He was a Rabbi, but refused to marry. Now for a Jewish male this was peculiar at best, for a rabbi it would be unheard of. You had to be married to be a rabbi so it was doubtful he ever could be a Rabbi. To be in his 20’s and not married was just screaming their was something “different” about him.
Jesus had plenty of opportunity to have sex with women, he was flocked by them, but he always avoided it. If a modern man did the same, we would assume he was gay.
He spent the majority of his time hanging around with people of ill repute, such as prostitutes, former thieves, sodomites and all manner of other lowly sinners. In this day and age Jesus would be looked at as being a tad peculiar at best, especially with his close connection with sinners and sodomites.
He was physically intimate with other men. He surrounded himself with other men of a similar disposition as his. There are accounts in the bible where they place their heads in each others lap whilst dining. Now today in a more tolerant society this would be deemed a “bit gay”. Back then it was probably very nearly a crime punishable by stoning.
Jesus and his chums often were seen to kiss each other
Jesus’s "groupies" competed, each claiming to love Jesus the most, often declaring their love for him quite openly.
John 13:25 tells of John lying with his head on Jesus’s breast. Straight men don’t do that, at least not in our culture, and it would have been unheard of in their day and culture.
Ok, so that is my opinion based on nothing but what I can see for myself in the bible.
So now for some “evidence”.
In 1958 a Scholar from the University of Columbia, named Morton Smith discovered a fragment of manuscript in Mar Saba Monastery in Jerusalem which was, according to local scholars and records, excised and edit out of the original Gospel of Mark.
The passage read: "The youth, looking upon him (Jesus), loved him and beseeched that he might remain with him ... they went into the house of the youth ... And after six days, Jesus instructed him and, in the evening, the youth came to him wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God."
This passage would fill the gap in Mark 10:46 which has Jesus and his chums making a journey to Jericho and then as soon as they got there, they left again. There seems to be a whole episode in Jericho that vanished with in one sentence. Later on Jesus was caught in a park with a naked young man dressed, or rather undressed, in the same manner as the one mentioned in the missing text. See Mark 14:51-52.
During the Last Supper before Jesus' execution, the authors/editors of the Gospel of John describes how the "beloved" disciple laid himself on Jesus' inner tunic – which to us is another word for his undergarments. See John 13:25 and 21:20.
There is a story recorded in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10. where a Roman centurion came to Jesus and asked him to heal his Servant. Seems innocent enough, but the ancient Greek word for Servant was “pai”, which also happens to be the same word used for same sex partner (the Greek had no qualms about homosexuality) so the Centurion would have asked Jesus to come heal his boyfriend. You have to remember that Roman soldiers of the time were not permitted to marry and it was not unheard of for Centurions and higher ranking soldiers to have young (often teenage) male servants that were also used to satisfy sexual needs. This may sound shocking now, but the culture of the time was different and these things were, if not exactly acceptable, were known and tolerated. So the Roman could have been asking Jesus to heal his lover.
Matthew 19:11-12 has a statement from Jesus about “Eunuchs”, which announces “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can” Again this may sound a relatively harmless statement about eunuchs, but let’s examine the use of the term eunuch. The latter part of the statement speaks of those who made themselves eunuchs, which means those who forego marriage and children to better serve God, such as nuns and priests. Jesus also mentions the made into eunuchs, which was a common practice of the time. The unusual one is the one where Jesus speaks of those who were born Eunuchs. Medical the chances of being born a eunuch (with a penis but no testicles) is extremely slim, but consider other literature of the time that uses the term “Born Eunuchs” as a veiled euphemism for homosexuality.
In the ancient world, including ancient Jewish culture (as reflected in the Talmud), “natural” or “born” eunuchs were not associated with missing testicles. Rather, they were associated with stereotypically effeminate characteristics and behaviours such as that of homosexual desires.
The bible does not denounce same sex relationships, in Ruth 1:14 the same Hebrew word is used to describe Ruth’s love for Naomi, as used to describe Adams love for Eve e.g. as a partner or lover. In II Samuel 1:26 David declares that he loved Jonathan more than any woman. This is just one of several Bible passages that describe and celebrate an intense love between these two men that went well beyond friendship
Although there is no mention of Jesus being directly homosexual in a physical sense, there is no proof that Jesus was heterosexual in a physical sense, either. He never claimed to be heterosexual. He never denounced homosexuals either. There is no Biblical evidence that Jesus ever had sex with anybody, though in his times, celibacy was considered abnormal and a little queer!
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
With extra special thanks to the great Chaz Braman for allowing me to use his brilliant cartoons on my otherwise naff web blog.For more from Chaz view his fantastic site http://russellsteapot.com/comics/
Monday, November 5, 2007
The Death of Christ (how and why)
The late great Bill Hicks said about the symbol of the cross for Christians,
“A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. Do you think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a fuckin' cross? It's kind of like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant on."
The crucifixion of Jesus is perhaps one of the best known of all the Biblical stories and the symbol of the cross is synonymous with Christian’s world wide.
But what exactly is crucifixion, how is it done, how does it work, how does that hold fact with biblical accounts of Jesus’ death and for what reason did Jesus actually die.
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is perhaps one of the most horrible ways to die, not that I know this from experience, but the mechanics of the process makes it impossible to be anything but horrible.
First of all you are tied by the wrist to a plank of wood, not a full cross as traditionally shown, the upright section it stationary and only the cross piece is lifted and attached to the upright (bare in mind these uprights were used again and again for numerous crucifixions and would remain in place). Once your wrists are bound to the plank, nails are hammered through your fore arms, not the hands as depicted on all the pictures of Jesus. The nail which is four to six inches long and an inch wide would be driven between the ulna and radius bones and often bent over the radius to hold it in place. If the nail were driven through the hands are normally depicted once raised up the weight of the body would just rip the nails through your hands.
So, now you are securely nailed to a plank, wrists bound and ready to go. You were then lifted up to the upright and made to stand on a small ledge on the upright while a couple of crucifixion attendants secured the cross piece to the upright. You are now stood on a ledge, up a pole nailed to a plank of wood. This sounds bad enough but just standing there with nails through your arms does not really achieve much as you could stand there a couple of days before dehydration and fatigue finally began to take its toll. Now the Romans did not want to waste time standing around several days waiting for you to die, guarding you to make sure no one rescues you. On occasion for really evil criminals or those they wanted to make examples of they did just leave you to die slowly, often giving the criminal water to sustain the dying process, but this scenario was quite rare. The Romans preferred you to die in a couple of hours, so they could all go home, so what they did was once you were securely perched on the crucifix, they broke your legs so that you could not stand and support yourself.
The result, slow asphyxiation (or more precisely you drown as fluid collects in your lungs) as the weight of your body pulls down on your arms preventing you from being able to breathe, that combined with the agony of two broken legs and the whole weight of your body dragging on two nails hammered through your fore arms.
Those are the facts of crucifixion.
So let’s assume that the method of crucifixion is not as above, but as depicted in the crucifixion of Jesus, what would this mean? Lets try to sort some of the facts from the fiction.
Jesus was made to carry his own cross to the crucifixion site. Well this is quite possible, occasionally full crosses were used in places where existing uprights were not available, but considering this was out side a large populated city it seems unlikely that an existing crucifixion site wouldn’t exist, so it would be more probable that Jesus would have to have carried the cross bar of the cross, but not the whole cross. So this is possible, but not probable.
Jesus was nailed to the “cross” through his hands. Obviously this would not work, unless the wrists were bound to the cross as well. People that show signs of stigmata never show signs of rope burns on the wrists or of holes in the fore arms. So the likelihood of Jesus just being nailed through the hands is not possible as the weight of his body would have pulled him free.
Would Jesus have been able to talk at length to his disciples? Not possible as the whole mechanics of crucifixion makes it almost impossible to breathe let alone carry out conversations. So not possible or at the very best only in tiny gasps. (although seeing as the four gospels can not agree on what Jesus said on the cross, it is highly unlikely that he actually said anything at all)
Ok, so that to some degree covers the How section of the Christ Crucifixion story, now lets have a little look at the Why.
“God sent his only son to die for us”, or “Jesus died for our sins” are two stock responses normally applied to why Jesus was crucified. Apparent it was a selfless act on both Gods and his son’s behalf.
Ok, Lets look at this “selfless act”
1, if Jesus had to die, why the whole charade of being frog marched up and down carrying a cross, the whole suffering and indignity of the crucifixion etc… Why couldn’t just jump off a cliff or something?
2, if Jesus willingly allowed himself to be crucified isn’t that the same as suicide?
Surely that is a sin?
Sins are bad aren’t they?
Some would say it was a sacrifice, but what is the difference? He basically sacrificed himself to, er himself, knowing that he was only going to be dead a few days anyway, so hardly a huge sacrifice seeing as he knew he was going home at the end of it.
3, exactly how does Jesus’ death free us from sin? I have read the bible and spoken to many people who claim to be Christians and neither seem able to explain clearly, or show where it is explained how the death of Jesus actually freed us from Sin. There just seems to be no sense in it at all, if it was such an issue God could have sorted it out with out the necessity of making his son suffer so much, unless he was actually punishing Jesus for something, perhaps his own sins!
4, As the son of god, and in turn God himself (remember the holy trinity), would Jesus actually feel any pain? As an omnipotent, omniscient deity, can he really feel pain? If he did feel the pain, why was in necessary and if he didn’t feel pain, then the whole thing must have been just for show.
5, if God is omnipotent and omniscient (all powerful and all knowing) then he already knew before he sent his son down to earth that this would be the outcome. As part of a part of the triune God, Jesus knew all along what his outcome would be, so this sort of negates the sacrifice as it was actually part of the whole plan, because if it wasn’t what he wanted, then he had the power to change it.
6, Why is Judas so reviled? If he acted with Jesus' blessing, or even under divine coercion from Jesus, why is he portrayed as a bad person? Either way, he helped the crucifixion take place, so surely Christians should admire him. Without Judas they might not have been saved, or Jesus might have lived a lot longer and they'd have a much less impressive ornament to hang round their necks as a symbol of his death. A runaway horse maybe, or a slippery banana-skin or perhaps a poorly looking kebab.
So seeing as Jesus died for all our sins, past present and future, anything we do now is basically sinless as Jesus has already atoned for them. If our acceptance into heaven still depends on us living a sinless lifestyle then surely the death of Jesus was pointless! As from that point onward no matter what we did, the death of Jesus atoned for it. Anything we do from that point onwards is technically already accounted for. As I have already explained previously, in another post, Jesus could not be paying for the original sin, as God permitted that one as part of his creation
So in conclusion to this part, basically we have God sacrificing himself to save us from a hell he created in the first place. Also if the reason Jesus had to die to atone for all mankind’s sins past, present and future what was the point of the Great Flood and Noah? Surely all the millions that died then were rendered pointless if God knew at a later point he would forgive them all anyway. Seems to me God just likes to see things die, after all he caused Cain to kill Abel because he preferred to see the murder of innocent animals over the growing of crops.
In order to accept that Jesus' death washed away Original Sin (and therefore had any meaning at all), you are forced to subscribe to the young-Earth creationist view that the universe is about 6000 years old, and was created just as described in the Book of Genesis. This would mean that almost all sciences (including the sciences that allow us to generate the electricity that is letting you read this blog) are totally wrong about everything. This is one of the main reasons why creationists object so strongly to evolution. It implies (or demonstrates) that the basic concept behind Christianity is simply false.
There was nothing for Christ to atone for, so the crucifixion was meaningless.
“A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. Do you think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a fuckin' cross? It's kind of like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant on."
The crucifixion of Jesus is perhaps one of the best known of all the Biblical stories and the symbol of the cross is synonymous with Christian’s world wide.
But what exactly is crucifixion, how is it done, how does it work, how does that hold fact with biblical accounts of Jesus’ death and for what reason did Jesus actually die.
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is perhaps one of the most horrible ways to die, not that I know this from experience, but the mechanics of the process makes it impossible to be anything but horrible.
First of all you are tied by the wrist to a plank of wood, not a full cross as traditionally shown, the upright section it stationary and only the cross piece is lifted and attached to the upright (bare in mind these uprights were used again and again for numerous crucifixions and would remain in place). Once your wrists are bound to the plank, nails are hammered through your fore arms, not the hands as depicted on all the pictures of Jesus. The nail which is four to six inches long and an inch wide would be driven between the ulna and radius bones and often bent over the radius to hold it in place. If the nail were driven through the hands are normally depicted once raised up the weight of the body would just rip the nails through your hands.
So, now you are securely nailed to a plank, wrists bound and ready to go. You were then lifted up to the upright and made to stand on a small ledge on the upright while a couple of crucifixion attendants secured the cross piece to the upright. You are now stood on a ledge, up a pole nailed to a plank of wood. This sounds bad enough but just standing there with nails through your arms does not really achieve much as you could stand there a couple of days before dehydration and fatigue finally began to take its toll. Now the Romans did not want to waste time standing around several days waiting for you to die, guarding you to make sure no one rescues you. On occasion for really evil criminals or those they wanted to make examples of they did just leave you to die slowly, often giving the criminal water to sustain the dying process, but this scenario was quite rare. The Romans preferred you to die in a couple of hours, so they could all go home, so what they did was once you were securely perched on the crucifix, they broke your legs so that you could not stand and support yourself.
The result, slow asphyxiation (or more precisely you drown as fluid collects in your lungs) as the weight of your body pulls down on your arms preventing you from being able to breathe, that combined with the agony of two broken legs and the whole weight of your body dragging on two nails hammered through your fore arms.
Those are the facts of crucifixion.
So let’s assume that the method of crucifixion is not as above, but as depicted in the crucifixion of Jesus, what would this mean? Lets try to sort some of the facts from the fiction.
Jesus was made to carry his own cross to the crucifixion site. Well this is quite possible, occasionally full crosses were used in places where existing uprights were not available, but considering this was out side a large populated city it seems unlikely that an existing crucifixion site wouldn’t exist, so it would be more probable that Jesus would have to have carried the cross bar of the cross, but not the whole cross. So this is possible, but not probable.
Jesus was nailed to the “cross” through his hands. Obviously this would not work, unless the wrists were bound to the cross as well. People that show signs of stigmata never show signs of rope burns on the wrists or of holes in the fore arms. So the likelihood of Jesus just being nailed through the hands is not possible as the weight of his body would have pulled him free.
Would Jesus have been able to talk at length to his disciples? Not possible as the whole mechanics of crucifixion makes it almost impossible to breathe let alone carry out conversations. So not possible or at the very best only in tiny gasps. (although seeing as the four gospels can not agree on what Jesus said on the cross, it is highly unlikely that he actually said anything at all)
Ok, so that to some degree covers the How section of the Christ Crucifixion story, now lets have a little look at the Why.
“God sent his only son to die for us”, or “Jesus died for our sins” are two stock responses normally applied to why Jesus was crucified. Apparent it was a selfless act on both Gods and his son’s behalf.
Ok, Lets look at this “selfless act”
1, if Jesus had to die, why the whole charade of being frog marched up and down carrying a cross, the whole suffering and indignity of the crucifixion etc… Why couldn’t just jump off a cliff or something?
2, if Jesus willingly allowed himself to be crucified isn’t that the same as suicide?
Surely that is a sin?
Sins are bad aren’t they?
Some would say it was a sacrifice, but what is the difference? He basically sacrificed himself to, er himself, knowing that he was only going to be dead a few days anyway, so hardly a huge sacrifice seeing as he knew he was going home at the end of it.
3, exactly how does Jesus’ death free us from sin? I have read the bible and spoken to many people who claim to be Christians and neither seem able to explain clearly, or show where it is explained how the death of Jesus actually freed us from Sin. There just seems to be no sense in it at all, if it was such an issue God could have sorted it out with out the necessity of making his son suffer so much, unless he was actually punishing Jesus for something, perhaps his own sins!
4, As the son of god, and in turn God himself (remember the holy trinity), would Jesus actually feel any pain? As an omnipotent, omniscient deity, can he really feel pain? If he did feel the pain, why was in necessary and if he didn’t feel pain, then the whole thing must have been just for show.
5, if God is omnipotent and omniscient (all powerful and all knowing) then he already knew before he sent his son down to earth that this would be the outcome. As part of a part of the triune God, Jesus knew all along what his outcome would be, so this sort of negates the sacrifice as it was actually part of the whole plan, because if it wasn’t what he wanted, then he had the power to change it.
6, Why is Judas so reviled? If he acted with Jesus' blessing, or even under divine coercion from Jesus, why is he portrayed as a bad person? Either way, he helped the crucifixion take place, so surely Christians should admire him. Without Judas they might not have been saved, or Jesus might have lived a lot longer and they'd have a much less impressive ornament to hang round their necks as a symbol of his death. A runaway horse maybe, or a slippery banana-skin or perhaps a poorly looking kebab.
So seeing as Jesus died for all our sins, past present and future, anything we do now is basically sinless as Jesus has already atoned for them. If our acceptance into heaven still depends on us living a sinless lifestyle then surely the death of Jesus was pointless! As from that point onward no matter what we did, the death of Jesus atoned for it. Anything we do from that point onwards is technically already accounted for. As I have already explained previously, in another post, Jesus could not be paying for the original sin, as God permitted that one as part of his creation
So in conclusion to this part, basically we have God sacrificing himself to save us from a hell he created in the first place. Also if the reason Jesus had to die to atone for all mankind’s sins past, present and future what was the point of the Great Flood and Noah? Surely all the millions that died then were rendered pointless if God knew at a later point he would forgive them all anyway. Seems to me God just likes to see things die, after all he caused Cain to kill Abel because he preferred to see the murder of innocent animals over the growing of crops.
In order to accept that Jesus' death washed away Original Sin (and therefore had any meaning at all), you are forced to subscribe to the young-Earth creationist view that the universe is about 6000 years old, and was created just as described in the Book of Genesis. This would mean that almost all sciences (including the sciences that allow us to generate the electricity that is letting you read this blog) are totally wrong about everything. This is one of the main reasons why creationists object so strongly to evolution. It implies (or demonstrates) that the basic concept behind Christianity is simply false.
There was nothing for Christ to atone for, so the crucifixion was meaningless.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Know your son of God.
Read these questions, see if you know the answers.
1, Which Son of God’s birthday is 25th Of December?
2, Which son of God was born of a virgin mother?
3, Which Son of God had 12 disciples?
4, Which son of God performed miracles, such as curing the blind and lame?
5, Which son of God was referred to as the “Good Shepard” or “Lamb of God”?
6, Which son of God was visited by Three Persian Magi at his birth?
7, Which son of God died on a cross?
8, Which son of God subsequently was placed in a cave and reappeared 3 days later?
9, Which son of God held a last supper with his 12 disciples?
10, Which son of God ascended to heaven to watch over his flock?
Ok, you now have 20 minutes to think about the answers, so I will see you back here in 20.
Done already?
Ok, here are the answers.
1 to 10 the answer was of course Mithra, the Persian Saviour, know as “the light”, or “the way”.
Oh yes, Jesus would also fit, but he was born 4000 years later.
1, Which Son of God’s birthday is 25th Of December?
2, Which son of God was born of a virgin mother?
3, Which Son of God had 12 disciples?
4, Which son of God performed miracles, such as curing the blind and lame?
5, Which son of God was referred to as the “Good Shepard” or “Lamb of God”?
6, Which son of God was visited by Three Persian Magi at his birth?
7, Which son of God died on a cross?
8, Which son of God subsequently was placed in a cave and reappeared 3 days later?
9, Which son of God held a last supper with his 12 disciples?
10, Which son of God ascended to heaven to watch over his flock?
Ok, you now have 20 minutes to think about the answers, so I will see you back here in 20.
Done already?
Ok, here are the answers.
1 to 10 the answer was of course Mithra, the Persian Saviour, know as “the light”, or “the way”.
Oh yes, Jesus would also fit, but he was born 4000 years later.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
You need to click the image to see the full sized cartoon, although it will probably offend everyone and their dog, so don't bother if you are only going to moan about it.
Taken from my other blog http://jebusno.blogspot.com/
Bible versus the Koran.
This section is to highlight sections of both the Bible and Koran that speak of the same subject, but not only contradict each other, but themselves as well.
I was going to do one big list, but the more i read the bible and the Koran the longer and longer my list got, and this post would have beeen twice as long as the books themselves. So i have decided to make this a reaccuring section that I will post time to time, concentrating on a different area each time.
Creation:
The Bible has literally loads of Contradiction regarding the creation of everything.
In Gen 1:3-5 it claims that God created light on the first day and then went on to separate light and darkness.
In Gen 1:14-19 is says that the source of the light, the sun, wasn’t created until the fourth day.
Gen 1:11-12 states that trees where created before man.
Gen 2:4-9 states the opposite.
Gen 1:26-27 states that Male and Female (Adam and Eve) were created at the same time.
Gen 2:7 and Gen 2:21-22 states that the Female was formed much later.
The Koran has its own confusion over creation
Koran 7:54, 10:3, 11:7, 25:29 all state that Allah created the world in six days
Koran 41:9 states that the earth was created in just two days.
Koran 39:73, 41:30, 57:21, 79:41 all refer the there being only one Garden of paradise.
Koran 18:31, 22:23, 35:33, 78:32 all state there are several Gardens of Paradise.
Koran 2:29 tells that after creating Earth, God then created the heavens
Koran 79:27-30 has it the other way around.
Koran 96:2 states that man was made from a clot of blood.
Koran 21:30 and Koran 25:54 both state that man was made from water.
Koran 15:26 says man was made from Clay
Koran 3:59 and Koran 30:20 both state that Allah created man from dust
Koran 16:4 has man being created from a drop of sperm.
To be continued
I was going to do one big list, but the more i read the bible and the Koran the longer and longer my list got, and this post would have beeen twice as long as the books themselves. So i have decided to make this a reaccuring section that I will post time to time, concentrating on a different area each time.
Creation:
The Bible has literally loads of Contradiction regarding the creation of everything.
In Gen 1:3-5 it claims that God created light on the first day and then went on to separate light and darkness.
In Gen 1:14-19 is says that the source of the light, the sun, wasn’t created until the fourth day.
Gen 1:11-12 states that trees where created before man.
Gen 2:4-9 states the opposite.
Gen 1:26-27 states that Male and Female (Adam and Eve) were created at the same time.
Gen 2:7 and Gen 2:21-22 states that the Female was formed much later.
The Koran has its own confusion over creation
Koran 7:54, 10:3, 11:7, 25:29 all state that Allah created the world in six days
Koran 41:9 states that the earth was created in just two days.
Koran 39:73, 41:30, 57:21, 79:41 all refer the there being only one Garden of paradise.
Koran 18:31, 22:23, 35:33, 78:32 all state there are several Gardens of Paradise.
Koran 2:29 tells that after creating Earth, God then created the heavens
Koran 79:27-30 has it the other way around.
Koran 96:2 states that man was made from a clot of blood.
Koran 21:30 and Koran 25:54 both state that man was made from water.
Koran 15:26 says man was made from Clay
Koran 3:59 and Koran 30:20 both state that Allah created man from dust
Koran 16:4 has man being created from a drop of sperm.
To be continued
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Omniscience versus free will
Who or more precisely what is God?
According to common understanding he is an omnipotent and omniscient being. He is all powerful and all knowing. He has prior knowledge to everything to come and everything that has ever been. He has the power to shape everything to the way he likes and he knows the outcome of every single change he has ever made or will make.
With all this power and foresight why does he not intervene or prevent wars, rapes, murders, natural disasters and innocent deaths?
Because has given man free will to choose his own destiny.
Hmm, is it me or do these two statements contradict each other?
If God is omniscient then he surely already knows 100% what each individual or group is destined to do. So if a person is going to grow up to raise an army and rampage through the world slaughtering indiscriminately then God is already aware of this before the person is born. In fact he knew this at the moment he created the world. So with his omnipotent powers he could alter this persons destiny to suit Gods own will if he was not happy with the outcome he already knows will occur.
If man truly has free will, then God is unaware of which option the person will choose. He may be aware of the choices available, but not the choice that will be taken.
In this case God can not be Omniscient.
So if God is omniscient then there is no point complaining about the evils in the world because God must know about them and actively sanction them by his very Omniscient nature.
God must not dislike Gays, as he created man in the knowledge that he would experiment with his sexuality and thus at some point be aware that a section of his creation would choose the path of Homosexuality. If God did not want this then he could have deigned the relevant parts so that they could not possibly fit together or give pleasure. Sort of a square peg and round hole scenario.
The people who claim to have killed in Gods name must be telling the truth no matter how heinous the crime as God knew it would be done centuries, even millennia, before any of those involved were born.
You have no choice, the universe was made in such a way that everything you do must necessarily happen
And so on…
If man is free to choose his destiny then God is little more than an observer of his creation. If he is not omniscient then he could not possible omnipotent either.
He can not possible be all powerful, if he can not see what your next choice will be.
So if you believe we have free will you may as well resign yourself to the fact that God is powerless to intervene so prayer is, well just the same as talking to yourself, which is generally regarded as a form of madness.
According to common understanding he is an omnipotent and omniscient being. He is all powerful and all knowing. He has prior knowledge to everything to come and everything that has ever been. He has the power to shape everything to the way he likes and he knows the outcome of every single change he has ever made or will make.
With all this power and foresight why does he not intervene or prevent wars, rapes, murders, natural disasters and innocent deaths?
Because has given man free will to choose his own destiny.
Hmm, is it me or do these two statements contradict each other?
If God is omniscient then he surely already knows 100% what each individual or group is destined to do. So if a person is going to grow up to raise an army and rampage through the world slaughtering indiscriminately then God is already aware of this before the person is born. In fact he knew this at the moment he created the world. So with his omnipotent powers he could alter this persons destiny to suit Gods own will if he was not happy with the outcome he already knows will occur.
If man truly has free will, then God is unaware of which option the person will choose. He may be aware of the choices available, but not the choice that will be taken.
In this case God can not be Omniscient.
So if God is omniscient then there is no point complaining about the evils in the world because God must know about them and actively sanction them by his very Omniscient nature.
God must not dislike Gays, as he created man in the knowledge that he would experiment with his sexuality and thus at some point be aware that a section of his creation would choose the path of Homosexuality. If God did not want this then he could have deigned the relevant parts so that they could not possibly fit together or give pleasure. Sort of a square peg and round hole scenario.
The people who claim to have killed in Gods name must be telling the truth no matter how heinous the crime as God knew it would be done centuries, even millennia, before any of those involved were born.
You have no choice, the universe was made in such a way that everything you do must necessarily happen
And so on…
If man is free to choose his destiny then God is little more than an observer of his creation. If he is not omniscient then he could not possible omnipotent either.
He can not possible be all powerful, if he can not see what your next choice will be.
So if you believe we have free will you may as well resign yourself to the fact that God is powerless to intervene so prayer is, well just the same as talking to yourself, which is generally regarded as a form of madness.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
What am I?
I am frequently reminded, often in quite colourful terms, when debating religion in one internet forum or other that “all you atheists” are miserable, untrusting, aimless, disrespectful, conniving, thoroughly worthless and altogether somewhat of a blight on Gods wonderful creation.
Some times you get that feeling that some one is trying to tell you something but you just can’t put your finger on it.
Firstly, I am not an atheist, so they must be confusing me with some one else, I think of myself as Agnostic. I do not personally believe in God, but I can not prove or be 100% sure that he doesn’t exist (although I am 99.9% sure).
People, mainly theists and other religious types, seem to think that we (atheists and agnostics) have no respect for life.
I find this incredulous as I personally accept people as I find them.
I do not prejudge people because their belief system is not the same as mine.
I do not wallow in self superiority when speaking to Muslim, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians believing that they will all burn in hell fire as my religion or belief system is the only true one and there for everyone else will suffer.
I give equal worth to disasters that occur in Christian countries as I do those that occur in Islamic countries, because I see the people involved, not the religion.
If there were starving babies in an orphanage in some none Christian country my first thought would not be to say a prayer, or how to send them bibles, but how to get them food.
No one has ever, in my name, enslaved masses and preached conversion to Christianity or Islam on fear of death.
I don’t tell people “believe what I believe or you will die”.
I consider all life important and (dare I say it) sacred, as I believe we only have the one so it is important to use it right and for the right reasons.
I do not suffer from any preconditioned guilt when having sex for enjoyment rather than just reproduction;
I do not feel that I will be judged as being avaricious for having more chocolate than is good for me;
I have no shame about displaying pride in my own achievement.
We are often deemed as untrusting or dubious.
I trust what I can see or what can be proved, I am dubious of “facts” that can not be proved or of people who make decisions based purely on what a book tells them rather than what common sense tell them.
Some say it is only because I can not see God or that he works in ways that I don’t understand that I don’t trust him.
Well I have never actually seen the processor in my computer nor do I understand how it work, but trust it to do stuff on a daily basis.
When I see a wonderful sunset or beautiful mountain range I marvel at the immeasurable and destructive forces that were needed to create both, the sun with its countless billions of hydrogen reactions and the mountains with their crashing together of tectonic plates.
I don’t think “God put them there” and think nothing more of them.
We are often accused of being selfish.
I am nice to people because I choose to be, I do good things because it is usually the best for everyone, not because I am thinking to myself “If I am nice to people and do good things, I will surely go to heaven”.
I do not discount the opinions of other because their religion contradicts my religion and thus is wrong and therefore anything they have to say is wrong.
I treat people the same way I would expect them to treat me, regardless of age, sex, creed, colour or lifestyle. I do not view anyone that does not share my beliefs as some way less worthy.
I am certainly not aimless, I have goals like most people, but my goals are determined by my own abilities, not by dogma.
I want to live my life as peacefully as possible with out prejudice or preconceptions.
I want to sit on my death bed and ponder whether my life has any bearing or positive effects on the lives of the people I have known, not worrying if I have atoned for any forgotten sins I may or may not have committed.
I try not to be disrespectful, but some time it is extremely difficult to debate a point with some one who’s only retort is “well it says so in the Bible” with out blowing a fuse.
I do not look down on Mr Patel (yes, that is his name) at the local off licence because he is a Muslim, nor do I secret scoff at Mr and Mrs Greenman when I see them in the petrol station because they are Jewish.
I do not ignore my cousin, or not speak of him because he is openly gay.
In fact I regard everyone I meet with the same amiable standing. As I said previously, I see the people, not their choices.
I do, on the other hand disrespect ignorance and intolerance.
And on a final note, anyone who knows me personally will tell you, the one thing I have never been is Miserable.
Some times you get that feeling that some one is trying to tell you something but you just can’t put your finger on it.
Firstly, I am not an atheist, so they must be confusing me with some one else, I think of myself as Agnostic. I do not personally believe in God, but I can not prove or be 100% sure that he doesn’t exist (although I am 99.9% sure).
People, mainly theists and other religious types, seem to think that we (atheists and agnostics) have no respect for life.
I find this incredulous as I personally accept people as I find them.
I do not prejudge people because their belief system is not the same as mine.
I do not wallow in self superiority when speaking to Muslim, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians believing that they will all burn in hell fire as my religion or belief system is the only true one and there for everyone else will suffer.
I give equal worth to disasters that occur in Christian countries as I do those that occur in Islamic countries, because I see the people involved, not the religion.
If there were starving babies in an orphanage in some none Christian country my first thought would not be to say a prayer, or how to send them bibles, but how to get them food.
No one has ever, in my name, enslaved masses and preached conversion to Christianity or Islam on fear of death.
I don’t tell people “believe what I believe or you will die”.
I consider all life important and (dare I say it) sacred, as I believe we only have the one so it is important to use it right and for the right reasons.
I do not suffer from any preconditioned guilt when having sex for enjoyment rather than just reproduction;
I do not feel that I will be judged as being avaricious for having more chocolate than is good for me;
I have no shame about displaying pride in my own achievement.
We are often deemed as untrusting or dubious.
I trust what I can see or what can be proved, I am dubious of “facts” that can not be proved or of people who make decisions based purely on what a book tells them rather than what common sense tell them.
Some say it is only because I can not see God or that he works in ways that I don’t understand that I don’t trust him.
Well I have never actually seen the processor in my computer nor do I understand how it work, but trust it to do stuff on a daily basis.
When I see a wonderful sunset or beautiful mountain range I marvel at the immeasurable and destructive forces that were needed to create both, the sun with its countless billions of hydrogen reactions and the mountains with their crashing together of tectonic plates.
I don’t think “God put them there” and think nothing more of them.
We are often accused of being selfish.
I am nice to people because I choose to be, I do good things because it is usually the best for everyone, not because I am thinking to myself “If I am nice to people and do good things, I will surely go to heaven”.
I do not discount the opinions of other because their religion contradicts my religion and thus is wrong and therefore anything they have to say is wrong.
I treat people the same way I would expect them to treat me, regardless of age, sex, creed, colour or lifestyle. I do not view anyone that does not share my beliefs as some way less worthy.
I am certainly not aimless, I have goals like most people, but my goals are determined by my own abilities, not by dogma.
I want to live my life as peacefully as possible with out prejudice or preconceptions.
I want to sit on my death bed and ponder whether my life has any bearing or positive effects on the lives of the people I have known, not worrying if I have atoned for any forgotten sins I may or may not have committed.
I try not to be disrespectful, but some time it is extremely difficult to debate a point with some one who’s only retort is “well it says so in the Bible” with out blowing a fuse.
I do not look down on Mr Patel (yes, that is his name) at the local off licence because he is a Muslim, nor do I secret scoff at Mr and Mrs Greenman when I see them in the petrol station because they are Jewish.
I do not ignore my cousin, or not speak of him because he is openly gay.
In fact I regard everyone I meet with the same amiable standing. As I said previously, I see the people, not their choices.
I do, on the other hand disrespect ignorance and intolerance.
And on a final note, anyone who knows me personally will tell you, the one thing I have never been is Miserable.
Are you a good christian?
1, You feel quite at ease when debunking and ridiculing hundreds of other religions and their Gods, but fly into a rage when anyone tries to question yours.
2, you are unable to accept that Humans could ever be related to dirty beast such as the apes, but are quite happy when the Bible tells you that mankind was made from dirt and mud.
3, you mock the idea of polytheism, but then worship the holy trinity.
4, You become upset and angry, often flying into a rage, when you hear of other religions committing “atrocities” in the name of their Gods, but remain silent and at ease with such things as “The inquisition”, “The crusades”, “Persecution of homosexuals” and “The spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and AIDS due to churches prohibiting the use of condoms.”
5, you laugh at the idea that humans can be deified as in Hindu religions, but have no issues with elevating a Jewish carpenters son in to a saviour of mankind.
6, you will spend years of your life looking for tiny scraps of evidence, no matter how tenuous or ambiguous, to try and prove the evolutions wrong, but take the word of a man made book which offers no evidence to support its claims that the Earth is only a few thousand years old and was made in six days.
7, you truly believe that apart from yourself, and everyone that shares you exact religious persuasions and beliefs, the entire population of the planet, past, present and future, are all condemned to eternal hellfire.
8, Although the thousands and thousands of pieces of evidence collected and shown by History, science, physics, geology and chemistry , you are unconvinced of evolution and the possibility of a godless universe, but Mrs Miggins’, from church, claim of her TV starting to work again after she started praying when it broke is proof enough of God existence.
9, you constantly foam at the mouth over the godless heathen of other religions. You think all gays should be shot. Teenage mothers should be locked away in asylums and that abortionist should be killed whilst espousing the evils of contraception. Yet you consider your religion to be one of tolerance.
10, You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.
2, you are unable to accept that Humans could ever be related to dirty beast such as the apes, but are quite happy when the Bible tells you that mankind was made from dirt and mud.
3, you mock the idea of polytheism, but then worship the holy trinity.
4, You become upset and angry, often flying into a rage, when you hear of other religions committing “atrocities” in the name of their Gods, but remain silent and at ease with such things as “The inquisition”, “The crusades”, “Persecution of homosexuals” and “The spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and AIDS due to churches prohibiting the use of condoms.”
5, you laugh at the idea that humans can be deified as in Hindu religions, but have no issues with elevating a Jewish carpenters son in to a saviour of mankind.
6, you will spend years of your life looking for tiny scraps of evidence, no matter how tenuous or ambiguous, to try and prove the evolutions wrong, but take the word of a man made book which offers no evidence to support its claims that the Earth is only a few thousand years old and was made in six days.
7, you truly believe that apart from yourself, and everyone that shares you exact religious persuasions and beliefs, the entire population of the planet, past, present and future, are all condemned to eternal hellfire.
8, Although the thousands and thousands of pieces of evidence collected and shown by History, science, physics, geology and chemistry , you are unconvinced of evolution and the possibility of a godless universe, but Mrs Miggins’, from church, claim of her TV starting to work again after she started praying when it broke is proof enough of God existence.
9, you constantly foam at the mouth over the godless heathen of other religions. You think all gays should be shot. Teenage mothers should be locked away in asylums and that abortionist should be killed whilst espousing the evils of contraception. Yet you consider your religion to be one of tolerance.
10, You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Noah, the Ark and the Flood.
I have lost track the amount of times I have had this discussion with people who wish to believe it.
I don’t doubt at some point in history there was a flood, a big flood, but not a world wide flood, and that some chap called Noah some how had the foresight to build a big boat and put some animal on board.
The story of Noah is mentioned in the Bible, Koran and Torah, so it must have some basis in fact.
The Ark
The Bible leads us to believe that one man and perhaps his three sons built a sea worthy vessel that could carry two (or in some passages of the bible, seven) of each species of animal and plant life on the planet.
There are millions of different species of animals on this planet alone and many many more millions of plants and Noah had to accommodate them all, if the story has to be believed.
Even some of the world’s biggest super tankers of present time could only hold a fraction of the world’s myriad of different animal species in conditions where they would be comfortable and safe.
Noah would not only have to build an Ark big enough to hold all the animals, but areas large enough to carry food and keep it fresh for ten months at the very least. Also much of the ark would be given over to supplies of fresh water (unless he some how managed to build a desalination unit that converted the sea water in to potable water.)
He then would have needed extra storage areas for the food they would need to sustain them after the flood for a year or two until natural vegetation began to grow back again (that’s assuming there would be any soil left for it to grow in).
So at the grand age of around 600 years old Noah had to build a super ship, the size and likes of which could not be built today with all our modern ship building methods, all out of locally sourced gopher wood. The upper deck of the ship would have been that high Noah would probably need breathing apparatus to walk on it.
The whole upper deck(s) would have to be given over to plant life and grasses, just to support a fraction of the grazing animal. None of the plants that Noah would have needed to take aboard would survive the minimum of Forty days journey (this is if the billions of plant species were all put aboard on the last day or two before the flood started) if they were kept below the deck levels away from sun light.
So if the bible is to be believed eight people, Noah his wife, their three sons and wives, cared for the specialised and demanding needs of countless millions of animals and hundreds of millions of insects as well as tending to thousands of acres of grass and plant life during the journey. Most zoos only have a tiny fraction of the possible array of animal species that Noah would have had, yet they employ hundreds of people to take care of them.
The physics behind the story of the ark is impossible. Not only would the collection and storage of the animals require all of Noah’s energies, he had to collect the plant life, grow specialised crops, build a ship of such proportions to house them all and then contend with being over 500 years old at the time.
He also only had seven days (Gen 7:4-10) to load all the millions of animals and plants onto the ark.
So if we take a very conservative guess and say there was 10 million different species of animal and plant to load (which I am sure you will agree is much much less than there would be), then he would need to load approximately 1,500,000 per day, or put another way, 1041 per minute or 17 per second.
The bible says that Noah had approximately 100 years to do all this and that in itself poses its own issues. If Noah spent the whole 100 years just building the ark, then surely the parts he built first would have started to rot away by the time he hammered in the final nails. This is not taking into account for such thing as termites and other wood devouring insects that would have risen thousands of generations amongst the timbers of the ark.
This also does not account for jealous locals stealing the wood for them selves or trying to sabotage the project.
Personally I believe there was a chap called Noah, who during a localised flood in and around the area of Modern day Turkey saves a significant amount of animals on a large boat. Like all great tales, the story became embellished with every telling and a handful of farm animal became a menagerie and then the whole spectrum of animal life upon the planet.
The Flood
According to the Bible during the flood every mountain was covered by water. So that is at least 8,848 metres (29,000 feet) of water encompassing the entire globe.
Now I am not a mathematician but that is something close to 4,500,000,000 cubic kilometres of water which is 15 times the volume of the sea and the ice caps combined.
Rainfall of that magnitude is akin to the amount of water pressure used in Hydraulic mining where water is used to break rocks.
We are talking in excess of 200 metres (90 feet) of water per day or around 8.5 (2.5 feet) metres an hour or 0.14 metres (4 inches) a minute. Recently we had rain in Britain that amounted to a couple of inches a day and it destroyed crops and brought life to a halt. We are talking of rainfall that would strip soil from land and churn the seas into mud.
Water cascading from the sky at that speed would completely flatten everything that it hit, including the Ark itself.
The earth would be stripped down to the rock of all soil and arable land. All fresh water would become tainted with salt water which would kill all aquatic life that relies of fresh bodies of water to survive. The seas would be a churning mass of mud and debris that would clog and suffocate anything that swam in it. Animals such as dolphins would soon die out as hunting fish with it sonar would become impossible because of the turmoil caused in the water by the 90 feet a day down fall. Whales would drown as they came up for air because their air holes would instantly fill with water the second it surfaced, that is if they survived the pressure of the down pour as it would probably prevent them from being able to reach the surface of the water anyway.
Then you have the dead. There would be tens of millions of dead people and animals floating and festering in the water around the ark spreading disease and illness once the rain stopped and they would have been an ever present threat for the next nine months attracting flies.
According to the bible in all this time Noah, his family and al the animals remained shut up in the ark, which God insisted only had one tiny window (Gen 6:16).
So millions of animals, billions of plants, no ventilation, no fresh food, no fresh water, no facilities for the treatment or disposal of manure and millions upon millions of dead people and animals floating about just outside.
Well now I put it like that I begin to wonder why I ever doubted it.
The story of the flood is, to me, a wash out.
See what I did there?
After the flood
So the waters have gone (who knows where?) and the ark has come to rest. The time has come for Noah to release the animals that gallop off the ark and start breeding like the clappers.
Just a couple of problems with this scenario though.
All the animals have been cooped up with out exercise for almost a year, so the gallop is would be more of a shaky crawl, or totter at the very best.
The majority of them would not have seen daylight in all that time, unless Noah rotated them so they could be near the window, and would be lacking in many essential vitamins.
They would not have had access to fresh water and food in all that time so their general health would be critical, that is assuming they would in reality survive at all.
So Noah’s first job would be the recuperation of his animals, and for this he would need fresh water and fresh food.
Oh dear.
No arable land in which to plant crops (that is if he had the foresight to bring along some seeds) and no potable water. All available land would have been stripped by the floods and anything deposited as the water receded would be full of salt deposits and unsuitable to the majority of all known crops. Any pools of water would be salt water and full of rotting decaying dead things.
So here is Noah with several million sickly animals and nothing to feed them with and nothing for them to drink.
The predators with in the animals would soon start to diminish the number of remaining animals as Noah and God seem to have neglected the basis of all food chains, some animals eat other animals faster than they can breed so lots of them are needed to sustain the animal above them in the chain.
The herbivores would have nothing to eat and very quickly the carnivores would run out of things to eat.
Anything else would most probably succumb to diseases or die of thirst.
The whole exercise would have been futile.
Odds and ends
Just supposing Noah landed safely and all the animal were well and there was underground springs bringing fresh water and acres and acres of crops and grass lands which had remained untouched and all the dead were washed away, and all the carnivores agreed to become vegetarians until there was enough years of reproduction to allow them to start meat eating again and everything else that needed to happen to allow the flood story to succeed actually did happen (this requires some amazing leaps of faith) there are still things that would make the flood story hard to believe.
How did all the animals return back to whence they came safely? Just having one pair of each animal species is extremely precarious at best, throwing arduous treks across the globe over land and sea (not sure if panda and kangaroos are that good as swimmers?) only make the chances of survival much less likely.
Inbreeding would begin to mutate all the species after a couple of generation rendering much of them sterile.
Again, we have inbreeding with in the remaining eight humans, of which only six were of breeding age (in biblical terms they were less than 400 years old), and who could they breed with?
Er..each other, and all the males were related so all offspring would be related and so once again, as with Adam and Eve, the population is based on inbreeding and incest.
I once more hear the twangs of the six fingered banjo emanating from the pages of the bible.
I am sure I will broach this topic again at some point, but for now, I believe that give my reason why I think the whole thing is utter drivel.
I don’t doubt at some point in history there was a flood, a big flood, but not a world wide flood, and that some chap called Noah some how had the foresight to build a big boat and put some animal on board.
The story of Noah is mentioned in the Bible, Koran and Torah, so it must have some basis in fact.
The Ark
The Bible leads us to believe that one man and perhaps his three sons built a sea worthy vessel that could carry two (or in some passages of the bible, seven) of each species of animal and plant life on the planet.
There are millions of different species of animals on this planet alone and many many more millions of plants and Noah had to accommodate them all, if the story has to be believed.
Even some of the world’s biggest super tankers of present time could only hold a fraction of the world’s myriad of different animal species in conditions where they would be comfortable and safe.
Noah would not only have to build an Ark big enough to hold all the animals, but areas large enough to carry food and keep it fresh for ten months at the very least. Also much of the ark would be given over to supplies of fresh water (unless he some how managed to build a desalination unit that converted the sea water in to potable water.)
He then would have needed extra storage areas for the food they would need to sustain them after the flood for a year or two until natural vegetation began to grow back again (that’s assuming there would be any soil left for it to grow in).
So at the grand age of around 600 years old Noah had to build a super ship, the size and likes of which could not be built today with all our modern ship building methods, all out of locally sourced gopher wood. The upper deck of the ship would have been that high Noah would probably need breathing apparatus to walk on it.
The whole upper deck(s) would have to be given over to plant life and grasses, just to support a fraction of the grazing animal. None of the plants that Noah would have needed to take aboard would survive the minimum of Forty days journey (this is if the billions of plant species were all put aboard on the last day or two before the flood started) if they were kept below the deck levels away from sun light.
So if the bible is to be believed eight people, Noah his wife, their three sons and wives, cared for the specialised and demanding needs of countless millions of animals and hundreds of millions of insects as well as tending to thousands of acres of grass and plant life during the journey. Most zoos only have a tiny fraction of the possible array of animal species that Noah would have had, yet they employ hundreds of people to take care of them.
The physics behind the story of the ark is impossible. Not only would the collection and storage of the animals require all of Noah’s energies, he had to collect the plant life, grow specialised crops, build a ship of such proportions to house them all and then contend with being over 500 years old at the time.
He also only had seven days (Gen 7:4-10) to load all the millions of animals and plants onto the ark.
So if we take a very conservative guess and say there was 10 million different species of animal and plant to load (which I am sure you will agree is much much less than there would be), then he would need to load approximately 1,500,000 per day, or put another way, 1041 per minute or 17 per second.
The bible says that Noah had approximately 100 years to do all this and that in itself poses its own issues. If Noah spent the whole 100 years just building the ark, then surely the parts he built first would have started to rot away by the time he hammered in the final nails. This is not taking into account for such thing as termites and other wood devouring insects that would have risen thousands of generations amongst the timbers of the ark.
This also does not account for jealous locals stealing the wood for them selves or trying to sabotage the project.
Personally I believe there was a chap called Noah, who during a localised flood in and around the area of Modern day Turkey saves a significant amount of animals on a large boat. Like all great tales, the story became embellished with every telling and a handful of farm animal became a menagerie and then the whole spectrum of animal life upon the planet.
The Flood
According to the Bible during the flood every mountain was covered by water. So that is at least 8,848 metres (29,000 feet) of water encompassing the entire globe.
Now I am not a mathematician but that is something close to 4,500,000,000 cubic kilometres of water which is 15 times the volume of the sea and the ice caps combined.
Rainfall of that magnitude is akin to the amount of water pressure used in Hydraulic mining where water is used to break rocks.
We are talking in excess of 200 metres (90 feet) of water per day or around 8.5 (2.5 feet) metres an hour or 0.14 metres (4 inches) a minute. Recently we had rain in Britain that amounted to a couple of inches a day and it destroyed crops and brought life to a halt. We are talking of rainfall that would strip soil from land and churn the seas into mud.
Water cascading from the sky at that speed would completely flatten everything that it hit, including the Ark itself.
The earth would be stripped down to the rock of all soil and arable land. All fresh water would become tainted with salt water which would kill all aquatic life that relies of fresh bodies of water to survive. The seas would be a churning mass of mud and debris that would clog and suffocate anything that swam in it. Animals such as dolphins would soon die out as hunting fish with it sonar would become impossible because of the turmoil caused in the water by the 90 feet a day down fall. Whales would drown as they came up for air because their air holes would instantly fill with water the second it surfaced, that is if they survived the pressure of the down pour as it would probably prevent them from being able to reach the surface of the water anyway.
Then you have the dead. There would be tens of millions of dead people and animals floating and festering in the water around the ark spreading disease and illness once the rain stopped and they would have been an ever present threat for the next nine months attracting flies.
According to the bible in all this time Noah, his family and al the animals remained shut up in the ark, which God insisted only had one tiny window (Gen 6:16).
So millions of animals, billions of plants, no ventilation, no fresh food, no fresh water, no facilities for the treatment or disposal of manure and millions upon millions of dead people and animals floating about just outside.
Well now I put it like that I begin to wonder why I ever doubted it.
The story of the flood is, to me, a wash out.
See what I did there?
After the flood
So the waters have gone (who knows where?) and the ark has come to rest. The time has come for Noah to release the animals that gallop off the ark and start breeding like the clappers.
Just a couple of problems with this scenario though.
All the animals have been cooped up with out exercise for almost a year, so the gallop is would be more of a shaky crawl, or totter at the very best.
The majority of them would not have seen daylight in all that time, unless Noah rotated them so they could be near the window, and would be lacking in many essential vitamins.
They would not have had access to fresh water and food in all that time so their general health would be critical, that is assuming they would in reality survive at all.
So Noah’s first job would be the recuperation of his animals, and for this he would need fresh water and fresh food.
Oh dear.
No arable land in which to plant crops (that is if he had the foresight to bring along some seeds) and no potable water. All available land would have been stripped by the floods and anything deposited as the water receded would be full of salt deposits and unsuitable to the majority of all known crops. Any pools of water would be salt water and full of rotting decaying dead things.
So here is Noah with several million sickly animals and nothing to feed them with and nothing for them to drink.
The predators with in the animals would soon start to diminish the number of remaining animals as Noah and God seem to have neglected the basis of all food chains, some animals eat other animals faster than they can breed so lots of them are needed to sustain the animal above them in the chain.
The herbivores would have nothing to eat and very quickly the carnivores would run out of things to eat.
Anything else would most probably succumb to diseases or die of thirst.
The whole exercise would have been futile.
Odds and ends
Just supposing Noah landed safely and all the animal were well and there was underground springs bringing fresh water and acres and acres of crops and grass lands which had remained untouched and all the dead were washed away, and all the carnivores agreed to become vegetarians until there was enough years of reproduction to allow them to start meat eating again and everything else that needed to happen to allow the flood story to succeed actually did happen (this requires some amazing leaps of faith) there are still things that would make the flood story hard to believe.
How did all the animals return back to whence they came safely? Just having one pair of each animal species is extremely precarious at best, throwing arduous treks across the globe over land and sea (not sure if panda and kangaroos are that good as swimmers?) only make the chances of survival much less likely.
Inbreeding would begin to mutate all the species after a couple of generation rendering much of them sterile.
Again, we have inbreeding with in the remaining eight humans, of which only six were of breeding age (in biblical terms they were less than 400 years old), and who could they breed with?
Er..each other, and all the males were related so all offspring would be related and so once again, as with Adam and Eve, the population is based on inbreeding and incest.
I once more hear the twangs of the six fingered banjo emanating from the pages of the bible.
I am sure I will broach this topic again at some point, but for now, I believe that give my reason why I think the whole thing is utter drivel.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Adam and Eve
The Bible, or at least the people who hide behind it, tells us lots of things that are contradictory.
On one hand we are told that the account of the creation according to Genesis is how the world and universe was formed is the true way it happened, as is Gods word.
Yet these same people, when faced with some startlingly obvious errors with in the books text claim that parts should not be taken literally, but as metaphors or parables, so any “mistakes” are not really mistakes but gaps in interpretation!
How convenient.
So basically the Bible is the literal word of God, which is also a collection of metaphors, parables, analogies and selected allegories which the reader is free to interpret to there comfort.
You should always distrust those people who appear to know so well what God or the bible wants or tells them to do, because you will always become aware that it coincides exactly with their own desires.
Strange that really when you think about it!
The First Man
God created Adam in his own image, or so it is told, from dust and stuff he found laying around or if the Koran is to be the correct source of information then Allah made Adam “He has created man from a sperm-drop...”KORAN 16:4
Either way he was created in some ones image. Now my problem with this was did Adam have genitals, or more precisely, the reproductive part of his genitals, eg: his Testicles.
If so, why?
At this time, females had not been created or even considered so the need for reproductive organ were unnecessary, unless God had them and if so, why did God need them when he can create life with an apparent flick of his wrist? (no pun intended especially if the Korans version is correct)
God did not create a woman until Adam claimed he was lonely. To create a woman God needed to perform a little surgery on Adam and remove a rib from which he then created a woman. Now this could tally with the Korans version of how humans are created as it claims that humans are made from clots of blood mixed with sperm.
(Koran 23:14)
Then WE made the sperm into a clot of congealed
blood; then of that clot We made a lump;
then We made out of that lump bones and clothed the
bones with flesh
So Eve had to be made from one of Adams ribs, not dust like Adam and presumably he gave her reproductive organs that would accommodated those of Adams, despite the fact until that moment Adam had no need or use for them.
As they say where I come from “Sounds like bollocks to me”
The Forbidden fruit
It is understood that the “Apple” is symbolic, and not the actual fruit, but for reasons of ease I will use “Apple” when referring to the Fruit of the tree of knowledge.
Adam and Eve were innocent, they did not know the difference between right and wrong or good or Evil. God created them, put them in a lush Garden full of wonderful flora and fauna, yet did not give them the knowledge to know what was right or wrong. Adam could have quite easily vented his desires upon the various forms of livestock with in the garden and would not know it was wrong, and as a result, God would have to look on and either say nothing, or give Adam the knowledge or right and wrong.
Instead he Gave then a tree full of apples and said “Don’t eat the apples, it is wrong” and then left, where as Adam would have looked at Eve and said
“What does wrong mean?”
Where Eve could have replied “I don’t know, but it may be fun!”
So basically in essence God set Adam and Eve up for a fall. He knew they did not know the difference between right and wrong and thus any actions they took should not have been punishable as their innocents would not allow them to know what they were doing was erroneous.
Once they tried the Apple and discovered knowledge God got angry and punished them. This to me is like not telling a child that taking with out asking is wrong and merits a punishment and then punishing the child because they have done exactly what you knew they do because they did not know any difference.
For Adam and Eve it was a situation where they could not win. If they did not eat the apple, then God could have punished them if they decided to murder all the animals for fun, even though they would not know it was wrong, but by eating the apple, they learnt what was right or wrong, thus avoiding angering God by doing things that he would deem punishable.
They were damned if the did and damned if they didn’t.
On one hand we are told that the account of the creation according to Genesis is how the world and universe was formed is the true way it happened, as is Gods word.
Yet these same people, when faced with some startlingly obvious errors with in the books text claim that parts should not be taken literally, but as metaphors or parables, so any “mistakes” are not really mistakes but gaps in interpretation!
How convenient.
So basically the Bible is the literal word of God, which is also a collection of metaphors, parables, analogies and selected allegories which the reader is free to interpret to there comfort.
You should always distrust those people who appear to know so well what God or the bible wants or tells them to do, because you will always become aware that it coincides exactly with their own desires.
Strange that really when you think about it!
The First Man
God created Adam in his own image, or so it is told, from dust and stuff he found laying around or if the Koran is to be the correct source of information then Allah made Adam “He has created man from a sperm-drop...”KORAN 16:4
Either way he was created in some ones image. Now my problem with this was did Adam have genitals, or more precisely, the reproductive part of his genitals, eg: his Testicles.
If so, why?
At this time, females had not been created or even considered so the need for reproductive organ were unnecessary, unless God had them and if so, why did God need them when he can create life with an apparent flick of his wrist? (no pun intended especially if the Korans version is correct)
God did not create a woman until Adam claimed he was lonely. To create a woman God needed to perform a little surgery on Adam and remove a rib from which he then created a woman. Now this could tally with the Korans version of how humans are created as it claims that humans are made from clots of blood mixed with sperm.
(Koran 23:14)
Then WE made the sperm into a clot of congealed
blood; then of that clot We made a lump;
then We made out of that lump bones and clothed the
bones with flesh
So Eve had to be made from one of Adams ribs, not dust like Adam and presumably he gave her reproductive organs that would accommodated those of Adams, despite the fact until that moment Adam had no need or use for them.
As they say where I come from “Sounds like bollocks to me”
The Forbidden fruit
It is understood that the “Apple” is symbolic, and not the actual fruit, but for reasons of ease I will use “Apple” when referring to the Fruit of the tree of knowledge.
Adam and Eve were innocent, they did not know the difference between right and wrong or good or Evil. God created them, put them in a lush Garden full of wonderful flora and fauna, yet did not give them the knowledge to know what was right or wrong. Adam could have quite easily vented his desires upon the various forms of livestock with in the garden and would not know it was wrong, and as a result, God would have to look on and either say nothing, or give Adam the knowledge or right and wrong.
Instead he Gave then a tree full of apples and said “Don’t eat the apples, it is wrong” and then left, where as Adam would have looked at Eve and said
“What does wrong mean?”
Where Eve could have replied “I don’t know, but it may be fun!”
So basically in essence God set Adam and Eve up for a fall. He knew they did not know the difference between right and wrong and thus any actions they took should not have been punishable as their innocents would not allow them to know what they were doing was erroneous.
Once they tried the Apple and discovered knowledge God got angry and punished them. This to me is like not telling a child that taking with out asking is wrong and merits a punishment and then punishing the child because they have done exactly what you knew they do because they did not know any difference.
For Adam and Eve it was a situation where they could not win. If they did not eat the apple, then God could have punished them if they decided to murder all the animals for fun, even though they would not know it was wrong, but by eating the apple, they learnt what was right or wrong, thus avoiding angering God by doing things that he would deem punishable.
They were damned if the did and damned if they didn’t.
Monday, September 10, 2007
The deadly Seven
We are lucky to have been provided with a list of sins that can apparently lead to all sorts of trouble - the Seven Deadly Sins. These should not be confused with the Seven Samurai (who could also cause lots of trouble and be deadly), the Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, or the Seven Sinful Ice-cream Flavours (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, pistachio, anchovy, mint-choc-chip and pumpkin). Obviously, it would be bad to commit any of these sins (they`re deadly, remember), and as such it seems reasonable to suppose that our Lord and Creator would carefully avoid them too.
Let`s see how well He does.
PRIDE
After creating various bits and bobs in Genesis, we are told "And God saw that it was good". So, He takes pride in His work, apparently.
Also, when John baptised Jesus (good job he did, because we all know what happens to un-baptised people when they die...) God said, and I quote, "You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased". God, who is Jesus, loves and is pleased with Jesus, who is God. If you knew someone who claimed to love and be pleased with himself, wouldn't that hint at a self-proud person?
WRATH
Well, according to the Old Testament, God was a genocidal maniac of Biblical proportions (naturally). However, it could be argued that many of the mass-slaughters described therein were not done out of anger, but for some other Godly motives. Fair enough, but are there any specific examples of wrath?
Samuel (24:1) tells us :"Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying 'Go and take a census of Israel and Judah'". Burning anger? Sounds like Wrath to me.
Also from Samuel (6:6) "When they came to the threshing-floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. The LORD's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the Ark of God." Presumably God would have preferred the Ark to fall into the mud, but Uzzah paid the price here...
ENVY
From the Ten Commandments : "You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God..." Says it all, really. We don't even need to look for the evidence here, as we get it straight from the horse's mouth (so to speak).
LUST
Your school Nativity Play is a good example : the Holy Spirit impregnating virgins... Naughty, naughty - randy old God.
GLUTTONY
Why are we here? Many theologians would say "To love and worship God". Apparently, God just can't be content unless He creates five billion souls for the specific purpose of telling him how great he is. That's lot of people. That's just plain gluttonous.
AVARICE
Okay, he's let off this one - God has no need of money. Unfortunately his spokespeople, the televangelists, more than make up for this. Send me money and get to heaven! Either they're lying and just trying to get rich, or God actually does need money. Either way, it doesn't look good.
SLOTH
Back to Genesis again: "By the seventh day God finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work."Being omnipotent, god cannot get tired. If He has access to an infinite supply of energy (as we are led to believe), He could create a billion galaxies without so much as breaking into a sweat. It looks like He was just slobbing around...
Let`s see how well He does.
PRIDE
After creating various bits and bobs in Genesis, we are told "And God saw that it was good". So, He takes pride in His work, apparently.
Also, when John baptised Jesus (good job he did, because we all know what happens to un-baptised people when they die...) God said, and I quote, "You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased". God, who is Jesus, loves and is pleased with Jesus, who is God. If you knew someone who claimed to love and be pleased with himself, wouldn't that hint at a self-proud person?
WRATH
Well, according to the Old Testament, God was a genocidal maniac of Biblical proportions (naturally). However, it could be argued that many of the mass-slaughters described therein were not done out of anger, but for some other Godly motives. Fair enough, but are there any specific examples of wrath?
Samuel (24:1) tells us :"Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying 'Go and take a census of Israel and Judah'". Burning anger? Sounds like Wrath to me.
Also from Samuel (6:6) "When they came to the threshing-floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. The LORD's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the Ark of God." Presumably God would have preferred the Ark to fall into the mud, but Uzzah paid the price here...
ENVY
From the Ten Commandments : "You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God..." Says it all, really. We don't even need to look for the evidence here, as we get it straight from the horse's mouth (so to speak).
LUST
Your school Nativity Play is a good example : the Holy Spirit impregnating virgins... Naughty, naughty - randy old God.
GLUTTONY
Why are we here? Many theologians would say "To love and worship God". Apparently, God just can't be content unless He creates five billion souls for the specific purpose of telling him how great he is. That's lot of people. That's just plain gluttonous.
AVARICE
Okay, he's let off this one - God has no need of money. Unfortunately his spokespeople, the televangelists, more than make up for this. Send me money and get to heaven! Either they're lying and just trying to get rich, or God actually does need money. Either way, it doesn't look good.
SLOTH
Back to Genesis again: "By the seventh day God finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work."Being omnipotent, god cannot get tired. If He has access to an infinite supply of energy (as we are led to believe), He could create a billion galaxies without so much as breaking into a sweat. It looks like He was just slobbing around...
The big ten, with add ons
Thou shalt have no other gods before me. *
* Except the Virgin Mary, and all the Saints. Feel free to treat them as if they were gods.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.... Thou shalt not bow down thyself nor serve them...*
* Again, statuettes of Mary are exempt (especially weeping/bleeding/oozing ones), as are ornate carvings of My Son on the Cross. Oh, and pretty stained-glass windows. I like them.
Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain. *
* Without mitigating circumstances, such as whacking your thumb with a hammer. I've even done it myself!
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. *
* Preaching on a Sunday morning is exempt from this, as is running God-fearing cable-TV stations.
Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land... *
* Jesus always sent a Mother's Day card, so you better had too!
Thou shalt not murder. *
* Unless it is done in my name, or I am on your side.
Thou shalt not commit adultery. *
* Unless you're a King, in which case I give you Divine Right to do whatever the heck you like. If you get caught you can always blub in public and say that you know I forgive you.
Thou shalt not steal*
*Taking 10% of the earnings of the poor to build enormous cathedrals and fill them with gold baubles is not counted as stealing.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. *
* Unless it helps to spread my message to the infidels. Creationists - why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house / wife / manservant / maidservant / ox / ass. *
* It's okay to covet their mental health, peace of mind, sense of humour, intellectual integrity, rationality of thought and unmatched sexiness, even if they are hell bound atheists.
* Except the Virgin Mary, and all the Saints. Feel free to treat them as if they were gods.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.... Thou shalt not bow down thyself nor serve them...*
* Again, statuettes of Mary are exempt (especially weeping/bleeding/oozing ones), as are ornate carvings of My Son on the Cross. Oh, and pretty stained-glass windows. I like them.
Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain. *
* Without mitigating circumstances, such as whacking your thumb with a hammer. I've even done it myself!
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. *
* Preaching on a Sunday morning is exempt from this, as is running God-fearing cable-TV stations.
Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land... *
* Jesus always sent a Mother's Day card, so you better had too!
Thou shalt not murder. *
* Unless it is done in my name, or I am on your side.
Thou shalt not commit adultery. *
* Unless you're a King, in which case I give you Divine Right to do whatever the heck you like. If you get caught you can always blub in public and say that you know I forgive you.
Thou shalt not steal*
*Taking 10% of the earnings of the poor to build enormous cathedrals and fill them with gold baubles is not counted as stealing.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. *
* Unless it helps to spread my message to the infidels. Creationists - why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house / wife / manservant / maidservant / ox / ass. *
* It's okay to covet their mental health, peace of mind, sense of humour, intellectual integrity, rationality of thought and unmatched sexiness, even if they are hell bound atheists.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Quick religious Joke
One day, heaven is beginning to fill up (of course due to the population explosion), so St. Peter decides to ask each person a question about the bible before they can enter. Three men stand at the pearly gates, waiting to get into heaven. "How many wise men were there?" St. Peter asks the first man. "Three." He answers, and the trumpets sound, the gates open, and the first man enters."How long did the flood last?" St. Peter asks the second man. "Forty days and forty nights." He answers, and the trumpets sound, the gates open and the second man enters. Seeing how easily the first two answered his trivia, St. Peter thinks of a much more difficult question for the second man. Finally, he asks, "What was the first thing Eve said to Adam in the Garden?"The man thinks and thinks, but can't come up with an answer. "Boy, that's a hard one," he finally says. And the trumpets blow, the gates open, and the last man enters heaven.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Evolution or Creation?
Where to start? The beginning, or not, as the argument may be.
The Christian faith denies the theory of evolution and the scientific community denies the theory of creation. So who is right, or more importantly, who has the evidence to back up their claims?
Let me start by making it clear that the theory of creation and the theory of evolution are just that, Theories. Neither have any base in absolute fact and neither can be 100% proved or disproved. All we have is supportive evidence on which we can make reasonable assumptions about how either theory could or could not be true.
From a personal point of view I can not see how creationism could support the diversity of life. Even the human race is so diverse in term of colours, builds, features and everything else that distinguishes one race from another, that one set of parents as little as 9000 to 12000 years ago (creationist estimate of the age of earth according to the bible)
The Bible claims that God created the world in just seven days which by any measure is pretty impressive considering it took two men nearly three weeks just to install my new bathroom.
It is fair to say on the side of creationism that one of Gods “days” could be billions of years of human time, so in my opinion there is no need to argue the possibility of a seven day universal construction.
Time in the bible is figurative at best. In Genesis on the sixth day God brought forth all the animals and Adam named them. Now given that there are over 90 million different known species of land animal (including birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, invertebrates and vertebrates) the task of naming each one would have taken many, many years at least, and that did not include the marine life, but Adam did this all in one day.
There are several thing about the theory of creation that bothers me and which are not clearly explained in the bible.
When God supposedly created Adam (and take note that the Koran claims that it was Allah that created Adam) and Eve he placed them in the Garden of Eden and blessed them with two sons Cain and Abel (although only Cain, Abel and Seth are mentioned by name the bible tells that in his 930 or so years Adam had many more children after them). It is known that Cain Killed Abel and as a punishment he was outcast and sent to the east of Eden, to the land of Nod, where quite strangely he met and married a Shepard’s daughter (like any good mystery, her name was never revealed). By now you should be asking yourself “Where did she come from?” and quite rightly so. In chapter four of Genesis the population suddenly changed from just the original four (Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel) to a mass of population out side the Garden from Which Cain could choose a wife, in less that 16 paragraphs with no explanation. As yet I have never seen a convincing rationalisation of this paradox, although I have heard the use of such terms as “They could be the descendants of Adam not previously mentioned” or “God put them there after creating Adam and Eve” and my all time favourite “They just were, ok!”
Another worry I have is that if all the people were descended from Adam and Eve as claimed, then does God promote incest? The descendants of Adam would have had to take the terms of brotherly and sisterly love to a literal degree. I have seen the film Deliverance and I have seen what the results of what sort of offspring a man and wife can produce when they both share the same parents. We should all be sat on our back porches strumming our banjo’s with our little six fingered hands whilst drooling.
But in response a creationist would mock “are we expected to believe that we came from apes?” And believe me this is a standard response to any such questioning of God creation.
So let us set the record straight, when Darwin first postulated his now famous “theory of Evolution” he suggested that perhaps man and ape shared a common ancestor somewhere in the darker times of history, a primate that both man and ape could be related back to, but not that man and ape were ever one and the same.
Unlike Darwin, We now know that Humans and Apes share approximately 98-99% of the same DNA which proves we are more closely related than most people would like to admit. After all we are both primates, we walk upright, have opposable thumbs, binocular vision and only have one pair of mammary glands.
So like it or not, we are related to apes, although we are not required to invite them to family gatherings.
As I mention previously, Evolution is a theory, but unlike creationism, it is a theory with evidence. We have fossil records that show evidence of creatures that lived millions of years ago, and we can see the evidence of natural selection over a relatively short time. There is no doubt that dinosaurs existed, yet they are not mentioned in the bible at all, despite being some of the largest creatures ever to have roamed the planets surface. We have hundreds (maybe even thousands, I am not going to count) of museums around the world packed to the rafters with examples of this planets evolution and the plethora of creatures that once roamed in abundance around the globe but I have yet to see an equal (or even any significant) amount of museums that have evidence of creation with in.
In conclusion to this section ( I will most probably revisit this subject again) I believe in evolution simply because I can see examples of how creatures have developed over many millennium to suit their environments but none to support that God created everything at once.
The Christian faith denies the theory of evolution and the scientific community denies the theory of creation. So who is right, or more importantly, who has the evidence to back up their claims?
Let me start by making it clear that the theory of creation and the theory of evolution are just that, Theories. Neither have any base in absolute fact and neither can be 100% proved or disproved. All we have is supportive evidence on which we can make reasonable assumptions about how either theory could or could not be true.
From a personal point of view I can not see how creationism could support the diversity of life. Even the human race is so diverse in term of colours, builds, features and everything else that distinguishes one race from another, that one set of parents as little as 9000 to 12000 years ago (creationist estimate of the age of earth according to the bible)
The Bible claims that God created the world in just seven days which by any measure is pretty impressive considering it took two men nearly three weeks just to install my new bathroom.
It is fair to say on the side of creationism that one of Gods “days” could be billions of years of human time, so in my opinion there is no need to argue the possibility of a seven day universal construction.
Time in the bible is figurative at best. In Genesis on the sixth day God brought forth all the animals and Adam named them. Now given that there are over 90 million different known species of land animal (including birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, invertebrates and vertebrates) the task of naming each one would have taken many, many years at least, and that did not include the marine life, but Adam did this all in one day.
There are several thing about the theory of creation that bothers me and which are not clearly explained in the bible.
When God supposedly created Adam (and take note that the Koran claims that it was Allah that created Adam) and Eve he placed them in the Garden of Eden and blessed them with two sons Cain and Abel (although only Cain, Abel and Seth are mentioned by name the bible tells that in his 930 or so years Adam had many more children after them). It is known that Cain Killed Abel and as a punishment he was outcast and sent to the east of Eden, to the land of Nod, where quite strangely he met and married a Shepard’s daughter (like any good mystery, her name was never revealed). By now you should be asking yourself “Where did she come from?” and quite rightly so. In chapter four of Genesis the population suddenly changed from just the original four (Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel) to a mass of population out side the Garden from Which Cain could choose a wife, in less that 16 paragraphs with no explanation. As yet I have never seen a convincing rationalisation of this paradox, although I have heard the use of such terms as “They could be the descendants of Adam not previously mentioned” or “God put them there after creating Adam and Eve” and my all time favourite “They just were, ok!”
Another worry I have is that if all the people were descended from Adam and Eve as claimed, then does God promote incest? The descendants of Adam would have had to take the terms of brotherly and sisterly love to a literal degree. I have seen the film Deliverance and I have seen what the results of what sort of offspring a man and wife can produce when they both share the same parents. We should all be sat on our back porches strumming our banjo’s with our little six fingered hands whilst drooling.
But in response a creationist would mock “are we expected to believe that we came from apes?” And believe me this is a standard response to any such questioning of God creation.
So let us set the record straight, when Darwin first postulated his now famous “theory of Evolution” he suggested that perhaps man and ape shared a common ancestor somewhere in the darker times of history, a primate that both man and ape could be related back to, but not that man and ape were ever one and the same.
Unlike Darwin, We now know that Humans and Apes share approximately 98-99% of the same DNA which proves we are more closely related than most people would like to admit. After all we are both primates, we walk upright, have opposable thumbs, binocular vision and only have one pair of mammary glands.
So like it or not, we are related to apes, although we are not required to invite them to family gatherings.
As I mention previously, Evolution is a theory, but unlike creationism, it is a theory with evidence. We have fossil records that show evidence of creatures that lived millions of years ago, and we can see the evidence of natural selection over a relatively short time. There is no doubt that dinosaurs existed, yet they are not mentioned in the bible at all, despite being some of the largest creatures ever to have roamed the planets surface. We have hundreds (maybe even thousands, I am not going to count) of museums around the world packed to the rafters with examples of this planets evolution and the plethora of creatures that once roamed in abundance around the globe but I have yet to see an equal (or even any significant) amount of museums that have evidence of creation with in.
In conclusion to this section ( I will most probably revisit this subject again) I believe in evolution simply because I can see examples of how creatures have developed over many millennium to suit their environments but none to support that God created everything at once.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
The Bible in general
The Christian bible is just one of around thirty books that all claim to derive from divine origins. It is impossible for them all to be right.
So where did the bible come from?
The simple answer is it was written by man, in the name of God; which is completely different to being written by God.
The modern Christian Bible consists of sixty-six books that were declared canonical or holy by a council of men who allegedly found these writings to be more holy than the other 200 or so Jewish/Christian texts they had to choose from.
The bible has been through many different “editing” since it was first declared divine in around the fourth century A.D. The current revision of the bible is around 350 years old as The book of Revelation was not included until1672 by the council of Jerusalem. We could argue why was revelation not classed of divine origin until then, or how many other worthy texts have been ignored on the same principles. Sadly this argument could last forever and a day as the people who made those definitions are not here to defend their decisions.
There is no proof anywhere that any part of the bible was actually written by God and handed to man, whereas there is reams of evidence that support that the bible was written by man as an attempt to explain things which were then unknown.
Too much nonsense and contradiction.
I was brought up as a generic Christian, My father is non practicing Roman Catholic and my mother was Church of England, which as you may know absolves you from actually visiting church at any time other than funerals, christening and Weddings.
My father was a dominating force in the forming of my personally beliefs. He basically said “There are several different churches in this village, they all have their own strengths and faults, you have to make up your own mind which if any you want to believe.” Although he said it with a Hungarian accent and punctuated with a plethora of swearword.
Thus my religious upbringing was free from preformed opinions or forced doctrine. I was left to look at them all and make up my own mind. Sadly all the churches in the area were of some Christian denomination or other so the majority of my personal findings are based around the Christian Bible. I am not picking on the Christians in this blog, it is just most of my observations were formed during my teen years and onward and unfortunately I did not come into contact with many other religions later in life. I will try to include all religions in this blog, not to ridicule or debase them but to explain why I personally choose not to believe them.
My father was a dominating force in the forming of my personally beliefs. He basically said “There are several different churches in this village, they all have their own strengths and faults, you have to make up your own mind which if any you want to believe.” Although he said it with a Hungarian accent and punctuated with a plethora of swearword.
Thus my religious upbringing was free from preformed opinions or forced doctrine. I was left to look at them all and make up my own mind. Sadly all the churches in the area were of some Christian denomination or other so the majority of my personal findings are based around the Christian Bible. I am not picking on the Christians in this blog, it is just most of my observations were formed during my teen years and onward and unfortunately I did not come into contact with many other religions later in life. I will try to include all religions in this blog, not to ridicule or debase them but to explain why I personally choose not to believe them.
About me
About me (isn’t that what blogs are all about really?) and my reason for this blog.
My name is Ade and I am approaching forty much faster than I care to admit. I have started this blog not as a rant against religion or peoples beliefs but more of an explanation of why I personally choose not to believe or follow and particular religion. I suppose I am more an Agnostic than an Atheist, but most people that I talk to assume that I am an atheist and think this because they misinterpret what I say. They think I am an atheist because I refuse to believe in anything remotely religious, which in part is true but not absolute. I believe in what can be proved and I try to retain an open mind on things that can’t be proved. I object to the mindless following of dogma and teaching that expect us to act and respond in a certain way because it is what we are told to do, rather than knowing the reason why we are reacting in such a manner.
I believe night follows day because the world rotates and that science has proven it to be so. I believe we are what we are because nature and nurture shape us and as we mature free will completes what we are to become. Social and economics restraints may hold us back or urge us forward but what we become inside is based on how we see ourselves with in the whole fabric of existence.
The purpose of this blog is not to debunk or ridicule religion but give the reasons why I personally choose not to believe in religion.
My name is Ade and I am approaching forty much faster than I care to admit. I have started this blog not as a rant against religion or peoples beliefs but more of an explanation of why I personally choose not to believe or follow and particular religion. I suppose I am more an Agnostic than an Atheist, but most people that I talk to assume that I am an atheist and think this because they misinterpret what I say. They think I am an atheist because I refuse to believe in anything remotely religious, which in part is true but not absolute. I believe in what can be proved and I try to retain an open mind on things that can’t be proved. I object to the mindless following of dogma and teaching that expect us to act and respond in a certain way because it is what we are told to do, rather than knowing the reason why we are reacting in such a manner.
I believe night follows day because the world rotates and that science has proven it to be so. I believe we are what we are because nature and nurture shape us and as we mature free will completes what we are to become. Social and economics restraints may hold us back or urge us forward but what we become inside is based on how we see ourselves with in the whole fabric of existence.
The purpose of this blog is not to debunk or ridicule religion but give the reasons why I personally choose not to believe in religion.
Is God an Atheist?
Honestly I don’t know, but there again neither does anyone else.
The Dictionary describes an atheist as
a·the·ist –noun
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
This said, does God believe in a higher being than himself. It is doubtful, as he (according to religious dogma) is the only supreme being and thus could not cowl to anything or anyone, thus by definition God must be an Atheist.
So what is an Atheist and how does an atheist differ from a Believer. Well by not much when you think about it.
A believer is some one who denies the existence of all other Gods and faiths bar one.
An Atheist is some one who believes in one less God and faith than a believer.
So the difference is minimal as an atheist denies the existence of only one more God than any believer.
The Dictionary describes an atheist as
a·the·ist –noun
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
This said, does God believe in a higher being than himself. It is doubtful, as he (according to religious dogma) is the only supreme being and thus could not cowl to anything or anyone, thus by definition God must be an Atheist.
So what is an Atheist and how does an atheist differ from a Believer. Well by not much when you think about it.
A believer is some one who denies the existence of all other Gods and faiths bar one.
An Atheist is some one who believes in one less God and faith than a believer.
So the difference is minimal as an atheist denies the existence of only one more God than any believer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
