Religion. Crazy? Yea.
Archive for February, 2012
Religion. Crazy? Yea.
AMEN!
(Check out the rest of bdwilson1000’s video’s here: http://www.youtube.com/user/bdwilson1000)
Scapegoating - justice the Christian way.
A Christian friend re-tweeted the following quote:
“A God who could pardon without justice might one of these days condemn without reason.” (C.H. Spurgeon)
Since a self-confessed Christian wrote the quote originally and it was recently tweeted and re-tweeted by Christians I don’t think it would be unfair to assume that the quote is meant to refer to Yahweh and/or Jesus Christ. Since we’re talking about the Christian God and Christians, it is safe to assume that Christian doctrine applies to that quote.
In particular, the following Christian doctrinal statements:
- There is only one God – Isaiah 43:10; 44:6,8; John 17:3; 1 Cor. 8:5-6; Gal. 4:8-9
- There are no Gods before or after God – Isaiah 43:10
- God knows all things – 1 John 3:20
- God is all-powerful – Psalm 115:3
- God is everywhere – Jer. 23:23,24
- God created all that exists – Gen. 1:1; Isaiah 44:24
- Jesus is God – John 1:1,14; 10:30-33; 20:28; Col. 2:9; Phil. 2:5-8; Heb. 1:8
- Jesus was sinless – 1 Pet. 2:22
- Jesus is the only way to God the Father – John 14:6; Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22
- All people have sinned – Rom. 3:23, 5:12
- Jesus died for all our sins – 1 John 2:2; 2 Cor. 5:14; 1 Pet. 2:24
- Jesus’ sacrifice was a substitution, for us – 1 Pet. 2:24
- Jesus rose from the dead in His physical body – John 2:19-21
- Those who reject Jesus will go to Hell – Rev. 20:11-15
- Hell is a place of fiery punishment – Matt. 25:41; Rev. 19:20
- Hell is eternal – Matt. 25:46
- The unsaved go to hell forever – Rev. 21:8
- Salvation is a free gift of God – Rom. 4:5; 6:23; Eph. 2:8-9
- There will be a final judgment – 2 Pet. 3:7
- The damned will be thrown into a lake of fire – Rev. 20:15
The God referred to in the quote is Yahweh and Yahweh alone because of statements #1 and #2: “There is only one God and no other Gods’ before or after”: and the quote is about “the final judgement” (statement #19) in which Yahweh will decide on the reward and punishment of every person that ever lived.
Before something can be pardoned or condemned there must exist a set of criteria against which performance or actions can be measured or a set of rules must exist against which compliance or not compliance can be measured or judged.
Christianity is fairly clear on the requirements of their deity and the associated rewards and punishment for compliance or non-compliance.
The Requirements
It is commonly accepted by Christians that the only requirement to be ‘saved’ or to be judged worthy by the creator of the universe is to firmly believe that: (#7) Jesus Christ is God, (#11, #12) Jesus died for all other human’s sins, (#13) Jesus rose from the dead and (#9) Jesus is the only way to God. It’s neatly summarised in 1 Cor. 15:1-4:
15:1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
15:2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
15:3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
15:4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
The requirements that are set and that everybody who ever lived will be judged against are simple. They are that you must firmly believe all of the above: you must accept that Jesus Christ is God, that he is your personal lord and saviour, that he died for you and through dying for you saved you from eternal torture. That is it.
The Reward
From a nice Christian website:
David put it this way: “You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand” (Psalm 16:11). John described it as a time when “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 20:4). Everyone will be fully happy. There will be no dissatisfaction of any kind. No one will be able to think of even a tiny way in which things could be better. We will have reached the purpose for which God has made us.
Isaiah described some of this joy when he predicted a nation returning to its land: “The ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away” (Isaiah 35:10). We will be in the presence of God, and we will be happier than we have ever been. This is what Christianity has traditionally tried to convey by the concept of “going to heaven.”
Basically, if you meet the requirements outlined above, you will enter a state of being that is so good that nobody in that state could think of a way to make it better. The reward is eternal, never-ending.
The Punishment
If you do not meet the requirements, there are serious consequences and repercussions:
(#14) Those who reject Jesus Christ will go to (#15, #16) Hell, an eternal place of fiery punishment, for all (#17) eternity. If any person is not (#17) saved and receives ever lasting life in heaven as a reward, that person will be sent to hell and be (#20) thrown in a lake of fire to suffer for the rest of (#17) eternity.
The punishment is eternal, never-ending.
The Quote
Let’s examine the quote by C.H. Spurgeon:
“A God who could pardon without justice might one of these days condemn without reason. “
The quote says that if Yahweh were to start pardoning people without justice he could or might start condemning people without having a good reason in the future.
Here’s the problem(s): when you examine The Requirements of Christianity, you notice the following:
1. Christianity is firmly and entirely based on the principle of scapegoating – an innocent is punished for the alleged wrongs of others (or their distant forbears…)
I think you’ll find that this principle is nowhere to be found in any modern justice system. Blatantly obvious: it’s not just to punish somebody for the crimes committed by another person.
2. Christianity requires a person to believe certain things that are not physically possible and for which there is no credible evidence
The complete lack of evidence for god and the disturbing contradictions in the Bible and the utter lack of corroborating evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ aside, there exists not a single shred of evidence that any person has ever come back to life after being dead. In fact, we have a lot of evidence to the contrary. No additional evidence is provided or promised to convince one of the truth of Christianity. In fact, The Requirements must be believes without any proof what so ever.
3. The Requirements were set at a point in time in a specific place.
Before the point in time and outside the immediate area of the place, knowledge of The Requirements did not exist. It could have, had the omnipotent deity in question willed it so but it did not, for reasons that can’t be explained. People before the alleged birth of Jesus Christ did not know of The Requirements and people outside the immediate area surrounding the places where Jesus Christ preached did not know of the requirements. It is safe to say for a good one and a half thousand years, if a person was unlucky enough to have lived in China, Southern Africa, North and South America, Australia or the Arctic it was impossible to know of The Requirements.
There are just as many problems with The Reward and The Punishment:
1. Infinite punishment for finite transgressions
No finite transgression can ever be severe enough to warrant infinite, eternal, never-ending punishment. At best, the punishment – and even the concept of punishment has severe problems – should fit the crime. Not believing something for which there is no evidence is not even a crime in any sense of the word yet the punishment for this non-crime is eternal torture. It’s so much of a non-crime that in every other aspect of life it is a virtue, even to Christians.
No modern person considers torture a valid punishment, for any transgression. No modern society uses torture or even condones torture, not even Christian societies.
2. Infinite reward for finite actions
No finite action can ever be good enough to warrant infinite and never-ending reward. The action of believing things for which there is no evidence or good reason at all to believe certainly does not qualify as something for which a person should receive a reward, at all.
3. The Requirements reward bad people and punish good people
Judgement passed using The Requirements as the criteria will allow bad people to be rewarded and good people to be punished. If a serial rapist, child abuser and murderer accepts Jesus Christ as his personal lord and saviour moments before he dies, he will be rewarded eternally. If an atheist, who dedicates her entire life to helping and counselling the rape victims, children and families of the murder victims of the aforementioned murderer and does not one single bad deed for her entire life, dies without accepting Jesus Christ as her lord and saviour she will be punished, tortured for eternity.
Punishing good people and rewarding bad people, eternal or not, is not justice. Condemning good people to eternal torture is not reasonable. There is no reason what so ever involved in any process that condemns good people to eternal torture.
4. Eternal happiness and eternal damnation cannot simultaneously co-exist unless people are fundamentally changed
How can anybody be happy knowing that billions of other people are being horribly tortured night and day – many of them family members and loved ones – without being fundamentally changed? Can anybody with a straight face say they will be exquisitely happy despite knowing their child is constantly being horribly tortured, forever? To be eternally happy then, a person must be edited to either not care that people are being tortured or to not know that people are being tortured. Clearly, if you are changed, edited, redacted in some way, it’s not really you who receives the eternal reward, merely a shadow of your former self, assuming there’s anything left of you at all. The remaining part being that which doesn’t care or doesn’t know about horror that makes the holocaust seem like a gentle stroll at the beach…
5. God could have made things differently if it chose to
God is, by definition, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. God can by definition not make any mistakes and God knows, by definition, everything before it happens. God, by definition, made everything exactly the way it is. Then by definition, God could have made it differently but chose not to. God must have had every intention of creating billions of people for the sole purpose of having them tortured for eternity. He knows before hand exactly how everybody is going to behave, exactly what the outcome is going to be so how can the outcome be any different than what God knew? He knows before hand who is going to be tortured, creates them anyway and then goes on to torture them.
It is therefore argued that the God of Mr. Spurgeon and of Christianity already pardons without justice and condemns without reason. Thankfully, there is no reason to suspect that this God, or any other, actually exists.
Christianity and its implications
An omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent being designs and creates everything and knows all occurrences beforehand. This perfect being, unable to make any mistake, designs and creates human beings. It designs and creates human beings in such a way that their actions, thoughts, words and deeds are entirely the product of the structure of the meat (their brain) in their heads. It designs people so that the meat’s structure is determined by a ridiculous number of factors external to a human being, that are outside the control of a human being. Things like a humans’ s body, environmental chemical levels, hormone levels, altitude, brain and nervous system electrical signals, external visual and auditory stimuli, country, culture, family, surroundings, education, the type of food and drink a person consumes, gasses a person breathes, the things a person reads, hears, watches, the parasites a person carries, the diseases a person’s had, the injuries a person has received and all of this and much more over the span of a person’s entire life.
Sam Harris makes an argument that ‘free will’ does not exist, that it is essentially an illusion. Without getting into a protracted explanation or argument, consider that your brain makes decisions based on a billion things you have no control over at all. Since a decision is the product of your brain which is the product of the environment it’s in, decisions are the product, indirectly, of the environment of the brain. Unless you can find an additional, and as yet undetected and wholly unnecessary, source of input to the brain, it does not seem that ‘free will’ really exists or needs to exist. Is a person able to make a decision differently from the decision they have made? (Then why don’t they?)
Yet Christianity balances eternal torture and eternal reward purely and only on the belief that a person holds.
How is that justice or reasonable? How is that right? How can anybody claim to believe that?
I saw this on a Christian’s Facebook and it got me wondering. There’s several things going on with this statement and I think the implications are quite interesting.
A statement of faith by a Christian on Facebook
I believe in a Creator God who chose me before the beginning of time to Love
I think that bit has a slight problem. The disturbing lack of proof for the existence of a ‘Creator God’ aside, questioning what comes before the beginning of time is a bit pointless since the concept of ‘before’ is meaningless without time. I also think ‘chose’ is pretty much the wrong word to use: if there was a ‘creator god’, he didn’t ‘choose’ you out of a set of options, he invented you, put you together from scratch. In other words, you are now exactly as he decided before you existed. Also, the word ‘chosen’ in that context is actually a bit annoying. It implies you are important; more important than somebody else who was not chosen. Why were other people not chosen? Indeed, why were the Israelites ‘chosen’ and nobody else? Not the Chinese, not the Australian Aborigines, not the Eskimos, not the Europeans… and the list goes on. Why do you think your god plays favorites and why are some people more deserving of his choosing than others?
to Love and know Him
A great many passages in the Bible contain horror and terror actually. Fear is what your god wants most. Love should be earned, fear is demanded. Love should not be demanded yet that is what your god does. Love me or I will torture you forever. Sure, you’re free to not love me but you will be tortured for eternity if you don’t. Love? How do you love something that not only invents The Worst Thing Ever(tm), eternal torture, but then goes on to bestow that privilege on most of humanity – that he personally designed and created by the way. And know Him? Really? Through one terribly badly cobbled together, self-contradictory, reality contradictory book of dubious origin and not a damn thing else? If he wanted you to know him, he’d be talking to you unambiguously and you’d be able to prove it simply by getting verifiable information you didn’t have before. Which you don’t.
who sacrificed much
Well, no. You see, here’s the thing. You can’t have an omnipotent, omniscient, immortal super being on one hand and then claim that 72 hours of temporary loss of human existence is a sacrifice of any kind. Do you even need me to equate that to something? Ok, let me try. Let’s assume that at the time of the alleged crucifixion the world was just 4,000 years old and lets just work with that, discarding that this god had allegedly been around for a trillion trillion years before that and will be around for another trillion trillion years after that. God, being omniscient and omnipotent knows perfectly well that he will be ‘dead’, in other words, lose his earthly mobility – because he KNOWS death is not the end of existence, merely a change – temporarily. He will ‘die’ and be ‘dead’ for 72 hours and then he will be ‘alive’ again.
If he was only 4,000 years old he ‘sacrificed’ the minuscule equivalent of about 100 minutes of a human life. That’s a sacrifice? Are you kidding? Do you know what people who die of AIDS or cancer or Ebola go through? And they know the end is the end, there is no coming out the other side after a quick, temporary, 72 hour episode of death. People suffer heinous deaths every day, suffer for months even years before they die and you want to call giving up a pathetic fraction of a fraction of a percent of a never-ending life a sacrifice? I don’t think so.
to have you Love and know Him too
Yea? Me too? Well that’s pretty simple and since he knows everything and can do anything he knows how to get me to get to know him. He just has to start talking. It’s so incredibly simple – just give me some of that divine knowledge. Tell me the proof for Goldbach’s conjecture. Put the mathematical equation that shows how to fit gravity into the standard model in my head. Tell me how to prove or disprove M-theory. No? The requirement is that I have to believe in something while all the evidence points to something else? That’s a bit strange don’t you think? Why is this god trying to trick me?
He is amazing
Really? Which part of him precisely? The genocidal part? The infanticidal part? The bit that invented eternal torture and suffering? The misogynistic woman hating part? No, the stories that contain this horrible character were amazing to bronze age goat herders. What’s amazing is that you, a modern, educated, thinking person can ignore the truck load of problems, horror stories, gross injustice and just plain terrible shit, happily, to carry on sprouting this idiocy.
the best thing about my life is He is in it
And here we get to the crux of it, as it were.
Imagine for a moment, what it would take to convince a person, who repeats this kind of statement to themselves every day, that this god they think is the best thing about their life is a figment of their imagination. I think this is one of the main things that keep people in religion. Having to think that you’ve gone around for years and years saying things like ‘He is amazing and the best thing about my life is He is in it’ and having that sentiment reinforced once a week by people that you trust and then to think that the ‘he’ part of that statement doesn’t actually exist must be pretty disconcerting.
All other things aside, I think it takes a hell of a lot to get over the sheer embarrassment that the realisation that there is no god brings and I think this is why the realisation builds over time instead of just arriving like a ton of bricks all at once (usually). The knowledge that this god you carry on about is a figment of your imagination must be a profoundly uncomfortable thing to realize when your entire life up to that point essentially consisted out of ‘the best thing about my life is that he is in it’. How would you feel if you had to find out the ‘best thing in your life’ was really a shitty horror story and nowhere near even resembling the truth. And a lot of people around you know it. And you’ve been saying this really stupid shit and rubbing it in their faces at every opportunity you got… for years…
I think this is also why it is so difficult to get a person who is religious to take an objective view on what they believe, just for a moment. To take that objective view involves having to look at that statement and the thousands just like it, made repeatedly over years and consider that it was all nonsense. The thought actually has to enter your brain and I think it is kept out by sheer embarrassment.
I don’t think Christians or religionuts of any other description seriously consider what it is that they say or do. I don’t think they can. If they could, I think they’d understand how profoundly stupid and ridiculous it really is and they would stop.
Part 1: Facts Of Evolution
While the graphics in this video aren’t always top-notch, the science described in it is mind-blowing.
The mountain of evidence for Evolution (by natural selection) is astounding and I find it really freaking difficult to understand how anybody can take even a cursory look at it and still believe creationist claptrap. The only conclusion I can draw is that Evolution deniers fall into two camps: those who are ignorant (out of choice, having been deceived, through lack of education) and those who are just plain freaking delusional.
To put it bluntly: are you prepared to convict a person in a criminal case based on DNA evidence? The overwhelming majority of people answer yes and rightly so, it’s pretty accurate. The travesty is that, at the same time as proving a criminal case (beyond reasonable doubt…), it is also rock solid proof of the common decent of all life on earth, beyond any reasonable doubt. Common decent, one of the facts of Evolution.
Virtually everybody implicitly agrees with Evolution by happily using science and technology in their every day lives that also happen to prove Evolution beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet a great many people somehow still deny the fact of Evolution.
Ignorance or delusion? It’s one of the two. Or both.
Part 2: Mechanisms of Evolution
Science is awesome. That is all.
Here’s the rest of the series:
- Part 02 String Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT_IVdCO4ZE&list=UUoXC5AynOb9DMY810CUwNYQ&index=12&feature=plcp
- Part 03 String Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7bakDI_TwA&list=UUoXC5AynOb9DMY810CUwNYQ&index=11&feature=plcp
- Part 04 String Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLd0lwQrxOw&list=UUoXC5AynOb9DMY810CUwNYQ&index=10&feature=plcp
- Part 05 String Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWGb-pIAQ-E&list=UUoXC5AynOb9DMY810CUwNYQ&index=9&feature=plcp
- Part 06 String Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD9vwfl2xQs&list=UUoXC5AynOb9DMY810CUwNYQ&index=8&feature=plcp
- Part 07 String/M-Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PVjNlXj2WQ&list=UUoXC5AynOb9DMY810CUwNYQ&index=7&feature=plcp
- Part 08 M-Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuK9Rb-tBBg&list=UUoXC5AynOb9DMY810CUwNYQ&index=6&feature=plcp
- Part 09 M-Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BRhjntvGoE&list=UUoXC5AynOb9DMY810CUwNYQ&index=5&feature=plcp
- Part 10 M-Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zgxvGaei6o&list=UUoXC5AynOb9DMY810CUwNYQ&index=3&feature=plcp
- Part 11 M-Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6lW-8CwpM&list=UUoXC5AynOb9DMY810CUwNYQ&index=2&feature=plcp
Did you notice? Haha yea! 11 video’s for M-theory. Funny right?
I find myself wondering if there exists a list of books that one can read to get from knowing absolutely nothing to actually understanding the mathematics of string theory. Sort of like a critical path. I wonder.
Anyway, there’s a bunch of other interesting video’s at ognianks’s YoutTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/ogniank
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm277H3ot6Y]
Ah. What he said. That is all.
Check out AronRa’s YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/AronRa
God and Adam (sitting in a tree...)
What do you blog about when you don’t feel like blogging and don’t have anything to say? The Bible! Nothing like a bit of Bible study to get you going right? Right.
I thought that today, I’d go back to the beginning. You know, this bit:
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
I think even some Christians might recognize that line. It’s the first line of the Bible (the King James version anyway…). And I know what you’re thinking: “he’s going to tear into the horse shit that is the creation story and point out how it’s not scientific at all, has no evidence and is generally laughably impossible”.
Well, no.
Instead, we’re going to have a look at the characters of the creation story. ‘Story’ since it is a story, on par with the Hindu creation myths and the ancient Greek ones and the ancient Roman ones and the Norse ones and the Egyptian ones… you get the point. There is not one iota of evidence that makes the Christian story more credible than any of the other aforementioned stories. Christians can’t even agree among themselves on the truth of their own creation story and god knows they allegedly speak to the same deity and could just ask him. They even have a ‘personal relationship’ with it. Strange no?
Anyway, there’s four characters we’ll look at:
- God – Perfect, omniscient, almighty creator of the universe.
- Adam – The first human being created by God
- Eve – The second (or third, depending on how much attention you pay when you read the Bible) human being created by God
- The Serpent – A garden variety snake created by God. And no, I don’t see any evidence in the Bible that says the snake was anything other than a snake.
Everybody knows the story, right? Ok, fine, several billion people know the story, right? Right.
God slaps the universe together in a couple of days, gets lonely (or something) and makes a dude called Adam who seems lonely so God makes him a wife called Eve. He puts them in an awesome garden and from the rest of the story we can infer that their lives are pretty much awesome: low stress, high relaxation, essentially on an ever lasting holiday at an out of season nudist resort.
In the mean time, God had also made two magic trees. We’re not even going to go there. Ok, fine, we will, but not now.
God:
2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Pretty straight forward: eat the fruit of the tree and you will die until you are DEAD on that very same day. You picking up what I’m putting down people?
The Serpent:
3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
Like I said, God made the snake, plain old garden variety. Only, back then, snakes could talk. Somehow. Not too sure where the vocal chords went since then. Maybe snakes were telepaths or something? Right? Right.
Eve:
3:2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
So there’s Eve telling The Serpent pretty much exactly what God said.
The Serpent:
3:4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
3:5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
What is this? The Serpent is contradicting the almighty creator of the universe! Sure folly! No! Don’t do it Eve! You’re gonna die! You! Gonna! Die!
3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
OMG they ate the poisonous, man killing fruit! They’re gonna die! Poor bastards. Not even 5 pages into the history of the world and the original people are dead. Not a great start.
3:7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
Say what now? No horrifying death? Must still be coming.
God:
3:11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
Yea man, here it comes, horrible horrible DEATH!
Adam:
3:12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
Good on Adam, saying it like it is. Staring certain death in the face and still manning up.
Eve:
3:13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
Good on Eve. She’s about to end her short existence by dying horribly and she’s still saying it like it is. Well done. I mean, what’s the point in lying to an omniscient being anyway?
3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
…
3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
…3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Ah, Houston, we have a problem.
Read this and remember it:
Numbers 23:19
God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent.1 Samuel 15:29
The Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent.2 Samuel 7:28
Thou art that God, and thy words be true.Titus 1:2
In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began.Hebrews 6:18
It was impossible for God to lie.
Out of the four characters in the story:
The Serpent – spoke the truth about the tree of knowledge
Adam – spoke the truth about what he had done
Eve – spoke the truth about what she had done
God – lied his pants off about what would happen when they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge
But God can’t lie. But he did lie. But he can’t lie. But he did lie.
Hey, don’t look at me, I don’t believe that crap. A billion or two Christians allegedly do believe that crap. Or they just ignore the lies. And the hundreds of other contradictions in the Bible.
Oh, wait, let me guess, Adam and Eve died a spiritual death, not a physical one. Oh yea? Show me the passage that says that. Quote me the verse. Show, me, it. No? Quite.
So… let’s ‘go there’. About the trees… there were two of them. The tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. Why did God create these two trees and place them exactly where the creation story and the rest of the Bible would need them, to explain why we’re all wretched, disgusting immoral bastards in great need of some saving by the human sacrifice of a god-man? Oh, convenient! So all-knowing God creates these trees knowing full well The Serpent will convince Eve to eat it and she would convince Adam to eat it. Bit of a bastard thing to do, setting them up like that and acting all astonished when this played out exactly like he knew it would… And he did know:
Omniscience (all-knowing) – John 16:30 the apostle John affirms of Jesus, “Now we can see that you know all things.
Omnipresence (all-present) – Jesus said in Matthew 28:20, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Not only did he know what was going on, he acted like he didn’t:
3:9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
Acting like you don’t know something when you do know something… isn’t that also lying?
Anyway, the second tree is pretty interesting when you think about it. The tree of life, eat of it and you live for ever:
3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
That implies that Adam and Eve were not going to live forever to begin with. Since, why create a tree that gives an ability they already have and tell them to not eat it? Why stop Adam and Eve from gaining something they already have?
So… Adam and Eve were going to die at some point anyway, they just didn’t know. (Also… when God says ‘one of us’… who’s the other’s in the us? Just a thought.)
Christians: your god lies. Actually, no, if you believe this crap the problem is with you. How, on god’s green earth can you believe this rubbish? And, might I take this opportunity to once again point out that some of you ‘Christians’ don’t actually believe this rubbish and yet those of you who do believe this tripe speak directly to the same deity than those who don’t believe this tripe. Allegedly.
I have a simpler explanation: It’s a freaking story and your god is a figment of your imagination. A pretty bad story if you ask me, and, there, is, no, god, at, all.
RAmen.
I totally pillaged this picture from Atheism Resource’s Facebook page. How could I not?
Oh dear, I can't spot the problem...
The logic seems pretty watertight to me but I’d love to hear from a religionut or two where the problems might lie. The love of god is a beautiful thing right? Right.
Also, I do suggest checking out Atheism Resource, especially the comments on this particular picture. They’re pretty funny.
One Furious Llama 