Man vs. God

Even during my childhood when I whole-heartedly believed in God, I knew that something was a little bit off when Christians would answer a question pertaining to their religion. There was always something missing; something to be desired. Usually an answer was something like “because that’s God’s will” or “God works in mysterious ways”. Clearly, both of those answers are just nice ways of saying “well, I have no idea because it doesn’t make sense”, but the answer that I hated to hear more than those two are “because that’s what the bible says”.

Whenever someone of the Christian faith is asked a question about their beliefs, they point to the bible. Christianity is the way it is because the bible says so. Christians believe what they believe because the bible tells them to. And why is the bible so important? Well obviously the bible is so important because it’s the word of God. But here’s the thing: it isn’t.

God didn’t write the bible. Man wrote the bible. This is a historical fact.  Yeah, sure, these men may have claimed that they were communicating the words of God but were they really? What do you do when someone you’ve never met tells you that God speaks to them? You don’t sit down and listen and take the guys word for it. You acknowledge that the man is crazy and you go on your way. So why would you take the bibles word for it?

Well, most people take the bible’s word for it because most people believe that the bible is the word of God.  People believe that the bible is the word of God because either someone told them that it was (usually a parent or religious leader of some sort) or because the bible itself says that it’s the word of God. There are so many things wrong with this logic that I don’t even know where to begin when tearing it apart.

By this logic, God told some guys to write a book about Him and essentially what he demanded of the human race. He told them how humans should live and how they should worship Him. Now, I’m no expert here but isn’t God all-powerful? He can’t write his own goddamn book? He needed men to do it? And for that matter, why didn’t he just tell everyone what he wanted? If he can talk to a select few, I’m sure he would have the power to talk to everyone all at once. After all, he listens to everyone at once doesn’t he?

 So we have this book written by man claiming to be the words of God, and that’s all fine and good, but what can we take from it to be true? Surely if it’s truly the word of God, we have to take everything in it to be true. But if it’s simply man’s interpretation of God’s word, there must be room for error, and so what can we take as true or false?

 

It’s common for bible-thumpers to throw around anti-gay passages from the bible in an effort to convince people that homosexuality is wrong. They say it’s an “abomination”. The bible says so after all, so it must be true. Well if that’s the case, let me share with you one of my personal favorite passages from the bible…

"Of the animals that live in the sea or in a river, if the animal has fins and scales, you may eat it. But whatever lives in the sea or in a river and does not have fins and scales -- including the things that fill the water and all other things that live in it -- you should hate. You must not eat any meat from them or even touch their dead bodies, because you should hate them. You must hate any animal in the water that does not have fins and scales."

Leviticus 11:9-12

Yep. All you shrimp-eaters out there are going to hell. The bible says that you can’t do it and you still went out and did it anyways? Not good. I bet you didn’t even know that was in the bible huh? That’s because man has no hidden agenda against shrimp or lobsters. But many men have an irrational fear and hate of homosexuals, so they’re quick to quote the bible on that.

I guess my point here is that even if God is real (which he’s not), and really did inspire the words of the bible (which he didn’t), you can’t take everything that the bible says to be true. If you’re going to take some of it to be true, then you have to take all of it to be true. You can’t just pick and choose to your liking. If you look at some passages from the bible and think “wow, that’s ridiculous”, what makes you think that anything else in the bible is any more credible?

For now, I’ll leave you with some of my favorite passages from God’s book (with a few comments of my own)

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. -- Deuteronomy 21:18-21            Killing children is very Christian-like.

And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat. -- Leviticus 26:16

Christians don’t just kill their children, they eat them too! How very green of them. Wasting is a sin you know…

Exodus 31:13-15
Six days my work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.

Ever work on Sunday? Dead.

Well, that’s all for now. There are countless passages from the bible that are ridiculous and laughable but I’ll leave them to another blog post. So tell me, what’s YOUR favorite passage from the bible? What are your thoughts on my post? I want to know!

Who Are You?

At the insistence of my girlfriend, I’ve decided to start my own blog. Although I do occasionally enjoy writing, it’s usually in the form of poetry, and so writing a structured blog is a little bit different for me.  I knew to keep my interest levels up, I would need to pick a topic that I feel passionate about. This is why I’ve chosen to focus most of my blog entries on Atheism. I’m well aware that there are countless atheism blogs scattered around the internet, but hopefully I can provide a slightly different, and interesting view on some things.

While I plan to focus most of my blog entries on the subject of atheism, I won’t completely restrict myself to the topic. I’m sure there will be times when I feel the need to write about another subject but I will attempt to keep any other blog topics just as interesting and thought-provoking.  This may also be a good time to point out that I fully encourage any of my readers to share their thoughts and comments about all of my posts. Whether you agree or disagree though, please try to be as respectful as you can towards others; I won’t tolerate abusive comments towards other readers. If you must be abusive in your comments, please just direct them towards me. I don’t mind and will probably even get a good laugh out of it.

                Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff. I thought long and hard about what the topic of my first atheist blog should be, and I decided that I should start at the beginning: Why I became an atheist.

 I grew up in a family of six with three brothers (two older and one younger) in addition to my mother and father. My father came from a fairly strict catholic upbringing, but thankfully, never pushed any kind of catholic views onto our family; we were never required to attend church (with the rare exception of a special occasion) and we never had to pray before meals or anything like that. In fact, I’m not even sure that my father considers himself to be catholic at all. Even so, as a child, I never doubted the existence of God. I was told by my parents (and grandparents) that there’s God and then there’s the Devil. I didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it, that’s just how it was.

                I knew that God was all-powerful and created everything, and that he loves everybody. I also knew that if you really wanted something, you could pray to God, and he’ll help you out. Sounds like a pretty swell guy right? The only thing is, I noticed that nothing I prayed for ever happened. Where was my mansion full of candy? I prayed really hard for that one and it never materialized. I must have been doing something wrong.

                Although I was never educated on all the details and “facts” of the bible when I was a child, I knew enough to see that some of these other claims didn’t add up either.  I mean, there’s Jesus, who is the son of God but is also God himself, and he sacrifices himself to himself to save man from the punishment that was going to be brought forth by him to begin with? Even as a kid, this made absolutely no sense. I couldn’t begin to imagine how full grown and even well-educated adults could take this in with no problem.

So needless to say, the idea of organized religion was pretty much lost on me from a young age.  All was not lost though; I still had my own version of faith. I looked at it kind of like an AA meeting: take what you like and leave what you don’t. I liked the idea of a loving and caring God who has a plan for all of us and was waiting up in Heaven when we all died. I didn’t like the idea of an intolerant and jealous God who shunned certain people and wouldn’t accept people who didn’t act as he believed fit. So I just more or less believed in my own version of God and religion because that’s what sounded good to me at the time. Despite the fact that I knew organized religion was B.S., believing in a higher power still brought comfort to my life, and so I continued to believe late into my teens and even for a little bit in my early 20s.

                I’m not sure what exactly changed that blissfully ignorant mindset I had of a perfect God who had his plan for all of us. Perhaps it was the furthering of my education that set it off, or maybe I was simply maturing and realizing that even my idea of God had some gaping holes that couldn’t be ignored.  Whatever the reason was, I started coming to my senses slowly but surely. It no longer made any sense to believe in something just because it sounded good and was comforting to me. Where were the facts? Where was the evidence? The more I searched, the more I realized that there simply isn’t any real evidence for a higher power of any kind. Any kind of “evidence” that any person of faith has is no more than biased interpretations of chance events, or religious scripture written by men (not God) who were not even around to see the supposed things that they wrote about.

           
              So is that it? Am I 100% positive that there is no higher power somewhere out there? No. But until I see any sort of evidence to the contrary, I have to hold the belief that there isn’t a God or any other supernatural man in the clouds watching over us.

               How did you come to believe in what you believe in? Were you raised that way? Did it come later in life? Tell me your story!