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The Logic of Christians

Why I am an Atheist

Why We are Atheists

Do You Want to Buy My Soul?

Religious indoctrination is child abuse

The Power of Faith

Faith, Hope and Belief

The Leap of Faith

What the Bible Says About Abortion

Aborting Babies

Animal Rights

Women and Islam

Evils of Music

Kill the Puppy Dogs

Masturbation

Does God Bless America?

Teenage Sex

The Clitoris

Section 1: Genesis to Psalms

Many times Christians have berated me and told me to read the Bible. The idea seems to be that if I (somebody who is clearly smarter than they are) would read the Bible I must then start to believe in it all just as they do. I have always pooh-poohed that idea often with assertions such as you don't need to go to the South Pole to know it's cold.

Recently I have been at a bit of a loose end and I had read all the books in my possession that I had any desire to read or re-read or re-re-read and I decided to take the plunge and to read the Bible. If nothing else it would be one of those things on the To Do list which I could cross off.

So far I have reached Psalms and I have had no radical transformation in my beliefs. I am still an atheist. I have learnt quite a lot and the experience has been worth the effort. I suggest that anybody who lives in a Christian country and is an atheist should try to find the time before they die to read the Bible, but not until you you have done all the essential reading you need to do for your studies and career.

I have been reading the Authorized King James Version, because I've got a copy and it is small enough to carry around with me. That is the reason I chose it, but I am glad that I did because it is in every sense a classic piece of literature. Of course it is a little hard to read but no doubt it is easier than reading ancient Hebrew the wrong way round with no vowels and no spaces between words. The slightly archaic language helps remind me of the ancient heritage of the words. There is not much world literature which is older, at the time the words were written writing was as high-tech as gene sequencing is today, only a small number of cultures knew anything of it and within them only a minority knew how to do it, and they were generally quietly smug about that state of affairs. The KJV is written in the language of Shakespeare, Early Modern English, a dialect that due to our written culture we can still understand despite the relatively vast distance in time and culture that separate us from its authors writing just before 1611. If we consider how difficult it is to read Chaucer, which is only a couple of hundred years older the ease with which a modern reader can understand the King James Version without a glossary or translation is really notable. It seems to me that this is partly due to the conservative effects of having widespread literacy in a literate culture and partly due to the special power of this particular book, which for many families was the only reading material they had, which is a chilling and saddening thought. Read this book, it really is a classic. You will get new insights into your language and culture even if your religious views don't move a cubit.

Overview

So far I have read half of the Bible, by weight of page numbers. I have only just come across the first hint that God knows what people are thinking. Satan has had one brief appearance, no, not in the Garden of Eden, that's a snake, unless you're a Muslim. Satan appears for the first time in the book of Job which is transparently intended to be taken as both fictional and allegorical. Job is not given the usual three or four paragraphs of genealogy and he is not placed in a clear geographical context either, in sharp contrast to the clearly historical characters such as King David. (Well, as historical as Shakespeare's King Richard III, a fraction less mythical than Robin Hood). The appearance of Satan in the aftermath of the captivity (of a few elite Hebrews, just before they started to call themselves Jews) in Babylon is entirely to be expected, Zoroastrianism had the idea of the good god and his almost equal nemesis, so the invention of a bad lesser deity is hardly surprising. Of course the first half of the Bible has no hint of survival, reward or punishment after death. When people die they go to sleep with their ancestors, an idea that puts across the concept of them never waking up again without having to explain where they go in any great detail. Dead Ancient Hebrews are simply dead. There is only one exception to this which is the prophet Elijah, who does not die but ascends, bodily and without first dying, into the sky/heaven while old baldy watches in awe.

And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces.

Who said that alien abduction stories were new?

Here's another thing I noticed, there's a lot of rending clothes in this book. Is that why Jews make such good tailors? Lots of practice stitching up rent garments.

Not only is there no hint of survival after death and therefore no hell, damnation or eternal “reward” (praising the tyrant god you fear and cannot escape for all eternity is a reward?) there is no immortal soul. When you're dead you're dead. The story's over. All punishment by God is done to the living, and whatever is convenient to be regarded as punishment or reward from God is the work of God. Children are the reward of God, so is riches, so is longevity. That is why all the people in the early parts of the Bible were so old. Anybody who was described as virtuous in the Bible had to live well past the age of ninety, often past an hundred and a score years and ideally have children (at least two sons to each daughter) in their dotage too. The virtuous are also rich, God makes people rich in life because the meek can't inherit the Earth and the poor eat no pie in the sky.

The Bible is clearly written as religious propaganda. You would have to be mentally defective to read this stuff and simply believe it at face value. The Bible is only convincing to people who read it needing it to be convincing, people who want to be taken in by it. Reading it with normal bullshit filters in place, with the sceptic's toolkit and even with the standard issue analytical tools of reading literature it is immediately apparent that the stuff is written by many different people with contrasting styles, differing abilities and differing agendas. It is clearly not divinely inspired. If it was divinely inspired it would surely read better, be more consistent, less laughable and would be focused on a divine goal.

Genesis

There are two creation stories here, back-to-back, and they are not consistent in style or chronology. The sequence of creation is not scientifically accurate and to suggest that it is shows straw-clutching desperation on the part of Biblical literalists.

The serpent is clearly a serpent and the entire story is clearly allegory and myth. Only a cretin would believe that this literally happened! The serpent is a talking snake. In the Qur'an the tempter in the garden is Satan but this is not so here. If it was Satan in disguise God punished all snakes for no reason, it would be less unjust to lock up all skiers (and their children for all eternity) for rape because one rapist once used a ski mask. God clearly saw the snake as a snake and punished snakes (by pulling their legs off?) for this snake sin. Nobody comes out well from this story, least of all the idiots who regard it as true and more true than anything provable by science. Punishing mankind and womankind separately is ridiculous and of course unjust in the extreme. The concept that anybody can be born guilty of the sins of a distant ancestor is thoroughly obscene.

Update: I'm currently ploughing my way through Jeremiah.

My notes are a bit out of sequence, but I read it in sequence, that is vitally important otherwise you don't spot when new concepts arise for the first time, like omnipotence and omnipresence (Job 42) which obviously didn't apply when God was walking in that other part of the Garden and failed to notice the commission of a sin so great he punished mankind for it for millennia.

There is still no sign of a soul or an afterlife yet but we do have Satan as a named character (introduced in Job, a story clearly written as allegorical fiction by Judeans in exile in Babylon) and also the idea that other gods aren't real, which pops up first in some psalms, although contradicted in others, now seems to have become accepted. I have also seem crystal clear evidence of Christian spin. Parts of Isaiah which to me are nothing to do with any one true messiah are shown in comments at the top of the page to be prophesies of Christ which they transparently are not.

The term Jew first appears in Ezra and Nehemiah, about the time when the concept of the tribes of Israel, if it ever did have any real meaning was losing out to clans within the race/people who were Hebrew speaking and Yahweh worshipping.

The concept that Yahweh knows what you are thinking comes in at Psalm 44, verse 20 and 21.

Psalm 22 is not and was never intended to be a prophesy. The parallels between this Psalm and details of the crucifixion story suggest deliberate manipulation and fabrication rather than fulfillment of a prophesy. PSALMS AND PSALMISTS DON'T PROPHESY! Contrast Psalm 38 verses 4 to 8, colourful phrases which could have been shown to be a prophesy of something but that wasn't the plan so Jesus was not quoted as saying “O Lord rebuke me not in thy wrath” while on the cross but instead the Gospel writers suggest he quotes the first line of Psalm 22 instead, which points to the source of some of allusions the storyteller inserts at this point.

Job might just as well have begun in a galaxy far, far away in the land of green ginger lived a man, a good and pious man. It's a fairy tale. Transparently so. Where is his genealogy? Where is the long description of where he lives? Those details don't matter for this story, which is a clear hint that the story was never intended to be seen as historical. We don't need to know who Job's great grandfather was for exactly the same reason we don't need to know who Sleeping Beauty's grandfather was. This is in direct contrast with the historical ethic used in Kings, Judges and Chronicles which told you about genealogy of people even if they couldn't remember any any other details about the people at all. Such and such lived for twenty five years as Judge and then died. Big deal. Who cares? Job is very different, in Job we get conversation and motivation. It's almost an interesting story, while it isn't Homer or Shakespeare at least it tries to be a good story. But Job also reveals a big change. Shitty things happen to Job because of Satan. Before this point shitty things happened to people only because of Yahweh. This is heretical, it is a very different god to the one in the Moses story.

Esther

8:17 And in every province, and in every city, whithersoever the king's commandment and his decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day. And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them.

You can become a Jew? Who knew? Oy Vey!

Esther describes both the first pogrom (failed) and the first anti-Semite witch hunt (75,000 dead).

Ezra is the first book with credible numbers of animals slaughtered. If the earlier figures were true sheep would have become extinct.

This is also the first evidence of anything a detached person would regard as civilization as opposed to order and organized slaughter of animals. The Persians seem like cool guys, significantly more civilized than any group encountered up to this point, including the Jews. There is distinct and nasty racism in Ezra, particularly the idea of “putting away” strange wives. What kind of a religion breaks up marriages and sees women abandoned?

Which is it to be Yahweh?

Isaiah Chapter 53 seems to suggest a mute ugly friendless deformed freak will be whipped for the sins of Israel and then afterwards killed, with the death signifying nothing.

Isaiah 7 14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Not Jesus then?

At yet other places he prophesies about the Messiah, the King of the Jews who doesn't just have the title of king but actively rules the kingdom / two kingdoms of Israel and Judea. 66 chapters in total. From that Christians pick out and cobble togther the suggestion that Isaiah prophesies the virgin birth of Jesus and his death and his coming again in glory.

Ecclesiastes

5 For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.

 

10 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

So, when you're dead, you're dead. So far the Bible is very clear on this point. No doubt it gets less clear later.

Ecclesiastes 10:13 The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness: and the end of his talk is mischievous madness.

To be continued

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

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