Blasphemy Week Part IV: What's Wrong with the Bible?

This is the fourth part of an ongoing series on my conversion to atheism. To start at the beginning, follow this link.

What's Wrong with the Bible?

In my last post, I mentioned that studying the Bible had turned me off to it. I thought I'd take a break from narrative to discuss what exactly it is about the Bible that offends my sensibilities. In my last post I argued that most people who argue that the Bible is the literal word of God have never read it. But I believe equally strongly that most of the people who complain about contradictions in the Bible couldn't name a single one if pressed. This is because people generally arrive at a conclusion and then look for supporting evidence.  But when you actually look...

The long and the short of it is this: the Bible doesn't make any sense.

You have your more granular contradictions: In Genesis 1, God creates man on the sixth day, after all the animals. In Genesis 2, God creates man before all the animals. That's right, the Bible can't go two chapters without contradicting itself. This is one, but the bible is simply littered with them; Infidels.org gives a more comprehensive list.

Some contradictions are a bit broader. The author of Matthew (who was almost certainly not the Matthew, but in his defense, he never claims to be) takes scriptures from the Old Testament out of context. A great example is 2:15, "out of Egypt, I called my son", which is a reference to Hosea 11. Hosea was in the middle of a history of the Jewish people when he said that and was clearly talking about "Israel" when he said "son", but for Matthew this became a prophesy that Jesus would escape to Egypt during a retread of the infant massacre from Exodus. Most of the narrative of Matthew comes from Mark, with a few notable exceptions. Mark contains no birth story (which Matthew and Luke both have, although they disagree about Jesus's lineage), for example.  In the other gospels Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a single animal, Matthew places him on two (apparently he misunderstood what he was copying).   It's also worth pointing out that major plot points in the gospels coincide with the myths of Osiris and Mithra (and others, find an Osiris comparison here, but be warned, it's pop-up heavy).

Beyond the literal contradictions, there are any number of more conceptual ones. For example, God is eternal, but he changes character dramatically throughout the course of the Bible. First he's involved and vengeful. Then he get's a bit more mystical (in Genesis God talks to Adam directly, then he switches to prophets) and a lot more vengeful (see Judges). Then he mellows out for the New Testament, when it becomes the Jesus Show, right up until it's an acid trip ending with Revelations.

Jesus also changes dramatically throughout his life. In the canonical gospels, he has a more-or-less identifiable character, although through the Gospel of John he's kind of a douche (John is the only book, incidentally, in which Jesus talks more about himself than about the teachings of God). John features the story of Jesus turning water into wine, his first miracle. It's an interesting story, but the way he rebuke's his mother, the whole nature of the incident, the fact that he was with his disciples in spite of the fact that his ministry hadn't really started--it feels more like glurge than anything else.

Granted, it's not nearly as glurgy as any of the myriad non-canonical gospels. I particularly enjoy the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which Jesus miraculously makes clay birds comes to life and also kills and resurrects a playmate. You can't make this up. Wait, clearly you can. There is a rich Christian tradition of people making shit up as evidence of Jesus' miraculous nature--one that continues in people's inboxes today.

Then there's the fact that Christianity purports to be a monotheism. You have God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. By my count, that's three.  Three being more than one. Okay, yes, they're supposedly "one", but the doctrine of the trinity is not biblical--the doctrine wasn't established until some 400 years after the New Testament timeline. But let's dismiss that, we'll assume that it's covered.  You still have a host of, well, heavenly hosts: angels--several of whom are named--seraphs, demons, a devil (who is a central character in the book of Job), and so on and so forth, including any number of strange heavenly creatures (i.e., the Leviathan in Job or Daniel's 4 Beasts). And much of what I've just referenced is from the Old Testament (with the exception of the trinity). One of the fundamental traits of Judaism is that it is a monotheism--that is what set it apart from Roman paganism--and yet it's simply swimming in divine beings.

Of coures, the biggest problem with the New Testament is that Jesus never bothered to write anything down and there are no reliable contemporaries of his that wrote about him either (no, Josephus didn't, read why here). The first mention of Jesus (chronologically) comes from the writings of Paul (Saul of Tarsus) who never met the man and never refers to any of his life, only his death, resurrection and ascension, none of which are ever given an explicitly historical context (that is to say, any time Paul writes about Jesus, it could be interpretted as having happened in Heaven rather than on Earth).

But for my tastes, I found the most compelling argument against Christianity to be the take-a-step-back argument. It's easy to dismiss Mormonism or Scientology as crazy because, well, they sound crazy. But imagine someone telling you the story of Jesus in a vacuum. Imagine that you didn't already believe it.

Does it sound any less crazy?

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