neologist wrote:What are your objections to the bible?
I have more objections with the idea of personal gods than I do with the Bible. But, when put together, I have more problems with the Bible due to its inherent problems combined with the problems presented by the idea of a personal god.
It seems unthinkable that the Universe was created by something intentionally through facilities of logic. Why would an intelligent being create trillions of trillions of lifeless orbs that do nothing but rotate around eachother for billions of years? And why would an intelligent designer create stars in a way that the planets which revolve around them receive less than 1% of the energy they radiate? The Earth, for instance, receives ~0.0000000004% of the energy of the Sun. If the Universe were designed so that planets revolved around stars in a more 3 dimensional manner instead of like pancaked sprint tracks it would be possible for each star to harbor life on billions of planets. Take into consideration the second law of thermodynamics about how isolated systems will approach maximum entropy. If the Sun didn't waste as much energy the Universe would live longer! The Universe is rapidly counting down to the time it destroys everything inside of it yet some insist that this thing was created by something intelligent that loves us. That doesn't even make sense. And what is intelligent about the rotations of the planets? Mercury rotates so slowly that one side is always facing the sun while the other practically never sees the light of day. If astronauts were to crash there, for some reason or another, they would have to choose between frying or freezing. If Mercury had a very fast rotation it would be able to dissipate heat more rapidly and might have even been capable of harboring life. (Those who think the environment would still be too extreme probably haven't heard of water bears before--they are marvelous things indeed.) Pluto rotates so quickly that any heat energy it does receive dissipates incredibly quick. If Pluto rotated very slowly even it may be capable of harboring life. And the tilt of the Earth's axis could only be attributed to a malicious God. If humans had the ability they would most certainly remove the tilt because then there would be perpetual spring time and less people would die of starvation due to the inability to grow crops during winter, less people would die of dehydration during the scorching months of summer, less people would die due to meteorological phenomenon caused by the unbalanced distribution of heat, etc. There are too many problems in this solar system to honestly attribute it to design, let alone as the design of a "higher intelligence." If the Universe were designed the only description of the designer that would be accurate is "powerful dimwit."
And what about the human body? Anybody familiar with engineering will tell you it is a train wreck. The spine could certainly have been designed better for bipedal movement. If there was a designer then apparently lower back pain and the shrinking elderly were all a part of the plan. And what about the nonfunctioning vitamin-C gene? Am I supposed to believe that some intelligent designer gave us the capability to synthesize vitamin C but then decided "maybe not"? And am I supposed to believe that an intelligent designer created the human eye so that it processes signals upside down? I can keep naming problems to the "humans created by God" perspective. Yet Christians assert, for some reason or another, that this train wreck was one of the most important creations in the Universe. Mere logic alone prevents me from accepting that assertion and the tens of thousands of evidences that argue against the notion doesn't help either.
As for problems specifically with the Bible, there are many. First and foremost both of the narrations for Genesis contradict what is known about the Universe. Apparently the stars that form the constellations came after the creation of the Earth yet we know those stars are around two to three times as old. It asserts that reptiles and insects were created after whales and birds yet we know this is false. And I say "narrations" because the two narrations were given by two different priesthoods of which neither had any idea of how the Universe came to be. Then one comes to the idea of Eden. Eden, as an actual place, existed but is now covered by water. One would think that a flooding of Eden would be mentioned in the Bible. (The Noah's flood explanation doesn't work, as I shall explain later in this post.) Did God decide that a gate with whirling swords weren't good enough so he decided to take his gates and use them for another project and then drown humanity's supposed birthplace? And what about the idea of humanity starting from two individuals? We know, through science, that this idea is completely wrong. It even asserts that God opened the gates of heaven when it rained. Obviously that is nonsense. Then there is the supposed existence of the Leviathan but that is a completely imaginary creature probably thought up by some ignorant man who found some dinosaur bones and placed them together wrong. (I do not consider Behemoth an error, though the interpretation of it usually is an error. It is hard for people like Hovind, a.k.a. Dr. Dino Tax Evader, to realize that the "tail" wasn't a tail at all but a different thing that hung between the legs and that the stones were attached to this "other tail.") One can keep naming errors for hours on end. Of all the errors in the very foundations of the story presented in the Bible there is no way for me to honestly believe the authors were inspired in any way, shape, or form beyond the inspiration that an artist experiences before creating an imaginative painting.
Then one should take into consideration the assimilation of other gods into the Bible. It is no coincidence that Joshua has many attributes of a Sun God. He was essentially based on Iusa, who is more commonly known as Horus. It is also no coincidence that Jesus Christ has the name he does, he was essentially based on Jezeus Krishna, who was based on Horus KRST (pronounced the same as Krishna.) Moses is another fictional character though it is harder to pin down exactly which he was modeled after: Minos, Manes, Mises, Nemo, Manou, etc. and the ten commandments are essentially just the Code of Hammurabi with the rights of woman removed. Noah was also a myth as the archaeological record clearly demonstrates. The story of the Ark of Noah was based off of The Deluge and the name was taken from the yearly Egyptian Nile-flooding celebration called "Argha-Noa." Ishtar (Isis), from which we now have the holiday Easter, was remade into a Yahweh believer and canonized as Esther. Ishtar, I should add, was also known as a virgin mother called Mata-Meri and that should ring a bell or five. The early Christians remade Buddha, with the title Bodhisat, and canonized him as St. Josaphat. And as I have already demonstrated earlier in this topic, Brahma was remade and inserted into various stories in the Bible as Abram and Abraham. Even the name Yahweh was taken from the Egyptian IAO. All of the corruptions of Egyptian gods helps to explain why Israel, Yahweh's chosen land, is not named after Yahweh. Is-Ra-El is named after Isis (Mata-Meri), Ra (Horus KRST), and El (the dark side of the Sun, also known as Set, which later became Saturn and Satan). When one considers how many gods were assimilated and vilified by the Bible it should come as no surprise that one of the alterations to the Code of Hammurabi was to not create idols of other gods because God was a jealous God. It would be extremely difficult to think of a single person in the Bible that wasn't completely fictitious, a remake of past gods (that were also fictitious), or a false retelling of real people.
These are only a small portion of the reasons for my rejection of the Bible.
Arella Mae wrote:I did not refer to hell as an eternal punishment IN THIS PARTICULAR SCRIPTURE. I was referring ONLY to the fact that Jesus went there and preached to those that were there.
If you were referring ONLY to the fact that Jesus went there and preached then how come you responded saying "You obviously have your understanding of this and I obviously have mine." I think we both have an understanding that the passage says Jesus went there and preached. So where do we disagree on that passage as you so plainly suggested by saying we have different interpretations?
