THE WORK WHICH

TRANSFORMS GOD
Tommy P.

Preface
I recall a time when my fate was entirely out of my hands a time when every prayer was answered regardless of the outcome, a time when the biggest roadblocks in life only inspired me to leave my fate in the palms of the Divine Creator. This was a time where I relinquished control of my life and left its open-ended questions up to the will of God. Any questions or criticisms I had of my faith were always met with a simple, logically inconclusive answer: The finite minds of men cannot understand the infinite works of God. For awhile, this explanation made the most sense to me, and I inquired no further. The reins guiding my life were ultimately held by a power greater than myself. That is, until I discovered I was on a horse whose reins had been dangling from its mouth for years. Im certainly no stranger to faith. I was raised in a non-practicing Roman Catholic household that still maintained much of the mysticism and symbolism attached to the faith; namely, the miraculous works of saints to reward the righteous and the bludgeoning hand of God to smitten those who committed wicked deeds. I was afraid of God, because as a mischievous child, I knew what his tit-for-tat strategy would entail for me. Every bad deed came with an even worse punishment. As a teenager, I swore off religion entirely. Part of it was my increasing interest in the sciences, and part of it was the satisfying feeling of rebellion associated with the downright refusal to obey the highest throne. Given a long string of stupid and unfulfilling decisions, my life was going nowhere fast. Ultimately, I ended up staying with a family who lovingly took me into their home when I had finally almost hit rock bottom. Despite my atheism (a term that, in hindsight, I was very uneducated in using) and without even being on a first-name basis with them, this Protestant Christian family offered unto me another chance at starting fresh in life.

Because of them, I was able to center myself and concentrate on re-stabilizing my life. Over time, I came to know more about their particular views on Christianitycertainly a fresh take on the mean old cop in the sky that I once feared during my childhood and began to attend church with them regularly. It was definitely a cool church the kind with rock music and a pastor who wasnt afraid to dress up as Darth Vader to give a message about the dark side of sin. After about a year, I rekindled my faith and discovered that God wasnt that bad of a guy. I had managed to piece together all of the positive turns that my life had taken and attributed them to Him, and I decided to become baptizedI was then a born-again Christian. I didnt have a care in the world for my bigger problems, because I had felt a higher presence taking control of my life. Those were simpler times. Theres a quote from the Kevin Smith film Dogma that very much rings true to my current situation. A friend of the main character is discussing her faith, and how gradually, as one becomes older, faith becomes harder and harder to maintain. She recalls a conversation that she had with someone from high school:
He said that faith is like a glass of water. When you re young, the glass is small, and its easy to fill up. But the older you get, the bigger the glass gets, and the same amount of liquid doesn t fill it anymore. Periodically, the glass has to be refilled.1

The problem is, no matter how many times I would refill the glass, I couldnt rid myself of its stagnantly bland taste. My faith had once been my guide through all things, as I had the almighty strength of a personal god at both my side and my disposal. His strength, however, always went unquestionedand even as Alexander and Napoleon once discovered, power is a finite resourceeven to my own god. Although my bout with cognitive dissonance is at a rest, and I no longer question the nature of my feelings, I nonetheless retain a lingering zest for triumphing over my resident demons. I m not entirely sure what part of my being is parched for discoursewhether my desire stems from the anger expressed toward centuriesmillennia!of regurgitated religious dogma that were pushed unto me as truth, or simply the basal human desire to quench my intellectual thirst and vanquish the unknown. In
1

Garofalo, Janeane. Dogma. DVD. Directed by Kevin Smith. Santa Monica: Lions Gate, 1999.

either case, the floodgates had been opened. I have always been told to seek the truth by my Christian friends, and this is the product of said quest. Over the following pages, I would simply like to share my thoughts as to why Ive come to feel the way that I do. This is not a personal attack against any of my family members or friends for believing what they do, for I have met many a great people from all across the world, from all walks of life and of varying faiths and beliefs (or lack thereof). My use of vocabulary in this writing may be strongly worded, but it is assuredly not a means of defacement. Ignorance is not a substitute word for stupid or feeble-minded, and my use of it is not expressing this sentiment. My use of this word, then, is to emphasize the lack of understanding that opponents of the scientific method have when formulating their arguments and claims against factual evidence and scientific laws. This work, more than anything else, is ultimately a rebuttal against blind faith and religious indoctrination which seeks to jeopardize critical thinking.

PART I

Science: Public Enemy No. 1 __________________

People believe in God because theyve been conditioned to believe in God.
ALDOUS HUXLEY, BRAVE NEW WORLD

Christianity is held on the founding bedrock that is Scripture. Throughout my experiences, Christians have fallen into one of two groups: either they have come to the conclusion that the Bible is completely infallible and thus free of any errors, or they have essentially dismissed the Old Testament entirely due to the redemption of Christ and base their faith solely on his decrees. Both of these camps, however, tend to overlap in many ways, and the bedrock on which they are founded is slowly but surely eroding away. The first group I find is the most difficult to argue with not because they make logically sound arguments, but because they have been conditioned to believe that the Bible is the ultimate truth. The problem with this train of thought is that it is inherently fallacious: they have already drawn their conclusions, and are merely working backwards to try and justify the alleged written works of God. Any evidence to the contrary is quickly dismissed, given that the Bible cannot be proven wrong. They arent trying to play a game of darts; they are throwing darts at a wall and then painting the dartboard.

The Evolution of Faith

I was attending an evening church service several months ago where my amicable Korean friend was preaching that night. He is a young man in

his early thirties, recently married, and is a very passionate speaker. If only more pastors spoke with his level of fervor, I believe we d find less people who simply attend church to catch up on their sleep debt. Where he excelled in communication, however, he lacked in his reasoning. For months, I had been attending church solely to save face; I had long grown bored of the tired sermons regurgitating antiquated laws and points of view that I wholeheartedly disagreed with, and instead I used the opportunity merely to keep in touch with my Christian friends and the church community. However, this particular sermon stuck with me, for indeed it was the last stripe on the zebras back. Evolution is the enemy of Christianity, he began to say. You are not the products of evolution, but the products of a loving God who lovingly made you exactly who you are. Naturally, my initial instinct was to stand up in the middle of the sermon and furiously refute such a claim after all, we have sufficient evidence of evolution: transitional fossils, hominid specimens, and weve witnessed evolution first-hand with generation after generation of E. coli strains observed in laboratories. Evolution is both a fact and a theory, the latter of which serves to try and model the why and how of the changes weve been able to observe over time. However, most Christians seem to ignore this detail and immediately connect the term theory to something which has yet to be provena straw man argument which, of course, they are unwittingly mistaking for that of a hypothesis, rather than that of a theory. When my Korean friend continued on his rant against the evils of science, I came to realize that his crusade had already been lost before he muttered a single word that evening for if one is to pit religion against science, religion will always lose. Science attests to that which is testable, observable, and falsifiable; to argue science with religion whose merits rely solely on faith, rather than testable criteriais not only futile, it is irrelevant. For a long while, I had suffered to try and successfully balance my faith and the findings of science. Admittedly, I became a victim to my own delusion upon trying to concoct an explanation that God was ultimately in control of every aspect of biological evolution on Eartha constant battle of cognitive dissonance that Ive only recently come to settle entirely.

As I was having dinner with a Christian friend one evening, we began discussing the origins of salt deposits in his native Switzerland. He stated that the explanation for the salts origins depended on what version of Creationism you subscribed to be it young-Earth, old-Earth, neo-Creationism (a label I never knew existed and, for the sake of my sanity, havent bothered to investigate further). I explained to him that I subscribed to theistic evolutionessentially an appeal to intelligent designand that I accepted the scientific 4.5-billion-year-old Earth model. He responded with How can you believe that? Thats just wishful thinking. Ignoring the irony behind his words, he left me puzzled with his retort. Until I realized that he was absolutely right. To understand the random changes in biological organisms over time, one neednt look further than random to realize that theistic interference in such a system is a perverse violation of evolutionary theory and an utter dilution of human reasoning and competence. To believe in theistic evolution, one would need to subscribe to the notion that an all-powerful being purposefully engineered every random mutation that has transpired over the past several billion years. This very-much-indeed wishful thinking completely flies in the face of science and reason, and I have thus since pried the notion of theistic interference from natural occurrence.

Why Does God Make People Gay?

Another factor weighing against Christianity today is that of homosexuality. Take, for example, the modern issues surrounding gay civil rights. Many Christians abhorrently oppose gay marriage, and will show you the appropriate Bible verses to justify their reasoning. Not only is this an example of one persons religious beliefs violating another persons personal right to wed, but these same Christians are entirely against and ignorant to the notion that these people they adamantly oppress were born already polarized to a certain persuasion. But God didnt make Adam and Steve, my missionary friend would often argue. No, he didnt make Adam and Steve, but you have no evidence that he ever made Adam and Eveand there certainly exists more than enough evidence to support that this nudist couple never existedyet the

basis of your specific case relies exclusively on non-factual Biblical inference, again another case of attempting to argue science with non-science. Furthermore, the continued restraint shown by Christians toward those of the gay persuasion solely on the basis of folklore that the majority of Jews themselvesthe very minds who penned the Biblical creation storydont read as being a part of literal history is, quite frankly, delusional thinking. Moreover, science is continually demonstrating that being gay is indeed not a choice. A study conducted by evolutionary biologist William Rice postulates that epi-marksextra layers of information that control how certain genes are expressed are sometimes passed between opposite-sex generations. 2 These epi-marks, which normally protect parents from natural variation in sex hormone levels during fetal development, sometimes arent erased from generation to generation.3 This can trigger homosexuality in opposite-sex descendants. Seeing that the Bible makes as many claims as it does regarding how God feels towards homosexuality, where does that, then, place the very creator that made them gay to begin with? When reading these passages, I tend to see less the words breathed by a divine and loving creator and more those penned by a homophobic misogynist author. Despite advances in science that continually confound much of the madness established in the Bible, the foundation of Christianity in modern society is held together primarily through rationalizations. This is why Christians might make any of the following arguments:
1. God doesnt make you gayscience is wrong. Being gay is a choice, just like choosing to kill or stealand by being gay, youre choosing to disobey God. 2. God might have made you gay, but homosexuality is still a sin. Yet because we are all sinners, our glorious and merciful God came to save us from our sinful nature. If youre gay and you pray to God,
William R. Rice, Urban Friberg and Sergey Gavrilets, Homosexuality as a Consequence of Epigenetically Canalized Sexual Development, The Quarterly Review of Biology 87, no. 4 (December 2012): 343-368. 3 Epi-marks hold answer to homosexuality, The Chicago Sun Times, modified January 15, 2013, accessed February 21, 2014, http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/16998486-418/epi-marks-hold-answer-to-homosexuality.html .
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you can be saved. 3. God made you gay, you will undergo endless discrimination and ostracization in your life, and if you follow God and abstain from your sinful nature altogether, your lifetime of suffering will be rewarded in Heaven.

Christianity states that God made and loves each one of us equally. This same God determines your sexuality prior to birth, instills into societal doctrines that theres something inherently wrong with you, and that you should either refrain from sexual relations for the rest of your life or marry someone of the opposite sex and live a complete lie to yourself and to your spouse. Not only is this a contradiction within itself, but is also a hypocritical contradiction held by the helmsmen at the forefront of the anti-gay crusades. If homosexuality is to be labeled a sin that a person is helpless to do anything against, what makes the same sinning Christians who condemn gays any better than those they are persecuting? Based on the exorbitant amount of verses listing homosexuality as being immoral and socially unacceptable, we can deduce that Christianity and homosexuality are wholly incompatible. Only through rationalizations have modern Christians come to the conclusion that God loves everyone, including homosexuals. Yet the Bible explicitly states otherwise. The problem lies with cherry-picking. Christians will pick their verses carefully in order to formulate their arguments, yet dismiss other passages entirely. This is why it is relatively simple for a fundamentalist Christian to cite passages such as 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 to argue against homosexuality, which states:
Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Yet, it is just as simple to forget, ignore, or dismiss other passages that call for more extreme precepts, such as what Jesus states in Matthew 5:28-29 regarding adultery:

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

Given the absurdity of even attempting to uphold such an outmoded passage, it is safe to assume that passages such as this are often glossed over. Church officials caught in sex scandals live to see another dayliterallyyet because the gay movement poses such a threat to Christianity at the moment, Christians nevertheless cling to antiquated verses and defend them fervently while altogether overlooking others. In fifty years time, in a day and age where weve laid this issue to rest and can agree to treat gays and lesbians with the equal rights they as human beings deserve, Christians will likely find a new enemy to attack. Until then, the social implications nevertheless remain. Regardless of whether being gay is a choice, the fundamental question to ask as a human being is, does it really matter ?

Redefining Science
Lastly, another perverse disregard of scientific evidence comes with the belief that the Earth, along with the universe and everything in it, are within the range of thousands to millions of years old. Christians who believe this, the former being Biblical literalists and the latter attempting to placate the discrepancies of Biblical literalism with pseudoscientific explanations, are unfortunately the vocal majority in the United States. This presents a problem. We are seeing today, at least in the United States, that this vocal majority are attempting to push science out of the classroom and instead bring in Christian doctrine. Not only is this a despicable and deplorable violation of the separation of church and state, given that public schools are funded through state allocations, but it is also a violation of a student s religious freedoms. These vocal Christians argue that Creationism is a viable and competing theory to evolution; however, Creationism is far from a theory, as it fails to present any evidence whatsoever to fuel its tenets. The only acceptable place for Creationism in public schools would be in an

elective course where other theological concepts, such as those same theories of human origins taught by Greek, Egyptian, and Norse mythologies, to name a few, are also discussed. Even those Christians who adhere to intelligent design are blind to the holes in their logical attempts at justifying faith and reason. Even the Catholic Church has dismissed Creationism and intelligent design as being downright silly, even embracing evolution. Fr. George Coyne, former chief astronomer of the Vatican, even went so far as saying that intelligent design isnt science even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science.4 It is indeed true delusion to deny scientific progress in favor of religious zealotry. I recently watched a debate between my childhood idol, Bill Nye, and the head of the Creation Museum in Kentucky, Ken Ham, arguing whether Creationism was a viable model for human origins. Some people, such as scientist and free thinker Richard Dawkins, stated that such a debate would only serve to justify and bring Creationism validity, given that a widely respected scientist was taking the time to debate the topic in the first place. However, in my opinion, this debate only helped to demonstrate the increasing amount of highly contorted rationalizations needed by fundamentalist Christians in order to support obsolescent Biblical beliefs against emerging scientific discoveries. Ham begins by attempting to create two distinct subfields of science: observational and historical science. By doing so, Ham creates a justificationalbeit in his own mindthat there is in fact a distinction between, say, the science behind what makes a car engine combust fuel and what an archaeologist studies in fossilized remains. However, there is no difference between the two: science is science, and it has always been that way. By devising these labels, Ham is thus able to frame his entire argument to suit his Biblical world view. Ham would believe that, because one cannot directly observe evolution, that it must be false; unfortunately for Ham, this is a fallacious argument. Science is built upon hundreds of years of observation and inference from other fields of science, and evolution is supported by findings in nearly every field, ranging from geology, biology and genetics, and so forth.
Vatican official: Intelligent design isnt science, USA Today, last modified November 18, 2005, accessed February 25, 2014, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/2005-11-18-vaticanastronomer_x.htm.
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Amusingly, Ham did a fantastic job of tearing apart his very own arguments. Ham constantly relied on his claim that because scientists were never there to witness evolution first-hand, evolution is thus automatically not a viable argument, therefore making the claims in the Bible true. Not only is he making a false dichotomy, a fallacy of induction, and coming to an all-around logical disjunction, he also failed to realize one important point: that he himself was also not present during the penning of Scripture, thereby rejecting his own claim using his own argument. Nor was Ham physically there to see dinosaurs roam the Earth, yet he is nonetheless deducingvia the very fossil record that he attempted to refute, no lessthat they must have existed. Moreover, he presented charts which detailed how the various kinds of animals branched off into all of the kinds of animals that we see todaya claim which ironically falls apart without the theory of evolution to support it. Yet, using the very same fossil record that Ham used to arrive at the conclusion that dinosaurs once existed, we have been able to observe and infer how various species have emerged through time via logic and reason, rather than Biblical fanaticism. The amount of mental disregard one would need to pay with regard to rejecting scientific milestones to justify a strictly literal Biblical perspective is astonishingly high. One would need to ignore the fact that light, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, has been observed by the Hubble Deep Field coming from the furthest reaches of space ten billion light years away. One would need to accept that Adam and Eve rode around on the backs of dinosaurs all the while dismissing sedimentary layers and varves, erosion, and radiometric dating of fossils and coralsamong many other thingswith the idea that God made the universe appear much older than it really is. This type of counterargument is satirically known as a Last Thursdayism, where one could argue that God created the universe last Thursday our own memories and experiences includedwith the appearance of it being much older than it really is, and we would be none the wiser. One can see that it is utterly absurd to believe that the Earth is any younger than it is. This is the very same kind of ignorance that we as a society are soliciting to force down the throats of future generations. This blind belief system, combined with an utter lack of critical thinking, is a dangerous combination.

PART I I

History and Biblical Infallibility __________________

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Given the apparent inerrancy of the Bible, you wouldnt expect to find any historical errors or contradictions residing within its pages, for this would violate the very definition of inerrancyyet the Bible is very much filled to the brim with such inconsistencies and anachronisms. The more I read the Bible, the harsher my criticisms grew until I came to the only logical solution that I could reach: that the Bible itself is as fallible as the minds of the men that wrote it. Most Christians I know are trapped in a loop of circular logic that they use to defend the Bible even in the face of evidence. How do we know the Bible is infallible? Because the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. How do we know the Bible is the inerrant word of God? Because the Bible says so. This is fallacious reasoning.

False Predictions
One of the biggest claims offered by the Bible came from the lips of Jesus himself. In Matthew 24:32-34, he makes the following assertion:
From the fig tree learn this parable. When its branch becomes tender and it puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also you, when you see all these things you know that he [the Son of Man] is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this

generation will not pass away before all these things take place.

The fig tree is a representation of the nation of Israel. It would put forth its leavesthat is, reemerge as a nationafter lying dormant, and this would then signal the coming of Armageddon within a generation s time of the rise of Israelforty years time, according to Biblical terminology. Israel emerged as a nation in 1948 and, according to Jesus, this should have signaled the beginning of the end sometime within the next forty years.5 1988 came and went without so much as a single flaming arrow from the heavens, and yet here I sit, writing a Biblical critique in 2014. Egypt is a particularly interesting case to look at. In Ezekiel 29:8-12, a very specific claim was made about the destruction of Egypt:
Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD: Behold, I will bring a sword upon thee, and cut off man and beast out of thee. And the land of Egypt shall be desolate and waste; and they shall know that I am the LORD: because he hath said, The river is mine, and I have made it. Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia. No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years. And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years; and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.

Historically, this prediction never came to pass. Egypt has been continuously populated and settled for thousands of years, and has never experienced a time where it was left completely uninhabited. Furthermore, never has Egypt been surrounded by desolate countries. In Ezekiel 30:10-11, the Bible goes on to say the following:
This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will put an end to the hordes of Egypt by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.
Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005), 13.
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He and his armythe most ruthless of nationswill be brought in to destroy the land. They will draw their swords against Egypt and fill the land with the slain.

A bold contention that never came to fruition, however. During his only attempt at invasion, Nebuchadnezzar was defeated by then-ruler Ahmose II. The Babylonians never again sought to conquer Egypt, given internal conflicts within their respective empire.6 Not one to give up, God had one more bone to pick with Egypt, stating the ultimate fate of the Nile in Ezekiel 30:12:
I will dry up the streams of the Nile and sell the land to evil men: by the hand of foreigners I will lay waste the land and everything in it. I the LORD have spoken.

The Nile is, I must emphasize, still flowing strong to this day.

Who Said What When?

Another problem Ive come across is not only that of historical inaccuracies, as I pointed out previously with failed prophecies, but as well as general inconsistencies with respect to times and events. One cannot hold the Bible as being literally true and wholly inerrant if such errors do indeed exist. Many factors weigh into this, ranging from a lack of education and understanding about history and the natural sciences by the authors of the Bible to the long-winded efforts by scribes over centuries copying these ancient texts repeatedly by hand. I would like to especially emphasize this latter point. For example, in 1 Samuel 21:1-6, David goes to Ahimelek the high priest on an exclusive mission from the king:
David went to Nob, to Ahimelek the priest. Ahimelek trembled when he met him, and asked, Why are you alone? Why is no one with you? David answered Ahimelek the priest, The king sent me on a mission and said to me, No one is to know anything about
Alan B. Lloyd, The Late Period, in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, ed. Ian Shaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 381-82.
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the mission I am sending you on. As for my men, I have told them to meet me at a certain place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find. But the priest answered David, I dont have any ordinary bread on hand; however, there is some consecrated bread hereprovided the men have kept themselves from women. David replied, Indeed women have been kept from us, as usual wherever I set out. The mens bodies are holy even on missions that are not holy. How much more so today! So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence that had been removed from before the LORD and replaced by hot bread on the day it was taken away.

Jesus later cites this very passage when he is confronted by Pharisees for plucking grains from a field on the Sabbath in Mark 2:23-27:
One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? He answered, Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions. Then he said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

If youll notice, there is a very distinct contradiction between these two passages. In 1 Samuel 21:1-6, Ahimelek was the high priest when David received the consecrated bread. However, in Mark 2:23-27, Jesus explicitly states that it was Abiathar, not Ahimelek, who was the high priest. 7 Was Jesus blatantly incorrect when he was reciting this passage? Did Mark make a mistake as he was recalling this story? Or was it a mistake on behalf of a scribe who simply mixed the names? In any case, this is a clear error, and this repudiates the claims made by Biblical literalists of absolute inerrancy. This isnt an isolated case, mind you. In Mark 15:25, Mark plainly states that Jesus was crucified at nine in the morning following the Passover meal, yet in John 19:14, he was
7

Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 9.

crucified at noon prior to the meal having been eaten.8 How does this justify inerrancy? As I stated previously, scribes and slaves who had the painstaking task of copying Christian texts were at the mercy of their own scrutiny. A third-century church father, Origen, made the following statement about Gospels which he had acquired:
The differences among the manuscripts have become great, either through the negligence of some copyists or through the perverse audacity of others; they either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or, in the process of checking, they make additions or deletions as they please.9

Through the derision of human error and negligence over centuries, it is truly difficult to fully grasp just how many changes and alterations the Bible has undergone. Because of this, it is quite arduous to label the Bible as being the absolute truth, when so much of it consists of little more than mere rehashed copies of other copies.
Once a scribe changes a textwhether accidentally or intentionallythen those changes are permanent in his manuscript (unless, of course, another scribe comes along to correct the mistake). The next scribe who copies that manuscript copies those mistakes (thinking they are what the text said), and he adds mistakes of his own. The next scribe who then copies that manuscript copies the mistakes of both his predecessors and adds mistakes of his own, and so on.10

Some of these errors can readily be found by any reader and are downright impossible to justify, as what can be seen in Jesus last address to his disciples in John chapters 13 through 17.
In John 13:36, Peter says to Jesus, Lord, where are you going? A few verses later Thomas says, Lord, we do not know where you are going (John 14:5). And then, a few minutes later, at the same meal, Jesus upbraids his disciples, saying, Now I a m going to the
Ibid., 10. Ibid., 52. 10 Ibid., 57.
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one who sent me, yet none of you asks me, Where are you going? (John 16:5). Either Jesus had a very short attention span or there is something strange going on with the sources for these chapters, creating an odd kind of disconnect.11

Human inaccuracy isnt limited to mistakes in copying. A recent study by a pair of Israeli archaeologists, Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen, helps to shed some light on the idea that much of the Bible was written both out of place and out of context by people who had little knowledge of the regions history. The pair used radiocarbon dating to pinpoint the earliest known domesticated camels in Israel to the last third of the 10th century B.C. centuries after the patriarchs lived and decades after the kingdom of David, according to the Bible.12 The Bible, however, makes mention of camels long before they were ever introduced and domesticated in the region. This tells us that the Bible was written long after its purported events ever took place, and its authors used information only available to them at the time to make incorrect inferences about the past. This makes the Bible an unreliable document for historical accuracy. On the subject of historical accuracy, this brings us back to the Biblical story of Passover. In the Bible, it is said that the Jews were kept in slavery in Egypt only to later be freed by Moses. The problem is, there is absolutely no evidence to confirm this was ever the case.
It is hard to believe that 600,000 families (which would mean about two million people) crossed the entire Sinai without leaving one shard of pottery (the archaeologists best friend) with Hebrew writing on it. It is remarkable that Egyptian records make no mention of the sudden migration of what would have been nearly a quarter of their population, nor has any evidence been found for any of the expected effects of such an exodus; such as economic downturn or labor shortages. Furthermore, there is no evidence in Israel that shows a sudden influx of people from another culture at that time. No rapid departure from traditional pottery has been seen, no record or story of a surge in population.13
Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Dont Know About Them) (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 9. 12 Camels Had No Business in Genesis, The New York Times, last modified February 10, 2014, accessed February 24, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/science/camels-had-no-business-in-genesis.html. 13 Were Jews ever really slaves in Egypt, or is Passover a myth?, Haaretz, last modified March 26,
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Id also like to bring up the case of Noahs flood. I wont go into the details to debunk it, because it would be an effort akin to debunking any childhood fantasy story. Common sense tells us of the impossibility of such an endeavor, and to believe such a story against all logic and reason without evidence is an exercise in delusion. Moreover, one needs to realize that this is not an original story: it is derived from the Babylonian myth of Uta-Napisthim and known from the older mythologies of several cultures. 14 However, this myth will help me introduce another case against God: namely, his sense of morality. An omnipotent, all-knowing being would have already known of Adam and Eves eventual transgressions; so in his anger, he senselessly flooded the world in one giant mass murder. He took a dim view of humans, so he (with the exception of one family) drowned the lot of them including children and also, for good measure, the rest of the (presumably blameless) animals as well.15 Sounds like an all-loving God if I ever knew one. It has grown increasingly difficult to take anything that the Bible claims as truth when so much stacks against its very claims. It is indeed a mentally arduous task, having to take the Bible as the proof in the pudding when the pudding itself is stale.
The historical narratives of the Old Testament are filled with legendary fabrications and the book of Acts in the New Testament contains historically unreliable information about the life and teachings of Paul. Many of the books of the New Testament are pseudonymswritten not by the apostles but by later writers claiming to be apostles. The list goes on.16

As Carl Sagan once famously said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, 17 something that the Bible is itself severely lacking in.

2012, accessed February 25, 2014, http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/the-jewish-thinker/were-jews-ever-really-slaves-in-egypt-or-is -passover-a-myth-1.420844 14 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Suffolk: Bantam Press, 2006), 237. 15 Ibid., 238. 16 Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 6. 17 Sagan, Carl. Encyclopaedia Galactica. Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. DVD. Cosmos Studios, 2002.

PART I II

Gods Morality __________________

Man created God in his image: intolerant, sexist, homophobic and violent.

MARIE DE FRANCE

Yahweh is unquestionably one of the biggest antagonizing browbeaters to ever grace a written page. Richard Dawkins does a meticulous job of capturing the essence of Yahweh himself:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynist, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror. 18 To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and improved by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries.19

I will have to agree that much of the Bible is, indeed, very much just plain weird. What really shines through, though, is Gods sense of morality throughout the Old Testament. Although apologists will quickly
18 19

Dawkins, The God Delusion, 31. Ibid., 237.

jump to defend and justify Gods wrath (and propping Jesus on a pedestal to dismiss much of what is written), none of his moral edicts logically make sense whatsoever. That is, until you remember just who it was exactly that scrawled the Biblenot God, but rather, the hands of men.

The Burden of Sex

One neednt dig very far into the Bible to realize how insignificant women and their societal roles were going to be throughout the book. Even in Genesis, within the first few pages of the Bible, a woman is introduced, chronologically, as:
1. A creation sprung from man, not from the Earth. God didnt originally create a woman until Adam became lonely. 2. A subservient being, described as having been created in order to help Adam (rather than establishing her own unique identity and independent role). 3. The weaker of the two who was foolish and wrought sin unto this world.

Eve is created from man to serve man. One can only logically assume that the Bible wasnt divinely inspired by a being that cared about equality, but rather drafted by a group of men who sought to continue a tradition of male dominion over women, subjugating and labeling them as the weaker sex. The serpent, after all, speaks directly to Eve not to Adam and because of this, the Bible makes the case that the reason for the introduction of sin into the world is due to the navet of woman and the result of her wickedness influencing the will of man. So right off the bat, women draw the short straw. It really doesnt get any better further in the Bible, either. Not only are women barred from certain activities and treated as lesser beings, but the roles that women play in the Bible are unimportant and unfulfilling. Jesus had twelve apostles, none of which were women. (For that matter, why was Jesus a man in the first place? Did God need to be a man? Wouldnt it have been

more appropriate for God to possess neither trait of being male or female?) I digress. Earlier I mentioned that Christian apologists will defend the tenants of the Old Testament by indicating that Jesus sacrifice nullified the old laws, hence why we no longer abide by the rules and ordinances proposed in it. However, the mandates in the New Testament particularly toward womenreally arent any better. 1 Timothy 2 states the following:
Also that women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire but by the good deeds, as befits women who profess religion. Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.

I also mentioned cherry picking earlier, and this is a prime example of one of those verses that is conveniently glossed over or ignored entirely. A female Christian friend of mine adamantly opposes gay marriage, citing the Bible as her moral reasoning for doing so. I wonder if she would be as quick to defend this verse with equal fervor. So much for bikini season. The same oppression is shown in 1 Corinthians 14, stating that women should be in complete silence and submission during church:
As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

Then we have Ephesians 5:22-24 and 1 Peter 3:7, respectively:

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the heart of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

Women must be thoroughly obedient to men, because they are the weaker sex. Conclusively, its rather insensitive of an all -loving God to paint woman as a lesser being due to her altogether lack of a penis unless of course, if by all-loving God, you mean a group of primitive, sexist misogynist tribesmen akin to the same types of primitive, sexist misogynist tribesmen that youd find in remote desert villages today, then yes, it begins to make sense why the Bible was written as it was.

Whitewashing Jesus
What I really dont understand about Christianity is why much of what Jesus purportedly claimed is either whitewashed or seldom mentioned. Sure, the typical issues such as gay rights and abortion are ceremoniously regurgitated by churches, yet I have never attended a church service where they expound upon Jesus insatiable wrath. One of the most irritably revolting verses I ve heard attributed to Jesus is what he states in John 3:18:
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of Gods one and only Son.

This, to me, is absolute nonsense. God will condemn and cast billions of people into a lake of fire because of their refusal to obey a passive-aggressive bully. This reflects the billions of people who were born into other faiths. Just as Christians profess that Christianity is the truth, they have no evidence to validate this claim, and only purport it as truth because many of them were indoctrinated to believe this way at a young age. What of the billions of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and other non-Christian faiths around the world today? They are to be forever tormented because of a faith they were, like Christians, born into and/or taught to believe as their version of the truth? Am I honestly to accept that my Muslim friendsmany of whom have demonstrated a deeper moral character than some of my own Christian acquaintancesare to be cast forevermore in hell because of a difference in beliefs? Would any rational human being really drop their long-established faith in place of another whose only claim to certainty is itself? That doesnt seem very loving at all to condemn people who refuse to believe a faith presented to them with no evidence, does it?

Previously, I mentioned that many Christians believe with Jesus death, the laws of the Old Testament are no longer to be observed or practiced. However, Jesus himself plainly stated otherwise in Matthew 5:17-19:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Im not exactly sure where Christians are deriving this gentle and meek caricature of the God they are worshipping, because the Bible clearly paints an entirely different picture. For example, in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, great care is taken in removing the expression of anger on Jesus behalf, both Matthew and Luke having no qualms about describing Jesus as compassionate, but they never describe him as angry.20 However, Mark apparently made no such reservations. In the story of Jesus healing a leper, several surviving manuscripts provide two alternative takes on the story:
Anda leper came to him beseeching him and saying to him, If you wish, you are able to cleanse me. And [feeling compassion (Greek: SPLANGNISTHEIS)/becoming angry (Greek: ORGISTHEIS)], reaching out his hand, he touched him and said, I wish, be cleansed.21

Shown in brackets, one manuscript paints Jesus as having felt compassion for the leper, whereas the other has Jesus becoming angry. This might seem trivial, but not only does this help to emphasize that many versions of these stories have existed through history, but also that later scribes have generally opted for the most satisfying versions of these stories. Given this explanation, if Christian readers today were given the choice between these two readings, no doubt almost everyone would choose the one more commonly attested in our manuscripts: Jesus felt pity for this
20 21

Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 136. Ibid., 133.

man, and so he healed him.22 But the real question to ask is, which one is indeed the original?
Which is more likely, that a scribe copying this text would change it to say that Jesus became wrathful instead of compassionate, or to say that Jesus became compassionate instead of wrathful? Which reading better explains the existence of the other? When seen from this perspective, the latter is obviously more likely. The reading that indicates Jesus became angry is the more difficult reading and therefore more likely to be original.23

To his credit, however, it can be said that Jesus strongest and arguably most important points arent his threats to worship God, but rather those that call for extreme social changeimportant points that many Christians, primarily those in the Christian right-wing in the United States, completely ignore. I cant help but to think on a very popular and inescapable verse from the Bible that is supposed to reinforce Jesus overarching message. Psalm 139:16 says the following:
You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your book!

Looking strictly at the reality of the world, Gods plan is absolutely horrible. God has already predetermined the outcome of our lives theres no room for free will in this scenario. According to this verse, God scheduled the marriage and rape of an 8-year-old girl from Yemen who was married to a man five times her age, only to die from severe bleeding after the man tore her genitals. 24 Or imagine being locked and isolated from the outside world in a house for ten years with two other women, kept in bondage and fathering the child of your rapist captor. This is what God apparently scheduled for Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight, who were kept as sex slaves for a decade.25 Fundamentalists like Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, enjoy using this verse to
Ibid., 134. Ibid., 134-135. 24 Yemeni child bride, eight, dies of internal injuries on first night of forced marriage to groom five times her age, Daily Mail, last modified October 23, 2013, accessed February 27, 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415871/Yemeni-child-bride-8-dies-internal-injuries-nightforced-marriage-groom-40.html. 25 Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle escape chosen as one of nations biggest stories of 2013, Cleveland, modified December 23, 2013, accessed February 27, 2014, http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/12/amanda_berry_gina_dejesus_and_3.html.
22 23

justify offspring in rape cases by citing that regardless of the circumstances of your birth or who your parents are, God had a plan in creating you.26 By this logic, God is a cynical, despicable and outright vile entity that employs rape as a tool. (He impregnated a virgin against her will, after all.) It is verses and justifications like these that help fuel the Christian right-wings efforts in telling a woman what she can and cant do with her bodyeffectively throwing religion into legislative efforts to bar a woman from receiving an abortion, even when circumstances outside her control may have caused the very pregnancy in question. Whether one agrees with abortion is irrelevantif you dont agree with it, dont get one. Its when one uses their religious views to prevent another person from doing what they will with their own body that things become problematic. We can see that God has no plan for us. There is no cosmic alignment that predetermined our births. To say that God has a plan for us is to say that God specifically created every murderer, rapist, and future Fidel Castros and Joseph Stalins. It is absolute drivel to believe that God is sitting in his throne, pondering away what ones future job prospects are and interfering in ones trivial daily efforts based on our prayers all the while forgetting that, in that same vein of thought, he did the exact same thing for Mao Zedong and King Leopold II. This brings me to my closing point.

The Futility of Prayer

Prayer is a touchy subject. I dont believe that prayer is inherently bad or selfish, but I do believe that it becomes cognitively impairing when you are expecting a response from the other end. Even after I denounced my faith, I nonetheless prayed for friends and familyafter all, you can still be hopeful for another person without having to include a deity. In the same vein, you can just as easily express gratitude for those things youve received and cherish most. This doesnt beg the ear of a man in the sky. However, its important not to fall victim to confirmation bias: that is, to believe something is the case when it confirms your subjective belief. For example, you pray for God to fulfill outcome A. If outcome A is fulfilled, then God answered your prayer. If outcome A is not fulfilled and you are left with outcome B, then God still answered your prayer, only not as you would have hoped for. In the former case, youve affirmed the
26

Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 24.

consequentyouve essentially fooled yourself that because the outcome you prayed for came to fulfillment, that God must have been listening in on your prayers.
1. If P, then Q. 2. Q. 3. Therefore, P. (If God is listening, my prayer will be answered.) (My prayer was answered.) (Therefore, God was listening.)

This is invalid logic, because you cannot prove that God was ever listening. You can replace God with any deity, really, and still draw the same conclusion.
1. If P, then Q. 2. Q. 3. Therefore, P. (If Zeus is listening, my prayer will be answered.) (My prayer was answered.) (Therefore, Zeus was listening.)

Its easy to attribute divine intervention in ones own affairs due to subjective validation. You pray for a better job, and a few months later, youre employed at a new company with a higher-paying salary. God did it. Youre tired of your junk car and you pray for a miracle. A few days later, you stumble across an envelope with $10,000 in a parking lot and proceed to buy yourself a new Toyota. God did it. Youre tired of moms meatloaf and you pray for something else to eat. That night, your father decides to order pizza. God did it. You can see that Jesus makes this clear in Mark 11:24:
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

But what about harlequin fetuses? Quadriplegics? Children born with genetic abnormalities? What does this say about the efficacy of prayers for situations which we know God is absolutely powerless in? As I said before, its easy to attribute a miraculous outcome to a prayerbut what about those prayers that even the most faithful know God is impotent to answer? No amount of prayer will ever be able to re-grow a persons limb, nor did prayer do anything to prevent some of the most horrid atrocities throughout human history. Really, I ask: why pray to a powerless God? How many people were frantically praying on the airlines that crashed into the Twin Towers, hoping God would extend his ever-loving hand out of the heavens and

divert the planes to a safe landing? Where was he then? Or the over six million detainees in German labor camps that died praying for liberation? Those prayers went unanswered. Bu t Im almost certain that some one somewhere had his prayer answered today, either because class was cancelled or because God helped him heal up from a cold. This is the delusion that Christians live in they live in a fabricated reality where God is in control, yet ignore the times when he has absolutely no control. I know, because I used to be that Christian. I thanked God when he answered my prayers when I graduated college, when I landed a good job overseas, when I found out that I would be placed conveniently next to a church. (Ironically, my experience at that church is partially why I began to question my faith in the first place.) Yet, looking back on these prayers, these were all circumstantial in nature. Any prayers that required an insurmountable amount of faithor as little faith as a mustard seedstill linger as echoes yet to be heard. Try it out for yourself: if you have an uncle with a brain-eating disease, pray that the disease go away and his brain be restored to full capacity. If you have a mother whos been praying fervently for years for her womanizing husband to return to her and live out the waning years of her life happily together, pray along with her and see if that helps. If you have an amputee friend and hate seeing them struggle with everyday tasks, pray that God gives them a new limb. Never worked for me, anyway. After all, anything is possible with God, right? Anything being a misnomer for anything that isnt impossible within the scope of our comprehensible reality, that is. Its said that God answers all prayers, even if the answer is no. So hence, weve managed to exclude the prayer of every paraplegic and quadriplegic for new limbs, every blind person that hopes to see, every deaf person that hopes to one day experience music, and virtually every prayer that is out of the grasp of our reality. Ironically, it is through the works of science that we are working to one day being able to accomplish these things, not through the hands of God. If he is unable to perform what he claimed to be able to perform, then I ask the same question inquired in the riddle of Epicurus: why call him God?

PART I V

Gods Universe __________________

Is man merely a mistake of Gods? Or God merely a mistake of man?
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Every text, every work of man is subject to meticulous scrutiny and is ultimately at the mercy of logical inference. I will save scientific inquiry in this section and focus primarily on philosophical questions surrounding stories and ideas in the Bible, primarily because science has already superbly done much to discredit many Biblical premises I will, however, come back to science in latter sections. Instead, I wish to frame existence from Gods point of view, and explore the philosophical underpinnings of the Bibles folklore. There is much debate within the Christian community regarding the exact methodology of Biblical interpretation, between creationists and subscribers of intelligent design, between layman and theologian, and even between theologians themselves. Regardless of how one chooses to digest the Bibles morsels of morality, however, one neednt scrape very far before unraveling the absurdity behind the Bibles postulations.

Illogicality of Creation
Let us begin at the very instance of Creation and the story of Adam and Eve. Before I continue, I would like to state that I will focus on a literal interpretation of this story, given that those who argue otherwise myself included, prior to abandoning my religious convictions have essentially nullified the very core of their faith and the redemption of Christ by dismissing this story as being anything but literal. Without a literal Adam

and Eve to introduce the concept of sin into the world, the very foundation of Christianity already falls apart rather quickly. Moreover, I wont focus too keenly on dismissing the unrealistic claims made in this story, but instead I will concentrate on the inherent problems within the story itself. In the beginning, an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving God created the Heavens and the Earth. God then proceeded to create man in his image, assigning him the task of naming every species on the planet. God then created woman from man, and gave them the freedom to do as they wished, so long as they did not consume from the Tree of Knowledge. Up until then, man and woman were sinless beings. God tells man and woman to be fruitful and multiply, and to subdue the Earth. Before Adam and Eve succumbed to temptation, they knew nothing of mortality, and woman had no fear over the pains of childbirth. So long as Gods original scheme held up, Adam and Eve were bound to multiply endlessly on a finite planet with finite resources. Without death, they were free to produce offspring who, in turn, would need to continue on the incestuous cycle of immortal inbreeding indefinitely. One can already see the logical problems with such a story. Accounting for the past 50,000 years, it is estimated that roughly 108 billion people have been born. The amount of people alive and walking the Earth todaya measly 7 billionaccount for only 7% of the amount of people to have ever lived.27 Now try to imagine a world without death. Try to visualize what it would be like to see one billion people after another billion people being born in a continuous, never-ending cycle. In Gods sinless universe, there is no such thing as mortality. Even though we as a species are currently struggling with such issues as climate change, overpopulation, and food shortages throughout the world, human mortality has up until now prevented these issues from escalating any faster than their current pace. Was this detail lost on the original writers of this story due to a lack of oversight? I cant help but to ask, just what exactly is Gods ultimate endgame here? I can only infer that he would have issued mankind one final decree upon reaching their total population zenith, something along the lines of:
Cease all this senseless fornication, my children, for there is room for no more.
How Many People Have Ever Lived On Earth?, Population Reference Bureau, last modified October, 2011, accessed March 3, 2014, http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx
27

Going back to our old friends in Eden, Gods original plan was absolutely ludicrous in contextunless, of course, you factor in that sin was an inherent necessity in Gods plan. By accepting this, you also accept that God is the author of sin itself, solely responsible for all of the malice wrought unto this world. This is a tough pill to swallow, but without this detail, Gods plan for a perfect paradise on Earth simply would not have worked. Therefore, we are left drawing the following conclusions:
1. An all-knowing God was already aware that mankind would transgress against him. He knew his plan was bound for failure, and ensured that this was to come to fruition by placing the very monument of temptation, the Tree of Knowledge, within the easily accessible reach of man. 2. An all-powerful God willfully allowed Satan to enter his realm in order to tempt his own creationan act that, given Gods omniscience, he would have already known about and would have already condoned. 3. An all-loving God tempted his very own creation, knowing full-well that they would succumb to and indulge in it, henceforth leading to all of the pain, strife, and misery evident in the world today.

Before dismissing the idea of God and Satan working exclusively with one another, bear in mind that such a concept is explored later in the Bible, in the Book of Job. The only deaths attributed to Satan in the entirety of the Bible are those conducted against Jobs family and servants as a test of faithan act specifically ordained by God himself. Satan, making a divine bet with God, assured God that Jobs faith would waver given enough prodding. He suggested that killing Jobs family would cause Jobs faith to utterly dissolve; however, Satan specifically required the permission of God to carry out the killings in order to test Job s faith, which God then obliged and encouraged him into doing so. Satan was otherwise unable to work outside the realm of God. This all-knowing God allowed Satan to kill a mans family all over an outcome that he already knew. Why did God test Job, then, if he ultimately knew that he would pass such a trial? Why did God strip this man of his children over a question that he already knew the answer to? This really paints a perspective of the fear that most Christians attest toward Satan, when the reality is that God himself has senselessly killed millionsSatan was merely a pawn on Gods grand chessboard.

After all, looking solely at Biblical numbers, God has killed a total of 2,821,364 peoplemen, women, children and infantscompared to Satans measly ten (which were, as I stated, those killings approved by God: Jobs seven sons and three daughters). 28 This, of course, doesnt factor in the number of times when numbers werent included, which then truly inflates the numbers for Godan estimate of roughly 25 million killedyet only marginally ups Satans kill count to 60. 29 Of course, I dont believe that any of these killings actually transpiredIm merely going off of what the Bible has to say. We can establish that God is the sole author of sin, and he presented it to humanity on a silver platter. When Christians ask for salvation, they are not asking for forgiveness for the sins wrought upon their soul by people who transgressed against Godthey are asking for salvation from God himself. Given the logical plot holes in the story of Creation, one can see that the very notion of sin was an ad hoc conjecture on behalf of the many writers of Genesis. An apologist would defend God by stating that our own free will was what led us to temptation; however, in Gods universe, free will is but an illusion. If you recall back to Psalm 139:16, God has already scheduled every day of your life for you. One cannot expect to have free will in a life that theyve trusted over to a higher power. By accepting that God is ultimately in control, youve relinquished your free will altogether. As I said previously with prayer, wouldnt you be calling to question the very benevolence and omniscience of God by asking him to perform an outcome contrary to whatever he already has in store for you? Doesnt God already have the best intentions set out for you and your life? What really bothers me, then, is the fact that God advances to take out his wrath on his own creation that he himself conspired against. Given his omniscience, what other outcome was he expecting when he said the following in Genesis 6:6-7:
The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the LORD said, I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the groundfor I regret that I have made them.
28 29

Steve Wells, Drunk With Blood: Gods Killings in the Bible, (SAB Books LLC, 2013), 12. Ibid.

How can an omniscient being feel regret over the actions taken by his creation? He knew exactly what the outcome would be and continued his experiment anywayso the fact that he felt regret whatsoever challenges his omniscience. Moreover, not only is God angry with man, but he also goes forth to enact his wrath against creatures that had nothing to do at all with man and his actions. Seems reasonable enough.

Heaven and Hell

The concept of heaven is a simple one: an eternal paradise that awaits those who have voluntarily chosen to be saved by accepting God as their savior. Those who reject the name of Jesus are otherwise condemned to an eternity of pain and suffering in hell, never again having the opportunity to seize redemption. Although most Christians will rejoice at the idea of an eternal life of bliss and harmony, the very idea of a heaven is a contradiction. Lets reexamine some of the killings attributed to God that I mentionedin this instance, the senseless slaughtering of people whom God found to be disagreeable:
There are places where the text seems to embrace a view that seems unworthy of God or of his people. Are we really to think of God as someone who orders the wholesale massacre of an entire city? In Joshua 6, God orders the soldiers of Israel to attack the city of Jericho and to slaughter every man, woman, and child in the city. I suppose it makes sense that God would not want bad influences on his peoplebut does he really think that murdering all the toddlers and infants is necessary to that end? What do they have to do with wickedness?30

Its hard to believe that fundamentalist Christians get so worked up over abortions, when God has probably killed more infants out of rage than those that have ever been aborted by humankind. The question that I want to raise is, just what became of the souls of these victims? Where did they end up? Did God kill them to expedite their way into heaven? Or do these childreninnocent beings that knew nothing of wickedness, for Gods sakeend up in hell? Did Godin all his omnisciencealready know these children would grow up to be sinners and simply sped up the
30

Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 10.

process toward their inevitable damnation? Its a really disturbing thought, and a blow to free will either way you look at it. How could one even conceive of a perfect place to begin with? Imagine, if you will, that youre a Christian who died tomorrow and went directly to heaven. You left behind friends and family who you loved dearly, and are looking forward to reuniting with once again when it is their time to walk through the pearly gates. However, as time goes onassuming that time in such a place is linear you come to find out that your son eventually comes to reject the notion of God and decides instead to become an atheist. By this standard, God will condemn him to hell. No amount of arguing, pleading, praying, or begging will convince God otherwise unless your son, out of his own God-given free willa contradiction, at thatdecides to convert to the Christian faith. He otherwise leads a good life, has children of his own, and dies at a ripe old agenever once uttering the name of Jesus. However, he is nevertheless condemned to hell. Now you, in heaven, must live out the remainder of eternity knowing full well that your one and only child is suffering to no end, forever, because he failed to adhere to a simple belief system. That s it. Even though, by Biblical standards, your son followed a lifestyle akin to that of a typical Christiannever killing, stealing, lying, or breaking any of the other major deadly sinsyet he is to be forged eternally in a fire from which he will never escape. And you, bearing this weight in your heart, will have to endure and persist with this knowledge forever. Your God will do nothing for him at this point. A Christian rebuttal might introduce a deus ex machina by saying that God will heal you of your pain of this knowledge, but this is utterly contrived nonsense. If it were me, no amount of mystical magic would ever tear me from the fact that my only child is nothing short of a wick fueling an everlasting flame in hell. Why would I continue to worship the bastard that put my kid there in the first place? I could never in the span of eternity come to worship such a deity. Of course, Im not the one going to heaven, because I stopped believing. Or am I? It really depends on who you ask, honestly. Some Christians believe that a former Christian can still enter heaven, given that that person was once and forever remains saved; some others, however, argue that salvation isnt fixed, and can be lost. I could instead subscribe to Pascals wager, in which Blaise Pascal stated that it is better to believe in God and receive an eternity in Heaven, because if indeed he does exist, such a fate would fare much better than not to believe and consequently

rot in hell because of it. However, this is only further feeding and perpetuating cognitive dissonance.
Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something I can decide to do as an act of will. I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word inside them. But none of that can make me actually believe it if I don t. Pascals wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he d see through the deception.31

Let us return back to the plausibility of heaven, a perfect place away from our imperfect world. Once more I ask: can such a place truly exist? Moreover, would you truly want to be stuck there for eternity? If heaven is indeed a perfect place, then it is a place that cannot be improved upon any further; after all, you cant make something more perfect, for that is an oxymoronperfection is the epitome of itself. Part of what makes life on Earth so monumental and joyous are the imperfections that we as human beings build uponbe those moral, intellectual, or personal imperfections that we are constantly working on through learning and our subjective experiences. We can never achieve perfection, but it is through our strides to broaden ourselves that make life truly worthwhile. Furthermore, with respect to such things that may fuel our desires, there s always something to look forward to around the bend. In my particular case, movies and their sequelswith the exception of Spider-Man 3 and Die Hard 5provide me with a sense of anticipation and excitement. Technology, media, new video game consoles and hardware always leave me waiting to see what great inventions and innovations human beings come up with next. Thinking of future possibilities truly enriches my life. In heaven, however, such luxuries cannot possibly exist, because it is already a perfect placeeverything that can and will exist already would in heaven. You simply cannot add to the concept of perfection. We as people attach meaning to our lives given the span of our brief stint on this stellar rock. What would fuel ones passions if the potential to experience everything there is to do in heaven is available to you, without repercussions or time limits? It is because of finiteness that we grow to cherish and appreciate what we have in our lives.
31

Dawkins, The God Delusion, 104.

Not even the Bible can agree with itself as to just exactly what Gods grand plan is. Within the context of this book, you have verses that dismiss the very notion of heaven and hell, and yet others that confirm it. Which is it, then? Is God using the concept of sin solely for the sake of punishment? Has he no other motive than to ensure the suffering of mankind?
The authors of Job and Ecclesiastes explicitly state that there is no afterlife. The book of Amos insists that the people of God suffer because God is punishing them for their sins; the book of Job insists that the innocent can suffer; and the book of Daniel indicates that the innocent will in fact suffer.32

On the same page, many variations of a particular argument for defining God and his foolproof playground have sprouted through the centuries. Rene Descartes, Kurt Gdel, and Anselm of Canterbury all subscribed to one variation or another of the ontological argument for God s existence. A simplified version of this argument can be framed as follows:
1. We understand that Gods perfection cannot be surpassed. 2. We are currently thinking about God; and if he were to only exist within our thoughts, then surely we can conceive of a greater being. 3. Because we cannot conceive of a greater being than God, God must surely exist.

One of the many problems with this framework lies in its form. For one, you are free to replace the variable of God with essentially anything that you please, thereby allowing other variables to appear equally sound, as Gaunilo of Marmoutiers argued. 33 Immanuel Kant was also a proponent critic of this argument. He stated that existence is not a matter of merely possessing a property or certain attributes. 34 Thus, a God that exists possesses all of the same properties as a God that doesnt exist, making them identical. Neither of them can be compared. To elaborate on Kants argument, suppose I tell you all about the PlayStation 5. I tell you about its size, its color, and every detail in
Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 12. Michael J. Murray and Michael Cannon Rea, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 126. 34 Anselm: Ontological Argument for Gods Existence, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last modified April 27, 2005, accessed March 4, 2014, http://www.iep.utm.edu/ont-arg.
32 33

between. Then I assure you that it truly does exist. By my telling you that it exists, I havent taken away from the idea that Ive just painted about the PlayStation 5. Regardless of whether it exists in the real world, this does nothing to change the conception I have just drawn of the PlayStation 5. However, this doesnt mean that, in actuality, said console exists. Ive constructed the idea of the PlayStation 5, but this isnt sufficient to say that it exists. The same can be said of heaven and of God. Many people have crafted many different visions and representations of God and his perfect paradise, but this does nothing to validate the existence of either conjecture. You can tell me all about Gods omnipotence, his omniscience, and his miracles, but this wouldnt be sufficient to validate his existence. We as a species have constructed the idea of Godmany, many ideas of God throughout human history, actuallyand Ill heartily contend that God does indeed exist in one place: within the realms of our minds.

Defining Salvation
The very idea of salvation is a difficult concept to grasp. God, the only logically-conclusive creator of sin, became angered and threatened his creation because he knew that they would fall for his trap. He wipes life off the face of the Earth and decides to give it another go. His thirst for gore goes unquenched for a few thousand years until he decides to send himself down to Earth to sacrifice himself to atone for man s transgressions. Not one to pull any punches, he makes one lasting and impressionable threat to mankind during his time here: follow me or rot in hell. Reallythats unapologetically the core tenant that he repeatedly espoused throughout the Bible. Look at John 15:6:
If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

As I discussed previously, it becomes inherently difficult to define just exactly what the meaning of salvation is, and what it is exactly that we are being saved from. Were being saved from Gods wrath? But God is all-loving, isnt he? Were being saved from our sinful nature? But God put us in this very position, didnt he? Why would God condemn someone merely for refusing to follow him because a critique of Gods own word led them to no rational or logical conclusion of his very existence? It would seem that if we think too hardhard enough to abandon all of the

inconsistencies, justifications, and rationalizations we need to hold up in order to make the word of God somewhat consistent were destined to hell; yet if we passively follow his word, were pretty much in safe territory. God really isnt a nice guy, and I brought this up beforehe is just as vengeful as ever in the New Testament as in the Old.
Even in the New Testament God is a God of judgment and wrath, as any reader of the book of Revelations knows. The Lake of Fire is stoked up and ready for everyone who is opposed to God. This will involve eternal burningan ever-lasting punishment, even for those who have sinned against God, intermittently, say, for twenty years. Twenty trillion years of torment in exchange for twenty years of wrong living; and thats only the beginning. Is this really worthy of God?35

Ive had discussions before with my Christian friends and family about just where exactly God draws the line between being saved and going to hell. Most of them are of the belief that God will not punish those who have not heard his name before; say, people in remote parts of the world or those without access to missionaries and church bodies who otherwise have no way of discovering God. This is just nonsensical thinking, though. What of those who have merely heard of Jesus through hearsay and in passing? At what point does God say that your trial period is up before asking you to subscribe to his faith or suffer eternally? Ive had non-Christian friends attend church services for one reason or another, usually to participate in or listen to some worship music that I used to be involved in. They strolled in and out of church on numerous occasions, listening to people singing praise to Goddoes this mean that now, having been exposed to God, that they are going to hell because they didnt convert? Wouldnt it make more sensefrom a humanist perspectiveto simply cut out God from the equation altogether if its that easy to fall victim to damnation? After all, the less that people know about God, the more likely they are to enter heaven because of this apparent loophole of a free pass to heaven simply by never hearing about God in the first place. Wouldnt you be, in actuality, saving that many more people simply by refraining from bringing God into the picture to begin with? Its really counterintuitive to introduce this idea of try and die aspect of faiththis notion that everyone is saved before hearing of Jesus but are condemned if they so much as hear of his name. This contrarily defeats the
35

Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 11.

idea of original sin, doesnt it? Youre born damned, you need Jesus to save you, yet if you dont hear about Jesus whatsoever in your life, youre let off the hook. Im not entirely sure how many Christians believe this, or how other Christians feel about non-believers, but this idea truly flies in the face of reason. Suppose there is a hardened criminal lying on his deathbed taking his last breaths of life. This is a man who killed an entire family, spent the majority of his life peddling drugs to children, cheating others out of their money, and committing other seemingly sinful acts. Minutes before his passing, however, he asks for a priest to come into the room. The priest walks in, and the man asks the priest for forgiveness and to ask for the salvation of Jesus Christ. The priest obliges, blesses the man, and a few minutes afterwards, the man finally passes from this world. By all accounts, this man is saved, yes? Despite an entire life devoted to selfishness and breaking every deadly sin, he was nevertheless able to repent at the very last minute, saving his soul from eternal damnation and punishment. But what about in the case of the atheist son that I mentioned earlier? While the former is saved via technicality, the latter is damned, despite having lived out a relatively sinless lifeI use relatively due to the fact that many Christians already assume that people are inherently damned and cannot be truly sinless beings. Ive been told that sin bears equal weight, and I would imagine that most Christians would agree that the criminal will end up in heaven due to his repentance. The atheist son, still bearing the weight of original sin and whatever other minor transgressions he may have committed throughout his life, will end up in hell, seeing that it was his own fault for rejecting the faith and carrying his sins to the grave. Am I really to believe that it is that easy to sneak into heaven and just that easy to be damnedbased on little more than a mere triviality? This just seems that God is merely ticking off a box on a sheet, rather than judging us based on our moral character and what is truly within our hearts. It just seems downright silly to judge an entire race based on a singular act in a metaphorical story committed by two people who ate a fruit from a tree. By this standard, if your father committed murder, would it be appropriate for you and your children to carry out his sentence?

PART

Abandoning God __________________

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
ISAAC ASIMOV

You will have to excuse my use of the word, but hindsight truly is a blessing. I never really did realize just how guarded I was and those around me still are in defending their faith. Much of my Catholic upbringing stuck with me through my Christian rebirth. I was afraid to questionat least, question too deeplywithout fear of being smitten. I was afraid to parody contradictions and nonsensical stories that I came across in the Bible without thinking that I might honestly spontaneously combust into flames. Come to think of it, much of my faith was firmly rooted in fear. The love I ultimately felt was that out of pity. So long as I hadnt crossed God, Id be rewarded with something in return. Good, I havent pissed him off, I used to tell myself. I remember purchasing a book, sometime before I began to slip into staunchly critiquing my faith but after my faith had matured to the point of pursuing further intellectual inquiry, which dealt with the historicity of the Bible and its stories. I dont remember its title, but it was not a book that sought to attack faith in any way. I simply yearned to learn more about my faith through other means. I enthusiastically showed off my book to someone very dear to mewho, for the sake of anonymity, will remain namelessand I vividly remember them telling me these words that have never really left me: Im glad youre handling your faith with such earnest. But remember not to stop reading your Biblethats the real truth. I honestly believe that is the day God took the first bullet.

No Looking Back
My journey away from my faith didnt happen immediately. I didnt have an Aha! moment where I simply dropped my beliefs. It was a long-winded process, involving denial, attempts at rationalizing inconsistencies, and a string of ad hoc reasoning. It involved looking at plain, raw, factual data and drawing illogical conclusions about how and why God operated the way that he did. I wish to revisit the scientific method and just what incompatibilities I discovered between faith and reason, but first I d simply like to discuss my psychological bout with God and his machine. Bart Ehrman wrote about his gradual decline from faith, a testimonial that truly reverberated with me and my situation. Ehrman is a Christian-turned-agnostic New Testament scholar and historian who attended Moody Bible Institute to devote himself completely to the Christian faith.36 Upon entering Wheaton College, he delved deeper into textual criticism of the Bible and came to realize more and more that the Bible was not consistent with itself nor was it historically accurate with its claims. He recalls his experience in such a way that I could not help but draw parallels to my own life:
As time went on my views continued to evolve. I did not go from being an evangelical to an agnostic overnight. Quite the contrary: for some fifteen years after I had given up on my views of the verbal inspiration of the Bible, I continued to be a faithful Christiana churchgoing, God-believing, sin-confessing Christian. I did become increasingly liberal in my views. My research led me to question important aspects of my faith. Eventually, not long after I left the seminary, I came to the place where I still believed completely in God, but understood the Bible in a more metaphorical, less literal, sense: the Bible seemed to me to contain inspired literature, in that it could inspire true and useful thinking about God, but it was still the product of human hands and contained all the kinds of mistakes that any human undertaking will bring.37

For a long time, this essentially mirrored my own views that I held while I was juggling my faith and disbelief. I never truly believed in a literal
36 37

Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 4. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 16-17.

interpretation of Genesis, for it defied reason; I had always questioned the stories of Moses and Abraham because they too lacked historical evidence and defied what we have come to know about human origins through scientific inquiry and consensus; I never really believed that God would have sent a bear to maul 42 children merely for insulting a bald man. I myself sport a barren head and have been mocked for it on many occasionsyet Id never wish death upon my inciters, let alone a mauling by a rabid beast. I simply read the Bible as a metaphorical story that God used to explain elaborate workings of his universe to primitive, uneducated men. Ultimately, though, I found that I could no longer sustain this juggling act any further. The balls came crashing down, just as they had for Ehrman.
There came a time when I left the faith. This was not because of what I learned through historical criticism, but because I could no longer reconcile my faith in God with the state of the world that I saw all around me. There is so much senseless pain and misery in the world that I came to find it impossible to believe that there is a good and loving God who is in control, despite my knowing all the standard rejoinders that people give.38

This is exactly the point where I find myself today. Faith, I find, is akin to a very fickle table. It holds together quite well, so long as you don t put too much pressure on it. As soon as you mount enough strain on its framework, though, the entire thing collapses. It s very difficult to put back together, if at all. Once you begin picking apart faith with reason, it s nigh impossible to ever embrace it the same way again. Ehrman contends that his research is nothing new; in fact, most historians and pastors are taught of the inerrancies of the Bible in seminaries and divinity schools at least, one could only hope. 39 Although it led him to question, it is not his dissection of historical errors that ultimately shattered his faith; what did him in was the problem of suffering, not a historical approach to the Bible, that led [him] to agnosticism.40 He states that it is a real shame that people both in the
38 39 40

Ibid., 17. Ibid., 18. Ibid.

pew and in the streets know little about the actual historicity and fallibility of the Bible, and I couldnt agree more. Information would certainly levy some of the ignorance being espoused from those who aren t informed to the natural workings of the world. This brings me back full circle to my opening statement: God and evolution.

God Was A Fish

I cannot stress enough how much of an impact scientific inquiry and the illiterate disregard of itled me to abandoning my faith. If historical inquiry placed my faith in a coffin, science was what nailed it shut. I mentioned evolution early on, but I really want to focus on what exactly evolution is, how it works, and why it is a scientific fact. As stated previously, Christians get hung up on the notion that evolution is just a theoryas if this was sufficient enough to dismiss it entirely. Thats equally as ridiculous a statement as dismissing gravity for also being just a theory and instead purporting that God is using magic to keep the planets in celestial orbit. They fail to realize the difference between a laymans use of the vernacular I have a theory that Jack has a crush on Ginaand the scientific use of a theorya collection of observable facts that help to explain a given phenomenon.
In Darwins day, the evidence for his theories was compelling but not completely decisive. We can say, then, that evolution was a theory (albeit a strongly supported one) when first proposed by Darwin, and since 1859 has graduated to facthood as more and more supporting evidence has piled up. Evolution is still called a theory, just like the theory of gravity, but its a theory that is also a fact.41 But evolution is far more than a theory, let alone a theory in crisis. Evolution is a fact. And far from casting doubt on Darwinism, the evidence gathered by scientists over the past century and a half supports it completely, showing that evolution happened, and that it happened largely as Darwin proposed, through the workings of natural selection.42

41 42

Jerry A. Coyne, Why Evolution is True (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 18. Ibid., xii.

This denial of evolutionary fact is mainly an American phenomenon, and its clear that this resistance stems largely from religion. You can find religions without creationism, but you never find creationism without religion.43 There was a time when Darwins observations were held under scrutiny, and for good reasonafter all, this is what makes science such an unbiased field. If it cannot be tested, then it fails to be good science. Creationismand its cheap knockoff, intelligent designfail every criteria of science because its tenets cannot be tested. Yet this is the type of garbage that Christians would like to prop up to compete against evolutionary theory.
Why teach a discredited, religiously based theory, even one widely believed, alongside a theory so obviously true? Its like asking that shamanism be taught in medical school alongside Western medicine, or astrology be presented in psychology class as an alternative theory of human behavior.44

I can understand that the idea of creation without a designer is a scary one to some people, especially those who have been led to believe that a benevolent man in the sky lovingly customized and crafted every facet of their being. It is due to this inability to cope with anarchic design that many who reject creationism instead adopt intelligent design as a Christian alternative. However, as Ive argued, intelligent design is as absurd and preposterous a notion as creationism itself. In actuality, it should instead be dubbed Creationism Lite. Adopters of intelligent design often use the watchmaker analogy, an argument from design given by William Paley in 1802, in a vain attempt at countering evolution. Its premise is simple: you stumble upon a watch, and upon scrutinizing said watch, draw the conclusion that given its technical and complex mechanical workings, someone carefully and meticulously crafted its designit couldnt have manifested itself. Given the exponential complexity of life compared to the watch, life must have been designed, and could not have simply just appeared. This argument, however, is not only self-refuting, but also falls apart given modern advances in understanding the natural world. In the case of complexity, you are essentially constructing an argument based on unjustified assertions:

43 44

Ibid., xvi. Ibid., xviii.

1. Object A appears complex. Therefore, Object A was designed. 2. Object B appears more complex than A. Therefore, Object B was also designed.

Complexity alone does not justify design, and is a terrible measure to use when implying design. Couldnt you use this argument against God by saying that God, appearing complex to our finite minds, is also worthy of his own designer? Who designed God? It s an inherently flawed premise. Moreover, adherents of intelligent design fail to explain why, in a purposefully-crafted natural system, such fine-tunings fail to ensure the survival of species:
And, of course, every instance of a plant or animal that is parasitized or diseased represents a failure to adapt. Likewise for all cases of extinction, which represent well over 99 percent of species that have ever lived. (This, by the way, poses an enormous problem for theories of intelligent design. It doesn t seem so intelligent to design millions of species that are destined to go extinct, and then replace them with other, similar species, most of which will also vanish. ID supporters have never addressed this difficulty.)45

It truly seems mad to have to conjure up insane and fallacious explanations to try and balance ones faith in the face of scientific evidence. During a time before we knew that stars were superhot furnaces, many of which weve discovered have planets of their very own, I can understand why one would be inclined to take the Bible literally and believe that God strung them up as lights in the night sky to guide us through our travels. During a time before we knew that the moon does not produce any light of its ownacting merely as a reflector of itthat one would literally believe that it was the second light that God created to rule over the night. This is why the Bible is as unscientific as it is, because it was written by people who had little knowledge over the natural workings of our world. But we have come so far as a species to simply reject all of the scientific advances that we have made only to seemingly regress backwards in our thought and reason. I believe the problem lies in much of the misinformation spewed from the mouths of those unknowledgeable about evolution and its workings.
45

Ibid., 13.

One fallacious claim that I often hear is the presupposition that humans evolved from apesthis is simply not true. This straw man is likely drawn from a widely-publicized image depicting a progressive change from ape to man, where a chimpanzee is shown progressively becoming a human being. This, however, does not represent evolution. Evolution is not a linear change, and chimpanzees do not possess the ability to become human beings. This is just not how it works, and is an example of a bad argument arguing bad science. Although human beings did not evolve from apes, we do share a common ancestor. Fossil evidence shows us that Homo sapiens shares a common ancestor with earlier Hominin species that later evolved into the Homo line. Recent findings also show that Europeans and East Asians contain roughly 20% of Homo neanderthalensis genes in their genome.46 Evolution is a bumpy process, and doesnt necessarily involve going from point A to point B in a smooth progression. In countering this, however, opponents of evolution will often make the case that because we have not found the missing link in human evolution, that evolution itself is false and just a theory. While it is true that evolution is still an evolving theory (no pun intended), its merits nevertheless lie in well-founded evidence. As Ive already argued, evolutionary theory is founded on scientific fact the theory itself is an explanation of the workings of the natural world based on our observations of natural laws. Suppose that I were to show you a jigsaw puzzle of a car. However, you realize that there are three or four pieces missing from the puzzle. Even though the puzzle itself is incomplete, you can still deduce from the puzzle the make, model, and color of the car in question. Despite missing a few pieces, you can confidently make the assertion that, upon finding the missing jigsaw pieces, the final image wont be that of a boat or a plane. This is akin to what we know about evolution today: although it is currently incomplete, we have enough evidence to construct the bigger picture.
The total number of species that have ever lived on Earth has been estimated to range between seventeen million (probably a drastic underestimate given that at least ten million species are alive today) and four billion. Since we have discovered around 250,000 different fossil species, we can estimate that we have fossil evidence of only 0.1 percent to 1 percent of all specieshardly a good sample of the history of life! Many amazing creatures must
Benjamin Vernot and Joshua M. Akey, Resurrecting Surviving Neandertal Lineages from Modern Human Genomes, Science 343, no. 6174 (February 2014): 1017-1021.
46

have existed that are forever lost to us. Nevertheless, we have enough fossils to give us a good idea of how evolution proceeded, and to discern how major groups split off from one another.47

Occasionally Ill come across Christians who will dip their feet only so far into the pool, but refuse to jump in. For example, I have Christian friends who have told me that they believe in adaptation and natural selection, but refuse to believe the tenets of evolution. Ironically, they are simultaneously accepting and rejecting evolution itself, for the two come as a package deal. In a nutshell, the processes fueling both are remarkably simply. It requires only that individuals of a species vary genetically in their ability to survive and reproduce in their environment. Given this, natural selectionand evolutionare inevitable.48 As time progresses, those individuals that contain better genes are selected against those with deleterious genes through natural selection. With enough time and change, the consequent generations may become so genetically different that they branch off into subsequent species that can no longer interbreed a process known as speciation.49 This is a process that we have not only been able to infer from the fossil record, but that we have also been able to observe given the variety of species that have become suited to their environments through natural selection. Again, supporters of intelligent design have failed to answer why species undergo evolution in the first place if indeed they were designed as-is only to later be replaced by individuals better suited to their conditions primarily because they like to pretend that evolution is not a fact, and jump around the subject to land on their own conclusions. Birds and reptiles are two groups that serve as a prime example of evolution over a long period of time. Common ancestrythe tenet that we can always look back in time, using either DNA sequences or fossils, and find descendant lineages fusing at their ancestors 50 has allowed scientists to make powerful predictions about evolution.
If we see that birds and reptiles group together based on their features and DNA sequences, we can predict that we should find common ancestors of birds and reptiles in the fossil record. Such

47 48 49 50

Coyne, Why Evolution is True, 23-24. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 4-6. Ibid., 8.

predictions have been fulfilled, giving some of the strongest evidence for evolution.51

The only arguments against the theory of evolution are unjustifiable, untestable theories conjured up by creationists and intelligent design advocates based on other equally unjustifiable, untestable theories. The very framework of intelligent design falls apart under its own meritscomplexity does not infer design. In fact, if human beings were in fact designed, then they should be taken back to the drawing board for some further tinkering. Many aspects of human biology suit our needs, but they could really use some improvement. Our eyes work well, but they could comparatively function better. Our ears hear well, but our ability to hear certain ranges fades with time. This is why evolution is passively selective: it doesnt select the best traits, but only those traits that ensure the survival of the individual. Evolution only cares about what works in a given environment, and doesnt imply that one day there will be a supreme, perfected version of a species.
Evolution is like an architect who cannot design a building from scratch, but must build every new structure by adapting a preexisting building, keeping the structure habitable all the while. This leads to some compromises. We men, for example, would be better off if our testes formed directly outside the body, where the cooler temperature is better for sperm. The testes, however, begin development in the abdomen. When the fetus is six or seven months old, they migrate down into the scrotum through two channels called the inguinal canals, removing them from the damaging heat of the rest of the body. Those canals leave weak spots in the body wall that make men prone to inguinal hernias. These hernias are bad: they can obstruct the intestine, and sometimes caused death in the years before surgery. No intelligent designer would have given us this torturous testicular journey. Were stuck with it because we inherited our developmental program for making testes from fish-like ancestors, whose gonads developed, and remained, completely within the abdomen. We begin development with fish-like internal testes, and our testicular descent evolved later, as a clumsy add-on.52

51 52

Ibid., 10-11. Ibid., 13.

On fetuses, Charles Darwin himself was fascinated and obsessed with fetal development. He became particularly interested in the fact that nearly all of the fetuses that he studied appeared remarkably similar. Although he couldnt truly grasp the reasons why at the time, modern science has demonstrated that genes in DNA are switched on and off, thereby igniting the spark from which all species are endowed with what makes them inherently unique. After all, about 60 percent of chicken genes correspond to a similar human gene. 53 Moreover, research conducted by the National Human Genome Research Institute also discovered that:
Genes conserved between human and chicken often are also conserved in fish. For example, 72 percent of the corresponding pairs of chicken and human genes also possess a counterpart in the genome of the puffer fish (Takifugu rubripes). According to the researchers, these genes are likely to be present in most vertebrates.54

The origin of vertebrates has furthermore been linked to an aquatic common ancestor. Modern fish, mammals and reptiles all have a backbone, which originally helped to anchor the strong swimming muscles of the tail in fish.55 Of course, this is more than simply mere conjecture:
Sixty million years ago there were plenty of fossil mammals, but no fossil whales. Creatures that resemble modern whales show up thirty million years later. We should be able, then, to find the transitional forms within this gap. And once again, thats exact ly where they are.56

Satirically speaking, if God truly created man in his image, then God is a fish. Our bodies are littered with vestigial remains that further reinforce this detail. Vestigiality is diagnosed not by its usefulness but because it no longer has the function for which it originally evolved. 57 Take whats left of our tail, for example: the coccyx, or the triangular end of our spine, thats made of several fused vertebrae hanging below our pelvis. Its what

Researchers Compare Chicken, Human Genome: Analysis of First Avian Genome Uncovers Differences Between Birds and Mammals, National Human Genome Research Institute, last modified December 8, 2004, accessed March 7, 2014, https://www.genome.gov/12514316 54 Ibid. 55 Coyne, Why Evolution is True, 52. 56 Ibid., 52-53. 57 Ibid., 66.
53

remains of the long, useful tail of our ancestors.58 To argue against the mounds of evidence supporting evolution with little more than the antiquated, tired words of scribes is truly a mental feat of ignorance. In my opening, I stated that I have been told time and time again, after asking serious questions about the inherent flaws in Christianity when compared to scientific research and findings be those questions surrounding human evolution itself, the origin of the universe, the question of sufferingthat the finite minds of men cannot understand the infinite works of God. This is a very dry and baseless defense, however. If I stumbled upon a mystical altar in the middle of the desert, glowing with power that simply could not be measured by human hands and transcended all human comprehension, then such an explanation could possibly hold up. But we have been able to understand and explain the works of God that Ive been arguing all along using measurements, observations, evidence, inferences, and falsifiable experimentations. What Ive come to find is that God is simply not there.

Godless Morals
I suppose a question one might ask me now is, Well, whats left of your morals now that youve left your faith? Its one that I oft hear Christians ask other agnostics, atheists, and non-believers, and it is as silly as it is equally arrogant, self-inflating and downright insulting. By asking such a question, you are drawing an assumption that Christianity is the basis of all moralityand its not a very good basis for one, at that. Let me speak for God before I speak for myself on this issue. God is the one who issued the Ten Commandments to Moses. He is also the one who holds humanity accountable for adheringor failing to adhere to his teachings. Morality in the Christian faith, then, is firmly rooted on the teachings of God and his edicts. So why, then, is it fair for him to enact his wrath on humankind for breaking his laws, when he himself does not follow nor conform to his own morality? Why is God exempt from his own laws? This doesnt make sense to me in the least. Gods moral foundation for our lives is weak if we cannot even hold him accountable to uphold it. Regarding Christians themselves, it is rather hypocritical for a Christian to assume that a non-believer has an inferior moral character to
58

Ibid.

them. Im not saying that this is the case with every Christian, because thats simply not true. However, I have met a large number of whom that resonate a very cavalier holier than thou portrayal of themselves. As far as I know, there hasnt been a perfect Christian to have ever walked this Earth (or roam the sky, seeing that God cant even hold himself accountable). Then again, this all boils down to the sins of the fathers. After all, is it truly moral to believe that a newborn child is born tainted, in need of holy cleansing? Is it also morally acceptable to teach this child during the critical period of his or her development about the subjective religious truths held by its parents, before the child has grown up enough to draw his or her own conclusions about a faith that is taught to them as matter of fact? This is indoctrination, plain and simple. These children are learning truths at a young age, unable to think outside of this religious framework that their parents have constructed for them. Dont take my word for it: simply look at the backlash against scientific findings today. Moreover, many Christians tend only to pick and choose the truths and moral tidbits of the Bible that they find convenient and appropriate, yet wholly disregard others. Take money, for example. If one were to truly take the Bible seriously, then they would sell all of their earthly possessions and have need for none. Jesus stated in Luke 14:33 that:
Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.

And Acts 2:44-45 says that:

All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.

With these verses alonecertainly not isolated ones, at thatwe have in actuality called to question millionsif not billionsof Christians today who live well beyond their means and enjoy a life of relative comfort. These Christians willagain, as a form of countering cognitive dissonance find a happy medium somewhere between giving nothing and giving everything. If Christians were to truly live in accordance to the Bible, the amount of wealth that could potentially be proliferated to the needy and poor throughout the world would change millions of lives. Yet, what I have come to realize is that many Christians will only let their god so far into their lives so that it neednt cause a disruption to their daily routines. A

good amount of Americans would like to believe that they live in a Christian nationan ironic contradiction, given Americas secular upbringing and secular Constitutionyet these same Americans fail to realize the absurdity of that claim, considering that they live in a consumerist capitalist society that is altogether incompatible with Jesus calling for a life of humble subtlety. If Americans were to truly live in accordance to what Jesus said, many wouldnt have three cars in their driveway, extra bedrooms in their homes that could otherwise be housing the needy and the poor, and hefty savings accounts, to name a few. Thus, to truly follow Jesus verbatim would be a major inconvenience to those that otherwise claim to follow him. Christianity, then, is not a good standard for morality when the majority of its followers dont even follow its core tenets very closely. In many cases, Ive noticed that a good amount of Christians will be good for the sake of appeasing God, rather than to fulfill their own internal moral satisfaction. As Einstein once said, If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.59 So where does that leave me? Am I now going to become a hedonistic, selfish money-hoarding murderer for hire? This might come as a shock to some people, but morality can survive despite religion. In fact, rescinding my faith only made me realize how unnecessary a component it is to ones sense of morality. The big no-nos are definitely still theredont kill, steal, lie, rape (actually, that last one should already be a given, but its surprisingly absent from the Ten Commandments)but I realized more than ever that I shouldnt do these things because of the repercussions they will have on others, not because someone upstairs will become upset with my actions. My not acting like a prick on Earth shouldnt be used as a means of attaining an all-access pass to see me through the gates of heaven. Regardless of a celestial reward system, though, most Christians do adhere to the Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would unto youwith the exception of a select few that I know, so homophobic, anti-progressive and anti-feminist that they are apparently trapped in a 1950s time warpbut now this universal Golden Rule holds a much deeper sense of altruism for me, given that I dont have to feel as if Im following what some sky demon reincarnated as a bearded man said. Not that all of Jesus ideas were badalthough some of what he said was outright insanebut he certainly wasnt the first to say what he did about
59

Dawkins, The God Delusion, 226.

altruism, about treating others as they should be treated, and about the dangers of a society so engrossed with itself. Do I believe in a historical Jesus? Sure, I can accept that a Palestinian Jewish man walked the Earth some 2,000 years ago and preached what he believed to be the word of God, but I dismiss any divinity associated to him. Remember that much of what is in the Bible was written many years after the fact, with only vague recollections to guide the writers. Also, without any of the original documents to compare to our modern Bible, coupled with what weve come to understand about the world through scientific inquiry, I simply cannot believe that Yahweh and/or Jesus are the gods of this universeassuming such a supernatural power exists at all. Although still logically inconclusive, it is still far easier to entertain that if a god exists whatsoever, such a god created the universe and walked away, entirely indifferent to the pleas of man, rather than to assume that such a being hides away in the shadows of our lives, judging us for our sins and doing absolutely nothing for the vast amount of suffering in this world. So am I thus bound to living the remainder of my days as a crabby, Godless heathen? Noand this might also come as a shockbut my sense of wonder about the world and its workings have never been at a greater height. The fact that I have but one life to live only rewards each passing day with more insight than the last, and Ive garnered a greater acknowledgement and thankfulness for my life experiences. I have a deeper appreciation for the little things that help to paint this elegant picture of the world. One can say that spirituality is a religious experience; but I disagree. The mere act of being alive and asking questions about the complex nature of the world is the essence of spirituality itself. I can only find it fitting to end on the same closing words used by a man in his monumental treatise that so incredibly spurred the advancement of intellectual scientific thought; a man Christians find so controversial, yet one who only sought to explain the beauty of the world around him.
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms so beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.60

60

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859), 490.

Conclusion
I hope that by now I have made my feelings clear. My goal was not to offend nor to de-convert, but merely to offer my perspective on why I abandoned my faith. Do I ultimately believe there is a God? My agnosticism begs to answer that question by stating that there may very well be a God, simply not the Christian god. If there is a god, such a god is not concerned over the affairs of man, given the random, chaotic and anarchic state of the world and the universe. I m open to believing in a godall he, she, or it needs to do is show itself. Give me some evidence of your existence, and I will believe beyond belief. However, I cannot believe in the Christian god and simply take the Bible as evidence. I cannot believe in a God that does not hold himself accountable to his own standards. I cannot believe in a god that creates souls knowing full well they will be destined for damnation simply based on a belief system. I cannot believe in a god that places as much emphasis as he does on male supremacy and expects women to be the subservient sex. I cannot believe in a god that creates a person with a specific sexual attraction and damns them for it. I cannot believe in a god that supplied man with such a convoluted text that has sparked countless wars over its interpretation. I cannot believe in a god who unleashed his anger on millions of innocents because of his own failure. I cannot believe in a god who instills in us that we are nothing more than tainted broken vessels, powerless without his invisible life force. I cannot believe in a god who purportedly once walked the Earth, performing parlor tricks and spoke in parables only to disappear entirely, alluding to his return within the lifespan of his followers, yet never to be seen again. I cannot believe in a god concerned so closely on the petty transgressions of man given the awesome scale and infinite span of the universe. Its all just very unbelievable.