2009 October « de-conversion

Archive for October, 2009

Whacked Bible Contradictions: 2

Mathematical contradictions. Gotta love ‘em. You’d think the almighty creator of all (including math presumably) could get his earthly scribes to do simple math correctly.

Not that such things as flat-out, numerical errors will ever stop a true believer from staying the course.

Gen 11:26 – Terah was 70 years old when his son Abram was born.
Gen 11:32 – Terah was 205 years old when he died (making Abram 135 at the time).
Gen 12:4 – Abram was 75 when he left Haran.
Acts 7:4 –This was after Terah died.
Thus, Terah could have been no more than 145 when he died.

2 Kings 24:8 — Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months.
2 Chronicles 36:9 — Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem.

I like this next one. Two, consecutive verses.
Gen 8:4 — And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.
Gen 8:5 — And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.

Actually these are all more time errors than math errors. Maybe BibleGod has trouble with that since he “lives outside of time”. (We’ll not bother with the silliness of that concept for now.)

Oh, but here’s a math error for y’all.
1 Kings 7:23 –Then [Solomon] made the molten sea; it was round, ten cubits from brim to brim. A [rope] of thirty cubits would encircle it completely.
Hmmm…. Pi = 3 …. That would have made a lot of calculations easier in school.

October 31, 2009 at 6:10 pm LeoPardus 19 comments

Whacked Bible Contradictions: 1

“There are no contradictions in the Bible.” How many times have we heard that? Or, for many of us, how many times have we said that? Of course it’s silly. The Bible is chock full of ludicrous and obvious contradictions. So herein commences a series to showcase many of them.

Y’all ready for all the christians to come screaming in here and give us the “right” interpretation that allows one to turn a blatant contradiction into wonderful, infallible Godspeak? It reminds me of the old saying, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

When did Jesus actually ascend into heaven?
Luke Chap. 24 — the day of resurrection
John Chap. 20 — about 8 days after resurrection
Acts Chap. 1 – at least 40 days after resurrection

And now for something completely different, but still a contradiction, here’s a little OT to go with the NT contradiction.

Do you need balls to go to church?
Deut 23:1 – A castrate may not enter the assembly of the Lord.
Isaiah 56:4-5 – Some castrates will receive special rewards.
Matt 19:12 – Men are encouraged to consider making themselves castrates for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

I’ve got so many of these that I think I could dole out 2-3 at a time and get a couple dozen articles still. And my collection is not even close to exhaustive.

October 30, 2009 at 6:03 pm LeoPardus 38 comments

The Inscrutable Jehovah

Theism begins with a commitment to absurdity. It revels in mysteries, embraces paradoxes, and wallows in warm credulity while reason is buried in a mudslide of illogical affirmations. It sees no need to apologize for belief where the evidence is not only absent, but also contrary to claims.

inscrutable Theism trains the credulous in the art of illogicality by unabashedly positing incoherent notions of god that require the complete surrender of rational faculties. Some such common theistic notions among Christians are listed below.

The notion that we were created with an actual choice not to sin in the face of the biblical assertions that we have all sinned.
The notion that the wrath a “loving” god over a single sin results in condemnation to eternal torment.
The notion that a “loving” god must see blood to forgive, and cannot simply forgive as he has asked humans to.
The notion that the 3 days of temporary death by Jesus is the exchange rate for the deserved eternal damnation of billions…

Continue Reading October 28, 2009 at 3:21 pm Phil Stilwell 18 comments

Reasons for my de-conversion (4 of 4)

I hope I have adequately described our inherent weaknesses in cognition (Part I), emotions (Part II) and dogmatism (Part III). Perhaps I can now continue with some of the reasons why I dismiss the notion of a personal god.

First, much of the ontology of Christianity is dependent on the Bible. The veracity of the Bible must be established before notions such as Heaven, Hell and sin can even be submitted for evaluation. Do not quote the Bible to “prove” to me the existence of these entities. I reject the Bible as “god’s word” for several reasons. As I list these reasons, Christians will contend that I am taking things out of context, yet I have spend years begging to see some objective, consistent and reliable standard of hermeneutics being practiced among Christians. None has emerged. This is the beauty of the “scriptures” of all successful religions; they are all ambiguous enough to provide deniabilty when backed into a exegetical corner. This lack of unity in exegesis I’ll introduce later as a failure of the Holy Spirit.

1) Moral ambiguity.
Polygamy, incest, rape and slavery are just a few of the practices condoned or encouraged in the Bible. Extravagant and elaborate apologetic arguments are employed, and usually track back to the incoherent notion that “God’s ways are not our ways”.

2) Philosophical dilemma
Persons who have not heard of Jesus are, nonetheless, eternally condemned for what the Bible claims is a clear manifestation of his eternal power and godhead in nature. In addition, a finite number of sins committed by a soul who had no choice but to be born sinful are given infinite punishment…

Continue Reading October 27, 2009 at 12:01 am Phil Stilwell 52 comments

Reasons for my de-conversion (3 of 4)

In Part I, I discussed the fragility of human cognition, and the myth of the virtue of faith. In Part II, I discussed the enormous deficiency in human cognition coupled with a propensity to rely on emotions to construct our belief system. Now let me move on to the issue of dogmatism.

Consider the proper way for a person to choose a presidential candidate. Voting along party lines is not considered to be very intelligent, and claiming faith in the party would rightfully make you the object of scorn. A proper evaluation involves exploring all the sources you have to your disposal to assess the knowledge, experience, convictions, competency and character of each candidate. The accumulation of this information is linear; it generally accumulates in a steady manner until you reach a point where you are able to make a decision. It should make sense then that the degree of certainty should also be linear. Instead of suddenly stating that one candidate is wonderful while the other is evil, one should be making statements such as “based on the evidence so far, X appears 20% more competent than Y. But few of us seldom do this due to our propensity for dogmatism.

While facilitating action, this dogmatism is a detriment when attempting to find objective truth. The polar ends of the god question are over-weighted with atheists and theists in my opinion. I am an agnostic. While I can state that there is a very low probability of a personal god for reasons I’ll discuss later, I am less certain when considering an Einsteinian god. And I do not feel compelled to choose a side without sufficient evidence. However, this probabilistic attitude towards questions is not natural to me. It had to be learned. I started out quite dogmatic as some of you may recall.

Christianity encourages dogmatism. Certainty is a goal in most religions…

Continue Reading October 26, 2009 at 10:46 pm Phil Stilwell 19 comments