No, this piece is not about alliteration. For True Believers? the subject matter is quite serious, and may just possibly affect the quality of the rest of you lives; it may also affect your eternal fate, if there is such a thing.
Those of you who are familiar with the writings of Thomas Paine, may find some familiar material here, as it was Paine who inspired me to put this material together.
Some of this material may make True Believers? uncomfortable. Tough cookies. The truth has a way of doing that for people who are blinded by lies.
?Now this is the basis for judgment, that the light has come into the world but men have loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were wicked. ? - John 3:19
One doesn?t have to believe in the veracity of the Bible to accept the above statement from John. Wicked people have always preferred darkness over light or truth. Just look at how people like Sadaam Hussein, Hitler, Stalin and the Catholic Church operated and you?ll see what I mean.
When one has invested one?s entire life, future life and eternal destiny solely on the words of a book, what is wrong with investigating those words to see if they are true or not? Nothing. If a God chose to give his earthly children a book that would be their sole guide to happiness and salvation, one would expect that book to be full of nothing but clear-cut rules and examples designed to show people the path to that happiness and salvation. Instead, the Bible is full of stories that have no application or meaning in anyone?s life. While some history of God?s so-called ?chosen? people might be helpful in understanding why God gave certain laws, most of the Bible?s history is worthless, rambling narrative that has no application to anyone other than those who lived during those times.
Would you put your trust in a book where most of the books within it were written by anonymous writers? There are some pretty heavy duty miracles described in the Bible, but hardly anyone stepped forward to identify themselves as witnesses to those miracles. Moses was allegedly a witness to a bunch of spectacular miracles, yet he never admitted his authorship to any book . None of the four gospel?s writers identified themselves, either. Why?
Many True Believers? insist that because the Bible is such an ancient book and has survived through the ages, that alone should be sufficient proof of it?s veracity. I argue the opposite: by nature of it?s very age, and by nature of what was known by man during those ancient times, it makes the Bible even more questionable.
Here?s an example:
?Accordingly the sun kept motionless, and the moon did stand still, until the nation could take vengeance on its enemies. Is it not written in the book of Ja'shar? And the sun kept standing still in the middle of the heavens and did not hasten to set for about a whole day. 14 And no day has proved to be like that one, either before it or after it, in that Jehovah listened to the voice of a man, for Jehovah himself was fighting for Israel.? - Joshua 10:13-14
There is nothing in this narrative to suggest these verses were not what actually (supposedly) happened. There are three fatal flaws here. Do you see them? First, keeping the sun still for a day would not prevent darkness. It?s the rotation of the earth that causes light and darkness. This shows that the writer believed the sun revolved around the earth. Such a belief was common in those days. Second, if God actually stopped the rotation of the earth, the entire world would have noticed it, for they would either have 24 hours of the same darkness, light, or dusk. Yet NO other reliable person on this planet at that time documented such an event. Third, and this is a big one is this: Joshua is supposed to have written the book that bears his name (yet he himself claims no authorship). If so, why is he speaking in the past tense about the FUTURE? He states that ?no day has proved to be like that one, either before it or after it??. He nowhere makes claim of authorship of this book as I stated, and he nowhere claims that this special knowledge of speaking about the future in the past tense is because of any divine revelation.
The whole story stinks and any logical person would have to conclude it is a fable made up long after the supposed event. One of the advantages of doing this is that all the eyewitnesses to the event are dead, and one can say anything one wants, claim it is of Divine origin and get away with it. Also, one would have to wonder why God would radically change the laws of physics that HE CREATED to make this event happen. Why couldn't he just have tossed down a bunch of flashlights to the Israelites, instead? Why did he have to screw up the entire earth for a day so the Israelites could fight one of their numerous stupid little battles?
But there are many, MANY such idiotic stories in the Bible, and I will illustrate a few more.
Take the story of Jonah, for example. The story is fabulous. (The word ?fabulous? in the 18 th century meant the same as the phrase ?crock of shit? means today.) God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell the people God is pissed off because they are somehow ?wicked.? Since when did God decide to start messing in the affairs of ?heathen? Gentiles who were minding their own business? Jonah, being the low-life coward that he was, runs away from the job and hitches a ride on a merchant ship. God is now pissed that Jonah is such a coward, so he makes a huge wind that is so dangerous the crew had to throw their cargo overboard. In the meantime Jonah is ?sleeping? through this all! What a retard! The crew discovers that Jonah is the cause of the mess they?re in and decide not to kill Jonah for his evil deed, but put him overboard. Any self-respecting Jew of the day would have immediately hacked to pieces any Gentile who put them in a like mess. But NO! These ?pagan? Gentiles showed mercy and compassion and saved Jonah?s life, even though they still faced death or at the very least suffered for all their time and work by having to unload their cargo.
So, God gets a big fish to swallow Jonah and then heave him up in three days. And who else witnessed this event? NO ONE! We only have Jonah?s word for it, yet the account itself shows Jonah to be a self-serving coward. Who would believe such a fabulous (read: ?crock of shit?) story as that, given the evidence? If God had wanted to show his power and fully convince people of that power with a real miracle, he should have had JONAH SWALLOW that monstrous fish and then have HIM heave up the fish in front of a whole bunch of people. Now THAT would be a real miracle, and there would be eyewitnesses to it, unlike Jonah's own story.
Jonah then goes to Nineveh and hurls his invective at them. Nineveh repents. Shouldn?t Jonah be thrilled that because of his mission, an entire city was spared God?s wrath? NO. He?s PISSED about it. He?s so mad, he tells God to kill him. God doesn?t kill him. God should have killed that vindictive nitwit. Even after that, he hangs around hoping that Nineveh will go back to their wicked ways, so they will all be killed.
Jonah was a dick. Therefore, nothing he says can be trusted. If the story of Jonah can?t be trusted and the story of the sun standing still can?t be trusted, then ALL of the Bible is suspect. Unless the Almighty is a weak and puny God, it would not be unreasonable for him to keep his own road-map to happiness and salvation from being so corrupted.
Then there is the story of Samson. Delilah tricks him into telling her the secret of his great strength. Because Samson is so effective at killing the Philistines, it was a major coup for Delilah to know how to take away that strength. By the way, modern historians are mostly in agreement that the Philistines were one of the most civilized nations on earth at that time, and not the bloodthirsty cretins the Bible describes.
Samson had never cut his hair before this. It therefore was LOOOOOONG hair. Hair grows about a half inch per month. Samson therefore must have been in prison a very long time for his hair to have grown to any length. Now, since the Philistines knew that if his hair grew back, he would get his strength back and kill all of them. This begs the question, ?why in-the-hell didn?t they bother to keep his hair SHAVED OFF? What kind of morons were they, anyway? If you had some guy locked up, who could rip the jail door off and squash you like a bug, wouldn?t you take a few minutes every so-often and shave his damn HEAD? I would!
Don?t try to argue that God made Samson?s hair grow long overnight, for that will hurt your case even more. Why would God use miracle hair growth when Samson didn?t even need to have long hair in the first place for God to give him superhuman strength? That?s like arguing that God suspended all the laws of physics that HE CREATED to make it rain long and hard enough to cover the entire earth and all its mountains, when all he had to do was vaporize everyone with a wave of his hand. Clean, neat, simple.
Let?s take one final example. I will provide many more examples in future installments.
? Now these are the kings who reigned in the land of E'dom before any king reigned over the sons of Israel.? - Genesis 36:31
See the problem with this verse? Moses is considered to be the writer of Genesis by both Christians and Jews. There weren?t any kings of Israel until the time of Saul, so that is the absolute earliest this verse could have been written.
The Watchtower publication ?Aid to Bible Understanding? on page 335 puts the Beginning of Saul?s reign at 1117 B.C. It puts the entry of the Israelites into Canaan in 1473, and Moses was already DEAD when that event happened. That means this verses was written at LEAST 353 years after the death of Moses.
When you have fabulous (read: ?crock of shit?) fables like this and fabulous (read: ?crock of shit?) anachronisms like this in a book that claims to be God?s very own word and you put your whole life in trust and your eternal salvation and trust in such a book, you are as foolish as the stories I?ve just related.
Farkel