Athiest Book of Bible Stories

by dozy 13 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  dozy

  Thanks to Runningman for the book - I just found this while perusing some older threads. I agree with the other posters that it should be given a wider audience. It is a masterpiece of research.

  I've always been a man for figures / statistics , so the emphasis on that was useful.

  I think like a lot of former JWs , you first start by realising the religion itself isn't the truth , then it perhaps is a natural progression to start looking at the bible , especially if you have doubts already in this area. ( The JW talk on Noah's flood was always one of my favourites & I gave it many times throughout the circuit , until I decided to do a bit more research & realised that the account was full of so many holes that it no longer made any sense. I then amended it almost to the point of the account being a useful allegory but finally decided , in good conscience , that I no longer could give it. )

  By the way - if you still believe that the bible is the inerrant Gods word - then that is cool with me. Whatever. I've put the self righteous "I'm right & everyone else is wrong" days behind.
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  jaydee

  I Haven't come across this one before,

  Love it,

  thanks for the share.......
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  Heaven

  One day I am going to print it out so I have it in hardcopy. It's on my harddrive for now though. So many nuggets in this gem of a read... like this one almost right off:

  " Now, take a look at the order of creation. Notice that the first thing that God created was light. That was a good idea. Unfortunately, he forgot to create the main light source for the earth - the sun. I assume he used giant heat lamps to make up for the oversight. Also notice that he made plants before he made the sun - mostly frozen vegetables, I suspect."

  ** Giggle **

  How about the story of Cain and Abel? Tee hee hee....

  ABEL THE SHEPHERD
  The first problem that we encounter may be unique to some of the more silly brands of fundamentalism. Having come from one of these, I must deal with it.
  
  Jehovah’s Witnesses, and some others, believe that humans did not eat meat until after the flood. So, for approximately 1,600 years from creation to the flood, humans were vegetarians. They did not begin eating meat until this privilege was granted to humans in Genesis 9:3. In fact, Jehovah’s Witnesses go one step further. They believe that even animals were vegetarians until after the flood. They believe that grass is the natural, god-intended food for lions. Fossils of carnivorous dinosaurs are rather troublesome to them, so they ignore them.

  This creates an interesting problem in the Cain and Abel story. As you recall, Abel was a shepherd.

  Now, don’t forget that there are only four people on the planet. Acquisition of food must have been their top priority.
  
  So, the question arises, if they didn’t eat meat, what was Abel doing with all those sheep? Either he was a huge slacker (imagine 25% of the planetary labour force piddling around with their pets when they should be working), or he had some other purpose for them. Don’t forget that there were no women, other than their mother. I will say no more.
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  dozy

  The book mentions the vast quantities of quail. The WTBTS tries to get around this , as follows. Painful.

  (Numbers 11:31) 31 And a wind burst forth from Jehovah and began driving quails from the sea and letting them fall above the camp about a day’s journey this way and about a day’s journey that way, all around the camp, and about two cubits above the surface of the earth. . .

  insight book2p.718Quail

  The expression "about two cubits [c. 1 m; 3 ft] above the surface of the earth" has been explained in different ways. (Nu 11:31) Some consider that the quail actually fell to the ground and that in some places they were piled up to that height. Others, objecting that such action would undoubtedly result in a large portion of them dying and hence becoming unfit for eating by the Israelites, understand the text to mean that the quail flew at that low altitude over the ground, thereby making it quite easy for the Israelites to knock them to the ground and capture them. Expressing a similar idea, the Greek Septuagint reads: "all around the camp, about two cubits from the earth"; and the Latin Vulgate says: "all around the camp, and they were flying in the air at an altitude of two cubits above the earth."