What I Learned in Bible School

In very late 2006 or very early 2007 some friends of mine convinced me that I should take a Bible study.  As my wife had within the previous few years took on the mantle of a professing Christian, the friends intimated that my following in her steps would be good for me and for my wife.  Having long been at least agnostic, and leaning very heavily towards atheism, I told them several times that they would probably be wasting theirs and my time.  Well they didn’t listen and they finally wore down my resistance.

I would meet with them once a week for what was supposed to be a 1 hour study. Inevitably that 1 hour stretched into 2 or 3 hours.  There was not one page of their study material that I did not question or have some legitimate objection too.  I was not trying to be difficult or mean to them—they were friends after all—but what they were saying and the stuff from the Bible just made no sense to me.  I was excited because I was finally laying out and writing down what was heretofore just a vague feeling or sense.  I was getting organized and I researched and researched everything, I was learning about the Christian history and its dogma…and it did not bode well for the Christians.  I started this blog in November of 2007 to try to keep some track of what I was learning.

I learned that the earth, sky, waters, animals, plants, and the human race are not roughly 6,000 years old. There is just too much conclusive evidence that this is not true

I learned that there was no Adam and Eve (4000+- BC) as portrayed in the Bible. There are thousands of anatomically modern skeletons and hundreds of thousands of human bones that go back hundreds of thousands of years.  There is no doubt, at all, that modern humanity did NOT begin 6000 years ago.  Then there are the tens of thousands of bones of human type species (Homo-erectus, Homo-habilis, Homo-neanderthal, etc.)  that did not make it through to our times, and they made and used tools and fire and there is some evidence of art.  They walked upright and didn’t live in trees and surely they were our long lost cousins.  I also learned that All of humanity alive today has their ultimate roots in Africa.  The fact that there was no Adam and Eve has tremendous consequences down the road.

I learned that there was never a whole earth covering flood (2350+- BC) that destroyed all of mankind except for a mythical man, his wife and three sons and their wives.  The evidence against the flood has been known since the 1700’s and keeps getting stronger as the years go by.  I learned that people keep searching this one mountain in modern day Turkey for remains of Noah’s Ark in vain and that at least 5 people have perpetrated a hoax on the public by announcing they have found the Ark. One person even doctored some wood planks at home to try to make them look old enough to have come from such a vessel.

I learned that there was never a Tower of Babel scenario (2000+- BC) such as told in Genesis.  We now know beyond a doubt that there were already millions of humans spread ALL over the earth at that time.  The Biblical story is nothing more than a fairy-tale, a crude attempt to try to explain the different languages that were spoken at the time the story was written.

I learned that Moses was probably a fictional character, as we know that the work attributed to him (The first five books of the Bible…the Pentateuch) was written by more than one person (3-4) and was probably written around 600-550 BC as a fictive work passed off as holy to bring the Hebrews tribes together again after the exile in Babylon.

I learned that the Exodus as described in the Bible is just a fairy tale. Archaeologists have been scouring the Sinai for over a hundred years looking for signs of at least a million people passing through and living on the land for 40 years…they have found Nothing!  They did find evidence of much earlier humans visiting and living there, but no Israelite signs from the era supported by the Bible story.  This also means that there was no exodus of Hebrews trodding across the Red/Reed Sea, no burning bush, no water spouting rock, no Ten Commandments carried down Mount Sinai, no golden calf, and no manna from heaven.

I learned that Joshua did NOT fight the battle of Jericho. Extensive archaeological work has determined that most all of the towns he was supposed to have squashed were already empty and in ruins at the time indicated in the Bible—both the 1400’s BC and the 1200’s BC theory. But then he was a fictional character anyway so it doesn’t matter.

I learned that Moses couldn’t have written at least some parts of Genesis because he wrote (probably in the 1400’s BC) that Abraham came from “Ur of the Chaldee’s” but we know from history that the Chaldeans did not control the city until around 600-500 BC.

Also Moses wrote that Abraham rescued Lot from the city of Dan which did not exist under that name at the time of Moses.  300 years later the town of Laish was captured by the tribe of Dan and renamed Dan.

I learned that God cannot defeat Iron Chariots used by us war-like humans.

I learned that God does not answer prayers…at least not of those with limb amputations.  Not once in all of recorded history has God ever restored some poor person’s amputated arms or legs and there have been many, many millions of people who have suffered this. You may even know someone from the armed forces who lost a limb or two in Iraq or Afghanistan…or Viet-Nam. The Bible tells us that Jesus raised the dead and threw out spirits or demons and healed some really bad diseases, and he himself was supposed to have risen from the dead, but no mention of limb re-growth anywhere.

I learned that God was really really mean. One mistake in the garden and He curses Adam and Eve and ALL the billions of their offspring to a miserable life with disease and famine and wars and all manner of horrible torture and deaths.  He orders the tribes of Israel to murder man, woman, and child of innocent villages or towns. He fire-bombs villages, He orders running thru pregnant women with swords, bashing babies skulls against the walls or rocks, beheading hundreds or thousands, tossing live people into the fires and who knows what else. And, the animal cruelty you don’t even want to know about.  All in all, the God as described in the Bible is a horrible figure…not God-like at all.  Of course we know that the entire God ordered killing was just the Hebrews way of conquering territory and booty.  There was no God to order all that murder and mayhem.

-end part 1

Warning: This video has a few cuss words…easily offended–don’t watch.

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God Never Was

God would have had to either make the Ark by magic or help Noah make it by means of magic because there were no tools or materials available that were sophisticated enough, at the time, to make a seaworthy wooden structure that big.

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An Englishman named William Whiston¹ wrote a book in 1696 (A New Theory of the Earth), wherein he calculated that as many as 500 million humans may have been born in the antediluvian period, based on early assumptions about lifespan and fertility rates. Now the Flood supposedly happened 10 generations from the creation of Adam and Eve. Ten generations of people that lived on average 600 to 700 years is a lot of time. However, if you believe Ussher and most of the old Christian apologists, the ‘Flood’ happened around 1600 to 1700 years after creation. So I guess the early humans waited 165+- years to have sex for the first time. His figures are probably wrong.

Modern scientists have estimated that around 2000 to 3000 BCE the earth had a population of anywhere from 5 to 50 million souls.² Some scientists have postulated that the earth has been home to slightly over 100 billion³ humans in its long (4.5 billion years) history. Now this figure takes into account that modern humans have been walking the earth for well over 50,000 years, and the modern human population…50,000 years ago…was 2 million souls.

All the population data I have seen from righteous sources does not show a sharp decline to a low of 8 people (and believe me…that would show) in 2400 to 2300 BCE. All the worlds early historical records, that were being written at the time, do not show that all societies were totally wiped out, a catastrophe that would have taken thousands of years to overcome and come back to previous standards. None of the archaeological evidence shows this happening in our historical past, and the Flood times, if you believe religious materials, is in historical times.

Besides all the hundreds of other scientific proofs about the Flood’s non-historicity, the simple excavations and recording of archaeologists for the last 150 years or so has conclusively proven that no world-wide flood ever happened. The disruption would leave tremendous amounts of evidence and would disrupt our societies much more than they have ever been. Eight people is not a viable population that could have survived, and the DNA evidence rules it out…also rules out a 6000 year old Adam and Eve by the way.

Now I have had a Christian person tell me that the Genesis tales HAVE to be true because Jesus mentions Genesis, which means that he knew about the ‘Flood’ and therefore knew our history of Creation, Flood, Tower of Babel, etc., and of course the Trinitarians say that Jesus Was God, so he knew it ALL. So that seems to mean, at least to me, that if one disproves the Flood and other Genesis trivia…they have disproven God (and the divinity of Jesus). Of course there are hundreds of other things that disproves God…but this one above kind of seals it for me.

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1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whiston
2. http://ehistory.osu.edu/world/index.cfm
3. http://www.prb.org/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx

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More Evidence Against Noah’s Flood

Floods do not form mountains, but rather erode them away. Walter T. Brown, In the Beginning, 1986

All Biblical dates that I have seen for Noah’s flood fall within a period of the earth’s history known to historians the world over, as the “Bronze Age” This is a period in our collective history in which we humans discovered and used the metals copper and tin to make Bronze.

It started around 3500-3000 BCE in the Middle Eastern and African areas, and lasted until we learned how to make Iron (about 1200 BCE, probably in Africa) and thus entered the ‘Iron Age’ This time span also happens to encompass the beginning of writing and keeping records…so we have written records of what was going on at these times; in other words this was ‘historical’ time.

In those times the impetus for the development of the Bronze technology was war. Bronze was used in most weapons of the time, such as spear points, arrowheads, swords, axes, helmets, armor, and shields. Production of these items, in the quantities needed for the armies of the time, required much infrastructure and many people devoted to the making of them. This was not a fly-by-night operation

According to recorded history there were six well-established cultures or ‘civilizations’ at the time of Noah’s Flood. They were: Mesopotamia (Sumerian), Indus Valley, Egypt, the Minoan, the ‘Holy Land’ area, and China. Archaeological records such as ruins of cities, tools, pottery, skeletal remains, weapons, and other artifacts support the written records that survive. These records all show that humans and civilizations existed in almost all parts of the world at the time of the flood, and that there was a worldwide population of possibly 100 million people.

The civilizations of the time were using Bronze tools and had the potters wheel, looms to made textiles, had invented the plow and domesticated draft animals, they also traded with peoples hundreds of miles away. In other words a cultural revolution was going on. Man was changing from herders and hunter-gatherers to settled agriculture and cities that could support the new technologies. An infrastructure was developing. The written record and Archaeology support this view. Records of the Sumerian/Mesopotamian civilization show a continuous ongoing culture from about 3350 BCE to a period well past the Noachian flood.

Mesopotamia had great prosperity and expansion during the flood period under Sargon the Great and his grandson Naram-Sin. The area was a thriving center of culture and advancing civilization. There is no evidence for a cataclysmic flood wiping out the entire culture and infrastructure.

Egyptian civilization is probably familiar to most of us. Egypt’s dynastic history started with the uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt by King Menes, around 3100 BCE. The Egyptian period known as the “Old Kingdom” lasted from 2800 to 2175 BCE. During this time many of the pyramids were built. There is no record, written or archaeological, for a monster flood destroying and completely interrupting this countries infrastructure or it’s monuments such as the Sphinx, the Step Pyramid, or the Great Pyramids, which were built before ‘The Flood’

China has a reasonably accurate history starting around 3000 BCE. According to texts from a Chinese book called “Shu King” and verified by archaeological records, China was undergoing a prosperous period around 2400 to 2200 BCE during the early Yaou Dynasty. They have no record of a cataclysmic flood interrupting their whole civilization and destroying the infrastructure of the country.

The Indus valley civilization has a well-known history dating back to perhaps 3100 BCE. By 2500 BCE there were two major cities, Mohendaro (or Mohenjo-Daro) and Harrapa, which rivaled Egypt and Mesopotamia in population and technologies. This great Civilization also encompassed maybe 100 smaller cities, towns, and villages, and didn’t fall until about 1500 BCE. They have no record of a worldwide civilization-destroying flood.

The Minoan civilization was probably as old as Egypt. Based on the Island of Crete, this civilization grew quickly and was highly advanced by 2500 BCE. By the middle of the second millennium it had an alphabet, used bronze tools, had pottery, textiles, advanced architecture, and had established cities around the Islands. It continued to grow and was a center for trade and culture until about the mid-1400’s BCE  when it was suddenly destroyed by the violent eruption of the Thera volcano. There has been no evidence unearthed from this civilization that shows a flood destroying their whole infrastructure, at any time in their existence.

We do not have any archaeological evidence from the Japanese culture, Native American culture, or the Black tribes of Africa that indicate a world wide flood at any time in their existence. Think about this. How could all these civilizations, tribes, and world-wide culture along with sooo many people suddenly disappear from the earth and then suddenly reappear all over the world and bring the same culture, arts, pottery design, architecture, writing, language, and artifacts that was unique to them and their part of the world?

The entire history of the world does not show…any…of the known civilizations to have a large gap in their chronology or technologies as a result of being destroyed by a worldwide flood. It is not plausible that they were destroyed, and within a few short years, reappeared in their original numbers and with the same abilities and infrastructure. All the inventions and culture of the people of the time…would have had to be reinvented by new inhabitants…that did not happen. It just didn’t happen people.

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Evolution or Intelligent Design??

Scientific advisers from the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine have released a new document emphasizing the importance of teaching evolution in schools. This is a follow up on a report released in 1995. This new study includes recently discovered evidence supporting evolution, including new and important fossil discoveries.

The report released today also takes swipes at Creationism and Intelligent Design.

“Despite the lack of scientific evidence for creationist positions, some advocates continue to demand that various forms of creationism be taught together with, or in place of, evolution in science classes,” the report says.

Evolution is a continuing topic of debate in many ‘Bible belt’ states. In Texas, Chris Comer, the state’s director of science curriculum, says she was forced to resign recently due to evolution politics. Comer had came under pressure after forwarding an e-mail that her Bosses felt made the agency appear to be biased against the instruction of intelligent design, an alternative to evolution espoused by some religious conservatives.

Intelligent design believer’s say that evolution cannot explain the universe’s order and complexity

Josh Rosenau, a spokesman for the California-based National Center for Science Education, which supports the teaching of evolution, said the new report is very important because the debate over teaching evolution in school is not going away anytime soon.

Casey Luskin, who is a program officer for the Discovery Institute, a Seattle religious think tank, that supports teaching students about the criticism of evolution, was critical of the document.

“Students should learn about the evidence for and against evolution,” he said.

An overwhelming majority of scientists, around the world, believe that Intelligent Design is an attempt to insert conservative religious views into school curriculum’s. This is against the constitutions ‘separation of church and state,’ directive.

Schools science classes are no place for religious arguments. Evolution does not destroy religion it ignores it.

The evidence for humans being alive on Earth for much more than 6,000 years is impossible to refute.

There is no scientific evidence supporting ‘Noah’s Ark.’ Creationists have been trying for over 1,000 years to find the Ark and any geologic evidence, and there is none.

Intelligent Design proponents keep arguing that the mile deep stratigraphy record that is actually a record of millions of years of our Earths past was caused by less than a years covering by the ‘Great Flood,’ at approximately 2250-2275 BCE. No credible or slightly credible evidence exists.

That leaves the Creationists and Intelligent Design people spluttering and complaining, but never fear, next year they’ll be back again.

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