Just one more brick in the wall separating real factual evidence and religious, creationist, ID, YEC nonsense.
Human language almost certainly started in Africa (where WE as the human race started coincidentally) and it started MANY years before the Bronze Age (c.4000 +-BC) It has been speculated by many that the invention of language was the beginning of man’s rising intelligence and domination. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6027/346.abstract
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.
“Biblical history totally lacks an historical basis and its character as a largely fictional composition or wholly imaginative history is motivated by the theology of the time of its compilation in the Persian or Hellenistic periods, centuries after the alleged events took place. At best, it contains only vague and quite unreliable information about early Israel. Yet, the continuing power of the Biblical narrative is testimony to the literary skill of the authors as they produced a compelling propagandistic work to a highly receptive audience.” Israel Finkelstein, “The quest for the Historical Israel”, Society of Biblical Literature, 2007
Israel Finkelstein is an Israeli archaeologist and academic. He is currently the Jacob M. Alkow Professor of the Archaeology of Israel in the Bronze Age and Iron Ages at Tel Aviv University and is also the co-director of excavations at Megiddo in northern Israel. Previously, he served as Director of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University from 1996-2002. In 2005 he received the Dan David Prize.
For a hundred plus years or so we have known that the Old Testament had some major problems; such as…who wrote it, when was it written, are the stories true, etc? Professor Finkelstein went out…did the science…and found out.
I spent a lot of time on this reply, it needs to be on the blog front page.
Hi Marianne, Thank you for writing.
You write:”
I am a scientist that is paying attention. I have spent 30 years in biochemistry, which includes cell biology, toxicology, pharmacology, inflammation, biophysics of DNA and RNA, and medical research in general.
Great, I’ve always wanted to talk to someone in the research. If you are comfortable with it, could you tell me where you received your degree, what degree you have, and what particular field you work in today?
You write:
“Most scientists do not have any proof for what you say. It is all just “tradition.” They just assume evolution did this, and evolution did that. There is no proof. What the lay person perceives as proof is just scientific speculation, based on this traditional thinking.”
So are you saying here that you do not agree with or accept evolution?
How old do you think the earth and our universe is?
You write:
“you make several unsubstantiated comments. Like Noah did not exist. Well there are records of him, just like there are records of Julius Caesar. There was a garden of eden, and the description of what happened to it is consistent with the syrian african rift – most of it fell into this pit. The bible knew about this rift before modern science did. And the descriptions of the Garden match up with local areas, if you understand tectonic plate shifts.”
Here is what I actually wrote in my reply to your earlier post:
“Looking around and paying attention and studying the world we find the evidence that there never was a world-wide flood, which means we are not descended from Noah’s 3 sons. We find that real humans have been walking the earth for at least 200,000 years (means that there was no Adam and Eve as the Bible relates), which also means there was no fall from grace in the Garden of Eden, which means there is no Original Sin…which also means there is no need for a redeemer (Jesus) for our (non-existent) original sin .”
I did not say Noah never existed (although I do doubt that he did) I said there is NO evidence of his supposed flood, and you will find the evidence for this fact is all over the internet. You say there are records of him…could you perhaps guide me to them?
Regarding the Garden of Eden, there are many stories and guesses as to where it was. The Discovery and Nat Geo channels have had a few specials about that, and it has variously been placed in Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ethiopia, and Kenya. The Great Rift Valley which goes through Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, and goes right by the Afar depression…you know where Lucy and her brethrens bones are found, also the border area between Namibia and South Africa, and probably other places I haven’t heard about. Yes, I am familiar with plate tectonics
The Largest DNA study on record at this time is the IBM, Nat Geo Genome Project which has over 350,000 DNA samples right now, and they are showing all the existing human bloodlines come from Africa, primarily the Ethiopian, Kenya area and the border area between Namibia and South Africa.
And why would there be a Garden of Eden if Adam and Eve did not exist?
You write:
“I do not accept the Jewish archeologist denying the Exodus or Joshua. I say the opposite. They are uncovering new evidence every day. They have sites where the Red Sea was crossed, and the pharoah’s chariots are still down there, under water. THey also have sites where the Israelites offered sacrifices in the desert, with hebrew symbols. The israelites were instructed to leave markers along their journey, and these markers have been found. “
You do not accept the Archaeological evidence? Do you have other scientific evidence that refutes this? Is this part of your field today? Also it’s not just one archaeologist.
There has never been a discovery of Pharaohs chariots in the Red Sea, or the Reed Sea for that matter, and believe me they have been looked for. If you insist there is…could you please point me to the evidence, as I have scoured the internet for almost three years now for evidence of this (and other Biblical things) and have had no luck at all.
To the best of my knowledge many, many archaeologists have scoured the Sinai for a hundred years looking for any evidence at all that over a million Hebrews wandered there for 40 years and have found absolutely nothing. There is even no evidence at Kadesh-Barnea where a million Hebrews supposedly spent the majority of their time during this 40 years. You know that the evidence of Joshua defeating the town of Jericho and Ai are lacking also, don’t you? I haven’t heard anything at all about markers.
You write:
“Most modern church and theology seminaries are getting away from the truth, not going toward it. Much is crap. They need the holy spirit to know truth, not a man getting paid a salary. He is just a hireling.”
I guessing here that you are an evangelical fundamentalist and believe in the literal Bible as being inerrant in all matters. Would I be right? I think a lot of what the modern church and seminaries are doing is trying to keep up with the emerging science that somehow impinges on religion. This is what’s going on with the Old Testament and Genesis specifically. The circumstantial evidence against Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood, Tower of Babel, Exodus, Joshua, and the subsequent fallout from these stories being false…nothing but myth, is changing our world of religious thought. Denying facts do not make them go away.
You write:
“As far as time on the earth, no data is any better than the tool that measures it. There is no realistic tool that can measure over 500o years. The rest is speculation, and going off the standard curve, which is bad science.”
Have you heard of Potassium Argon dating? There are also about 20 or 30 radioactive element methods of dating besides the common C-14
In it I reference a Christian writer and scientist who actually works in the age-dating field. I have there a link to a PDF file about age-dating that the man wrote especially for Christians. Also I will post his contact data here: Dr. Roger C. Wiens RCWiens@MSN.Com Dr. Wiens has a PhD in Physics, with a minor in Geology. His PhD thesis was on isotope ratios in meteorites, including surface exposure dating.
He was employed at Caltech’s Division of Geological & Planetary Sciences at the time of writing the first edition. He is presently employed in the Space & Atmospheric Sciences Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
He has published over twenty scientific research papers and has also published articles in Christian magazines. Dr. Wiens became a Christian at a young age, and has been a member of Mennonite Brethren, General Conference Baptist, and Conservative Congregational, and Vineyard denominations.
Whole PDF article can be found at: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html
Age Dating in the many ways and methods used by science nowadays works…there is NO real dispute about this…except from YEC’s
You write:
“If you want to know Jesus, he will make himself known to you, in a way that is unique to you.”
Is there really a need for Jesus…if there was no Adam and Eve and consequently no “Original Sin”?
You write:
“After stating that you’re not hung up on pain and suffering, you immediately bring up an argument that says maybe you are! “
And:
“We don’t understand why God ordered the wiping out of certain people groups, but when we judge God for being unjust, we are a lot of things, none of them right, none of them just, and none of them smart. God has much more information than you. He has reasons for the things you complain about that we cannot possibly understand, because we have too small a perspective and our capacity to understand is so much more limited than God’s.”
John I’m sorry I don’t seem to be explaining myself very well. What I am trying to say here:
“If God and Jesus were preaching a sermon of love and understanding, what the hell is going on with all the so called Christians killing each other for over a thousand years? Is/was this Godlike?
What on earth was the Jewish God thinking when he was going around telling “His” people to kill and maim everyone in sight?
I’m thinking that if you take in and consider all the horrible things that have happened in the history and name of Christianity or YHWH or Elohim or El, or whatever you want to call this God…it’s all a lie…what we have seen and read about is not worthy of a real God…a real God would not allow such a screwed up operation to go on for over 2,000 years and still be in such disarray…unable to agree on anything.
Why do you think we have so many religions and schisms and enclaves and crazy people running around killing each other….”
I’ll put in plainer talk here. The whole history of the Christian movement seems to be a chimera…fake, wholly made up by men, a figment of some Hebrew sheep/goat herders imagination, phony, a lie, does not fit the real evidence of our known history. The known history of the beginnings of this religion does not have any signs of being directed or led by a God. We only know what men have done and there is no signs of Godly leadership or help.
I’m not concerned by all the deaths that are on the hands of Christians…I’m just using the history of the genocides that were caused by them as an example of the absence of a God behind the men who were doing all of this in the name of God…no God would do such a thing. There was never a God behind all the murders and torturing going on…men did this and used “God” as an excuse for doing it. There was never a God anywhere near the early or later Christians.
The church that brought the Scriptures through the Dark and Middle Ages was the Catholic Church and the Popes associated with it. Read some non-church history of the “Mother Church” and the Popes and leaders of the times. Your Scripture was handled exclusively by, and redacted by, evil men of the early church for over 1200 years, again a sign that there is no God behind all of Christianity.
This taken together with other things we have learned about the Bible such as; no flood of Noah, no Tower of Babel, no Exodus and consequent parting of the Red/Reed Sea, modern men/women being on earth for 200,000 years, pre-human Neanderthals walking around for over 200,000 years…which pretty much means no Adam and Eve, and if we lose Adam and Eve there is no original sin story for Paul to concoct, or for Jesus to have to expiate our original sin by dying on the cross for.
If there are mis-truths or lies or false information in the Bible, it losses all authority. If you can’t tell what is true and what is made up (and there really is a lot of made up stuff in there) how can anybody believe it?
You write:
“With respect, let me also caution you on something. God will not be mocked. When you go from asking legitimate questions to angry dismissals of God and his goodness, you commit the very sin for which God threw Satan out of Heaven. You appoint yourself judge over God! Could anything be more absurd?”
John, with respect to you…I don’t believe there is a God to mock. The evidence is nowhere to be found. If I were to join a religion I would surely do my homework and examine and inspect it. I would study its history both from its own perspective and from an outsider’s viewpoint. If it claimed to be the only source of Truth and that it had the only “True God” I would surely examine the claims from all sides, and try to divine and verify its “realness”
This God whose name has been at one time or another; Yahweh, Elohim, Jehovah, El, Baal, Allah, El Elyon, Yeshua, Adonai, El Shaddai, and who knows what else, does not seem to be anything more than an idea. He has evolved from a God that had a wife, to a stern taskmaster who intrudes in the day to day affairs of a tribe of sheep/goat herders and directs these sheep/goat herders to slaughter other tribes, finally to a “Loving God” under the watchful eye of Paul, who totally changes Jesus’ message.
Don’t feel bad for Christianity though. My examination of Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism did not turn up any better. Although I did not do as thorough an investigation of these religions as I did of Christianity, I can tell you with confidence that they are pretty hokey and infantile also. The level of violence is pretty high in both Islam and Hinduism, probably at the same level or slightly higher then Christianity, with Buddhism being fairly gentle.
Their stories and God(s) and histories are about as dopey as Christianity’s is, that is to say they don’t make much sense in our modern times. They also are clearly the product of their times and the sophistication and knowledge level of the ancient writers.
Christians are not the problem…religion is.
You write:
“The fact remains that if one is to learn, one must be willing to be taught.”
In my early years I was taught, in my later years I took Bible study, in my ‘now’ years I have taken to self study. All the old evidence is still there, and new evidence is falling down faster and harder than at any time in history.
I remain open to change, but there must be better evidence behind it than there is now.
The further I investigate the Christian religion and survey the timelines and civilizations that were flourishing around the Levant and Mesopotamian areas, in the supposed time of Adam and Eve, the more I realize that the creationist people at ‘Answers in Genesis’ (AiG) are right in their most loudly proclaimed message. The whole truth or lie of the Bible and the Christian religion is depended on that single chapter of Genesis. The information given in this seminal work of Christianity absolutely has to be true or the whole house of cards falls apart.
AiG and their brethren, the hundreds of evangelical fundamentalist sects out there, have to have this key grounding to their beliefs or the whole theological mess makes no sense.
The earth and the universe have to be only 6,000 to 10,000 years old; otherwise their Noah’s Flood and ‘Flood Geology’ story falls apart because it is dependent on the figuring of generations since Adam. The Tower of Babel explanation is connected to the timing of the spread of language and the 6 procreating passengers of the Ark. The story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden play the most important part of all.
All of these stories intertwine and depend on each other to shore up the modern day exegesis of the Christian faith as expressed by evangelical fundamentalism. The drama that is to follow Genesis has to have the elements of this first chapter in it to make sense, for Jesus mentions both Adam and Eve and Noah in the New Testament scriptures.
Matthew 24:37-39: (Jesus speaking) “But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
Matthew 10:4: (Jesus Speaking) “And he said unto them, ‘Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female?”
It needs to be mentioned that of course Jesus had the Hebrew ‘Bible’ (Tanakh) to read in his time on earth, as all the old stories, including Genesis, had been recorded and saved by Hebrew scribes around 500 to 600 BC, probably during or just after the exile. So if Jesus were not the Son of God or God Himself (that Trinity myth gets me so confused) and have firsthand knowledge of these happenings, at least He would know the story and know it was part of His heritage
After the flood subsided and the sons and daughters-in-law of Noah (Noah had no other children according to the Bible) spread over the earth they of course were to multiply and subdue the earth again, and they all spoke one language, as they came from the same land and family. This ties the Tower of Babel story inextricably to the Noachian Flood. If a normal person were to hear or read the stories of Genesis (and who hasn’t?) and our beginnings without applying any basic reasoning skills or knowledge of what’s going on in the world now, I think the normal response is to believe they are reporting actual historical happenings.
These stories in Genesis and the other Biblical writings of the Hebrews of the Old Testament and the later scribbling of Paul and other writers of the New Testament have been pushed upon the Western world as an absolutely-totally-accurate description of how our world and humanity began. Well they have to do this because we’re talking about ‘The God of Everything’ and it’s not possible that He could be wrong, if He is found to be wrong then He has no real authority or potency…in fact He would not be a God.
For two thousand years they have pretty much got away with it. In the Dark Ages after the downfall of Rome and in the Middle Ages up till around the 1800’s there was little-to-no resistance to the Christian world-view and in fact you could get into serious trouble by actually speaking out about and denying the truth of God, Jehovah, Yahweh and Jesus. Actually, in some places you could get into serious trouble up into the 1900’s for sins against God.
The church and its leaders were quick to protect their turf and muzzle any dissent or opposition to their perceived “Truth.” It is factual recorded history that many many thousands, maybe millions of human were killed in the establishing and early continuation of Christianity. Many Popes and early leaders of the ‘Mother Church’ were totally depraved and preyed on their flocks, much wealth was stolen and put into church vaults and Cathedrals and buildings and to supporting extravagant lifestyles of the elite. All in all, the rise of the Christian faith has been a bloody non-Godly event in our human history.
Now, the Christian faith and its sourcebook, the Bible, is facing increasing pressure to prove itself to be a religion of truth or actual relevance as more and more evidence of our earth’s history and the history of mans beginnings is coming into focus. When this Bible was written I doubt there was much thought given to us humans eventually being able to figure out what actually-really happened in our past. The Hebrews were writing in a time of mythical constructs and beliefs, they had already been through a number of gods before and none of them proved to be strong enough or able to bring the people together. A synthesis was needed. The Egyptians and Sumerians were next door so to speak and they had pretty well developed theories of godship…Hmmm.
There are many methods to date old artifact, and dating only as far back as 4,000 or 5,000 BC is totally easy and totally doable by a plethora of dating methods that can be easily cross referenced, and for a lot of the times, there are written records. Egypt and the Mesopotamian area of this planet are arguably the most studied, measured, and scrutinized places on earth. Archaeology has been going on in the Holy Land and surrounds forever, it seems. Scholarly men and women have been digging up and analyzing every sign of ancient habitation for over 200 years there. We have a tremendous store of factual data on the real history and goings on in this area of the earth.
The Bible says that the earth was created in 6 days and that Adam and Eve were created on the last day…or maybe the first day…depends on your interpretation. The religious right says this was 6,000 years ago, plus or minus a few years
It is an easily checked fact that Egypt in the Nile valley and Sumeria in Mesopotamia were functioning city states/civilizations at this time. A little harder to find, but the facts are out there, is that the Indus Valley Civilization in parts of what is modern day Pakistan and India and the Chinese civilization in Asia were flourishing at the Biblical time in which God was supposedly creating the earth, our solar system, the whole universe, and Adam and Eve. You have to wonder what these people were thinking… 🙂
The Sumerian civilization lasted from the first settlement in Eridu in the Ubaid period in the late 6th. millennium BC through the Uruk period in the 4th. millennium BC and the Dynastic period of the 3rd. millennium BC until the rise of Babylon in the early 2nd. millennium BC. These dates are not disputed by archaeologists who work in the field, and are fully supported by many different methods of dating…in short, these are facts. The Sumerians already had a pantheon of gods as evidenced by their artifacts and ruins, but that did not include Jehovah or Yahweh. The plains of Shinar and the Tigris and Euphrates fall into this real estate, and some say the Garden of Eden was in this area. So why didn’t the Sumerians know of our God? (Hint: he wasn’t invented yet)
In Egypt, by about 5500 BC, small tribes that were living in the Nile valley developed into a series of unique cultures that demonstrated a firm understanding and control of agriculture and animal husbandry. They can be identified by their unique pottery and personal items they produced, such as combs, bracelets, and beads. The largest of these early cultures in Upper Egypt, the Badari, was known for its high quality ceramics, stone tools, and its use of copper.
In southern Egypt, the Naqada culture, similar to the Badari, began to expand along the Nile by about 4000 BC. Over a period of about 1000 years, the Naqada culture developed from a few small farming communities into a powerful civilization whose leaders were in complete control of the people and resources of the Nile valley. By 3100 BC Upper and Lower Egypt were unified under Narmer and he became the first king or pharaoh of the First Dynasty. For nearly 3,000 +- years after this event Egypt was the center of civilization
Again, as in Mesopotamian ages, the Egyptian ages are easily found and cross checkable by different methods and held to be true by working archaeologists and other scientists all over the world. These ages are known facts as opposed to the myths written by a tribe of wandering Hebrew sheep/goat herders.
So what do you think the reaction of the average ancient Egyptians would be to God/Yahweh/Jehovah moving to and fro across the earth while they were trying to farm it and build monuments and such? Those Egyptians were around then, of that there is no doubt at all. What were the Sumerians thinking as this God/Jehovah/Yahweh was flying around setting up the Garden and making the “first” humans in the middle of their farm fields and interfering with their building of the first true cities.
Something seems to be incompatible and out of place here. The actual-real-physical evidence says there was no “Garden of Eden” here and that humans had been around for many thousands of years before.
So there was no actual-real-physical creation of Adam and Eve anywhere near 4,000 BC in or around the Middle Eastern area. If in fact there is a God who created the first Humans he did not make them there, and he did not make them in or about 4,000 BC…and we can prove it. Christians have a book written by a tribe of sheep/goat herders that has many-many errors of dating and impossible goings on. This book has no more reality attached to it than the works of Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, or any other religion. It has no more claim to be true than any other. Actually less if you factor in how much scholarship has been expended on it and come up with no factual proofs of its beginnings
What happens if the story of Adam and Eve is proven wrong? Do we just say ho-hum and go about our business, but still believe in Christianity, still believe in the divinity of Jesus? Do we still believe in Angels and magic?
What do we do with the story of Jesus? If Adam and Eve are not true…they weren’t created in a garden somewhere in Northern Africa or around Mesopotamia about 6,000 years ago, and all the real evidence points to this; what do we do with Jesus? There is no need for him to redeem original sin that never happened, in fact we can break free of this 6,000 lb. elephant that we have carrying around on our back since Paul invented this lie. To carry this even further, we can break out of this creepy drama that God supposedly set up for his creations to go through and maybe set up a rational version of SkyGod worship. 🙂
The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that the creation of Adam and Eve is not a real historical event and that the Bible timeline in relation to the beginnings of humanity and the earth is just wrong in ALL ways…it is all made up by our human ancestors…there is no truth there.
As for the other crap that the people at ‘Answers in Genesis’ believe such as; Ice Age after the flood, Neanderthals being offspring of one of Noah’s sons and living after the flood, etc,….well, I won’t even go there…yet
“…atheism is not a conscious act of turning away from all gods. It is simply the final destination for those who think. …you will be pleased to discover that the sky does not fall down on your head. … if you still want to pray, you can (the success rate of your prayers is unlikely to change).”Guy P. Harrison
After going over all of this God and religion stuff for nearly two years now and not really finding any new facts (except for occasional new science coming up…that all supports, so far, the ‘No God’ theory that I hold) I have boiled it all down to this….
The fact that Adam and Eve did not exist (among other things that are known to be untrue in the Bible), completely unhinges the Christian religion. For, if there was no Adam and Eve, the whole Christian scheme of redemption falls completely apart. There is no need of Jesus…as there was no original sin. The God story keeps falling apart upon close modern examination.
Year after year the science gets better, and it invariably proves something else is not true in the Bible.
It can be proven, by many paths, that the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Adam and Eve, and the Exodus are not historical happenings. A real God would not write this untrue stuff…but men would.
Christians can deny this all they want and it will not change the facts. The evidence keeps getting stronger, not weaker.
…” I deny the existence of all Gods: those of the Mayans, the Hindu, the Ancient Egyptians, and the God of the Old and New Testaments. If I am right, all of these are fictional constructs invented by clever humans for … a variety of purposes, ranging from psychological comfort to entertainment.” Doug Jesseph
So this Christian person writes to me and calls me a snob and complains that what I write is offensive for him to read. He accuses me of conjecturing on the basis of what I have been taught and therefore think I know…Well…DUHH…where does knowledge come from?
He writes:
“As a Christian, your atheistic views and dogmatic snobbery about them is offensive to read, the fact is that you don’t know – you are only conjecturing based on what you think you know and have been taught. You are no better off in your belief system than anyone else, so your high horse judgmental attitude is a put off; no different than any other fanatic, so get over yourselves.”
He is commenting on my blog of July 12, 2008 called: “More Evidence against Noah’s Flood.” Go Here for blog.
My ‘belief system’ is science, and yes I believe that my belief system is far superior to your Christian belief system when talking about the real world. Its superiority comes from empirical knowledge that is transparent and accessible for all to see and test…and learn about. Your belief system is a book that was written by many different authors over roughly a thousand year period. It has many facts in it about geographical areas and some historic personages, but it is very flawed despite the denials by Christians…who either ignore the evidence or refuse to learn it.
It (Christianity) is also responsible for hundreds and hundreds of years of repression, torture, murder, death by any number of causes by believing in the power of prayer and just plain ol’ suppression of the human spirit. I don’t let Islam off the hook either…if anything they are much worse today. The wars between Christian sects in the Middle Ages though was probably worse than any Christian / Muslim conflicts…so far.
He writes:
“That said, I like the scientific approach and take the evidence presented here seriously. As a critical thinker, I correlate between opposing views and take such opposite views as presented here with my own beliefs and research them out to further gain insight. I know that no conclusive answer will be had until Judgment Day, so I don’t get into this “know it all” game with people.”
Scientific knowledge is pretty much all I use in this blog. I’m not just making the stuff up. I have been studying what I write about many years, and I don’t write about it if I don’t believe it. I think one can come to a logical conclusion on the evidence that is out there right now. There is no evidence, despite what the evangelical fundamentalist say, for a world-wide flood…ever…in the earth’s history. That is not my personal opinion (well, yes it is actually), that is the opinion of the sciences that work in fields that somehow impinge on that myth of a flood. That scientific opinion comes from lifelong work and study of literally hundreds, or possibly thousands, of scientists.
He writes:
“From what I have ascertained, a local flood in the Mesopotamian area some where between 3000 BC and 2300 BC is quite possible, and God’s Word to Noah written by Moses could very well have been in the context of that area as far as Noah need to know. There are also interpretation and time gaps from historical accounts that can account for minor discrepancies when trying to account for events thousands of years after the fact. So you trying to to pin “disproof” by variations of interpretation and context, just shows your atheistic bias – a dogmatic desire to “Not Believe in God.” So don’t make the mistake of excluding yourselves from being part of a sect as well, as offensive as that may be to join the rest of “us” in darkness figuring things out as best we can. Restricting the Flood to this local area also takes care of the only 8 people spawning humanity again “disproof” idea you present.”
There is archaeological evidence for a large local flood in the Mesopotamian area around 2900 BC, however there is no evidence for one around 2400 to 2300 BC, which is the time zone that most Christian apologists place Noah’s flood. The DNA evidence says that the human race existing nowadays does not come from either two or eight people. With all the other real evidence that backs up this statement in one way or another, I think I’ll go with this worldview.
He writes:
“Another point, is that I’m currently researching the aftermath and tribal dispersal of the people listed in Genesis 7-10, this historically bears out. So it is unlikely that one event didn’t occur while the subsequent events did. The fact that this probably was a local flood and beared out factually from there, doesn’t seem to be explored here. I think that shows a bias and not an actual pursuit of knowledge. You are too happy to gloat “see, there is no God” and “see, you Christians are stupid” for any serious critique of your own views to be part of this information.”
You might want to check into the information about the Earth being populated from pole to pole in the times that are recorded in the Bible. The evidence from the earth sciences is that the world was teaming with humanity and never suffered a total wiping out such as the ‘Deluge.’ We all came from Africa, not Mesopotamia, and there is very long DNA evidence backing that up. I’m sorry if that disturbs you, or you think I am gloating too much. All the information is on the Internet and strangely enough, it comes from actual scientific sources, not atheist sites.
He writes:
“Suit yourselves, but I’ll take this information with a grain of salt and add it to the rest in my research, it does help and thanks for the research. And I’m as appalled by so-called Christian theorists that take no time to actually add any scientific research to their theories and likewise present a bias view. Besides that, I know there is a God and He’s My Father – if you don’t that’s your choice, but don’t get up on a high horse and deny things you really don’t know based on perception of finite knowledge.”
I am writing from the position of someone who is throwing the information out there. Many people will not read a scientific journal or magazine or take night classes in archaeology or religious studies, but might read a blog. My opinion, from all I have studied so far, is there probably isn’t a God. There is just overwhelming evidence in all science fields that there is many-many problems with all religions, not just Christianity. The Actual and Real evidence is just not there.
Christianity has no more superior knowledge, or more proofs, or claims to be more real than any other religion. In fact the reality of there being sooo-many different religions, and so many offshoots of mainline religions, each feeling that they have the only “truth”, speaks to the probable case of there not being Any truth…to Any God.
The geographical universality of the Deluge may be safely abandoned Neither Sacred Scripture nor universal ecclesiastical tradition, nor again scientific considerations, render it advisable to adhere to the opinion that the Flood covered the whole surface of the earth. Maas, A. (1908). Deluge. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved December 15, 2008 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04702a.htm
So, 100 years ago the Catholic Church was admitting ‘The Flood’ probably wasn’t a real event
Naturalists (early scientists) were disputing the ‘The Flood’ as early as the 1600’s. Here The Nile River has supported over 5000 years of civilization without interruption. Here
The following civilizations were all centered in the lands written about in the Bible. There are archaeological records of many floods in the area, but that is to be expected because the area has two major rivers flowing through it. Hammurabi of course figures in the tales of Gilgamesh. All the evidence keeps pointing to ‘The Flood’ story being local or most likely just a myth. The Sumerian civilization (ca. 4500–4000 B.C.) The Akkadian Empire (ca. 2350–2150 B.C.) The Babylonian Empire was an Amorite state in Lower Mesopotamia (modern southern Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged when Hammurabi (ca. 1728 – 1686 BC, short chronology) created an empire out of the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad. Wikipedia: Here
Christians nowadays are in a very unstable position although they will deny it strongly. Arguing philosophy and exegesis of the Bible is pretty much a waste of time now. The thing that is killing religion in our times is science and the unstoppable uncovering of evidence that disproves most of the foundation of all religions. Judaism, Islam and Christianity are all irrevocably tied to the Bible. All that believers in Yahweh, Elohim, Jehovah, or Allah can do nowadays is say they don’t believe the sciences that contradict their theology.
The believers in God have to deny that we can accurately date tens of thousands of artifacts and human bones and artwork and structures that are scattered all over the earth and give live testimony to our civilizations verrry looong past. The many evidences we have for our past are real and tangible and their provenance can be scientifically proven…and there is so much of it. The followers of God and Allah sometimes say that it doesn’t matter what evidence there is, God is outside of the evidence and cannot be proven…or disproven.
Perhaps true. But, what can be proven beyond a doubt, is that certain things that are described in the infallible ‘Word of God’ inspired Bible are not true and not infallible or factual and that a lot of the stories are not to be trusted as actually happening. Another thing that stands out is the actual explanation of the supposedly unfolding drama is stupid. The most stupid part is that Satan knows he will fail because it’s part of the drama that God set up…preordained from the very beginning if you will.
If you believe the story of Gods plan you have to accept the fact that God actually created this WHOLE drama from the beginning. He created all Evil, Satan, the Demons, He set up the Fall, giving us Original Sin, He was the playwright, the creator of unimaginable human suffering and death. A loving God creates two humans and actually sets them up for failure and then kicks them out of his care and lets these poor people try to survive with nothing…that part of the story is both scary and a not very bright explanation of a Gods actions. Wake up Christians…A true humane God would not do these things.
Some things to consider:
1. We know that the flood described in the Bible never happened.
2. We know that humans and civilizations were spread all over the earth in the time of the deluge and Tower of Babel.
3. We know that Neanderthals were walking the earth for tens of thousands of years before a supposed Adam and Eve were created.
4. We know that Homo sapiens or ‘modern humans’ were walking the earth tens of thousands of years before the Biblical folklore was even thought of.
5. We know that Moses did not write the Pentateuch.
6. We know, although fundamentalists deny it, that there are many, many contradictions and falsehoods in the scripture.
7. We know that the Hebrews conception of ‘God’ changed mightily over the years. They once had a pantheon of gods and worshiped idols at late as 500BCE.
8. There is no evidence outside the Bible, in other historic documents or the archeological record, for a mass migration from Egypt involving hundreds of thousands of people.
9. No evidence for Joshua’s knocking down of Jericho’s walls or destruction of Ai and other cities.
10. Archeologists also have discovered that most of the large Canaanite towns that were supposedly destroyed by invading Israelites were either not destroyed at all or were destroyed by “Sea People”-Philistines, or others.
Just the first 4 things above are enough to prove the Bible false.
Religion is a construct of the human mind…its explanation of creation is a story from a very old tribe
of Sheep/Goat herders, in the language, and with the worldview, of the times it was written in. The Old and New Testament scriptures are very different views of God, and how he treats and interacts with humans…they are not compatible…and not ‘Gods’ word.
Bible
The Word of Me... 
Recent Comments