God Hates Figs!

The Accursed Fig Tree, James Tissot (1836-1902)

Here's a strange tale from the Bible in which Jesus shows himself to not only not be an all-knowing god but to be a petty, vindictive tyrant and a braggart too. Perhaps Christians can explain it and discern a moral in the story.

And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest. And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve.

And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry: And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.

And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves; And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.

Mark 11:9-16

So, having been greeted by a multitude on his 'triumphal entry' into Jerusalem, Jesus can't find anyone to stump up a decent meal and has to go out hunter-gathering. But, even though he is allegedly the earthly form of an omniscient creator god he has to walk over to a fig tree to see if it has any figs.

On finding both the fig tree and his journey fruitless, and even though he has a reputation for being able to conjure up food for five thousand men plus their attendant women and children, and had, as God, at one time allegedly magicked up enough food and water to sustain three million Israelites for forty years in a desert, he can neither conjure up food for himself, nor make a fig tree bear fruit, so in a fit of peak he curses the fig tree and kills it, like a spoiled child having a tantrum.

Then, presumably still hungry and tetchy he goes back into Jerusalem and starts a riot in the temple for reasons which are not at all clear unless it was to make some obscure political point about socio-economic systems, ownership of capital or simply about trade and traders in general of which his adopted father was one. (See Was Jesus Against Capitalism?)

But it gets worse:

And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.

And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

Mark 11:20-24

Then they go back to Jerusalem to see the aftermath of the riots from the day before.

So, having gone without food the previous day and caused a riot in Jerusalem, Jesus and his gang spend the following morning walking back to Bethany, apparently just to see if the curse has worked on the fig tree.

When it clearly has, Jesus starts bragging about how he can do these things because he believes he can and how he could even throw a mountain into the sea if he wanted to. Apparently, you can have anything you want if you just have enough faith in God and believe your wishes come true.

So there you are: when God doesn't answer your prayers by doing whatever you want, it is your fault for not being faithful enough. Must pray harder and give more money to the priests...

Curiously though, none of his gang think to ask Jesus why, if he can kill a fig tree with words, and throw mountains about, he can't make a tree bear fruit or think up a loaf of bread.

Then, having had to listen to Jesus bragging about his magic powers and what he could do if he wanted to, they all trot off back to Jerusalem to face the music for the previous day's behaviour. We are never told whether Jesus and his hapless band ever managed to find any food.

Matthew tells a different version of this same tale. For Matthew the entire thing happened much more economically. None of that walking out the day before to find food and cursing the fig tree, then having to go back the next morning to see if the curse has worked. This all takes place the day after that spot of bother in Jerusalem and the beating up of the traders. Presumably, this Jesus and his gang had been suitably fed and watered that night by the jubilant multitude.

Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.

And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away! Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

Matthew 21:18-22

In this version, the most impressive thing from the gang members' point of view is the speed at which the tree was killed. For those in Mark's version, taking a day to work was taken for granted; what mattered was that Jesus had such marvellous powers - as though they were still not fully convinced by the other demonstrations of power.

Strange how two different 'eye-witness' accounts can differ so greatly in detail where they can't agree even on when in the day it happened and how many times they went to the fig tree. But there is that same assurance that you can have and do anything you want if you just pray hard enough and believe what the priests say, and if if doesn't work, you only have yourself to blame.

But then, if you believe any of that, I have this bridge for sale...

(Credit for the inspired title goes to @skeppy4eyes)

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Jesus Said He Wasn't Good or God!

I wonder how devout Christians come to terms with the Bible saying that Jesus said he wan't good because he wasn't God. No doubt those who've come across it and haven't moved swiftly on, have a good apologetic ready...

For those who haven't yet read the Bible - and I expect that to be most of them - here he is saying it. Stop now if you find it distressing or annoying to read the parts of the Bible that don't agree with you.

And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.

Luke 18:18-19

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And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

Mark 10:17-18

Viewed in the light of the finalized version of the Jesus myth, where Jesus has become the earthly manifestation of the Old Testament god, this makes no sense at all. Why would Jesus be deliberately drawing this distinction between himself and God, and why would he be implicitly admitting to not being good, in other words, to being a sinner, just like other people?

Clearly, this is from an earlier time in the development of this myth when Jesus was being portrayed as the Jewish Messiah in the context of the Jewish Messiah narrative, not in the narrative Paul later invented. In the Jewish version, the Messiah was only ever going to be a human, chosen by God to lead the restored Jewish nation and Jesus was probably at best no more than a claimant amongst many to that title. In fact, it seems that, because the title was commonly claimed by cheats, charlatans, conjurers and pretenders it had by then become a vernacular pejorative term to indicate a fraud and tended to be applied mockingly to people suspected of making false claims.

Stories purporting to be about the real Jewish Messiah, especially when others were claiming he was God or the son of God, would quite naturally have the hero emphatically denying he was God and at pains to point out that he was merely a man. It is entirely consistent with the view that the Jesus myth was originally based partly on an apocalyptic 'prophet of doom' who was telling people the end was nigh and that the only way to be saved was to obey all the Mosaic Laws, hence the reference to the 'commandments' in the same passages.

Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.

Luke 18:20

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Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother.

Mark 10:19

It's a shame that the author of Mark didn't appear to know the Ten Commandments and added an extra one, so implying that Jesus didn't know the commandments he was lecturing others about, but be that as it may.

What we have here then is clear evidence that the Jesus myth developed and grew over time out of a local Jewish Messianic myth, until we have Paul telling people that Jesus was God and that it wasn't necessary to be a circumcised Jew and to obey all the Jewish laws and rituals to be saved - which just happened to broaden the appeal of the cult he was pushing and laying claim to be leader of.

If only the post-Constantine Roman era hadn't been one where state-sponsored Christians of the triumphant Pauline sect, in a stunning display of non-confidence in the truth of their new 'faith' and the power of their new god to defend it, went on a book-burning orgy of censorship, destroying almost all the earlier versions of this and related myths and killing the 'heretics' who could have re-written them (and so incidentally encouraging all the forgeries claiming to be by Paul which clearly aren't his work which subsequently got incorporated into the Bible), we might now have a much better record of how Christianity was invented.

All we have left is a few scraps of parchment which have survived because they were well hidden from the censoring zealots and so almost invariably tend to be of non-biblical 'heracies'. Some, such as the Gospel of Judas, pre-date any known versions of anything in the New Testament, and hints of earlier sects like the the Ebionites and Nazarenes, of which Jesus' brother James may have been a member, who saw Jesus as just a man and Mary and Joseph as his natural parents, and the hysterically genocidal persecution of the Cathars, indicating that they held beliefs which the Vatican found seriously threatening, would very probably give a fascinating account of how myths evolve to become adapted to the needs of the priesthood and the rulers they serve - which of course is one reason rivals were so assiduously sought out and destroyed.

As it is, we have to rely on an intelligent reading of the often copied, amended and edited versions of the few surviving manuscripts which were selected for inclusion in the Bible to reassemble the story from the transitional fossil remnants to be found in them, such as the above little snippets that escaped the censor's pen, possibly because it is tightly bound up with tales about suffering little children and rich people giving up their wealth that it suited the church of the time to keep.

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Birth of a Myth - Mary The Virgin

James the Just, 'brother of Jesus'

Here is an interesting Judeo-Christian sect from the first century CE. Interesting that is not so much because of what they believed in general but because of what they believed in one particular. For people who want to believe that the modern Christian Bible was all written or inspired by the Christian god and so is the gospel truth, this sect represents a major problem.

The sect is the Ebionites whose name is believed to derive from the Hebrew word 'Ebyonim' ('the poor', 'poor ones') reflecting their ascetic life-style, having obeyed Jesus and given all their possessions away. Some scholars think they may have been one and the same as the 'Nazarenes', also an early Judeo-Christian sect.

The basic belief of the Ebionites was that the Laws of Moses, traditionally believed to have been handed down by Yahweh to Moses in Sinai, were sacrosanct and that Jesus was the Messiah, so anyone who wanted to follow Jesus had to be Jewish and had to follow Jewish laws and rites (and so must be circumcised - I wonder who else can see the misogyny there). In fact, the Ebionites are believed to have been amongst the earliest followers of the 'new' sect of Jesus, of which James the Just (= 'James the brother of Jesus') and Peter (Simon "The Rock" Peter), both early church fathers in Jerusalem. The sect is thought to have arisen around the time of the destruction of the Temple in about 70 CE.

The Birth Of Jesus - Southern Version

This is interesting. There seem to be three different accounts of the impregnation of Mary and the birth of Jesus; two Christian ones in the Bible and a Muslim one in the Qur'an. The weird thing is, the then recently-converted Christian King of Abyssinia thought the Muslim one was the authentic version!

What's maybe even more weird is that none of them bear more than a passing resemblance to one another.

First, the Bible versions:

Version 1

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

How Christians Lie To Us - Birth Of A Myth

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Reading Christopher Hitchins' book, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice I came across this wonderful example of how both the myth of a miracle and the myth of sainthood are produced by cynical self-interest and a cavalier approach to truth, honesty and intellectual integrity.

The origin of the Mother Teresa of Calcutta myth can be traced back to a 1969 TV documentary and a 1971 book, both entitled Something Beautiful For God by Malcolm Muggeridge, a pseudo-intellectual convert to Catholicism. Muggeridge had started out as a left of centre satirist but had moved later in life to be a right wing fundamentalist moraliser who, as part of Mary Whitehouse's self-appointed cabal of Christian bigots, had tried to get banned, amongst many other things, The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour on the grounds that it contained the words "Pornographic priestess; boy, you've been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down".

As we said at the time, Muggeridge was all for a liberal attitude to sex - until he got too old for it himself.

No Requiem For Dead Gods

H.L. Menchen
Sep 12, 1880 – Jan 29, 1956

How are the mighty fallen!

No one mourns for dead gods. Once mighty, omniscient, omnipotent, deities, feared or loved, worshipped and eulogized, are as nothing once they take their place in the trashcan of history and become just those laughably silly, mythical gods simple, ignorant people of times gone by used to believe in before they knew any better.

I read this in Christopher Hitchen's must-read collection of Atheist writings, "The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever".

Memorial Service

H. L. MENCKEN

Saint Patrick

Written words, for some reason, seem to have added power as though truth can exist in a book, especially when written long ago.

St. Patrick was probably the first Bishop of Armagh. Despite countless stories and legends, very little is actually known about him with any certainty. The account of his capture by Irish pirates and enslavement, then subsequent escape, are taken from his Confession which is the second oldest document in Irish history; the oldest being a letter of excommunication from Patrick to the soldiers of King Coroticus (probably Caracticus who may have been Irish or British) for murdering some of his converts and enslaving others.

According to this Confession, which seems to have been written to the British clergy to justify his claim to jurisdiction over the island of Ireland, he was captured by slave-raiders from Ireland and spent 6 years as a slave before escaping and returning to his home in Britain. He was probably the son of a Roman-British official of some importance whom Patrick says was a deacon, himself the son of a priest. If the slave-raid is genuine this would place Patrick somewhere on the West coast of Britain, probably between Cumbria and West Wales. He seems to have been fluent in Latin and may well have spoke Welsh, then the native British language south of the Scottish central valley and possibly north of it.

Ireland had been completely untouched by the Romans and consisted of a loose federation of warring chiefs and petty kings who nominally owed allegiance to a 'High King' of Tara (a sacred hill in Central Ireland) and subscribed to the 'Brehon Law', a Celtic tradition by which contracts, land disputes, marriage, etc, were settled. Patrick describes Ireland as 'in ultimis terrae' (at the ends of the earth) and 'usque ubi nemo ultra est' (as far as where there is no one beyond). The religion was essentially Druidic where the earth was a spirit with whom the High King symbolically united at his coronation, the ghosts of legendary ancestors stalked the land and an earlier people, the Tuatha Dé Danann, still lived underground.

In his Confession, Patrick claims to have been untaught and lacking in fluency, however, the construction of his arguments and his obvious mastery of Latin in the very document in which he makes that claim have led scholars to doubt this claim.

After his putative escape from slavery he trained for the priesthood and was eventually ordained as a bishop. He tells of a dream in which the people from 'Silva Vocluti' near the 'western sea' were calling him to come and walk with them once more, so he decided to return to Ireland and never seems to have left.

Whatever his motives and whatever the truth of his enslavement was, he quickly seems to have gained some authority amongst the scattered Christian communities which had already been established in the island. He had the backing of the Ui Néill with their considerable military and political power centred on Armagh which became the centre of the St. Patrick cult, one of several Christian cults in Ireland. The primacy of Armagh, and with it the cult of St. Patrick was papally endorsed in 1111.

One of the legendary 'contributions' St. Patrick made to Irish social and political development was the integration of the Brehon Law with Christianity, though this can be seen as a virtual replacement. The probably apocryphal story is that Patrick called all the chiefs together and went through each of the traditional laws explaining to them where they were right and proper according to the Bible and where they needed 'improving'. One of the 'improvements' was in stripping women of the right to property, inheritance, political power and divorce which they had enjoyed under the Celtic traditional law, which the entirely male chieftainship seems readily to have agreed.

The strategy Patrick adopted seems to have been the one the Pope told St. Augustine to use in his mission to the Anglo-Saxons. It was the one which, judging by the multitude of local legendary saints found throughout France, Spain, Wales and elsewhere, seems to have been routinely employed by Christian missionaries, that of converting the religion, not the people.

The Christian Celtic church which Patrick established in Ireland gave rise in turn to the Columban Church established by Colum Cille, or St. Columba, who was himself from the Ui Néill and influential among the Scoti tribe which established the kingdom of Dal Riata based in Antrim, in Northern Ulster and extending across the Hebrides into Western Scotland. The term 'Scoti', originally the Roman name for the Irish, so gave us the name 'Scotland'.

Through St.Columba, Christianity was spread to the Picts of Scotland to establish Christianity in the North of Britain from where it penetrated Northumbria, one of the (then pagan) Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which had replaced Roman rule in England. The Irish Church had also penetrated Wales, especially the South West at St Davids and, so it is claimed, had supplied teachers and missionaries to the emerging Christian church in France. It was probably in France where Patrick had trained for the priesthood.

The Celtic Church, although nominally recognising the Pope in Rome as the head of the church, was for practical purposes, autonomous, and had it's own date for Easter, then the most important Christian festival, and an issue which still divides the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

This issue was eventually settled at the Synod of Whiby, ostensibly called to settle the dating of Easter but actually to establish the authority of Rome over the Celtic Church and so the supremacy of the Augustinian Church based in Canterbury over the Columban Church, the political supremacy of the Anglo-Saxons over the Celts and of Wessex over the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

One of the supreme ironies of Irish history is that the confiscated land of the last Earl of Ulster and last Gaelic Chief of Ireland, Hugh O'Neil, of the Ui Néill, direct descendent of Niall of the Nine Hostages, was the land upon which the Ulster Plantation was established and through which a concerted effort was made by the English to replace and expunge the Catholic Church which Patrick, through the Ui Néill, had originally helped to established.

But maybe the most interesting thing about St. Patrick, certainly from the point of view of an Atheist and anyone interested in how legends and myths grow and develop, are the many stories and legends about St. Patrick's magical powers. Stories about banishing snakes from Ireland, crossing the River Loire using his cloak as a raft and then hanging it on a bush which promptly burst into flower, of healing the sick and curing the blind, of defeating the Devil in combat. There is no evidence for any of these things; they are fanciful stories woven around a historical figure who has been given exaggerated and elaborate powers which exist only in the imagination of the story-teller.

For example, the story that Patrick banished the snakes seems to have been invented in the 12th century by a Northumbrian monk named Jocelyn, whom the wife of the Anglo-Norman John De Courcy brought to her husband’s court in Downpatrick. The Graeco-Roman writer Solinus had already recorded the fact that Ireland was snake-free a good two hundred years before St. Patrick was born.

These stories tell us little of the actual person, but a great deal about the thinking of those who invented them and the culture from whence they came. A culture in which it was believed magic could be done with words and gestures, where animals obeyed the will of humans and a world populated by spirits and ghosts and where the Devil was fully expected to make a personal appearance. When collections of these myths and legends acquire the proclaimed sanctity of holy writ the stories become no more believable and no less magical than when they were invented and written down in the first place and yet many people believe they do.

I wonder what the resulting religion would have been had the stories of St Patrick and his magical powers ever gained the status of holy writ like the legends about Jesus did, instead of remaining attached to the religion and the culture which spawned them.

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Where Have All The Miracles Gone?

Mythology is full of stories of divine interventions; of things magically happening before people's eyes; of dragon's teeth turning into heavily-armoured soldiers; of burning bushes talking; of magic trees with magic fruit and talking snakes. We are told of giants rising up from the sea; of kings who could turn stuff into gold by touching it; of wolves rearing human children; of people being swallowed by great fish and walking out of them unharmed three days later.

If these myths are to be believed wooded staves could turn into snakes; whole armies could hide inside a wooden horse; whole seas could be made to open up to allow people to walk across them; laws could appear written on tablets of

A Bedtime Story For Christian Children

This nice little bedtime story for children is from the Bible. It is almost guaranteed to make your children grow up respecting priests and loving God.

Once upon a time in the city of Jericho there was a spring without any water, so no one could grow any food because the ground was too dry. So the men of the town told a kind priest who had been given special magic powers by God.

The priest said there was no water because the water was sick so he sent the men to get him some salt which he sprinkled on the ground where water should have been coming from. Somehow, that did the trick and the water was healed so the townsfolk had some water again.

Then the priest went out of the town gates where some children teased him because he was bald so the priest used his special magic powers to make two bears come out of the woods and eat forty two of the children. The children's mummies and daddies didn't mind because they probably thought their children deserved to be eaten by bears for teasing a kind priest just because he was bald.

Then the kind priest went away and lived happily ever after. The people of the town still remember how kind he had been to them and the wonderful things he did.

2 Kings 2:19-25

Goodnight children. Sweet dreams!

Tomorrow we'll have a story about a special fire for burning and torturing people in if they do what the priests say.

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You'd Never Believe The Things Some People Believe

I Thought I'd share this with you.

In the Bible we find a strange world... And it is indeed strange to us today - very strange.

We find a world where a snake and a donkey talked, where giants lived in the land, where people could live to nine-hundred-plus years old, where a woman was turned into a pillar of salt, where a pillar of fire could lead people by night, where the sun stopped moving across the sky or could even back up, where a star could point down to a specific home, where people could instantly speak in unlearned foreign languages, and where someone's shadow or handkerchief could heal people.

It is a world where a flood could cover the whole earth, and where a man could walk on water, calm a stormy sea, change water into wine, or be swallowed by a "great fish" and live to tell about it. It is a world populated by demons that could wreak havoc on earth and also make people very sick. It is a world of idol worship, where human and animal sacrifice pleased God. In this world we find visions, inspired dreams, prophetic utterances, miracle workers, magicians, diviners, and sorcerers. It is a world where God lived in the sky (heaven) and people who died went to live in the dark recesses of the earth (Sheol)...

The world is viewed as a three-storied structure with the earth in the centre, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath. Heaven is the abode of God and celestial beings - angels. The underworld is hell, the place of torment. Man is not in control of his life. Evil spirits may take possession of him. Satan may inspire him with evil thoughts.

It is simply the cosmology of a prescientific age.

"Why I Became An Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity", John W. Loftus (Kindle Edition), Prometheus Books

Bible literalists hold this book to be the best description of the real world, far surpassing for accuracy, reliability and usefulness anything modern science can produce.

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Imagine - New Hampshirite Liberation Organization

Just imagine.

Imagine a tribe of Native Americans who previously lived in New Hampshire, the Abenaki for example, had as part of their traditional origin myths a story of how what we now call New Hampshire had been granted to them for ever by one of their gods some 4000 years ago. This belief was central to their sense of identity, to their very idea of nationhood and ownership of this part of North America.

Imagine now that history had turned out differently; that this tribe's land had been occupied by other people with superior technology and that they had been scattered across the world to be a minority people in other nations, but always staying loyal to the tribal myth of rightful ownership of New Hampshire; indeed, clinging to this myth was the one thing which kept them together as a people but always a minority wherever they settled.

Meanwhile, back in New Hampshire history moved on and new people arrived, set up home and developed a new state; the state we now call New Hampshire. These people who called themselves New Hapshirites had built homes, created towns and farms, and set up industries and prospered. They had their own religion and knew little and cared less for the old religions of people who used to live there. These people were justifiably proud of the state they had created and were determine to defend it at all costs and to keep the freedoms they had won for themselves.

Roll on a couple of thousand years to a time when the displaced, dispossessed people had lived through periods of repression and persecution and of determined attempts to wipe them out entirely in genocides and pogroms and denials of basic civil liberties. Now they were enjoying a revival in more enlightened times and earning a new respect as progressive bankers, scientists, artists, craftsmen and lawyers and had become influential within the ruling class of a new world powers; a world power that had found itself to be the political and military power in New Hampshire, to the general irritation of the New Hampshirites.

Imagine if this new power had been persuaded that the original people of New Hampshire had a case; that they had a right to live in their former homeland of New Hampshire; that there was actually something in their claim to be the rightful owners because their god had said so several thousand years earlier.

And this new power allowed them to flood into New Hampshire under their protection until they were strong enough and powerful enough to launch a bid for independence; a bid for independence which included expelling the New Hampshirites from their homes; from the towns, villages and farms, and herding them into refugee camps to be treated as lesser people whose land could be taken at will and a people now subjected to the strange laws and customs of these invaders.

Now, imagine the New Hampshirites are trying to gain their state back; to return to live in their former homes, and are engaged in a guerilla war with the occupiers.

Whose side would you be on? Would the New Hampshirite Liberation Organization be terrorists or freedom fighters?

Would the traditional legend of a Native American tribe be a good enough reason to ignore the basic human rights of New Hampshirites?

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How Dan Destroys The Bible

First, a word from Thomas Paine:

Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies. The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian tales, without the merit of being entertaining; and the accounts of men living to eight or nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the Mythology.

Thomas Paine - The Age Of Reason

And, self-evidently, Thomas Paine is right.

So, what is the evidence?

A few facts, all from the Bible itself:

And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan.

Genesis 14:14

Clearly, this could only have been written after there was a place named Dan, just as an account of someone going to, say, New Hampshire, could only have been written during or after 1629 when New Hampshire was first named.

And they took the things which Micah had made, and the priest which he had, and came to Laish, to a people that were at quiet and secure: and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city with fire. And there was no deliverer, because it was far from Zidon, and they had no business with any man; and it was in the valley that lies by Bethrehob. And they built a city, and dwelled therein. And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born unto Israel: howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first.

Judges 18:27-29

So now we can place the writing of Genesis after the events described in Judges 18 since before then, the place was called Laish.

All this takes place after the death of Samson, as related in Judges 16. Samson is reputed to have died some 330 years after Moses died and certainly after Joshua who succeeded Moses and died reputedly aged 110 (Joshua 24:29).

So, whoever wrote Genesis must have written it long after Moses died and probably at least 330 years after. Therefore Moses could not have written Genesis. So, as Thomas Paine points out, Genesis is just "an anonymous book of stories, fables, absurdities and downright lies". Moreover, the author was also clearly ignorant of the history of the place about which he/she was writing stories, not realising that Dan was not so named in those times, hence this is not even reliable history even if we ignore the poor chronology. It is as made up as Harry Potter or Peter Pan.

Genesis was clearly written long after the establishment of the ancient Israel and is at best merely folklore and at worst made up. As the Bible itself shows, the entire foundation of the Abrahamic religions as the word of God as related to Moses, has no basis in fact.

There is no basis whatever for the idea of God, of Creation, of Heaven and Hell, of Satan, Of Angels, of the "Fall of Man", of Original Sin, of the need for forgiveness and redemption including the need to 'accept Jesus' or for his supposed sacrifice, or for all the absurdities in the story of Noah, the flood and the ark, or indeed any of the basic tenets of any of the three major monotheist religions.

They are based on nothing more than "stories, fables, absurdities and downright lies".

And all this can be readily discovered by reading the Bible itself.

Can anyone suggest a reason why no preacher, Bible thumper, Pope, priest, Sunday-school teacher or neatly coiffured televangelist claiming to be a Bible scholar has ever pointed to this childishly simple biblical refutation of everything they preach as biblical truth?

Obviously, a desire to preach and teach truth can have played no part in it.

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Noah, Dead or Alive.

Here's a funny thing:

And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

Genesis 7:23

And yet:

And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.

Genesis 8:10-11

So, are olive trees not living substance?

You'd have thought the creator of life would know what's alive and what's not.

Or is this just another example of how a legend of a local flood was badly grafted onto a made up story of a frightening god who would do terrible thing to those who didn't obey the priests and the petty despot kings they worked for?

Beyond Belief - The Ten Plagues of Egypt.

Why did an omniscient, omnipotent god need ten tries to convince Pharaoh?

1. All the water turned into blood. The Egyptians never recorded this. Nothing happened.
2. Frogs. Millions of frogs! The Egyptians didn't notice them either, so nothing happened.
3. Lice. Nothing.
4. Flies. Still Nothing.
5. Pestilence to kill all the livestock. Nothing.
6. Boils. Even the livestock... er... see 5 above.
7. Thunder and hail. [Shrug]
8. Locusts. Now this is just being silly. Still nothing.
9. Make it dark for 3 days. You've guessed it. Nothing. Not even a marginal note in the official records.
10. Kill all the ‘first born’. Even the ‘maidservant behind the mill’ (what did she do?), and the livestock, yet again. (And the Hebrews find lambs to sacrifice... even though they all died in the fifth plague).

Phew! After only ten tries!

But even then Pharaoh changed his mind again and sent the army after the Hebrews ... riding in chariots pulled by horses ... er... that had all been killed in the fifth plague.

Amazing how inept an omniscient god can be when the story requires one.

Beyond Belief.

How many chances does the Judeo-Christian god need for goodness sake?
First it goes to all the trouble to create a vast universe out of nothing just so it can have a tiny speck of dust on which to create humans, complete with all the plants, animals, air, water, etc, they need.

And they promptly go wrong. Undeterred, instead of learning and just starting over with an improved model, it decides its design failure is all the humans' fault so it'll make do with the faulty ones for a while to see how things turn out.

God The Sadist Almighty

If we are to believe the Old Testament, the God of the Jews, Christians and Muslims is inerrantly omniscient; it knows all things past, present and future. It knows absolutely, and in every last detail, everything about you and your future.

If you’re bound for Hellfire, as all Christians, Jews and Muslims believe many or most of us are, the Biblical god has always known this, for all time, way before it created you. It created you in the sure and certain knowledge that you would end up being thrown into the fiery lake of Hellfire.

How then is this god any different to a man whose hobby is breeding kittens to throw them into a fire, or to pour petrol (gasoline) on them and throw a match onto them? If you knew of such a man in your street, what would be your opinion of him?

Would you tell your children to look to him for moral guidance? Would you feel safe in his presence? Would you build wonderful buildings to meet with other admirers and sing songs in his praise? Would you constantly praise him and tell him what a wonderful person he is?

Or would you notify the authorities, try to put a stop to his sick, sadistic activities and warn your children not to go near him or any of his friends or associates?

It would be astonishing if even the primitive Bronze Age tribal nomads whose traditional creation myths were eventually written in the earliest versions of the Bible, believed such a sadistic monster could be a source of morality. In all probability, they were not writing about a loving, moral god, but an object of fear which needed to be controlled with the protective spells, incantations and rituals which random chance had convinced them were the only way to control this capricious, unpredictable, dangerous monster who was about as controllable, predictable, and loving as any other volcano.

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