Recently I queried someone who posted such a statement for his personal profile for Facebook; I asked him for his definition of ‘God.’ And his response: “As for my Facebook status, “there is a God” is meant to reflect my very general, simplistic and humble attitude to the presence of forces larger than ourselves that I know I will never be able to fully comprehend. So I am, frankly, not really interested in the philosophical issue of my own or anyone else’s definitions of God.”

What, exactly, was this person trying to convey? Let’s assume ‘God’ as implied is the equivalent of ‘forces larger than ourselves that I know I will never be able to fully comprehend.’  But can this expression be properly taken as a definition?  From my understanding of the term ‘God’, which is synonymous with that of most people, or of all God-believers/worshippers, I thought the explanation was unsatisfactory; so I reverted to him thus: “The point concerning ‘God’, I would like to say that this term is commonly understood to relate to some supernatural entity perceived to be not of nature but beyond nature.”

And his response: “As for my Facebook status, I believe my use of the term God conforms with existing conventions of language. Whether it conforms with your philosophical or theological understanding of the term, as I said, I don’t really care since most of my Facebook visitors are familiar with the context of Facebook and know better than to take it out of that context.”

I cannot help concurring with the person who declared, with some agitation, that using the term ‘God’ in this way would be rendering the term worse than useless, as it can lead to unnecessary misunderstanding between speaker and listener, as I have had in my dialogue with the person mentioned above.

And as I have said earlier in a thread in Facebook, you can’t hold a serious discussion with a God-believer, whatever ‘God is’ to this other person. Some believers of ‘God’ think we are psychic – that we can read their mind, that we know precisely what they mean when they say “I believe there is a God.”

 Some end-of-world predictions can be observed as age-old, including the one allegedly made about 2,000 years ago by someone named Jesus, but the world still exists; Jesus had allegedly predicted that the world would end before the “passing away of this generation” but this so-called generation had passed away 2,000 years ago and we are still here and the world is now, comparatively speaking, more alive and kicking, with a hugely larger population. According to Edward O. Wilson [American biologist, researcher, theorist, naturalist and author], if all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago; if insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

 First, I have no qualms in saying that the Bible is a huge dunghill containing a minuscule amount of usable material, but otherwise overflowing with dung, that the Old Testament is brimming with false predictions or prophecies and that certain statements/predictions allegedly made by Jesus as reported in the New Testament can be observed as false or untrue. But for this synopsis, I shall exclude discussion of the OT’s false predictions or prophecies, the inclusion of which would likely take up a considerable amount of space but which in my opinion appear insignificant, in relation to the purpose of my writing, which is to show how different the image of God is, as portrayed in the Bible, the so-called “inerrant word of God,” from  the image of God that is held by Christians. In all, at least three encyclicals [official documents], were issued in the last two hundred years by the Catholic Church affirming the Bible to be books containing revelation without error and written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  If the Bible is the inerrant word of Yahweh/God, then Yahweh/God can be observed, from reading the script, as the greatest blunderer, contradictor or liar, or the greatest hypocrite, the greatest perpetrator of evil [for creating Hell and eternal punishment] and thus the greatest sinner or maniac.

 Included in the New Testament are four canonical books believed to have been anonymously written during a time span estimated to be somewhere between 60 years and 110 years after the death of Jesus – assuming Jesus was not a fictional character.  “Mark”, “Matthew”, “Luke” and “John” have been thought by Bible scholars as names being added subsequently to provide authorship-identification convenience for these gospels or to show that they were actually written by Jesus’ close disciples or disciples of his disciples. However, the New Testament, apparently, did not come to public attention until much later, centuries after the death of Jesus. What this means is that by the time the New Testament came into public readership, people who had supposedly lived during the life-time of Jesus were all dead including those who might have witnessed and those who might have been completely ignorant of the events that had allegedly occurred as described. It is possible that some people might not have even heard about Jesus, if he had existed or produced miracles. Other than what we can get from the New Testament or from the gospel writers, there is no historical record of the miracles allegedly performed by Jesus; hundreds or thousands of people had presumably witnessed one or more of these miracles, assuming of course these miracles had indeed occurred.

 In 1 Corinthians 15.16 we hear Paul making the claim of Jesus’ so-called resurrection being witnessed by five hundred people; but it seems that none of these so-called witnesses have ever been identified. No doubt news of this so-called resurrection, which must be considered a miracle indeed since it was allegedly witnessed by five hundred people, would have spread fast even in those days but Rome knew nothing about it and we have no historical account for this event, apart from the New Testament.  “Mark” projects an image of Jesus as a human, while “Matthew” and “Luke” project him as a demi-god; “John” is of course outstandingly distinct from the synoptic gospels in the treatment of Jesus: here, Jesus is all God [as the term ‘God’ is commonly understood in western tradition] . Any claim of Jesus being God is in a fact a devaluation or moral indictment  of the character of Jesus, exposing Jesus to judgment or condemnation for his barbarity, brutality, cruelty, hatred, immorality, racism, violence and insane genocidal instinct and other vices, as recorded in the Old Testament. The Bible as a whole is more about fire and brimstone than about love and forgiveness.

 No historical Jesus’ data of the kind found in the canonized gospels or in the epistles of Paul or other New Testament authors have been recorded in the writings of any non-Christian writers or historians who lived in the first or second century or who can be considered to be contemporaries of Jesus. For example, writings of Pliny the Younger, Tacitus and Suetonius, although they contain passages with general references to Christianity or early Christians they do not record any details of a historical Jesus. Jesus allegedly wrote nothing concerning himself; and have you noticed something unusual? Except for a few brief lines in Luke about Jesus sitting among the teachers in the temple courts, listening to them and asking them questions, the four gospels are conspicuously silent with regard to the first 30 years of Jesus’ life. Was there something wrong about Jesus in his earlier years that the authors found unworthy for the record? It is hard to argue that the story of Jesus is not made up of whole cloth. And it is easy to conclude that there is nothing much in the Bible that can be taken at face value.

 Christianity, it seems, has many similarities to the pagan religion of Mithra that preceded it by approximately 600 years and which was widely embraced by people in the ancient world. For example, Mithra, was born on December 25, died, was buried, and resurrected in three days. He had twelve companions as Jesus had twelve disciples. He also performed miracles, was called “the Son of God”, “the good shepherd,” “the way, the truth and the light,” “redeemer,” “savior,” “Messiah.” The Mithra religion had a Eucharist or “Lord’s Supper” and Mithra’s sacred day was Sunday. If you are in Rome and visiting the catacombs, be on the look-out for an image of the infant Mithra seated in the lap of his virgin mother, while on their knees before him were Persian Magi adoring him and offering gifts.

 [Text in italics extracted, with slight modification, from Michael Shermer’s The Believing Brain]

Over the past ten thousand years of history humans have created about ten thousand different religions and about one thousand gods. What is the probably that Yahweh is the one true god, and Amon Ra, Aphrodite, Apollo, Baal, Brahma, Gasesha, Isis, Mithra, Osiris, Shiva, Thor, Vishnu, Wotan, Zeus, and the other 986 gods are false gods? The story of Jesus’ so-called virgin birth is not the only one that has come to attention: among those alleged to have been conceived without the usual assistance from a male were: Attis, Dionysus, Horus, Krishna,, Mercury, Perseus, and Romulus. In addition to the parallels between Mithra and Jesus of Nazareth, consider the parallels between Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of wine, and Jesus of Nazareth. Both were said to have been born from a virgin mother, who was a mortal woman, but were fathered by the king of heaven; both allegedly returned from the dead, transformed water into wine, and introduced the idea of eating and drinking the flesh and blood of the creator, and both were said to have been liberator of mankind. In ancient Egyptian culture “Osiris” was the god of life, death, and fertility and one of the oldest gods for whom records have survived, with a following that was well established by the year 2400 BCE. Widely worshipped until the compulsory repression of pagan religions in the early Christian era, Osiris was not only the redeemer and merciful judge of the dead in the afterlife, he was also linked to fertility and, most notably, the flooding of the Nile and growth of crops. The kings of Egypt themselves were inextricably connected with Osiris in death. When Osiris rose from the dead, they would rise also in union with him. Not only pharaohs but mortal men believed that they could be resurrected by and with Osiris at death, if, of course, they practiced the correct religious rituals. Osiris predates the Jesus messiah story at least by two and a half millennia.

 [Text in italics extracted from Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code]

…By the way, December 25 is also the birthday of Osiris, Adonis and Dionysus. The new-born Krishna was presented with gold, frankincense and myrrh. Even Christianity’s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans. Originally, Christianity honoured the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagan’s veneration of the sun. To this day most churchgoers attend services on Sunday morning with no idea that they are there on account of the pagan sun god’s weekly tribute – Sunday.

 The God-Mary-Jesus story seems nothing extraordinary, in the context of mythologies antedating Christianity, including the myth of gods impregnating mortal maids who then gave birth to heroic figures. The Jesus story can be viewed for what it is:  an obvious borrowing and adaptation from earlier myths. But myths can be uplifting for some people. Where a myth is apparently uplifting, the truth of the matter is the least important.

 The Book of Revelations is an imaginative story that tells us, in no uncertain terms, that so-called divinity is no different from insanity. Revelations is revealingly insane, written probably by someone with a warped mind or suffering from a mental illness or brain-seizure; how anyone rational can believe in such trash is simply mind-boggling! A Christian believer who is not intellectually dishonest or not incapable of sound reasoning should consider this so-called revelatory narrative as diametrically opposed to, or as a contradiction of, the teaching of Jesus about love, mercy, and the principle of forgiving, like forgiving seventy times seven times. If you think of Jesus as the source of Revelations, and this is of course a matter of belief nothing short of being irrational, then it would also be irrational of you in not accusing Jesus of being a hypocrite.

 Let’s evaluate with reference to some Biblical excerpts [from the New International Version]:

In Mark 13.24/30 and Matthew 10.23, 16.28 and 24.29/36 we see Jesus projecting an image of making a second appearance or second coming following his death but before the demise of all the people he was speaking to at the time. Taking the Scripture at face value, we can’t avoid the fact that these people had passed away 2,000 years ago but there has been no appearance of Jesus [aka Son of Man] appearing in the clouds in all his glory. In fact, based on what Jesus had allegedly spoken, Jesus can be demonstrably shown to have lied at least on three other instances; he is reported to have said:  

•  [1] [Luke 24.46]: “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.” These words were allegedly spoken by Jesus to his disciples after he had allegedly resurrected. But nowhere in the Old Testament can any statement be found that talks about the messiah [Christ] dying and then rising on the third day, not even a narrative that can claim to be representative, whether closely or only marginally, of such a statement. In other words no such prophecy was made in the first place
• [2] [John 7.38]: Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him but nowhere in the Old Testament can such a statement be found, and
• [3] [Mark 16.18]: “they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”

We have yet to witness whether any human being can survive or will not be hurt at all after drinking deadly poison. And it appears there would be no necessity for hospitals, modern medical treatment or trained or qualified doctors or other medical practitioners if placing of hands on sick people by God-believers will heal sick people of their sickness. If you fervently believe in Jesus’ so-called divine wisdom, including his assertion about faith and prayer being powerful enough to move a mountain, you can try putting his advice to the test by, for instance, placing your hands on the sick people in the hospitals and then see whether they get well immediately or shortly after. But, please, do not try testing Jesus by drinking deadly poison; in all probability you will not emerge unhurt and there will be no miracle to save you from the physical ailment or termination of your life that is likely to result. Jesus can be seen as being obviously ignorant of the old saw: “Never promise more than you can perform.” To some people at least, miracles occur only in the Bible and perhaps in the religious text of some other religions. And would a god supposedly omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent need to resort to threat? In Mark 16.16 we hear Jesus saying: Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. Why the condemnation just for not believing? Why should anyone believe without evidence? Surely, Jesus with his so-called omnipotence and divine eloquence should have no problem in convincing the creatures he himself allegedly created; but it is obvious from reading the script that Jesus alone was not adequate; he needed the help of the so-called Holy Spirit. And yet what happened? The Holy Spirit descended on so-called Pentecostal Day but over the centuries Christianity has split into close to 34,000 denominations with disparate doctrines, beliefs or practices. Some so-called Christian sects do not embrace the doctrine of the Trinity or of so-called Holy Eucharist.

 Jesus [or the gospel writer?] can be accused of making another huge lie or fraud when he was allegedly making reference to “angels”, “Father” and “heaven” in this utterance: [Matthew 18.10]: See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. It is not infrequent that we hear of media reports of children, some of them toddlers, being made to suffer physically and/or mentally, or losing their lives, as a result of the actions of human adults, their own parents in some cases. The number of children who were raped and/or killed, say, in the last 50 years, is probably in hundreds of thousands if not in millions. Were these children given a chance to exercise their free will, for example, to live peacefully rather than be tortured, raped, killed or murdered? The simple answer is NO. They died or suffered pain, physically and /or mentally, through the irrational or rash actions of adults. What about the announcement of Jesus concerning angelic or divine oversight or protection?

 Pedophile priests in the thousands have apparently forgotten or disregarded Jesus’ teachings about celibacy or staying sinless or perfect, and it appears that the Catholic Church has paid billions or millions of dollars in compensation to victims of child sexual abuse, and been accused of attempts at covering up child sexual abuses committed by some of its clerical members, by arranging the transfer of  an accused member from one parish to another. It has been reported, in a book authored by a Queen’s Counsel, that one particular pedophile priest was assigned to nine different parishes, where he regularly re-offended for the next fifteen years. Indisputably, priests found guilty of pederasty can be labeled as homosexuals for having committed homosexuality. Of course, pedophilia is a condition that is not restricted to clerics [Catholic or otherwise] only; people outside the clergy, of various stripes or colors, including women, have also been charged for being pedophiliac.

 One can argue that there is nothing great or profound about the moral teaching of Jesus. Many of the utterances of Jesus as reported in the synoptic gospels can be said to be neither wise nor morally admirable. He appeared intolerant toward those who disagreed with him [Mark 6.11 and Matthew 10.14-15, 11.20-24] and, although he is reported to have preached the virtues of forgiving, he himself appeared as an unforgiving person [Mark 8.38, 14.21]; his constant harping on eternal punishment in hell is a sure sign of a character defect [note that it is only from the New Testament that we hear so much about hell and eternal punishment]. According to Jesus [Mark 7.21], sexual immorality, fornication, for example, is an evil that defiles a person.  In Matthew 5.17 we hear him saying: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Thus Jesus can be seen as giving support to the proscription laid down in the Old Testament against homosexuality, an offence so allegedly serious as to merit the death penalty.

 Let’s recall the story of the fig tree narrated in Mark 11.12-14, 11.20-21 and Matthew 21.18-20. Jesus was allegedly hungry and saw a fig tree in the distance but when he approached closer he noticed that the tree was barren; apparently it was not the season for figs. Then Jesus allegedly spoke to the tree thus: May no one ever eat fruit from you again [Mark 11.14] or May you never bear fruit again! [Matthew 21.19]; according to script, the tree withered, as a consequence of this utterance of Jesus, interpreted as a curse. It can be assumed that Jesus with his so-called divinity could have easily caused the fig tree to produce, in an instant, fruits in abundance, for his own consumption and for the benefit of members of the public.. And that would have been a far more positive action or miracle, if causing the tree to wither can be judged as positive rather than negative. But Jesus’ cursing of the tree can be viewed as an adverse revelation of his nature, whether human or divine, and whether or not the cursing of the tree and its resultant withering is a metaphor for demonstrating the power of prayer, as amplified in these passages:

•  Mark
• 11.21. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”
• 11.22. “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered.
• 11.23. “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.
• 11.24. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

 My questions/message to Jesus: What about the children who lost their lives in earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, famine, diseases, etc? What about the Beslan massacre, where 186 children lost their lives as a result of stupid, delusional adult human actions, whether politically motivated or otherwise? And what about the deaths of 276 children  in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978 [People’s Temple/Jim Jones]? Where were the children’s angels? Weren’t you lying when you were making reference to “angels”, “Father” and “heaven”? Would you not agree that the Bible is messy, full of inconsistencies and contradictions, despite the belief of your followers in its inerrancy and that it was all written with the inspiration of the so-called Holy Spirit, a being interpreted in some quarters as your father [or you yourself?] who in terms of biblical script impregnated Mary in order to give birth to you? Were you wine-drinking and celebrating in Heaven with your disciples when innocent people, including innocent women, were tortured or burnt to death by people who were supposedly acting on your authority or under the banner of so-called Christian faith during the era of the Inquisitions? Jesus, I have no choice but to say that you are nothing but a huge lie and, possibly, the greatest fraud in the history of humanity.

In Galatians 1.11-12 we hear Paul asserting: I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. So when we hear him saying, in 1 Corinthians 11.23-25: For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me,” it has to be assumed this speech of Jesus was not something he gathered from the other apostles but a product of revelation from Jesus, not dissimilar to the numerous other instances of revelations received by Old Testament prophets from Yahweh or the revelations allegedly made to “John” as reported in the Book of Revelations. A skeptic familiar with Mithraism is likely to offer the explanation of Paul copying, probably with some modification, from Mithraic communion liturgical practice. Part of the Mithraic communion liturgy included the words, “He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation.” And it would not appear unreasonable for the skeptic to conclude that Paul’s theology was incorporated into the gospels by the Church to reflect that it was Jesus who spoke those words at the Last Supper. Whether these words [1 Corinthians 11.24-25] were actually spoken by Jesus or a fabrication by Paul, the Jews are religiously forbidden to taste blood.

 Jesus is biblically portrayed as an observant Jew who allegedly came to fulfill Jewish religious laws and thus can be viewed as having acted strangely or inconsistently if he had indeed established a practice, merely symbolic or otherwise, for drinking his blood.  In Mark and Matthew, Jesus’ last words on the cross are reported to be: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” I wonder how many Christians are aware that these words can be found in Psalm 22.1: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? The probability of the author of Matthew copying from the author of Mark cannot be ruled out, while the probability of the author of Mark lifting these words from the Old Testament can certainly be ruled in.

 A belief in Yahweh, aka the obnoxious God of the Old Testament, is not necessarily a belief in Jesus; but to believe in Jesus is to believe in Yahweh, in view of the claim of Jesus of Yahweh being his God/Father. The Bible can be considered as a story of ancient Jews, but how much of it can be considered as a true account is highly debatable. From reading it, particularly the OT, one can glean that much of it is about belligerence, cruelty, hatred, malevolence, pillaging or robbing, racism, tyranny, murder or genocide, and the killing of men, women and children by the Jews at the so-called behest of their warmonger-deity [Yahweh]. Yahweh can be claimed to be a creation of the Jews but Yahweh, regardless of whether the claim is true, cannot be worthy of human worship, in terms of his abysmal portrayal in the OT, which is basically a translation from the Jewish Bible, which the Jews consider as an account of their early history and of Jewish religious worship and practices. Yahweh’s speeches/actions can be infamously gleaned from reading the Bible.

 The OT, not the NT, of the Bible can be considered as its backbone and incurably diseased, in the context of this declaration, allegedly from Jesus:  Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them [Matthew 5.17]. Hence non-Jewish Yahweh-believers can be observed to be providing, wittingly or unwittingly, a certain kind or level of sponsorship to ancient Jewish history or, as some people prefer, Jewish mythology, originated by silly, ignorant Jews for Jewish consumption. Unfortunately for humanity as a whole, many non-Jews have bought into the creation propaganda and all the rest, with the natural consequence that what is myth is no longer seen as myth but as reality, as the truth. Is there any logical ground for the creation of a world where rape and murder and all other forms of evil or suffering are common occurrences? The answer must be No, but Yes if the creator can be labeled a barbaric, cruel, genocidal maniac, not as an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being.

 More than one and a half centuries ago, many Christians were already convinced that the second coming of Jesus would occur in 1843. William Miller, an American Baptist converted from deism, and his supporters [number said to be over 50,000 at the time] believed that Jesus would make his appearance between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844, But Mar 21, 1844 passed without any incident and a new date, Apr 18, 1844, was adopted; however, Apr 18 also passed without any evidence or indication of Jesus’ return. Then someone, apparently linked to Miller, calculated that the correct date for Jesus’ appearance should be Oct 22, 1844. The Millerites were, however, greatly disappointed when the sun rose on the morning of October 23 like any other day. Arguably, predictions of future events appear to be a common feature of Christianity [see http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl2.htm]; another group of so-called Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses [previously known as the Bible Student Movement, founded in the late 19th century by Charles Taze Russell], had also made several predictions that outturned unfulfilled. For details visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_regarding_Jehovah%27s_Witnesses

 It would be easier to believe that the universe is infinite than to believe it is not; if the universe is infinite it can never have a beginning, hence there is no question of creation and no position or location, anywhere in the universe, can be considered central. If the universe is finite, then in principle its boundary can be established, provided we have the requisite technology or capability, but in this scenario there is a possibility of us facing this conundrum: What is behind the boundary, whatever the boundary is? Various scientific studies—radiometric dating of rocks and meteorites, radioactive study of uranium, thorium and lead isotopes, soil erosion, fossil and plant remains and salinity of the oceans—were undertaken to gauge the age of the Earth and all pointed to the age as being around 4 to 5 billion years; to be more precise, around 4.5 billion years. Science postulates that the Earth was formed from a remnant of a star’s explosion, called a supernova. Astronomical observations have led scientists to theorize the existence of 100-400 billions of stars [and thus billions of planets] in our galaxy [Milky Way] alone. And scientists think there are billions of galaxies in the universe. Earth can cease to exist but the universe will continue, regardless.

 The Earth is so insignificant in the immensity or infinitude [assuming the universe is infinite] of space that this analogy may seem inappropriate for merely stating our visibility or invisibility: the Earth is just not only like a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert but a grain among the aggregate collection of sands on this planet! Being a mere planet among the trillions of stars [many a star is millions of times the size of the Earth] and other planets [plausibly billions or trillions] scattered throughout the universe, the Earth in space is just like a microbe or a very tiny object that is visible only under the lens of a telescope. And think about space – can you imagine space being a creation? The Old Testament, by its narrative, points to the Earth as being around 6,000 years’ old; no rational person is agnostic on the question of whether the world was created in 4004 BC. If science is correct with regard to the age of the Earth, or to the existence of dinosaurs [from fossil records] about 60 million years ago, then it wouldn’t be unreasonable to form a picture of God/Yahweh looking on nonchalantly as a disinterested bystander for over 4 billion years prior to mankind’s appearance. Maybe, only a nincompoop god would do, or could have done, such a thing and only a nincompoop human would believe in God/Yahweh intervening in this manner. According to what science has unearthed, modern humans started their appearance only about 250,000 to 200,000 years ago.

 According to scientific findings, other animals existed on Earth long before the appearance of humans and many of these animals are reckoned to have suffered as their species became extinct. What explanation can we expect from God/Yahweh-believers for animal suffering, including the pain of being burnt alive, say, in a forest fire or being eaten alive by another animal? Would they say God/Yahweh is a cruel god with a zest for sadomasochism? Their response would probably rest on using Satan as a whipping boy – that it was Satan, not God/Yahweh, who created evil – bypassing, lamely but conveniently, their belief that it was God/Yahweh who allegedly created Satan. And if evil must exist, then what is this silly revelation that is offered in Revelation about evil being eradicated in the Armageddon, the so-called final climatic battle between God/Yahweh and Satan? Let’s hear the words of Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who lived centuries before Jesus, concerning God and evil: Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

 Indisputably, we are living in an imperfect world nothing short of being wasteful and messy, inefficient and full of imperfections. Hence it is nonsensical [or should we say anthropomorphic?] to profess God/Yahweh as being “perfect” or “all-loving.” Only irrational, imaginative people are capable of that, as there is no empirical evidence for his existence; God/Yahweh “exists” only within the covers of the Bible. And in terms of biblical portrayal the perfect description for God/Yahweh is “imperfect,” imperfect in myriads of ways and as a spoilt-brat in need of parental spanking for his unhealthy craving for sacrifice and for adult human attention.

 Let’s review some passages from the OT, which make Bible-reading so revolting:

• Numbers
• 5.11. Then the LORD said to Moses,
• 5.12. “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him
• 5.13. by sleeping with another man, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act),
• 5.14. and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure-
• 5.15. then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder offering to draw attention to guilt.
• 5.16. ” ‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the LORD.
• 5.17. Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water.
• 5.18. After the priest has had the woman stand before the LORD, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse.
• 5.19. Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has slept with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you.
• 5.20. But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have defiled yourself by sleeping with a man other than your husband”-
• 5.21. here the priest is to put the woman under this curse of the oath-”may the LORD cause your people to curse and denounce you when he causes your thigh to waste away and your abdomen to swell.
• 5.22. May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells and your thigh wastes away.”  ” ‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”
• 5.23. ” ‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water.
• 5.24. He shall have the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water will enter her and cause bitter suffering.
• 5.25. The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the LORD and bring it to the altar.
• 5.26. The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water.
• 5.27. If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse, it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell and her thigh waste away,  and she will become accursed among her people.
• 5.28. If, however, the woman has not defiled herself and is free from impurity, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.
• 5.29. ” ‘This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and defiles herself while married to her husband,
• 5.30. or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the LORD and is to apply this entire law to her.
• 5.31. The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’ “

 So we have here a sign of an ignorant, asinine, barbaric god imparting bizarre ideas, or further ignorance or imbecility, to his already barbaric, ignorant or gullible followers.

 And in these passages, also from Numbers, God/Yahweh can be observed to be exhibiting his thirst for revenge:

•  25.4. The LORD said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of these people, kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the LORD, so that the LORD’s fierce anger may turn away from Israel.”
• 25.5. So Moses said to Israel’s judges, “Each of you must put to death those of your men who have joined in worshiping the Baal of Peor.”
• 25.16. The LORD said to Moses,
• 25.17. “Treat the Midianites as enemies and kill them, because they treated you as enemies when they deceived you in the affair of Peor and their sister Cozbi, the daughter of a Midianite leader, the woman who was killed when the plague came as a result of Peor.”
• 31.1. The LORD said to Moses,
• 31.2. “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people.”
• 31.7. [Moses said] Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man.
• 31.27. Divide the spoils between the soldiers who took part in the battle and the rest of the community.
• 31.28. From the soldiers who fought in the battle, set apart as tribute for the LORD one out of every five hundred, whether persons, cattle, donkeys, sheep or goats.
• 31.32. The plunder remaining from the spoils that the soldiers took was 675,000 sheep,
• 31.33. 72,000 cattle,
• 31.34. 61,000 donkeys
• 31.35. and 32,000 women who had never slept with a man.
• 31.40. 16,000 people, of which the tribute for the LORD was 32

 This passage is addressed to God: God, first things first: Is this story true or false? If true, then, without doubt, it can be taken at face value and you can be accused of being an ungodly creature and a criminal with a lethal instinct for killing or revenge. It has been said that “revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind.” Are you capable of evaluating the presence of evil in your mind, God? A human court of law would have no hesitation in sentencing you, regardless of your so-called omniscience, to prison or the gallows. And no doubt, Moses, your right hand man, and his accomplices would have received similar treatment for their crime of genocide. It would not be unreasonable to say that you probably watched with relish the killing of every Midianite woman who had slept with a man. What if they were married women who had only slept with their husbands? Notwithstanding their marital status or that they had only slept with their husbands, all Midianite women were killed purely for being non-virgins. God, why did you create sex in the first place? According to Genesis and if Genesis accounts can be believed, you created sex when you created Adam [a male] and Eve [a female] for the purpose of sexual procreation, for increasing in number and filling the Earth. If the Genesis account of Adam and Eve is true then we can say their physical bodies were works of your divine artistry. But some present-day people have expressed the opinion that the human body seems to have a number of flaws. However, we shall discuss this on another occasion. Now back to the Midianite story. Without a physical examination, how can another human tell whether a girl or woman has slept with a man or is still a virgin? Under certain circumstances, the answer is Yes, otherwise the answer is No; obviously, for example, if a human female has sexually procreated, then she is no longer a virgin. Can a married woman/widow still remain a virgin? In case you are ignorant, the short answer is Yes if, for instance, her husband is/was sexually dysfunctional or has died before consummating the marriage, and I don’t think we need to delve deeper into the question. Presumably women who had to undergo a physical examination suffered the humiliation of being probed physically before escaping death for being virgin or losing their lives for being non-virgin. My apologies for assuming you might be ignorant since, as we have just said a moment ago, you supposedly designed the human body [male or female] and therefore can be assumed as having intimate knowledge that the hymen—supposedly a functional virginity test [but may not be the final arbiter in modern medical practice] for a female human being—is usually ruptured during sex. But I have no doubt that you would agree that any strenuous form of physical exercise, such as gymnastics, bicycle-riding, horse-riding, and perhaps any other form of physical exercise requiring movement of legs and body, may also rupture the hymen. Therefore, a ruptured hymen is no guarantee that a girl or woman is no longer a virgin. Would you agree? I suppose the answer cannot be other than Yes. But, then, we cannot discount that such possibilities were unknown to your stupid, unthinking, barbaric followers of this period. We must, however, also remember you were their God, their leader and you were, according to script, teaching them as to how they should live, that is, strictly according to your laws or guidelines. People say that the followers in a group or community usually follow in the footsteps of their leader and thus if their leader is cranky or irrational then one can expect no less of the followers. On the point regarding strenuous exercise, we have to acknowledge, however, that bicycles were non-existent hence this particular category can be removed from the equation. What about horses and gymnastics? Modern gymnastics, arguably, was developed much later in human history and that, presumably, can also be taken out of the equation. But what seems unquestionably clear is that a broken hymen cannot be taken as a conclusive proof of being a non-virgin and that this story is basically about hatred or revenge. Furthermore, using the non-virginity of women or girls as the sole criterion for terminating their lives can be seen as an act of madness only a mad god like you and his mad followers are capable of. Do you agree? What did you do with the 32 virgin women presented to you as your share? This story seems to say that virgin women or girls were objects of pleasure to you and to your maniacal people while boys, regardless of their virginity were considered as being of no value hence they were murdered. God, if this story is not true then the person who wrote it can be accused of fabricating; in which case, we cannot rule out that, possibly, there are other fabrications strewn throughout the pages of the Bible. But whether untrue or true, there is no denying that the Bible is littered with inconsistencies and contradictions and that it still has a vast following, notwithstanding the inconsistencies and contradictions. The people who take the Bible as myth are probably inclusive of those who find it hard to stomach the story of a barbaric, cruel, malevolent, maniacal god with a morbid instinct for revenge and genocide incarnating on Earth as a human for the purpose of teaching other humans the virtues of love, compassion and humility. One way of interpreting the incarnation story is to say that you can be accused of being a liar and a hypocrite or of suffering perpetually from an incurable amnesia. Another interpretation is that some people are probably suffering from a delusion, due to their inability to distinguish between fact and fiction or between reality and imagination. Thus your so-called existence, based purely on scriptural evidence, could be just stupid, irrational, human imagination, although no one can deny there is no empirical proof for your existence or non-existence. [End]

 Killing instructions from God/Yahweh [Exodus and Leviticus]:

•  E19.12. Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them, ‘Be careful that you do not go up the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.
• E19.13. He shall surely be stoned or shot with arrows; not a hand is to be laid on him. Whether man or animal, he shall not be permitted to live.’
• E35.2. For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it must be put to death.
• L20.14. If a man marries both a woman and her mother, it is wicked. Both he and they must be burned in the fire, so that no wickedness will be among you.
• L24.16: anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death.
• Deuteronomy
• 7.2. and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.
• 7.16. You must destroy all the peoples the LORD your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you.
• 12.2. Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains and on the hills and under every spreading tree where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods.
• 12.3. Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.
• 13.6. If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known,
• 13.7. gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other),
• 13.8. do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him.
• 13.9. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people.
• 13.10. Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery
• 20.16. However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.
• 20.17. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you.
• 21.18. If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him,
• 21.19. his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town.
• 21.20. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.”
• 21.21. Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.
• 22.22. If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.
• 22.23. If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her,
• 22.24. you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.
•  
• Joshua
• 6.20. When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in, and they took the city.
• 6.21. They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every livingthing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.
• 6.24. Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the LORD’s house.
• 8.24. When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it.
• 8.25. Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai.
• 8.26. For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai.
• 10.11. As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth Horon to Azekah, the LORD hurled large hailstones down on them from the sky, and more of them died from the hailstones than were killed by the swords of the Israelites.
• 10.30. The LORD also gave that city and its king into Israel’s hand. The city and everyone in it Joshua put to the sword. He left no survivors there. And he did to its king as he had done to the king of Jericho.
• 10.39. They took the city, its king and its villages, and put them to the sword. Everyone in it they totally destroyed. They left no survivors. They did to Debir and its king as they had done to Libnah and its king and to Hebron.
• 10.40. So Joshua subdued the whole region, including the hill country, the Negev, the western foothills and the mountain slopes, together with all their kings. He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded.

 What I have quoted is just a fraction of what can be found in the Bible, but some (or many?) Christians seem hopelessly ignorant of the existence of such passages; maybe not; maybe some of them are incapable of understanding Biblical text; maybe they are not concerned whether it is only a charade they are exhibiting.

My own ignorance of the Bible was a contributing factor for my becoming a Christian; my reading of the Bible, on a critical basis, was what led, ironically, to my de-conversion; there are numerous testimonials – see examples appended –  posted in the Internet of de-conversion, resulting from Bible-reading:

 “….Women were nothing to the scribblers of the Bible – women were too inferior to teach men, were to keep their mouths shut and not ask questions in church, etc. I wondered what in hell was so attractive about this trash to my mother and women like her, who devoted their time to a religion that despised them and a God who cared nothing for them! ….By the time I was thirteen, I had lost my belief in the Abrahamic nonsense [and yes, that means that I concluded that Islam is a load of rubbish, as well.] Today I look back on the childish, empty-headed belief system I swallowed as a kid, and I know that there is no God out there of the type spoken of in the Bible. I shake my head at my stupidity. ….So in closing, let me say that I am an example of the fact that nothing will turn you into an unbeliever as quickly as reading the source material.”

 “….The God of the Bible wasn’t the God that was praised so heavily by Christians. The God of the Bible was a very selfish, obnoxious, uncaring, unloving, hateful and sinister entity of evil that craved constant attention. Because of one man’s sin, he condemned everyone to Hell for eternity (unless they commenced obedience and repentance). He could’ve prevented that from the beginning, but instead, he gave people his distorted version of choices or lack thereof. He blames people for his own mistakes. Not only that, everything he spoke against was something he himself also practiced (example: murder, favoritism, perversion, hate). He encouraged genocide in which women and children were killed as depicted in the book of Judges.”

 “….I realized that the entire bible is full of contradictions that cannot be reconciled. How can this be the work of god? It obviously isn’t the inerrant thing I was taught it was. More, the god of the bible is downright EVIL. He condones rape, child sacrifice, pillaging, conquering, slavery, treating women as animals and as vulgar, unclean, overly emotional, unthinking, vain, inferior possessions. It’s despicable. I not only don’t understand how people believe it, but I don’t understand WHY anyone would want to.”

 “The dreadful actions of God in both the old and new testaments bothered me too, whether it was God commending Abraham for being ready and willing to murder his son Isaac for Him, killing the first born of Egypt, slaughtering whole cultures in Canaan, threatening to send mere non-believers to hell, or wiping out over a third of humanity in Revelations. God sounded more like an angry prudish tyrant or a cruel mafia don.”

 Some people, and the number may not be insignificant, may not be aware that most researchers agree that about 20 percent of all known pregnancies end up as miscarriages. Any God/Yahweh-believer against abortion should seriously consider querying God/Yahweh as to why, for all his divine intelligence, one in five fetuses has ended up getting aborted through miscarriage. Pro-life Christians seem to think that their God/Yahweh is against abortion or against baby-killing. Whether these people can be accused of being ignorant or not, the fact is, their God/Yahweh can be accused of being the greatest abortionist or the greatest baby-killer of all. If they think their God/Yahweh is not or cannot be viewed as a baby-killer, then it is obvious they have no understanding of or have not read the Bible. Listen to this braggadocio from God/Yahweh: “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord”? [Exodus 4.11]

 Some God/Yahweh-believers pray to God/Yahweh at meal times, to thank and praise him for the meal they are about to eat and, presumably, for everything else positive in their lives. But are these God/Yahweh-believers so ignorant or so naive that they are not aware of the things that have happened or are still happening around the world? Turn the pages of the newspapers, any day, and we can read of all sorts of mayhem taking place all over the world; natural disasters destroying lives and property, terrorism resulting in the loss of innocent lives, diseases taking their toll on human and animal lives, etc. Christians [all those who have prayed at one time or another, or are still praying, to God/Yahweh] can be critiqued as being hopelessly ignorant of the biblical passages that are a clear reflection of God’s/Yahweh’s weaknesses, for example, his apparent high dependency on his so-called human prophets to execute his so-called wishes/plans; in Exodus we see his dependency on Moses/Aaron to act as  his mouthpieces, and on Moses to produce  two new stone slabs [for so-called Ten Commandments] and build his so-called sanctuary on Earth, despite his creative powers, as demonstrated in Genesis. 

 There is no argument that the Bible is saturated with stories of all sorts of miracles; turning river water into blood, separating the waters of the Red Sea [in case one is not aware, the Red Sea is not a chest-level body of water; its average depth is said to be about 500m], changing water into wine, feeding thousands of people with just two loaves and a few fish, restoring sight to the blind, raising the dead to life, walking on water, walking through solid walls, closed doors etc. However, miraculous stories are not confined only to Christian religious literature but can also be found in the religious text of other religions and in Greco-Roman and  Egyptian mythologies and in other cultures of the ancient world. A suggestion to God/Yahweh-believers to give this a try: on your next praying occasion, pray to God/Yahweh to work a miracle such as causing heavy rain to come down hard on the entire Sahara Desert for, say, one month non-stop; or pray for the entire world, for everyone, for the eradication of hunger, poverty and all kinds of suffering. Please evaluate the effectiveness of your praying by making a note of the day you made this supplication to God/Yahweh and monitoring the  situation; what sort of time-frame would you assign to God/Yahweh for working this miracle: one hour, one week, one month? If your prayer for this miracle outturned ineffective, then simply admit it.

 It would be easier than a walk in the park [or the Garden of Eden?] for God/Yahweh to eradicate, overnight, hunger, poverty and all kinds of suffering; remember the story in Genesis – wherein God/Yahweh allegedly says: Let there be light, and, lo and behold, there is light? So there was darkness where light made its appearance; maybe God/Yahweh was moving about in uncreated total darkness and discovered light was essential for his eyesight. But who heard God/Yahweh saying this or that? Who witnessed God’s/Yahweh’s actions?  And remember, too, that God/Yahweh, supposedly omnipotent with the ability for creating solid objects out of nothing by merely voicing out his thoughts or commands, was allegedly highly dependent on Moses, supposedly his human deputy or one of his deputies, for building for his personal occupation a so-called sanctuary on Earth, or for cutting two new stone slabs for inscription of the so-called Ten Commandments. Only stupid people cannot see the stupidity so typically embedded in biblical stories.

 Presumably, you already know prayer can never move a mountain, notwithstanding the teaching of your so-called Lord, Jesus, about prayer. And, presumably, religious leaders appear to be a lot more pragmatic than their followers are wont to believe; these leaders prefer to rely on money collections or contributions from their parishioners than to pray to God/Yahweh/Allah to grow, say, a gold or diamond tree in the backyard of any church or mosque. Without a doubt these religious leaders are fully appreciative of the impossibility of the occurrence of this kind of miracle, as Emo Philips, an American stand-up comedian, discovered when he was a kid; Emo reportedly said this, after having gone through an experience: When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me. We can’t be wrong in saying that many religious followers, as with their leaders, also appear pragmatic, in certain ways, despite believing in praying or prayer; for example, they would consult a physician and take medicine for their illness; and they would opt for prosthesis, denture or prescriptive lenses for, say, a lost limb, lost teeth or poor vision, rather than relying on prayer alone for growing a new limb, new teeth or vision restoration. Funnily enough, they think such miracles are impossible, notwithstanding their belief in the miracles narrated in their religious text.  Provided money is not an issue they will probably have no hesitation in spending vast sums of money to stay alive if they are unlucky enough to be stricken with, say, a life-threatening illness. Maybe, as part of the human psyche, some people are aware that there is no certainty about the unknown. The least we can say about such behavior is that their faith in God/Yahweh or Jesus is not solid but malleable, to be varied according to circumstances or as it suits them; their faith is no less tainted with doubt.

 A caution, though; prayer can also create problems, as highlighted in an incident that led to litigation. Remember the court case involving priests from the Novena Church at Thomson Road, Singapore? The priests engaged lawyers for their defense, instead of putting their trust entirely in God/Yahweh by relying, as the Scripture says, on God/Yahweh to whisper infinite words of wisdom in their ear should they come under cross-examination. Perhaps, in their opinion and the opinion of their superiors, that was the right thing to do. Thus faith in God/Yahweh in guiding them as to how or what to say under cross-examination was put on the back-burner or considered as a non-primary issue. Maybe, they had come to the realization that for them to get out of this sticky situation, prayer alone would not be sufficient, may even outturn futile or disastrous.

 Some of the faithful may not be aware that praying in a church or mosque can be highly risky, and may not have read of news reports of people losing their lives or getting seriously injured from suicide bombers. God/Yahweh/Allah, where were you? And you can accuse Jesus of lying because your prayer or praying for someone to get well from a sickness produced nothing positive as the healing that you had expected did not materialize. On the contrary, you saw only negative results, because the person you prayed for died from his/her sickness. Dale and Leilani Neumann were charged by a Wisconsin [US] court in 2009 with second degree homicide for the death of their 11 year-old daughter, Madeline, from diabetic ketoacidosis, on Mar 23, 2008; apparently Madeline’s death was attributed to the irrational religious beliefs of her parents, who believed in faith-healing and prayed for her instead of taking her to a physician even as her condition deteriorated, leading to a most unpleasant death.

 Who said: Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer – was evidently someone with a realistic viewpoint, and there is substance in this statement and in this one, from Frederick Douglass: I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs; Douglass [1818–1895] was an American author, statesman and reformer and one of the most prominent figures in United States history. Some Christians are of course too young to know the horrors of human history; but for adult, “educated” Christians there is no necessity to go too far back; if you are harboring lofty or fairy-tale notions or beliefs about God/Yahweh, think of these horrible events:

• The so-called Taiping Rebellion in China [1850-1864] that ended the lives of about 20 million people.
• World War I and World War II occurred in the 20th century and accounted, between them, the loss [in one estimate] of about 76 million people, not counting the wounded who survived.
• The 1918/1919 Spanish Flu Pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people around the world.
• About six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, comprising more than one million Jewish children, approximately two million Jewish women and three million Jewish men.
• In the Indian subcontinent, at around the time of the partition [1947] of India into India and Pakistan, religious riots accounted for the death of about 1 million people and caused the displacement of over 10 million.
• In 1975 to 1979 about 1.7 million Cambodians died in their own country, from execution, forced labor, disease and starvation under the Khmer Rouge regime.
• In 1994 in Rwanda about 1 million people were brutally murdered over a period of approximately 3 months
• The genocide in Darfur [resulting from a conflict that began in Feb 2003] has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over 2,500,000 people.

 “According to the most recent compendium of history’s worst atrocities, Matthew White’s Great Big Book of Horrible Things (Norton, 2011), religions have been responsible for 13 of the 100 worst mass killings in history, resulting in 47 million deaths…Many religious massacres took place in centuries in which the world’s population was far smaller. Crusaders, for example, killed 1 million people in world of 400 million, for a genocide rate that exceeds that of the Nazi Holocaust. The death toll from the Thirty Years War was proportionally double that of World War I and in the range of World War II in Europe.” [http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/qa-with-steven-pinker/]. There is no doubt that religious beliefs, of the God-kind, particularly, have wrought immense suffering on humanity. This observation by Professor Steven Weinberg [an American physicist]: With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion – seems unsurprising, in the context of human cognitive faculties, which can be suspect concerning moral and religious matters. There is no denying the fact that we disagree or are uncertain or ignorant about many important moral and religious issues. “A man who thinks he has a higher purpose can do terrible things, even to those he professes to love.” [Denise Mina]. The deaths in the 20^th century of millions of people of diverse ethnicities and beliefs, under, separately, the regimes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, were allegedly the result of the exercise of certain political ideologies; people were killed or murdered regardless of their background, religious or non-religious.

 Suppose a person or some persons had the power to prevent a disaster, natural or otherwise, from occurring and killing, say, thousands or millions of innocent people, yet coolly refused to do so. He/she/they would rightly be judged a monster or monsters. So why should God/Yahweh be excused, when you believe he exists, is all-powerful and all-loving? A kind friend or sibling or parent or benefactor doesn’t hide from you from before your birth until after your death and still expect you to feel love and trust and gratitude. Why should God/Yahweh? Religion is a crutch some gullible people got shackled to, one they never really needed in the first place but were convinced by others that they couldn’t live without. Once they become aware that it’s only an illusion, they will discard it gladly.

 Anyone who cannot see Biblical irrationality/stupidity/myth – Biblical inconsistencies and contradictions notwithstanding, and these are littered throughout the Bible  – is probably someone incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. In Genesis, God/Yahweh allegedly created Adam and Eve naked; it would of course be mere speculation to wonder whether God/Yahweh felt any shame or derived enjoyment from ogling, presumably with divine glee, Eve’s naked body, assuming Adam’s physical appearance, being of his own image, possessed nothing of interest for him. At the very least, in the context of Genesis, nakedness appeared to be something natural and acceptable to God/Yahweh. Despite God’s/Yahweh’s apparent appreciation or visual enjoyment of human nakedness, God/Yahweh can be critiqued as having counterfeit or conflicting standards of morality or dressing in the context of his speech as recorded in Exodus 28.42/43: “Make linen undergarments as a covering for the body, reaching from the waist to the thigh. Aaron and his sons must wear them whenever they enter the Tent of Meeting or approach the altar to minister in the Holy Place, so that they will not incur guilt and die. This is to be a lasting ordinance for Aaron and his descendants.”

 Vide Deuteronomy, instructions were allegedly given to the Jews to bury their excrement in a hole in the ground to preempt the plausibility of God/Yahweh seeing anything indecent within the Jewish camp and turning away from them: [Deut 23.12-14] Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. For the LORD your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy, so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you. So God/Yahweh can be seen as having an aversion to “anything indecent” including, obviously, human excrement left uncovered on the ground; excrement buried in the ground being presumably beyond his sphere of view or knowledge.

 Please don’t forget Yahweh’s/God’s superstitions:

• Do not allow a sorceress to live [Exodus 22.18]
• Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast… [Exodus 34.25]
• Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings [Leviticus 2.13].
• Then the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering and pour out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar [Leviticus 4.34].
• He shall remove all the fat, just as the fat is removed from the lamb of the fellowship offering, and the priest shall burn it on the altar on top of the offerings made to the LORD by fire Leviticus 4.35].
• Or if a person touches anything ceremonially unclean—whether the carcasses of unclean wild animals or of unclean livestock or of unclean creatures that move along the ground—even though he is unaware of it, he has become unclean and is guilty [Leviticus  5.2].
• Or if he touches human uncleanness—anything that would make him unclean— even though he is unaware of it, when he learns of it he will be guilty [Leviticus 5.3].
• Meat that touches anything ceremonially unclean must not be eaten; it must be burned up. As for other meat, anyone ceremonially clean may eat it [Leviticus 7.19]
• But if anyone who is unclean eats any meat of the fellowship offering belonging to the LORD, that person must be cut off from his people [Leviticus 7.20].
• If anyone touches something unclean—whether human uncleanness or an unclean animal or any unclean, detestable thing—and then eats any of the meat of the fellowship offering belonging to the LORD, that person must be cut off from his people.’ [Leviticus 7.21].
• Say to the Israelites: ‘Do not eat any of the fat of cattle, sheep or goats [Leviticus 7.23].
• The fat of an animal found dead or torn by wild animals may be used for any other purpose, but you must not eat it [Leviticus 7.24]
• Anyone who eats the fat of an animal from which an offering by fire may be made to the LORD must be cut off from his people.’ [Leviticus 7.25]
• When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten [Leviticus 19.23].
• In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering of praise to the LORD [Leviticus 19.24].
• But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the LORD your God [Leviticus 19.25].
• Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard [Leviticus  19.27].
• A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads [Leviticus 20.27].
• No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; [Leviticus 21.18].
• no man with a crippled foot or hand, [Leviticus 21.19]
• or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. [Leviticus 21.20].
• No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the offerings made to the LORD by fire. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God [Leviticus 21.21].

 Yahweh/God needed animal sacrifice and the splashing of blood on his so-called altar; the smell of animal blood and burnt animal flesh is said to be pleasing to his empty nostrils. No one who is not incapable of sound reasoning, and familiar with the Bible, can fail to see how ridiculous or contradictory the belief in Yahweh/God being all-powerful and all-loving is, when it is juxtaposed against the so-called inerrant Biblical portrayal of Yahweh/God – as a barbaric, bloodthirsty, cruel, malevolent, sadomasochistic, genocidal maniac with a high dependence on his Jewish followers to execute his instructions. Only a fiendish, insane god would find joy in engaging in talks of taking revenge or of punishing the children and their children or grand-children for sins committed by their fathers or grand-fathers or great grand-fathers ages ago:

•  Exodus
• 20.5. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.
• 34.7. …Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.
•  
• Numbers
• 14.18. …Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.
•  
• Deuteronomy
• 5.9. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.
• 23.2. No one born of a forbidden marriage nor any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, even down to the tenth generation

 What kind of being do you think you are worshipping? Whether you care to admit or not, Yahweh/God can be labeled a moronic, unstable, freakish and immoral god with a zest for killing or genocide, in addition to his apparent racism and preference for creating enmity rather than harmony between non-Jewish tribes and Jews. Yet not a scintilla of empirical evidence can be found in support of his existence, if he exists; therefore it is perfectly legitimate to say that he exists only in biblical passages. Similarly, it is not illegitimate to say that Zeus, Apollo, Mars, Hera, Venus, Odin, Thor, Ra, Horus, Vishnu, Devi etc. are all deities that existed or exist only in mythology or in religious text.

 The Adam and Eve story as narrated in Genesis can be put down as Yahweh’s/God’s first failed endeavor; being supposedly omniscient he should have foreseen the consequences; yet no measures were taken to prevent access to the so-called Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; and it seems the talking serpent was far more persuasive than anything Yahweh/God could have voiced, for example, issuance of a death threat. Next, Noah and his family members as the prototype of future humans also failed to live up to Yahweh’s/God’s expectations; In fact, the experiment with Noah and his family had already allegedly gone wrong long before YahwehGod decided on his human incarnation, as the story of the Tower of Babel reveals. What about the so-called incarnation on Earth? Notwithstanding the schism within Christianity [who are the ‘true’ Christians has become a debatable issue], Christians presently constitute less than one-third of the world’s population, after 2,000 years of so-called Christian teaching or proselytizing. In case a Christian is not aware, Christianity is tainted with a history of intolerance, of acting with hatred and malice and of killing non-Christians or so-called heretics; the Crusader Wars, the Inquisitions, the Witch-hunts,  the Thirty Years War and other religious conflicts that accounted for the deaths of millions of people can be attributed to actions initiated by the Catholic Church.

 To say Yahweh/God is all-loving is nothing short of being wishy-washy. To believe in things which are manifestly absurd is to be irrational. Unfortunately for humanity, billions of people are afflicted with the Yahweh/God-virus, a memetic disease that has obviously taken a toll on human reasoning. Yes, religious faith is blind without a doubt. But anyone who can still be considered to be capable of reasoning should consider abandoning certain notions of their faith that appear to be outright ridiculous or nonsensical. Do you think that there is a possibility that you could have been wrong, or could be wrong, even now? Yes or no? Maybe you have been looking in the wrong places; maybe you weren’t paying attention to the script while engaged in reading; maybe your beliefs are due for a fresh evaluation, but on a rational basis this time round. Most people who claim to have religious beliefs have scarcely ever analyzed the contents of their belief, and indeed are reluctant to do so even when prompted [Adele Mercier, Professor of Philosophy at Queen's University, Ontario]. All or most of the comforts in living can be attributed to science and technology; what has religion offered or is offering? Prayers and more churches or mosques, with religious institutions growing wealthy or becoming richer from owning more land and buildings, bought or built with funds from the people?

 Arguably, what we believe or choose to believe, or what we do not believe or choose not to believe, will greatly influence our lives or the way we live and our attitudes toward ourselves and others. Hence we can never over-emphasize that believing, or having a desire or urge to believe, particularly the religious kind, can be a powerful force in the affairs of humanity, so powerful that wars have been fought, and people have died or suffered and others are willing to risk their health or wealth, or even to die as martyrs or to risk or sacrifice the lives of others, all for the sake of their beliefs, regardless of the fact that these beliefs are merely beliefs, with no empirical basis. The fact that some of our beliefs tell us only how things seem to be, not what they are, seems to be lost on some people. It can be ignorance or intentional disregard. To have no doubts at all about one’s beliefs can be symptomatic of irrationality, insanity or arrogant irresponsibility than of sound thinking. To face reality requires some courage. To engage in mystical magic thinking is not to face reality but can be seen as an attempt to produce a pseudo effect or solution to a real problem.

 And to round off, a couple of noteworthy quotations:  

•  People don’t believe what you tell them.
• They rarely believe what you show them.
• They often believe what their friends tell them.
• They always believe what they tell themselves.
• [Seth Godin]
•  We are all atheists about most of the gods humanity has ever believed in.
• Some of us just go one god further.
• [ Richard Dawkins]

Some God-believers pray to God at meal times, to thank and praise him for the meal they are about to eat and, presumably, for everything else positive in their lives and as a sign of his goodness and lovingness. But are these God-believers so ignorant or so naive that they are not aware of the things that have happened or are still happening around the world? Turn the pages of the newspapers, any day, and we can read of all sorts of mayhem taking place all over the world; natural disasters destroying lives and property, terrorism resulting in the loss of innocent lives, diseases taking their toll on human and animal lives, etc. The  news concerning the loss of 11 human lives and the injury of 76 people in New Delhi on 7 Sep 2011 may be old hat by now to some people.  It appears there was no whispering by God in the ear of the attacker to caution about the evil of killing/wounding innocent people. Why? And what empirical evidence do you have for God? According to a news report [Xinhua, Agence-France-Presse, reprinted in The Straits Times, 9 Sep 2011, Page A14], there is one suicide every 2 minutes [or about 260,000 suicides pa] in China. According to Agence-France-Presse, Xinhua, reprinted in The Straits Times, 21 Sep 2011, Page A20, “Heavy rain and floods across China have left 70 people dead, dozens of others missing and hundreds injured, while more than 1.66 million residents have been evacuated from their homes, the government said.”

Belief in divine Providence has no logical basis, in the face of empirical facts or real life happenings. Please stop dreaming or imagining.

If God is believed by you to be all-loving and all-powerful, with no question of anything being impossible to him, why do you pray just for yourself and family members and close friends? Why not pray for the entire world, for everyone, for the eradication of hunger, poverty and all kinds of suffering? It would be easier than a walk in the park [or the Garden of Eden?] for God to eradicate, overnight, hunger, poverty and all kinds of suffering; remember the story in Genesis? Wherein God allegedly says: Let there be light, and, behold, there is light. Why don’t you give this a try: on your next praying occasion, pray to God to work a miracle [the Bible is saturated with stories of all sorts of miracles], like causing heavy rain to come down hard on the entire Sahara Desert for, say, one month non-stop? Then evaluate the effectiveness of your praying; make a note of the day you made this supplication to God and monitor the  situation; what sort of time-frame would you assign to God for working this miracle: one hour, one week, one month? Remember, he is believed by you to be  all-powerful? And you believe in the power of prayer.

Please reflect on your past; have you consulted a doctor, taken medication for some ailment you have been suffering? Why the bother with doc consultation and/or medication if you have been fervent in your belief in prayer and the power of your God?

If you are not ignorant of other parts of the Bible, you may recall that God was very dependent on his human minions to execute many things for him; like cutting two new stone slabs, building his so-called earthly sanctuary, sacrificing and burning of animals and splashing of their blood around his so-called altar to satisfy his empty nostrils and his barbaric appetite.

God allegedly even told Moses how the Jews should follow the procedures for testing a wife suspected by her husband of being unfaithful, and God allegedly, meticulously spelt out these procedures, step by step, viz [Numbers, New International Version]:

•         5.11. Then the LORD said to Moses,

•         5.12. ”Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him

•         5.13. by sleeping with another man, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act),

•         5.14. and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure-

•         5.15. then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder offering to draw attention to guilt.

•         5.16. ” ‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the LORD.

•         5.17. Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water.

•         5.18. After the priest has had the woman stand before the LORD, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse.

•         5.19. Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has slept with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you.

•         5.20. But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have defiled yourself by sleeping with a man other than your husband”-

•         5.21. here the priest is to put the woman under this curse of the oath-”may the LORD cause your people to curse and denounce you when he causes your thigh to waste away and your abdomen to swell.

•         5.22. May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells and your thigh wastes away.”  ” ‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”

•         5.23. ” ‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water.

•         5.24. He shall have the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water will enter her and cause bitter suffering.

•         5.25. The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the LORD and bring it to the altar.

•        5. 26. The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water.

•         5.27. If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse, it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell and her thigh waste away, [f] and she will become accursed among her people.

•         5.28. If, however, the woman has not defiled herself and is free from impurity, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.

•         5.29. ” ‘This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and defiles herself while married to her husband,

•         5.30. or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the LORD and is to apply this entire law to her.

•         5.31. The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’ “

So we have here a sign of an ignorant, asinine, barbaric god imparting bizarre ideas, or further ignorance or imbecility, to his already barbaric, ignorant or gullible followers.

And in these passages, also from Numbers, God [or Yahweh, if you like] can be observed to be exhibiting his thirst for revenge:

 •         25.4. The LORD said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of these people, kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the LORD, so that the LORD’s fierce anger may turn away from Israel.”

•         25.5. So Moses said to Israel’s judges, “Each of you must put to death those of your men who have joined in worshiping the Baal of Peor.”

•         25.16. The LORD said to Moses,

•         25.17. “Treat the Midianites as enemies and kill them, because they treated you as enemies when they deceived you in the affair of Peor and their sister Cozbi, the daughter of a Midianite leader, the woman who was killed when the plague came as a result of Peor.”

•         31.1. The LORD said to Moses,

•        31.2. “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people.”

•         31.7. [Moses said] Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man.

Whether you care to admit it or not, Yahweh is a moronic, unstable, cruel, freakish god with a zest for killing or genocide and, unfortunately for humanity, so many people are afflicted with the Yahweh/God-virus -a memetic disease. People who are so afflicted are not in the least bit aware of it. They can no longer see the fault-lines, the irrationality or ridiculousness in their beliefs. And this Yahweh is none other than the god Jesus referred to in the New Testament as his “god/father.”

The Bible is saturated with speeches allegedly emanating from the God of Jesus, or Yahweh if you like, calling for the eradication or destruction of nations and/or individuals, for no reason other than being non-Jewish and for minor infringement of his so-called edicts [immorality masquerading as morality] .

Do you know who can be labeled as the barbaric ones in the story of Abraham? God, Abraham and Sarah! Read the story.

There is no question that it is far more onerous to tell people to use reason or logic than to appeal to their prejudices. However, we have to be cognizant that it is not reasonable to reason someone out of something for which they have not been reasoned into.

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Introduction

[Chapter 1 - available in book]

Is there a perfect being?

[Chapter 2 - available in book]

Solar System/Milky Way Galaxy/Universe

Big Bang Theory/Anthropic Principle

Age of the Earth/Creation as per Genesis

Solar System – Comparative Table

[Chapter 3- available in book]

Life hereafter

Chapter 4

“Intelligent design” argument

Court trial in the US on intelligent design

[Chapter 5 - available in book]

Ontological Argument

Message from Paul Grobstein to Rene Descartes

Watchmaker Argument

Cosmological Argument:

First Cause

Cause and Effect

Necessary and Contingent

Kalam Cosmological Argument

[Chapter 6 - available in book]

Summation and further considerations

Pascal’s Wager – from Sam Harris [with excerpts from some readers]

Intuition

Chapter 7

A critical review of the story of Adam and Eve

[Chapter 8- available in book]

Child-bearing pain

Free will/God as bystander

Story of Noah

[Chapter 9- available in book]

A critical review of the story of Abraham

[Chapter 10 - available in book]

A critical review of Exodus

Chapter 11

God and his superstitions

Supreme goodness v eternal punishment

[Chapter 12- available in book]

Evil and intolerance of God:

Murder of Onan

Murder of son born to David and Bathsheba

God’s evil, tyranny and killing or genocidal instinct as exemplified in Exodus, Leviticus, etc.

Parable of the 10 minas

Ananias and Sapphira [Acts 5.1-11]

Paul’s unforgivingness [Acts 13.6-12]

[Chapter 13 - available in book]

Morality and Good/Evil

[Chapter 14- available in book]

R- available in book]eligious membership

Religion – a curse on mankind

Religion as morality

Can apostasy be made official?

[Chapter 15- available in book]

Examples of racism/bigotry

Question of term “Allah” as a copyright

Excerpts from Janadas Devan’s article: One God many names

High court decision/public reaction

Dichotomy of Church and State

Definition of religion/positive and negative aspects of religion

A secularist policy deserves commendation

[Chapter 16- available in book]

Creation, creation to creation, evolution

Omnipotent/omniscience and creative philosophy

God’s so-called omnipotence – an imagined dialogue

Reading of Bible/bible

Avoidance of Bible in philosophic discussion of God/religion

[Chapter 17- available in book]

Where is the protection?

Sep 11 2001

Landslide in Philippines

Natural disasters

Acts of God

The nuclear environment

[Chapter 18- available in book]

Priest psychic?

Spiritual mediums/bomohs

Dogs howling/Ghost

Satan

[Chapter 19- available in book]

Nature/nurture

Being unique/different

Religion and national sentiments/Yasukuni

Kindergarten politics/baseless rhetoric

Rational/irrational/an imaginary case study

Examples of frail reasoning ([1] – [5]):

[1] Cherry-picking by some Australians

[2] Brahma and mentally ill person

[3] Shocking incident at Singapore Airport

[4] Is Buddha tooth here the real McCoy?

[5] God’s will – examples including Musharraf/Bush/Blair

[Chapter 20 - available in book]

To err is human – no exceptions

Infallibility is not infallible

Martin Luther’s On Jews and their lies

[Chapter 21 - available in book]

Human love/cruelty

Human imagination and creativity

Man creating deity/deities

“Dear Theologian” by Dan Barker

[Chapter 22 - available in book]

Thomas Aquinas [1225 -1274]

Wealth

Prayer/irony/life’s complications/grim statistics

[Chapter 23 - available in book]

Equality/inequality/slavery

Life-span/Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide/Growing old

Advanced Directive or Advanced Medical Directive

Chapter 24

Basic differences in beliefs – Christianity/Islam/Judaism

The Koran/Shortcomings of some prophets

Men created superior to women vide Koran/Bible

The most beautiful thing in God’s whole creation is the body of a human female

Ms Hauwa Ibrahim and Syariah law

[Chapter 25- available in book]

Was Muhammad a prophet sent by God?

Was Islam started purely on religious grounds?

Islam’s forsaken renaissance by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad

Miracles/Discrepancies in gospels

Excerpts from Marshall Gauvin’s “Did Jesus Christ Really Live?”

Marian apparitions

[Chapter 26- available in book]

Apparent falsehoods

Apparent distinction in images of God/contradictions or nonsense

Proscription against marrying one’s sister

Super biological procreativity

The Immaculate Conception

Assumption of the Virgin Mary

[Chapter 27 - available in book]

Birth of Jesus and King Herod

Reincarnation/Transfiguration

Holy Communion Animal/human sacrifice and circumcision

The Trinity/Revelation

[Chapter 28- available in book]

Purgatory/Sin

Is there a purpose?

What is the meaning of life?

A God-believer’s philosophy

An example of faith bounded by ignorance/Alzheimer’s disease

[Chapter 29 - available in book]

Contradictions or inconsistencies in an “inerrant”, “God-inspired” Bible.

[Chapter 30- available in book]

Concluding comments/looking back [including excerpts from Prof Victor Stenger’s book - God the Failed Hypothesis]

This thesis arose principally from my response to three specific questions:

 1                 Is there a perfect being?

2                 How would you evaluate the question: Is there a Creator of the universe distinct from it in the context of religious beliefs in the universe and everything else in it being a creation of God, the so-called Intelligent Designer?

3                 Is there a providential divinity watching over the human drama and occasionally revealing information to us supernaturally?

 These questions have as their genesis a book concerning philosophy authored by an American professor by the name of Tom V. Morris. Having read it I queried him on his concept of God and whether he was specifically referring to the God of the Bible. He replied that in mainstream Western tradition, when reference is made to God, it is to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. However, he also said that there are three philosophical questions [Q1, part of Q2 and Q3] that most philosophers consider relevant in any discussion concerning God/god or when the question Does God exist? is debated. I thank Prof Morris for being the catalyst for my interest in searching for answers to these questions.

 You will see that Q2 and Q3 are about God/god and religion and there is some overlap in all three questions. A consequence of the overlap is that specific points raised in response to one question will be found interwoven in many places in the book. This helps clarity or emphasis. My response to Q1 is complete in chapter 1. My response to Q2 and Q3 is spread across the other chapters. After I completed my response to all three questions and read what I wrote, I concluded that the most appropriate title for the thesis is God or Allah – truth or bull? As the Table of Contents provides a snapshot of the book’s contents, I  consider it superfluous in providing a separate, brief overview as to what the reader can expect in the pages that follow at the end of the Introduction. Hence, please use the Table of Contents as a guide wherever necessary.

 Unless indicated otherwise or specifically qualified, the term “God” will henceforth be taken to mean the Bible God. God/god, however, is not a new concept. Monotheists would argue that God was, is and always will be, but I would argue that God has always been controversial and will always remain so. Einstein allegedly said: The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses [NewScientist, Jul 5, 2008]. Being age-old the question of whether there is a god has been debated for thousands of years and will continue to be debated for as long as there are theists, atheists and agnostics.

 One cannot deny that God/god and religion are wide-ranging issues that somehow can get connected to everything else. Although some of the arguments expounded herein may sound like old hat, there may be views you have not heard of before. Nonetheless, I strongly feel the book would serve as good education for believers or non-believers who know little or next to nothing about their beliefs or non-beliefs in God or about God. Extracts of information from the Internet, newspapers and other sources considered relevant have been incorporated. Most if not all of the newspaper articles used were taken from the local English newspaper, The Straits Times, and some could be reprints of articles lifted or borrowed from other newspapers/publications or news agencies.

 I for one would welcome anyone who has a fresh point to make or perhaps offer a fresh perspective that may change our own views or outlook on life, be it God/god-oriented, religion-oriented or otherwise. And we cannot discount that there is always a first-time for some people. In fact, come to think of it, all of us have gone through first-time experiences of one sort or another, e.g. brushing teeth for the first time, eating out for the first time, watching a movie for the first time, etc. I have included discussions on issues that from my perspective are not only relevant but may be pertinent to the cultural, religious or educational background and experience [or inexperience] of the reader. The information is there as an available option to the reader, to read or to skip depending on his/her mindset or personal interests.

 Regardless of whether you think you may have a good counter-argument, god/God is a metaphysical term, hence to say that “god/God exists” or “god/God does not exist” is to make an assertion that cannot be either true or false; it is beyond verification or falsification. In a multicultural society, the term “god” or “God” can have a different meaning for different people. Even for the three major monotheistic religions – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – whether their followers believe in the same God is open to debate. Christians and Muslims had fought with each other over their religious beliefs or over apparent differences in their dogma. Christians in general believe in Jesus as God or Son of God, but followers of Judaism and all Muslims [and possibly followers of other creeds] do not believe in the divinity of Jesus. This conceptual difference in beliefs between Christians and Judaists or between Christians and Muslims is a very crucial one and has persisted since the advent of Christianity, or the advent of Islam in the case of Muslims. In addition, Judaists and Muslims do not believe that the so-called Virgin Mary has assumed divine attributes or that there are any merits in praying to her. If I am not mistaken, Catholics are the only group of Christians encouraged by their own clergy to pray to Mary.

 Christians when claiming they have had visions of God may say that it was Jesus Christ they encountered. On the other hand, a Hindu, if he has experienced a vision of god, is likely to name Krishna as the object of that vision. A Buddhist, in a strict sense of the word, does not believe in god/God, hence a Buddhist’s vision, if any, is likely to be linked to Buddha or his image. Two adults of the same religious faith discussing god/God may understand each other, but two adults with opposing beliefs, say, a religious person and a non-religious person, are not likely to reach a mutually acceptable conclusion in their discussion about the existence or non-existence of god/God. The religious person may have already “experienced” god/God whereas the non-religious person has had no experience of this nature. Even two religious adults may have problems in their discussion about god/God or the prophets mentioned in some religious text if they are not affiliated to the same religion.

 Man’s propensity to engage in beliefs that appear to be in discord with reality is simply mind-boggling. It seems that some people can be swayed more easily by their beliefs or prejudices than by logic or reason. If creation is not an acceptable concept, how else can one explain human existence here on Earth? Theists, or certain theists, will not of course reject the concept of creation, to avoid being castigated as apostates for rejecting creationism as part of their religious dogma. The theory of evolution may be the best explanation as to how life evolved but apparently this theory has been misconstrued in several ways. The most important point to remember is that this theory is not an explanation of the nature or origin of life itself; evolution is not necessarily a denial of religion or belief in God; evolution does not mean that man evolved directly from the ape or monkey. Man has had a long ancestry and man came from earlier species of man.

 Undoubtedly, religious faith can be the overriding factor or the guiding force for one’s thoughts or actions. Giving religion paramount status can render a situation dangerous, especially if professional training and other considerations are cast aside or viewed as less important than one’s religious faith. During the time of the Witch Mania/Inquisitions, thousands of innocent people were falsely accused of being witches or practicing witchcraft and were then imprisoned or put to death, by burning or other means. And how or why did the burning to death of people as witches or wizards happen? Many people in this era were gripped by an irrational, superstitious belief of the existence of witches and wizards and thought they were following the instruction contained in a passage in Exodus that says: You shall not allow a witch to live. But the witches or wizards who were put to death were none other than human beings! A total of nine crusades were apparently fought to wrest control of Jerusalem and the land of Canaan from the Muslims, the first crusade started in 1095 and ended in 1099 and the last started in 1271 and ended in 1272. How many people, including Christians, Muslims and others, died from these crusades cannot be accurately assessed but some sources have put the figure in the millions. The 1^st Crusade was reportedly initiated by Pope Urban II:

  At the Council of Clermont, assembled in the heart of France on November 27, 1095, Urban gave an impassioned sermon to a large audience of French nobles and clergy. He summoned the audience to wrest control of Jerusalem from the hands of the Muslims. France, he said, was overcrowded and the land of Canaan was overflowing with milk and honey. He spoke of the problems of noble violence and the solution was to turn swords to God’s own service: “Let robbers become knights.”[9] He spoke of rewards both on earth and in heaven, where remission of sins was offered to any who might die in the undertaking. Urban promised this through the power of God that was invested into him. The crowd was stirred to frenzied enthusiasm and interrupted his speech with cries of Deus lo volt! (“It is God’s will!”) End of excerpt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade [Sep 29, 2008]. 

There was little economic value to the Crusades, aside perhaps from protecting trade routes, but the religious value to leaders of the Christian church was immeasurable. There is little difference between this doctrine of holy violence and the belief of many Muslims today that dying as a martyr will ensure one’s entry into heaven. End of excerpt

http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/christian/blxtn_crus_maps02.htm [Sep 29, 2008]

 Arguably, religious bigotry can be seen as a bane of humanity, in terms of the significant number of lives lost through religious wars, albeit some of the worst crimes perpetrated against humanity were undoubtedly attributed to political leaders exercising their brand of political ideology as, for example, in the 20^th century under the regime of Stalin, or that of Hitler or Mao or Pol Pot, millions of people were killed or murdered because of egregious government policies. Fortunately for us, the situation today with regard to religion is vastly different in some respects from that of yesteryears; for one thing, the clergy in most if not all countries is no longer the deciding authority in matters of social justice and thus has no power to sentence anyone to death or imprisonment for their non-belief or their refusal to embrace any particular creed. Most people today are cognizant of the dangers of mixing politics with religion and are of the view that for the good of the community, especially one that is multicultural or multireligious, politics and religion must be kept separate. Thus most governments today operate on a secular basis. And we are also fortunate that personal freedom of choice, whether for religious worship or otherwise, is a principle widely acknowledged, by the vast majority if not by the entire world. Hence, we can be said to be enjoying a safeguard that was non-existent previously. Unfortunately, religious bigotry or stupidity, as one can see, is not dead.

 No doubt the power of belief, or of religion if you prefer, has been and still is a crucial, influencing factor in the lives of billions of people. Differences in religious beliefs, as history tells us, can lead to social dysfunction, even wars or destruction of communities. Throughout the course of history thousands or millions of people have died because of differences in religious beliefs or religious conflicts. The human mind can be totally warped through believing, and if we agree that believing unwaveringly in the absence of evidence or presence of invalidating or countervailing evidence is evidence of delusion, we can say that the world is heavily populated by delusional people. Even sensible people can become deluded and a plausible rejoinder is that all of us may be deluded, in one way or at one time or another.

 A person being delusional may be strictly a private affair, posing no danger to themselves or others. There is, however, the danger that a deluded person may think that rules that apply to others are not applicable to them and that they are entitled to something extra, some special treatment. To be more accurate, it is delusion combined with extremism and without regard for the well-being of others that can pose a danger to society, for example, some people from the male gender believe that they would be rewarded with, among other things, 72 female virgins to satisfy their every whim when they exit this world through suicide bombing themselves and others, innocent or otherwise, to Never-land. What about female suicide bombers? – asked a poster from the Internet; Do they get to screw 72 male virgins in paradise? Or are the only virgins in heaven female?

 Others, like members of the Heaven’s Gate cult, believed that the Earth was “about to be recycled (wiped clean, refurbished and rejuvenated), and that the only chance to survive was to leave it immediately.” The Heaven’s Gate cult achieved notoriety when 39 of its members were found dead in a mansion in the upscale San Diego community of Rancho Santa Fe, California, on March 26, 1997, after they had allegedly ingested phenobarbital mixed with vodka and secured plastic bags around their heads to induce asphyxiation. In 1994 74 members of the Order of the Solar Temple died from suicide/murder in Switzerland and Quebec. On November 18, 1978, 918 Americans died in Peoples Temple-related incidents, including 914 members [number may differ slightly depending on source] of the Temple, led by Jim Jones, in Jonestown, Guyana. The dead included 276 children.

 Whether it can be considered political or religious, or a combination of both, the senseless killing rampage in Mumbai on Nov 26, 2008, resulting in the death of more than 170 people, including  Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Jews, is clearly a case of the killers being delusional. The case of Sep 11, 2001, culminating in the death of over 3,000 people, is also a case of gross delusion, of the highest order. Any kind of delusion that is potentially dangerous to the community at large needs to be carefully monitored, or neutralized if necessary, for the safety of the community.

 If my evaluation of religious beliefs as expounded in these pages appears less than favorable it is because I am an atheist peppered with agnosticism. We should not, however, conflate an evaluation or criticism with blasphemy. But what is blasphemy? It can be broadly defined [in one dictionary] as “irreverent or abusive speaking about any person or thing held in high esteem”. From this definition it appears that blasphemy is possible only when more than one person or group is involved: the speaker and anyone who perceives that the speaker has “blasphemed”. Hence blasphemy, unless legally framed, can be considered a subjective issue with no basis in law, but it can have serious repercussions when there are people who are religiously bigoted or superstitious.

 The present world may be better educated but what happened to people in the past charged for being blasphemous can still happen today. The Bible or more accurately the Old Testament is notorious for its strident tenets bordering on extremism, and what’s more, they allegedly originated from a so-called all-loving God; vide Exodus 19.12/13 and 35.2 and Leviticus 20.14 and 24.16; except for line E35.2 these were allegedly words spoken by God to Moses:

•  E19.12. Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them, ‘Be careful that you do not go up the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.
• E19.13. He shall surely be stoned or shot with arrows; not a hand is to be laid on him. Whether man or animal, he shall not be permitted to live.’
• E35.2. For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it must be put to death.
• L20.14. If a man marries both a woman and her mother, it is wicked. Both he and they must be burned in the fire, so that no wickedness will be among you.
• L24.16: anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death.

 For biblical record of death due to blasphemy, Leviticus 24.14 appears to be the only case, concerning the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father. If I say God is portrayed in the Bible as a genocidal maniac, would that be construed as blasphemy? Well, that’s my perspective, from reading the Bible. Blasphemy or not, imagination or religious fanaticism can lead to a false sense of perception. That said, Jesus, so-called 2^nd Person of the Trinity, is reported to have pointed out blasphemy against the Holy Spirit as a very serious offence, vide Mark 3.28 – 3.29: 

• 3.28. I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them.

• 3.29. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.

 Cases of blasphemy in modern times in Western civilizations can be viewed as isolated cases; there were at least three such cases in the UK in the last 30 years but, not surprisingly, there was no judicial sentence calling for death by stoning in any of the cases, the reason being such harsh punishment has never been a feature of any modern society, let alone advanced Western civilizations. As a matter of fact, capital punishment has been abolished in several countries as it was considered uncivilized or barbaric. The blasphemy law in the UK was abolished with effect from 8 July 2008. In Muslim countries, anyone convicted of blasphemy, depending on the severity, can be sentenced to death or imprisonment. Several cases that have come to the public sphere:

 [1] Gillian Gibbons, a British schoolteacher, was arrested in Sudan in 2007 for allegedly insulting Islam by allowing her class to name a teddy bear “Muhammad”. Gibbons was formally charged under Section 125 of the Sudanese Criminal Act, for “insulting religion, inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs” and sentenced to 15 days’ imprisonment and deportation. It has been reported that approximately 400 protesters took to the streets, some of them waving swords and machetes, demanding Gibbons’s execution after imams denounced her during Friday prayers. During the march, chants of “Shame, shame on the UK”, “No tolerance – execution” and “Kill her, kill her by firing squad” were heard. Witnesses reported that government employees were involved in inciting the protests. Gibbons was then moved to a secret location because of fears for her safety. In an attempt to push for the release of Gibbons, two British Muslim peers (members of the House of Lords), Lord Ahmed (Labour) and Baroness Warsi (Conservative), visited Sudan with hopes of talking to the country’s President Omar al-Bashir. While the two British politicians were meeting the President on December 3 it was announced that Mrs. Gibbons was to be released from prison after being pardoned by Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir. She was released from prison into the care of the British embassy in Khartoum, and she later returned to her hometown in Britain, after issuing a written statement saying; “I have a great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone.” [Gibbon’s case was taken from Wikipedia, July 3, 2008]

 [2] Sabri Bogday, a Turkish national, was sentenced to death by a Saudi court on March 31, 2008 for allegedly cursing the name of God in his barber shop in Jeddah during an argument with a client. Under Saudi Arabian law, insulting God and the Islamic religion can be considered as apostasy or heresy, both of which are criminal offences punishable by death. Apparently Bogday was released in January 2009 after a court in Jeddah accepted his repentance. His release could also be partially attributed to the intervention of Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, both of whom had reportedly held telephone conversations with King Abdallah bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia and asked the King to pardon him.

[Pointers taken from http://www.doublespeakshow.com/2009/01/, Mar 23, 2009]

 [3] Sayed Pervez Kambaksh

[Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayed_Pervez_Kambaksh]

Mar 23, 2009 and Dec 12, 2009:

 Sayed Pervez Kambaksh (also spelled Kambakhsh or Kaambaksh) is a 23 year old reporter for a local newspaper (Jahaan Naw) and a journalism student from Afghanistan who was sentenced to death for downloading and distributing a report criticising the treatment of women under Islamic Law. A religious court found him guilty of blasphemy. He was tried behind closed doors and without legal representation in Mazar-e-Sharif. His brother Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is a journalist who wrote about human rights, exposing rights abuses.

 The Afghan Senate passed a motion confirming the death sentence on 30 January 2008. The motion was later withdrawn due to international pressure, giving Kambaksh the right to appeal the sentence. The British newspaper The Independent has now launched a campaign to support Kambaksh, and an online petition has also been started by the newspaper. If a journalist in Afghanistan were to support Kambaksh they would also be arrested.

 As of September 2008, he was still imprisoned and under threat of the death penalty. In October 2008, his lawyer Mohamed Afzal Shormach Nuristani demanded that Kambaksh be freed as his detention since the appeal has exceeded legal limits because of court delays.

 In March 2009 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

 In late August 2009, President Hamid Karzai granted “amnesty” to Kambaksh, and Kambaksh left Afghanistan.

 Can it be possible to define “God’s will”? The reader may have read a newspaper report about a Muslim cleric ascribing September 11, 2001 to the “will of God.” If this report is true, how would you describe this kind of thinking, the ascription to God of an act of genocide and destruction of property carried out by terrorists? As long as your description is negative, you may describe it anyway you want, even consider it as a case for the psychiatrists. But if your description is positive, then you may have to consider it suitable in making an appointment for yourself with the psychiatrist. On my part I would definitely describe it as fanatically religious or religiously bizarre! If this cleric was convinced that it was not irrational to ascribe the act of terrorism mentioned above to God’s will, then he should not consider it irrational or feel offended or aggrieved if someone were to give him a description of God as a genocidal maniac. If it is not true that it was God’s will [not provable of course], then the cleric can be accused of making a false declaration, a misleading statement or ascription, and thus his credibility or integrity as a religious leader must be open to question and he can also be accused of misleading his own flock. And if the cleric had thought that God was all-loving, despite being genocidal, then the cleric was just making a contradiction or talking nonsense. Some people, particularly those who are religious or in politics, have a habit of using “God” or “God’s will” as a way of escaping difficulties that may arise in an argument or as a ploy for providing a convenient justification for the occurrence [or non-occurrence] of some event, regardless of the circumstances. The case we have just highlighted is just one among the several examples cited herein.

 Have you ever thought about the universe and wondered whether it is infinite? Can there be infinity and can it be created? Similar to the concept of God, this question can only be a matter of speculation. Like whatever concept people may have of God, which is purely subjective, and debatable of course, whether the universe is or is not infinite can only be a matter for discussion, or speculation. If the universe is infinite, we have no way of proving it but we can then say that the term “ultimate” would need to be used with some qualification as we can never know the infinite possibilities ahead of us that may outturn to be “more ultimate” than the present ultimate, provided of course we ourselves have a life longevity that is also infinite, and a capability to travel forever in the universe. If the universe is infinite, it would mean that it is immeasurable, shapeless and it would also mean that it has no beginning. If it has no beginning then it cannot be said to have been created. If the universe is finite but unimaginably vast, we would be unable to determine its boundary, at least not in our current stage of development. On the other hand, if there is a boundary we would still be left with a conundrum: What is behind the boundary? No matter how vast the universe is, if it is finite, then, in principle it is measurable provided we have the means of measuring it.

 Let us review briefly some data relating to our own area in the universe. The Solar System, comprising the Sun and the Earth and several other planets, is located somewhere in the suburbs of a galaxy known as the Milky Way. The Milky Way Galaxy is estimated at 100,000 light years across; a light year, a measurement of distance, is 10 trillion kilometers. Science has posited that there are about 100 to 400 billion stars [suns] in the Milky Way Galaxy alone and that there are possibly billions of galaxies in the universe.

Can we have morality without God? If one is pragmatic the answer will be Yes. And it is not difficult to defend such a position. Anyone who thinks that it makes no sense for a person to talk about morality without believing in God would need to explain, using rational terms, why this is so. If a person thinks morality is grounded strictly in God, it is obvious that this person is ignorant of the abysmal biblical portrayal of    God. In Genesis/Exodus/Leviticus/Numbers/Deuteronomy/Joshua/Judges, etc one can read about God committing immoral or cruel acts of killing and destruction against innocent human beings, and instructing or teaching his so-called chosen people how they should go about invading and killing their enemies. Morality may have many shades but I don’t think we can disagree that what is right or wrong is what individuals or cultures agree on collectively at a particular time or place. Some people view morality as something that should be linked to the Golden Rule – Do unto others or do not do unto others etc. Others may view the Golden Rule as the corner stone for all moral issuesAccording to Sam Harris [author of the best-selling books Letter to a Christian Nation (2006) and The End of Faith (2005), which won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction and has been translated into many foreign languages]:  

•  If a person doesn’t understand that cruelty is wrong, he won’t discover this by reading the Bible or the Quran – as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are [at some level] hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.
• We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn’t make this progress by reading the Bible or the Quran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery – and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination.
• Whatever is good in scripture – like the golden rule – can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.

 [excerpted, partially, from an article “10 myths, truths about atheism” by Sam which, after publication in the Los Angeles Times, was reprinted in The Straits Times, Jan 6, 2007, p S17]

 What, possibly, can be the philosophy for life after death? Some of us may have pondered with the questions – What happens to me after I die? Is there a soul or spiritual self that continues to exist after the death of the physical body? Does consciousness survive death? Generally speaking, Christians and Muslims believe in eternal life in Heaven or Hell, while other religious groups such as Buddhists, Hindus and Taoists embrace reincarnation, the belief or doctrine that some essential part [often referred to as the Spirit or Soul, the “Higher or True Self”] of a living being [a human being for instance] can survive death in some form, with its integrity partly or wholly retained, to be reborn in a new body. Would I know who I was before, if we were to assume reincarnation as a possible gateway to another life after the termination of the present life?

 In the New Testament, we hear Jesus openly declaring that John the Baptist was the Elijah prophesied to come before him. Elijah, according to the Old Testament, was a prophet who was taken up alive to Heaven in a fiery chariot and it was allegedly written that the Messiah’s coming would be preceded by the coming of Elijah. Jesus told his disciples that he was the Messiah. Prejudice aside, Jesus can be clearly seen as having lied or making a false promise; he is reported to have told his disciples that his second coming, descending from the clouds with trumpet blast, after his death and resurrection, would occur during their lifetime here on Earth. Now we have to ask – Isn’t it clear that the so-called second coming of Jesus is long overdue in terms of the time-frame that he himself had indicated, since so many generations have already passed away in the last 2,000 years and there has been no sign of any fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy, of trumpet blast and his so-called descending from the clouds? We can say with tongue in cheek that this is one divine promissory note that has long matured with the maker, allegedly God himself, defaulting by not fulfilling his obligation in accordance with his promise. Clearly, Jesus had made a false claim. This is definitely a bad or negative reflection on Jesus’ so-called divinity.

 To live is to live for a time only, but to be able to die peacefully, without any pain or hassle, can be considered a life achievement. Some of us now alive today may not be that lucky, and may find ourselves going through a state of anxiety and anguish before the curtain comes down. If continuing to live means enduring or suffering pain, physically and/or mentally, with no hope of recovery or amelioration, must life continue on its natural course and, if so, on what grounds? This is where the subject of euthanasia or assisted suicide needs to be debated on an in-depth basis in a country or community in which euthanasia or assisted suicide is not yet legal but there are proponents arguing in their favor. Euthanasia can be defined as “the intentional ending or mercy killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit”. If death is not intended, it is not an act of euthanasia. Should euthanasia be made legal? Perhaps before answering this question we should ask: Are there any good reasons for prolonging pain and suffering, including of course mental anguish? Euthanasia, however, needs to be distinguished from physician assisted suicide, which refers to a physician providing a patient with the means for taking his or her own life.

 Instructions or commands allegedly initiated by God to the Hebrews [Jews] to kill and/or plunder can be found aplenty in the Bible but the ones [including a command from Moses to kill every Midianite woman who had slept with a man] that have affected my senses most and prompted my reaction in excerpting text for special mention, can be found in Numbers [chapter 12]. Apparently the Lord’s booty included 32 human female virgins but what did the Lord do with these virgins? The Bible doesn’t say. Can you imagine the Lord gloating over his ill-gotten gains? Can there be any physical contact between a spirit being and a human body? You may say no but people familiar with the Bible may remember that God allegedly appeared as a man to Abraham and ate a meal prepared by members of Abraham’s household. And it is also biblically reported that God was engaged in a wrestling match with a man by the name of Jacob.

 Nothing, it is believed, is impossible to God notwithstanding that God can be accused of being revengeful and of being ignorant about the virtues of love and forgiveness. Many of the actions and speeches of God, as narrated in the OT, including his approval or encouragement for slavery, are simply disgusting by any modern humanitarian standards. What can we determine from the teachings of love and forgiveness that Jesus himself [or, if you prefer, God-Son] allegedly promulgated, as reported in the New Testament? Someone may argue that all this talk by God or God-Son about loving your enemies, forgiving seventy times seven or turning the other cheek is all meaningless when viewed against the destruction and killing by God and God-Son against their so-called enemies, as revealed in the Old Testament and in Revelations.

 Can a person believe in human free will and at the same time believe in God’s so-called omniscience? This can be seen as a case that you can have your cake but you cannot eat it. Can one be considered as a contradiction of the other? From my perspective, the answer is Yes. Can there be any dispute that good and evil exist in this world? If the answer is No, then, it would be irrational to claim that God is omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving or all-caring. Such issues are discussed within these pages.

 Any criticism made in this thesis, intentional or otherwise, can be attributed to the subjective nature of the questions discussed and must not, therefore, be taken as a contemptuous view of religious beliefs, but as a standpoint or basis for the arguments and where it is clearly not an incitement to violence it should not be interpreted as such. I hope this thesis will imbue in you a realization that there are no logical arguments for the existence of God or any god, apart from wishy-washy propositions that say little or nothing, and that no empirical evidence has ever been offered in support. Arguments must be decided on the basis of their being factual or non-factual, persuasive or unpersuasive, logical or illogical. Furthermore, any stalemate needs to be resolved, if necessary, through further arguments, but still on the basis of logic and/or facts. Where a point in contention is all but metaphysical, it may not be possible of resolution through the use of logic or reason. But where an argument can be resolved through logic and/or facts, we can expect logic and/or facts to prevail.

 Should this thesis lead to a change in your views about God and religion, then it would not be wrong to say that to a certain extent you have been convinced by the arguments expounded. If you are ambivalent or remain unaffected, it may mean you are someone who is already familiar with all these arguments or issues or it may mean they are irrelevant to your personal beliefs or lifestyle. By conceding that belief in God is strictly a matter of faith, theists would free themselves from the onerous or impossible task of proving that which is non-provable. Theistic arguments for God have been principally of the god-of-the-gaps variety with vague or tenuous excuses being offered as props when countered with well-reasoned, logical arguments from non-theists. To be sure, there are different conceptions of God/god and whether they can be considered coherent would depend on whether you are a believer or non-believer.

 If we think or believe that we are living in a civilized society [debatable], should we also think or believe that everybody is free to discuss freely and logically, but not to incite violence? Writing about God/religion is not always risk-free as any discussion, whether on issues related directly or by implication, or on matters considered ancillary or only remotely connected, can evoke emotive feelings and thus use of emotive language; if I have resorted to emotive language I must say it would be the exception rather than the rule and I beseech your pardon. There is no doubt, however, that sincerely religious people can get offended even over logical arguments if such arguments impinge on their religious beliefs, and they can go berserk by taking extremist actions.

 As some people may recall, Salman Rushdie, an Indian-born British author, was threatened with a fatwa proclaimed by a top Muslim cleric, the erstwhile Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran, in February 1989, requiring not only his execution but the execution of all those involved in the publication of his book, The Satanic Verses. That The Satanic Verses raised hackles in the Islamic world was said to be due, apparently, to its irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. Whether irreverent or not, as a result of the fatwa, Rushdie was living in fear and inconvenience for a number of years and to his financial cost had to employ bodyguards for personal protection. Rushdie, if my memory serves, had to change his lifestyle; for reasons of personal safety he was dependent on others for buying groceries on his behalf, even though he would have liked to hop over to the supermarket to enjoy the shopping himself. Once out of the house Rushdie had to be extra careful with his movements. That Salman Rushdie is alive today can be attributed significantly to security precautions, which included police protection, initiated by he himself and by others on his behalf. His Norwegian publisher was shot but survived and his Italian and Japanese translators were physically assaulted.  

 It is very questionable whether anyone has a right to issue a fatwa on another person’s life or to carry it out if nothing unlawful has been committed. We can say: It seems to be an irrelevant point in a democratic society with a secularist system of law and order. But things can be different in a despotic or an autocratic society whose members are subject to the decisions or whims of one particular individual. Still, democratic, secularist governments around the world have the right to condemn any fatwa deemed unreasonable or unjustifiable. In retrospect I cannot recall any open criticism or condemnation being leveled against this fatwa; what seems more memorable to me was the general passivity or apathy toward this matter. Maybe democratic secularist governments thought this had nothing to do with them. There is no doubt that religious stupidity or bigotry can cause havoc or great harm to the lives of nonbelievers, or even to believers themselves for acting irrationally or criminally because of their bigotry or narrow-mindedness.

 If you had been following the news that grabbed public attention in Feb 2006, you may recall that what had allegedly started as a satirical portrayal of an erstwhile individual were blown out of proportions. Cartoon depictions of the prophet Muhammad, one showing him with a bomb in his turban, published by a Danish newspaper [Jyllands-Posten] in Sep 2005, were seen as insensitive to Muslim religious sentiments, resulting in outbreaks of violence in various Muslim countries, burning of the Danish flag and burning or vandalizing of the building or quarters housing the Danish embassy/consulate. Boycotting of Danish goods was one of the retaliatory measures undertaken by some Muslims as Danish products were reportedly taken off the shelves in supermarkets in some Muslim countries. In Nigeria at least 138 Christians and Muslims lost their lives on account of the caricatures, according to an Internet posting. Several newspapers in other Western European countries – Italy, Spain and Holland – apparently tried to show solidarity with Jyllands-Posten as well as to lend support to the so-called right of freedom of speech by republishing the same caricatures.

 This thesis will not make you rich but I am sanguine that it will help you become a more rational and courageous person by being more circumspect of any belief system and by challenging the status quo using reason and if necessary requesting sound evidence for any extraordinary claims. Reason is a far more reliable or effective tool than a mountain of faith, especially if faith means adhering blindly to one’s religious teachings or dogma. I think it would benefit the world if religious people are less dogmatic, or more open about the implausibility or absurdity of their beliefs, or about their private doubts concerning God.

The God of the Bible is a god of delusion and the following pages provide a detailed discussion of this statement. What about the God of the Koran, known or referred to as Allah in the Muslim world? Well, based on Islamic beliefs and Islamic religious text, Allah is none other than the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, represented as a father-figure in the Old as well as the New Testament.

 It will be evident that I have quoted extensively from the Bible and to a much lesser extent from the Koran [Quran]. All biblical excerpts, unless otherwise indicated, are from the New International Version. The reason for bible-quoting, which is obvious, is to tell the reader that since we are discussing God, this is what is precisely stated in the Bible or Koran. The Bible to many Christians, especially Catholics, is the gospel of God; therefore, any biblical text quoted verbatim can be viewed by them as the inerrant word of God, an absolute truth which they are not expected to challenge or criticize, unless they opt to be irrational [or rational?]. The same can be said for the Koran, believed by Muslims as revelations from Allah [God], copied word for word from the original version of the Koran believed to be stored in Heaven.

 Against such claims of truth, we can then add by saying one particular truth seems to stand out, which may be unpalatable to many people, and that concerns the portrayal of God or Allah in the Bible or Koran. The Bible is exceptional for inconsistencies and/or contradictions, examples of which can be found in some detail in chapters 25 and 29. The Koran, too, appears controversial and has been subjected to criticism for apparent inconsistencies and/or contradictions. For the Koran, I have in this book highlighted only the inconsistencies/contradictions that came to my attention while reading the Koran [with parallel Arabic text] by N. J. Dawood [1990]. The Internet is littered with articles regarding inconsistencies and/or contradictions, Bible or Koran related, and I have no doubt that where such inconsistencies/contradictions are concerned I have covered only a small area.

Arguably, whether life is meaningful, whether there is a purpose to the universe or whether there is a paradise waiting for us after we are buried or cremated are questions that will have to rest with each individual. Grappling with questions for which there are no clear or ready answers is probably common to many of us, but on a pragmatic level we have to deal with the physical world because this is where we are living our lives. And there is one thing that needs some emphasis: One real, serious threat facing humanity in the 21st century is global warming.

 Should the reader discover no definitive answers have been provided to Q2 and Q3 that would not be unusual or unexpected, in the context of the metaphysical nature of the questions However, if there are any truths to be found in this thesis, it is for you, the reader, to decide. Finally, with tongue in cheek I have to say that if there are any errors or deficiencies in this thesis, and I am positive there are, there are a couple of possibilities [1] my carelessness or oversight, for which I sincerely apologize [2] I have been fed with wrong information and therefore cannot be faulted for passing on wrong information. Inconsistencies and/or contradictions of my own, if any, are probably eclipsed by the innumerable inconsistencies/contradictions of the Bible. Such comparison can be seen as dubious, as the Bible comprises 66 books written not by a single author but by many people. However, unlike the Bible, supposedly written with so-called divine inspiration, my thesis was written strictly from human effort. That said, there is always a first time for most or all people, as I have mentioned earlier, and I am no exception. Word-spelling is based on United States English, the choice of language for my PC. Due to automatic correction by software application, it is possible that some words in excerpts from external sources have been corrected automatically.

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 “Intelligent Design” argument

There are several forms of this argument but they are all centered on basically two terms: “intelligent” and “design” and the focus of the argument rests on taking the view that the world – with all its apparent beauty and complexity and/or simplicity, with all its myriad structures and phenomena seemingly engineered to sustain life and with its diversity of complex and/or non-complex biological structures – could not have come into existence without an intelligent designer or creator. So if a garden is beautiful there must be fairies at its bottom. Douglas Noel Adams evidently hit the nail on the head when he quipped: Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? Adams [1952 -2001] was an English writer, dramatist, and musician. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a “trilogy” of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, as well as a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Obviously, if you are theistic, God is the most natural term to use to identify as to who this intelligent designer or creator can possibly be. One reaction to this is to query: Why the use of the term “God”? Are we so prone to referring to or talking about “God” and not “Goddess”? Apart from the three major monotheistic religions, the term “Goddess” or “goddesses” [plural] is not unusual in the context of religious beliefs. If there is a creator [here we are not alluding to God] is there any reason why the creator cannot be other than a he? Let’s hear from the women for a change. If anybody thinks of God as the Intelligent Designer or Creator, then they are not thinking intelligently. If they are arguing on the basis of biblical text, then they are evidently being wishy-washy and their argument can be easily refuted as groundless and irrational.

Before we go into details about beauty and complexity and all the rest, let’s ask ourselves these questions: If this Earth was designed, for whom was it designed? For whose satisfaction, for what reasons, if any? Based on our understanding of the term “intelligent”, can we, with due honesty and taking all factors into account, describe the Earth as an intelligent design? To be sure, all these questions are subjective. My own response to the first two questions would be “I don’t know”. For the third question, my response would be: It seems the Earth is filled with intelligence as well as unintelligence [or stupidities], but as to whether it can be called a design – which implies the existence of a designer – there is no empirical proof. Any inference to the existence of a designer may naturally prompt further inquiry: How did this designer come into existence? Who designed the designer?

Time scales may differ slightly but in the main the scientific view is that Homo sapiens appeared on Earth only in the last 200,000/250,000 years, although the Earth, according to science, has been in existence for about 4.5 billion years. If such findings can be considered acceptable, we can then agree that the Earth was a harsh, inhospitable environment before the emergence of Homo sapiens, notwithstanding that our ancestors the hominids were living in the wild for millions of years. Thus it can be argued that all the beauty, wealth and living comfort in the world we see around us today have been put there by human beings through years of human toil and sweat, and human ingenuity and creativity. We cannot deny that we have reached the current stage of development through a process of evolution, over thousands of years. We must remember that the man-made structures – houses, buildings, roads, sanitary systems, potable water systems, electrical and communication systems, transport systems etc – providing living comfort were non-existent before their creation by human beings. The expansion of human population and the advancement of science and technology are the two principal reasons for such man-made structures. There was a time when we were living in caves and dependent on hunting and simple farming for our subsistence and the only available means of shelter from the heat or cold, rain or snow were the caves in mountain or hill sites or in the ground, and the forests. Arguably, there was what we would call “natural beauty” – the “beauty” of mud tracks, caves, forests, volcanoes, rivers, waterfalls, valleys, mountains and desert sands. Apparently, it was around ten thousand years ago that human beings learned how to domesticate plants and animals, making possible settled agrarian communities. And it took another five thousand years to discover how to extract and use metals.

If beauty in nature is proof of the existence of God then the ugliness in nature can also be seen as proof of his non-existence or his ugly nature. If we grant that human beings started crowding the Earth, say, 100,000 years ago we cannot be faulted for wondering why God, in his wisdom, intervened in human affairs only within the last 2,000 to 3,000 years, in terms of beliefs in the Old Testament accounts of God giving instructions to the Hebrews and making appearances to several of his prophets, and in the context of New Testament accounts and/or Christian doctrine, incarnated on Earth in the form of Jesus. Hence it seems reasonable to deduce that God just looked on nonchalantly as a disinterested bystander for about 97,000 years, or over 4 billion years prior to mankind’s appearance. Maybe, only a nincompoop god would do, or could have done, such a thing and only a nincompoop human would believe in God intervening in this manner. And the land God allegedly robbed and gave to his so-called chosen people, at the time an ignorant, belligerent, nomadic tribe, has turned out to be an oil-dry territory in a region that is oil-rich in many places.

What can we say of omniscience? Going by biblical script, we can see the failure of so many of God’s so-called experiments or the nonsense or lies in his alleged pronouncements. Regarding so-called divinity of Jesus, it was not until A.D.381, at the Council of Constantinople, that the Catholic Church finally adopted the Nicene Creed, which can be seen as official confirmation of the Trinity doctrine [Chapter 27]. So, as to whether Jesus was fully or partially divine or purely of human stock, the question was finally settled by some Christians in the year A.D.381.

There are millions of things in this world that are man-made, and we cannot be wishy-washy in attributing all these to so-called creation-design or omnipotence. If one were to stop for a moment and reflect on what the world looked like thousands or millions of years ago then one might not, unless being prejudicial regarding such matters, be so ready to attribute this or that to so-called creation-design or omnipotence. Just think about the numerous catastrophes – earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts etc – that have occurred and are still occurring, resulting in heavy toll on human lives and other living creatures and causing severe damage to the living environment. What about human suffering from wars and from poverty and hunger? Can it be meaningful to believe that the Earth is the handiwork of an intelligent designer or a supposedly all-powerful and loving God who loves us like a father loves his children, in the face of such natural disasters and human poverty and suffering?  If you are a non-theist you might say you have no reason to believe in God. If you are a God-believer and say Yes, it would be unsurprising; you are merely looking from a religious perspective without regard to reason or logic. If you happen to be a deist, you may say that this is the best of all possible worlds God has created and that God has ceased involvement after having created it. But such a perspective may not be agreeable to others who think that this world is a lousy habitat and there is no question of anything intelligent about it.

German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz [1646-1716] is considered to be the first writer in the Western world to use the idea of possible worlds to explain, inter alia, the problem of evil. Vide Wikipedia, Leibniz’ solution casts God as a kind of “optimizer” of the collection of all original possibilities: Since He is good and omnipotent, and since He chose this world out of all possibilities, this world must be good – in fact, this world is the best of all possible worlds. John Adams, the second President of the United States, is reported to have said: This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it. To some people, a possible world is not just another planet in space but a complete universe unto itself with a past, present and future. The one possible world we live in is called the “actual” world. However, one is not precluded from speaking about worlds that are not possible worlds.  

People who have suffered badly from natural disasters or from other causes [no food, no shelter etc] may view God as non-existent or may see the world as a lousy design, whether God-created or not. To others, however, the world is evidently full of things that can be safely argued as well-designed: for example, a well crafted or well cut diamond can be said to be a work of beauty; a well designed motor car, a cruise ship or a jet plane can be said to be a technological marvel or beauty; a sculpture, whether of wood, metal, stone, crystal etc can be said to be a work of beauty or of fine craftsmanship; a well designed building can be said to be an architectural beauty; a painting no doubt can be a work of artistic beauty; a musical composition that gives listening pleasure to people is doubtless a product of musical brilliance . A computer system with all parts working efficiently is an engineering marvel of complexity and intelligence. Economics management is a complex matter and if a country’s economy is running smoothly, it could be due in no small part to the intelligence of the people who are managing it. These are just a few examples of the beautifully engineered products or systems we can find in the world, made possible through the skills and intelligence of their human inventors or creators.

However, as mentioned in chapter 1, what you or I may claim as perfect may not be perfect to others. Similarly, what I claim to be beautiful or intelligent may not be within your concept or standard for beauty or intelligence. Thus you are not hindered from claiming that the Earth is a beautiful creation or an intelligent design, that such things as natural landscapes of vast expanse of the sea or ocean, of valleys and snow-capped mountains, of waterfalls or streams flowing with clean water, of plants with flowers of every hue or color, are all beautiful. Not that I am disputing that there is not much beauty in nature. However, anyone arguing in favor of intelligent design must also accept that there are certain areas in this design that appear unintelligent, for example, the barren deserts of the Earth, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, diseases and other adverse conditions affecting life on Earth.

If you believe in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve as a true account, you may wish to view Adam and Eve as models of divine artistry.  Let’s review a few lines from Genesis:

• 1.26. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
• 1.27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

If we agree to man being a creation of God, created according to God’s image, then, if there are any features of man, in appearance or character, that can be considered ugly or beautiful, bad or evil or good, such features can be deemed to be reflective of the features of God; in which case God can be seen as a nasty piece of work and such an impression fits, arguably, with his image as portrayed in the Bible. Hence if we can be labeled as sinners or perverts, then God can be labeled as a sinner, a pervert, regardless of whether you wish to introduce “free will” into your argument. And who needs Satan when you have this God-Pervert? If you believe in the Trinity doctrine, you can argue that Jesus is reported to have added further confirmation about God’s appearance when he allegedly said to his disciples [John 14.9]: “…Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father…” when one of them allegedly requested him to show the Father to them. If man can be appraised as being both intelligent and stupid [an apparent contradiction in terms but one can be intelligent in certain matters and stupid in others], we can extrapolate that God can, likewise, be intelligent as well as stupid. And God, like man, can be assumed to be in possession of a penis, a presumption not hard to imagine in terms of the image of God as presented by Jesus in John 14.9 and in the context of biblical text stipulating that the so-called Virgin Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit, supposedly God himself, in terms of the Trinity doctrine, and that God, inter alia, was allegedly allocated with 32 Midianite female virgins, his share of the booty following the genocide, committed by the Jews, of all Midianite males, including boys and infants, and all non-virgin Midianite females [Numbers 31.1-40].

Can this claim -The most beautiful thing in God’s whole creation is the body of a human female -  apparently made by someone with a profound appreciation for beauty – have any validity? If you accept it as valid or true then you would probably not be amenable to the Koranic claim of God creating men superior to women or of the former having authority over the latter because of their superiority, vide The Koran (with parallel Arabic text) by N. J. Dawood (1990), p.83 sura 4.34: Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. We shall examine the merits or otherwise of these claims in chapter 24, where other issues concerning the Koran are discussed.

Whether the human body can be claimed to be a model of divine artistry, it has certain features which from human observation can be put down as flaws; for example:

• [a] Located within the legs of a human body, notably that of a female, is “an entertainment complex” but this complex is located next to a sewerage, where smelly excrement is constantly produced and then excreted. If you are an engineer thinking of building an entertainment complex, would you build it next to a sewerage area, with its overpowering stench? It has been suggested that no human engineer would conceive of such a lousy design, if he has other better options. Furthermore, due to proximity of the vagina and urethra to the anus, women are prone to genital and urinary infection. Since God allegedly made man according to his image, God can be assumed to be in possession, like a human being, of an olfactory system that can be critiqued as horribly skewed or low-grade. It cannot be facetious in thinking of God of possessing human attributes in the context of his appearance as a man to Abraham and his wife, Sarah, his eating of food prepared by members of Abraham’s household, his alleged incarnation as a human on Earth and his sojourn, for about three decades, on this planet. Only a nincompoop can’t tell the difference between a fragrant or agreeable scent of, say, perfume or cologne and a nauseating or offensive stench, and may prefer shit-smell to perfume or cologne. For someone who is anosmatic, there would be no question of exercising a preference. A person who has never been exposed to any inviting or refreshing kind of smell will have no need for such an experience to say that excrement from a human or animal body smells nauseating or disgusting. Indisputably, with few exceptions, if any, people with a normal sense of smell would prefer the scent of perfume or cologne to the disagreeable, nauseating smell of excrement. Maybe, perfume and cologne, being products of human ingenuity, were substances unknown to God. Maybe, God himself is not immune to the flaws in the human digestive system he allegedly created but the nauseating smell of excrement can be something of an aroma to him just as the smell of burnt animal meat is reported to be pleasurable to him; provided we disregard the other parts of the Bible, we can critique God as having abhorrent tastes and preferences that are assuredly not human-like, in contrast to his having allegedly a human-like image. Vide Deuteronomy, instructions were allegedly given to the Hebrews to bury their excrement in a hole to preempt the plausibility of God seeing anything indecent within the Jewish camp and turning away from them: [Deut 23.12-14] Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. For the LORD your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy, so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you. So God can be seen as having an aversion to “anything indecent” including, obviously, human excrement left uncovered on the ground. By burying the excrement one could assume that it would be hidden from God’s view. Presumably people who believe in the human body being an output of divine artistry will have no wish to admit to the apparent flaws in divine workmanship.
• [b] Arguably, the human body can be compared to a human-designed manufacturing factory as having a certain degree of similarity between them insofar as they are viewed on economic terms such as imbibing input and producing output. Notwithstanding this similarity there is a huge difference in their output; while the latter takes in raw or semi-refined materials and converts them into gleaming or refined, value-added products, the former takes in edible materials and converts them into stinking, waste products minus of course any absorption, good or bad, by the digestive system. Is there any use for human waste products? It appears the answer is yes; plants, inter alia, breathe the waste products of humans and in turn produce waste products which humans, inter alia, breathe. One good turn deserves another, as they say. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that human and animal waste products pollute the environment. God if he exists and is the designer of the human body can be accused of being hopelessly ignorant of the consequences of environmental pollution. With his so-called infinite powers and with all the infinite possibilities from which to choose, he could have created a digestive system that can do without the anus, for example, with any bodily discharge from food ingestion flowing through the urethra as a clear, non-stinking, non-toxic fluid. This fluid could be just pure water, or something like wine, since nothing is impossible to him and it may be just a matter of using his imagination and so-called omnipotence. There is no denying that God created waste when he created animals and humans. One of the measures for the management of human waste, estimated at 0.6kg per day per adult, is modern sanitation, an invention of man, but modern sanitation is possible only in countries with abundant water supplies; it seems that in some countries in the world, including a developing country such as India, millions of people are still defecating in the open.
• [c] God if he exists can be charged for being ignorant of the flaw in his design of the anus or that the anus would lead to acts of sodomy or homosexuality, which according to script led to the destruction of two cities and their inhabitants. In Leviticus 20.13 we hear God declaring that any male committing homosexuality must be put to death. A clear case of God penalizing humans for his own stupid mistakes. Can you imagine a supposedly all-loving all-knowing God who is allegedly responsible for the design of the human anatomy telling his followers to exercise a fanatical hatred toward human homosexuality? And it seems losing one’s life by being killed or murdered for one’s homosexuality is not enough punishment; in 1 Corinthians 6.9-10 we hear that “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” However, an avenue of hope is open for homosexuals – embrace belief in Jesus through baptism and all will be forgiven.
• [d] Another undeniable flaw, in the context of creation, is that the human body in its natural condition will stale in no time and needs constant washing, and scrubbing, to stay clean and fresh. If you are living in an equatorial region with high humidity, without the benefit of air-conditioning, you would realize how uncomfortable or sticky it can feel without washing up or bathing just for one day, especially after a day’s outing. If our body can exude a stinking, disagreeable smell, God can also be viewed as having a stinking body, on the assumption he created us in his image.
• [e] God’s alleged creation seems to be tainted with so much uncleanliness and his so-called edicts concerning “unclean”, as reported in Leviticus, are simply mind-boggling; look at these passages:

Leviticus

• 12.5. If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding.
• 12.1. The LORD said to Moses,
• 12.2.  “Say to the Israelites: ‘A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period.
• 12.4. Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over.

Leviticus also provides other examples of what is considered unclean in God’s views. Lines 12.2, 12.4 and 12.5 are reflective of God as a misogynist; should a woman give birth to a son she would be considered unclean for seven days and must go through a period of 33 days to be purified; should she give birth to a daughter she would be considered unclean for two weeks and must go through a period of 66 days to be purified. Why the double standard? Giving birth to a girl produces more uncleanliness? There is no doubt that the Bible God is a low-grade god with a low-level intelligence or high-grade stupidity.

• [f] Other obvious body flaws: loss of minerals after about age 30 yrs leading to susceptibility to bone fracture and osteoporosis; enlargement of prostate in men leading to difficulty in passing urine; clogging in arteries in the heart leading to stroke or death; choking as the windpipe and the gullet share a common plumbing. We don’t need to know the exact figures but we know some people have suffered from stroke and died and some people have choked to death while eating; and we can see people being bound to wheel-chairs because of bone fracture arising from osteoporosis and men facing risk of prostate cancer because of prostate enlargement. Whether the Appendix has any useful function, its removal, from the numerous operations done so far, imparts no harmful impact on the body; on the other hand, if it gets infected, it can mean death for the person concerned.

If you believe in so-called intelligent design, then you will have to accept all this as part of the design and agree to the design being stupid as well. God it can be assumed must have thought the inclusion of armpit hair or pubic hair in his design for the human body would look good or in the case of the female body would make her look more beautiful or charming. But it is crystal clear from the evidence that this is not the case. Many modern women find armpit hair unsightly and would painstakingly take steps for their removal either through a do-it-yourself procedure with a shaver or with hair removal cream or spray, or through a more expensive process with longer-lasting results at a professional beauty clinic. If a woman happens to be a contestant taking part in a beauty contest requiring her, among other things, to sashay in a swimsuit, you can safely bet that any hair removal process to enhance her looks to maximum level would be an item of priority on her agenda. A contestant with any unsightly exposure of hair on her armpit or pubic area is not likely to go far in the competition. And there is evidence that many women have resorted to various beauty treatments, from cosmetics to plastic surgery, to enhance the beauty of their face and/or body. Dental reconstruction, including the use of false denture, an invention of man, is one of the most common and popular means of enhancing a person’s looks, regardless of their sex. Hence there is no denying that human input is necessary for enhancing so-called divine output to improve the quality or to make it look better. For his next creation God may find it beneficial to copy the aesthetics techniques of humanity or to register himself for lessons on beauty or aesthetics by human beauticians. God if he exists should ask himself as to why so many people in the world today are not following the stupid rule he allegedly established in Leviticus 19.27: Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard. 

There is no doubt that the world is a structure of complexity and there is no dispute that the human body with its consciousness and billions of cells is a complex living organism. The human eye or the eye of a non-human creature has been dubbed as a complex biological marvel. However, the human brain with its billions of cells can be said to be a far more complex structure than the human eye or the eye of any other animal. In fact, we can say that the human brain is the most complex entity known to us. Whether the brain is where our consciousness resides is debatable and best left to the opinion of experts – neurosurgeons or brain- specialists. We know, however, that when the brain is severely damaged from a hard knock to the head or from an accident the victim can become unconscious or rendered comatose.

Cell complexities, including the inherent complexity of the DNA molecule, it has been argued by some people, including eminent scientists, could not have simply come into existence through blind chance and random natural forces operating through eons of time, as evolutionists have claimed. But complexity alone, staggering as it appears to be, cannot be assumed as sufficient evidence for assuming the existence of an intelligent designer. Complexity is not necessarily efficiency. Complexity can mean complication and complication can translate into inefficiency or deficiency. As for the human eye there is something to be said that is indicative of a flawed design; dark spots on the eyes can be detected when the eyes are staring at a very bright light or even a blue sky. These spots are apparently due to the positioning of the blood vessels serving the eye in front of the optical nerves, a feature a competent engineer would have avoided, according to people with a profound knowledge in eye anatomy. Another flaw, also apparent only to some people, is that the human eye is built upside down and backwards. When we take into account the many eye problems afflicting people – cataract, glaucoma, myopia, hypermetropia, presbyopia and astigmatism – we can argue that evolution still has a lot of territory to cover.

To those who prefer to stick to the argument for intelligent design, a fancy new name for creationism, not a scintilla of empirical evidence has ever been produced to prove the existence of a designer [or designers if more than one]. We can say these people possess an inability to see unintelligence or faulty intelligence when the evidence is right before their eyes. Whether it can be regarded as a matter of prejudice, there is no question that some people prefer to remain deluded or to wallow in irrationalism. Would anybody just pray for the healing of their eyes or restoration of their eyesight, and forget the idea of consulting an eye doctor or optician, when they are experiencing one or more of the eye problems mentioned above? Obvious as it seems, the answer is that even God/god-worshippers or believers can appreciate the value of being pragmatic or realistic.

If you still want to insist that the human body was designed by God, then you will have to admit that it was a sloppy design. So sloppy that after he had completed designing and production he discovered that the foreskin at the tip of the male sexual organ should be severed and in consequence gave a commandment to his chosen people that this flaw in his design should be corrected, by they themselves. Or it can be seen as God having a change of heart about how the male human penis should be structured, after his so-called design of the male human body. And we cannot consider as ridiculous the idea of God having a circumcised penis, if we seriously believe that the circumcision commandment emanated from him and that he created man in his image. God can be seen as attempting a correction of his own mistake and could have performed circumcision on himself, or the Son or Holy Spirit could have excised it for him. Circumcision without the benefit of modern pain-killer is obviously a painful process, whether performed via an ancient procedure – for male infants – by first cutting around the prepuce and then sucking off the foreskin using the mouth, or through modern surgical methods. The sucking off was usually carried out by an established circumciser and foreskin remover who might be a rabbi. Such a procedure is obviously unhygienic and for this and other reasons most Jews have discontinued with this method. If you say there were probably cases of circumcision causing infection and resulting in death, you would probably be right.

Claims of circumcision having therapeutic value were not uncommon years ago but the truth today is that no medical association in the world recommends it and that most Catholics worldwide do NOT circumcise their children. Circumcising a minor or person with no capability for making an informed decision for themselves due to being mentally immature or handicapped is clearly not only an invasion of privacy, which may mean little or nothing to some people, but is risky in terms of its potential for compromising or jeopardizing their health or safety. Unless as a form of punishment arising from, say, jurisprudence, inflicting injury on a person against their will is all but an act of injustice, even a crime in the eyes of the law. Female circumcision, or female genital mutilation [FGM], may involve mutilation of the female genitalia and can be seen as invasive when it means partial or complete removal of the clitoris, removal of prepuce and the labia minora and the sewing together of the labia majora.

According to a news report [by Mardiana Abu Bakar] headlined: A crime that should never be inflicted on daughters and published in The Sunday Times, 30 October, 1994, page 5 [Upfront], a 10-year-old Egyptian girl named Nagla was circumcised by a barber using, presumably, a razor blade and the circumcision ceremony of Nagla [I was not aware of the TV screening or the newspaper report until someone brought the latter to my attention] was shown worldwide over Cable News Network last month [September 1994] and it created an international furore. Let it be a reminder of the crime that should never be inflicted on daughters in the name of culture or misconceived religious injunctions. For it is precisely that combination of antiquated culture and distorted religious injunction that had brought about the unforgiveable pain on Nagla and on many other young girls in the Middle East, Africa and now with mass immigration, in Europe and North America. Nagla’s pain will not end with that horrendous episode. She might haemorrhage and suffer severe infections that might lead to death. Etc. What is even more difficult for me to accept is the revelation by the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics which met early this month, that every day, 5,500 similar mutilations take place. Etc. I wept for the physical pain that Nagla must have been put through, the indignity of being held down by strong men, and the violation of her body. Which is why, as a Muslim woman, I find it outrageous that the practice has become associated closely with Islam in many minds. A colleague reacted to the New Paper picture by saying: “Why do Muslims do this to their daughters?” Etc. To begin with, the practice of female circumcision is encouraged, but not compulsory, according to three out of four main schools of thoughts in Islam. Only the fourth pronounced it as a must. And even then, the spirit of the injunction is not to mutilate. As the Mufti of Singapore pointed out to me earlier this year, Prophet Mohamed stated emphatically that female circumcision should be done “as minimally as possible”. The Mufti clarified that the practice of female circumcision in Singapore “involves cutting off a tiny part from the outer portion of the clitoris” – about 1mm to 3mm is snipped off the very top of the clitoris. Etc [Text in italics excerpted, partially, from the newspaper report].

The conceptions in the Muslim world regarding female circumcision were uncertain or varied, at one time. Thus some Muslim women were subjected to genital mutilation. In the past several decades, the World Health Organization has coordinated efforts to end FGM and the United Nations has declared February 6 as “International Day Against Female Genital Mutilation.” I am thankful to the Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura [MUIS], aka the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore, a statutory board, for providing clarification regarding female circumcision, after I initiated an inquiry with them via email. MUIS in their response through an email dated July 13, 2010 said: “Dear …. Thank you for your…. Female circumcision as practiced and permitted in Islam is different from other forms of female genital mutilation (FGM). What is permitted is a slight nicking of the female clitoris. It is also not compulsory, hence not practiced by many Muslims. Even if it were practiced, anything more than what was mentioned is prohibited. Islam highly emphasizes on the notion of non-maleficence, hence it condemns all forms of imposing pain on the physique unless for known benefits. Circumcision for males, for example, is highly recomended for hygienic purposes. We hope the above info has been useful in addressing your concern. Thank you.”

Whether female circumcision in our present environment is strictly a cultural or cultural-cum-religious issue is debatable. Mardiana Abu Bakar in the report mentioned above claims that only one of the four main schools of Islamic thoughts has pronounced female circumcision as a must, while for the others the practice is encouraged but not compulsory. Which may prompt us to ask: What if these others have a following that is dwarfed by the followers of the one school holding the view that female circumcision is a must? It does not matter whether female circumcision is not a religious requirement where the Koran is concerned; if I am not mistaken, female circumcision is not mentioned in the Koran, and there are postings in the Internet to this effect. What seems clear is that while Allah is reported to have whispered into the ear of some human beings [Old Testament], to provide guidance on how to act, Allah can be viewed as being ambivalent or disinterested concerning human female circumcision. Perhaps, for those who have been circumcised, Allah can be viewed as having planted the idea in their minds or those of their parents or guardians, and for those who have not been circumcised, as having made no contact with any of them or of their parents or guardians.

Adult Muslim women who have been circumcised were probably not persuaded from eschewing such an act of barbarity or futility. Imagine: 5,500 mutilations per day! Whether we can take this figure at face value and whether they were all Muslim cases would require further probing but the fact that it was quoted in a report written in October 1994 tells us that the figure must be relevant only to a time at least more than one and a half decades ago. I wonder what the statistics say, presently. However, if the figure cited can be considered as indicative of the scenario prevailing at the time, for female circumcision or female genital mutilation, whether governed by personal reasons or religious edict we can’t be wrong in describing the circumcision process or the inclination for it, whether such inclination can be considered as exogenous or emanating strictly from the individuals concerned, as horrendous or irrational or mind-boggling. In the case of Nagla, to call it a “circumcision ceremony” would appear to be a generous use of terminology or euphemism; from reading the news report, it appears apt to describe it as a form of torture forced on a minor openly exhibited for purposes of propaganda. And, likewise, it would appear generous to ask: What’s the benefit of snipping off part of the clitoris, whether it’s only 1mm to 3mm?

Even if accept without a shred of evidence the argument for a deity’s existence – here we are NOT referring to God – this deity may not have anything to do with the design of the human body, male or female. You may then ask: What about the biblical story of creation? Just hogwash!

The argument from irreducible complexity is one that came under the spotlight in recent years but, as with numerous other pro-God arguments, it has been roundly refuted by people from the scientific/atheistic community. The following passages, in parenthesis, from Wikipedia [excerpted July 1, 2007], can be seen as a testimony of the futility of using irreducible complexity for arguing for God, or Intelligent Designer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity

“Irreducible complexity (IC) is the argument intended to support intelligent design creationism [1] and refute evolution that certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved from simpler, or “less complete” predecessors, and are at the same time too complex to have arisen naturally through chance mutations. The originator of irreducible complexity as it applies to intelligent design, biochemistry professor Michael Behe, defines an irreducibly complex system as one “composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning”[2]. These examples are said to demonstrate that modern biological forms could not have evolved naturally. The argument is used in a broader context to support the idea that an intelligent designer was involved, at some point, in the creation of life, against the theory of evolution which requires no designer. In a manner of speaking, the IC argument is a definition of the “designer”, or at least “what was designed”, a definition that has proven elusive in the past. The most common examples used in argument are the complexity of the eye, the blood clotting cascade, or the motor in a cell’s flagellum.

The examples offered to support the irreducible complexity argument have generally been found to fail to meet the definition and intermediate precursor states have been identified for several structures purported to exhibit irreducible complexity.[3] For instance, precursors to the flagellum’s motor can be found being used as ionic channels within bacteria, known as the Type III Secretory System.[4] This is true for most of the structure of the flagellum in general; of the 42 proteins found in the flagellum, 40 have already been found in use in different biological pathways.[5] Even Behe’s toy model used to illustrate the concept, the mouse trap, was countered by critics including biology professor John McDonald, who produced examples of how he considered the mousetrap to be ”easy to reduce”, eventually to a single part.[6] Critics consider that most, or all, of the examples were based on misunderstandings of the workings of the biological systems in question, and consider the low quality of these examples excellent evidence for the argument from ignorance. Irreducible complexity is generally dismissed by the majority of the scientific community;[3] it is often referred to as pseudoscience.[7]

Despite being discredited in the Dover trial where the court found in its ruling that “Professor Behe’s claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large”,[8] irreducible complexity has nevertheless remained a popular argument among advocates of intelligent design and other creationists.”

From what we can see of the Earth, of everything we know about it, unintelligence, too, seems to be pervasive. Natural disasters and other adverse conditions affecting humanity and other living creatures can only be seen as unintelligent, even if one persists in thinking of this world as the best of all possible worlds. Notwithstanding the complexity of the human body, human life can be viewed as highly fragile, considering that the human body is constantly exposed to the many external influences affecting its survival, not to mention the risks of something going wrong within its own internal structure, like malfunctioning or failure of a body organ such as the liver, the heart, the kidneys, etc, although loss of use of an organ may not necessarily lead to death as with the advancement of science and technology we now have artificial organs like electronic hearts, kidney machines, etc and organ transplant is now a possibility provided a suitable donor or replacement organ can be found.

Fragility, it seems, is typical of any complex living organism that must maintain for itself consistency in body or physical functions, for example, a constant body temperature, blood pressure, metabolism, awareness of environment, etc. Although the end of life is death, and death being unavoidable, growing old has its own disadvantages, which I shall enumerate later on. But this is not saying that death is a disadvantage. Some people may welcome death as a relief when life appears to be nothing but pain and suffering. Death to some people is the extinguishing of all suffering, pain, sorrow, joy, pleasure, happiness etc but it can also mean, to these same people, or plausibly others, the beginning of a new stage or the end of everything else.

In a rational analysis, it cannot be a question of intelligent design but human redesign. Redesign on an ongoing basis by human beings to suit their purposes and to make their own lives more comfortable or less unbearable. The argument from design has lost much of its glitter and can be said to be an argument with lots of demerits rather than merits; one can go further by saying that none of the claims for intelligent design made by ID proponents such as Michael Behe and William Dembski have stood up under scientific scrutiny.  I would venture to say that it must have been a grossly stupid design in designing or creating materials for making weapons of mass destruction, unless the alleged Designer or Creator was totally ignorant of what these materials are capable of or had no foresight of what people would do with them in the future. Thanks to the availability of materials in the Earth for making weapons of mass destruction, we now have nuclear bombs. Before, man had to live with the idea of death as an individual, but with nuclear proliferation mankind may now have to live with the idea of its death as a species. One can argue that the availability of materials is for the benefit of humanity but should humans with their free will put the materials to destructive use then they themselves must carry the blame. Such an argument may sound logical but is highly illogical when you also believe in the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent and all-loving God.

We can end the discussion on the argument for intelligent design by saying that while we cannot deny that intelligence exists we have no evidence that intelligence is a progeny of creation or that the world came into existence as a result of someone’s design; moreover, there is no doubt that unintelligence also exists and can be found in abundance – bad bacteria and viruses, cancerous cells or  tumors, intestinal parasites, bugs [blood-sucking type], lice, mosquitoes, dengue-fever, malaria, influenza, leukemia, osteoporosis, stroke, tuberculosis, Aids, Alzheimer’s, Parkinsonism, earthquakes, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis etc and, we must not forget, irrationalism and terrorism. “What’s more, the genomes of complex creatures reveal a lack of any intelligence or foresight. Your DNA consists largely of millions of defunct copies of parasitic DNA. The inescapable conclusion is that if life was designed, the designer was lazy, stupid and cruel” – says the author of an article concerning evolution, published in NewScientist [Apr 19, 2008].

Court trial in the US on intelligent design [ID]

Before ID there was creation science, but the concept of ID is no different from creation science, just a new name for an old pseudo scientific concept that has been attempting to masquerade the teaching of creation beliefs in public schools in the US as science, as evidenced in a recent court case in the US. No doubt, for non-religious people, creation science is not science but religion. ID is not precluded from being discussed in any argument over the question of whether God exists or does not exist, or in a religious setting or as part of a religious study. Even people who considered themselves religious have challenged the idea of introducing creation science into public school classrooms as a scientific theory to be taught alongside the Theory of Evolution.

According to Stephen Jay Gould [September 10, 1941 - May 20, 2002, was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation, leading many commentators to call him "America's unofficial evolutionist laureate"]: Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage — good teaching — than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise? [end of quote].

On November 4, 2005, after 40 days and nights of testimony, the first evolution-intelligent design trial of the 21st century drew to a close in Federal court in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The resultant verdict is that ID is NOT a science and that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom. While evolution trials in the 20th century had focused more on traditional creationism, Kitzmiller et al v. Dover Area School District pit the teaching of evolution against a more legally sophisticated challenger (ID). The following, in parenthesis, is taken from the concluding remarks of the judge, John Jones III, delivered on December 20, 2005:

[Feb 18, 2006: http://www2.ncseweb.org/wp/?p=98#more-98]

“The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID. We will also issue a declaratory judgment that Plaintiffs’ rights under the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been violated by Defendants’ actions.

Defendants’ actions in violation of Plaintiffs’ civil rights as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffs’ attorneys’ services and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”

 A critical review of the story of Adam and Eve 

We are now talking about God in the context of his portrayal in the Old Testament. The story of Adam and Eve cannot and should not be read in isolation from the rest of the Bible but whether it can be taken as testimony that God exists and that he created us for a specific purpose – to populate the Earth and live forever, whether in spirit or physically - is of course subjective, depending on who you are, your cultural upbringing, your education and experience. However, if we regard the story as an ill-conceived mythology riddled with conundrums that are indisputably incredible, or nonsensical or unexplainable, the question of whether God exists becomes superfluous. The person who posted this comment in an Internet website can be seen as having similar thoughts: It’s incredulous that anyone could really be brainwashed into being convinced that the bible is anything other than a collection of myths and legends written by ancient men and used to control the masses. Comments of a similar nature have also been expressed by other like-minded people, as exemplified by these passages [partial excerpts], taken from the Internet; however, as there is a section headed Reading of Bible in chapter 16, some of the excerpts [6-10] are presented in that section, as a further reminder of the numerous opinions other people have expressed, concerning the Bible:

[Excerpt 1]

….I realized that the entire bible is full of contradictions that cannot be reconciled. How can this be the work of god? It obviously isn’t the inerrant thing I was taught it was. More, the god of the bible is downright EVIL. He condones rape, child sacrifice, pillaging, conquering, slavery, treating women as animals and as vulgar, unclean, overly emotional, unthinking, vain, inferior possessions. It’s despicable. I not only don’t understand how people believe it, but I don’t understand WHY anyone would want to.. 

 [Excerpt 2]

….In reading the Bible, I figured out that the Bible is crap. It’s not good literature, it’s bad. It’s not historical, it’s mythical. It’s not even good mythology. But most of all, it’s totally unbelievable…. The Bible is the ONLY book I can credit with helping me become an Atheist.

 [Excerpt 3]

….The bible, in my view, along with any other religious text, is at the top of the list of the most evil, bigoted, and misused writings on the planet. Right up with ‘Mein Kamph’.

[Excerpt 4]

….If you read the bible, god is impatient and jealous and boastful and conceited and rude and selfish, he takes offense and is resentful, he takes pleasure in peoples’ sins and constantly changes ‘His’ mind as to what truth is or isn’t, doesn’t like excuses, trusts no one and his claimed love is purely conditional, based on fear and wrath. God is the contradiction of what love is supposed to be.

 [Excerpt 5]

….It’s so completely obvious to me, now, that everything in the Bible – everything – is primitive philosophizing about life, all wrapped up in supernatural yarns and myth. Some stories were written to provide an explanation for what seemed incomprehensible mysteries. Some were written to teach children various practical moral lessons. Some were crafted by raving madmen. Some are pure political propaganda. Some of the stuff was just made up, the result of passionate, misdirected zeal.

 Any person with a modicum of common sense would find it hard to believe that God, so-called Creator and believed by his followers to be omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving, had allegedly acted so ignorantly, stupidly, malevolently and unjustifiably. If God had wanted to give Adam and/or Eve the elixir for living forever, by making available the Tree of Life, why did he project an image of being timorous, of showing fear that Adam, after having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, might react by eating from the Tree of Life and then living forever? Vide Genesis 3.22/3.23: “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. It thus seems clear that God banished Adam and Eve from the so-called Garden of Eden partly as a form of punishment for their disobedience resulting in their acquisition of knowledge of good and evil and partly because of his own fear that either or both might start eating from the Tree of Life and then become immortal. With access to the Garden of Eden or the Tree of Life no longer a possibility, mortality was expected to be the norm for Adam and Eve and their descendants; and it seems, from reading the script, that their lives would still end even if they had not eaten from the tree forbidden by God. God, however, allegedly made an exception with their grandson, Enoch, vide Genesis 5.24, where it is stated: Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away. And later on in the script [2 Kings 2.11] we are told that the prophet Elijah became another exception when he is reported to have ascended, alive, to Heaven in a fiery chariot.

Anyone who believes in Jesus as “the way and the truth and the life” or as the Second Person of the so-called Trinity cannot have their cake and eat it, too, in the context of what Jesus allegedly said, in John 6.46: No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. They will have to consider seriously whether they should denounce the Old Testament accounts of Enoch or Elijah meeting God or ascending to Heaven to see God as sheer nonsense. But denouncing anything in the Bible as nonsense can be viewed as rejecting a doctrine of the Catholic Church that every passage in the Bible [both Old and New Testament] was written with the inspiration of God. Whether you like it or not, there is no denying that the Bible is brimming with inconsistencies or contradictions. The picture being projected to us when we read Genesis, Exodus and other parts of the Old Testament is of God appearing and talking to people including of course Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Abraham, Moses and some elders of the Jews. Can Jesus be seen as talking nonsense? Or should the blame be put on the people who wrote the nonsense, or the many people who consider the Bible as absolute truths?

Adam and Eve had apparently acquired knowledge including being aware and shameful of their nakedness after eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and such awareness plus what further mental or intellectual capability they had supposedly acquired had apparently resulted in God becoming timorous. God allegedly created them naked in the first place; it would of course be mere speculation to wonder whether God felt any shame when he gazed, presumably with divine glee, on their nakedness. How much knowledge can a human being amass in today’s environment would depend on his intellect, education, life span, experience, social life with others, interest in world affairs and reading materials etc. What sort of knowledge had Adam and Eve acquired from eating from the magical Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is something we can only imagine or speculate in futility, whether we treat the story as myth or otherwise. But can or should we believe in God being omnipotent for having expressed fear? Why should a so-called all-powerful being – allegedly also all-loving – be fearful of something he himself created? It appears that expressing or evincing fear is not an uncommon trait of God, however; we can see examples aplenty of his fear being expressed or evinced in other areas of the Bible, for example: [1] fear that stepping on the ground with sandals would in some way affect the “holiness” of the ground or his own holiness, as when he allegedly exclaimed to Moses in Exodus [NIV] 3.5: Do not come any closer, God said. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground [2] fear of the witch, as when he allegedly said in Exodus [KJV] 22.18: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live [3] fear of physical uncleanliness, as expressed in Exodus [NIV] 19.10, 29.4, 30.19/21, Leviticus [NIV] 5.2, 11 and 13 [4] fear of “altars”, “sacred stones” and “Asherah poles” of non-Hebrew tribes, as expressed in Exodus [NIV] 34.13: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles [5] fear of yeast, as expressed in Exodus [NIV] 34.25: Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning. Anyone versed with the Bible may have other examples to offer.

God allegedly created humans and animals with two distinguishing characteristics – masculine and feminine – to differentiate them sexually as male and female creatures. God can be said to have sex in mind when he “designed” the sexual organs of male and female creatures. But Eve, a female, was allegedly created as an afterthought, arising apparently from the alleged loneliness being experienced by Adam after he was allegedly given the breath of life. Thus when God created Eve it was not for the purpose of producing someone, so many generations down the line, for the purpose of crushing the serpent’s head. Nothing had been said to this effect when God decided to create a woman [Eve] for Adam. His purpose, allegedly, was to provide human companionship and suitable help for poor Adam, who was allegedly lonely – the only human – in the so-called Garden of Eden. That Eve was allegedly created as a female, rather than a male, companion may serve as indication that there was a specific purpose to it and “sex” is obviously the word to describe this purpose. One can, however, view the term, sex, from several perspectives: sex is for procreation, sex is for pleasure, sex is healthy, relieves stress and prolongs life’s longevity, sex can lead to heart attack and can add to existing misery by creating new responsibilities, etc.

By eating from the tree forbidden by God, Adam and Eve had allegedly sinned against God and so originated what is now commonly known in the Christian world as the sin of disobedience, or “original sin”. And in tandem with the belief that they were our first parents and we are the descendants, all humanity has become tainted with this so-called original sin, which one can expunge by conversion to Christianity by baptism. The concept of original sin as an inherited spiritual infection is irrational and absurd, without any semblance of justice or equity, appears as an idiosyncrasy applicable only to Christians [or Catholics only?] and seems to imply the evilness of God in punishing the innocent for the so-called guilt or sins of others. One cannot and should not punish all the members of a family for a wrongdoing that was committed by only one of them.

Typical human justice in a civilized society will not result in the punishment of another family member or the rest of the family members if only one of them has committed a wrong. Human justice without a doubt appears to be more coherent or superior to so-called divine justice involving punishing not only the present generation but future descendants. Use any pejorative you want, but divine justice of the kind narrated in the Bible can be labeled as twisted, warped or mad. We have to add a caveat though: We are discussing a particular belief so if one does not believe in God or in Adam and Eve being our first parents one is not obliged to believe in the concept of original sin; but if the belief says that everyone, whether or not a member of the Christian flock, is also tainted with the original sin I am obliged to say something about it.

However, for those who are interested, a prime consideration or question to evaluate is: Can Adam or Eve be considered capable of committing sin, in the context of their ignorance of the meaning of good or evil? Remember, knowledge of good and evil for them was something they acquired from eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. So the blame, it is not unreasonable to say, must fall on God for his faulty creation or his inability for sound reasoning. Or maybe we should think of those with a blind faith in the concept of original sin as the ones incapable of sound reasoning.

It is apparent that theists, generally, do not hold themselves accountable to their fellow men for their religious opinions, being responsible only to their God. But as a non-theist I am entitled to ask:  What the hell has Adam’s or Eve’s alleged original sin got to do with me? Why should I, a non-theist, be tarred along with others who have chosen to indulge in their own idiosyncrasies? Freedom to exercise one’s religion is an undeniable right but this right cannot be exercised as though one’s religious tenets or beliefs are applicable to everybody else, including people of other creeds. If people wish to tar themselves, by all means please go ahead but they should not use the same brush to tar others who do not share their idiosyncrasies or beliefs.

Using my free will I have in fact deconverted from Christianity, years ago, after, ironically, giving the Bible a critical review and receiving a shock in the process – that I was worshipping, with regrettable ignorance, a barbaric, bloodthirsty, capricious, freakish, tyrannical, genocidal egomaniac. What if there is no question of me embracing Christianity, ever again? Presumably, by giving up my Christian faith and becoming an atheist, I can be deemed to have already forfeited my right of qualifying as a member of the Heavenly Club. Based on the so-called doctrine of original sin, no one who has not been baptized into Christianity should harbor the thought of joining this invisible, nowhere to be found club. Well, we all have to live by what we have chosen to be our choices or decisions. Sometimes, and for some people, there are no other options, and living the kind of life they were born with and have been experiencing since early childhood is the only option available.

Let’s back-track a little and familiarize ourselves with the events leading to the eating by Adam and Eve from the tree forbidden by God. God had allegedly cautioned Adam and Eve that although they could eat from whatever else they could find in the Garden of Eden they must not on pain of death eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. But judging by the script, God did not give Adam and Eve the necessary protection and can be accused of being totally ignorant with regard to security issues. The Garden of Eden, presumably a paradise, was apparently also accessible to an animal called the serpent, which the Bible describes as “more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made”. Eve, according to the script, entered into a conversation with the serpent, which in this story happened to be a talking serpent, vide Genesis 3.1 – 3.5:

Serpent:                    “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from  any tree  in the garden’?”

Eve:                   “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ “

Serpent:             “You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

As a result of the serpent’s persuasion – that eating from this tree would “open” her eyes and make her like God knowing good and evil – Eve allegedly took some fruit from the tree and ate it and she gave some of the fruit to Adam who was with her, and the outcome is only too familiar to those who have read this story; in case this is something you are reading for the first time, Adam also ate the fruit he got from Eve. Then the eyes of both of them were “opened”, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. The serpent, it can be argued, was not telling an untruth. Before consuming from the forbidden tree, Adam and Eve were not aware of their nakedness. With the acquisition of knowledge concerning good and evil, they acquired an awareness that being naked was something inappropriate or shameful. If being naked is something to be shameful of, then God can be critiqued for being shameless for creating them naked and, presumably, for getting enjoyment from ogling the naked body of Eve, or even that of Adam. Genesis does not say how this serpent gained access to the Garden of Eden. Presumably, the serpent was also one of its residents, after it was created along with other creatures, vide Genesis 1.24 to 1.31:

• 1.24. And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so.
• 1.25. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
• 1.26. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
• 1.27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
• 1.28. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
• 1.29. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
• 1.30. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
• 1.31. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Apparently, there is no mention of the animals being endowed with an ability to talk. Was the serpent the only kind of animal created with such ability? There is no indication from Genesis. What seems strange, however, is that Eve was persuaded [“deceived” would appear inappropriate] by the serpent despite, together with Adam, having been blessed by God. So the blessing from God was not effective in that it failed in preventing the serpent’s persuasion from taking effect. God was presumably unaware that his blessing would turn out to be valueless or useless. When he said to Adam and Eve: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground”, he was evidently looking ahead at an increase in human population and giving human beings dominance over all the other creatures he had allegedly created including, presumably, the serpent. Could it be that dominance over the other creatures would be possible for Adam and Eve only after they had increased in number and filled the Earth? Since “Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature” was spoken after “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it”, God can turn around and say “my words are clear – that dominance would not be effective until the fulfillment of certain conditions.” Still, God must admit his blessing was useless, since it gave no protection to Adam or Eve.

Genesis gives no explanation as to why the serpent had opted to point the way to knowledge for the human inhabitants. What seems to stick out is that the serpent’s verbal output is far more powerful, more persuasive, than the command of an allegedly omnipotent God, notwithstanding that this particular command was issued with a death threat. God can be seen as the loser in this instance, trumped by a crafty, talking serpent he allegedly created. God can be viewed as the one who was the liar who lied to Adam and Eve, for giving them the impression they would suffer death by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil when in fact they had not been endowed with immortality and thus would die anyway, regardless of the precaution from God. God can be viewed as a nincompoop oblivious to his surroundings.

You can say the story is about an imperfect God with a warped sense of justice or, if you think this story is credible, you may have to thank the serpent for ruining the garden party of the couple as through its skilful initiatives they were expelled from the garden, the home allegedly created for them by God, since  had Eve not been persuaded by the serpent you or I might not have been born to talk or read about this, assuming of course the creation story is true. A point that is seldom discussed is the possibility of Adam and Eve achieving immortality by eating from the Tree of Life, but without eating also from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil they could be forever running around naked without realizing it. Going by the script, they were apparently denied the luxury of having their cake and eating it. However, to give a person a piece of cake and then tell that person he/she cannot eat it can be viewed as an act of idiocy. But then, this only shows that God was not prepared to accept the existence of human beings with attributes of knowledge and immortality; can this be seen as a sign of fear or concern that such beings may pose a challenge to him? You can try to imagine the scenario of Adam and Eve eating first from the Tree of Life, then eating from the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil and then producing a race of super-humans each of whom may be the equivalent of God, or even superior to him.

Let’s continue with Genesis to get a picture of what allegedly happened after Adam and Eve had eaten from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil:

• 3.08. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
• 3.09. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
• 3.10. He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
• 3.11. And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
• 3.12. The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
• 3.13. Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”  The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
• 3.14. So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
• 3.15. And I will put enmitybetween you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush [b] your head, and you will strike his heel.”
• 3.16. To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
• 3.17. To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
• 3.18. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
• 3.19. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

The punishment being meted out by God, as expressed in these few lines, is an example, the first among many, of justice being dispensed by a so-called “omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving God.” Line 3.19 deserves further comment in terms of belief in life after death or so-called postmortem hope. Clearly, if one seriously believes in the Bible being the spoken words of God, then one ought to be realistic and accept that to dust one shall return. This passage says nothing about Adam continuing life after he is dead and seems to rule out the idea of life after death. One can, however, point to the accounts in the New Testament about Jesus and his so-called resurrection and his promise of eternal life; in which case one will have to accept that God can be accused of spouting gibberish or acting capriciously, whether or not one is a Trinitarian. Or one can consider Yahweh and Jesus as mythic characters borne of human imagination, or the Bible as a dunghill with a minuscule amount of usable material.

How many Christians are aware of the fact there are two creation accounts in Genesis and of the discrepancies or inconsistencies between them? In Genesis chapter 1 we are told that sea creatures and birds of the air were created on the 5th day, the day before land creatures were created with humans, both male and female, last on the list. The creation account in Genesis 1.1-31 gives the impression of God “creating” just by speaking out. Genesis 2.7: the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being – is, however, clear; man was allegedly formed from dust. Genesis chapter 2 gives the impression that the creation that followed after the creation of the earth and the heavens was in this chronological order: man [Adam], plant and vegetation, animals, and finally a woman [Eve], created from a rib taken from Adam’s body. The rib from Adam can be seen as a large chunk of Adam’s DNA and one can therefore argue that Eve was cloned from Adam but God, presumably, performed some miraculous DNA manipulation that resulted in the creation of Eve instead of a Steve with no boobs but with a penis similar to that of Adam; Eve was modeled, apparently, with beauty in mind with, among other things, sexy, beautiful curves and boobs.

Wherefrom or how did God get his idea of boobs, vagina and sex and procreation? Probably from his imagination or, more likely, the whole idea of God arose from human imagination. Why did God go to the extent of putting Adam into a deep sleep and then removing one of his ribs when he could have simply uttered the words “Let there be Eve,” or twitched his nose or scooped up another handful of dust from the ground? Since Eve was allegedly created from a rib of Adam it cannot be ruled out that Adam and Eve committed incense when they had sex and produced children. There would of course be no question of procreation if a Steve instead of Eve had been created. The two creation accounts of Genesis appear to have been written with conflicting data. It seems that God completed his creation on the 6^th day, vide Genesis chapter 1, but in this chapter we hear nothing concerning the creation of the Garden of Eden, which comes into the picture only in Genesis 2.8: Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. Even if one assumes Genesis chapter 2 as a continuation of the preceding chapter, serving as further explanatory notes, the chronological order of creation after the creation of the earth and heavens is evidently dissimilar in both accounts.

The Old Testament is brimming with other examples of the vengefulness or revengefulness of God. And the New Testament projects the impression that this same God so loves the world that he sent his only son into the world to preach peace and forgiveness and to save humanity. God must be joking, or having a wry sense of humor. Can you imagine God, all-powerful, sacrificing himself to himself? What is strange is that people who may have heard or read about the vengefulness or revengefulness of God and his capriciousness, cruelty, despotism, egotism, freakishness with animal sacrifice and blood splashing, homicidal instinct, racism, lack of foresight, high dependency on his human followers to execute actions on his behalf, etc as narrated in the Bible, still persist in believing in his so-called all-lovingness and almightiness, attributes that are evidently borne of human imagination. Call it anthropomorphism or human stupidity or unpredictability. Vide Genesis 3.24: After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. So it can be said that God became wiser after the event and like human beings he went through a process of experience and learnt the folly of his complacency or the ill-designed architecture of his creation, inclusive of course the Garden of Eden. But has anyone advised God that it is pointless to close the stable door after the horse has bolted? If it was his intention that Adam and Eve should not eat from the Tree of Knowledge, why did he put the tree there in the first place? Being allegedly omniscient God should have known what was going to happen, yet he did not pre-empt any possibility of access by Adam or Eve.

Any human parent who is not totally daft would ensure that any unsuitable substances for their children, say, for example, a bottle or tube of medication labeled “Poison. Keep out of the reach of children” would be safely tucked away, well out of reach of their children. God could have rendered the tree such that its fruits were hanging high and out of reach of humans. If this was something not within his powers, did it not occur to him to consult Chubb Security or any of the big, well-known security companies for advice regarding security issues? If he had consulted, they would have told him that the erection of a fence or barrier around the tree would suffice. Since we have already considered God as a nincompoop, there is no point now in deliberating why he was so daft as to leave the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil unguarded or unprotected if not allowing Adam or Eve to eat from it was his intention. Apparently, a common view taken by theistic Christians is that Adam and Eve had disobeyed God and this obedience – the eating from the tree that God forbade – was the cause of their downfall and thus would have been the cause of the downfall of humanity if not for God’s alleged mercy in sending his so-called son, Jesus, as the “Messiah” or “Savior” of the world. However, the question: Who allegedly created the talking, crafty serpent with the full knowledge that Eve would fall prey to its persuasion? – appears to have been lost in the theistic world, despite theistic belief in God being omniscient.

Someone who gave his name as Mitchy, who has apparently deconverted from Christianity, posted a testimonial regarding his deconversion which has a paragraph concerning original sin, viz: …..I listened to some preachers say that, because of original sin, we deserved any evil that we suffer. This seemed unfair, cruel, and far from loving. And furthermore they taught that our goodness was not good enough to get us into heaven if we don’t believe; only faith will do, no matter how evil we’ve been. Again, it shows that my religious orientation was Protestant. So a lot of goodness from non-Christians means nothing, but a tiny bit of sincere faith from a serial killer before he or she dies (even when the choice to believe is made under duress with the threat of hell) is enough to do the trick? This sounded like a terrible game with absurd rules! And why was believing so important anyway? After all, God, who supposedly loves us, will send us to hell for not believing but is unwilling to reveal Himself to everyone like He did to Paul to get us to believe? These moral scales God was using seemed terribly unbalanced….[http://exchristian.net/testimonies/2009/04/why-i-left-christian-faith.html, 28 Apr 2009]

I was at a funeral wake some years ago when I heard a pastor during a brief sermon saying that it was because of the alleged disobedience of Adam and Eve that we now have to suffer sickness and death. Going strictly by the script, taking such a view is unreasonable and therefore untenable, whether or not the story of Adam and Eve can be considered a real-life event. If we treat God as only a mythic figure then we shall have to treat Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden as imaginary productions of the mind, like Homer’s gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus. But can we have life alone without death? Life and death in this world are inseparable. While mortality is an empirical fact of life, immortality is not. Death being a condition of life, there can be no life if there is no death; but if there is life there is death. Whether there is life eternal without death waiting for us is not a matter of fact but something that is beyond verification or falsification, in the realm of metaphysics.

While dark-eyed houris [beautiful virgin women] may await Muslim male believers, the Koran [Quran], if I am not wrong, is not clear as to which assumption one should apply, for example [1] Muslim male believers will be endowed with new physical bodies in Paradise to enjoy being wedded to the so-called houris, assuming the latter are endowed with physical bodies similar to those of women on Earth [2] houris are non-physical and the enjoyment of Muslim male believers in Paradise, with or without houris, is strictly spiritual. However, according to Christian beliefs, God will eventually give a new physical body to every human being in their new abode in Heaven. But for Christians there is no question of marriage in Heaven between a man and a woman [or whatever they have become], in terms of what Jesus allegedly said: [Matthew 22.30] At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven - when he was queried by the Sadducees as to which of seven brothers a woman would be wife to when all of them had died and gone to Heaven, as during their time on Earth she was married to all of them, although she was only married to one brother at a time until his death before starting her marriage with the next brother. So there seems to be a contradiction between the Islamic belief of righteous Muslim men being wedded to houris in Paradise and the Christian belief that there can be no question of marriage in Heaven, assuming Paradise is Heaven.

To return to Adam and Eve; attributing disobedience to Adam and Eve as the cause of our sickness and death would seem illogical or difficult to connect, to a non-theist who is familiar with the story. And one can only wonder whether Christian theists who have read this story have ever tried to analyze it from a logical viewpoint. Eve was merely attempting to ascertain what was going on, after receiving information from a talking serpent. Remember, Eve and Adam were like children ignorant of what can be counted as good or evil, hence to accuse either of committing evil would be absolute evil in itself. In the worst case scenario, if we grant that guilt can be assigned to Adam and/or Eve, then a far greater guilt should be assigned to God because he was the architect of the entire drama. If you believe in God being omniscient then it would not be unreasonable to ask: Why did God create the talking, crafty serpent, knowing full well that it would turn out to be an adverse persuasion for Eve and Adam? Surely, it would not be unreasonable to question as to why God did not confront the serpent face to face when the serpent was trying to persuade Eve.

Nothing in Genesis 3.1 to 3.4 says anything or gives any hint about the serpent being Satan [Devil] in disguise, notwithstanding a Judeo-Christian belief associating the serpent with Satan. Whether it is a distortion to say that it was Satan in disguise – and not the serpent – who persuaded Eve would depend on your reading or interpretation of biblical text; either way, the episode is wholly controversial, whether or not it is mythical. If you wish to take the view that Eve was deceived by Satan disguised as the serpent, then you may have to accept the possibility of God being afraid of confronting Satan face to face, or the possibility of God having no, or only limited, power over Satan. But by believing that the talking, crafty serpent was Satan, you are imputing, in an irrational way, something which is not there, just as you may believe in God being all-powerful and all-loving when there is absolutely no empirical evidence to support such belief or the belief in God’s so-called existence.

Misinterpreting facts or ignoring evidence can be detrimental to oneself, let alone others, as court cases can testify. Misinterpreting facts or ignoring evidence can be a result of being irrational or ignorant, but it can also be perceived as lying or concealing the truth. Now for a brief digression, for recounting an experience: About 14 years ago I decided to take up an insurance policy to cover myself against a list of critical illnesses. The insurance company that I was discussing with told me that they would proceed with the insurance on one condition, which was that there would be an exclusion of coverage for paralysis, after a so-called consultant of theirs read a letter written by an orthopedic surgeon whom I had consulted about my backache. The letter reads:

“The abovenamed first consulted me on 16.11.93 for spontaneous onset of low back pain of four weeks duration. This pain was aggravated by protracted walking, sitting and the wrong spinal movement. He gave a history of spontaneous low back pain off and on for the previous 8 years.

On examination there was only some stiffness of his lumbar spine. There was no neurological deficit in his limbs referable to his spine.

Radiographs of the lumbosacral disc. This degenerated disc was responsible for his recurrent low back pain.

He was treated with anti-inflammatory medications and physiotherapy which settled his pain. He was advised on back care and back strengthening exercises which helped.

Opinion

Mr ….has low back pain off and on due to degenerative narrowing of his lumbosacral disc.

This is controlled by back care and back strengthening exercises.

During recurrences the pain usually settled with anti-inflammatory medications and physiotherapy”

Post-script [added 25 days later]:

Basically his back pain is due to some degenerative changes of his lumbar spine which is consistent with his age and common in his age group. It has nothing to do with any injury that may cause paralysis. His condition does not lead to paralysis either.

Before the addition of the post-script the insurance consultant took the view that I would become paralyzed should I slip or fall as a result of “stepping on a banana skin” while walking or running, and refused to cover me for paralysis, notwithstanding that nothing about paralysis was mentioned in the testimonial. I was thus prompted to seek further clarification from the orthopedic surgeon. He reviewed what he had written in the letter and then expressed his dismay with the insurance company’s consultant for misinterpreting its content. There is no dispute that anyone can become paralyzed if the backbone gets damaged severely. Even with the backbone fully intact and working normally, a person can still be paralyzed as a result of a stroke. I considered it fortunate that the surgeon did not charge me for taking up his time, which could have amounted to something like the present cost of ten of the most expensive breakfast set available today in a Macdonald’s restaurant. For the sake of clarification, the surgeon wrote a post-script to his letter. After reading the freshly added explanatory note [which was unnecessary from my perspective] the insurance company agreed to proceed with the insurance without any exclusionary clause. But by then another insurance company had offered to cover me without any exclusion risks, after reading the letter with the post-script. Whether this other insurance company would have taken a similar stance without the benefit of the additional explanation would be mere conjecture, at the present time. They agreed with me, however, that the original content says nothing about risks of paralysis stemming from my condition and that somebody had apparently misconstrued the text. The fact that to date no claim has been made under the policy is a significant factor; it implies that I have not suffered any of the insured illnesses and that the insurance company has benefited to some extent from the relative premium they received for the past 16 years.

Back to the Bible; by recalling the words spoken in Genesis 3.14 and 3.15:

• 3.14. So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
• 3.15. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel”

we may be struck with the realization that it was the serpent “above all the livestock and all the wild animals” that God cursed. Genesis 3.15 refers to enmity being put between the serpent’s offspring and the woman’s offspring; 3.14 is clear about the punishment allegedly meted out by God to the serpent for telling the truth: the serpent being cursed by God to crawl on its belly and to eat dust all the days of its life. Is there anything in the Bible about Satan having offspring, or about him crawling on his belly and eating dust? If Satan was using the serpent’s body, then it was evidently bizarre of God for taking out on the serpent instead of Satan; similarly, it was bizarre of Jesus, so-called Son of God, for allegedly censuring Judas for betraying him. In the New Testament we hear Jesus saying [Mark 14.21]: The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born. Jesus as God-incarnate is forgetting his death on Earth being allegedly a pre-arranged affair. Can it be free will [on Judas’ part] if it was pre-arranged or pre-determined? Furthermore, Judas’ mind was allegedly hijacked by Satan, vide gospels of Luke and John: Luke 22.3: Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve; John 13.27: As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him etc. In the Adam/Eve story, however, we are confronted with a narrative that is clear: that it was merely a serpent, an unusual crafty, talking serpent that persuaded Eve. Nothing is said in 3.14/15 or anywhere else in Genesis about the serpent being stripped of its power of speech; but has anyone come across a talking serpent? You can search through every cubit inch of the Earth, every nook and cranny, and you know that you will not expect to find a talking serpent.

We have to live with reality, though we are not precluded in any way from reading fairy tales, whether for amusement purposes or otherwise. And since time immemorial people have been creating all kinds of fairy tales, for pleasure reading or otherwise. A person with a flair for fairy tales may however offer the explanation that as a result of God’s curse, laid out in Genesis 3.14 to 3.15, the serpent has lost its power of speech and its legs; but is there anything in Genesis that says that the serpent was created with legs and was moving about like other animals with legs? Genesis says nothing about God depriving the serpent of its power of speech or its legs. One cannot simply interpret according to one’s fancy, where the text is clear and unambiguous. The serpent was only cursed to crawl on its belly and to eat dust all the days of its life. But not all serpents today crawl on their belly and no serpent can be found to be reliant on dust or eating dust to stay alive. Whether the snake descended from a creature with legs is a different matter, however. According to some researchers, the snake’s closest relatives, considered to be inhabitants of the ocean, were the mosasaur, a gigantic marine lizard and the Pachyrachis, the most primitive snake. Fossil evidence of the mosasaur and the Pachyrachis show them to be animals with legs. If lizard-like animals with legs were the progenitors of the snake, then it may be a misnomer to call these lizard-like animals “snakes”; it would be more accurate to simply call them lizards.

But if one were to assume as true that God’s so-called curse on the serpent resulted in the deprivation of its power of speech and its legs, then it must also be true that the punishment meted out to Eve and Adam seems, on the contrary, to have placed no restriction on them to continue with the exercise of their so-called free will, although free will, in a logical argument, was precisely that which culminated in the anger and frustration in God, who, despite his apparent stupidity or ignorance, took it out on Eve and Adam and the serpent, and their descendants. And, arguably, free will was the thing that exposed God’s tyrannical behavior in committing genocides in the stories that follow after the Garden of Eden episode. God can be accused of being an imbecile because with our free will we can choose to reject him as a spoilt-brat with an insatiable, morbid craving for adult attention, or consider him a fiendish, sadistic killer in need of psychiatric help. One theistic belief or inference from the free will concept is that by rejecting God we are destined for Hell. To argue for free will on this basis is to argue illogically. The fact that A loves B does not mean that B loves A or that B must adhere to the principle of reciprocity by loving A in return; whether B loves A needs to be established, and even if it is true that B loves A it cannot be ruled as a matter of reciprocity; B’s love for A may be the outcome of several factors, may even have originated from the moment they first met each other. The theistic argument for free will is clearly a flawed argument, a non-starter.

Someone familiar with the Bible may quote Romans 16.20: The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you – to support the view that this has a similarity to Genesis 3.15. So what if there is a similarity? It still does not prove that God was cursing Satan in Genesis 3.14 and 3.15. It is clear from 3.14 that he was cursing a member of the livestock; can Satan be considered a member of the livestock? Certainly not! In recalling the so-called dialogue between God and Satan in Job 1.6 – 1.12 [see below], we might be tempted to say that it would be strange or bizarre of God to have been talking like that to Satan if it was Satan he was allegedly cursing in Genesis 3.14 and 3.15. For one thing, nowhere in Job 1.6 -1.12 can we find any hint of Satan crawling on his belly or eating dust. These lines give us an impression of a friendly meeting between God and Satan:

• 1.6. One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them.
• 1.7. The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”  Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.”
• 1.8. Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
• 1.9. “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied.
• 1.10 “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.
• 1.11. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
• 1.12. The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”  Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD;

However, there is still no denying that Adam and Eve had disobeyed God by eating from the tree he forbade, notwithstanding the mitigating circumstances. With tongue in cheek we might ask: What is the degree of guilt of this so-called disobedience? Was it a mortal sin or venial sin? Obviously, it must be interpreted as a big sin since as a consequence Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden to live by the sweat of their brow in the outside environment. But if this interpretation is correct, then God himself had committed a bigger or greater mortal sin for being a nincompoop because, as it transpired, he did not put in place the necessary measures to pre-empt any possibility of access to the so-called Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, despite being omniscient and if omniscience can be believed. And God can be censured for being totally ignorant about the “ounce of prevention” principle. Disobedience in this case can be considered a wrong but not an evil, since prior to this Adam and Eve were ignorant of good or evil.

Maybe, omniscience is not one of God’s so-called attributes. He was evidently presumptuous and clueless about security issues, about what was happening or going to happen; or he can be said to have experimented with free will and discovered, too late, that his lack of foresight was a cause of problems for others. Is there anything being said in the Bible about God admitting his own mistakes in this episode, or thinking of punishing himself for his apparent blunder in allowing the serpent, the “most crafty of all animals” access to the so-called Garden of Eden? Not that I am aware of. And this particular serpent, in case one forgets, was endowed with the power of speech, with an apparent ability to articulate, to hold a conversation with a human being and to impress. Why did God endow the serpent with such eloquence or persuasive power, if he knew full well that Eve would be persuaded? Maybe it was no blunder; maybe God had no power or only limited power, in which case God cannot be said to be omnipotent. And neither can he be said to be omniscient. His inaction, passivity or impotence [call it what you want] is a clear betrayal or falsification of such theistic beliefs. Let’s continue with our evaluation.

Would a loving father knowing the adverse conditions affecting his children just stand by and do nothing? A yes answer seems plausible and not unusual, if the father happens to be powerless to do anything, as for example, the father being a paralytic cannot move or speak but is not visually impaired. But what if the father happens to be omnipotent, able to do anything and everything? A yes answer in this case would sound illogical. But if the father does nothing despite being wishfully thought or believed to be omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving, then it would probably give rise to some contentious issues; one can then say that the father may be all-loving as he is believed to be but the belief that he is also omnipotent may be false; it would be illogical to believe he is omnipotent and all-loving in view of his apparent apathy or passivity in the face of adverse conditions affecting his children; the fact he does nothing can be seen as an indication of his impotence or powerlessness to intervene or influence. On the other hand, he may be omnipotent and omniscient, a combination that is not totally without difficulty, since it can be evaluated as being contradictory or illogical, but the belief in his being all-loving seems irrational, since despite his almighty powers he still does nothing to save his children.

By his apparent inaction of staying on the sidelines as a bystander one can logically conclude that the father can have only one or at most two of the three attributes cited above, notwithstanding that such human constructs can come only from wishful thinking or belief. Thus the father can be [1] omnipotent [but cannot be all-loving at the same time], or [2] omniscience, or [3] all-loving, or [4] omniscient and all-loving. Being both omnipotent and omniscient can be seen as conveying something contradictory or illogical; if God [assuming he exists] is omniscient, then God can predict with 100 per cent accuracy anything or everything that is going to happen, including your future actions and those of his own; however, being omnipotent he can do whatever he wants, including doing or behaving differently from his predictions or expectations, thus making his predictions or expectations uncertain and fallible. Hence, by this argument, he can’t be both omniscient and omnipotent.

After their eviction from the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve allegedly gave birth to three sons, first Cain then Abel and then Seth. Needless to say, the story of Adam and Eve and their children has so many mysterious implications and gaps that not to treat it as myth would seem irrational. But if we treat it as myth, what about the rest of the Bible? Everything else in the Bible, including the New Testament, seems to be flowing from the accounts reported in Genesis or having some connection with the belief in the existence of God as the Creator, as reported in Genesis. I was discussing with someone, via an Internet forum, concerning the Bible and Christian beliefs and received a huge surprise when he said: “Either way, mainline Christian Tradition (which excludes the Creationists and Adventists) treats the story of Adam and Eve as a myth.” I was surprised because he had intimated to being a Catholic and a student of philosophy. And when I countered that if the Adam and Eve story is myth, then God is also myth, he insisted that God [as portrayed in Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament] is not myth. In fact, prior to his statement on Adam and Eve being myth, he had already initiated an incredible output by declaring: “On Eden: Fruit is considered a metaphor. That is to say, the Knowledge of Good and Evil is not part of the fruit’s biochemical composition. (And incidentally, it is “fruit”, not “apple”.) The Tree of Eternal Life, on the other hand, may have had a genuine chemical that prolongs life.” Unmistakably unbelievable! It was clear he wanted to have his cake and eat it. But that kind of talk has been typical of my experience talking with God-believers. He made a good observation, though, about “fruit” and not “apple” as the term being referred to in the script. If there is a Bible version that refers to the fruit consumed by Adam and Eve as an apple I would like to know which version. But does it make a difference to the story, whether it was an apple or another fruit? Did he analyze the biochemical composition of the fruit in question? Was there a “tree of knowledge of good and evil”? What about the claim of the story being myth? And saying: “may have had a genuine chemical that prolongs life” can be seen as self-contradicting or irrational. Should he agree, after his graduation, that it is not unreasonable to say that “if the Bible is truly the word of God, then God is irrefutably a bloodthirsty, cruel, despotic, hypocritical, manipulative, revengeful, genocidal maniac”, then I would happily applaud and congratulate him for his educational achievement.

Maybe not everything reported in the Bible is myth and, to be sure, it is not an easy task to say with precision which particular area is not myth, notwithstanding that all biblical stories are nothing but myth to some people. Even for Jesus, no account of his life story, the kind reported in the canonized gospels, can be found in any history books written by non-Christians. In fact, the canonized gospels appear to be the only sources about Jesus but, regrettably, they provide little or no information about the first 30 years of his life. That period, sad to say, is a big chunk of Jesus’ life span, considering that Jesus allegedly died in his early thirties. To return to our main theme, it was Abel’s animal sacrifice, not the sacrifice of the fruits of the land being offered by Cain, which allegedly found favor with the Lord [to read as God]; Cain’s offering was allegedly rejected by God and this rejection allegedly resulted in Cain killing Abel out of jealousy. One can be excused for asking: Why was God such an imbecile in the handling of this apparently simple situation? The Garden of Eden episode can be viewed as the first example of God’s disastrous administrative ability, or irrationality or stupidity. Being ostensibly incapable of handling a situation involving only two people, can you expect God to handle a human population in the billions and the millions or billions of prayers being plausibly directed at him at any given moment? Was there a need for him to exercise favoritism? Even if he had a morbid zest for meat rather than fruits or vegetables, he could have, with a bit of tact or diplomacy, accepted the offerings from both of them. Can he be said to have been unaware that his stupidity or favoritism in accepting one and rejecting the other would end in tragedy for Abel?

If God can be said to be omniscient then it can be said he engineered Abel’s death, regardless of whether the concept of free will can be legitimately brought into the argument. But there is another mysterious aspect: How did Cain know that his sacrifice was rejected but that of his brother was accepted? Presumably, but speculatively, God must have made a physical appearance or some clear indication as to which offering found favor with him and which was rejected; he might have eaten the animal sacrifice of Abel in their presence, while leaving untouched the fruits or vegetables offered by Cain. God, we have to remember, is portrayed in the Old Testament as a being with a morbid zest for animal sacrifice, and the sprinkling and splashing of blood on his so-called altar. The story of the angelic rebellion, from bits and pieces scattered here and there in biblical narrative, can be viewed as another example of the deplorable state of God’s leadership or statesmanship and lack of foresight. As you continue with your reading of the Bible, you will no doubt discover more examples of God’s ineptitude along with examples of his brutality, cruelty, immorality, insanity and his other vices.

The story says nothing about other human beings, and the impression it gives to the reader up to the point of the offerings to God by Cain and Abel is that there were nobody else besides their parents. But Cain is reported to have expressed fear that other people might harm him should they come to know that he had killed his brother without justification. Let’s recap the dialogue between God and Cain:

Genesis

• 4.9. Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
• 4.10. The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.
• 4.11. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.
• 4.12. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”
• 4.13. Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear.
• 4.14. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
• 4.15. But the LORD said to him, “Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him.
• 4.16. So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

The impression one gets is that this dialogue would not be possible without Cain having a clear indication that he was talking to God; can it be assumed that God appeared as a recognizable person to Cain [and to his parents and Abel], similar in manner to the time he allegedly appeared as a man to Abraham, generations later? Vide line 4.14, who were these other people who allegedly gave rise to Cain’s fear of getting killed? Line 4.15, the alleged putting of a mark by God on Cain’s forehead as a precaution to others to leave Cain alone, seems to be saying something obvious: there were other inhabitants on the Earth besides Adam, Eve and Cain; but this is mysterious, since before the killing of Abel and up to that stage the story has been confined to four people: Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel; hence with Abel dead, the only reasonable assumption available is that Cain and his parents were the only people left.

Cain, sometime after the killing of Abel, went to live in the land of Nod, got married and produced a son called Enoch, vide Genesis 4.17-18:

• 4.17. Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch.
• 4.18. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.

Who was this female person Cain married, since Adam and Eve according to script had given birth to sons only?

According to Genesis 4.26: Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh. Who was Enosh’s mother? Could it have been Eve? If not, who?

One cannot be faulted for saying that the Genesis account of Adam and Eve and their children was written with too many gaps. God-believers will no doubt believe in the story as a true account of the origin of mankind, despite the fact that it is more akin to a mythology than to anything else.  Anybody who is able to reason or analyze would say the author was talking nonsense. Adam is reported to have lived a life of longevity, before dying at the age of 930 years [Genesis 5.5].

If anything the story of Adam and Eve is all but a disproof of God being all-loving, omniscient or omnipotent; it is one of the numerous biblical accounts that point to an imperfect God or a mythical God. In fact nothing in the Bible can be adduced to support the belief in God being all-loving or almighty, regardless of the question of existence or non-existence. The fact that Eve was persuaded and got the blame should give us pause for reflection, for making inferences and drawing a conclusion. And it would not be illogical to infer or conclude that the belief in God being omniscient is either false or has no validity. However, theistic argument for his apparent non-intervention revolves on the concept of free will, a pseudo concept, and not on the possibility of God being a mythical being or a being having no foreknowledge of the future. If the Genesis story is true that God created humans and endowed them with free will and now humans, or some humans, doubt his existence by merely exercising their free will, then God must carry the blame for the existence of such doubt.

We have to question God for creating faulty humans and  blaming them for his own mistakes, a view that was expressed by Gene Roddenberry [Aug 19, 1921 – Oct 24, 1991; an American scriptwriter and producer and the creator of science fiction television series “Star Trek”] vide his comment: We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. There is more to be said about the concept of free will, although our initial reaction is that it appears illogical and full of loopholes. According to theistic reasoning, God allegedly gave humans free will to choose or act freely because he didn’t want us to be robots; so with Adam and Eve having the power of free will to act in accordance with their choices, God could no longer intervene, as intervention would make free will meaningless. If free will is the reason for God’s non-intervention, then why did he allegedly intervene on so many occasions in the affairs of humanity? Free will cannot be seen as a restrictive barrier for God when viewed against the numerous interventions God allegedly made as reported in the Bible. We shall subject free will to further evaluation.

Let’s recall some stories from the Bible concerning certain actions of God: [1] he allegedly engineered, excepting Noah and his family members and some animals, the genocide of humanity and other creatures [2] in the time of Abraham he allegedly punished Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and members of his household with diseases because Pharaoh slept with Sarah, Abraham’s so-called sister/wife [3] he allegedly enhanced the sexual or procreative ability of Abraham and Sarah, despite their old age [4] he allegedly offered a well of water to Hagar and her son, Ishmael, to save them from their ordeal in the desert when they allegedly ran out of water [5] he allegedly destroyed, excepting Lot and his family members, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their people, allegedly on account of their lifestyle, although it can be viewed that the people were merely exercising their free will when they were embracing a certain kind of lifestyle [6] he allegedly punished King Abimelech by allegedly making King Abimelech impotent, and he also allegedly punished members of King Abimelech’s household by “closing up” the womb of all the female members – all because King Abimelech tried sleeping with Sarah after being told by Abraham that Sarah was his sister; Abraham can be seen as a man pimping for his wife to gain financial benefit [7] in Exodus he allegedly hardened Pharaoh’s heart to gain glory for himself [8] In 1 Samuel 10.9 he allegedly changed Saul’s heart.

 God and his superstitions

Based on God’s portrayal in the Bible, on scriptural evidence of course, God can be described as superstitious, in ways that we can only describe as simply bizarre, if not downright stupid or irrational. How anyone can believe in the absurdity of God saying or doing this or that, as recorded in the Bible, is mind-boggling. The Bible, the Old Testament to be precise, is overflowing with narratives of God’s superstitions, and just selecting some relevant excerpts, say, from Exodus and Leviticus, is sufficient to make our point. But are we right in accusing God of being superstitious? There are several ways of looking at this question. One approach is to say he does not exist and therefore the question does not make sense. Another approach is to assume that there is no empirical evidence of his existence and the question can only be answered by reference to the Bible, to passages about the speeches allegedly made by God, or by Moses allegedly on God’s instructions or behalf.  So to answer the question, let’s review these excerpts, from Exodus and Leviticus:

Exodus

• 3.5.   “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
• 12.19. [God speaking to Moses and Aaron] For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born.
• 12.20. Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.”
• 13.1. The LORD said to Moses,
• 13.2 “Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether man or animal.”
• 16.29. Bear in mind that the LORD has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where he is on the seventh day; no one is to go out.
• 19.12. [God speaking to Moses] Put limits for the people around the mountain [Mount Sinai] and tell them, ‘Be careful that you do not go up the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.
• 19.13. He shall surely be stoned or shot with arrows; not a hand is to be laid on him. Whether man or animal, he shall not be permitted to live.’
• 19.15. Then he [Moses] said to the people, “Prepare yourselves for the third day. Abstain from sexual relations.”
• 20.3. You shall have no other gods before me.
• 22.18. Do not allow a sorceress to live.
• 28.42. Make linen undergarments as a covering for the body, reaching from the waist to the thigh.
• 28.43. Aaron and his sons must wear them whenever they enter the Tent of Meeting or approach the altar to minister in the Holy Place, so that they will not incur guilt and die.
• 29.1. This is what you are to do to consecrate them, so they may serve me as priests: Take a young bull and two rams without defect.
• 29.2. And from fine wheat flour, without yeast, make bread, and cakes mixed with oil, and wafers spread with oil.
• 29.15. Take one of the rams, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on its head.
• 29.16. Slaughter it and take the blood and sprinkle it against the altar on all sides.
• 29. 19 Take the other ram, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on its head.
• 29.20. Slaughter it, take some of its blood and put it on the lobes of the right ears of Aaron and his sons, on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet. Then sprinkle blood against the altar on all sides.
• 29.21. And take some of the blood on the altar and some of the anointing oil and sprinkle it on Aaron and his garments and on his sons and their garments. Then he and his sons and their garments will be consecrated.
• 29.29. Aaron’s sacred garments will belong to his descendants so that they can be anointed and ordained in them.
• 29.30. The son who succeeds him as priest and comes to the Tent of Meeting to minister in the Holy Place is to wear them seven days.
• 29.33. They are to eat these offerings by which atonement was made for their ordination and consecration. But no one else may eat them, because they are sacred.
• 29.34. And if any of the meat of the ordination ram or any bread is left over till morning, burn it up. It must not be eaten, because it is sacred.
• 29.38 This is what you are to offer on the altar regularly each day: two lambs a year old.
• 29.39. Offer one in the morning and the other at twilight.
• 30.19. Aaron and his sons are to wash their hands and feet with water from it.
• 30.20. Whenever they enter the Tent of Meeting, they shall wash with water so that they will not die. Also, when they approach the altar to minister by presenting an offering made to the LORD by fire,
• 30.37. Do not make any incense with this formula for yourselves; consider it holy to the LORD.
• 30.38. Whoever makes any like it to enjoy its fragrance must be cut off from his people.
• 31.14. Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it must be put to death; whoever does any work on that day must be cut off from his people.
• 34.14. Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
• 34.25. Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning.

Leviticus 

• 2.13. Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.
• 4.34. Then the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering and pour out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar.
• 4.35. He shall remove all the fat, just as the fat is removed from the lamb of the fellowship offering, and the priest shall burn it on the altar on top of the offerings made to the LORD by fire.
• 5.2. Or if a person touches anything ceremonially unclean—whether the carcasses of unclean wild animals or of unclean livestock or of unclean creatures that move along the ground—even though he is unaware of it, he has become unclean and is guilty.
• 5.3. Or if he touches human uncleanness—anything that would make him unclean—even though he is unaware of it, when he learns of it he will be guilty.
• 6.24. The LORD said to Moses,
• 6.25. Say to Aaron and his sons: ‘These are the regulations for the sin offering: The sin offering is to be slaughtered before the LORD in the place the burnt offering is slaughtered; it is most holy.
• 6.26. The priest who offers it shall eat it; it is to be eaten in a holy place, in the courtyard of the Tent of Meeting.
• 6.27. Whatever touches any of the flesh will become holy, and if any of the blood is spattered on a garment, you must wash it in a holy place.
• 6.28. The clay pot the meat is cooked in must be broken; but if it is cooked in a bronze pot, the pot is to be scoured and rinsed with water.’
• 7.19. Meat that touches anything ceremonially unclean must not be eaten; it must be burned up. As for other meat, anyone ceremonially clean may eat it.
• 7.20. But if anyone who is unclean eats any meat of the fellowship offering belonging to the LORD, that person must be cut off from his people.
• 7.21. If anyone touches something unclean—whether human uncleanness or an unclean animal or any unclean, detestable thing—and then eats any of the meat of the fellowship offering belonging to the LORD, that person must be cut off from his people.’
• 7.22. The LORD said to Moses,
• 7.23. Say to the Israelites: ‘Do not eat any of the fat of cattle, sheep or goats.
• 7.24. The fat of an animal found dead or torn by wild animals may be used for any other purpose, but you must not eat it.
• 7.25. Anyone who eats the fat of an animal from which an offering by fire may be [b] made to the LORD must be cut off from his people.’
• 19.23. When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten.
• 19.24. In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering of praise to the LORD.
• 19.25. But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the LORD your God.
• 19.27. Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.  20.27. A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.
• 21.16. The LORD said to Moses,
• 21.17. Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God’.
• 21.18. No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed;
• 21.19. no man with a crippled foot or hand,
• 21.20. or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles.
• 21.21. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the offerings made to the LORD by fire. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God.
• 21.22. He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food;
• 21.23. yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the LORD, who makes them holy’.
• 22.12. If a priest’s daughter marries anyone other than a priest, she may not eat any of the sacred contributions.

One can argue that being superstitious, prudish or freakish, is a personal matter, and can be harmless where other people are concerned. But when a superstition is shared by a crowd or a large community, thus achieving collective proportion, it can become a matter of contention, even dangerous, and can be seen as no different from a religious belief. If God with his omni powers is superstitious, assuming he exists of course, the situation can be evaluated as even more dangerous, for humanity and all other living creatures.

Despite the apparent fear or jealousy allegedly expressed by God concerning other gods, there are presently hundreds or thousands of different religions associated with the worshipping of different gods and goddesses. Whether real or surreal, can these other gods pose a threat to God? If the claim of God being almighty and all-loving can be believed, why should God be timorous or jealous of these other gods? Can God’s timidity or jealousy vis-a-vis these other gods be seen as a sign or evidence of their existence, of their being real rather than surreal? However, the fact that there are people, distinct from the followers of the Abrahamic religions, who are presently worshipping other gods/goddesses, is no proof of the existence of these gods/goddesses.

With his so-called omnipotence, God should have no difficulty in banishing these deities [assuming God and these deities exist] to extinction, by simply opening his mouth instead of expressing his fear and jealousy and cautioning his so-called chosen people not to worship them. What can be viewed as a huge oddity or puzzle, is that, if God exists and created everything [Genesis], then God can be said to have created these deities himself, though there is no mention in the Bible of God creating deities.  In Deuteronomy 7.25 we hear God telling, via his mouthpiece Moses, his so-called chosen people: The images of their gods you are to burn in the fire. Do not covet the silver and gold on them, and do not take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it, for it is detestable to the LORD your God.

As we have observed through reading the accounts of Genesis and Exodus, God was allegedly, highly dependent on his followers to execute actions on his behalf. So the impression conveyed to us in Deuteronomy is nothing new. Maybe, we cannot discount the plausibility of these other gods/goddesses posing a challenge to God or having a countervailing power or influence. Maybe, like the imaginative humans God allegedly created, God himself can be viewed as being highly imaginative, too. Or would it be more accurate to consider God as a being created from human imagination to serve human purposes, for better or worse?

If the fat of cattle, sheep or goats cannot be eaten, then sirloin steak seems to fall under such a proscription. But sirloin steak, arguably, is eaten by some God-believers. Maybe these people are not paying any attention to the religious tenets established by the so-called prophets of the Old Testament. Maybe Judaists are the only God-believers who follow strictly to the laws established for Judaism; to be sure, Judaists are still practicing animal sacrifice, and perhaps continuing with the sprinkling or splashing of animal blood on God’s so-called altar, on garments and on right ear lobe, right hand thumb, right foot big toe, to appease or please God with the aroma of burnt animal meat, which God allegedly declared was pleasing to him.

We have projected an image of God being superstitious. And we have to ask: What is superstition? Wikipedia has an explanation; an abridged version is appended in parenthesis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition [Jan 20, 2006]:

A superstition is an irrational or invalid belief about the relation between certain actions (often behaviors) and other actions that is not true. The essence of superstition is not defined by the “truth” of the result, however, but recognized by the methods through which truth is searched for. By its definition superstition is not based on reason and is not true.

The superstitious individual erroneously believes that the future, or the outcome of certain events can be caused or influenced by certain specified behaviors, despite the lack of a causal relationship in reality. Many superstitions can be prompted by misunderstandings of causality or statistics. Some popular superstitions are a result of misinterpreting correlations as causes, although many others are simply urban legends that have no rational justification whatsoever. Others spring from unenlightened fears, which may be expressed in religious beliefs or practice, or to belief in extraordinary events, supernatural interventions, apparitions or in the efficacy of charms, incantations, the meaningfulness of omens and prognostications. Any of the above can lead to unfounded fears, or excessive scrupulosity in outward observances.[End of excerpts]

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States [1801-1809] and principal author of the Declaration of Independence [1776], had offered what sounds like good advice concerning superstition; this comment is said to have emanated from him: I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. And it appears Jefferson also passed a comment about fears, prejudices, reason and God; this quote reportedly came from him: Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear…

One particular superstition of God, as expressed in Exodus 22.18: Do not allow a sorceress to live, and allegedly infected his human followers, was apparently a factor for the killing of so-called witches or wizards during the era of the Inquisitions. If we cannot attribute the killing to scriptural text, then we can nevertheless attribute it to religious bigotry or insanity. Superstition was rife, especially during the era of the Inquisitions [1478 – 1834 AD], and thousands of innocent people were put to death after being accused by God-believers of being witches or wizards or being in league with Satan. Presumably these God-believers were either ignorant or had forgotten that it was God who allegedly created Satan or “Lucifer”, the name by which Satan was known previously.

The evils perpetrated by the Inquisitors – which included torturing and killing of innocent people – were ostensibly committed with the sanction and blessing of the Catholic Church. The Christian clergy and their flock were evidently not only ignorant but grossly superstitious, and the God of their worship, being allegedly superstitious himself, can be accused of looking on nonchalantly while evil was perpetrated in his name. How were witches identified during the time of the Inquisitions? Any common mole, wart, welt or any skin blemish on a woman’s body could turn out to be disastrous for the woman, as any such mark could be insisted upon as an authentic witch’s mark and that might mean forfeiture of her life. .

The Inquisitors thought they were showing appreciation of the love of their God when they were torturing or killing people who were accused of being witches or being in league with the Devil. Jesus allegedly said, vide Matthew 18.20: For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. So if the Bible is truly the gospel of the Lord then the Lord can be accused of being among the Inquisitors when they were torturing or killing or burning to death innocent people; in which case the Lord can be accused of being evil, of being complicit in the torture and murder of innocent people. You may wish to classify it as collective delusion or mass insanity or hysteria; call it what you want but you can’t rule out that these evil perpetrators were madly influenced by their superstitious religious beliefs. Can the claim of God being compassionate have any validity? If you are an atheist then the answer must be a resounding NO!

Continuing from Exodus into Leviticus the reader will find God having another kind of fear [or hatred?] for mediums or spiritists; not only must witches or sorceresses be put to death, mediums and spiritists, too; Leviticus 20.27: A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads. As a consequence of such fear or hatred, all mediums and spiritists were “cut off from the land,” vide 1 Samuel 28.8-20:

• 28.8. So Saul disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and at night he and two men went to the woman. “Consult a spirit for me,” he said, “and bring up for me the one I name.”
• 28.9. But the woman said to him, “Surely you know what Saul has done. He has cut off the mediums and spiritists from the land. Why have you set a trap for my life to bring about my death?”
• 28.10. Saul swore to her by the LORD, “As surely as the LORD lives, you will not be punished for this.”
• 28.11. Then the woman asked, “Whom shall I bring up for you?”  “Bring up Samuel,” he said.
• 28.12. When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out at the top of her voice and said to Saul, “Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!”
• 28.13. The king said to her, “Don’t be afraid. What do you see?” The woman said, “I see a spirit [a] coming up out of the ground.”
• 28.14. “What does he look like?” he asked.  “An old man wearing a robe is coming up,” she said. Then Saul knew it was Samuel, and he bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground.
• 28.15. Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?”  “I am in great distress,” Saul said. “The Philistines are fighting against me, and God has turned away from me. He no longer answers me, either by prophets or by dreams. So I have called on you to tell me what to do.”
• 28.16. Samuel said, “Why do you consult me, now that the LORD has turned away from you and become your enemy?
• 28.17. The LORD has done what he predicted through me. The LORD has torn the kingdom out of your hands and given it to one of your neighbors—to David.
• 28.18. Because you did not obey the LORD or carry out his fierce wrath against the Amalekites, the LORD has done this to you today.
• 28.19. The LORD will hand over both Israel and you to the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The LORD will also hand over the army of Israel to the Philistines.”
• 28.20. Immediately Saul fell full length on the ground, filled with fear because of Samuel’s words. His strength was gone, for he had eaten nothing all that day and night.

What does Christianity have to say about spiritual mediums being able to communicate with the spirits of the dead? The irony is that Saul, despite his Lord’s fear of the witch, consulted a witch. What can we glean further from these passages? For one, they project the image that it was possible for the living to communicate with the dead. And mind you, these passages were written with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, vide an encyclical issued by Pope Leo Xlll on Nov 18, 1893: “For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost: and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true.”

Thus God can be seen as a very superstitious god with a morbid habit for passing on his irrational superstitions to his so-called chosen people and for encouraging or instigating rivalry, hate, killing or destruction; to be fair, he can also be seen to have allegedly laid down ethical standards, for example, in Leviticus and in various other parts of the Bible. Leviticus 19:

 Do not steal

Do not lie

Do not deceive one another

Do not swear falsely by my name

Do not defraud your neighbor or rob him

Do not hold back the wages of a hired man overnight

Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind

Do not pervert justice

Do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly

Do not go about spreading slander among your people

Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life

Do not hate your brother in your heart

Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself

In the New Testament, we see Jesus, so-called Son of God or God himself, planting further material that is only partially usable, in a plot that is teeming mainly with weeds:

 Matthew 

• 5.1. Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him,
• 5.2. and he began to teach them saying
• 5.3. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• 5.4. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
• 5.5. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
• 5.6. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
• 5.7. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
• 5.8. Blessed are the pure in heart, or they will see God.
• 5.9. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Luke 

• 6.27. “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
• 6.28. bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
• 6.29. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic.
• 6.30. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.
• 6.31. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

The Bible reader can be forgiven for being confused with the inconsistencies and contradictions that are littered throughout the Bible. And one cannot be faulted for classifying many of the “Do not” advices cited above [Leviticus] as the “suck eggs” variety. Were the Hebrews so backward that they did not know that stealing or defrauding is morally wrong? But one thing appears clear: killing those or robbing from those outside their tribe appeared to be a preoccupation of the Hebrews under the alleged guidance or leadership of their God, as borne out by the narrative from Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles etc. The Hebrews even needed to be taught how to discern whether their wives were unfaithful, and guess what or how their supposedly living, all-powerful and all-knowing God taught them? The text in Numbers 5.11-31 under the heading “The Test for an Unfaithful Wife” says it all and to be sure nothing is missed out I am quoting each line verbatim:

• 5.11. Then the LORD said to Moses,
• 5.12.  “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him
• 5.13.  by sleeping with another man, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act),
• 5.14. and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure-
• 5.15. then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder offering to draw attention to guilt.
• 5.16. ” ‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the LORD.
• 5.17. Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water.
• 5.18. After the priest has had the woman stand before the LORD, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse.
• 5.19. Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has slept with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you.
• 5.20. But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have defiled yourself by sleeping with a man other than your husband”-
• 5.21. here the priest is to put the woman under this curse of the oath-”may the LORD cause your people to curse and denounce you when he causes your thigh to waste away and your abdomen to swell.
• 5.22. May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells and your thigh wastes away.”  ” ‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”
• 5.23. ” ‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water.
• 5.24. He shall have the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water will enter her and cause bitter suffering.
• 5.25. The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the LORD and bring it to the altar.
• 26 The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water.
• 5.27. If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse, it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell and her thigh waste away, [f] and she will become accursed among her people.
• 5.28. If, however, the woman has not defiled herself and is free from impurity, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.
• 5.29. ” ‘This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and defiles herself while married to her husband,
• 5.30. or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the LORD and is to apply this entire law to her.
• 5.31. The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’ “

So we have here a sign of an ignorant, asinine, barbaric god imparting bizarre ideas, or further ignorance or imbecility, to his already barbaric, ignorant or gullible followers. And in terms of the New Testament and the Trinity doctrine we hear this same god saying [Matthew 7.17-20]: Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. So Yahweh or Jesus, by their own words as expressed in the Bible, can be seen as a semi-rotten tree in dire need of a salvage operation entailing the sawing-off of all the rotten bits and pieces and throwing them into the so-called everlasting furnace Yahweh or the Trinity has or have allegedly created for others. I am all for staking that Yahweh or the Holy Spirit is no more mythic than, say, Zeus or Thor of Greek or European mythology.

While we cannot, however, discount the drivel represented by Numbers 5.11-31 as the product of an ignorant or irrational human being by the name of Moses, we cannot disregard the fact that who authored Exodus or Numbers was a human being, probably a story-teller with a high degree of ignorance or imagination for writing gibberish. We should not, however, lull ourselves into forgetting there are people, perhaps in the millions, who believe that the Bible was written with the inspiration of God. The Bible can be called an unholy mess if it was indeed inspired by God. Rational people, however, may have other ideas; they may think of the Bible as a book of filth, filled to the brim with celebrations of cruelty, hatred, intolerance, malevolence and killing including infanticide and genocide.  Reading the Bible can be a revolting experience. If you have experienced revulsions from reading the Bible and have an urge to critique it as a highly obnoxious publication, you are probably not alone. There is even a high probability that you might want to deconvert, just as others before you have already deconverted, after discovering what a load of filth the Bible is.

Did Jesus abolish his Father’s [or his own?] insane testing procedure for a husband’s suspicion of his wife’s infidelity? The New Testament does not say but one thing we would not be wrong in saying is that no rational Christians today would adhere to the nonsense allegedly laid down by God in Numbers 5.12 – 31, or the innumerable other examples of nonsensical verbiage that allegedly emanated from God and which can be viewed as the dirt that is littering the pages of the Bible. What, then, needs to be addressed, at least, by those who believe in the existence of God, is the question: Is the Bible the word of God or is it not? If the Bible is the word of God, then God can be considered as being insane for talking so much nonsense. If the Bible is not the word of God, then the Bible is the work of some people who can be rated as being grossly ignorant, irrational and superstitious, but only partially savvy or rational.

It is hard to dispute or deny the creative or imaginative power of the human mind, whether for good or bad, whether in the present environment or thousands of years ago. However, based strictly on biblical narrative there is no denying that God can be viewed as the crazy, personal God regardless of the question of his existence or non-existence; his behavior and some of his precepts, as textually provided, can be described as nothing short of being insane, in every sense of the word. The laws of an eternal, all-knowing God are deemed to be applicable at all times and anyone who believes in the Bible believes presumably in what Jesus allegedly said or did.

In Matthew 5.17 we hear Jesus saying: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. In effect Jesus is confirming that the laws as laid down by, for example, Moses on behalf of God, calling for the death sentence for violation are still applicable; death for anyone who curses his parents [Exodus 21.17]; death for anyone who desecrates the Sabbath [Exodus 31.14]; death for homosexuals [Leviticus 20.13]; death for mediums or spiritists [Leviticus 20.27]; death for blasphemers [Leviticus 24.16]; death for a stubborn or rebellious son for disobedience to his parents [Deuteronomy 21.18]; death for adulterers [Deuteronomy 22.22]. Not only emphasizing that we should obey our parents, the Old Testament also tells us that we are commanded by God to honor our parents; yet in Luke 14.26 Jesus exclaims: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple.” And Jesus is supposedly God, or the so-called 2nd Person, in the context of the Trinity doctrine. This is one of the many irreconcilable problems concerning Christianity. But there will always be some wiggle room for Christian theists, and goal posts changing or shifting is something they are adept at. Hence, we should not be surprised if we are told that Luke 14.26 must be read metaphorically, or that God acts in mysterious ways.

And Christianity, through the first Christian Church Council in Jerusalem, held approximately 50 AD, decreed that circumcision was not a requirement for Gentile converts, despite the clear-cut declaration allegedly made by God in Genesis 17.9-14:

• 17.9. Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come.
• 17.10. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised.
• 17.11, You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.
• 17.12. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring.
• 17.13. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant.
• 17.14. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

It is clear from line 17.13 that God established the so-called circumcision decree as an “everlasting covenant.” Can Jesus’ disciples be held accountable for breaking an everlasting law of God? The case seems clear but Christianity would not hesitate to argue that certain law[s] of God was/were established for a time only and the circumcision decree was obviously one of them, notwithstanding the clarity of the decree allegedly issued by God, as recorded in Genesis 17.9-14.

The Jewish Sabbath [day of rest] is observed on Saturday whereas the Christian Sabbath is Sunday. Sabbath or non-Sabbath, it is a fact of life that not all Christians today abstain from work on Sunday, for a variety of reasons: work schedule established by employers, personal preference to work throughout the week for economic reasons, etc. Working on a Sunday is no longer an issue for some people, Christians included.

What seems apparent from many of the Old Testament accounts is that the Golden Rule meant little to the Hebrews as they were guided directly by their God. It was not a cornerstone of their morality as it appeared that a principle of reciprocity common to humanity was either not meant for them or meant to be practiced only selectively. Presumably, under the belief [or illusion?] of being guided by their God, they thought they were entitled to seize any property, any land, so long as it was of foreign ownership or not Hebrew-owned.

Supreme goodness v eternal punishment

Can God be seen as supremely good? Pose this question to a staunch God-believer and you know what answer you are likely to get. Arguably, people who think that God is supremely good are ignorant of his portrayal in the Bible or paying no attention to the ongoing suffering that is all around us, or being wishy-washy in their thinking. For our argument, we have to assume that supreme goodness is an attribute that can only apply to God. What about Hell or eternal punishment? There is so much talk in the Bible about eternal punishment in the eternal fire of Hell, and the wailing or weeping and gnashing of teeth, after the “separation of the sheep [representing the do-gooders] from the goats [representing the bad or evil doers]”. That God-believers cannot see or appreciate the creation of Hell or eternal punishment as a vice or an antithesis to the supreme goodness they have been espousing is simply mind-boggling. There is no question of supreme goodness if there is eternal punishment.

Anyone who is unable to see the forest for the trees is also likely to be unable to see the glaring difference in concepts between so-called supreme goodness and so-called eternal punishment. And people who think that supreme goodness and eternal punishment are concepts that can co-exist are probably those with an inability to distinguish night from day.  However, one can counter: Anyone who is unable to see the existence of God is probably someone who is unable to see the forest for the trees; why are there billions of people in the world who believe in God and they outnumber considerably the non-believers? You can then argue that it is all a matter of perspective, or that belief is a freedom of choice, a personal matter, and your argument cannot be seen as other than logical.

Sheer weight of numbers alone does not give a complete picture and cannot be taken as the final arbiter for what is truthful, rational or otherwise. If a particular belief is false, it would still be false even if billions of people support it. Whether a belief is true has absolutely no relation to the number of people embracing it. At one time millions or billions of people believed that the Earth was flat and they were all proven wrong. Belief in God can be devalued to being a matter of perspective, but what is evident is that there is not a shred of empirical evidence in support of so-called God’s existence. We can still, however, point out that a matter of perspective can be true or false, or logical or illogical, or beyond verification or falsification. Thus we can say that if A contradicts B or vice versa, it would be illogical to say that both are true, although both can be false. If one is true, the other cannot be true.

As humans we think there is a limit to retribution or punishment and we cannot be wrong in stating that no eternal punishment can be seen as purposeful. From the notions expounded by some theologians, one cannot help but conclude that God apparently created most people with the aim of crowding Hell. Such an alleged divine sense of justice – eternal punishment in Hell – can only be described as un-divine or fiendish. If you believe that God created Hell and humanity and afterwards consigned certain people [or their souls or spiritual selves] to Hell to suffer eternal punishment, then you may have to agree with the viewpoint that God committed an evil deed and hence can be accused as the greatest culprit or the greatest sinner of all.

Why should anyone suffer eternal punishment for whatever wrong committed in this temporal life? Depending on the degree of suffering or punishment, annihilation, from a sufferer’s viewpoint, may be a preferable option to eternal punishment, and the sufferer with such a view may take comfort in the words expressed in Matthew 10.28: Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. So, despite all the talk of eternal punishment in Hell, it would still be dependent on God’s whims as to whether one suffers eternally or gets annihilated.

To fundamentalist Protestants Hell is “a real physical place of unbearable torture which lasts for all eternity with no hope of mercy, relief or cessation”. This is taking an extremist position and does not bode well for anyone making a one-way trip to Hell. To the Catholic Church, Hell is “more than a physical place, Hell is a state of being involving the pain, frustration, and emptiness of life without God.” But can life be empty without God? There are many people today who are happy and enjoying what life has to offer without bothering whether God exists or does not exist. As far as they are concerned, he has no role in their lives. Can we glean anything from these differing images of Hell among Christians? Yes, and that this is only one of the numerous differences in beliefs and practices between Catholics and Protestants.

What I am inclined to comment is that theists seem to have a good vocabulary for making descriptions that are beyond verification, and that you have to give them credit for their imaginative prowess. What is surprising, though, is why should there be any differences in doctrines or concepts about Hell [and in other areas] when the same God being worshipped by them allegedly created the one and only Hell? Plausible answer: It all boils down to a matter of interpretation.

Look at the schisms within Christianity – it seems there are over 30,000 different denominations. There are Christians – Jehovah’s Witnesses and Unitarian-Universalists, for example, who do not embrace the doctrine of the Trinity; to them there is only one God, one person. Some Christians consider other Christians as sub-Christian because of irreconcilable differences in their doctrines. Hence one can accuse God of being an abhorrent, bungling, confused being confusing people. Or would it be more accurate to say that though we do not have a shred of empirical evidence of God we can see masses of confused people out there. Catholics may hold the view that without God there would be “pain, frustration and emptiness” but they should also realize that there are many people out there who view the Bible as a book of filth and have no wish to be associated with a filthy, genocidal egomaniac obsessed with the smell of burnt animal meat and the splashing and sprinkling of blood around his so-called altar.

Some God-believers may say that God created us to love him and serve him and be forever happy with him in the life hereafter, in so-called Heaven. If we are the sheep, can we be truly happy in Heaven knowing that those suffering in Hell were people like ourselves, some of whom may have been our loved ones, our relatives, friends or colleagues whom we may still hold dear? Plausible answer: God will make us happy by altering or influencing our minds, or may even harden our hearts as he allegedly did with Pharaoh in the time of Moses. If that is the answer one can ask, after sentence has been passed: Why didn’t God soften our hearts to make us all good when we were living on Earth, so that everybody would end up in Heaven? Plausible answer: He didn’t soften our hearts because he gave us free will. If so, why did he allegedly harden Pharaoh’s heart after giving Pharaoh free will?

And what of the story [1 Samuel] of the Spirit of God coming into Saul and his men and as a consequence Saul and his men began prophesying? Thus free will, regardless of any direct influence from God, may just be the reason for going to Hell, although it can also be the reason for winning entry to Heaven. It would be irrational, however, to say free will exists if our choices or actions can still be influenced by intervention from God.  With our free will remaining intact we can choose to be unhappy in Heaven because of our knowledge of people suffering in Hell. In that scenario, we can say Heaven is not necessarily a place of happiness for some people. In fact, in biblical context, it was precisely the place that became the springboard for the removal of some angels. Maybe, these angels found Heaven to be a dull, lousy place and found pleasure elsewhere, where they could roam freely, after they got themselves evicted.

If we stick to free will as unhindered freedom to exercise one’s choices, we should not entertain any thoughts about God intervening to make us happy despite our awareness of people suffering in Hell. But free will, as we have argued, is not a valid defense for God’s apparent apathy in the affairs of humanity. For God to alter or influence our psyche to make us happy is like giving us pseudo-happiness when he is not supposed to, in the context of free will argument. And that would be abnormal. Whether our arguments can be considered logical, we have to agree that this is all speculation. What is undeniable is that human beings are self-conscious and can reason. And some human beings can see, while others cannot, the irrationalism in some beliefs, or the flaws in the arguments offered for such beliefs.

Concerning the metaphor of the sheep and goats used by Jesus for distinguishing between good and evil, we may feel obliged to ask whether the goat can be said to be inferior to the sheep. A subjective issue, needless to say. People knowledgeable in milk products might agree that goat’s milk is the most widely consumed milk in the world and is in some ways superior to cow’s milk. Goat’s milk contains all essential amino acids for optimal health. Sale advertisements for goat’s milk claim that goats are not fed pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones or antibiotics. Goat’s milk is an apparent alternative for people with an allergy or intolerance to cow’s milk. Both the sheep and the goat do have their own contributions toward the welfare of humanity. But alas, the poor goat, an innocent creature of alleged creation, has been caricatured as a symbol of evil, with artistic pictures of the so-called Devil commonly showing him with two goat-like horns sticking out from the forehead. Notwithstanding the comment by Jesus on the sheep and the goats, we can certainly say there is no compatibility between supreme goodness and everlasting punishment.

Presumably no one who believes in God would wonder whether God could have been hurt in some way by the alleged angelic rebellion. But if the belief in God being almighty or invulnerable can be given any credence, then there can be no credence in believing in Hell and everlasting punishment as a consequence of the so-called angelic rebellion. If God can be said to have been hurt, psychologically or otherwise, then one can argue that he cannot claim invulnerability and, therefore, cannot be omnipotent. And instead of claiming God to be all-loving we should accuse God of having a warped sense of justice for creating Hell and eternal punishment. A reading of the chapter on Joshua, wherein God allegedly instructed the Hebrews how they should go about invading or killing their enemies, would convince the reader to think twice about whether it is logical to think of God of being supremely good. If you have read Exodus and the relative comments we have provided, in these pages, you may have already formed an opinion about God. However, if you are a hardcore God-believer with deep-seated prejudices, then you may be someone with an inability to distinguish night from day.

 Non-Muslim readers who are unaware of some of the claims advanced relating to Islam or the Koran [Quran] may find the information given here, albeit meager, illuminating or interesting. Was Islam started strictly on religious grounds, or on religious and political grounds?

 Basic differences in beliefs – Judaism/Christianity/Islam

 Are religions faced with “external” contradictions? The answer is yes, in the sense that the beliefs or doctrines of one religion may be at odds with those of another religion even though their followers are worshipping the same God, for example, the God of Islam and Judaism. Any religion can be seen as contra if its fundamental doctrines or beliefs are clearly different from those of another religion. In terms of the Principle of Contradiction, contradictory statements cannot both at the same time be true, for example, the two propositions A is B and A is not B are mutually exclusive. “Jesus is God” is true to mainstream Christians but “Jesus is not God” is also true to Muslims and Judaists. Obviously, both statements cannot be true; if one is true the other must be false; and there is the plausibility that both are false. A Christian who was discussing with me about some aspects of Christianity tried to circumvent the contradiction by saying that Jesus was both God and man, but arguing this way would still not resolve the contradiction.

Despite having a common belief in their “bible” being a collection of divine revelations, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are professing different or contrasting doctrines; for example, Islam and Judaism [and several other religions] do not recognize the divinity of Jesus. Where Muslims are concerned, he was only a human prophet, a messenger of God, on the same level with so-called prophets, for example, Abraham, Moses and Muhammad, and he was never crucified and did not physically rise to life after having died. From an Islamic viewpoint, the title “son of God” is apparently one that had been conferred on others before Jesus and was merely an indication of their role as emissaries of God.

The Koran [The Koran (with parallel Arabic text) by N.J.Dawood (1990)] is clear about the role being played by Jesus, as these passages imply:

 To Moses We gave the Scriptures and after him We sent other apostles. We gave Jesus son of Mary veritable signs and strengthened him with the Holy Spirit. Will you then scorn each apostle whose message does not suit your fancies, charging some with imposture and slaying others? – sura 2.87, page 12.

Unbelievers are those who declare: ‘God is the Messiah, the son of Mary.’ Say: ‘Who could prevent God, if He so willed, from destroying the Messiah, the son of Mary, his mother, and all the people of the earth? God has sovereign over the heavens and the earth and all that lies between them. He creates what he will; and God has power over all things.’ – sura 5.17 page 109.

The Messiah, the son of Mary, was no more than an apostle: other apostles passed away before him. His mother was a saintly woman. They both ate earthly food. – sura 5.75 page 119.

 However, to mainstream Christians, the title “son of God” is not merely a title bestowed on Jesus; let’s hear what Jesus allegedly said as recorded in the gospel of John:

 8.58: “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am”.

10.30: “I and the Father are one”.

14.6: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”.

 One can argue that since Islam is firm that Jesus was only a human prophet, Islam must accept that Jesus was lying by claiming to be divine or “the way, the truth and the life.” If Jesus had indeed lied on such a significant aspect, can Jesus be deemed to be a human prophet of God? Can Jesus be accused of blasphemy? The answers to these questions would be debatable, no doubt. Muslims can, however, counter that what Jesus was, from an Islamic viewpoint, is based on what is stated in the Koran, not the Christian Bible. Muslims are of the view that the Judeo-Christian Bible has been so corrupted through inaccurate translations that it can no longer be taken as a credible or trustworthy record of God’s revelations. Taking such an approach, Muslims can counter anything reportedly said by Jesus as recorded in the New Testament that may appear to be in conflict with their beliefs or dogma, for example, Jesus’ consistent and frequent use of the term “Father” when making reference to God. Presumably, Muslims will also reject the Genesis account of God appearing physically as a man to Abraham and eating the food prepared by members of Abraham’s household and the story of the physical wrestling match between God and Jacob.

Muslims and Judaists believe that God is a being without any sort of association or connection, in outright contradiction of the belief of the majority of Christians in the so-called Trinity. For Muslims and Judaists, the belief in God incarnating as Jesus is the ultimate heresy. Several other differences in dogma and beliefs exist between Islam and Christianity, but the non-recognition by Muslims of the alleged divinity of Jesus is a very significant one and can be said to be a critically huge distinguishing difference in conceptual beliefs between Islam and Christianity. Other differences, for example: 

• [1] Allah [God] is neither male nor female; this is also a doctrine of Judaism but in Christianity God is a “he.” However, the Islamic belief that Allah is neither male nor female appears to be self-contradictory in terms of the Koranic text stating that the Torah and the Scripture are revelations of God, as God is portrayed as a father figure in the Torah and the Scripture; and in sura 16.11, the Koran (with parallel Arabic text) by N. J. Dawood (1990), God is referred to as “He.”
• [2] Muslims do not pray to the so called Virgin Mary or to “saints”, in contrast with Catholics, who believe in praying to her and to saints.
• [3] Muslims flatly reject the doctrine of the Trinity which, in their opinion, can be equated to polytheism.
• [4] The sacrament of the Holy Eucharist is something alien to Muslims, in line with their belief in God as a stand-alone entity without any affiliation.
• [5] Muslims are required to face Mecca while praying.
• [6] Friday to a Muslims is a day of congregation; it is obligatory for adult Muslim males to attend Friday congregational prayer at noon and this practice can be viewed as a contrast to Church attendance for Mass on Sundays by Christians
• [7] In Islam, the Holy Spirit is understood to be the “angel Gabriel”, and therefore is considered to be distinct and separate from God, not part of God; however, in mainstream Christian doctrine, the Holy Spirit and the angel Gabriel are two distinct beings; to mainstream Christians the Holy Spirit is the “3^rd Person” of the Trinity whereas the angel Gabriel is one of the angels allegedly created by God.

 In the past, being a heretic could invite dire consequences, even death, as exemplified by at least three cases: Michael Servetus aka Miguel Servet or Miguel Serveto [1511-1553], Giordano Bruno [1548-1600] and Galileo Galilei [1564-1642]; while Galileo was only put under house arrest, thus escaped death, Servetus and Bruno lost their lives by being burnt at the stake. Servetus was tried and convicted by the Protestant Geneva governing council for spreading and preaching Nontrinitarianism and anti-paedobaptism (anti-infant baptism). Servetus’ death was reportedly engineered by John Calvin, an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation and a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism; Bruno was tried and convicted by the Roman Inquisition [system of tribunal developed by the Catholic Church] for numerous charges including holding opinions considered to be erroneous about [a] Christ’s divinity and Incarnation [b] Transubstantiation and Mass, and denying the virginity of Mary.

 In saying the Torah and the Scripture are divine revelations, the Koran is directly or by implication attesting to the “truth” of the events described or narrated in the Torah or the Scripture. Yet, as we have noted above, where Muslims are concerned, the Judeo-Christian Bible has ceased being a credible or trustworthy record of God’s revelations. Paradoxically, despite their skepticism of biblical accuracy, they embrace belief in God’s so-called prophets named in the Bible. Cherry-picking! What other explanations can there be? Besides the differences cited above, there are umpteen differences in content between the Koran and the Christian Bible. Apart from being religious books, they are separate and distinct from each other. The mosques in Mecca and Medina are considered by Muslims to be the “holiest places” on Earth. If God is supposed to be everywhere [omnipresent?], then it may appear fair to say that every place is “holy”.

Judaists, however, do not believe in the concept of the Trinity or in the Koran or in Muhammad being a prophet. The non-recognition of Muhammad as a prophet by Judaists is representative of a critical disparity in dogma between Judaism and Islam; the implication here is that Judaism does not recognize Islam or the Koran. One similarity between Judaism and Islam is that both groups of followers believe that God does not have a body, in other words God is a spirit, hence neither male nor female. If this belief in God being a spirit is true, then the Christian or Jewish biblical accounts of God appearing in person [as a man on several occasions and being allegedly addressed as Lord] to human beings cannot be true. The many inconsistencies and contradictions in so-called religious revelations or dogma cannot by definition be simultaneously true; if one is considered true, any contradiction of it must be considered false. What is clear is that worshippers of God/Allah are embracing doctrines and beliefs that are radically different from each other and that such differences have been prevalent for centuries.

If we insist on using a logical approach and accept Islam as true, then we shall have no choice but to reject Christianity as false, or if we accept Christianity as true, then we shall have no choice but to reject Islam as false. If you happen to be a mainstream Christian with a firm belief in the Trinity, then you will have to reject Muhammad as a false prophet, as it would be illogical to conceive of Muhammad as a prophet sent by God-Trinity for the purpose of starting a new religion with clearly different doctrines and beliefs. Being different is not only a major concern, but Islamic doctrines and beliefs can be seen as a countervailing force to Christianity by, inter alia, claiming that Jesus was only a human procreated by human parents. And, of course, if we accept Christianity as true, we must reject Judaism as false or if we accept Judaism as true we must reject Christianity as false, notwithstanding that parts of the Christian Bible are said to be adoptions from the Jewish Bible. Christianity was evidently started not by Jesus but by his disciples, and Paul was the principal architect for its development, following the death of Jesus, who allegedly forfeited his life for claiming to be the Christ, the Messiah or the Son of God [Mark 14, Matthew 26 and Luke 22]. Arguably, Paul’s preaching and proselytizing contributed much to the rise of Christianity and Paul [Galatians 1.12 and Ephesians 3.3] allegedly claimed that the gospel he preached was received through revelation from Jesus. If we can believe Paul, others can believe Muhammad. But there is a chance they are all illusory and hence all false. Any belief based on unfounded claims is suspect and should be viewed with suspicion.

 Judaism is no doubt considered as a religion founded by Abraham long before the birth of Jesus or Christianity, yet today, Judaism is nowhere near Christianity or Islam, in terms of the number of followers. Despite the fact that Judaism is essentially a religion of the Jews, or so-called God-chosen people, Jews presently number about 14 million only, equivalent to about 0.2% of the total world population of about 6.5 billion and definitely a far cry from the promise allegedly made by God to Abraham to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky; Genesis 15.4-5: Then the word of the LORD came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” In terms of our scientific observation about the universe, of the number of stars in our galaxy alone being estimated at between 100 and 400 billion and of the existence of galaxies in the universe in the billions, whether we take only Jews or Jews and all other people as descendants of Abraham, the figures for people and stars are worlds apart. Moreover, there is the plausibility that many people, perhaps in the billions, who know nothing about Abraham and/or the Bible God and have no wish to consider the creation story in Genesis, which may be pure myth to them, as having anything to do with their lives.

 Arguably, one can produce biblical excerpts to show that Judaism was supported or embraced by Jesus, by quoting, for example, Matthew 5.17: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Jesus might have told his disciples to preach to all nations but his disciples were divided as to whether new converts should follow strictly to Judaism’s strict laws concerning circumcision and diet. Are there any followers of Judaism who are non-Jews? If there are they are probably a very small minority, with the vast majority being Jews. That said, it is probably true that not every Jew is a Judaist. For Jews who have been acculturated in countries to which they have emigrated there is the plausibility that they, or at least some of them, may no longer be affiliated to the religion of their ancestors. What the figures are telling us is that Judaism appears to have a zero or near-zero attraction for non-Jews, despite the numerous miracles allegedly performed by Yahweh, as described in the Old Testament. Maybe non-Jews have no desire to be involved in Judaism’s circumcision rites and/or dietary laws; maybe they have heard about Yahweh being a barbaric, bloodthirsty, cruel, malevolent, manipulative, racist and revengeful god with a genocidal instinct. Maybe Yahweh’s inveterate capriciousness or amnesia can be said to be the cause of his own apparent attempt to gain exclusivity for his chosen people in the current environment, or maybe it is simply a case of the majority of humankind not interested in joining the ranks of his so-called chosen people or the new club allegedly started by disciples of his so-called Son. One can rationally argue that rational people can distinguish between fact and fiction, or between myth and reality.

For the Jews, Saturday is the Sabbath, while for Christians, Sunday is the Sabbath. Vide NewScientist, Jul 5, 2008 [Commentary by Lawrence Krauss]: On Judaism and the idea of Jews as chosen people, Einstein says: “For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people… have no different quality for me than all other people…although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.” What seems to be mysterious as well as ironic is the fact that Jesus’ disciples have been unable to convince the majority of the Jews [barring exceptions] despite having been instructed by Jesus: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.”  [Matthew 10.5/6]. At any rate the claim by Jesus of being the Son of God can be seen as nothing unique, in the context of Genesis 6.1-2: When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose – as so-called sons of God allegedly existed long before him. Anyone can claim to be a son of God but such a claim can in no way be taken to mean that God exists. As we have noted in a previous chapter, to some people the Bible is the biggest catalogue of myths, including of course the myth of sons of God marrying daughters of men.

The concept of resurrection in Judaism is not similar to that in Christianity or Islam. To mainstream Jews or Judaists, resurrection would occur in the “messianic age” – following the birth on Earth of their messiah, who, as prophesied in their religious text, would be a direct descendant of King David and who would, among other things, oversee the rebuilding of Jerusalem and bring Jewish people from all over the world back to Israel, their homeland. However, the various claims of Jesus being divine and his own admission to being the Christ or Messiah [Mark 8.29/30, Matthew 16.16/17 and Luke 9.20/21] have no place in the dogma or beliefs of Judaism. Judaists can argue that the claim of Jesus being the Son of God is something alien to them, as they have never made such a claim. They believe that when their messiah comes to make this world a world of peace and prosperity, the righteous will be brought back to life but the wicked will not be resurrected. This may or may not seem queer, but what is clear is that while they strongly believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whom Jesus was literally professing or referring to as his Father when he was allegedly preaching and working miracles, they have never believed in Jesus being the Son of God or being the Messiah, notwithstanding the overwhelming conversion to Christianity. The Jews are, apparently, still waiting for the appearance of their messiah.

 The Koran/Shortcomings of some prophets

While the Koran is said to be the output of about two decades of labor and is revered by Muslims as revelations made directly to Muhammad by God through Gabriel, so-called angel of God, the Christian Bible – there are currently so many versions – is considered by most Christians as the human record of human responses to God’s purported revelations and as the output of numerous human storytellers and writers spanning more than a thousand years. To ask whether angels exist is no different from asking whether God exists. Notwithstanding the skepticism that exists with regard to the accuracy of Muhammad’s life history or even whether he lived at all, the fact remains that there are biographies of his life [ca. 570/571 – 632] written by different people. But whether all or any of the statements made in the Koran or, for that matter, in the Christian Bible or any bible can be considered as truth is an entirely different matter. Undeniably, religious claims about the metaphysical or spiritual realm are not possible or capable of verification in a scientific way.

In contrast with the Bible [New Testament], where casting out of evil spirits from people believed to have been so afflicted is a common theme, the Koran, if I am not mistaken, says nothing about exorcism of evil spirits from human beings. According to Joseph McCabe [in parenthesis], in his The Sources of the Morality of the Gospels, “… Babylonia is the classic source of the belief in evil spirits, and in this respect the Gospels are Babylonian literature.” Babylonia, according to Wikipedia, was a civilization in Lower Mesopotamia (central and southern Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Did Jesus or the Gospel writers get the idea of demons or evil spirits from Babylonian literature or from some other source[s]? Answer: Maybe. The Koran, however, is not short on text giving warning of severe punishment for non-believers, for example: As for the unbelievers, neither their riches nor their children will in the least save them from God’s judgment. They shall become the fuel of the Fire. They are like Pharaoh’s people and those before them; they denied Our revelations, and God smote them in their sin. God is stern in retribution. Say to the unbelievers: “You shall be driven into Hell – an evil resting place!” [p 50 sura 3.10-12, The Koran (with parallel Arabic text) by N. J. Dawood (1990)], and sura 5.10, p.108: As for those who disbelieve and deny Our revelations, they are the heirs of Hell. Now, why should anyone be punished or consigned to Hell just for refusing to be stupid or to believe in stupidity? If God exists and has given us intelligence and free will to act, then why should the mere exercise of this so-called free will cause him anger or dissatisfaction? There is no logic in this.

The Koran, however, is also not short on text praising believers and promising them the rewards of Paradise, including, for male believers, perks like “dark-eyed” houris [beautiful virgin women] allegedly, specially created by God for the purpose of becoming their wives. One version of the bliss that believers or righteous can expect is of being “well provided for, feasting on fruit, and honoured in the gardens of delight. Reclining face to face upon soft couches, they shall be served with a goblet filled at a gushing fountain, white, and delicious to those who drink it. It will neither dull their senses nor befuddle them. They shall sit with bashful, dark-eyed virgins, as chaste as the sheltered eggs of ostriches”. [p 446, sura 37.38-50, The Koran (with parallel Arabic text) by N. J. Dawood (1990)].  And in page 497 sura 44.51-56 you can find the following text: As for the righteous, they shall be lodged in peace together amid gardens and fountains, arrayed in rich silks and fine brocade. Even thus; and We shall wed them to dark-eyed houris. Secure against all ills, they shall call for every kind of fruit, and having died once, they shall die no more.

It appears, therefore, that Muslims can look forward to their rewards or perks in Paradise but the bliss of being wedded to dark-eyed houris may not appeal to all Muslim believers in view of the differences, physical or intellectual, existing between individuals; hence what is deemed desirable by A may not be deemed desirable by B. If some have a preference for “green-eyed” or “brown-eyed” or “blue-eyed” virgins, it would be a matter of personal preference. Some Muslims may be green-eyed or brown-eyed or blue-eyed and thus may have a preference for someone with eye-color similar to their own. What about Muslim women? Surely, they would not be interested in “dark-eyed” houris? The answer to this question is not a simple Yes or No, if you are familiar with the term “lesbianism”, or if you are a skeptic too familiar with beliefs in mythology. Is there anything in the Bible or Koran about heavenly rewards created specifically for women? I cannot recall. Maybe, Allah would also reward righteous Muslim women but not in the way righteous Muslim men would be rewarded. Getting wedded to a dark-eyed houri may be something unthinkable to a righteous Muslim woman. For the men, what if they desire the women who were their wives when they were on Earth? What if the women desire their previous husbands? We have to ask Allah. As a religious follower you can always try ascertaining, assuming this is possible, whether your Heavenly reward would be in line with your expectations. If you agree with the view that God/Allah is a male chauvinistic prick or freak you would probably think you have already got the answer, and you are probably right.

 Text repetitions are common in the Koran as well as in the Bible. While the Koran refers to the Torah [Five Books of Moses known as the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy] and the Scripture [Bible] as revelations of God, it also makes the claim that “The only true faith in God’s sight is Islam”. What can we deduce from this assertion? Can it be considered logical? In other words the Koran is saying that followers of Judaism or Christianity [and other religions, presumably] are not embracing the true faith. But what, precisely, is “true faith”? Whether Islam can be considered the true faith is subjective and highly debatable.

If there is any truth in the Koran and the Bible being revealed words of God, then there is no truth in God declaring Islam as the only true faith and God can be accused of making an irrational contradiction, regardless of whether the Bible has been subjected to numerous translations and various interpretations. But such a premise is good only for argument’s sake, has no empirical basis and thus the whole argument is utterly futile as proof for the existence God or that the Koran or Bible was an outcome of his revelation or inspiration. However, to continue with the argument, even if we allow for errors in translation or interpretation, the blame must still fall on God for not ensuring perfection in translation or interpretation, given the Koran or Bible being an output of divine revelation or inspiration. But God, in the context of his portrayal in biblical script, is a case of hopeless imperfection with evil or psychopathic tendencies. And since Judaism and Islam worship God, it would be mere cherry-picking, with no logical justification, to claim that Islam is the only true faith in God’s sight. Christianity, while worshipping God, has made the claim of God being a plural entity comprising three persons in terms of the Trinity in Unity or Unity in Trinity doctrine. A theist can argue for all he wants, but any religion insisting on God [or god or goddess] as the absolute truth needs to be treated with absolute caution.

Appended are excerpts taken from the Koran [with parallel Arabic text] by N. J. Dawood [1990]: 

• If you doubt what We have revealed to Our servant, produce one chapter comparable to it. Call upon your idols to assist you, if what you say be true. But if you fail [as you are sure to fail], then guard yourselves against the Fire whose fuel is men and stones, prepared for the unbelievers – sura 2.23-24, page 3.  

•  Such are they who buy the life of this world at the price of the life to come. Their punishment shall not be mitigated, nor shall they be helped [sura 2.86]
• To Moses We gave the Scriptures and after him We sent other prophets. We gave Jesus son of Mary veritable signs and strengthened him with the Holy Spirit. Will you then scorn each apostle whose message does not suit your fancies, charging some with imposture, and slaying others? [sura 2.87]
• They say: ‘Our hearts are sealed.’ But God has cursed them for their unbelief. They have but little faith. [sura 2.88]

These three paragraphs can be found on page 12.

•  And now that a Book confirming their own has come to them from God, they deny it, although they know it to be the truth and have long prayed for help against the unbelievers. God’s curse be upon the infidels! Evil is that for which they have bartered away their souls. To deny God’s own revelations, grudging that He should reveal his bounty to whom He chooses from among His servants! They have incurred God’s most inexorable wrath. Ignominious punishment awaits the unbelievers – sura 2.89-90, page 13. 
• You will please neither the Jews nor the Christians unless you follow their faith. Say: ‘God’s guidance is the only guidance.’ And if after all the knowledge you have been given you yield to their desires, there shall be none to help you from the wrath of God – sura 2.120, page 18. 
• But the infidels who die unbelievers shall incur the curse of God, the angels, and all mankind. Under it they shall remain for ever; their punishment shall not be mitigated, nor shall they be reprieved – sura 2.161-162, page 23. 
• Say to the unbelievers: ‘You shall be overthrown and driven into Hell – an evil resting place!’ – sura 3.12, page 50. 
• Such are the bounds set by God. He that obeys God and His apostle shall dwell for ever in gardens watered by running streams. That is the supreme triumph. But he that defies God and his apostle and transgresses His bounds, shall be cast into a Fire wherein he will abide for ever, Shameful punishment awaits him – sura 4.13-14, page 78. 
• They would have you disbelieve as they themselves have disbelieved, so that you may be all alike. Do not befriend them until they have fled their homes in the cause of God. If they desert you, seize them and put them to death wherever you find them – sura 4.89 page 91. 
• The unbelievers are your inveterate foe – sura 4.101, page 93. 
• He that disobeys the Apostle after guidance has been revealed to him, and follows a path other than that of the faithful, shall be given what he has chosen. We will burn him in the fire of Hell: an evil end – sura 4.115, page 96. 
• Those that deny God and His apostles, and those that draw a line between God and His apostles, saying: ‘We believe in some, but deny others,’ – thus seeking a middle way – these indeed are the unbelievers. For the unbelievers We have prepared a shameful punishment – sura 4.150-151, page 101. 
• Unbelievers are those who declare: ‘God is the Messiah, the son of Mary.’ Say: ‘Who could prevent God, if He so willed, from destroying the Messiah, the son of Mary, his mother, and all the people of the earth? God has sovereignty over the heavens and the earth and all that lies between them. He creates what He will; and God has power over all things’ – sura 5.17, page 109. 
• Believers, take neither the Jews nor the Christians for your friends. They are friends with one another. Whoever of you seeks their friendship shall become one of their number. God does not guide the wrongdoers – sura 5.51, page 116. 

• If the People of the Book accept the true faith and keep from evil, We will pardon them their sins and admit them to the gardens of delight. If they observe the Torah and the Gospel and what has been revealed to them from their Lord, they shall enjoy abundance from above and from beneath – sura 5.65-66
• Say: ‘People of the Book, you will attain nothing until you observe the Torah and the Gospel and that which has been revealed to you from your Lord.’ That which has been revealed to you from your Lord will surely increase the wickedness and unbelief of many among them. But do not grieve for the unbelievers. – sura 5.68
• Believers, Jews, Sabaeans and Christians – whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does what is right – shall have nothing to fear or to regret. – sura 5.69  These four paragraphs can be found on page 118. 
• The Messiah, the son of Mary, was no more than an apostle: other apostles passed away before him. His mother was a saintly woman. They both ate earthly food. See how We make plain to them Our revelations. See how they ignore the truth – sura 5.75, page 119. 
• Let not the unbelievers think that they will ever get away. They have not the power so to do. Muster against them all the men and cavalry at your command, so that you may strike terror into the enemy of God and your enemy, and others besides them who are unknown to you but known to God. All that you gave in the cause of God shall be repaid to you. You shall not be wronged – sura 8.59-60, page 183.

• Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate – sura 9.73.
• They swear by God that they said nothing. Yet they uttered the word of unbelief and renounced Islam after embracing it. They sought to do what they could not attain. Yet they had no reason to be spiteful; except perhaps because God and His apostle had enriched them through His bounty. If they repent, it will indeed be better for them; but if they pay no heed, God will punish them, both in this world and in the world to come. They shall have none on earth to protect or help them – sura 9.74.

These paragraphs can be found on page 198. [End of excerpts]

 It seems we have a language problem here. If the reader thinks some of these passages are vague or inconsistent, he is probably not alone. Can all this verbal output be claimed to have emanated from God/Allah but spoken through so-called “angel Gabriel”? What can be gleaned from reading these passages may be expressed as follows: that they appear to be nothing short of saying [1] Islam is the true faith [2] all non-adherents of Islam – the unbelievers – will go to Hell [3] Muslims should not befriend Jews and Christians [4] notwithstanding [2], Jews, Sabeans and Christians should, however, have nothing to fear or regret if they believe in God/Allah and the Last Day and do what is right [5] unbelievers [presumably non-Muslims] are to be considered the enemies of God/Allah [6] Apostasy will be subject to punishment by God/Allah in this world and in the world to come.

 The passage about striking terror into the enemy of God can be interpreted as a mandate for terrorism, for suicide bombing as a means of achieving one’s ends. Which reminds me of a comment made by Professor Weinberg [chapter 8]: With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. That there are Koranic passages encouraging exclusiveness is not something exceptional. Paul of the New Testament also preached exclusiveness in one of his epistles [2 Corinthians 6.14-18] and Judaism is a great example of exclusiveness in terms of Old Testament   script encouraging “smashing or destroying of symbols and other artifacts of other religions.”

 Further excerpts from the Koran, also taken from N. J. Dawood’s translation, evidencing inconsistency or contradiction: 

p.151, sura 7.12-18:

‘Why did you not prostrate yourself when I commanded you?’ He asked.

‘I am nobler than he,’ he replied. ‘You created me from fire, but You created him from clay.’

He said: ‘Get you down hence! This is no place for your contemptuous pride. Away with you! Humble you shall henceforth be.’

He replied: ‘Reprieve me till the Day of Resurrection.’

‘You are reprieved,’ said He.

‘Because You have led me into sin, ‘ he declared, ‘I will waylay Your servants as they walk on Your straight path, then spring upon them from the front and from the rear, from their right and from their left. Then You will find the greater part of them ungrateful.’

‘Begone!’ He said. ‘A despicable outcast you shall henceforth be. As for those that follow you, I shall fill Hell with you all.’

 p.263, sura 15.32-43:

‘Satan,’ said God, ‘why do you not prostrate yourself?’

He replied: ‘I will not bow to a mortal whom You created of dry clay, of black moulded loam.’

‘Get you hence,’ said God, ‘you are accursed. The curse be on you till Judgement-day.’

‘Lord,’ said Satan, ‘reprieve me till the Day of Resurrection.’

He answered: ‘You are reprieved till the Appointed Day.’

‘Lord,’ said Satan, ‘since You have thus seduced me, I will tempt mankind on earth: I will seduce them all, except those of them who are your faithful servants.’

He replied: ‘This is My straight path. You shall have no power over My servants, only the sinners who follow you. They are all destined for Hell.’ [End of excerpts].

 In one section it is reported that God’s servants would be waylaid but in the other it is reported that with the exception of God’s faithful servants all would be seduced. The Koran can do with some fine tuning from a human editor but this is not possible as it is held to be an exact copy of the original believed to be stored in Heaven. Hence there is no possibility of subjecting it to any human revision.

 Some so-called prophets of God – Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Elisha, Samuel, Saul and King David, for example – can be said to have something in common – a cruel, killing instinct, not unlike the vengeful, malevolent, genocidal instinct of God. Another common feature about God’s so-called prophets is that they were apparently all males, a testimony to God being a misogynistic prick. Has anyone come across a Jewish woman named as a Jewish prophet or Jewish queen? Presumably the answer is No. Maybe God remembered how Eve, a human female, exposed his stupidity in the Garden of Eden. One can argue, in the context of biblical script, that these prophets were allegedly instructed by God and that the free will allegedly bestowed on them was merely for executing his so-called will or, more precisely, his malevolent instructions. Whether they were acting with free will or not, they were a bunch of killers or maniacs, cruel and malevolent, not unlike their God. The inability of some people in distinguishing right from wrong or between good and evil because of the evil [for destroying others] inherent within themselves is, fortunately, not something that can be said to be widespread but it is there, nonetheless, as it was prevalent in times past and history can attest to that. Moses, one can observe from Numbers, had no problem in making an assessment of the value or non-value of being a human female virgin or non-virgin. As we have noted in chapter 12, he allegedly prized virgin women or girls over non-virgin ones and he allegedly gave instructions to kill every non-virgin Midianite woman or girl. We have through the presentation of Exodus and other biblical examples provided a comprehensive account of the evils perpetrated by Moses and his God. Let’s now review some of the activities of these other so-called prophets, as narrated in the Bible:

 Joshua

• 10.26. Then Joshua struck and killed the kings and hung them on five trees, and they were left hanging on the trees until evening.
• 10.28. That day Joshua took Makkedah. He put the city and its king to the sword and totally destroyed everyone in it. He left no survivors. And he did to the king of Makkedah as he had done to the king of Jericho.
• 10.38. Then Joshua and all Israel with him turned around and attacked Debir.
• 10.39.They took the city, its king and its villages, and put them to the sword. Everyone in it they totally destroyed. They left no survivors. They did to Debir and its king as they had done to Libnah and its king and to Hebron.

 Elijah

1 Kings

• 18.40. Then Elijah commanded them, “Seize the prophets of Baal [450 of them]. Don’t let anyone get away!” They seized them, and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there.

2 Kings

• 1.9. Then he sent to Elijah a captain with his company of fifty men. The captain went up to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of a hill, and said to him, “Man of God, the king says, ‘Come down!’ “
• 1.10. Elijah answered the captain, “If I am a man of God, may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men!” Then fire fell from heaven and consumed the captain and his men.
• 1.11. At this the king sent to Elijah another captain with his fifty men. The captain said to him, “Man of God, this is what the king says, ‘Come down at once!’ “
• 1.12 “If I am a man of God,” Elijah replied, “may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men!” Then the fire of God fell from heaven and consumed him and his fifty men.
• 1.13. So the king sent a third captain with his fifty men. This third captain went up and fell on his knees before Elijah. “Man of God,” he begged, “please have respect for my life and the lives of these fifty men, your servants!
• 1.14. See, fire has fallen from heaven and consumed the first two captains and all their men. But now have respect for my life!”
• 1.15. The angel of the LORD said to Elijah, “Go down with him; do not be afraid of him.” So Elijah got up and went down with him to the king.
• 1.16. He told the king, “This is what the LORD says: Is it because there is no God in Israel for you to consult that you have sent messengers to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron? Because you have done this, you will never leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!”
• 1.17. So he died, according to the word of the LORD that Elijah had spoken.
• 10.17. When Jehu came to Samaria, he killed all who were left there of Ahab’s family; he destroyed them, according to the word of the LORD spoken to Elijah.

 So Elijah can be seen as a prophet with a propensity for killing or wishing death for others, with the alleged participation, assistance, or power of his God, who can be described as having a similar propensity. Killing appears to have been something right or fun for Elijah and his God. If you cannot read the Bible with honesty, you are not honest with yourself.

 Elisha

2 Kings

• 2.23. From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. “Go on up, you baldhead!” they said. “Go on up, you baldhead!”
• 2.24. He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.
• 5.26. But Elisha said to him, “Was not my spirit with you when the man got down from his chariot to meet you? Is this the time to take money, or to accept clothes, olive groves, vineyards, flocks, herds, or menservants and maidservants?
• 5.27. Naaman’s leprosy will cling to you and to your descendants forever.” Then Gehazi went from Elisha’s presence and he was leprous, as white as snow.

 But Elisha to his credit had allegedly done some good for humanity; in 2 Kings 4.17-37 we are presented with an image of him performing a miracle by raising a dead boy to life, but whether this story formed the basis for a subsequent miracle allegedly performed by Jesus – the raising of a dead girl back to life [Mark chapter 5, Matthew chapter 9 and Luke chapter 8] is for the reader to decide.

 Samuel [1 Samuel 7.9-11]

• Then Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered it up as a whole burnt offering to the LORD. He cried out to the LORD on Israel’s behalf, and the LORD answered him.
• While Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle. But that day the LORD thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.
• The men of Israel rushed out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, slaughtering them along the way to a point below Beth Car.

 Saul

[1 Samuel 11.11]

• The next day Saul separated his men into three divisions; during the last watch of the night they broke into the camp of the Ammonites and slaughtered them until the heat of the day. Those who survived were scattered, so that no two of them were left together.

[1 Samuel 14.36]

• Saul said, “Let us go down after the Philistines by night and plunder them till dawn, and let us not leave one of them alive.”

 David

[2 Samuel 5.19]

• so David inquired of the LORD, “Shall I go and attack the Philistines? Will you hand them over to me?”       The LORD answered him, “Go, for I will surely hand the Philistines over to you.”

[2 Samuel 5.23]

• so David inquired of the LORD, and he answered, “Do not go straight up, but circle around behind them and attack them in front of the balsam trees.

The passages cited above [2 Samuel 5.19 and 5.23] give impressions [1] of God promising David some form of assistance in overcoming the Philistines and [2] of God giving military instructions to David.

Kind David can be accused of violating two of the so-called Ten Commandments of God [not to commit adultery and not to covet your neighbor’s wife] when he allegedly sent for Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, and had sexual intercourse with her. And King David allegedly contrived the death of Uriah by intentionally putting him on the front battle lines to get him killed, vide 2 Samuel 11.14-15: In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In it he wrote, “Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.” Hence King David can also be accused of further sinning against his God for violating another Commandment not to kill. When we recall the earlier accounts of God “hardening” Pharaoh’s heart [Exodus] and intervening when King Abimelech tried mating with Sarah [Genesis], it seems strange that God with his omniscience did not intervene when King David was manipulating to get Uriah killed or when it was clear that without his pre-emptive whisper-in- the-ear or some such so-called divine intervention, King David would be breaking one or some of his commandments. King David, we are told [2 Samuel 5.13] “took more concubines and wives in Jerusalem, and more sons and daughters were born to him.”

 Can anyone be faulted for calling God an imbecile, for his apparent stupidity for not knowing when or when not to intervene or for acting capriciously? Plausible answer: What can you expect from a moronic, war-mongering god? Free will? Dream on.

 Men created superior to women vide Koran/Bible

 The Koran is emphatic about Allah’s bias in favor of men over women, as exemplified in this excerpt: Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. [sura 4.34, p. 83, The Koran (with parallel Arabic text) by N. J. Dawood (1990)]. Another example of God’s decree concerning male superiority or female inferiority can be found in Leviticus: A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days.. Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding… If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean… Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding [Leviticus 12.2, 4-5]. If it is a person between one month and five years, set the value of a male at five shekels of silver and that of a female at three shekels of silver [Leviticus 27.6]. And in Exodus we can see God laying down the ground rules as to how a man can acquire a girl or woman, say a virgin, as his wife, by simply seducing her [raping?] and paying the bride-price; If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife [Exodus 22.16]. 

In fact, where the Christian Bible is concerned, the role of women is subservient to that of men. And there is of course no question of any woman being eligible to participate in the voting process for a new pope or to contemplate of taking charge of the papacy; voting for a new pope is restricted to Cardinals [below the age of 80 years] and, until the rules are changed, women cannot be validly ordained; the pope, is by definition, the Bishop of Rome. Even for what can be perceived as a non-religious area, the political domain, for instance, women’s suffrage – the right to vote and to run for political office – started in a small way in the 19th century with a few countries granting suffrage to some women on a restrictive basis, for example, for local but not national elections, and it was only during the 20th century that women’s suffrage was granted a status similar to that of men, in most if not all countries.

That God [or Allah] can be characterized as chauvinistic or misogynistic can also be inferred from a reading of some of Paul’s epistles, for example, 1 Corinthians 11.2-9, Ephesians 5.22-24, Colossians 3.18, 1Timothy 2.11-15. Through these passages we can see that Paul, a chauvinist or misogynist like his God, was unequivocally preaching that wives should submit to their husbands or live in “quietness and full submission.” It seems that Paul was confirming his God’s view of female inferiority. A spirit-being believed by Muslims to be neither male nor female is also believed by them to have created men superior to women. Did Muhammad get his cue from reading Old Testament stuff? Muhammad allegedly had 9 or more wives in his lifetime, presumably before the establishment of an Islamic edict limiting the number of wives for any Muslim man to a maximum of 4. The Koran, however, does not allow the same privilege to Muslim women; hence a Muslim woman is limited to one husband at any one time, even though she may have the means to maintain more than one.

The legal age for marriage for Muslim females may vary from country to country, notwithstanding that in Iran the legal age for marriage for a Muslim female is 9 years. Iran is apparently following in the footsteps of Muhammad, who is reported to have married a girl, Aisha, when she was only 9 years’ old, after having allegedly been engaged to her since she was six years of age. Being at the age she was when she was allegedly engaged or married to Muhammad, one could be forgiven for asking whether Aisha herself agreed willingly to the engagement or marriage or whether she was capable of understanding the nature of what she was getting or being led into. The answer, doubtless, can be open to all sorts of subjective interpretation, regardless of any biography that may exist concerning Muhammad’s life or Aisha’s life. Some people can point out that what Muhammad did was guided by the customs or local customs prevalent at the time, present conditions or customs notwithstanding. On the other hand, Muslims are steadfast in their cherished view of the Koran being the revealed word of Allah and therefore should be considered as being applicable for all time, from the time the Koran came into production, regardless of changes, if any, in customs or practices not governed by the Koran.

 It may be safe to say that some modern women may not take kindly to the view of women being inferior to men. Either it is prejudice that has led to this kind of thinking or belief or such thinking or belief has given rise to prejudice against women. In either case such thinking or belief has been proved to be nonsense. And no woman can be faulted for calling God a chauvinistic pig or prick and he all but deserves such denigration if he exists and is precisely none other than the capricious, egotistic, misogynistic, malevolent and genocidal maniac portrayed in the Bible or the Allah of the Koran with the aggressive tendency for sending infidels to the so-called fire of Hell. We cannot deny that vast physical differences exist between a man and a woman, but in the intellectual sphere, differences where exist are deemed slight or insignificant, hence cannot be prejudged.

People who firmly believe in the Koran as a revelation of God may insist that women are inferior to men because the Koran says so, not for any other reasons, not even for the fact that many modern women are not financially dependent on men for their livelihood or maintenance, nor for the fact that many women are superior to many men in more ways than one. Maybe there are exceptions; maybe in our modern age there are Muslim men who do not look upon women as inferior. And maybe Saudi Arabia, a Muslim country governed by Islamic laws, is one of the few exceptions on the flip side. Subject to the caveat that we may not always be up to date with the latest information or situation, it appears that in Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to go out without guardians, unrelated men and women cannot go to restaurants together, they are separated in offices, and women are not permitted to drive. Afghanistan under the Taleban can be seen as another Muslim country with strict “Islamic” restrictions for their womenfolk. To be sure, not all Muslim countries practice the same severe restrictions for Muslim women. Some have taken a far more liberal approach, with Muslim women and men sharing many equal rights or privileges.

 Indisputably, the Islamic claim of men being superior to women is a value judgment, underpinned apparently by a couple of dubious claims: [1] that God made men superior to women, and [2] that men spend their wealth to maintain women. In terms of what we have said so far concerning God and creation, if we are non-theistic we can discount the first supporting claim including the term “God” as non-factual, non-empirical and irrelevant. As for the second, the claim or notion of men spending their wealth to maintain women, we have to admit that it is true that some men are the sole or main breadwinner in a family and that in certain respects they are superior to some women. But that’s only part of the whole story; to be fair we also have to admit that some women are superior to some men in some ways. Personally, I think women sing far better than men and I seem to derive more enjoyment hearing a song being sung by a good female singer than by a good male singer; from my perspective, a woman’s voice sounds more melodious than that of a man. We cannot deny that, generally, men have greater muscle bulk and higher bone mass and are physically stronger. On the other hand, we cannot deny that women, generally, live longer than men, and some have outlived their spouses by five years or longer; and among centenarians women outnumber men nine to one.

 It seems there is a physical difference where the brain is concerned; women on the average have 10 per cent more fibers compared with men and they can switch between the two hemispheres of the brain much faster than the average man. Before cow’s milk emerged as a suitable infant feed, babies were greatly dependent on their mothers’ milk. And the woman, the mother, is usually, but not always, the one who invests more heavily in terms of physical care than the father in taking care of their child or children from birth to a certain age. While women tend to have heart attacks much later than men, they are more susceptible to other health problems like lump in the chest and osteoporosis. Although men are less susceptible to such health problems, they are prone to the problem of prostate enlargement once they are in their sixties or seventies. We can, therefore, say there are differences between men and women, but we are unable to support the Koranic claim of men being superior to women, for several reasons. Any man who cannot do without a woman’s love or cannot live without a woman may think of male superiority as just a myth.

Apart from the wealth aspect, are there other ways in which men were allegedly created superior to women? The Koran does not say. What cannot be refuted is that there are women who are earning more than many of the men and contributing as the sole breadwinner or as a major contributor to family upkeep. And I suppose there are many women who are totally, financially independent. If crime commitment, for example, murder, manslaughter, aggravated assault, rape, robbery, burglary, kidnapping, motor vehicle theft, drug-smuggling, illegal drug consumption, etc can be used as a yardstick for measuring inferiority, and every single crime committed is assigned a point as an act of inferiority, then some men can be said to be hopelessly inferior to many women, or many women can be clearly seen to be superior to some men. Should you have any doubt that men commit more crime than women, just check the crime stats with the police dept.

 What, possibly, can be our conclusion to all this? We can conclude that the Koranic claim of men being superior to women is under present circumstances all hogwash, or history if you like, if you wish to insist that the claim was in respect of an era long gone, when men were setting the rules and women’s role was merely to stay at home as a housewife, to take care of the children and do housework, such as cooking, cleaning and washing etc. But even in those conditions, thoughts of male superiority probably stemmed from male prejudice or chauvinism. It is from a woman’s body that a baby is produced, so who is superior or inferior? If the Koran is not applicable in certain respects to modern times, then should the Koran be updated to reflect the current situation? As we have said, the answer is No; the Koran is believed to be an exact copy of the original stored in Heaven hence it cannot be subject to any human input or editing. Despite being claimed as a collection of divine revelations, the Koran is subject to variant interpretations within the Islamic community, hence can be seen as equivocal rather than univocal. Any religious text that can give rise to variant interpretations can give rise to conflicting interpretations.

 The most beautiful thing in God’s whole creation is the body of a human female

 If we reflect on this claim, made presumably by someone with a profound appreciation for beauty, we can say there’s some truth in it, although it can also be said to be subjective, thus controversial. If you are a non-theist you might promptly say that you know nothing, or something, about God or his “whole creation” and that insofar as you are concerned any assertion of God as Creator is not an assertion of fact but an expression of a religious belief meaningful only to its supporters.  You might, however, agree that the body of some human females is indeed very beautiful but you might qualify that not all human females have a beautiful body. Others may agree with your opinion but whether the body of a human female is the most beautiful thing in the world would require polling the opinion of a large group of people. Even if the majority is in support, it is still a matter of opinion. What if every adult were to agree that the most beautiful thing in the world is the body of a human female? Then it would be correct to say that it is a fact of life that we all agree that the body of a human female is the most beautiful thing in the world. Why do people appear to be more interested in organizing beauty contests for women than say, good-looks contests for men? Plausible answer: A woman’s beauty, rather than the good-looks of a man, generally commands a higher level of attention, admiration or interest from the general public. Hence, should we accept Jesus’ claim of God having the image of a man, vide John 14.9: “…Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father…,” we can by extension say that a beautiful woman may look far more beautiful than the image of God.

 Ms Hauwa Ibrahim and Syariah [or Sharia] law

 Some Muslim countries, for example, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Sudan have adopted Syariah law [considered to be “Islamic” law] as the law of the land. It appears that in March 2002 a Syariah Court in Funtua, Nigeria sentenced a Nigerian woman by the name of Amina Lawal to death by stoning for adultery for conceiving a child out of wedlock. According to Wikipedia [partially excerpted, July, 19, 2007]:

 The father of the child was not prosecuted for lack of evidence. Her conviction was overturned and she has since remarried. Baobab for Women’s Human Rights, an NGO based in Nigeria took up her case, which was argued by Nigerian lawyers trained in both secular and Sharia law. Amina’s lawyers included Hauwa Ibrahim, a prominent human rights lawyer known for her pro bono work for people condemned under Sharia law [End of excerpt].

According to a report [The Straits Times, July 19, 2007, p 1 and 2, article captioned: Taking the road less travelled to fight justice], Ms Ibrahim [a winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize in 2005], was in Singapore to give a talk to staff of Citi Singapore about her work as a human rights lawyer in Nigeria. Apparently, Citi’s Women’s Diversity Council would regularly extend invitations to inspirational and motivational speakers to talk about women’s issues at the workplace. Ms Ibrahim was reported to have said: I don’t know about clashes of civilisation. What I know is that the law has condemned a woman [Amina] to death by stoning. What I can do is to interpret the law to help her. It’s not about religion or color or sex. It’s about our humanity, our dignity – in response to foreign journalists who allegedly asked her if what was happening in her country represented a clash of civilisations.

I beg to differ. I think Ms Ibrahim was talking erroneously when she said: “It’s not about religion or color or sex”. This statement has to be evaluated in the context of the two preceding statements made by her and the background to the case. Amina was initially convicted of having committed a crime under Islamic law and this crime was allegedly the conceiving of a child out of wedlock. Then she was allegedly sentenced by Islamic law to death by stoning. The case allegedly dragged on for a year before the conviction was finally overturned by an Islamic appeals court. I may err here on the side of ignorance, but I have never heard or come across a “non-Islamic” civil law that clearly spells out that conceiving a child out of wedlock is a crime, or any legal system established on non-religious grounds that would prosecute a woman for merely conceiving a child out of wedlock. Therefore, the initial conviction of Amina was a religious issue, about a religion, whether wholly or only partially, and the subsequent overturning of this conviction by an Islamic appeals court was also a religious issue, or about a religion, wholly or partially, notwithstanding it might have been a case of her lawyers arguing convincingly that resulted in the overturning of her conviction. However, as the case involved human beings, it was also, undeniably, a matter of humanity or human dignity.