God Has Left the Building! Part Two.

Now the Bible was written over many, many hundreds of years, by many, many people, many, many decades after the events so described, and of course there was a lot of text left out (missing books of the Bible), and what was included was often hotly debated as to whether it should be included [i.e. – ‘Revelation’]. Talk about a dog’s breakfast! The Bible is really a hodgepodge of rather tall tales. It’s an anthology of short stories, with way less than ideal consistency between them; stories that often are in conflict – that is, down right contradictory. The Biblical texts are hardly something that if deemed to be the absolute true word of God, that the real God (assuming a real God) would be pleased with and proud of. God did a very poor job in proof-reading His Word!

If you think the Income Tax Act is an unholy mess, that’s nothing, nothing compared to the Bible. At least the Income Tax Act hasn’t been endlessly translated from one language to another language to yet a third, fourth and fifth language (with no loss in meaning) and modernised (several times over) and interpreted 1000 different ways by 1000 different taxation scholars. If the Bible really is the word of a supernatural God, it should be absolutely clear cut, no wriggle room; no correspondence need be entered into. 1000 Biblical scholars will agree 100% of the time on the meaning to 100% of the Biblical passages. That’s clearly not the current status quo. Quite apart from everything else, the Bible tells such tall tales that make science fiction writers seem downright unimaginative. Raise hands all of you who believe that you can be turned into a pillar of salt, that the Red Sea (or Reed Sea – scholars differ) actually parted, or that you can survive inside the belly of a fish! And that’s just three of the tall tales you’re expected to swallow hook, line and sinker.

Hands up? Didn’t think so! But if you question any one part of Biblical reality and interpret any part as being Biblical nonsense and pseudo-science at its worst, then you’ve got to logically question all of it. Nothing is sacred; nothing is unquestionable.

Speaking of the Bible, history, as has often been pointed out, is written by the winners. That there are “two sides to every story” is another quaint saying. Unfortunately, there are lots of Biblical tales told from the winner’s point of view; the losing side of the story isn’t heard. If you could take all of the so-called villains of the Bible (Adam & Eve; Judas; Satan) and put them on trial and into the witness box, what would their version of events; their side of the story, be? I mean we need Satan’s version of events to balance the books; ditto for all the others who have been vilified by God and company. That’s fair. But who ever said that God was fair hasn’t done his homework.

Eden: The Real Story: Just to show I can be as inventive as the authors of the Bible, well Eden was ‘God’s’ retreat or summer home away from His duties as commander of Starship Heaven or perhaps the proprietor of this ancient camp grounds / park / reserve. ‘God’ was willing to share paradise with lesser beings – i.e. humans, but guests were instructed not to touch – keep to the pathways and trails and established grounds! When one vacationing couple (guess who) didn’t and vandalised one of the endangered botanical species, they got their marching orders and no further humans were ever invited again to vacation in Paradise Eden.

By the way, given our so-called ‘loving’ God’s Biblical track record for throwing temper tantrums, such as against Adam and Eve in Eden, would you really want God to lovingly embrace you? I mean you might be better off embracing Jack-the-Ripper!

Premise Three: God has left the building. The basis for suggesting this is that even if you take the evidence for God’s existence as revealed in the Bible at face value – burning bushes, pillars of salt, universal floods, etc. There has been nothing one can hang one’s hat on for the past several thousand years in the way of evidence for God. No interviews, no photographs, no new Commandments, no verified miracles that God and only a God could preform, total and apparent wilful ignoring of the pope’s prayers for all the sorts of things popes go on and on about (like praying for world peace – a futile gesture if ever there was one), etc. Now, if God were really not God, but ‘God’, an extraterrestrial, well Starship Heaven and crew might have left the building (Planet Earth) eons ago and sought greener pastures. I mean his Old Testament temper tantrums got him nowhere; we still take his name in vain and curse him “God damn it”; his Ten Commandments are often ignored by the great unwashed; J.C. seems to get more press coverage and P.R. [1]; God has lots of competition from other deities, as well as other goods and services that rival his. I mean God can no more compete with prime time reality television and rap music and cell phones and iPods and the Internet’s MySpace and Facebook, than J.C. can compete with consumerism and commercialism on the 25th of December [2]! No, I think ‘God’ (the extraterrestrial since I don’t believe the supernatural God exists) has voluntarily give humanity the ‘big finger’ and taken his bat and ball and gone home to sulk. Or perhaps ‘God’ has been involuntarily exiled. I mean if ‘God’ exists, then perhaps the ‘gods’ must also exist, and because there are many, many ‘gods’, well I mean even the schoolyard bully can be send packing with tail tucked between legs if enough of the bullied gang up and fight back. There’s no love lost between God and the gods since God ascended the Top Dog throne and Commanded that the gods be considered persona non-grata.

[1] Well after all God is indeed a jealous God by His own admission via the Ten Commandments so it stands to reason that He’d be miffed that His son has stolen His limelight. However, God laughs last and best because obviously J.C. didn’t get to follow Dad home since he of course met his waterloo nearly 20 centuries ago. Actually our extraterrestrial God wasn’t totally without compassion for His executed son (the straw that broke the camel’s back?), so before departing He no doubt ‘beamed’ J.C.’s body aboard His Starship Heaven, and in so doing explain the resurrection and the empty tomb!

[2] Christmas is celebrated under totally false pretences, if one celebrates the birth of J.C. that is. The ultimate origins of Christmas have to do with a rebirth, not a birth. Christmas evolved from a winter festival that celebrated the rebirth of the Sun – the return of ever lengthening hours of daylight and the heralding of the return of spring, warmer weather and the growing season. Nobody has a clue when J.C. was born or even for that matter whether or not J.C. even existed in the first place. Christianity just thought it in their interests to hijack a pagan festival (can’t have pagan festivals) and replace it with something more religiously (as in Christian religiously) warm and fuzzy, not that lengthening daylight wasn’t something warm and fuzzy to the pagans.