Debunking the Bible, the entire basis of belief, disproves God’s existence. The absurdity of belief can also be demonstrated from a number of other angles. I’m referring to the spatial, numerical, and temporal contexts.
Ancient Palestine, the place where Yahweh was probably born, was only a smallish spot on the earth’s surface, an area roughly the size of Wales. The earth itself is only a tiny dot in an immense, in fact infinite, universe. When we gaze into the night sky, some of the stars are ten billion light years out, whereas God’s birthplace is not a blink of an eye away. The enormity of the difference in distance is almost incomprehensible.
The population of Palestine in King David’s day, c. 1000 BCE, was not more than a hundred thousand. There were fifty million people in the world. So only about 0.2 percent of people had even heard of Yahweh, and most of them thought of him as just one of many gods. There were hundreds of other gods, yet we rarely hear of them today. Yahweh and Jesus are not one iota more real than all these already expired others.
“Yahweh” was invented about three thousand years ago, which is a one and a half millionth of the time our earth has been in existence (4 ½ billion years.)
To claim that this paltry band of primitive people who have only recently appeared on a tiny part of our puny earth, is responsible for explaining the existence of everything in the entire cosmos defies credibility. Anyone who imagines this has an arrogant, inflated opinion of humanity’s importance in the universe. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_LA47fuWc8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXEiKPxCSdA http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=e8P1Y1a7-L4 – ! ).
The concept of god, a supreme being who’s in control, has been around since people started wanting their questions answered. Where does rain come from? Sometimes it doesn’t rain for weeks, why? Man didn’t have the scientific skills, equipment, or knowledge to answer the question, but needed to know. The rain god. Rain meant water for drinking and that plants would grow. When there was no rain, man tried to appease the god. He prayed, sang, beat drums, danced, and even made sacrifices. When the rain came, god had answered his pleas.
God made sense…to people who didn’t know any better. Replace rain with nearly anything. When the answer was unknown, ancient man created a god to fill the gap.
We don’t need the rain god now because we have science; the knowledge of how weather systems work.
We shouldn’t feign an understanding of the universe by believing in God. Faith, which ignores reason, is a travesty against our intellects. It’s anxiety about the unknown masquerading as certainty. To admit that there’s no god is to face up to facts. We don’t have answers to all of life’s questions, and that’s fine, because it’s the truth. As the decades go by, we’ll know more.
Religion is the product of puzzled people trying to comprehend things they didn’t understand. If humankind had been left to itself, as people learnt more about the world, religious thinking would have disappeared; replaced, first by common sense or intuitive explanations, then by reasoned and ultimately scientific explanations. Unfortunately, humanity wasn’t left to follow this natural development. Certain groups of people saw a business opportunity in the puzzlement. They set out to keep others – at least the unsophisticated others – puzzled. They called themselves priests or rabbis or Imams, and they invented gods so that they could control people’s lives. They’re still with us today doing the same thing, and many modern people still let them.
Some Christians don’t even care that there’s no evidence for their belief; they decide to believe because they want something to dream about. For Christians, a heavenly afterlife appears comforting. It means there’s something to look forward to, an improvement on the injustices, work, worries and ordinariness of life. Faith is like buying a ticket in a lottery; it gives you the belief that things must get better because you’ve struggled damned hard and you deserve a lucky break. Yet there’s no evidence anyone ever wins heaven.
I think they’re doing themselves a disservice. The promise of paradise can rob people of the pleasure of living in the present, and that’s a pity. There’s a better way to find meaning that doesn’t require belief in half-baked mumbo-jumbo. Who remembers what it was like to be a young child? Picture yourself running around a playground. We didn’t waste time worrying about God, the afterlife or why we are here. We were too busy exploring every nook and cranny of our world. We were unhindered by our experiences, expressed ourselves openly, and weren’t afraid of being judged. We accepted life with wide-open arms, didn’t deny our emotions, and weren’t cynical or opinionated. We were authentic, lived in the present, and were thoroughly happy as a result.
I contend Christians should embrace the here and now. When we do that, the present has more meaning: the taste of food, a glass of good wine, a friend’s smile, a string quartet or a Miles Davis ballad can be enjoyed for what they are and because they’re temporary. To experience the pleasure of the present, and stop worrying about consequences, can be like coming out of a trance. It’s about being receptive to the full gamut of the human experience, and that helps us feel more alive.
I think the promise of paradise produces performance anxiety, which robs people of the pleasure of living in the present. Life should be all about the journey, the here and now, not an imaginary destination, which is why we don’t need gods, beliefs, and creeds; we need to let them go!
When it turns out there’s no god and no afterlife, it won’t matter, because we’ll be dead! We were “dead” for billions of years before we were born, and it didn’t bother any of us in the slightest.
There’s nothing supernatural after death. Heaven is here and now, and is what we create on earth through love. Hell is also here; it’s what happens if we hate our fellow man.
In the modern world, “people” should replace “God.” “God” is the human race. Love of “God” should be a love of everyone in our global society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEVntZ8a-xk&feature=related).
References:
Dalai Lama., Cutler, H.1998 “The Art Of Happiness” . Hodder and Stoughton. London
Dawkins, R. 2006 “The God Delusion” London Transworld Publishers.
Winell, MarlenePh.D. “LEAVING THE FOLD: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion, ©1994, 2006
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwG9pDNSAXA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Oh947g4zvg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlxpQlNLKeM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngM-hZGYKgE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWKDOikIgIs&feature=fvst
One of the arguments used for god(s) is the “fine tuning” of the universe argument. The fact that we are here, in some way proves the universe was “fine tuned” for life. The argument goes like this :
“if the strength of the particle masses, or the strength of the Weak Nuclear Force (in Physics) were any different, and I mean ANY different), we would not be here, and thus it leads one to think the whole thing was “designed” for (our form of) life”.
(They forgot to mention universes without life disproves god, according to this line of BS). If every star in the universe has a habitable planet circling it, then one billionth of on billionth of one millionth of one percent of the universe is habitable. Oops. Black holes are estimated to exist for 10^100 years. Most stars in this universe will be dead before 10^14 years. The life span of stars, divided by the lifespans of super-massive black holes is zero, (to 80 some decimal places). Thank you Jesus for “fine tuning” the universe for us.
Yes, sort of puts things into perspective, thanks for sharing, Mark