The Invisible God

By Nicholas Holan

Billions of people around the world identify themselves as Christians. The Bible is accepted as the foundation for that belief. I examine the events that are purported to have happened in the first book of the holy text, Genesis, to determine if they are compatible with our knowledge of how the universe operates and to see what God truly considers important.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483531113

Book preview

book.

Imagine

Most of you reading this aren’t much different from me. You go to work throughout the week and enjoy the time you have off with family and friends. Life is a routine that seldom changes. I imagine that most of you are decent people. So, ask yourself a few questions.

If you are a parent, can you imagine slaughtering your own child? Well, you may not have kids. Can you imagine your mother or father attempting to murder you? Would you kill a man if he pulled out during sex to avoid an unwanted pregnancy? Would you kill children?

I hope you answered no to all of those questions. And if you did, there is a simple reason for that. Most of us on the planet aren’t psychopaths and murderers. However, it’s horrors like that which are part of what many claim to be a divinely inspired documentation of human history. They are part of a story about a loving god whose mission is to guide us all towards spiritual salvation.

While I understand that the material presented in the Old Testament is much different from the New Testament, it is accepted as the foundation for the entire religion. Whether you believe or not, is the Bible really something a normal, sane person should believe?

Who wants to believe that God ordered someone to murder his own son? Who wants to believe that God killed a man for pulling out during sex? Who wants to believe that God orders the murder of countless men, women, and children? Who really wants to believe that is true?

It’s obvious that many people do believe it. Many individuals just accept it. But doesn’t that alarm anybody? Doesn’t anyone stop and wonder how or why it is even possible that a small child could deserve to die? Doesn’t anybody find it horrifying that a man would actually try to murder his own son? If you believe in the story of Christ, it must not be too hard to believe that God would ask a man to murder his son seeing as God himself murders his only son.

People are horrified when they hear of maniacs shooting children at elementary schools. We are horrified when we hear of a mother drowning all of her small children. Death is a terrible thing for all of us. So, how can so many people who feel this way simultaneously brush off or even try to justify the atrocities in the Bible?

My goal is not, though inevitable, to arouse negative emotions. It is to arouse another part of the brain-the logical part. Nobody sees men with magic staves parting seas these days. God doesn’t come down to wrestle with anyone. Angels don’t come to our homes for dinner and foot baths. We don’t experience these things today in a world where the ability to record information is far better than it has ever been in the history of our species.

Why don’t we hear more stories about heavenly beings coming down to sleep with human women? The reason that we don’t hear of these things is because they don’t happen. They have never happened. When someone drops something-let’s say an apple-it falls to the Earth. To claim that conditions were somehow different a few thousand years ago is as absurd as claiming that apples once fell to outer space.

So, read my thoughts on Genesis, the first book of the Bible, and ask yourself if the things I talk about meld well with your perception of reality. Decide for yourself if this is what you think a good, morally just being would do. Imagine you are God for a moment and tell me if this is what you would consider to be the most important knowledge in the universe.

Genesis

From the beginning, the Bible makes no sense. The first verse of the Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth. The following verse then says that the earth was formless. You cannot create something and it not have a form. Unless you're God I guess. It still doesn't make sense to my feeble human brain. Next, the Spirit of God is floating over the water. What is the Spirit of God exactly? For some reason, most people don't seem to ever ask these questions. Why? Can anyone give me a physical description of the spirit of God?

God says Let there be light and there was. If God can do anything, why bother saying that? Especially if nobody is around to hear it? Why not will it into existence? Then it says that God separated the light from the darkness which makes absolutely no sense at all. Darkness is the absence of light (or light is the absence of darkness if you're of a different and strange mindset). Google Darkness Sucker Theory to read about some truly crazy individuals. They fall right in line with the flat earth society.

Okay. Some of you may say that I am taking it too literally but, isn't that the point? If this is truly the word of God, we have to take it for what it is. Forgive me for only using one version of God's word out of about a hundred. Why are there multiple versions anyway?

Continuing on, God creates an expanse that separates the waters above and below the expanse? He calls this expanse heaven. God then speaks to the inanimate earth and says Let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear.

I still don't understand the point of saying anything. God calls land Earth and the water Seas. Got it. And he sees that it is good. Okay. What if it was evil? What does he mean he saw that it was good? He liked it? He was pleased with his work?

And God said Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seeds, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth. Poof! The earth obeys (because God can speak to the earth). And all the plants and fruit trees appeared...really? That's an acceptable explanation for the origin of fruit and plants?

And God made the two great lights--the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night--and the stars. Okay. Here we are dealing with the creation of the stars, the sun-which is a star-and the moon. Why doesn’t he call the sun a star? If this is the true word of our creator, he'd have known that the sun was a star, right? Oh. Unless of course this book was written by men who had little knowledge in comparison to today about astronomy. I see. Now it makes sense that the sun isn't called a star.

Hey! Wait a minute. What the hell was morning and evening? Day and night are a result of the Earth rotating on its axis. The sun only appears to rise and fall during the day. The start and end of which is morning and evening. How did God have these if he hadn't made the sun yet? Am I overthinking this?

It says God made the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. The moon doesn't emit light though. We now know that light from the sun reflects off the surface of the moon. Oh. I see. God appears to not understand his own creation once again. The more and more I read the Bible, the more and more God starts to sound like an ignorant man trying to explain the origin of the universe.

God next says the waters need to create life to live in them and birds to appear and start flying. And he blesses them by telling them to have a lot of sex. I guess lots of sex is a blessing compared to just creating everything all at once. And that is day five. God is really milking this creation thing. Why didn’t he just create everything all at once?

Next, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds--livestock and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds. Is this serious? Creeping things? This sounds like something an 8 year old wrote.

There is a lot more variety to life on this planet. Why aren't these other creatures mentioned? What about viruses? Why even bother creating those? Oh? Really? Bronze Age men and women didn't know that such things existed? Is that why they didn't appear in the Bible? And livestock? So, God creates the food sources important to people living over 2000 years ago in the Middle East? God again sees his creation is good. Right. Whatever that is supposed to mean.

Then God says something I find interesting. He says Let US make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

Who are these other characters God speaks of? Maybe he is referring to angels. Notice that God gives man dominion over all the animals that humans can raise, catch, grow, and eat but not the beasts. You know...the things that eat humans.

Anyway, God tells the couple he creates to have lots of sex and to conquer the planet. He says he made crops and fruit for them to eat. And he made it for the animals, too. Behold! Everything he made was now very good!

God is worn out from all of that effortless creation so he decides to rest and take a break. He makes the seventh day holy because it is the day he decided to rest. God has quite the ego apparently. Then it says no plants have grown yet even though God had them sprout across the earth only a few verses ago.

I guess that didn't really happen because he didn't tell the earth to rain and nobody was there to tend the fields...even though he created humans already. Then it talks about a mist going up from the land and watering the face of the ground. Is this mist supposed to be rain clouds? I'm not sure.

God then creates man a second time. This time, he does it with dust of the ground or dirt as most people call it. He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man was a living creature. This story sounds very similar to Pinocchio. He then plants a garden in Eden.

So, God does have a physical form? Oh wait! He planted it in the east. That's important. I guess. Right? Why is that included? I want details but not meaningless details. East could mean anywhere. Most importantly, east of what? What aren't you telling me God!? What is west of Eden!?

Then he makes trees pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil are amongst them. I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Most would say it's a metaphor. But why is God giving man his word in the form of metaphors and riddles? Why not be clearer about it? Also, what exactly is a tree of the knowledge of good and evil? What does such a tree look like?

It goes on to describe four rivers and their geographic association with Eden. God places the most recent man he created in the garden and says he can eat whatever he wants except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He tells the man he will die if he eats it.

Why did God put the tree there in the first place? Behold! I made this universe for you! Especially this beautiful garden! Eat anything you want! Except for that tree. I poisoned it.

God, not wanting his new pet to be lonely, recreates all of the animals and brings them to the man to keep him company and to see what he will call them. Suddenly, it starts referring to the man as Adam. I don't know where they got that name from but okay! His name is Adam now.

Adam names every animal on the planet...except the creatures we're still discovering today. Maybe Adam named them and they disappeared into the depths of the oceans and forests, waiting for mankind to rediscover them and give them new names. Or this story is exactly that; a story. Occam's razor people. Think about it.

Adam was still lonely so God knocks him out, cuts him open, takes his rib, makes a woman, and seals the wound with flesh. What else would he have used? Why did he knock him out? Doesn't anybody think it's weird that God drugs his creation so he can steal a rib? Couldn't God have just made a woman without the surgery? He made everything else without it. According to Chapter 1, God already did make a man and a woman. If this is not them, who were those other people?

Anyway, Adam is satisfied with the female and decides to call her woman because she was created from man. I guess that makes sense. I thought Adam was unconscious though. How did he know she was made from him? Did Adam have his suspicions about God and so decided to regularly count his ribs? Oh! My rib is missing! Damn! And a woman is standing in front of me now? God obviously must have made her from my missing rib!

Immediately afterwards, we get