The Bible Delusion: 101 'Hang On A Minute' Moments; And God's Mysterious Ways

By Jim Whitefield

“The Bible Delusion: 101 ‘Hang on a Minute’ Moments; and God’s Mysterious Ways” comprises an easy to read summary of 101 examples of absurdity in the King James Version of the Bible, dismantling everything from the Genesis creation myth to the coherency of The Gospels. More aspects are categorised into groups that are anything but ‘godlike’ in their nature. The Bible is full of bizarre rules, regulations and instructions – on animal sacrifice, war, including genocide and ethnic cleansing, misogyny, slavery, and much more – straight from God. There are numerous contradictions, anomalies, anachronisms and oddities, many of which are explored and explained in this comprehensive work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781326752958

Book preview

The Bible Delusion: 101 'Hang On A Minute' Moments; And God's Mysterious Ways

THE BIBLE DELUSION: 101 ‘Hang On A minute’ Moments; And God’s Mysterious Ways

Jim Whitefield

First published in May 2016 by

Lulu Press Inc. Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.

First Edition 2016

First ePub edition August 2016

Copyright © Jim Whitefield 2016

ISBN: 978-1-326-75295-8

Lulu ID: 19156232

British Library Catalogue Reference: 9781326659097

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without the prior permission of the author.

One download version may be stored on a computer or suitable reader for the sole use of the purchaser. All other restrictions apply.

Also by this author

The Mormon Delusion. Volume 1.

The Truth Behind Polygamy And Secret Polyandry

Published February 2009

The Mormon Delusion. Volume 2.

The Secret Truth Withheld From 13 Million Mormons

Published May 2009

The Mormon Delusion. Volume 3.

Discarded Doctrines and Nonsense Revelations

Published July 2009

The Mormon Delusion. Volume 4.

The Mormon Missionary Lessons – A Conspiracy to Deceive

Published January 2011

The Mormon Delusion. Volume 5.

Doctrine and Covenants – Deception and Concoctions

Published February 2012

The First Vision

The Joseph Smith Story (Booklet)

Published August 2011

I spent 43 years believing in a false religion.

Now I want my 43 years as an atheist.

God owes me that.

Jim Whitefield

Dedication

To those who are brave enough to question their faith;

study the evidence and reach their own conclusions based on facts.

There are over 3,000 different religions on this planet.

One of them is Christianity, with over 41,000 different sects.

Either God is content with total confusion and vicious contention,

or he does not exist and humans have created him in their own image.

There is no reason for a God not to reveal the real truth to everyone.

The stage ‘religion’ has arrived at confirms it a cruel deception.

Ergo, God’s reality is highly suspect on that score alone.

To date there is no evidence for the existence of God.

It is time to replace unfounded faith with facts;

with common sense, reason – and science.

Jim Whitefield.

"My own view on religion is that of Lucretius.

I regard it as a disease born of fear

and a source of untold misery to the human race."

Bertrand Russell.

The Secular Creed

1. Reason, not Superstition.

2. Ethics, not Dogma.

3. Respect, not Worship.

4. Courage, not Fear.

5. Fact, not Myth.

6. Morality, not Religion.

7. Clarity, not Delusion.

8. Good, not God.

9. Skeptic, not Cynic.

10. Rationality, not Ideology.

de lu' sion: A fixed, false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact.

"Faith is belief without and against evidence and reason;

Coincidentally, that’s also the definition of delusion."

Richard Dawkins.

Faith: the ability to convince yourself that fiction is fact.

Jim Whitefield.

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity."

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason.

Isn’t it a remarkable coincidence almost everyone has the same religion as their parents? And it always happens to be the right religion. Religions run in families. If we’d been brought up in ancient Greece, we would all still be worshipping Zeus and Apollo. If we had been born Vikings, we would be worshipping Wotan and Thor. How does this come about? Through childhood indoctrination.

Richard Dawkins.

Evolution is one of the most powerful and important ideas ever developed in the history of science. Every question it raises leads to new answers, new discoveries, and new smarter questions. The science of evolution is as expansive as nature itself. It is also the most meaningful creation story that humans have ever found.

Bill Nye.

God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that is getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Acknowledgements

My grateful thanks go to my good friends John Bleazard and Jean Bodie, for their continued enthusiastic support and encouragement. Their proof reading and editing skills have helped provide what I hope is a fairly clean manuscript.      

I am also very grateful to authors David G. McAfee, Bill Lauritzen, David Fitzgerald and Brian Baker for reading a draft copy and kindly providing jacket reviews. Such endorsements from fellow authors, whose work I admire, have meant a great deal to me.

This work is entirely my own and I accept full and sole responsibility for any errors or incorrect statements. Unlike my earlier work, this book was never intended to be academic as such, but rather, just a book of observations made by someone reading through the Bible to see what they made of it in the cold light of day, using only common sense and reason, plus a little science; with no preconceived bias connected to faith or belief in anything.

I knew I was on track with how I had hoped to present my analysis of the Bible when John Bleazard started proof reading and immediately commented:

By the way, your writing seems more fluid.  The sarcasm and irony are totally your style and make it humorous and fun to read.  It will, of course, offend and detract for anyone who tries to read it expecting it to be completely unbiased and academic.  It works for me though.

This work is indeed neither academic nor unbiased. It is analytical, logical, questioning, and presented as the result of a project embarked upon to find out what God and his book are really all about. In the final analysis – as it turns out, Richard Dawkins was spot on and God is a complete and utter disaster – as is his book.        There is nothing in it that has any real merit and most is provably complete fiction, created by Hebrews to enhance the perception of their tribes. The rest is full of questionable and contradictory material, written by no one knows who, using decades to centuries old hearsay; it is not worth giving it the time of day.

The sad thing is that billions of people, Jews, Christians and Muslims, over thousands of years, have embraced it as true. Most of them have never actually read it objectively, in the cold light of day, taking into account all the science we now know and understand – which contradicts many teachings, supposedly coming straight from God. If there is a God, he is not very good at religion.

There are no excuses.

Praise for ‘The Bible Delusion’ from other authors.

The following reviews appear on paperback and hardcover jackets.

Years ago I ran across a book called The Positive Bible, a collection of just the uplifting and inspiring verses from the bible. My first thought was Wow, there’s a lot fewer pages here than in my bible… My second thought was, I wonder what The Negative Bible would look like? Now I know; it would look like Jim Whitefield’s remarkable take-no-prisoners tome, The Bible Delusion. Limiting himself to just 101 of the most epic Bible fails, he employs a battery of Hang on a Minute Moments like a laser beam to dissect the problems and problematic thinking behind the Bible. Whitefield wields logic and science the way sushi chefs use razor-sharp cleavers to cut through the bible’s blubber and serve up the choice cuts of the truth. Enjoy!       

– David Fitzgerald. Author of ‘Nailed’ and ‘The Complete Heretic's Guide to Western Religion’ series.

A commonsense and rational analysis of the Bible that can be a breath of fresh air for people indoctrinated by religion.      

– Bill Lauritzen, author of ‘The Invention of God. The Invention of God: The Natural Origins of Mythology and Religion.’

Jim Whitefield’s The Bible Delusion is a hell of an interesting read, regardless of where you stand on the nature and divinity of the Bible. In the book, Whitefield outlines a series of hang on a minute moments from the most popular religion’s holy book, dismantling everything from the Genesis creation myth to the coherency of The Gospels. The best part of The Bible Delusion for me is the perspective of the author, who has previously written books debunking false claims about the Book of Mormon and Mormonism in general.      

In this work, Whitefield expands into new territories and lends his unique insights and analytical skills to an important cause: demonstrating falsehoods within ancient Christian texts that the vast majority of people still take seriously. He takes on a task that others have attempted, but in a unique and thorough way that I think makes this book valuable for anyone with an interest in the Bible.      

– David G. McAfee. Author of ‘Mom, Dad, I'm an Atheist: The Guide to Coming Out as a Non-believer’; ‘Disproving Christianity and Other Secular Writings’; and co-author of ‘The Belief Book.’

Following an excellent series of books titled ‘The Mormon Delusion’ author Jim Whitefield, an Ex-Mormon, has now examined and questioned the validity of the Bible.

‘The Bible Delusion’ is an in-depth commentary and examination of the contents of the Bible. From the Genesis creation story through the Old Testament’s major events and then the New Testament, the text explores and investigates the books and verses on almost every major biblical subject. These include God’s commandments and punishments, misogyny, miracles, slavery, talking animals, scientific nonsense, Satan, murder, genocide, Jesus and the second coming, to name a few.

I recommend this book as a useful and informative source for everyone who questions the credibility of the content of the Bible and their faith.      

– Brian Baker, author of ’Nonsense from the Bible’ and ‘From Faith to Reason.'

Preface

This work is the result of a project on which I never intended to embark. There is a ‘Bible Delusion’ article that I wrote a few years ago, available via my web site www.themormondelusion.com At the time, I considered that other authors, who have a far better knowledge of the Bible than I do, had already written many excellent books on the subject. Those notes were all I intended to write (mainly for ex-Mormons). I have not referred to much of that article in writing this book as this is not about Mormonism; this work is based on a perusal of the Bible, using cold light of day common sense and reason plus just a little scientific knowledge; specifically excluding any prior held faith in (completely inadequate) explanations provided by my earlier religious leaders.

There are only a few references to the work of other authors so they appear in the text. There is therefore no bibliography or need for an index, beyond the extended contents pages. The Bible is the source of most things covered; any scientific comments or other notes can easily be Googled.

Either God or his claimed prophets are supposedly speaking; and that is all that is considered. Naturally, ‘believers’ will shout long and loud about things being taken out of context or that I am being selective, or even that I need ‘the spirit’ in order to even understand such things. However, I have yet to meet a minister or believer who does not cherry-pick Bible verses whilst completely ignoring the ‘uncomfortable’ passages. Such protestations are merely attempted excuses to cover up the fact that God and his Bible are anything but worthy of serous consideration. The Bible is obligated to stand up and be counted on its own merits – and it will quickly be discovered that it doesn’t have any. Much of the Bible is actually very, very boring indeed – and not at all ‘believable’.

I kept making private notes from time to time and as I read other books on the Bible, I began to realise that as I am naturally analytical, perhaps I did have something to add after all. Several writers have already claimed that the easiest way to become an atheist is to read the Bible, and had I not read it previously, that would most certainly have proven to be the case for me this time around. 

It became clear that the reason many people accept and believe the Bible without question – and often without ever actually reading very much (if any) of it – is that they have been taught to, by parents and ministers who quote supposedly ‘meaningful’ scriptures in support of their God and his ways.

What those parents and ministers fail to do, is explain the really awkward passages that defy all logic and reason; not to mention disgusting passages that children should never read or hear, such as Ezekiel 23:20-21, phrased in the Common English Bible as: She lusted after their male consorts, whose sexual organs were like those of donkeys, and whose ejaculation was like that of horses. She relived the wicked days of her youth, when the Egyptians touched and fondled her young and nubile breasts. There is more unnecessarily explicit text in the Bible you will not usually hear from the pulpit or as bedtime stories.

I had read, in fact thoroughly studied, the Bible previously, over several decades, but with a mind then attuned to very specific teachings of one minor religion which turned out to be a complete hoax, hence my series of books exposing the truth about it. My earlier work is written to academic standards and fully ‘Harvard System’ referenced. This work is just a summary of simple observations anyone could and should discover and question; as, if he exists, God has a great deal to answer for. He is not the character that Christianity, or any other religion, maintains he is. He is not at all loving, kind or caring.

When I first read Richard Dawkins’ vivid description of the God of the Old Testament, even though I had already accepted I was an atheist, I have to admit that I took a sharp intake of breath as I was quite taken aback.

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. (The God Delusion. p.31).

But, once I got over the initial shock, as I reread his above words, knowing the Old Testament quite well, I recognised that Dawkins’ description of God’s character was actually very accurately depicted. It was just that I had never previously read the Bible without a predetermined religious bias. Considered in the cold light of day, this God and his book are a complete and utter disaster.

I had left my religion, not because of any particular doctrinal disagreement but because I had to come to terms with the unwanted conclusion that I was in fact an atheist, thus it couldn’t be true. I had no idea why; I simply resigned out of integrity. Three years later, and quite accidentally, I finally discovered why my old religion was not true. Despite the fact that I was no longer a Mormon, the discoveries still devastated me. I didn’t want there to be such evidence.

Writing became my full time therapy for the next six years. I concluded my work in 2012 and subsequently tried to settle into the rest of my retirement years, but I occasionally dabbled with my thoughts on the Bible. I didn’t feel I needed to write anything else, but often wondered if I could usefully provide some thoughts on why the Bible is no basis for anything of merit or worth.

It soon became clear, as I started rereading the Bible, that it is full of utter nonsense that we don’t see through unless we pull the cap of faith off our heads and use common sense and reason to determine any real value in it. One day, and I think this is what finally spurred me into action, I was deliberating on a statement in Genesis 3:19 where God tells Adam In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground… and I literally thought hang on a minute – what would Adam have known about bread, let alone baking it?

Humans didn’t tame fire for a very long time and cereal crops we grow and use now, were first cultivated from wild grasses (by humans rather than God), in the ‘fertile crescent’ long after humans first evolved. Something was wrong.

Clearly, the Hebrews making up this nonsense just a few centuries BCE, being familiar with their own ability to create fire and make bread, had God tell Adam that because of his disobedience, he would have to make his own bread, rather than have everything handed to him on a plate, so to speak. I thought; you could not get something more wrong than that. Yet I discovered that in fact you really can – and the Bible is replete with many similar ‘hang on a minute’ moments – hence this volume. You will find comments about Adam and bread in Chapter 2. To my knowledge, no one has written an analytical summary of interesting and easily missed quotes in quite this way previously, so I hope it will be an entertaining as well as thought provoking read to supplement other more academic works.

It would be impossible to cover absolutely everything in just one volume, so this is limited to one hundred and one of the most ludicrous claims – plus an analysis of some contradictions and anomalies; God’s extremely mysterious, sometimes bizarre, often grotesque and downright disgusting ways; misogyny, genocide, slavery, and more; which no human being should ever entertain or emulate. Unfortunately, many did – and some still do. The world is not, never has been, and I fear, never will be, a better place because of gods and religion.

It is unfortunate that the Bible is the basis of excuse for all the Abrahamic religions; Judaism, Christianity and Islam – the three religions that have been, generally in that sequence (and some still are), very likely responsible for more death and destruction, cruelty and abominations than any other factor ever seen on this planet. If gods and religions had not been invented; if science had prevailed thousands of years earlier than it was permitted to; the world would be a much better and far more advanced place than it now is.

However, in our modern and much more enlightened world of science and reason, more and more people are ‘seeing the light’, so to speak, and throwing off the shackles of superstition, finally rejecting residual myths and legends of the past; so there is still hope – there is always hope. My hope is that this book will help people realise the folly of blind faith and belief in gods and religion.

I have tried to create an easy to read summary of some examples from the King James Version (KJV) Bible that are either too absurd to give the time of day to (hang on a minute moments, or ‘HOAM’s), or that can be categorised into groups that are anything but ‘godlike’ in their nature. The Bible is full of bizarre rules, regulations and instructions – on animal sacrifice, war, including genocide and ethnic cleansing, misogyny, slavery, and much more.

It is also full of contradictions and the most terrible practices imaginable. People are supposed to believe it to be true and valid, whilst not behaving the way God instructs Israel to in his book. That apparently was for ‘olden times’ when they needed a more severe set of rules. Really? If that idea crosses your mind – Think! It may be a new experience.

I do not comment much on areas that do not directly involve God, such as Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon etc., written ‘about’ God, or poetic, constructed by humans with no claimed input from God. They praise a God that doesn’t remotely resemble the character we have experienced up to that point. Mention Psalms, and naturally people will immediately remember the twenty-third for its poetic quality – but it could also be considered the best of a bad bunch, as many of them are not very good, or memorable, at all. Books ‘about’ God, poetry, songs, love, etc., give way to those involving God; those which include his claimed interaction with humans; likewise, New Testament books that do not claim to include anything God or Jesus actually said or did.

Those who think there is at least some merit to the Bible, in such aspects as the Ten Commandments, or perhaps the Beatitudes, for example, are actually sadly mistaken. We will look at all those in due course. A little thought reveals they are not really very useful or worthwhile at all when compared with better and more thoughtful ideas on morality – which really has nothing at all to do with religion. As with marriage, which was not ‘ordained of God’ at all and existed long before Christianity was invented, morality is not the brainchild of religion either; moral codes long predate religion which hijacked ideals and re-branded them to suit its own agenda. True morality actually exists in spite of religion and its cruel dogmas rather than because of it. Several mere humans have compiled much more meaningful moral guides than God or Jesus did.

If God exists –

why is he so malevolent?

Why is he the underlying reason

behind so many human atrocities?

The answers are actually simple –

and they can be found in the Bible

PART 1. The Old Testament

If there is a God – he is not very good at religion.

Jim Whitefield

FAITH

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1.

Christians argue that belief in the Bible is a matter of faith – rather than logic or reason. My own experience has been that in our modern, enlightened, scientific world, to maintain such faith, you now have to actually abandon logic and reason, as well as all common sense – and that is extremely ill-advised.

Faith is definitely not the ‘substance’ of things hoped for. Any such perceived assurance is purely imaginary, experienced as an internal emotion not remotely connected to reality. I have personally experienced what it is supposed to feel like and mean to an individual, many times, and whilst such emotional states can seem real at the time, they cannot actually be quantified as anything other than wishful thinking; no outside influence is involved; nor can such feelings remotely be considered ‘evidence’ of anything not actually seen.

The reality is that faith is not related to ‘substance’ or ‘evidence’; indeed it is the very lack of such things that makes faith what it actually is. Faith has no substance. In the secular sense, ‘faith’ is a term used to describe confidence or trust in a person or thing. In the religious sense, it is belief that is specifically not based on proof, but rather a complete and utter lack of any. Faith cannot possibly be equated to evidence regarding anything whatsoever; once evidence exists, having faith in that thing becomes superseded and completely obsolete. Knowledge and understanding of evidence replaces faith or belief – with fact.

Therefore, to support Hebrews 11:1 as a plausible supposition (regardless of how nice the idea may sound), is completely ludicrous. It is a contradictory statement, a double oxymoron, which makes the faithful feel vindicated and the sane scratch their heads.

Faith does not transcend reason; faith stifles reason.

Hebrews 11:1 might more appropriately be rephrased in this way:

"Faith is the unquantified anticipation of things hoped for,

the unsubstantiated conviction of things not seen."

(Jim Whitefield).

As we start our journey into the Old Testament, faith will not be required to appreciate that God and his book are pure evil and unworthy of consideration.

Chapter 1. In The Beginning

Naturally, we should start at the very beginning, which requires a brief review of the story of the Creation as recorded in Genesis 1. In light of our modern understanding of science and in particular, astrophysics, of course each and every ‘day’ as recounted in Genesis 1 is a complete ‘hang on a minute’ moment of its own, but I will just count the whole story as one. Almost all of the claimed events took place before humans ever existed, so they were either ‘revealed’ (by God through Moses?), or just another origin myth handed down over millennia. Decide for yourself – but please do so in the cold light of day – and with just a modicum of scientific understanding, excluding ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ in anything which evidence conclusively proves not to be the case.

HOAM 1. The Creation Story.

The story in Genesis 1 establishes the beginning of everything, for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in one single account accepted by all three monotheistic religions. Long held oral tradition, later written (and rewritten, many times), by Hebrews, accepted by Jews in the Tanakh, by Christians in their Old Testament of their Bible, and Muslims in their Qur’an (Allah gave the kalimat or words of guidance to Adam, the Scroll to Abraham, Psalms to David, Torah to Moses, and the Gospel to Jesus), provided what became – and despite modern science proving beyond conceivable doubt that things were anything but as described in those writings – an accepted understanding of the ‘beginning’.

It has long been argued whether or not all three religions worship the very same God. There are good arguments on both sides, but even in Christianity itself, some fundamentalist sects deride other believers, claiming they are not actually true Christians at all. Such is the effect of blind faith in one dogma which has no more evidence for a basis in reality than any other. However, the question is academic with regard to this work which concentrates purely on the Bible; exposing and highlighting the delusional state one must voluntarily embrace in order to accept the nonsense that it so clearly contains.

When considering the Pentateuch or the Torah, it should be noted that as Moses never existed, he certainly did not pen the first five books of the Bible. Had he actually been a real person, any record he could possibly have made would only have been hieroglyphically; writing had yet to be developed in Egypt, where it is claimed Moses lived. Glyphs conveyed concepts rather than detailed explanations.

The Canaanites simplified Egyptian glyphs around 1200 BCE but Moses supposedly lived before that time (c.1393-1273 BCE). It becomes clear that the early myths and legends, laws, and rituals of the culture created by Hebrews over millennia, emerged in written form much later.    

In most versions of the Bible, Genesis 1 is worded fairly similarly but one or two ‘modern’ religious sects have meddled with the text to suit their own theology.

The Jehovah’s Witness ‘New World Translation’ (NWT) of Genesis 1 pointlessly changes a few words; presumably they think that it sounds more pleasing to the modern ear, but nothing alters the basic storyline. In verse 1 ‘heaven’ becomes ‘heavens’ for no apparent reason. In the King James Version (KJV), v.2 claims that the earth was without form and void but the NWT phrases it as formless and desolate. The problem is, if something is described as without form and also a void at the start, clearly there was nothing there at all. If it was ‘formless’ but you then add ‘desolate’, it doesn’t exactly imply absolutely nothing was there; surely something must exist for it to be desolate. Such changes don’t enhance or further explain the original storyline. They just ruin and even question an already quite beautiful ancient origin myth.

Continuing with change for the sake of change, v.2 in the NWT alters the KJV from darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters to read "…darkness upon the surface of the watery deep, and God’s active force was moving about over the surface of the waters." If they were going to add anything of significance, it may have been a good idea to explain exactly where these ‘waters’ came from, considering there was nothing in existence at this point of the story. And so it goes on in the NWT, mostly adding nothing, but often pointlessly changing words, such as ‘firmament’ to ‘expanse’ and ‘lights’ to ‘luminaries’ for example. Why bother?

One addition that the NWT does include, in v.25 and again in v.27, is the introduction of domesticated animals which the KJV does not claim. Here the NWT makes a direct claim that God provided already domesticated animals and yet we know such domestication was the work of humans, many thousands of years BCE. The dog, for example, was domesticated by humans around 12,000 years ago. The NWT was not written relatively very long ago and those compiling the text should have been fully aware of facts that we have known about for a very long time. Such statements are bereft of careful thought and fly in the face of clear scientific evidence, making the writers, and at the same time therefore, their believers, look extremely naive – and somewhat silly.

In Mormonism, their first prophet, Joseph Smith Jr., rewrote some of the Bible in a claimed ‘Inspired Revision’ (IR). His version of Genesis goes way beyond a sublime (although fanciful) storyline, well into the ridiculous. Whilst most versions of Genesis 1 are in the main somewhat similar in wording, Smith adds many words and creates a whole new sub-plot to the creation process.

For example, the first verse of the Bible is generally recorded everywhere almost exactly thus: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Ten words – that’s it. Smith expands that statement to over sixty words, adding two extra verses in the process, in which he transcends the story about what God did and instead has God speaking directly to Moses in the first person, claiming: By mine Only Begotten I created these things. Smith introduces the existence of Jesus as the creator. A whole new, never before seen, theology is inserted. Yet he confusingly then has God add: "Yea, in the beginning I created the heaven, and the earth upon which thou standest."

As mentioned above, the KJV (v.2) states darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters but Smith changes this (in his v.4) to read "I caused darkness to come up upon the face of the deep. 5: And my Spirit moved upon the face of the waters, for I am God." Naturally, Smith doesn’t have God explain how he made it dark, or why after all, it wasn’t already dark, as no lights of any description had thus far been created; nor does he have God explain where the water came from.

Unlike the NWT, Smith’s IR is more dynamic. Throughout all his writing, he seems to need to quantify the power of his deity. This exhibits his own thirst for power – as he ‘represents’ God. For example, instead of assuming everyone who believes the story realises that God is indeed all powerful, Smith’s IR has God explicitly tell us that he is – several times. In v.5, for example, when God divided the day from the night, the IR (v.8) adds: "And this I did by the word of my power; and it was done as I spake." God hardly needed to boast like that.

Something that is strange is that whilst Smith’s IR is true to the KJV idea that fish and birds were created on the fifth day and animals and humans were all created on the sixth day, the Mormon temple endowment ceremony portrays the creation process with animals created on the fifth day and humans alone created on the sixth day. When members are bold enough to question this clear anomaly (remember, the IR was supposedly inspired by God), they are usually told that through later revelation the temple version is correct. The fact that this makes Joseph Smith a false prophet by all theological standards seems to be completely missed. Most Mormons seem blissfully unaware, but then if you are religious, reality, logic and reason take a back seat to faith in whatever fiction is being taught. Evidence is not considered useful – if even considered at all. 

So, let’s take a look at what God supposedly did when creating everything. There are of course six days (or periods) of indeterminate length involved. The amount of time taken in creation is unimportant as time itself did not yet exist.

What we term ‘time’ can be considered a man made concept, used in order to understand linear experiences. Time, as we understand it, behaves somewhat differently, depending where we are; on Earth, above the Earth, or elsewhere in the Cosmos.

Creationism maintains a six thousand year old Earth but even if you accept the true age of the Earth; 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years; it really makes no difference to the creation story in Genesis as it all takes place before the ‘time’ when life was created and placed on the planet.

When Hebrews eventually recorded the legends of goat-herding tribesmen of old, once they learned how to write down oral traditions, they had no idea about much of anything; so, as with other cultures, origin myths that had been handed down for thousands of years became the basis of their reality.

There are many books available covering origin myths of various cultures. Some of my favourite legends come from Native American tribes. Many have similarities whilst others are divergent. Some ‘borrow’ from earlier myths and legends of neighbouring cultures. The Genesis story is no exception; it contains very similar detail to several earlier legends. The purpose of this chapter is not to compare them but simply to consider the viability of the one regarded as true by many believers. ‘Hang on a minute’ and consider just what we now know as scientific fact – compared with the creation legend in Genesis.

Day one starts off very badly indeed in terms of any logic, and if you believe it – you are already lost to all common sense and reason; so, please think about what we know very carefully. God starts his creation process by floating across deep water, over which there is darkness. He doesn’t explain where the water came from, although the darkness is a given. Next, God ‘says’ let there be light, with no explanation as to the source of it. Remember, this is before the creation of the sun, moon or stars – so there is no feasible source of light at all.

God doesn’t create lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night until day four. So, what is the source of this ‘day one’ light, or means of establishing claimed Day and Night at this point? God just saw that it was good and divided the light from the darkness. Think; how was it possible to ‘divide’ light from darkness? There was no light source (sun) as yet and no planet was available to rotate and orbit it, thus obscuring any light and dividing it from darkness – into day and night. Alternatively, we could simply ask what the goat-herders had been drinking when they invented the impossible storyline.

Day two, and things start to get worse when God creates the firmament in the midst of the waters, separating water above and below it. Some claim it refers to the sky, with water as clouds above it and water on the Earth below. The problem is that so far God hasn’t created the Earth as such, in order to facilitate the ecosystem that allows the clouds to form and rain to occur. That happens tomorrow. (In Genesis 2:6, almost as an afterthought, in a review of everything, God says there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.) God calls his firmament heaven – which is not the atmosphere – and most clouds hang relatively quite low in the atmosphere; none can form ‘above’ it.

In any event, in a couple of days, God will place stars in his ‘firmament’ – and the nearest one is over four light years away. Light from the farthest known galaxy has taken 13.1 billion years to reach Earth – which is a long way away from the water ‘below’ the firmament. Remember, the stars will be placed ‘in’ the firmament and God put water ‘above’ his firmament which is in the midst of the waters. Get your head around that if you can.

Day three, and for the first time, God may have actually got something right. It is claimed that God gathered the water together unto one place and let the dry land appear, which he called Earth. He doesn’t explain where it came from.

Of the two prevailing models, it is possible that a single land mass or super continent existed prior to continental drift ultimately creating the world we now know so well. Still, that’s as close to possible reality as God ever got – and in any event, it was billions of years ago – not that time matters before Adam and Eve; it’s just that it took billions of years, following this initial ‘creation’, to establish the land distribution that we know today – not six thousand years.

Grass, herbs and fruit trees whose seed is in itself are created today. As ever, God saw that it was good. I am not sure how it could be ‘good’ as there was no light source to sustain vegetation of any description until day four. Clearly, no fruit trees that needed pollination were created at this stage, as there was nothing yet available to pollinate them. God never describes exactly when they were introduced. No light and no pollination – there’s a miracle for you.

Day four, and God’s story goes from bad to worse. He starts by placing ‘lights’ in his firmament to divide the day from night, yet only our sun, coupled with our rotating and orbiting Earth, is capable of that. The lights are impossibly also for "signs and seasons, days and years". Only after that did God make two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. God, or to be more exact, the Hebrews, clearly had no idea that the moon is not actually a lesser light and in fact does not emit light at all. …he made the stars also. Had he not already done that? And wouldn’t yesterday’s grass, herbs and fruit trees have died by now due to the lack of any sunlight? It definitely wasn’t a ‘day’ as we know it and many claim that God’s days were a thousand years. All life forms thus far created would have perished long since.

Day five finally sees the creation of some mobile life forms. God limits this to oceanic and airborne creatures – which, according to Genesis 1:20 all came from the sea. Perhaps God used evolution at this stage? And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. Did you ever notice that this implies birds came from the water? Believers will claim God is being succinct rather than specific – always a good excuse; but at this point, God’s ‘ways’ almost appear closer to evolutionary processes than to creationism.

Birds are mentioned again in the next couple of verses, but this time with no mention of where they came from. Clearly that was enough for one day. Assuming this ‘period’ was similar to the first four days – God didn’t exactly achieve much by comparison on day five. Perhaps he needed an early night, as tomorrow was going to be a long day.

Day six sees the culmination of God’s efforts. Today, he creates every creature on the ‘surface’ of the planet and also creates humans. Curiously, God says "let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Who was God talking to when he said us? And who was there to hear him and write it down? The story is the basis of monotheism – that is, with the notable exception of Joseph Smith’s Mormon IR which alters the statement to And I, God, said unto mine Only Begotten, which was with me from the beginning, Let us make man in our image. Make of that what you will. Smith’s bizarre ideas are covered more fully in ‘The Mormon Delusion’ series of books.

Think, if God created man and later formed Eve, why did God give Adam (and other male creatures), nipples? Evolution easily explains this – but God?

Summary. We know as facts: life did not suddenly appear in its various forms at any stage; it evolved over billions of years; the Earth was not created before the sun or the stars; day and night could not have been ‘created’ before the movements of the sun and Earth combined to facilitate it. We know a great deal – and we are learning more every day. The one thing that humans seem not to have learned is to not fill gaps in our knowledge with unfounded superstitions; and even worse, following them into an ever more enlightened world, rejecting scientific discovery in favour of ancient, long proven, fiction. Pending evidence about something, it is enough to say we simply don’t know yet; so when we do know – there is no doubt and people stop rejecting fact in favour of fiction.

If I have to explain to one more creationist (especially Jehovah’s Witnesses), what the word ‘theory’ means in the scientific world, I shall scream. Mention evolution being a long established fact and you will always, without fail, hear: Why is it just called a theory then?

If you encounter such a challenge, this from ‘livescience.com’, is a simple explanation – usually greeted with a blank stare as cognitive dissonance sets in.

They knock on your door in order to preach fanciful fiction, but they are not prepared to listen to or be taught the scientific truth.

Science is a systematic and logical approach to discovering how things in the universe work. It is derived from the Latin word scientia," which translates to knowledge. Unlike the arts, science aims for measurable results through testing and analysis. Science is based on fact, not opinion or preferences. The process of science is designed to challenge ideas through research. It is not meant to prove theories, but rule out alternative explanations until a likely conclusion is reached.

A scientific theory summarizes a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing. If enough evidence accumulates to support a hypothesis, it moves to the next step—known as a theory—in the scientific method and becomes accepted as a valid explanation of a phenomenon.

When used in non-scientific context, the word theory implies that something is unproven or speculative. As used in science, however, a theory is an explanation  or model based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena.

Any scientific theory must be based on a careful and rational examination of the facts. In the scientific method, there is a clear distinction between facts, which can be observed and/or measured, and theories, which are scientists’ explanations and interpretations of the facts. Scientists can have various interpretations of the outcomes of experiments and observations, but the facts, which are the cornerstone of the scientific method, do not change." (Bold added).

As they had stopped listening by the time I repeated the above, I have now shortened it, explaining that in science the word theory refers to an explanation of the facts rather than a hypothesis. Unfortunately, that also results in the same blank stare. Their voluntary delusional state precludes venturing into reality.

Evolution is not something you have to believe in; it is simply something you have to understand. It is a well established fact which we actually know far more about than we do about space-time curvature (gravity). Here, in the UK, evolution is so well established and understood, that in 2014, our government updated laws and instigated new laws banning the teaching of pseudoscience in all free schools and academies. Creationism, Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood etc., are now officially classified as pseudoscience and can no longer be ‘taught’ as evidence-based theory. Evolution is now taught as science from primary age.

So, in my country, facts and evidence are taught from an early age, whilst fairy tales must be seen as the nonsense the evidence proves them to be. Now, that is what you call progress. Unfortunately, I suspect it may be a long time before the USA accepts and adopts this as a valid educational standard.

We humans should have evolved to a stage of being intelligent enough to only accept anything, following extensive peer reviewed research and evidence – and even then, be willing to change our views at any time, based on further and better evidence and understanding. The problem