What the Bible almost certainly is not

I have just finished reading ‘The God Delusion’, Dawkins‘ new book critiquing religion. Influenced by this I would like to discuss my personal views of why Christianity is a pointless endeavour, or at least one that is taken far too seriously. I assume similar criticisms can be launched against nearly all of the major religions, however it is Christianity I come into contact with the most and it is Christianity I take to be the most dangerous of the current world religions. True, it may be Islamic nutjobs flying planes into buildings and bombing transport systems but it is Christian nutjobs who are in control of the most powerful nation in the world. And it doesn’t look like they’ll be passing over control anytime soon.

The main point of my argument here is that the Bible is being taken, increasingly, to be the literal word of God when it quite blatantly is not. I shall give one example, and only one is neccesary, of why this simple book cannot be ‘Truth’.

From Matthew 27:

3Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, 4Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. 5And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. 6The chief priests picked up the coins and said, “It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money.” 7So they decided to use the money to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners. 8That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day.

From Acts 1:

…Judas, who served as guide for those who arrested Jesus— 17he was one of our number and shared in this ministry.”18(With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. 19Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)

Two questions we can ask here, 1) What happened to Judas? and 2) Why is the field called the field of blood. Bear in mind I want you to answer me with the ‘gospel truth’ and the true word of the Lord. We now have two competing alternatives, both of which are supposedly Gods own truth. There is only one conclusion we can draw, that this book is not the work of God but of Man. So how close to actual events is this account?

It will be useful here to know also a little of what occured at the council of Nicaea. It was here, in 325AD, that the ‘authorised version’ of the Bible was finalised, where the competing gospels were included in or discarded from the Bible, it is to be assumed that, out of the many available books those that best fit together were chosen. This is the best that could be done, why? Surely there must have been a better correlation than this?

Turn now to the case of ‘John Frum‘ (mentioned in the god delusion). This is a cargo cult which sprung up around the 1940’s and has carried on to this day. I shall not go into details but this is one example, within living memory, of how a religion can gestate for political, social, economical and spiritual reasons, then both merge with other religions and schism into seperate faiths, all on one small pacific island within the space of sixty years. Given that the Gospels were written, as a best estimate, 30 years after Jesus lived, and written by men, most of whom never met him. is it any surprise they do not agree? Of course had this been the infallible work of God, these stories would agree.

Now for the point of all this. Why, as a non Christian, should I even care about this issue? I care because people are living their lives, raising their children and interefering with others’ lives as if the Bible is truth. It is no more ordained truth than any other book and should be treated accordingly. Do not use it to live your life by without a healthy dose of rationalism to back it up.

Other things that piqued my interest today include this amusing short on youtube. Do you mean to say that news channels twist the news to their own political ends? Say it ain’t so! Incidentally has anyone else ever suffered from this ludicrous obsession with youtube? It’s a terror.