Genesis From A Skeptics View

[ChristianGuy1000]

Hi Folks,

 

Took me a few days to do this.  Please feel free to add your own conclusions.  I myself will probably re-write it at some point but here's the problems / issues and down right weird things that happened in Genesis.

 

Its 11 pages long but I hope it helps a young de-converter follow my path of De-Conversion.  Its how to look at the bible while completely forgetting about the newer books until you get to them.  This means that I am writing as it is not as people generations from then said how it is.

 

Enjoy,

 

The next book is Exodus.

 

 

The Bible Exposed.pdf

[Loboperdido]

Thank you very much.

[sdelsolray]

Hi Folks,

 

Took me a few days to do this.  Please feel free to add your own conclusions.  I myself will probably re-write it at some point but here's the problems / issues and down right weird things that happened in Genesis.

 

Its 11 pages long but I hope it helps a young de-converter follow my path of De-Conversion.  Its how to look at the bible while completely forgetting about the newer books until you get to them.  This means that I am writing as it is not as people generations from then said how it is.

 

Enjoy,

 

The next book is Exodus.

Lotsa good questions.  You are in for a treat.  There are claimed answers to most of these question in Christian Apologetics.  If you review some of the Apologetics, you will find a goldmine of logical fallacies, misrepresentations, rhetorical devices (e.g., hey, look over there!) and general nonsense.  Some of it is actually quite funny stuff.

[ChristianGuy1000]

Most say to read the bible and ul stop believing that is so true. God so far sounds like a Dick and it seams es rewarding the bad guys

[Eugene39]

Most say to read the bible and ul stop believing that is so true. God so far sounds like a Dick and it seams es rewarding the bad guys

 

Reading the Bible through in a year to strengthen my faith is what actually destroyed my faith in the end. Genesis and Exodus contain the least of the Bible's problems. As you progress, you will find that you are in for a "real treat"!

 

A great book that you might enjoy is "God vs. the Bible" by John Armstrong. He is a deist, but it certainly helped me come to the conclusion that God as is portrayed by the Bible cannot exist, except only in the minds of people.

[RipVanWinkle]

Very good job which I'm sure took a lot of work. Thanks. By the way, since we are talking about genesis, it says Eve was deceived by the snake, and that Adam was not deceived. Why did Paul and the new

church use that as a reason the classify women as lesser humans than men? If Adam was not deceived

what he did was in deliberate defiance of god, knowing that god would kill Eve and him, and that they

would not get knowledge of good and evil. He deliberately insulted god knowing his only benefit was exactly that: insulting god!

 

Eve on the other hand was fooled and thought she would gain knowledge of good and evil and that she

would not die. She thought she had been deceived by god. Why is what Eve did worse than what Adam did?

Both of them were more stupid than evil.

 

I don't think it makes sense to say Adam was not fooled. If he knew he would get nothing beneficial

from eating the fruit and that he would die if he did, the only sensible conclusion would be that he

was fooled, just as Eve was. bill

[ChristianGuy1000]

Thank you for your kind comments.  I am simply detailing my walk into Athiesm.  I am not here to remake the SAB I am just here to help other de-converting christians see the bible from a more literal view point than the 'Brainwashed' one.

 

I am a member of the Athiest Forums too and its funny over there they have their own in-house christian.  Hes busy trying to refute all 148 issues Intrestingly as many of said he is trying to make poo from a bucket full of shit lol.

 

Also his opinions and views are 'His' opinions and views so there is actully no scripture to back it up!

 

I cant wait to continue reading so far in Genesis God only blesses those in his Clique and also intrestingly those in God's clique are the same people who actually talk about God - No one else cares lol.

[miekko]

I am convinced the bible is full of contradictions and genuine problems, and I am convinced these problems are sufficient enough that belief in the bible is not just irrational, but in fact impossible. However, some people who write these kinds of lists are a) too ignorant and too eager to find errors, that even things that aren't errors are included. This is sad, because easily debunked criticism of the bible gives Christians an advantage: they can pretend all our criticism is unfounded. I repeat that I think the bible obviously is very much fiction, very much made-up, and sometimes pretty illogical. However, it is less illogical than many lists like yours conclude, and that's why I offer up some rebuttals to your rebuttals.

 

I would also recommend you improve the language - it's really hard to read at times due to pretty sloppy writing.

 

Some slight objections:

 

- why is it a problem that genesis mentions that the people originally were nude? You seem to be assuming the usual American neuroses about nudity.

-  Genesis does not say it was only when Adam ate the fruit that they started seeing that they were nude. Any such reading reads stuff into the text that just isn't there. There's even less justification for reading that into it in the Hebrew.

- rhetorical questions were a thing in Hebrew culture too, so God asking things to the right and left isn't so much a sign of the author thinking him stupid, and rather of the author thinking God spoke like the average Hebrew speaker would.

As for God 'remembering' Noah, the Hebrew verb genuinely is more polysemous (= having more meanings) than the English verb, and the same Hebrew verb is present in this verse in Isaiah: "Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips:" - that is, "been mindful of" is the same verb as 'remember'.  Keep in mind that words in languages often can have meanings that are quite wide-ranging, consider all the meanings you can force into 'see' (= 'understand', 'perceive by eye-sight', 'know empirically' ('we'll see what happens'), 'ensure' ("see to it"), 'meet', ... several of which would sound really dumb in some other languages, and other words would be expected instead. This particular instance of God 'remembering' Noah is due to such sloppy translation.

 

As for Genesis 9-10, 9 looks a bit like a preamble stating what will be the result, and 10 looks like a conclusion: only by assuming it's chronologically written is there a problem. However, it likely is indeed chronologically written and has problems exactly for that reason.

 

Genesis 12:

Why Abraham would go to Egypt in times of famine - the Nile was iirc more reliable at fertilizing the ground than the Mesopotamian rivers were, so Egypt with greater likelihood than Mesopotamia would have crops.

 

Genesis 13:

In LOTS of cultures, and I mean fucking LOTS, 'brother' is polysemous, unlike in English. In fact, in Russian and Arabic and so on you call your cousins 'brothers', and so you do in all Semitic languages. It's been maintained in translation too because until a few centuries ago, this was not very uncommon in English either. Abraham calling his nephew a brother is neither illogical nor wrong in the language he supposedly spoke, because the word he would have used actually includes more distant relations. (However, I will not write a linguistic treatise on kinship words, polysemy and semantics in general here. If you're interested, I could. )

 

Genesis 19:

No, the verses there do not imply that incest is 'ok'. You should notice that the people that supposedly stem from this incestuous union were tribes neighbouring the Hebrews. This story probably was included as a kind of burn aimed at those - basically "your tribe's mom's dad is your tribe's dad'. Hebrew relations to the Ammonites and Moabites varied over time - with one of them it was more often quite hostile and tense, with the other it was more often the Hebrews that were the more powerful. In both cases, this story serves as an excuse to feel superior over the enemy, as the enemy are the result of incestuous relations, or alternatively a reason to feel superior over a pitiful little tribe without power, as the pitiful bunch are the result of incestuous relations. Nowhere does the bible say that what Lot's daughters did was right.

 

 

I actually kinda like that aspect to it, since it shows that the kind of neighbour rivalry (which today can be found between small countries, neighboring villages and towns, counties and regions, american states, etc, all over the world) existed even back then and already then took the form of slandering the origins of the rival. Of course, the rivalry was violent at times and that's sad, but we can't fix the past.

 

Genesis 26:

What the fuck is weird about naming places? People have named places they haven't owned since forever. Some cultures even lack the concept of land ownership - yet they had names for places.

 

Genesis 27:

'the Lord your god' looks more like what's known in linguistics as deference. That is, in respect to his father, it was phrased that way to mark respect for the father. Such deference is common in many languages.

 

As for brothers, note the polysemy I've earlier pointed out.

 

Genesis 28:

The ladder to heaven clearly means a ladder to the sky (since KJV-times, though, the meaning of the English word 'heaven' has signified the sky less and less often, and the non-existent religious thing more often). Also, in dreams you sometimes just "know" things. Keep in mind that dreams are things out minds create and interpret - if the brain makes a dream with angels in them, there are angels in the dreams. Not real angels, of course, but nevertheless. The problem you're reading into the dream is genuinely not a problem, and thinking it is a problem relies on obvious ignorance of the world.

 

 

Genesis 29:

uh, why do you think it's a problem that someone knew someone was barren? (Of course, these stories didn't happen, but people back in those days did have the concept of barrenness, and it's quite easy to observe - someone has sex with his wife regularly, yet she doesn't get pregnant - that should be sufficient to call her (effectively) barren.

Biblical language use often didn't specify timespans very often, so there's no reason to think the four sons were supposed to be born within one year.

 

Gen 30:

She didn't say she'd kill herself, she said she'd die. The idea back in those days was one could die of grief (and, well, people do at times seem to lose the will to live and get their health and so on broken due to that, however, is it weird that a person threaten their partner with suicide? I know several (unhappy) couples where that's the case. My reading actually is more damaging for the scientific accuracy of the Bible). As for the Bilhah-Leah thing, I guess Leah may have felt very close to Bilhah and been happy with her getting a kid? 

 

Gen 31:

Are you ignorant about female biology? Women do get periods after pregnancy, it's a thing that happens all the way up to menopause. . . If you're going to write a criticism of the bible, I suggest you actually educate yourself on stuff.

(However, the translations that imply she didn't stand up due to her period do read stuff into it that might not be entirely certain. The Hebrew means 'manner of women', which may be just a cultural thing too?)

 

God of Nahor and God of Abraham - doesn't look like a distinction, looks more like an attempt at showing that there IS NO distinction. Then the relevance would be the statement that they're really the same, that there's no reason to oppose Nahor's religious sentiments. It would have significance to the original writers and readers, no matter how little we care for that significance or believe in it.

 

Gen 32:

How the fuck wouldn't they know what a tendon is? They had, you know, slaughtered cattle, they had felt pain in various bits of their legs and arms and they had probably seen bits of amputated limbs etc. You know, we can trace words for 'tendon' in the Indo-European languages back to times way before the Bible even was written. Apparently, the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans six or seven thousand years ago knew of tendons. Why's it a mystery that biblical authors 3000 years ago or less knew of them, heck, that detail isn't even anachronistic for the time it's supposed to take place. You don't need modern medicine and x-ray technology to know what a tendon is. GEEZ man.

 

Gen 34:

Yes, Schechem's a rapist, and they punish him for that. However, as usual in biblical narratives, they overdo it and kill everyone in Schechem's town.

Fuck, your reading comprehension seems terrible.

 

Gen 38:

I suggest you read it again - the woman is almost to be burned, but Judah regrets it and doesn't burn her and instead states he is more of a sinner than she is.

 

Gen 41: famine and drought were pretty fucking closely connected in Egypt.

The last point you're making is pretty weird.

 

Gen 43:

As for 'thy God' rather than 'my God', again, that makes clear sense in the narrative. (Since Joseph was supposed to be hiding his identity from his brothers.)

 

Gen 47:

The word 'bread' in these verses also can mean 'grain (on the fields)', it is probably the narrative internally makes sense. As I've already stated though, the narrative is entirely fictional. But it's less illogical than you'd think.

 

 

Gen 48:

'forever' in the relevant context actually means 'for ages'.

[ChristianGuy1000]

Hey miekko,

 

I understand what you are saying and I spent today cleaning up the list and I will upload it soon,  Its a bit more concise and structured better.  The Vulgar language is removed as are my opinions.

 

The fact the Bible uses the concept of Barren then said that God opened their Womb is a very bad contradiction and one that I struggled with,  It makes literally no sense.  I thought like you it was because the woman was not getting sex but seriously how can you then deduce that God made her non-barren? 

 

My problem with them naming places is the pure fact that most of these places were simply stones and lumps of rocks why on earth would you bother.  That is like me finding a patch of grass and saying this is a new village?  It doesn't work like that especially considering most of these places were in the empty desert.

 

 

I understand your view and opinion however can I ask that you dont try and argue them down too harshly.  I am only on the beginning stages of De-Conversion and if you are going to give me raw apologetic then I am going to end up running right back to Christianity.  I see the problems and I don't want to go back but the last thing I need right now is to be convinced that its all real and accurate.

[miekko]

Hey miekko,

 

I understand what you are saying and I spent today cleaning up the list and I will upload it soon,  Its a bit more concise and structured better.  The Vulgar language is removed as are my opinions.

 

The fact the Bible uses the concept of Barren then said that God opened their Womb is a very bad contradiction and one that I struggled with,  It makes literally no sense.  I thought like you it was because the woman was not getting sex but seriously how can you then deduce that God made her non-barren? 

I think you misunderstood what I thought there - I thought she got sex, but didn't get pregnant. Then suddenly, she did get pregnant. BTW, I don't mind the vulgarity - "fuck" and so on are alright by me, but at times even following the reasoning got tricky.

 

Also, it's not raw apologetic - you may notice I left a lot of what you said uncommented, and I even offered a few criticisms of the bible myself! The things I've pointed out generally are just minor details that are a bit too eager - the main bulk of your argument, indeed, is pretty solid! 

 

I do think, though, that one assumption you'd do well to drop is the idea that when the authors of the Bible reported that X happened, they also thought that X was good. Oftentimes, they seem to have assumed the readership would share their values already before reading the text, and thus explaining which things are good and which things are bad would in many places have felt superfluous to the writer.