The Craziness Of Genesis In The Bible

[Margee]

I'm going into my 3rd year here on Ex-c and I have read hundreds of posts over that time. (and before I joined) I have asked many questions and have responded to a lot of the newcomers who come to seek relief like I did. I try really hard to read a lot of the information that all the biblical historians post here. Man, we have some real smart people here and I'm not one of them when it comes to knowing the bible the way some of you do.

 

It all came down to that first chapter of the bible...Genesis'' for me. The whole 'house of cards' fell apart for me after I really looked at that silly first book of the bible. Once I decided that the book was total foolishness, I didn't seem to need much more information, although I love to sit here and read as much as I can on every topic.

 

What I don't understand is, if this (first) book falls apart at the seams, why does any of the rest of the book matter? If I do not believe that the god of the old testament created the universe, that means I WAS NOT born in sin and ...that means I don't need a savior to save me from the sins of Adam and Eve. Right? 

 

Can we spend a little time tearing this first book apart because maybe it could help so many on the board who struggle with all the rest of it....the prophecies, the hell doctrine, the up-coming destruction of Jesus coming back to set up the new earth and on and on and on, etc....

 

One of the very first questions I asked the pastor was, if it was only Adam and Eve and the talking snake inside the garden....who was the 'stenographer' who stood outside the gates of the garden and documented the whole thing? The best answer was that Moses wrote the account. Well, I'm sorry, but Moses wasn't here on earth just yet??? There was only supposed to be 2 people on earth at that time??? Who was the one that saw and heard (the voice of the lord and all the conversation) that went on within those gates of the garden?? The whole account of Genesis seems so silly to me now. And I once believed in it more than anything in the world!!!

 

I would love for some of you wonderful bible scholars here on Ex-c to rip this book apart once and for all!! Once this 'beginning' book is torn to sheds - it will mean that none of the rest of the 'stuff', right on up to revelation is true.  Beside a little history in the book, the whole bible would fall apart, wouldn't you agree?

 

Thanks guys!

Love to you all today.

Margee

[pratt]

if god did not create the earth in 6 days,

if the earth is more than 7,000 years old,

if there was never an adam and eve,

if god did not flood the whole earth,,,,,

 

how do we know which part of the bible is fact, which part of bible is peom, which part of bible is fictional?

 

what happens if the earth may passe away but an iota or whatever crap in the scripture stays forever,,,,,,,

[mymistake]

Don't cut yourself short Margee.  You are on the right track.  Romans 5:12 is where Paul makes the fatal blunder of trying Christianity to a fable.

 

 

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned

 

The very reason for Christ was because of things that never happened.  Paul did this.  We are fairly certain that Romans was a legitimate Paul writing.  However the forgers who came later and wrote in Paul's name repeated the mistake in 1 Tim 2: 13-14 where the fable was used to justify sexism.  But Christians who see the Bible as the word of God are stuck defending these passages in Romans and Tim.  That means they are stuck defending Genesis with all of it's insanity.  That means they are stuck with Creationism and that is why they go off the deep end with it. 

 

This seems like an apt time for one of my favorite Hitchens quotes:

 

 

And here is a longer version with better sound quality for those who enjoy listening to him:

[centauri]

In Genesis, God accepts a sacrifice from Abel but not from Cain, even though Cain offered God the fruit of his work in the soil.

Cain's offering didn't involve killing, while Abel's did.

This always struck me as strange behavior from a "loving" God.

When Cain gets depressed and angry about this, God tells him that "sin" is looking to capture him. 

Then God drops a theological bombshell on Christianity by declaring that Cain can master sin and rule over it.

 

Gen 4:6-7(RSV)

The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen?

If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

 

There is no Jesus that's needed for a person to overcome sin.

This is confirmed by Ezek 18:20-27, where God clearly states that each person can save themselves with proper actions.

Every time I hear a Christian pastor proclaiming that Genesis points to Jesus, I remember how much nonsense this religion embodies.

[Scottsman]

Here.

http://www.biblicalnonsense.com/chapter5.html

 

And here.

http://www.biblicalnonsense.com/chapter6.html

[Journey]

It is indeed a very scary thing to consider that we can be so deluded to believe the bible is inerrant.  In a recent family situation where one side of our family are supporting my brother in law who molested his own daughter over several years ( now a court case) and some of the rest of us who are on my nieces' side and supporting her, I posted this on my facebook page: "None are so blind as those who refuse to open their eyes"... I didn't reference it directly to my family supporting the pedophile but they were whom I had in mind - funny thing is some of them clicked 'like' as if to say we were the ones who were blind. However, everyone who was hearing the case from an objective and unattached position clearly saw his guilt as did the judge who gave a scathing rebuke to the family. Interestingly enough - I see this also applies to christians who refuse to see the evidence before them as to the reliability of the Bible -- including my husband who is still very fundamentalist in his stance. He agreed with my statement regarding the court case but still refuses to open his eyes to the evidence regarding the bible. I know, I was there once too so I understand why (in a way) but am very frustrated that people cling to the inerrancy position out of fear and willful blindness.

[JamesG]

read the Hebrew version to it falls apart at the seems. It can't even decide if its mono or polytheistic Gen 1 has the Eloyhim(gods) creating the universe in the opposite direction (planets before stars, plants before sun.) Gen 2 has Ya'wah of the Eloyhim not creating the universe but

 

 2:4 ¶ These  [are] the generations  of the heavens and of the earth when they were created,  in the day  that Yähwè  ´élohiym made  the earth  and the heavens,

 

mainly it appears he was the god that created the earth and plants. gen 2:4 has him as a participant of creation not a singular creator.

 

http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Biblical_order_of_creation

 

also debunks  creation

 

Hebrew transliteration here http://www.qbible.com/hebrew-old-testament/genesis/2.html

 

another take I have on original sin

http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/56981-adam-gets-my-eve/

[Lerk]

What I don't understand is, if this (first) book falls apart at the seams, why does any of the rest of the book matter?

 

That is exactly what I think, Margee! I had a hypothesis that allowed me to accept the first two chapters, but it was chapter 3 that made me realize it was a myth once I realized it wasn't Satan in the story, but an ordinary snake. When I realized that, it allowed me to accept that chapters 1 and 2 were myths, and then, as you said, that none of the rest of it matters.

 

At first I thought about "liberal Christianity", the people who say that those first chapters just help us to understand god but aren't meant to be taken literally, but I didn't think about it long. Those stories are presented as fact. There are no disclaimers. If the rest was real and those chapters aren't, then the Catholics shouldn't have included them.

 

The Catholics say that the Bible is not the only authority, that the church is a greater authority than the book, because they compiled the book. That makes sense now (though as a fundamentalist I didn't think so). But by the same token, without an eternal perfect book, the church itself has no authority except "because we said so". It's all bogus.

 

Great post.

[GoddessOfWisdom]

One of the major components of my deconversion was that everything in the religion seems to point toward celebration of ignorance...but not. The fools are better than the wise (I Cor 1:27), but not really (Ps 14:1). You can't know God properly through wisdom (I Cor 1:21), but the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God (Proverbs 9:10). You must become "as little children" (Matt 18:3), yet "put away childish things" (I Cor 13:11) and be "wise as serpents" (Matt 10:16).

 

The worst and most epic case of this kind of cognitive dissonance is in the story of Adam and Eve.

 

They were, in effect, children. They had no experience prior to being created, no outside sources of information, no opposing viewpoints to weigh or complications to navigate. Just "god said it, I believe it, that settles it". They also had never had to make a moral decision in their lives and had no capacity to do so.

 

First, the tree that god said was a no-no, an absolute anathema on pain of death, was called the tree of "Knowledge". (I had to think about that one for quite a while; in other area of my life have I ever looked at a proposed leader who wished to HIDE KNOWLEDGE from me and said, "Yep, seems legit"? But in regards to my religion, I had done just that.)

 

Secondly, that knowledge in particular concerned morality. The very field that Adam and Eve are expected to have been experts in, just knowing that the right thing to do would be to listen to god. But then, listening to god would deprive them of the very knowledge that they needed in order to know that it was right to listen to him?

 

Also.

 

If I were a parent and I knew there were scary people out in the world that want to hurt my child, I would kind of try and find it in my heart to inform my child of this. You know those conversations, like, "Don't ever let anyone touch you there" or "Even if a stranger gives you candy, don't accept, just run away as fast as you can". I see no such warning about the snake. If Moses wrote this account and knew that the "snake was the craftiest of all the animals", then it supposedly was because God informed him directly. He couldn't have done as much for Adam & Co.?

 

My identity as a human and woman has been shaped, in my own view and that of others, by this book.

 

I need to lie down for a moment.

[Jds22]

You are so right. Once I educated myself on evolution and realized that there wasn't an Adam and Eve, everything else fell apart.

 

I can understand why Ken Ham is so adamant about the need to take Genesis as literal truth.

[RipVanWinkle]

In the first chapter, on the first day, god creates light. On the 4th day god created the sun, the moon

and the stars. What happened to the light that created the first day? Where was its source? Since it was

not the son (oops, I mean sun), how did it create days and nights? This is how: He literally divided the light from the

darkness, creating day and night. Huh? But....

 

Also god create 2 bodies of water; one he left on earth (the seas.). The other, above the firmament

(the heavens). That's where rain comes from; through "portals". See Job. God opens the portals BEYOND THE STARS, casing rain. The rain falls to earth from above the stars. Why doesn't it rain on the moon and

the planets? What forces rain to fall on earth from beyond the pull of the earth's gravity? God is

mysterious, indeed, bill

[Ravenstar]

Genesis is such obvious mythology that I am gobsmacked that a very long time ago I accepted it as true... but I have to agree with one of the posters above, it's the story of Cain and Abel that began my questioning. There is no rational explanation for why the sacrifices were accepted or rejected by god, except for one: The people who wrote it were already working from a basis of blood sacrifice and created this bloodthirsty god in their image. Genesis is a big morality play... like the Greeks used to put on, not history.

 

When I did ask about it... all I got was that it was 'pointing to Jesus' sacrifice later on, but then why flood the earth if the solution was already in play? The stories don't follow any logical train of thought and drawing connections between Genesis and the NT stretches things pretty thin.

 

Then there is the Enuma Elish, which is so similar to Genesis in areas as to be the obvious source of some of the stories... they had probably been retold and passed down amongst various peoples in the area for a VERY long time before the Hebrews wrote them down. Then there are the Ugarit texts... etc...

[♦ Fuego ♦]

And the Hebrews never equated the snake with Satan. And if that particular snake was bad, why were all snakes condemned to slither on their bellies and "eat dust" (though they are really sensing odors and heat)? Just a fairy tale about how an animal got to be that way.

 

If god didn't want them to eat the fruit, why grow it in the same garden instead of on a different planet, or skip that plant entirely? And what kind of father has only one kind of punishment (death) for disobedience? That's what we call a psychotic narcissist. Just a fairy tale about how we all got here.

 

 

(This one isn't in Genesis, but ran across it today: "The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." Well, ok then.)

[GoddessOfWisdom]

Also, quite later in Genesis:

 

When most preachers I'd heard talked about the story of Joseph, they were actually making a case against god in my opinion. He didn't intervene but let Joseph get tossed into the pit (insert metaphorical use of the pit as an example of various trials we go through today) because he had a "plan". And guess what that plan was?

 

I won't tell you.

 

I can only say that it involved a divinely forseen (and therefore preventable) famine; pointlessly esoteric dreams; utter lack of competent advisers in advanced and civilized Egypt who could explain to Pharoah that conserving grain would be a good idea; and getting Jacob and his peeps to move to Egypt so that eventually his people could become entrapped in 400 years of slavery (mass trauma) and he could bring them out to be dependent on him (psychological conditioning).

[GoddessOfWisdom]

And the Hebrews never equated the snake with Satan. And if that particular snake was bad, why were all snakes condemned to slither on their bellies and "eat dust" (though they are really sensing odors and heat)? Just a fairy tale about how an animal got to be that way.

 

If god didn't want them to eat the fruit, why grow it in the same garden instead of on a different planet, or skip that plant entirely? And what kind of father has only one kind of punishment (death) for disobedience? That's what we call a psychotic narcissist. Just a fairy tale about how we all got here.

 

 

(This one isn't in Genesis, but ran across it today: "The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." Well, ok then.)

 

Google the history of the terms "sinister" and "dexterous", if you haven't come across it already.

[amateur]

If the claim is that the bible is infallible due to god's omni-everything (omni-omni?), then all it takes is one story that can't possibly be true, or one serious contradiction, or one statement from Jesus that has proven itself not true, or proof that one story came from older myths to make everything unbelievable and completely fallible, and god cannot be omni-omni.  If god is not omni-omni, then god simply isn't anything.

 

We have list upon list on this site, things like "101 Bible Contradictions," links like the ones above from Scottsman proving the utter stupidity of Genesis myths, and the ever-popular sayings of Jesus concerning "I'll be back before everybody from this generation has died" and "anything you ask in my name will be given to you" which are obvious lies.

 

No amputee ever has regrown a limb with prayer.  That's good enough for me.

[Overcame Faith]

This didn't lead directly to my deconversion, but what I learned about Genesis in a college course I took as a young man always stayed with me and once I came seriously to question the religion, served to confirm that I was right that Christianity is a false religion.

 

In that course I took, we learned about the Documentary Hypothesis.  The essence of the Documentary Hypothesis is to learn the source of the first books of the Bible (the Torah, the Pentateuch, whatever you want to call them).  It posits that a number of editors collected various accounts and wrote them down.  The various accounts that were collected, were eventually woven together to form what we now have.  What scholars have done for around a hundred years is to continue this work and to try to refine it.

 

What I learned in that Course was quite surprising to me.  Here's an example: there is not one continuous account of creation.  Rather, there are actually two separate creation accounts, each written by separate authors.  The first account which is found in Genesis 1 was written by some unknown person whom scholars call "P".  The second creation account is found in Genesis 2:4-25 and was written by another unknown person whom scholars call "J".   The so-called "Fall of man" was also written by "J".

 

Similarly, the story of the flood was written by a number of people and also sewn together to form the story we have today.  And on and on it goes.

 

This pretty much does in the idea that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible.  It also helps explain why there are various inconsistencies and contradictions.  For example, why does God say in Genesis 6:19 for Noah  to bring two of every living thing (one male and one female) to the ark but in Genesis 7:1-3 he tells Noah to bring seven pairs of "pure" animals and of the animals that are not "pure" to bring only one pair (one male and one female)?  According to the Documentary Hypothesis, the answer is because Genesis 6:19 was written by one person and Genesis 7:1-3 was written by someone else entirely.

 

In other words, these books of the Bible were not written by one person and the various accounts of the same stories contained in these books are markedly different from each other.  The reason for this is because they were written by a number of different people over a long span of time and they were eventually collected and edited together to form what we now have.

[Denyoz]

If I do not believe that the god of the old testament created the universe, that means I WAS NOT born in sin and ...that means I don't need a savior to save me from the sins of Adam and Eve. Right? 

 

Yeah, sin is at the heart of the whole gimmick.  If you don't believe that you are a sinner, nothing else makes any sense.

 

But my reasoning was this:  Even if all humans are born in sin because of Adam and Eve, Jesus came and restored everything!  He died in our place, didn't he?  So everything is back to normal.  God is happy again!  Him and I are are best buddies now, just like He was with Adam before he ate the fruit.  So we can all close the book, put it back on the shelf and enjoy life without worrying about sin.  It was all taken care of thousands of years ago, before any of us were born.  End of story.

[Scottsman]

The whole concept of prayer is ludicrous. Picture yourself as god. You are asking me to ask you for something even though you have already made up your mind 8 milleniums ago. Utter rubbish.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

Here is a fun little factoid for you Margee: the majority of godlings do not actually know what the first sin ever committed was. If you ask them, "What was the first sin?", nine times out of eight they will tell you that eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the first sin. However, if you read the text, the serpent asks Eve, "Hath god said...?" And Eve replies, "Yes, God hath said that of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we may not eat, nor even touch it, lest we surely die." Well, actually, God never said anything about them touching the fruit, so either Eve lied to the serpent, or Adam lied to Eve in his zeal that god's words be obeyed. Either way, there was deceit involved before the eating of the fruit.

 

Also, I posted a topic in the Humor and Jokes Forum a few days ago called "Spencer and The Godling" that addresses when and how Original Sin entered into the nature of humans. It might give you some more ammunition against Genesis.

[Scottsman]

Here is a fun little factoid for you Margee: the majority of godlings do not actually know what the first sin ever committed was. If you ask them, "What was the first sin?", nine times out of eight they will tell you that eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the first sin. However, if you read the text, the serpent asks Eve, "Hath god said...?" And Eve replies, "Yes, God hath said that of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we may not eat, nor even touch it, lest we surely die." Well, actually, God never said anything about them touching the fruit, so either Eve lied to the serpent, or Adam lied to Eve in his zeal that god's words be obeyed. Either way, there was deceit involved before the eating of the fruit.

 

Also, I posted a topic in the Humor and Jokes Forum a few days ago called "Spencer and The Godling" that addresses when and how Original Sin entered into the nature of humans. It might give you some more ammunition against Genesis.

It gets better. God commanded adam and eve not to eat from the "tree of knowledge of good and evil." Do you see the irony? How could they be able to tell right from wrong? They were set up from the beginning. They were in an impossible situation. They didn't stand and a chance. Now god is going to punish all mankind in eternal hell fire for an action that was a pre-planned failure. If true(not likely) that is not a god worthy of worship. That is a sadist. They never even had a chance.

[LifeCycle]

 

 

 

 

Here is a fun little factoid for you Margee: the majority of godlings do not actually know what the first sin ever committed was. If you ask them, "What was the first sin?", nine times out of eight they will tell you that eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the first sin. However, if you read the text, the serpent asks Eve, "Hath god said...?" And Eve replies, "Yes, God hath said that of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we may not eat, nor even touch it, lest we surely die." Well, actually, God never said anything about them touching the fruit, so either Eve lied to the serpent, or Adam lied to Eve in his zeal that god's words be obeyed. Either way, there was deceit involved before the eating of the fruit.
 
Also, I posted a topic in the Humor and Jokes Forum a few days ago called "Spencer and The Godling" that addresses when and how Original Sin entered into the nature of humans. It might give you some more ammunition against Genesis.

It gets better. God commanded adam and eve not to eat from the "tree of knowledge of good and evil." Do you see the irony? How could they be able to tell right from wrong? They were set up from the beginning. They were in an impossible situation. They didn't stand and a chance. Now god is going to punish all mankind in eternal hell fire for an action that was a pre-planned failure. If true(not likely) that is not a god worthy of worship. That is a sadist. They never even had a chance.

 

Yes, it was a clear sabotage job. Adding to your point... God knows everything yet he placed the tree in the garden anyway. Seriously? This is the only way he could convince us that he loves us? Create all this injustice and suffering and then save some from it?  If that's not reckless and careless, I'm not sure what is.

 

 

[Margee]

Thank you guys for ripping this book apart for me. Thanks for tearing it to shreds. This is the book that, if I had to, I would argue to the Christians, because once the truth of the silliness of this book is revealed......it simply makes the rest of the so called holy bible a complete farce!!

 

Love and hugs to you all today.

[mymistake]

Here is a fun little factoid for you Margee: the majority of godlings do not actually know what the first sin ever committed was. If you ask them, "What was the first sin?", nine times out of eight they will tell you that eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the first sin. However, if you read the text, the serpent asks Eve, "Hath god said...?" And Eve replies, "Yes, God hath said that of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we may not eat, nor even touch it, lest we surely die." Well, actually, God never said anything about them touching the fruit, so either Eve lied to the serpent, or Adam lied to Eve in his zeal that god's words be obeyed. Either way, there was deceit involved before the eating of the fruit.

 

Also, I posted a topic in the Humor and Jokes Forum a few days ago called "Spencer and The Godling" that addresses when and how Original Sin entered into the nature of humans. It might give you some more ammunition against Genesis.

 

The only problem was that lying wasn't a sin back then.  Moses had not come down from the mountain yet so nobody knew that they shouldn't lie. So having other gods before Jehovah did not offend Jehovah. Cheating on your husband didn't offend God.  Killing your brother wasn't a sin.  Wait a minute . . . 

 

(Don't look at the Bible closely because it unravels quickly)

[Scottsman]

Thank you guys for ripping this book apart for me. Thanks for tearing it to shreds. This is the book that, if I had to, I would argue to the Christians, because once the truth of the silliness of this book is revealed......it simply makes the rest of the so called holy bible a complete farce!!

 

Love and hugs to you all today.

It really is amazing that once you remove the assumption that the bible is the infallible word of god just how quickly it falls apart. When you don't have to make excuses for it or try to read into it to make the contradictions work, you realize just how brainwashed you had to have been to believe it.