An Athiests Guide to the Bible: Cain and Abel

In the previous Guide, Adam and Eve got kicked out of Eden for eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge after being convinced by a talking snake. Now we find out what happened to Adam and Eve outside the Garden of Eden. 

Then Adam had intercourse with his wife, and she became pregnant. She bore a son and said, "By the Lord's help I have gotten a son." So, she named him Cain. Later she gave birth to another son, Abel. Abel became a shepherd, but Cain was a farmer.

These biblical writers didn’t muck around, did they? Straight to the sex! And Eve got pregnant straight away. Now I know it’s possible to get on the first go, and it’s not really specified how long it took them to get pregnant, but it seems like it was almost instantaneous.

There’s also very little in the way of description of the pregnancy, or the birth itself. Clearly written by a male with little regard for women. Luckily, not all men have such little regard for the role women play in history. But let’s break down the pregnancy a bit.

God cursed Eve, causing an increase to her trouble in pregnancy and pain in childbirth. Neither of these are elaborated on at all. She’s the mother of mankind, surely some sort of description beyond getting pregnant and having kids is necessitated here? I don’t expect the writer to give a blow by blow account of the whole ordeal, but there’s not even so much of a mention of her being in any pain during labour at all, which she would have been as there were no doctors, no pain relief medications, and she wouldn’t have been to a parenting class to learn any breathing techniques. As a woman, full props to Eve. She did it the hard way, with only Adam to lend a hand and I’m sure he was next to useless, there never having been a birth before.

Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Eve credits the guy who cursed her with the pain of childbirth. That is the last thing I would be doing. God’s help isn’t even mentioned, so what was it that God actually did to help Eve? It isn’t explained. As we will see in future guides, some things are detailed to a level that induces a coma when reading it, while other things are skimmed over as if they hardly matter. It’s infuriating, to say the least. 

After some time, Cain brought some of his harvest and gave it as an offering to the Lord. Then Abel brought the first lamb born to one of his sheep, killed it, and gave the best parts of it as an offering. The Lord was pleased with Abel and his offering, but he rejected Cain and his offering. Cain became furious, and he scowled in anger. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why that scowl on your face? If you had done the right thing, you would be smiling; but because you have done evil, sin is crouching at your door. It wants to rule you, but you must overcome it."

If someone could tell me, based only on what has been written so far, why Cain’s offering was so bad, that’d be great, because I feel like I’ve missed something somewhere. Cain offered the product of his own labour, just as Abel did, yet one offering is better than the other.

Obviously the two are grown men by this point (or at least teenagers, given events that are about to happen) so did God tell the brothers what sort of offering to make? You’d think this would be worthy of noting down. It would go a long way to explaining why God rejected Cain’s offering.

Some versions of the bible make it seem that perhaps Cain didn’t bring the best of his harvest while Abel brought the finest cut of meat. Is this what is meant by “the right thing” and why is it a matter of good and evil? God sounds a little judgemental, and a little harsh. 

Then Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out in the fields." When they were out in the fields, Cain turned on his brother and killed him.

He did what, now?

Could Cain have had some sort of brain injury, specifically relating to the area of the brain that deals with impulse control? If Cain had acted immediately, killing his brother on the spot, then this would be quite a good explanation but he displayed a desire to conceal the act by taking his brother to the field.

This leads us to a more psychological rationale for his behaviour – narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy – there are many disorders in which the elimination of a competitor is a possibility.

Cain’s overreaction is somewhat understandable if we take a deeper look at it from a psychological point of view. Cain is the elder son, yet it seems that Abel gets preferential treatment. It’s not specified (another example of a bit more detail being warranted) but it would seem like this has been going on their whole life. God rejecting the offering was the final straw, and sibling rivalry only goes part of the way to explain how bad Cain’s reaction is.

If we look at it from the perspective of a person who has been made to feel like he’s not good enough his whole life, and is then told by the god who created his parents that he has done evil and is courting sin, I don’t think that would have gone down well and definitely explains the snap which leads to Abel’s death.

This mix of personality and triggering event could very well explain the actions of Cain, especially if he is still a teenager and has not fully developed impulse control.

But how did God not see this coming? He allowed Abel to die. He gave him no warning and, at this stage, had not set out the commandments. This all-knowing, all-powerful being seems pretty inept. I’m all for having children learn lessons on their own, but I’d step in if someone innocent was going to be seriously injured, let alone die. 

The Lord asked Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" He answered, "I don't know. Am I supposed to take care of my brother?" Then the Lord said, "Why have you done this terrible thing? Your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground, like a voice calling for revenge. You are placed under a curse and can no longer farm the soil. It has soaked up your brother's blood as if it had opened its mouth to receive it when you killed him. If you try to grow crops, the soil will not produce anything; you will be a homeless wanderer on the earth."

Curses seem to run in this family, and God seems to like doling them out. This one takes away the one skill that Cain seemed to have – an ability to grow crops. As far as other curses and punishments go, this one seems to be about the most accurate in in terms of punishment befitting the crime. It’s still harsh by modern standards but being made into a beggar gets Cain off pretty easily by biblical standards. 

And Cain said to the Lord, "This punishment is too hard for me to bear. You are driving me off the land and away from your presence. I will be a homeless wanderer on the earth, and anyone who finds me will kill me." But the Lord answered, "No. If anyone kills you, seven lives will be taken in revenge." So, the Lord put a mark on Cain to warn anyone who met him not to kill him. And Cain went away from the Lord's presence and lived in a land called "Wandering," which is east of Eden.

This is where things start getting a bit weird, chronology-wise. Cain is afraid that someone will kill him. Who? As far as we know, Adam and Eve are the only two people on the planet so far. If he talking about future people? In that case, he’d still have a good 30 years or so head start. But God doesn’t seem to notice this either. Or maybe he’s just setting his mind at ease.

Also, how would people know what the mark on Cain meant? Yes, all the people speak the same language at this point in the bible so they could get the information verbally, but that is an unreliable method of getting what seems to be a pretty important message across. Maybe God just put the information into their brain, in which case he’s interfering in the free will of man when it would have been far simpler to just interfere in Cain’s brain before any of this happened.

And so, we reach the end of another Guide. Next time we’ll look at the descendants of Cain and ponder where he got a wife from.

An Athiests Guide to the Bible: The Disobedience of Man (including “God Pronounces Judgement” and “Adam and Eve are sent out of the Garden”)

In the previous Guide we looked at the Garden of Eden as a place, now we are looking at the events that transpired there, according to the biblical narrative. As per previous Guides, I will look at the scientific likelihood, as well as the actual biblical story and how it fits within the scheme of other stories within the bible. So, let’s jump in …

Now the snake was the most cunning animal that the Lord God had made. The snake asked the woman, "Did God really tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?"

Well, I’ve never met a talking snake and we have quite a few species here in Australia, so I can’t speak to the veracity of this claim but if God is all-powerful then it’s very possible for him to make a snake able to talk or a woman able to understand snake. But all-knowing God didn’t know that in making the snake, this would happen? And we know that God supposedly endowed humans with free will, but did he do this for other creatures, too?

"We may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden," the woman answered, "except the tree in the middle of it. God told us not to eat the fruit of that tree or even touch it; if we do, we will die."

First off, God told Adam not to eat the fruit, now it’s that they can’t eat or even touch it? Me thinks God keeps moving the goalposts, or did the writers add a little flourish? We keep coming back to this duel idea of the bible being the word of God, in which case it should have no changes, additions, or contradictions, or it’s a book written by man to be used to explain a world they couldn’t explain and to control a population by appealing to a higher authority.

The snake replied, "That's not true; you will not die. God said that because he knows that when you eat it, you will be like God and know what is good and what is bad."

Again, God’s all-knowing/all-powerful vibe is taking severe hit because, even with the idea of free will, God has to know what every single possibility will be, yet he still created this as a possibility. Now the snakes calls out God as a lie, and is ultimately proven right, meaning that the snake could be seen as the good guy in this story, telling the truth, while God has lied from the get go.

The woman saw how beautiful the tree was and how good its fruit would be to eat, and she thought how wonderful it would be to become wise. So, she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, and he also ate it. As soon as they had eaten it, they were given understanding and realized that they were naked; so, they sewed fig leaves together and covered themselves.

In this section we find a small contradiction. In the previous Guide the tree was named – The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is often shortened to the Tree of Knowledge and the passage above certainly implies that it is simply knowledge that is gained from eating the fruit, yet why be so specific only a few paragraphs earlier in naming it Knowledge of Good and Evil? While it might not seem be too much of a difference, the knowledge of everything that God knows is vastly more than simply the knowledge of good and evil.

Regardless of whether we take the knowledge to be of everything or just good and evil, the realisation of nakedness is written as a bad thing, and we know from other passages in the bible that anything to do with sex, genitals or the like is regarded as sinful. It starts early in the bible, as we can see, and doesn’t let up. Whatever knowledge the tree has given to Adam and Eve has been placed within the tree by God, so God is responsible for not only their nakedness for it being seen as evil or sinful.

That evening they heard the Lord God walking in the garden, and they hid from him among the trees. But the Lord God called out to the man, "Where are you?" He answered, "I heard you in the garden; I was afraid and hid from you, because I was naked." "Who told you that you were naked?" God asked. "Did you eat the fruit that I told you not to eat?" The man answered, "The woman you put here with me gave me the fruit, and I ate it." The Lord God asked the woman, "Why did you do this?" She replied, "The snake tricked me into eating it."

Problem number one is that when Adam and Eve hide from God, he apparently doesn’t know where they are, and has to call out to them. This whole passage reads as a parent who knows their child has done something wrong and is playing dumb. It seems a little petty for an all-knowing God to be playing such a human mind-trick on Adam and Eve.

But then problem number two is that Eve lies. The snake doesn’t trick her. He was absolutely truthful. Why does she lie? Surely having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, and now being as wise as God, she knows that God is all-knowing and will surely know she is lying. It’s a bizarre circumstance.

Then the Lord God said to the snake, "You will be punished for this; you alone of all the animals must bear this curse: From now on you will crawl on your belly, and you will have to eat dust as long as you live. I will make you and the woman hate each other; her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite her offspring's heel."

Here we come back to the scientific inaccuracies of the bible. All-knowing God curses the snake to crawl on its belly, which it does, and to eat dirt, which it clearly does not. It sounds more metaphorical than a literal eating of dirt, but did the people who wrote the bible know what snakes eat, or did they actually assume that snakes ate dirt?

The idea of snakes and humans being enemies is also somewhat dubious. It is highly likely that an innate fear of snakes, due to many of them being poisonous, is responsible for this part of the curse. We also know that many people are not afraid of snakes or, at least, a live and let live relationship with them. The concept that all of Eve’s offspring would be afraid of snakes is obviously not true, yet all-knowing God says it will be.

Lastly, I’m not sure that snakes are particularly afraid of humans, and probably have not enough brain power to come up with the idea of any other species as being an enemy. Snakes, depending on species, are only aggressive when threatened. I once went bushwalking through a local national park and came across and red-bellied black snake sunning itself on the path. I am not particularly afraid of snakes but I live in Australia and many, including red-bellied blacks, are poisonous so I have a healthy respect for their abilities. My first thought wasn’t to kill the snake, I was in its territory. I just waited for it to slither off into the bush and continued on my way. It wasn’t worried about me and I wasn’t worried about it, we just avoided each other.

And he said to the woman, "I will increase your trouble in pregnancy and your pain in giving birth. In spite of this, you will still have desire for your husband, yet you will be subject to him."

This part annoys me, as a woman. First of all, God lied to Adam and Eve when he told them they’d die the same day if they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Then he doles out a punishment far in excess of what the “crime” calls for. This makes God out to be a petty, vengeful god with no moderation or sympathy. Also, God is clearly male or created by males, with the style or explanation of the punishment – pain for something only women can go through and subjugation.

And he said to the man, "You listened to your wife and ate the fruit which I told you not to eat. Because of what you have done, the ground will be under a curse. You will have to work hard all your life to make it produce enough food for you. It will produce weeds and thorns, and you will have to eat wild plants. You will have to work hard and sweat to make the soil produce anything, until you go back to the soil from which you were formed. You were made from soil, and you will become soil again."

And what is God’s punishment for Adam, who is just as culpable as Eve? A bit of hard work in the garden. A bit of weeding, and cultivating the land. Doesn’t quite seem fair. As I have already mentioned, the bible has a misogynistic bent throughout its entire duration, and that misogyny has pervaded Christian culture to this day.

I have to say, not all Christians are misogynistic, but many do cling to the tenants set out in the bible which has caused many problems all over the world. I’m not even talking about extremists, or fundamentalists. We will deal with different reactions to events that go against biblical societal norms as we continue through the bible with these Guides.

Adam named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all human beings. And the Lord God made clothes out of animal skins for Adam and his wife, and he clothed them. Then the Lord God said, "Now these human beings have become like one of us and have knowledge of what is good and what is bad. They must not be allowed to take fruit from the tree that gives life, eat it, and live forever."

So, now we’re back to the knowledge being that of good and bad. This explains why God had to make clothes for Adam and Eve, rather than the fig leaves they were wearing since eating the fruit, because they haven’t become wise like God, as described earlier. We also find God using the word “us” implying other God-like beings. This is completely in line with religions which predate Christianity and Judaism. The God of the bible is just one of many Gods or God-like beings. This actually makes far more sense than monotheism and we’ll talk about the idea of monotheism versus polytheism when we get to the ten commandments.

Also, what’s the deal with Adam and Eve not having eaten from the Tree of Life already? If I were in the Garden of Eden and was told there was a tree which made you live forever, it’d probably be the first tree I’d eat from. But the bible is full of these little oddities.

So, the Lord God sent them out of the Garden of Eden and made them cultivate the soil from which they had been formed. Then at the east side of the garden he put living creatures and a flaming sword which turned in all directions. This was to keep anyone from coming near the tree that gives life.

God is really weird. Instead of removing the Tree of Life to avoid tempting anyone to get to it, he put a flaming sword and some creatures there to protect it. Obviously, it’s a powerful sword because it was created by God, but of all the things he could have done, why a flaming sword? And which living creatures? Dragons? That’d be pretty cool. Moths? Not exactly the scariest of creatures. A large 3 headed dog like in Greek mythology? We’ll never know, I suppose.

In the end, this part of the bible is a way to explain certain things in life – like pain during child birth and the need to cultivate the land – and to give an excuse for the ongoing degradation of women by painting them as weak in being “tricked” by the snake and to continue the subjugation of women as it’s their curse and God’s will (as opposed to allowing themselves to be governed by the free will given to them by God.)

Until, next week …

An Athiest's Guide to the Bible: The Garden of Eden

We’ve covered off the first several billion years (or 6000 years, depending on which camp you’re in) of Earth’s history in the previous Guide. Now we’re going into a bit more detail with the Garden of Eden. We’re looking at the mechanics of the Garden of Eden, not the events: that comes next in the next Guide.

When the Lord God made the universe, there were no plants of the earth and no seeds had sprouted, because he had not sent any rain, and there was no-one to cultivate the land; but water would come up from beneath the surface and water the ground.

Again, we have this conjoining of the universe and planet Earth. In the bible, the Earth is the entire universe. We could be even more narrow in our interpretation, and state that the Middle East in the entire universe because, for all intents and purposes, the writers of the bible didn’t travel much so had no idea of what was outside of their sphere of influence.

Also, the idea that rain is the only source of water above ground is nonsense as we know of many plants which collect water from the atmosphere in the form of condensation.

Lastly, plants don’t necessarily need cultivating to survive. Many areas of the world are not cultivated by humans, some not even inhabited by humans. We know, scientifically, that plants existed long before even simple animal forms, therefor cultivation is a redundant idea when talking generally about plants. Cultivation, in fact, is only needed when plants are grown as crops for consumption.

Then the Lord God took some soil from the ground and formed a man out of it; he breathed life-giving breath into his nostrils and the man began to live. Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the East, and there he put the man he had formed.

Laying aside the physical impossibility of soil turning into flesh, if we agree that the God of the Bible is all powerful (read: magic) then it is within the realms of possibility that this God could fashion a human out of soil. It’s not an uncommon device for gods from various cultures to fashion humans out of soil, clay or rock of some sort.

It’s also entirely possible for that god to create a garden in which the human they’ve just created can live. The God of the Bible is not only all powerful but all knowing, so they knew that man would need somewhere to live and something to eat.

He made all kinds of beautiful trees grow there and produce good fruit. In the middle of the garden stood the tree that gives life and the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad.

In the midst of this garden are these two trees. Of course, no evidence has been found for the existence of either of these trees but the concept of them is fascinating. If I were creating paradise for the creature I had just created I’d want there to be a tree which gives life to those who eat its fruits. Seems pretty reasonable. Then there’s this other tree: the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad (hereafter known as the tree of knowledge). You’d think knowledge would be a wonderful thing for this creature, this human, to have, especially as you’ve given them the task of naming everything. But it’s not just any knowledge, which might be useful. It’s knowledge of good and bad. But we’ll come back to this in a moment.

A stream flowed in Eden and watered the garden; beyond Eden it divided into four rivers. The first river is the Pishon; it flows around the country of Havilah (pure gold is found there and also rare perfume and precious stones.) The second river is the Gihon; it flows around the country of Cush. The third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates.

There is some debate about the exact location of the Garden of Eden, given than only two of the rivers listed are still called what they are in the Bible: the Tigris and the Euphrates. What became of the Pishon and the Gihon rivers is a mystery, as they are no marked on any modern maps. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers join in modern day Iraq, near Basra.

Flowing south is the Shatt al-Arab River, also known as Arvand Rud, which runs into the Persian Gulf. This could be the original stream that flowed through the Garden of Eden. A possibility of some note for the Pishon Rover is the Karun River which joins the Shatt al-Arab River at Khorramshahr in Iran. The Gihon River is somewhat harder to nail down. There are several canals which could follow the paths of ancient rivers. It is entirely possible that the river simply no longer exists.

Some biblical scholars get around this ambiguity by arguing that the flood of Noah’s time (which we will come to in subsequent Guides) has altered the landscape so much that the terrain of the present bears little resemblance to that of the time of the Garden of Eden. I would argue that, given the Bible was written after Noah’s time, the writers might have been able to at least given a more accurate description, with the modern equivalents named in conjunction, especially as it is supposed to be the unerring word of God.

Still others conjecture that it is impossible to tell where the Garden of Eden really was because, when Noah and his descendants named all the places post flood, they could have simply done as early British colonialists did and named things after what they were familiar with, and so the rivers known as the Tigris and the Euphrates might not be in the same location as they were pre-flood, just like there is Wales in the United Kingdom and New South Wales in Australia. This means that the original rivers could have been anywhere in the world. It’s a convenient loophole, if you ask me.

So, where was Eden? Nobody really knows but, if you take the position of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as they are now, and take the Karun river to be the modern name of the Pishon River, the Garden of Eden was probably located somewhere in the region of the Khuzestan Province of Iran, possibly stretching as far as the Persian Sea.

Then the Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it. He told him, "You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad. You must not eat the fruit of that tree; if you do, you will die the same day."

This passage raises two questions. The first being, why didn’t God want the human he has created and placed into the Garden to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? Surely, with God being all knowing, he could see what was going to happen and wouldn’t put temptation in the way. That’s what I’d do, anyway. As a mother, I wouldn’t put a whole plate of cakes in front of my child and tell them they could eat any of the cakes except the one with blue icing, and then be surprised when they ate the one with the blue icing. The caveat, of having said that they’ll die if they do means very little, because the first human would have no concept of death any more than a very young child does.

The second question I have is with exactly the caveat I just mentioned simply because it’s not true. We’ll come to the whole eating of the apple in the next Guide but I will touch on it now. Adam, being that first human that God created and told not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, didn’t die the same day as eating the apple. We know this because the bible mentions his expulsion from the garden and his children, etc. We could take dying in a more metaphorical sense. This could lend some plausibility to the die-the-same-day concept. It could be taken in a “you’re dead to me” way, in that God rejected them, much as those loving Christians reject their atheist offspring. It could also mean that on that day, Adam brought the concept of death to himself and that previously he was immortal. Either way, it’s a pretty harsh punishment for eating an apple. But we’ll discuss that more in the next Guide.

Then the Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to live alone. I will make a suitable companion to help him." So, he took some soil from the ground and formed all the animals and all the birds. Then he brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and that is how they all got their names.

Now, I don’t know about you but, if I were God, I wouldn’t leave it to a human to name all of my creations. Humans are notoriously bad at naming things. This is why we have scientific names for things, because people are really, really bad at naming things properly. Take the mantis shrimp, for example. It is neither a mantis, nor a shrimp. It falls directly into the say-what-you-see category of naming things. If I were God, I’d get so cranky at Adam for getting all the names so badly wrong, I’d kick him out of the garden for that.

So, the man named all the birds and all the animals; but not one of them was a suitable companion to help him. Then the Lord God made the man fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took out one of the man's ribs and closed up the flesh. He formed a woman out of the rib and brought her to him. Then the man said, "At last, here is one of my own kind - Bone taken from my bone, and flesh from my flesh. "Woman' is her name because she was taken out of man." That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one. The man and the woman were both naked, but they were not embarrassed.

And so, we come to the creation of the as yet unnamed Eve. All powerful god couldn’t just make a woman out of soil, like he did Adam. Don’t be silly, that’d just make another man. He had to take a bone from Adam, obviously one that was superfluous to requirements, to do that. Did God not know how DNA works? What he was essentially doing was creating a clone of Adam. Now, I’m not up with the latest cloning techniques but I do know that if you clone a male, you’re going to get a male. So, this whole bone being necessary to avoid God just making another man is completely absurd, because of the laws of cloning and because, well, God is all powerful. It’s also bizarre to me that God didn’t realise earlier on when he was creating all the companion animals for Adam than none of them were going to work.

The last part of this passage is really odd. They were naked but not embarrassed. Well, they’d only just been created, so they didn’t know what embarrassment was, or nakedness for that fact, just like babies. And being embarrassed over nakedness is very much a social construct, not an inherently human one. Again, we’ll deal with this a bit more in the next Guide as we deal with consequences of eating the forbidden fruit. The concept of concealing the human form as a way to hide nakedness is a fairly recent idea. Early man used clothing in a far more practical manner, for protection from the weather. Even today, we see tribal societies who wear little to no clothes and have no concept of embarrassment about the human form, much to the horror of many a Christian missionary.

Next week, we’ll dissect the story of the disobedience of man, where Adam and Eve eat an apple at the behest of a talking snake.

An Athiests Guide to the Bible: The Story of Creation

In the beginning, when God created the universe ...

Well, that's a interesting way to start. Regardless of which version of the bible you read, they all start with this idea. That God created the universe. But what is God? Not who. What. Is the Christian god a physical being, an incorporeal consciousness or an idea dreamt up by man? Obviously, if it's the third option, then the whole concept of the bible is severely put in doubt. The idea that an idea could create anything is, quite frankly ludicrous.

So if we are to believe that the bible is not simply a book written by man to explain that which they do not understand, then God must be either a physical being or an incorporeal consciousness. If God were a physical being, you would think that someone would have spotted him. We have some very smart scientists, high ranking religious clergy, philosophers, and all manner of extraordinarily intelligent people in the world. None of them have shown any physical evidence for the undoubted existence of God as a corporeal being.

That leaves us with God being an incorporeal consciousness. So how do you prove the existence of something that has no physical presence? Well, the short answer is, you can't. And that's the mistake that so many people make about atheism. Atheism in it's purest form is the rejection of the belief in any god because we see no evidence for it, mainly because much of the argument for any god is exactly the same argument for any other god, and they can't all be correct.

Anyway, for the purposes of this post (and future Guide posts) let's assume that the Christian God of the bible I hold in my hand for the purposes of writing this series is an incorporeal consciousness. Now that we've defined what God is, we must define what the universe is. So let's see what my bible says about that ...

In the beginning, when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulphed in total darkness, and the power of God was moving over the water. Then God commanded, "Let there be light" - and light appeared. God was please with what he saw. Then he separated the light from the darkness, and he named the light "Day and the darkness "Night." Evening passed and the morning came - that was the first day.

As someone who trusts the scientific explanation for the beginning of the known universe, this biblical explanation is troublesome. The first way in which is troubling is that is doesn't say how the universe was created. Of course, the bible was written at a time when physics of any description wasn't a thing. Even science struggles with the creation of the universe, so this isn't a criticism of the writers of the bible so much as a criticism of interpreters of the bible who think that a description of the beginning of the solar system is the equivalent of the a description of the beginning of the unknown universe.

The next troubling aspect is that the earth was created before light. Science tells us that the sun formed before the earth. The Sun has been around for around 5 billion years. The earth, young thing that it is, is only about 4.5 billion years. To give some context to just how young our solour system (and our earth is), the known universe itself is just under 14 billion years old. So it's not a great start for the bible.

The last bit that troubles me is the separation of light and dark to create day and night. We know that the sun provides the light for the earth and that the spin of the earth gives us day and night. We also know that there is not a distinct separation between light and dark because as the sun sets over the horizon the amount of visible light from the sun lessens, the reverse happening at sunrise. At its extremes we see how difference night and day are but it is extraordinarily hard for ordinary human beings to pick the point where day actually turns into night because, despite there being a time for sunset, the minute (or even the second) after that time is not exactly night, there still being light from the sun visible even thought the sun itself is not.

The bible continues ...

Then God commanded, "Let there be a dome to divide the water and to keep it in two separate places" - and it was done. So God made a dome, and it separated the water under it from the water above it. He named the dome "Sky." Evening passed and morning came - that was the end of the second day.

You can, naturally, imagine the writers of the bible looking at the sky and thinking that, because the sky was blue and the water was blue, there must be water above the sky to give it the colour. Today, many Christians will tell you that the dome is actually just the edge of the atmosphere in an effort to marry their faith and science. It fails to answer what the water above actually is and where it is located.

Then God commanded, "Let the water below the sky come together in one place, so that the land will appear" - and it was done. He named the land "Earth," and the water which had come together he named "Sea." And God was pleased with what he saw.

As far as the bible goes, this part I don't really have a problem with. We have earth and water. Ok, the water isn't just called sea, but oceans and lakes and rivers and all manner of different things. This is largely by the by, and if you're picking up on this point as something to argue against the validity of the bible, I think you're probably being a bit picky and a lot petty.

Then he commanded, "Let the earth produce all kinds of plants, those that bear grain and those that bear fruit" - and it was done. So the earth produced all kind of plants, and God was pleased with what he saw. Evening passed and morning came - that was the third day.

At this point, I have to leave what the bible actually says for a moment and remark upon the utter lack of creative thought that went into the writing of the bible. It feels like it was written by a small schoolchild who has been tasked with writing a narrative for the first time. It is very dry, almost procedural. The texts that engage people the best are not manuals but those where language engages the reader on a psychological and emotional level. The bible does neither.

Then God commanded, "Let lights appear in the sky to separate day from night and to show the time when days, years, and religious festivals begin; they will shine in the sky to give light to the earth" - and it was done. So God made the two larger lights, the sun to rule over the day and the moon to rule over the night; he also made the stars. He placed the lights in the sky to shine on the earth, to rule over the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God was pleased with what he saw. Evening passed and morning came - that was the fourth day.

And this is where we go HANG ON A MINUTE! There is so much wrong with this passage. Not just in relation to the actual science of reality but simply as a consistent narrative. Let's start with the science. The moon is not a light in that it doesn't produce it's own light. It reflects the light of the sun, that's why we get eclipses. Also, the sun and moon and stars are not equidistant from Earth.

The moon is 384,400km from Earth.
The sun is 150,440,000km from Earth.
The nearest star is 4.37 light years from Earth.

The idea that all those things are attached to a dome over the earth is, given current scientific knowledge, absurd. Most Christians understand this. Most Christians have given away with a literal interpretation of the bible. They still believe that God created everything but they make the distinction between the difference in the understanding of man at the time of writing the bible and now, so far as to say that the people who wrote the bible didn't understand how God did it, so they made it up. My counterpoint is always that if they made up that bit, could they not just have made up the whole thing?

Apart from the lack of scientific reality, there is a huge disruption to the chronological progression of the narrative. On day one God created light but didn't create the sun until day four? This doesn't make any sense. Also, God separated the light and dark on day one but he's doing it again on day four? Did he forget? If he didn't forget, what was creating the light on day one and how was that different from the light the sun? This is but one of many contradictions or anomalies in the bible and we'll get to many of them in this series but let's move on ...

Then God commanded, "Let the water be filled with many kinds of living beings, and let the air be filled with birds." So God created the great sea monsters , all kinds of creatures that live in the water, and all kinds of birds. And God was pleased with what he saw. He blessed them all and told the creatures that live in the water to reproduce and to fill the sea, and he told the birds to increase in number. Evening passed and morning came - that was the fifth day.

Scientifically speaking, fish and birds were not even close to being the first living creatures. Maybe the writers of the bible just didn't think the previous creatures were important. The first creatures on earth were single celled organisms. OK, we are just repeating the argument that the writers of the bible probably didn't have any idea about science but this leads to a questioning of the concept that the bible is the direct word of God. If it's the direct word of God and the writers are simple transcribing it, then surely God would understand the science and be able to explain it in a way that the writers understood, without the huge gaps and errors, and why did God wait thousands of years between creating humans and starting his book? But I digress. Lets push on, we still have two days to go!

Then God commanded , "Let the earth produce all kinds of animal life; domestic and wild, large and small" - and it was done. So God made them all, and he was pleased with what he saw. Then God said, "And now we will make human beings; they will be like us and resemble us. They will have power over the fish , the birds and all animals, domestic and wild, large and small." So God created human beings, making them to be like himself. He created them male and female, blessed them, and said, "Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control. I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds and all the wild animals. I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat; But for all the wild animals and for all the birds I have provided grass and leafy plants for food" - and it was done. God looked at everything he had made, and he was very pleased. Evening passed and morning came - that was the sixth day.

As a writer who got a distinction in grammar, I get very cranky when texts are not consistent in their tense or their pronouns. Here God refers to himself as we/us. There are a few explanations:

(a) There are many gods or God is talking to the angels.
(b) There's only one God but he's referring to the holy trinity
(c) There's only one God but he's using the royal "we"
(d) The writers stuffed up

If we are taking the atheistic position, this is clearly a stuff up by the writers. If we're taking the Christian position, it could be any of the other possibilities. This is not ever really reconciled. What is also not reconciled is that if God makes humans to be as himself, why are we not incorporeal consciousnesses? The fact that we have physical form could mean that this is the image the God has of himself or that God has a physical form. Going back to the opening of this post, if God had a physical form we, as a species, would have discovered a trace of it by now, one would think.

And so the whole universe was completed. By the seventh day God finished what he had been doing and stopped working. He blessed the seventh day and set it apart as a special day, because by that day he had completed his creation and stopped working. And that is how the universe was created.

Well, the solar system is not the universe, so that's a bit of a reach on behalf of the writers to claim that. It's not even all of the solar system, if we're being truthful. And there's not much of an explanation of the how, either. This is a huge problem I have with most religions, not just Christianity. God did it is not an explanation worthy of any enquiring mind, even if it was fundamentally true. If I built an amazing Lego world and someone asked you how it was made, and your answer was, "Nona did it" that would be true but not an explanation of how it was made.

But let's look at the story of Creation as a whole. It took 7 days. According to the bible, they were Earth Days as evening came at the end of each day, so seven lots of  24 and a bit hours going by current time telling techniques. But was it? Scientific studies of the bible have speculated that perhaps each day was an era, not a strict day as we know it. This is marginally closer to reality in that it allows time for evolution to take place but doesn't do anything to explain this process meaning that they thought this was unimportant, it didn't happen or the writers had no concept of it.

If you subscribe to a literal interpretation of the bible, you must deny the science that contradicts it and all the evidence which supports the science. I have talked to people both in real life and online who fall into this category. I have no problem with their belief in God but I do take issue with their rejection of evidence-based scepticism.

In the next Guide, in a few days time, we will look at the story of the Garden of Eden: its location and what it looked like. We will deal with the disobedience of man in the subsequent post.

An Atheists guide to the Bible: Prologue

As most of you will know, I don’t believe in a higher power such as any of the gods currently purported to exist. I don’t know if one exists but, given the evidence currently available, I come down firmly on the “does not exist” side of the fence.

This makes me both agnostic (I don’t know) and atheist (I don’t believe).

Some of you will think this makes me destined for hell, and I don’t really care because I don’t believe in hell. I figure that I’ve been a fairly good person (everyone has their moments) and that any supposedly loving god would take that into account over unquestioning devotion. And, if hell exists and I’m going there, I’ll be in pretty good company, with all the other atheists and non-believers anyway.

Why don’t I believe in a higher power? For the same reason I don’t believe in leprechauns, unicorns and mermaids: there’s no reliable, scientific evidence.

Some of you, if you are religious, probably know atheists but (like many of the religious people I encounter online) haven’t really discussed what it is to be atheist, or your knowledge of what an atheist is comes from what other religious people tell you it is. In many cases, this brings with it a ton of misconceptions and mistruths.

So here is the one (and only) defining characteristic of an atheist that we all share:

We don’t believe in any higher power.

That’s it. Every atheist you meet is different. There’s no “atheist charter” that we follow. It’s not a religion, with prescribed rituals. Atheists are as diverse a group as you’re ever likely to find. Some atheists are downright arseholes. Some atheists are the loveliest people you’re going to meet. Some atheists are intelligent. Some atheists aren’t. Some atheists are scientists. Some are teachers. Some are receptionists. Some are CEOs. Some are homeless and unemployed. Some struggle with mental illness. Some do not. Some are vocal about their atheism. Some, you would never know.

And most atheists would change their stance in the face of compelling evidence. What do I mean by compelling evidence? Something that cannot be explained by any other means and stands up to scientific scrutiny. It’s the same criteria that we use for gravity. If you don’t believe in gravity, I invite you to explain why you can’t fly and why objects fall when dropped through a medium less dense than they are.

If, after reading this, your reaction is to say, “yeah, well, you can’t explain where the universe came from and everything needs a creator, so therefore god did it” my response is as follows:

No, I don’t know how the universe came to exist and it doesn’t bother me at all. If everything needs a creator then who or what created your god? If your god can hypothetically exist outside of the realm of known science and not have a creator then so can any potential scientific reason for the beginning of the universe. You can’t have it both ways.

And, even if a higher power does exist, who’s to say you picked the right one? There are thousands of gods. Which one is the right one? You don’t believe it’s possible for any of the others to be the right god, so what’s the difference between me and you? I believe in one less god that you? Ok. So what? Maybe we’re both wrong.

Over the next 12 months, I will be studying the bible as if it is a literal and historic document. I will be looking at some of the major events of the bible which literalists claim to be true and seeing if they are possible given the scientific knowledge we have now.

There are many versions of the bible so I will be using The Good News Bible, printed by The Bible Society in Australia in 1986 which takes its translation from The American Bible Society 1976, as my main point of reference.

I will also be looking online for any major discrepancies between the versions, including The New King James Bible (1982) and The New International Standard Bible (2005).

But why the Bible? Because it’s what I am most familiar with. The bible I’m predominantly using is the one I was given in Sunday School as a child. It’s the very text I read when I began to question the existence of the Christian God, at 7 years old. You could say it’s one of the books that made me an atheist.