Christianity is a monotheistic religion. That means that it relies on a single god figure who is all-knowing (omniscient) and all-powerful (omnipotent). We are introduced to the god figure right at the beginning of the pentateuch (the first five books of the bible). For more information about the start of the story see: Christianity – in the beginning? (a page on this site).
The immediate problem with the Christian god comes about by asking how such a character could exist? Christians hand-wave the question away and state “god is eternal” – which explains nothing. That dismissive answer will never be updated because there is nothing in the source material (the bible) to help with the question. Every single thing that creationists currently know about origins is all that they will ever know.
The same people are not so eager to allow the same hand-waving when they ask atheists how everything could exist without a creator. But think about it carefully. At best, scientists are considering how fundamental particles came into existence, for example the splitting of matter and antimatter (the matter-antimatter asymmetry, or baryon asymmetry). For more details see Baryon asymmetry (a link to Wikipedia). That initial split is believed to have formed the fundamental particles: quarks, leptons, and their antimatter counterparts, along with high-energy photons – all in less than one microsecond of the beginning of the universe.
No one is claiming that those fundamental particles are omniscient or omnipotent. The “dumb” particles took billions of years to transform into modern-day humans (and everything else we can observe). On the other hand, the Christian god is claimed to be omniscient and omnipotent, and therefore (by the very reasoning of Christians) must have had a designer. There is also the problem for Christians about where the matter came from that god used to form everything, however that is also hand-waved away by religious folk.
To be sure, scientists cannot explain every detail of the very beginning of the universe, however theories are chipping away at the problem (see the above link for more details). There is also the theory that the universe is cyclical and therefore our universe formed from one or more previous universes. Of course, that leads to the question about the origins of the previous universes, however the theory does completely remove the need for a god to have created our universe. As the cyclical theory gains more support, the question therefore gets pushed back on the religious folk as to why their god would have first created a previous universe (or many previous universes) so that ours could originate from them? For more details about a cyclic universe, see Cyclic model (a link to Wikipedia).
Who decided that one god was enough? How was it decided which entity would become god? Anyone who has actually read the bible will acknowledge that god shows human traits and foibles in many places. How was it decided that god would have those particular traits and foibles? Would a different starting character have exhibited different traits? To be blunt, as soon as god does something or opens his mouth to speak, limitations and weaknesses emerge, and that challenges the claimed all-knowing aspect of a creator. The guys who wrote the bible made huge mistakes in having their god get involved in everyday events. This page will investigate many of those mistakes, but keep in mind that even one mistake should not arise from an omniscient being.
The mistakes stem from the fact that god was invented by superstitious and ignorant iron-age men. As a result, they had no choice except to limit their god figure to the knowledge they had at the time – which was very little. They also made a mistake in having their god figure interact with people and events, and therefore have to make questionable moral choices. Finally, they made a mistake by using their god figure as a device to assert control over other people, for example by exhibiting favoritism – a ludicrous concept for an omniscient creator of the universe. Those authors were at least partially successful in that they are still asserting control over people, e.g. the fundies of today.
Of course, the Christian god wasn’t so much invented as he was adapted from earlier mythology. That is something that the average fundie will never acknowledge because it strikes at the very heart of the we-were-here-first mentality that is so important when absolutes are being considered. Regardless, it is undeniable that the guys who wrote the bible absolutely took the earlier myths and stories and adapted them to produce a god figure that suited their requirements. They also did that for many of the other characters and events in the bible.
The first five books of the bible : genesis, exodus, leviticus, numbers and deuteronomy (the pentateuch) were thought to have been written and compiled between about 800-550 BCE (and likely finalized around 350 BCE). Think about that, because it’s something that would shock the average fundie who has been fooled into thinking that their “sacred” text fell fully formed from “heaven” as the word of their god (as it is packaged and presented today). Nothing could be further from the truth. It took hundreds of years to be compiled.
It gets worse because we have no idea of what was in the original texts, and that’s because not a single letter of the originals survive. Here’s the best we have for each of the five books (the links are to pages on this web site that analyse each book in great detail):
- genesis. Fragments found in the Dead Sea Scrolls (in the Qumran caves) date to the 1st century BCE.
- exodus. Portions, including the Nash Payrus, date to the 2nd century BCE. Other significant fragments are found in the Dead See Scrolls, circa 250 BCE.
- leviticus. Several manuscripts are found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, circa 250 BCE.
- numbers. Fragments found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, circa 1st century BCE.
- deuteronomy. Fragments found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, circa 2nd or 1st century BCE.
And that leads to a huge problem for those wanting to believe in a god: namely, how could the omniscient creator of the universe (the one who supposedly created two trillion galaxies) put into action a plan to leave his “sacred” word for his beloved creation and … lose the originals? That’s bumbling incompetence. The same god who (supposedly) created the cosmos could have made thousands of copies of the entire bible and have stored them around the world for safekeeping. Egyptian outdoor monuments (created by mankind) have preserved their messages for over 3,000 years, so why didn’t god do likewise?
By the way, we know for a fact that moses was not the author of the five books of the pentateuch. Not only is moses a fictional character, but he also managed to die before the end of book five. The variations in the writing styles in the texts strongly indicate that multiple (unknown) authors were involved. There’s also the niggly little problem of moses supposedly having been involved in the “exodus” (circa 1,350 BCE) and having written the works about them 800 or 900 years later (circa 500 BCE).
However the real problems start when more is understood about the origins of the Christian god – who was also known as yahweh. The guys who invented yahweh (and we don’t know who a single one of those really was) were heavily influenced by earlier near-Eastern, Canaanite, and Mesopotamian mythologies. Those guys decided to merge existing polytheistic ideas (multiple gods) into a new and developing monotheistic (single god) framework.
It’s clear that the authors of the texts believed that yahweh was originally not the supreme creator god, but one of many deities who eventually absorbed the roles of others. Two of those others were “el”, the patriarchal Canaanite god of wisdom and divinity, and “baal”, the Canaanite storm and warrior god. The image of god as an elderly, wise king seated on a throne in heaven stems from earlier portrayals of the Canaanite deity el. The Christian god came to display characteristics of both el and baal.
The biblical texts describe yahweh in human terms – walking in the garden, having a physical body (feet, limbs), and being a localized, warring deity, which is closer to the pagan gods of the ancient Near East.
The opening chapters of Genesis share structural, thematic, and linguistic similarities with Babylonian creation epics which predate the Hebrew bible. The Enuma Elish is the Babylonian creation story and tells of a god creating the world from a divided sea (genesis 1:6, anyone?). The story of Noah’s Ark is remarkably similar to the Babylonian flood story in the earlier Epic of Gilgamesh.
Fundies will “explain” the plagiarism and adaptation by suggesting that all religions are merely describing the same events … with their religion getting it right, of course. It’s strange how they never have an explanation for why their religion was always second when it came to documenting things! What is much more realistic is the explanation that the authors of the bible were keen to kick-start their own religion however they were clever enough not to stray too far from the stories from the past that the masses knew and loved.
(More – coming soon …)
Human characteristics of god.
god being talked out of actions by humans.
god being emotional and unpredictable.