I Have A Problem With Creationism (Part 3)

I Have A Problem With Creationism: the literal truth of the Bible.

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As I understand it, most Creationists hold the belief that the Bible is absolutely true. I disagree; I believe the Bible is flawed in a number of ways and I also believe it is a poor moral guide and is, as a result, not in fact the foundation of our current moral code.

"How is the bible flawed?" I hear you cry. Allow me tell you...

• 1 Kings 7:23 says, He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it. With a diameter of 10 cubits and a circumference of 30, this puts the ratio of the circumference to the diameter at 3. This figure is, of course, actually 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510 and so on. Using the correct value for Pi means that the 10 cubit diameter circle should, in fact, have a circumference of a little over 31.4 cubits. The Bible is therefore out by 1.4 cubits which, according to Google, is 2.1 feet. This is quite a large error; I would expect to be out by fractions of an inch, which is about 33 times smaller than the actual error. Clearly the Bible is not perfect, which throws into question its literal truth...
• On the subject of morals: Exodus 2:11-12 says, One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labour. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. which doesn't strike me as an appropriate reference for the right way to break up a fight. I certainly wouldn't want my hypothetical children following Moses' example in this instance, regardless of how much he regretted it afterwards.
• A slightly more facetious point is that the story behind most Holy Books is that a God or Gods dictated them to men; which is to say it was men that created the physical books. Now ask any woman and she'll tell you that men never listen. And this leads us to the problem: if men did the physical writing, and men never listen, then surely the Bible would be a poor record of the points God was trying to get across...
• Back to morals: Genesis 9:1 says, Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth., which, given how few people were around at the time, seems to be God promoting incest.
• Still sticking with morals: In Exodus 20:13 God says to Moses, Thou shalt not kill, yet after Moses comes back down from the mountain and finds everyone worshipping a golden calf, Exodus 32:27-28 says, Then he said to them, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbour.'" The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. I have difficulty reconciling those two...
• Leviticus 25:44-45 says, Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property., which appears to be God permitting slavery, and I'm sure Mr King would have had a thing or two to say about that...
• Exodus 35:1-3 says, Moses assembled the whole Israelite community and said to them, "These are the things the LORD has commanded you to do: For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it must be put to death. Do not light a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day." If the Bible is literally true, why then are there not packs of Christian Fundamentalists roaming the streets looking for shops that are open on Sundays and putting the staff to death? The answer, of course, is that the Bible is a poor moral guide. How can I say this? Because if my morals came from the Bible, then my morals would include killing people for working on Sundays and I would not think this wrong. Since I, and I should hope Society as a whole, thinks this is in fact wrong then our morals clearly cannot come from the Bible, because we need a non-Biblical point of reference to be able to pick out the morally justifiable sections of the Bible and to disregard the morally reprehensible sections.

On a lighter note, this next quotation isn't relevant to my point but is merely amusing. The stereotypical US courtroom "swearing" is placing your hand on the Bible and answering the question "Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?". However, in Matthew 5:33-37 Jesus says, Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, "Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord." But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.. Therefore, swearing on the Bible is - ironically - un-Christian, which is why - I believe - Quakers refuse to take oaths on the Bible. At least someone's paying attention...

One likely counter to this argument is that the Bible requires interpretation. However that just proves my point: If the Bible were literally true, it would be literally true and wouldn't need interpreting. If it does, then it clearly can't be literally true. Taking the "interpretation" viewpoint and running with it, it is entirely possibly that the bit at the beginning about God creating everything in 6 days and then taking a break was meant to be interpreted as "This book was written a number of millennia ago by people that had little to no knowledge of 21st Century Science. We came up with this story to explain something we couldn't explain any other way. When you advance sufficiently far enough to come up with a Theory based on observation and testing rather than the supernatural then you are welcome to discard our narrative and move on."

It's like a lie-to-children: They had to think God Did It so they could stop worrying about where the Universe came from and concentrate on figuring out what really happened...

Evolution vs Creationism Poll

This seemed like a appropriate thing to create...

If you can't see the form, try going here. You'll have to refresh the page before the chart will update, but make sure you don't accidentally resubmit the form...

Validation and Part 3 Update

Part 1 on YouTube recently had a comment from a Creationist! I feel validated.

I finished Part 3 a little over a week ago, but Revver appears to be currently experiencing upload issues and keeps crashing when I try (I've checked the forum; I'm not alone), and YouTube's uploader keeps refusing to believe I've entered a title and description. I'll get there in the end...

Maybe it's not a simple as you think...

I've always got the impression that Christian religions (possibly others; I don't know as much about them...) teach that God gave humans Free Will so we could choose to worship Him, as opposed to the angels who have no Free Will and worship Him "just because". Most denominations also appear to teach that if we don't worship God (or, more often, follow that specific denomination) then we're going to burn in Hell for all eternity when our respective numbers are up.

So it appears that we are supposed to use our God-given Free Will to choose between eternal bliss or eternal suffering. That doesn't strike me as a choice; that seems more like manipulation. If there's a bribe or the threat of torture then it's not really a choice.

Looking at the situation, the only logical solution (and possibly the choice God wants us to make, since it's an actual choice) appears to be to say, "No! That's stupid. I reject your religion, for it seems illogical. I will be good just because. I will be good because 'being good' seems to me to be the right thing to do. I will be good because it is how I would want others to treat me. I will not 'be good' just because you, your religion, or The Big Guy tell me to."

An Atheist who is "being good" does not believe in Hell, but is still behaving himself or herself. Surely that's more impressive than a well behaved Christian with the threat of eternal damnation hovering over them...

I Have A Problem With Creationism (Part 2)

I Have A Problem With Creationism: "God Did It" is an intellectual dead end.

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The argument "God did it" is an intellectual dead end.

For example, if your answer to the question "How is fire created?" is "God does it" then that tells you nothing about how fire is created, and the chances of a prayer for fire yielding fire in a short enough time are very small.

If, however, you don't simply attribute fire to God, then the thought process may go something like this: Fire is hot; I can tell that by approaching it. Perhaps heat is required. How can I generate heat? When I'm cold I rub my hands together to warm them; rubbing obviously causes heat. My hands have never caught on fire; hands must not be able to create fire. Perhaps something that burns can create fire. Wood burns; what happens if I try rubbing two sticks together?

And so on.

"God did it" is, of course, only a problem if the entirety of your explanation is "God did it"; it is still possible to believe God made something if your next thought is trying to figure out how God made it work. For example: How is fire created? God does it. Through what mechanism does God create fire? Fire is hot; perhaps God uses heat to create fire. Fire is a useful tool; how can I generate heat to create fire?

And so on.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Universe works as Science describes it. Although I do not believe in a god, if I did then I would believe He created the Universe with the intention that it functions as Science has discovered.

I Have A Problem With Creationism (Part 1)

I Have A Problem With Creationism: the apparent impotence of the Abrahamic God.

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As I see it, in the west, there are two main views on the topic of the creation of Everything: The Scientific explanation is the Big Bang etc. and the Creationism explanation is God snapping His fingers and Everything appearing in a crowd-pleasing puff of smoke.

Somewhat facetious, but anyway...

This is where I have a problem: according to my understanding of Science the Big Bang happened and hydrogen appeared. Then – as determined by Physics and a simplistic overview of the events – the hydrogen collected together and became stars which ran on nuclear fusion and created a few heavier elements. These stars then exploded, scattering the heavier elements and any remaining hydrogen. These then gathered together into more stars which produced even heavier elements, and then exploded. Finally stars formed again, but this time there were heavier elements which formed the planets orbiting around them. Now if we focus on one particular planet orbiting (for the sake of argument) a class G star at a distance of (just so we have a number to work with) about 93 million miles, the planet cools down and interesting things start happening. I admit to being less clear about the overview of this particular few million (or billion, whatever) years, so we shall skip to the amoebas. Eventually the volcanoes and chemical processes on the surface of this planet cause oxygen to appear. Life As We Know It seems to quite like oxygen, so the single-celled amoebas were suddenly presented with more complicated multi-celled organisms that were probably better at finding sources of nutrition. The organisms kept gaining more cells and becoming even better suited to their environment. Then some of them developed cells that were able to detect differences in the quantity of photons coming from the aforementioned star; these probably became quite useful in situations where a drop in the intensity signaled the approach of something that may want to eat you. And eventually some organisms discovered that if these light-sensitive cells were bowed slightly then it was possible to make out shapes and not just average intensity. Then some organisms developed an aperture over this dish which made the shapes clearer. Then some organisms developed a sort of lens-like structure over the aperture, and you finally had an eye after a long line of gradual improvements (but that's a subject for a different argument). And so things kept developing in this way until we get to now.

However according to Creationism, God willed Everything into existence exactly as it was a few thousand years ago and nothing has changed since, except fashion trends, architecture, and the quality of our tools; oh, and Evolution is apparently a lie.

And this is what I have a problem with: the apparent impotence of the Abrahamic God; He is supposedly all-knowing, all-powerful, all-talented, all-this-that-and-the-other. Yet the one thing He is apparently incapable of doing is devising and implementing Evolution.

In each of the following situations, which of the two do you think is more impressive, more awe inspiring, or more worthy of merit and respect:

1. Humans create an incredibly powerful computer; or humans create an incredibly simple computer which is capable of making itself progressively more powerful until it is far more powerful than we could have ever made it.
2. Someone uses a Game of Life applet to create as realistic a rendition of the Mona Lisa as it is possible to create with two colours; or someone sits down and works out what the simplest starting conditions would be such that the rules of the Game will eventually create the Mona Lisa themselves. (Coincidentally, if anyone can do that I would quite like to see it...)
3. A magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat; or a mummy rabbit and a daddy rabbit, who love each other very much, f**k like rabbits and, by cell division and whatnot, a baby rabbit builds itself.

If I was going to believe in a God, I'd much rather believe in a God that would put the time and effort into figuring out how to get the Universe to create us itself rather than just magically creating us out of nothing.

The point of it all

I've created this blog for two reasons:

1. To accompany and promote my ongoing series of videos talking about why I believe Creationism to be incorrect, and to present more general thoughts on religion that may or may not end up in a future video.
2. Because my main blog is throwing a temper tantrum at the moment, and I wanted an outlet for what is going to be this blog's first real post (after I've posted the first two videos).

I don't know how often this blog will be updated; we'll see how it goes.