God Hates You: Making Sense of the Bible Read online

  Put into a more humorous way, there is an interesting observation included in a pocket-sized book of quotations titled The Atheist’s Bible. A quote that is not attributed to anyone, but for a citation of an anonymous author, it reads:

  “Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Palaeontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species representing changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing your eyes shut and wailing ‘DOES NOT!’”

  I find it excessively humorous that God made light out of nothing, on the second day, which means he made the heavens and the earth in the dark! Now, if creating everything we know out of nothing wasn’t a challenge enough, he did it in complete darkness. Pretty clever isn’t it? I can’t even write my own name in the dark, let alone create a fucking great big shark.

  God Messes Up The Order

  Irrefutably, the total balls up of the Genesis order of events is the smoking gun for demonstrating that God is the figure of 2000 BC man’s imagination, but in keeping with the spirit of things let’s pretend he did create all of this. Then we must ask, “How?”

  God created light and darkness on day one and the sun and the planets didn’t appear until day four, according to the scripture. So where did the light come from? No sun, no light. Oops!

  On day three he creates all the earth’s vegetation, the plants and the trees, but as we now know God didn’t create the sun until the following day, so how can there be plant life without photosynthesis? Oops!

  Now we run into our very first contradiction, and we are only on page one of the Bible mind you, as God says that on day five he created the birds and animals from nothing more than the water from the oceans, but then in the very next chapter as he is doing a summary of these heady seven days, it is written:

  “Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the land and all the birds of the air.” (Genesis 2:19 NIV)

  God stays on message for less time than President Obama without a teleprompter. I’ve met goldfish with longer short-term memories.

  God Creates Man

  Moving onto the sixth day of his celestial architectural program, God decides to create a human being:

  “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him.” (Genesis 1:27 NIV)

  Think about this for a moment: made in his own image? If we are truly made in his own image then why aren’t we invisible? But clearly I can see you and you can see me, so I think this is another fallacy straight off the bat. And if we do look like him, which of us does he most resemble? Is he Asian? Is he black? Is he an NRA card-carrying member of the Texas branch of the Young Republicans? Or is he somewhat Tokyo metro-sexual in appearance? Does he stand naked in front of the mirror and wish he gave himself an extra inch or two, not that I do that, I’m just saying, ok! And what if he were anything like Bill O’Reilly? Because if he is anything like the white angry men on FOX News then I will violate all of the 10 Commandments right now, grab a gun, shoot myself, assuring myself a place in the sulphur fires of Hell. Ahh, heaven!

  Ok, let’s imagine that God is more like Morgan Freeman’s portrayal in God Almighty, and imagine for a moment that, bam! man is made out of thin air in God’s own image. Right? Wrong! Well, wrong according to the next contradiction, which follows alongside the birds foul up:

  “The Lord God formed the man from the dust on the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7 NIV)

  So, which one is it? Air or dust? Admittedly, I am easily confused but now I am fully flummoxed. We have only travelled a page or two into the Bible and, already, God is contradicting himself. You would think his preamble would be the easy part! Once God has to remember names and locations after receiving all those prayer-mails and knee-mails, it’s bound to get more difficult. At the start of the second chapter, where it is said that God made man before all the plants and trees, we are in led into confusion again. This is in complete contradiction to the first chapter’s claim that wildlife was made on day three and man on day six. Here is the incriminating passage:

  “When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens – and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up – The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground.” (Genesis 2:4-7 NIV)

  It is now at this point that we can see that religion truly was man’s first attempt to explain the natural world. An explanation constrained by the absence of crucial information to explain, what was 4,000 years ago, the inexplicable:

  “Let man rule over the fish and the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all of earth and over all creatures that move along the ground.”

  This evidently demonstrates that man falsely believed that he had dominion over all living things. An excusable false assumption one might make without what we know today about bacteria, microbes and germs, which undoubtedly hold dominion over us. Consider that in thousands of years of medical science, man has only had one success in defeating a solitary virus, small pox, which is certainly a humbling if not a terrifying fact. This is even more daunting when you consider the rapid spread of new pandemics of bird flu and swine flu; illuminating the fragile hold we have as a species on this planet. Furthermore, isn’t it deliciously curious that creationists doubt evolution’s claims but accept, without question, that viruses such as H1N1 display adaptive traits including mutation? To further underscore this point, ask yourself what is providing you comfort at night in relation to combating these viruses: science or religion? Yes, interesting isn’t it? Religion has never proven any scientific discovery wrong, but the same can’t be said the other way around, can it?

  A further mistruth is the Genesis claim that all animals and man were made on the same day; the sixth. We now know this simply to be utterly false through evidence and understanding of palaeontology, carbon dating and radiation dating. 97% of the world’s leading scientists concur that dinosaurs became extinct at least 65 million years before man inhabited the earth. And before you run off into the living room to clutch the ‘Good Book’ as a means of solace, carbon dating is real, just ask my friend Lewis Black:

  “And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to point out – for the benefit of the religious naysayers out there – carbon dating is real. It can help us tell how old something is. It can place things in time. THIS SHIT ISN’T MADE UP! You can carbon-date an object and it gives you a sense of how it is because of the carbon in it. No one is making these numbers up. It’s not mumbo jumbo. THE EARTH IS OLDER THAN SIX THOUSAND YEARS, SO TOUGHSKI SHITSKI!”

  Lewis adds further to his take, as a Jew, on the Genesis claim for the creation of the earth, in his typical acidic style:

  “Jews know that earth was not created in seven days, because as Jews we know what we are good at. And what we are really good at is – bullshit! This is a wonderful story told to the Jewish people in the desert to distract them from the fact that they did not have air-conditioning. I would love to have the faith to believe it took place in seven days BUT I have thoughts and that can really fuck up the faith thing.”

  The human arrogance of Genesis is further evident in the fact that it assumes that we, humans on planet earth, are the only occupants of the universe. There are 70,000 million million million stars within our universe (7 followed by 22 zeroes) and our sun is just one of those. Without getting all sci-fi on you, to live with the presumption that we are ‘it’ and that ours is the only civilization among galaxies 4 billion years older than ours, is not only childish naivety but wilful arrogance.

  A former US President had no difficulty in closing his eyes to all scientific evidence when he said:

  “On the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth.” – George W. Bush

  I am optimistic that by the time we get to the next book of the Old Testament you will conclude that it is glaringly obvious we created God in our own image complete with human qualities such as anger, jealousy, vengeance and remorse rather than the other way around.

  Introducing Adam and Eve

  Oh the boyhood sexual fantasies this story provoked in my pre-pubescent childhood, with thoughts of frolicking naked in a garden of paradise with a super hot chick. Not a care in the world except for the precautionary methods in ensuring I didn’t suffer sunburn to the roof of my pecker. Other than this penile concern, the last remaining stress would be to adhere to God’s only command, that being simply, to avoid the temptation of eating from just one apple tree. But returning for a moment to the creation of man, Adam, I find it utterly, scratch that, fucking incredible that believers are so quick to make their dim-witted assertion that evolution is only a theory and thus cannot be believed with any certitude. However, the Judeo-Christian ‘theory’ that man was formed from the breath of God into the nostrils of Adam is accepted with arrogant certitude is too hilarious to justify serious debate. The comedy of this belief lies in the fact that Christians feel aggrieved whenever scientists say that humans evolved from other life forms, but have no problem with the Bible’s claim that we were created from dirt. So ludicrous that it amuses my little mind to recall comedian Bill Hicks’ observation of happy-clapper Christians, when he said, “Why is it that those who believe in creation, appear, themselves, not to be fully evolved?”

  Another question I have is, if God really did create Adam out of thin air or dust and thus not born from a mother, did Adam have a belly button? All jokes aside, I think of Adam as the luckiest man ever made for one reason only, he didn’t have a mother-in-law.

  So, there is Adam the sole human being on earth, surrounded by vegetation, flowing r
ivers and an abundance of wildlife. Eden was truly paradise on earth! But God notices that Adam, with his testosterone-fuelled penile urges, is attempting to mate with the animals (puppy fiddler!) God thinks to himself, ‘This shit don’t look right, I need to get him something with less hair and nicer boobies.’ Thus we find the source of God’s inspiration to create woman. Check it for yourself…

  “Adam rejected the animals.” (Genesis 2:18)

  Now, in case you were wondering the creation of woman doesn’t get any less ridiculous. God recognizing that he needs to provide a playmate for Adam, so that he does not end up fathering a Taurus, comes up with the design blueprint for woman:

  “So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man and he brought her to the man.” (Genesis 2:21-22 NIV)

  Whilst Adam was sleeping, God snuck down to the garden, tip-toed up to him careful not to break any twigs, then slices Adam open with a pen-knife, snaps off one his ribs and whammo a woman. How delightfully simplistic is the origin of our species. Amen.

  God Is Resting... Still

  The last verse of chapter one is worth a chuckle too. Imagine God with his arms folded, leaning back in his rocking chair overlooking all that he had created in just six days with a broad smile of satisfactory accomplishment:

  “God saw all that he had made and it was very good.” (Genesis 1: 31 NIV)

  After that, the very next day, he rested. The day after that he rested, and the next day and the next. Fuck, he was still resting yesterday, and as of this morning. When is he ever going back to work? Unemployment is approaching 10%! Surely he can’t be satisfied with the planet he has created, considering that four-fifths of it is uninhabitable and most parts are either too hot or too cold to sustain life and the polar bears are drowning. This guy works less than a Melbourne wharfie on strike. C’mon you lazy sod, do us all a favor and get back to work for Christ’s sake! There are 26,000 children dying of thirst and starvation every single day whilst you continue to sit around and pat yourself on the back for a job half-done.

  For these reasons, my god is Thor, because he has a hammer. And if he is handy with the tools, he is more likely to get shit done.

  The Talking Snake

  “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat it you will surely die.’” (Genesis 2:15-17 NIV)

  Are you kidding me? What a wicked sense of humor God doth possess! His very first dialogue with his created humans is a rule. How about, “Welcome to Eden guys. Enjoy yourselves. Have wild outdoor sex to your heart’s content. Make yourself comfortable and later I will be back to you with one or two rules of the house.” But no, he introduces himself with a mind-fuck technique, the power of negative suggestion, “Don’t eat from that tree!” If God had said nothing of the tree, I am sure Adam and Eve would have never come within several orchard fields of it, but because he said ‘that’ tree, it is human instinct to enquire. If you repeatedly tell a child to stay away from the cookie jar, what do you think he will do the next time you turn your back away from the kitchen? Cookies will be gone, Mummy! Thus, God either commanded this edict for his own humorous benefit, or he is an extremely poor psychologist.

  I mean, why go to the effort of creating man from dust, woman from man’s rib and all the planets, only to play a trick of entrapment that completely fucks everything up for every man or woman ever since? Talk about a joke that backfired!

  Thus a serpent, with demonstratively superior psychoanalytical skills made its way to Eve in the garden, tempting her with the words, “Did God really say, ‘you must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Where did this talking snake come from? Yes, you guessed it, God. He made the snake and he put the snake there. The snake is Satan, and Satan is the root of evil, therefore God created evil! Did that just blow your mind? I am smoking an imaginary cigarette as I ponder this personal logical discovery!

  Ok, before we examine this interchange between talking snake and Eve, let me make this clear from my own perspective: if I’m walking through the bush and accidentally stumble across a snake, I run for dear life in the opposite direction. The mere sight of a snake makes me shit my pants, so imagine what a talking one would do to me?

  However, Eve is seemingly much braver than I and continues to engage in carefree casual dialogue with the serpent and answers:

  “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it or you will surely die.’” (Genesis 3:2-3 NIV)

  To which the mouthy snake responds,

  “You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4 NIV)

  We all know that the talking snake succeeded in ‘selling’ the apple appetizer to Eve, who in turn sold the idea to Adam. How she sold the idea we will never know, but I assume she offered the apple in one hand whilst stroking her naked ass with the other, “If you don’t take a piece of that, then you don’t get a piece of this!” Like any red-blooded male, the sexualized version of the car salesman’s alternative close sealed an event that Bible believers refer to as the moment of the ‘original sin’ and, shamelessly, the justification of man (gender) to treat women as sub-equals had begun. A theme we will continually revisit throughout this book.

  This part of the Bible also provides our first glimpse into the malevolent, brutish, vindictive, uncompromising and unforgiving character traits of God. As God says to Eve:

  “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16 NIV)

  What a wonderfully chauvinistic command, “He will rule over you”. I have repeatedly tried unsuccessfully to point to this passage whenever my wife has forbidden me to join my mates on a night trolling strip clubs. I still haven’t given up.

  Ok, that’s Adam and Eve punished. Of note is the fact that God promised Adam that he would “surely die” upon eating the apple, but God has proved already that he is not a man of his word, as Adam went on to live for another 900 years.

  And what of the snake, you ask, the instigator of fucking things up for all of us? Well, here is the punitive measure God dishes out to the snake. Are you ready for this?