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BS proof of God's existence
Argument From God Will Provide
Consider this
It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes. Thomas Paine
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The more I look at religion, the more I dislike it and what it does to the world and its people. This blog will help you understand why religion is something you shouldn't accept as a good thing in our lives. Above all, don't respect religious beliefs when their practitioners refuse to respect you.
Yesterday I bought a copy of the 'Children's Picture Bible', just to find out what Christians are telling their kids. It's not the whole Bible, just selected stories. This is not a radical fundie-style book, it's just a typical, inoffensive book of Bible stories. If read in the same context as Aesop's Fables or Grimm's Fairy Tales, I have no problem with book like this. Myth, legend and fantasy are all good for stimulating the developing brains of young children. With the obvious proviso: the stories are not true. While the book's contents don't offend me at all, it is not so much what they put in as what they leave out which interests me. For example the Book of Job doesn't seem to be mentioned at all - you'd have thought that kids would love a story where God makes a bet with Satan so that Job ends up being tortured and his children killed, all for no reason, wouldn't you? And the Flood story doesn't go into how long it takes someone to drown, and how much pain and suffering they have while they are breathing water into their lungs. I'm keen to explain to children (and their parents) what the stories actually mean, when you examine them more closely. So with this in mind let's go right back to the beginning of time, to the very first Bible story. There's no death and destruction yet, but there's a lot to learn from reading Genesis, so this is my up-to-date version of the Bible's Creation myth, from Genesis 1. Of course Genesis 2 is ever so slightly different, in a 'totally conflicting so how could you ever reconcile the two' way. But I'm sure I will deal with that at some point. For now, here's a story you can tell to your children, or enjoy for yourself. More stories will no doubt follow. God Made Everything A logical interpretation of Genesis 1, for children Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lived a god whose name was God. God was different from all the other gods because they didn't even exist. God was the one god, the only god, and he lived all alone in the middle of nowhere. Nobody knows how long God had been there, or where he came from, because God didn't tell anyone, and anyway there was no one there to tell. God was all alone in the universe, but he wasn't even in the universe because that didn't exist either. What a strange place it must have been back then! One day, about 6000 years ago, God decided to make the universe, so that he would have something to do. Maybe he was bored, or maybe he was lonely. We just don't know, because God never told us. You might think he would explain why he made the universe, but he never did. That's what God is like. He works in mysterious ways. The universe would be huge, so God would need a long, long time to build it. So he made a plan, decided how utterly enormous the universe would be, and thought that six days would be enough time to make it all. God started by making the heavens and the Earth, which was pretty important because everything else would need to fit in there. Nobody knows how God made everything so quickly. If you think about it, the Earth is a big, big place, and you'd need a lot of patience to put all the tiny little atoms together, one by one, to make a thing as enormous as a whole planet. And remember, he even had to make the atoms too, because before he made them there was no such thing. God was a super-fast worker, even though this was probably the first time he'd tried to do anything so complicated as making an entire universe. He made the heavens in no time at all, but that was a lot easier than the Earth had been, because that was just empty space with nothing inside, which was a piece of cake for a god who'd just made a huge planet from atoms. It was pretty dark in the big emptiness before Creation, so God made the light. He didn't actually make it, he just said it and there it was. Back then God just had to say things and they happened. It's easy to make things when all you have to do is say their names. Nobody knows where the light came from because God made it before he made the Sun and the stars, so some people think the story is mixed up. But the Bible says so, so it must be true, and we don't need to think about it too hard, we just have to believe it. When all this was done, God realised he needed new names for a few things, so he invented words like day, night, morning and evening. Nowadays we only get day and night when the Earth rotates and different parts of the planet face the Sun, but back then there was no Sun, so we don't really know what God had in mind when he said day or night. All we know is that God had a plan, and he stuck to it for six days, and if he needed six days he must have worked out what a day was before he started. If you don't know what a day is, how do you know what six days are? God knew, and that's all that matters. So that was the first day, and God must have been pretty pleased with what he'd made. Even if most of it was formless and empty, it wasn't bad for a first attempt. Nobody knows if God went to sleep at night, but he probably didn't because he had a lot to do. On the second day he realised that there was water everywhere so he made the sky and put it inbetween the water in the sea and the water in the clouds. There was still no Sun, so it must have been quite chilly, but the Bible doesn't mention any snow or ice, so there probably wasn't any. Dividing the water into two took a whole day, so it must have been quite difficult, much more difficult than making the Earth and the heavens and the light. Maybe God was tired because he had done so much on the first day, and wanted to pace himself. On the third day God had more trouble with the pesky water. He wanted to make some dry ground, so he moved all the water around until he had the land and the seas. It all looked a bit empty, and it was halfway through the week already, so God made all the plants and trees as well. These days many plants need bees and insects to pollenate their flowers, and lots of them will only grow where the weather is just right. And one of the things that plants really like is sunlight. But in Creation times God hadn't made any animals yet, and there was still no Sun, so there must have been special types of flowers which didn't need bees or sunlight, and God grew everything really quickly, using the light from the first day, which still seemed to be shining from nowhere. The Earth back then must have been like a huge greenhouse, and if you think how many millions and millions of plants and trees and growing things there are you will see just how busy God was on the third day. Of course God had to make all the growing things the hard way, by putting fiddly little atoms together just right, so that makes it seem all the more incredible. God decided that he really had to make the Sun and the stars now, because if he didn't do it soon, nobody would know where all the light was coming from. Luckily he made them on the fourth day, two days before he made the people who would do the wondering. The stars were a lot less trouble than the water had been, because he made billions and billions of them all in one day. And remember, he was making everything out of nothing, which people today say is completely impossible. But not for God of course, because God is special and doesn't have to follow the same rules we do. The Bible says that God made two lights for the Earth, one for the day and one for the night. The night light we have today is called the Moon, but it isn't really a light, it just bounces the light off the Sun onto us, a bit like a mirror does. So did the Bible get it wrong? Of course not, the Bible is never wrong! In Creation times it might have been a different kind of light, and nobody was there to see it anyway except God, and he wouldn't lie to us or try to confuse us would he? There were only two more days to go, so God worked even faster. On the fifth day he made birds for the sky and animals to live in the sea. He saved the land animals until later, maybe because the plants weren't quite grown up yet, and he didn't want the elephants to trample all over them until they were ready. Birds and fish are more difficult to make than billions of stars and galaxies, so God took the whole day, just to make sure he got it right. On day six God finally made all the animals who would live on the land. There were millions of different species, including all the dinosaurs, and thousands of things which we will never see again because most of them are now extinct. Some of the animals look like they are related, but they really aren't because they were all made individually, one at a time. All the birds and animals ate plants, because at that time God hadn't planned on making them eat each other. But he gave some of them long, sharp teeth, just in case he changed his mind later on. Even the sea birds didn't catch fish, so they must have been happy eating berries and seeds. Imagine how funny a pelican would have looked in those days trying to carry fruit and nuts in the pouch under its bill, and sharks would have had to chew on yucky seaweed! God just had one more thing to do. Remember at the beginning of our story when we found out that God was all alone? If you were alone wouldn't you want someone to talk to? Well God thought so too, so he made a man who looked just like him, except he was much smaller and not so powerful. Then he made a woman, who was like the man in some ways but had the kind of things under her clothes that make boys and girls different. Except that the man and the woman didn't wear clothes at all, but because there was nobody else to peek, God thought that would be okay. God told them they could eat all the plants, but not the animals, so the very first people were vegetarians. He told them they could rule over everything - over all the animals and the fish and the birds - so in a way they were like a king and a queen. Of course God was still in charge of everything, because he had made it all. And in only six days too. No wonder we call him God Almighty. Six days is very quick, even for someone who is as big and powerful as God, so God needed a rest and took the day off on the seventh day, which was his own special day. We now call that day Sunday, but you'd think that we'd give it a more God-like name wouldn't you? Well maybe it's to remind God that he should have made the Sun a bit earlier on, so that we weren't all wondering where the light came from for the first few days. Of course God does everything for a reason, but he never tells us what those reasons are. That's just how God is, and of course we love him anyway don't we? Of course we do. |
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