Prime Ideas

After my last post I’ve had a number of people giving me scripture that prove me wrong here or there and I wanted to document which ones and what they say in order to portray a fair and balanced thread. The main topic of today’s post will be the first 3 days and the remarks about how I just don’t understand the scripture. First a refresher on my previous statements.

Basically, it is my opinion that the Bible, while historical in content, contains no revealing comments what so ever that only god could know. As an example I covered the first 3 days and the fact that there was no Sun, yet we had morning, evening and plants growing here and there. To refute this, people have been telling me that God is light and he did not require the sun for things to grow. They also like to tell me that plants and life could exist without the Sun and therefore did not require it to get started. There is also the line of logic that states that a day was not a 24 hour period of time (this of course to try to explain why bible time provides the earth and the entire universe with a mere 6500 year age).

In response, I am going to read directly from the Bible and provide commentary that you can ponder if you’re interested.

1) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This simply tells us that God created everything, yet really doesn’t give us a time line for any of it taking place. From this we could surmise that the earth and universe are indeed older that 6500 years of age, but that nothing should have lived or existed during this time period since he had not created anything yet.

2) Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. At this point, God seems to be floating about the earth, but it further defines that the earth was without form and empty. Water seems to be the only thing it speaks of existing at this point. The key element to pickup from this statement however, is that their was darkness. If indeed God “IS” light, then there would not have been darkness during this floating period. To further clarify this, the claim was that plants and life existed from his light and not the light from the Sun. If this were indeed true then his light would have to fill the entire sky since the earth is not flat and a single source of light could not have produced the same effect across the entire surface.

3) And God Said, “Let there be light”, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he seperated the light from darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning - the first day. This verse creates quite a few problems in a number of areas for those trying to make verses written before man understood the planets, into fitting what we know today to be fact. First of all, God made light. This further refutes the claim that “God IS Light”, because it would mean that he was creating himself. Secondly it speaks of him naming night and day, yet we understand night and day to only be those periods as the earth rotates around its axis and the sun appears to set and rise, when in fact that is not at all what happens.

We also know that light is either on or its off, or its hidden in the case of our Sun and rotation. For him to have created night and day without the Sun, he’d actually either have to not be floating on earth as the bible says and be off somewhere in the distant, or he’d have to be turning himself on and off like a christmas light to give a similar effect.

The bible makes it a point to meaure this period of time as 1 day, morning and evening, not simply a period of time or some other means of measurement. As stated in earlier blogs, I think this was done to show how powerful god was, but it makes no sense for a number of reasons:

First, a day as we know it is a man made unit of measure to mean when there is light. More definately when the Sun is shinning, and more to the point, when the side of the earth you happen to be standing on is pointed at the Sun. So unless you were standing at a specific point on the planet, to call something day would have no meaning at all without the Sun existing and the earth spinning. Yet, none of these simple facts of reality exist in the bible. In fact, it is very obvious from many other versus in the bible that the earth was indeed flat and the Sun actually rushed around it in order to come up again on the other side. Here are a few versus for you to read about the planet actually being flat: Isaiah 11:12, 40:22, Revelation 7:1, Job 38:13, Jeremiah 16:19, Daniel 4:11, Mathew 4:8, Psalms 104:5 Ecclesiastes 1:5.

Note, that despite people’s comments about the bible stating the earth was round, or a sphere, there are no actual verses that make these claims. Its actually quite clear the people that wrote the Bible truly believed that the earth was flat and everything we see revolved around it.

And God Said, Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the expanse and seperated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse sky. And there was evening and morning the second day. On this day God supposedly created the atmosphere, yet it appears to me the people really didn’t understand what the atmosphere was when they wrote this. They talk about water in the sky like they believed their was a great ocean above them and it spilled out when it rained. And that God kept them seperated as if they were two different bodies of water. Again, there are no earth shattering revelations in this verse so we’ll just move on.

And God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let the dry ground appear. And it was so. God called the dry ground land and the gathered waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let the land produce vegetation:… You get the point. Again, we’re still marking each period of time with a morning and evening which refutes all the claims that these days were longer than a single day. It specifically states that god named day and night and that he named them after light and dark. So the constant remarks about how these were longer than a single day, seem to go against the statements in the book completely. Its also entertaining to me that God created light and saw that it was good. Did he not already know that it was good? And since we know now that light only comes from the burning of stars, exactly how did he create it without the stars being in place. The bible never speaks of him transfering his light source over to that of the Sun later on.

We also have vegetation growing without the Sun, moon, stars or anything else. Only the light source of god which would have to have somehow lit the entire sky in all directions and provided just the right amount of heat to let things get to cooking. All very strange that he’d disrupt the entire universe during these early years and now be completely gone to never again bother anything. Its also quite strange why if he truely created the universe that he’d have caused the entire thing to expand instead of just having things hang in the sky in one place for us to view. In fact, for what specific purpose did he create all the stars and the Sun? You could argue the Sun for keeping us warm, although that is quite stupid, due to the fact that he could have just left the original light source in place since it was obviously perfect for our existance.

And finally, on day 4 he finally creates the Sun and stars and the person that wrote it never mentions anything specific. Only that he created them and that they would govern night and day, yet he never mentions how night and day existed without them. Total oversite if you ask me! Consider that if God was your source of light and he was making night and day, he was only doing it to entertain himself, since there was no other reason for it to happen. Also, since he was the light source, he was actually having to turn himself on and off every 12 or so hours in order to make himself have a night and day. Then he pitched in the entire universe with all the stars and moon, and Sun at an instant, all in perfect balance and expanding forever.

Its all quite strange to me how today, people go to church and listen to all the sermons, and give their money like blind men doing as they were taught. NEVER, picking up the book and reading it to see what it really says. I take a lot of heat because I actually read the book and question what it says. Most people tell me that I’m not suppose to question, I’m suppose to just believe! That I can’t possibly understand God’s mind, so don’t try. All the while being completely blind to the fact that they’re in a cult. Cult leaders look for people that they can manipulate and keep under control. They can convince these people that they shouldn’t ask questions and should just believe his/her every word. Telling the people that they speak for God and explaining to them what he wants them to do, but without any real meat to the story. Oh, and don’t forget that old parental trick, fear of pain! You will go to hell if you don’t believe in Jesus!

Christians are quick to tell you that the terrorists are criminal, they are evil itself. Yet, not a single one knows a thing about what it would take to believe in something so much that you’d be willing to die for your god. These people don’t blow themselves up to be evil, they do it because they truely believe their God told them to do it. There isn’t a Christian alive with that kind of faith. Yet, its faith alone, because the terrorists are no better than the Christians with their god as they also practice the same blind faith.

People do not want to be alone, they don’t want to accept it. As a result throughout mankind’s history, we’ve created religions of all kinds to help us feel better. These religions have mainly served to help kings rule its people and to keep people scared and in constant search of God’s favor. They continue to pay a church that has never really done a thing for those that pay. Its all a mind game to make them feel better and nothing more. Show me a single person that lives a more gifted life than me, just because they go to church, give them their money and GOD rewards them. If God does exist, he doesn’t care about anything that is going on down here. We’re but a virus that has started growing on the planet and thinks that it’s important. We’re only important to ourselves, and cornered we’ll more than prove that.

Its a shame that we kill each other and take each others rights to live in the name of religion. We should all just live in peace and stop trying to harm each other. When a man steps up and says lets fight, we should only fight to have him sit. ALL Wars have been waged and fought by the people, as a result of the actions of a single Man thinking himself King. People follow and do as they are told and there are those that take exteme advantage of it. We should all just say enough, sit down and shut up, let us exist peacefully!

–glenn hancock

I’m posting this entry into my blog to document some of the points I have in relation to organized religion and why I don’t believe. If anyone has any valid points they’d like to share about why I might be wrong in my beliefs I welcome the conversation.

Issues:

1) “You just have to believe”. In a word, a copout. A cult nearby would love to have you come and worship with them since you’re not going to be asking any questions about what they are selling.

2 ) First 7 days: In the beginning God had 3 days of creating things before he created the sun and stars. If one honestly tries to think about God on earth during a period of complete blackness with no light, and then thinks about what we call light, you’d quickly have a thought that something might be wrong with this story. First of all, light is created by our stars and sun, so to seperate them is to say you don’t understand them. Secondly, during that period, man believed the earth was the center of the universe and the bible does nothing to refute this belief. Man also named morning and evening, not God, so for what possible reason would God have made reference to a single day. A day is a man made term as well and is only a means of us seperating the time it takes for the earth to spin in a circle on its axis. God would have had no use for it!

God also created plants and other living things that all have a 100% dependency on the energy coming from our sun, before the sun existed. Religious people like to say that the earlier light was a source unknown to us that god created to help things grow, however, if this were true, there’d be no reason to mention days in the creation. The earlier writer wrote those to make it obvious how powerful god was, however, they were a huge mistake on his part as it opens up the door for many confusing aspects of God and the creation story.

We know for an absolute fact that the Sun and its heat are the only things keeping life on this planet alive. So having 3 days before the sun was even created makes no sense at all.

3 ) The bible is full of errors and contradictions yet is suppose to be ordained by god.

4 ) Why on Earth would God care if we gave 10% of our money to the church?

5 ) God himself, in the Bible, on more than one occasion, started wars and told people to kill other people. Yet he supposedly condemned killing…

6 ) Whats with the change of heart? In the Old testament God was a hard guy to keep happy, having to worship him and cook animals in his name. Only certain ordained people could even go into his temples. Then all of the sudden he changes his mind and decides that we only need to believe in his only son to get saved. All very confusing from a God that is suppose to see the future and know everything that we feable humans couldn’t possibly know.

I could go on forever with this argument and the fact is, no one can counter them. The only thing that could ever be offered up is that we must just have faith and keep giving money to the church (most important!). Oh and lets not forget the argument is moot anyway because none of us are smart enough to possibly understand the grand plan. He put us down here with a bunch of dishonest humans, let them write the book, make the book, distribute the book and explain what the book means and all us dumb souls are suppose to just believe on faith that we’re not be lied to… Boy what a grand plan that is!

And if you are wondering why I think all this is stupid? Almost every war we’ve ever had on this planet was in the name of God! The bible describes it over and over again. People kill each other because they think our God wants it that way. All the wars going on now in Iraq and other places are the results of holy wars and nothing more. If their God is so powerful then why doesn’t he just wipe us out? Why does he need these bone heads to blow themselves up to take care of the problem? Sounds like a pretty weak god to me.

And for those of you that try to counter with statements like, “but god has to exist because look at the universe and life itself”. Well, I never said there wasn’t a God, or Gods, only that we have no idea who or what he or they may be. These books we all read to explain things were written by generations past trying to make themselves feel better about being so damn alone on this planet. The Gods didn’t write anything for us to read and they sure didn’t take any time out of their day to write the Bible. If it did, I think it would have done a much better job.

as always, have a good one,

–glenn hancock

For those of you out there watching my blog that are religious, I want to go ahead and apologize up front.  It is not my intention to offend anyone and I’m only offering my own beliefs as I see them.  I, like you, could be completely wrong in my beliefs and only time shall tell.

With that said, I want to go on record to state, that my life has not been spent believing or not believing in God.  I actually spent my entire childhood going to church, sometimes more than once a week.  I spent my youth in church camps and being taught the word of God.  I spent a good part of my adult life studying in depth the bible and what it has to say about all sorts of things.  The conclusions I have, are based not only on the fact that the God that created this universe didn’t write that book, but also on what religion has been used for throughout history.

After years of studying the Bible and trying to put myself in the minds of the people that lived during the times when these stories were written down, I’ve come to the conclusion that what it contains are the truths of the times.  By this, I mean that the Bible contains a lot of facts.  Mixing historical content along with the stories of God was a natural combination of thoughts.  People that don’t understand something that we know happens naturally today, would almost always assign some higher meaning to it.  However, we only need to look at all the things done on a daily basis today, to realize that people’s beliefs or truths can get rather mixed up.  Just poke around the Internet for a while and you’ll see that there are literally thousands of people out there that have beliefs that we view as completely rediculous.  Yet they believe them with all their minds.  What if all the information of the world were destroyed except for those papers,  and thousands of years from now they were found?  What would human kind in the future think about us?

Almost all religions on earth today make fun of the Greeks and their pagan gods as well as their ridiculous beliefs.  I however, see things a little differently.  I see religion as a necessary mechanism for all leaders.  Religion is something to tie things together and allow them to control the people in which they claim leadership.  Is there a single leader in this world that doesn’t use religion to control its people?  Has there ever been a leader on this earth that didn’t speak of God in some sense to lead credence to what he spoke? Heck, there have even been leaders that have changed their nations religion to a single religion when they saw that having more than one was tearing their countries apart.

Countries like the United States, which have allowed more than one religious belief to exist, have fallen apart over time.  Once too many different beliefs start to exist within a single region, you loose any hold you have over the masses.  How many wars have happened in this world throughout history in the name of someone’s God?  How many different God’s are there?  Everyone believes something different, everyone has written evidence, yet none can summon up his/her God for anything.

Is Science correct?  They are as religious in some respects as the churches themselves.  As an example, lets take a look at evolution and how many years it’s existed.  Evolution in a word is stupid!  There is no way that evolution controlled the creation of this planet and the universe as a whole.  People just don’t think, and as such, it’s easy to control their directions.  Take something as simple as the chicken and the egg question and most people laugh.  But seriously, explain it with evolution, I dare you…  You can’t!  Evolution is still taught as fact in schools and on every Discovery Channel special that comes on TV, yet there is not one shred of proof that its correct.  In fact, there are tons of evidence that say its not right, but its still taught as a religious belief.

The fact is, this universe is much more mysterious to us now than ever before.  Scientist are not getting closer at explaining life, they are getting farther away.  However, I tell you something that gives me comfort like no Bible or religion ever could.  Looking at the universe and its complex nature has all but convinced me that we’re not alone.  There is something more to life that can’t be explained and its much more magical than any Bible or religion could ever speak of.

The fact is religion is used to control the masses and make the very few crooks rich.  Governments use it to control their seats of power, churches use it to get more money and power for themselves.  Churches throughout history have even killed people of science or anyone else that threatened their business.  Wars have been waged and in fact, we find ourselves on the brink of WWIII, all because of different religious beliefs.  If people thought with their own minds instead of allowing themselves to be controlled by the crooks, the world would be a much better place.  We’re all different people, with different beliefs, but at some point, we are all people inhabiting the same planet.  We have to get along, or we are doomed to killing each other off and allowing the animals to be masters once again.

No God that created everything we see would ever care what us humans believe.  We are but specks of dust coming in and out of existence so quickly that he’d barely notice us.  Why would he write a book chocked full of errors and contradictions and threaten us with punishment if we didn’t believe in him?  What is with the Hell stories anyway?  They are stories you tell to children to get them to do right.  Yet at some point the children grow up and realize they were all just stories.  As useful as they were to keep them out of the street when cars drive by, they were all tools of more use than adult stories of going to hell if you don’t believe in the one true God.

Instead of trying to condemn the people of the Middle East for their beliefs, why don’t we all try to imagine what it would be like to live their lives?  We have our firm beliefs ONLY because they were taught to us from childhood.  Not because God gave them to us, but because society taught them to us.  The people of the Middle East, Israel, Germany and all the other countries of the world were raised and taught their beliefs the same way.  So us condemning another for their beliefs makes as much sense as them condemning us.  God didn’t come speak to anyone on this speck of a planet despite what people tell you!  All we can do is exist and try to get as much out of life as possible.  Fighting each other over differences of belief in a God that isn’t real, is just stupid, ON ALL SIDES!!!

–glenn hancock