3 Reasons I Stopped Believing the Bible
1. The Bible’s stories are not just hilarious but downright ridiculous. All through the Bible, we see a retinue of stories with unbelievable claims: Plant life existed before the sun existed, a woman created from the rib of her male counterpart, a snake spoke, a donkey talked, a man divides the Red Sea, another man walked on water while the shadow of some dude made sick people well. How in the world could Joshua make the sun stand still over the Earth? Does the sun move around the Earth? Isn’t it the other way around? I could go on and on but space wouldn’t be enough to make a full list the absurdities in the Bible. A functional brain is all one really needs to stop believing the bible.
2. Many of the Bible’s claims are in fact NOT HISTORICAL. In GENESIS, ‘God’ created the world and the first man, Adam (and every other human came from him). According to the Hebrew calendar, this creation was done exactly 5780 years ago. Meaning, the world is 5,780 years old. Well, we know that the Earth is actually billions of years old. We know that Lucy (a female of the hominin species, Australopithecus afarensis) found in Ethiopia, dates back to 3.2 million years ago. We know that the Aborigines of Australia first entered that region at least 40,000 years ago. Obviously, Yahweh didn’t create anything!
Then the Bible talks about Egyptian Pharaohs. 155 times the word ‘Pharoah‘ is mentioned between Genesis and Exodus but not once does the Bible identify any Pharoah by an exact name. NOT ONCE!
Remember the story that there was a global flood? Well, it turns out that there were at least 4 well-established civilizations at the time of the so-called ‘Global Flood’. They include: Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, Egypt, and China. None of these civilizations have a large gap in their chronology or a restart of their technologies as a result of being destroyed by a worldwide flood. It makes no sense that they were destroyed, and within a few short years, reappeared in their original numbers and with the same abilities and infrastructure. All the inventions and culture of the people of the time would have had to be reinvented by new inhabitants and that did not happen.
The Bible claims that King David built an Israelite empire which flourished in the 10th century BC after he had vanquished Israel’s neighbors – the Philistines. Surprisingly, there is no evidence that David’s massive empire ever existed. It’s a well known fact that Empires leave a great deal of evidence. The Israelites never had the wealth, population or literacy that would enable them defeat or dominate the more developed Philistines. Archaeological findings have shown that in the 10th century BC , Palestine-Canaanite culture continued uninterrupted by any invasion whatsoever.
The Bible also claims that Joseph and Mary left Galilee to Bethlehem so they could be counted during the Census of Quirinius. But Roman censuses NEVER required people to travel out of their own homes to those of their ancestors. In fact, the census of Judea SHOULD NOT have affected Joseph and his family. They supposedly lived in Galilee and as at the time the census was held (in 6CE), Galilee was not a part of Judea which was Roman province. In fact it was in 44CE that the Romans incorporated Galilee into Judea.
3. Many Bible stories are direct plagiarizations of older literary material from much older civilizations. The Creation story in Genesis is a mixture of 3 separate creation stories – Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Canaanite mythology. Each one edited and inculcated into the Genesis story at different times to make it more elaborate. This explains the CONTRADICTIONS in the Genesis story.
Genesis’ “Tree of Life” is a popular theme within the Ancient Near Eastern Region. The idea that ‘God‘ divided the work of creation into six days was stolen from ancient Persians. The Zend Avesta ( the sacred writings of the Parsees) states that the supreme being, Ahuramazda (Orinuzd) created the universe and man in six days: 1)The Heavens, 2)The Waters, 3)The Earth, 4)The Trees and Plants, 5)Animals, 6)Man. After the Creator Orinuzd had finished his work, he rested. Genesis follows the same pattern.
The story of Lot and his wife is a retelling of popular myths in the Ancient Near East. One of such myths is the Babylonian myth “The Descent of Inana” and the Greek “Myth of Orpheus”.
The story of Job is plagiarized from the ancient Mesopotamian myth called “Poem of the Righteous Sufferer”.
The “Plagues” which Yahweh struck on Egypt are a plagiarization from “Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage”, an ancient Egyptian story written during Egypt’s First Intermediate Period – when the empire was going through tough times.
I could go on and on, but these three points should be enough to make you ask questions about your Bible and Christianity as a whole.
