What is the Most Irrational Story in the Bible?
Offline I would like to hear opinions on what the absolutely MOST irrational story in the Bible is.
I'm going to nominate Noah's Ark.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060709124818AAdbr4o http://www.skepticreport.com/creationism/noahark.htm http://www.ofgodandlogic.com/morality/noah/long.htm http://home.comcast.net/~fsteiger/ark.htm http://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=13676
My favorite top 5 reasons why the Noah's Ark story is impossible:
1. ALL of the animals? Seriously? I'm under the impression Noah lived in the Middle East. Are we to believe that he supernaturallly travelled the entire globe to get every species in existence? Did ALL species live in the Middle East? There is NO freaking way one dude and a few helpers are going to collect all the species of animals on the Earth. How about insects? Aren't there over a million types of beetles?
6:19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
6:20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
How do you tell male insects from female insects?
Freshwater fish?
2. Was the ark big enough for that? Noah and 4 or 5 helpers are going to build a ship bigger than an aircraft carrier, with wood? And bigger than an aircraft carrier is just what the Bible says.
I would think such a boat would need to be as big or bigger than 100 aircraft carriers to hold a pair of ALL species of animal on the planet.
3. It killed everyone? The Bible is 6000 years old? How did native Americans get here after Noah? Mormonism?
4. The volume of water? We're talking a lot of F'ing water. And even after the rain stopped, you would have to have magical reclamation of the water. Our Earth system has a finite amount of water, and to cover Mount Everest, you'd need to cover the entire earth with 5 more miles high of water. How did Noah and all those animals survive amidst such a dearth of oxygen 5 miles up in the atmosphere?
5. Why does God need to do SOME things naturally and other things supernaturally?
It needs to rain 40 days and 40 nights to NATURALLY create floods, but then he has to reclaim the waters SUPERNATURALLY.
He has to have Noah get all the animals on Earth NATURALLY, but then he has to create some sort of SUPERNATURAL method for Noah to get animals in corners of the globe ie Antarctica for which there is no access to Noah.
God has supernatural powers. Why a flood? As I said before, just smite everyone, make them collapse dead, and make their bodies evaporate; leaving only Noah and his incestuous family.
And if you have to do a flood, why not supernaturally build the boat, transport the animals, and allow the water to spontaneously rise up rather than by rain storm?
If God has supernatural abilities, he's not using them wisely.
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Noah's flood is by far the most ridiculous story in the Bible. If you feel you know any other that can compete, please contest me.
Add to my reasons why Noah's flood is false if you wish, or link me to prior discussions on this forum, for which I'm sure there are some.
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM.
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This is probably the best link I found.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
The most irrational is the genesis account of original sin. "god" punishes adam and eve for the sin of disobeying by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
But in order to sin, you must have intent to sin. And in order to have intent to sin, you must know..... good and evil.
So the entire story rests upon a bootstrapping internal contradiction.
So it clearly is irrational.
Which means that there is no such thing as original sin.
Which means that there is no need for jesus' sacrifice.
Which means the entire bible falls to pieces within the first 3 chapters of the first book.
That's sorta irrational, I think.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
To choose one is far too dificult. But one of my favorites would be Elisha, the kids and the bears story in 2 Kings 2:23-24. In this story Elisha gets taunted by some street kids, or in the new revised editions 'youths' as to denote teenagers or even to some appologist, young adults. They call Elisha a bald man, and even though he is, he gets pissed, calls upon God for some due diligence. Next thing you know two bears come out of the woods and shred to pieces these kids for their taunts against Elisha. I think today we consider that to be road rage.
Then Samson found a jawbone of a donkey on the desert floor and he ran around and wacked 1,000 Philistines in the head and murdered them all without getting harmed. All 1,000 of the Philistines were killed by the donkey jawbone, since as you know, killing thousands of people with light and brittle bones is something that makes a lot of sense. Judges 15:14-15
God had no time to create time.
Mine would be the Nephilim breeding with the humans which apparently served as the justification for slaughtering all life (except for those 'pure' people aboard the ark which didn't cross breed with any of God's non-chosen).
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown
Now from the Book of Enoch, one of the banned books of the Bible these are a race of angels, the Grigori, others say they are the fallen angels who joined with Satan as expressed in books later to be written. In any case the absurdity is that God would create angels with human DNA who could reproduce with humans.
Clearly if God would have figured that breeding with humans is wrong he wouldn't have created them with DNA or with human genitalia (in the movie Dogma they had none, but this too was a story banned from the Bible even though many women found Matt Damon attractive).
Well, I believe it's in the Book of Jubilees (another banned book from the Bible) that said God allowed 10% of fallen angels to roam the Earth with the intention to corrupt humanity. The other 90% were confined to a realm of darkness. However this contradicts the entire free will thing the apologists say we have but say we don't have provided on the circumstance.
The idea of demons breeding with humans has persisted among the centuries. The result has been any child born with deformities was seen as a result of someone sleeping with a succubi or it's male equivilent. The result often meant death for someone. In other cases it served as a justification for genocide of populations with undesirable characteristics such as skin color or religion.
My personal favorite is Joshua and the.. um... I think Amorites... you'll have to look that up to make sure I'm remembering correctly. Anyway, Joshua's putting an Alabama Ass Whoopin' on the Amorites, but it takes a long damn time to kill that many people, and the sun was going down, so he yelled at the sun, and god thought that was pretty cool, so he stopped the entire universe from moving until Joshua was done killing those pesky critters from across the way.
He had to stop the whole universe, because if the sun stood still, and the earth stood still, but the rest of the universe kept moving, we'd have left the rest of the solar system far behind!
Also, god had to invent something like gravity, but not gravity, because if the solar system stopped moving, the planets would have immediately crashed into the sun... BUT... without gravity, the planets wouldn't hold together, so he had to invent something sort of like gravity, but not.
Also, when he was done, he told Joshua to write down everything that happened because he was going to erase the memory of the Amalekites... hmmm... actually, I think it was the Amalekites... anyway, I'm not going to look it up. He was going to erase the memory of the Amalekites from under heaven.
This is how we know where heaven is. Since we have the book to remember the Amalekites, we know that the earth is ABOVE heaven. This is a bit of a problem, since the world is round, but we can work this out by assuming that god was talking about under with respect to where Joshua was at the time... SOOOOO..... Heaven is at a place directly opposite the hill where Joshua was standing. I'm pretty sure that's Arkansas.
There you have it. Heaven is Arkansas. Indisputable biblical proof.
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Ok, so god gets pissed that he knew Adam and Eve would fall for the trap he allowed to be set but didnt have to do. So everyone after is subject to desease, war, famine, crime and natural disasters.
BUT, "How does freewill jive with this all powerfull being" when someone like Polly Class or Adam Walsh gets raped murdered and tourtured?
God, "I see everything all the time"
God, "I can prevent things if I want to. But sometimes I dont"
OUT OF ALL THE THINGS THAT HAS TO BE THE SICKIST CONCEPT FOR ANYONE TO JUSTIFY!
If you interviewed a baby sitter to watch your kids and they said, "Well, I once shot a molester before he got through the door. But the next time, even though I had the gun aimed at him, I shot him after he raped the kid. Then another time I let him go and shot him 10 years later"
WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD HIRE SUCH A VILE PERSON!
God fails as a concept when faced with this example.
The standard claim is that god has the power to stop horrible things from happening if he choses. But why wouldn't an ALL POWERFULL BEING want to stop this before hand every single time?
Most moral ethical parents would stop it and prevent it if they knew so to me humans are moral and the deity they worship isnt.
Don't ask me why. I know what I would do if I knew I could stop a child murderer. So what is this "god's" excuse? What possible reason would it surve to the kid or the parent or society if YOU THE DEITY didnt have to allow it in the first place? What did that kid do to diserve God saying, "Sorry kid, I know I am watching. I know you are scared and probibly will be in tons of pain, I know your parents will suffer emotionally and mentally, but I have to allow you to be raped and murdered because the perpitrator has free will".
THAT IS SO VILE AND SICK as a concept or claim. It shows that the claimant is focused too much on warm fuzzy feelings of daddy's apron that they lose site of the reality of the immoral logic used to justify the belief.
I would never worship any super being of any label that would allow a child to die in that horrific mannor.
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My personal choice for most irrational book of the bible, has got to be Revelations. It has to be one of the most screwed up, and bizarre stories I have ever read. I don't know what I think is more irrational, the story itself, or the fact people actually think it is literally true (ok, maybe I do know which is more irrational).
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This is the entire basis of Christianity, too. If Adam and Eve hadn't sinned, Christ wouldn't have had to die. That's some pretty fucked-up thinking, but many of us were raised to see it as normal.
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I'm still fond of Noah's Ark, Piper, but the Book of Revelation is definitely a collossal work of fiction. I wonder if St. John the Divine was insane, under the influence of hallucinogenic substances, or the author was deliberately creating something fictional for political purposes -- or attempting to "round out" the New Testament.
I think a major irrationality of the Bible is this:
The Bible was written over a long period of time before the dawn of science. Then, suddenly, the evolution and addition to the Bible stopped completely. Is this consistent? If God sets a precedent of constantly adding to his holy book and teaching humans on Earth, why would he just stop one day? That's an astonishing break in precedent.
My theory would be this: As science and rationality grew, the rational criticism of adding texts to the Bible grew as well. Sooner or later, the criticism of adding more texts became so powerful, that Catholic theologians would add nothing more because they found any additions to be forgeries or lacking the necessary criteria for addition to the Bible. Since Revelation was necessary to cap the Bible and create an ending... It was fabricated.
What do you think?
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
The problem with Revelations being created to cap off the bible, is that a number of parts in the new testament are dated after revelations was written (somewhere between 68 and 96 CE). With that said, it does seem likely that it was made official canon to cap off the bible.
As for being fabricated (as opposed to some type of hallucenigenic vision), I think this is likely. At the time it was written, Jews (and Christians) were being persecutted, and this book was written to give hope (ie. You may be persecutted now, but you will be greatly rewarded later, so keep hanging on).
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Mine would have to be the story of Job.
Satan and god are shooting the shit one day, which already doesn't make sense since if they're mortal enemies, they'd probably not be so chatty with each other. I mean, do you ever remember Stormshadow hanging out and small talking with the Cobra Commander? Yeah, didn't think so.
Moving along, satan tells god that devotion in anyone of his followers can be broken easily, including job, god's biggest ass kisser. God says something along the lines of "nuh-uh" and then gives satan permission to do whatever he wants to job to prove his point.
So satan summons a hurricane or something and blows job's house down, killing his whole family. All kinds of unspeakable things happen to job. Boils, poxes, you name it. After all this, job is still big on god and has no problem saying it. Satan walks off in a huff.
So, to recap, god wants to save you from hell, but has no problem throwing you to the devil himself to prove a point. Hey, who needs a stinking family anyways?
Oh, and about the bible not having any new content, the bible was written with the message that the world was going to end "any day now". Chirstians today are under the assumption that the world is going to end "any day now". Christians have been waiting roughly 2000 years for the world to end "any day now". What's the point in adding on to the bible if the world is going to end "any day now"?
Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine
So apparently God has no problem with a woman helping her husband out in a bar room brawl AS LONG AS SHE DOESN'T TOUCH THE OTHER GUYS NUTS!
Ridiculous . . .
Okay, here's my favourite irrational bible story.
So there's this guy named Er. And he's got a wife, Tamar(who may or not be a hottie, it never mentions). And he also has a younger brother named Onan(no relation to the barbarian).
But god decides Er is WICKED and Er dies. And according to OT laws, Onan is obligated by god to marry his bro's widow, get her pregnant, and help take care of the kids he fathers. SO, Onan and Er's dad, Judah, lets Onan know that he'd better do the nasty with his dead brother's wife, or god will be supremo pissed off. But Onan was bothered by this, knowing in the eyes of society the kids wouldn't really be "his", they'd be his brother's. So every time he fucked Tamar, he secretly made sure to pull out and jizz all over the ground and not inside her. SO, that made god really mad too, (Yes, god watches people having sex) so he killed Onan as well.
None of this story makes any sense to me. Why did god kill Er in the first place if he wanted him to have kids? Why did Onan have to have sex with his brothers wife? Why did jizzing on the floor bug god so much that he'd KILL someone over it?(Although if someone jizzed on my floor, an ass kicking may ensue.) Was it on tha carpet? Are all carpets god's carpets? Can god make a carpet so semen encrusted even he cannot clean it? Why isn't this fucking your family member's widows rule enforced now? ARGH! I'll never understand.
Update on Tamar: Tamar was gonna wait 'til the youngest brother, Shelah, grew up, so she went to live with her dad 'til Shelah came of age. She was still worried he was gonna die too, so years later she dressed as a shrine whore, and seduced her dead husband's dad who didn't even recognize his own daughter in law. Judah paid for the sex with a goat, but he didn't have any goats on him at the time, so he gave her a cord, seal and staff as kind of an "I.O.U one goat for sexxorz". So she was prego with Judah's kid instead, and then when Judah tried to send the goat to J. Random priestess whore, everyone found out it was actually Tamar! And she was a hooker! So some asshat went up to Judah and was all, "Dude, your daughter in law is a hooker!" and Judah was all like, "BURN HER!", but then she said "OMG, noes, 'cause I got this seal, cord and staff of Judah and these are his kids, and therefore my dead husband's kids too according to that weird law!" So it was all cool and she had twins, and everyone lived happily ever after. I thought MY family was fucked up.
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While I was looking up names and stuff for this post I found an amusing LEGO re-enactment of the story. Imaginitive use of some of those pieces, that's for sure.
I can't decide, but it has to be either Creation, Noah's Ark or Revelation. But picking the most irrational story in the Bible is kind of like picking the most dangerous interstate highway to lie down in the middle of.
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My vote is definately Noah's Ark.
I do love to hear the intellectual back-flips that creationists attempt to perform to say that this story really happened.
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