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Analysis of Creation   Age of the Universe   Did Jesus Really Exist?   Discuss   (Up to OJB's Religion Page)

Religious Stories

There are many stories in the Bible which a lot of Christians accept as being literally true. Others claim they shouldn't be taken literally but have some sort of symbolic meaning. Still others claim they were originally true but some of the detail or meaning has changed after translation. A key point is that all of these stories were originally accepted as being literally true until scientific discoveries showed they couldn't be. If we accept they are no longer true how many other parts of the Bible might end up being in this category later? Can any part of the Bible be trusted? Clearly, the answer is no. For those of you who still hang on to the old stories the following evidence disproves them.

Genesis

The Biblical account of Genesis has many errors. The first book of the Bible is so full of holes that it makes it difficult to take the rest of the Bible seriously. There is no doubt that the Biblical account of creation is wrong. Christians have varying ways of coping with this. First they deny all the evidence, no matter how strong, which disagrees with Genesis. Second, they say the Bible has translation errors which only look like factual errors. And as a final desperate solution they suggest the Bible stories shouldn't be taken literally but their original meaning is still intact. The first defence is irrelevant - the evidence against the creation myths is just too strong. The other two arguments decrease the accuracy of the Bible so much that they make it far less relevant to everyone.

Here's a few points regarding the accuracy of Genesis. First, the timing is all wrong. If you believe each day is a day or a thousand years makes no difference, the order of events is all wrong. Earth and the Sun were not made before the stars. Plants did not appear before the Sun. All the plants and all the animals did not appear together. The Earth is also a lot older than can be deduced from the Bible. The famous prediction of 4004 BC may or may not be what the Bible really says, but it definitely doesn't predict the origin of the Earth in 4,500,000,000 BC! I show why the Universe and Earth aren't 6000 years old here.

There is so much in the Bible that makes no sense. If Earth is the only place God created life, why is the rest of the Universe there? Why are there other suns and planets? Why do we find fossils of creatures not mentioned in the Bible? The questions are just too numerous.

It is possible that the Bible is true and God has just put all the evidence out there to test our faith, but this a very feeble explanation. The most likely explanation is that the Bible is not true and the Christians have it wrong.

There's a thorough analysis of problems with the literal Biblical account of creation here.

Jesus

There isn't even any good evidence that Jesus even existed. Any obscure evidence that does exist makes him just another religious teacher or prophet. People from other cultures treat him as a mythological figure. Other important people from this time, and well before, are documented in multiple places. Note, that documentation in the Bible doesn't count. Supporting Christianity by quoting the Bible which in turn is justified because its the holy book of Christians is the ultimate circular argument! There's also quite a lot of inconsistency in the four gospels describing Jesus' life.

The Great Flood

The scientific evidence shows the Great Flood definitely didn't occur. There are many areas of unrelated evidence which show no event of this type has happened. Examining growth rings of trees, sedimentary deposits, midden, etc would easily reveal any worldwide flood and in every case the result is negative. Some people who support the flood suggest geological strata and accompanying fossils were deposited by the flood. This can't be true because the multiple layers, thickness of layers and well ordered progression of fossils (which also support evolution) are totally inconsistent with a single global flood. Another study shows midden deposits dating back a million years with no lack of continuity suggesting a flood.

Even if you don't accept the scientific evidence, there is still the practical problem of all the existing species surviving on the ark. If all species are accounted for its simply not possible. Finally, there is no mechanism through which the water could have appeared, and subsequently disappeared again. None of the suggested mechanism (comets, subterranean water, etc) are even remotely feasible.

Faith Healing

I have only ever found one unbiased, scientific study of faith healing. It was reported by the Mayo Clinic in 2001. The study found a slightly negative effect associated with prayer. In other words, if your friends prayed for you, you were slightly less likely to get well than those who didn't! Another effect noted was the feeling of abandonment when the patient wasn't healed. This actually produced a more negative outcome due to the effect of depression. If you understand the placebo effect, conscious and sub-conscious bias, and other effects proper scientific studies have to allow for, you will see reports of spectacular success through prayer and faith healing have to be viewed with extreme suspicion.

Prophecies

While there have been plenty of prophecies pointed out after the fact (in other words, highlighting things that have already happened that might have been predicted) there as a suspicious lack of predictions ahead of time. In fact there have been hundreds of predictions of the second coming of Christ, the end of the World, etc which have just turned out to be another ordinary day.

Also, many prophecies are expressed in terms which can be open to many interpretations - its easy to select one possible interpretation to events which have already occurred and claim its a Biblical prediction. Finally, everyone can predict the future, but not be right every time. There's a common fault in people to conveniently forget the false predictions and focus on the true ones, even though the success rate might be entirely due to chance. On balance, I think for lack of an outstanding unquestionable prophecy, we have to reject the idea that Biblical prophecies are accurate.