Is God Just Pretend- Part 3

Prayer an Act of Futility

Pray...it's the least you can do...literally.
Prayer Believers say that God knows all our thoughts, all our desires, all that we need and all we deserve or will deserve in the future.

In addition, this God has a divine plan. He did not create the world without a clear picture as to what He wanted. If God is a perfect being, then the plan would need to be equally perfect as well. It would need to be elaborated down to the most finite of detail, all the way down to the last atom. After all, it is a perfect plan right?

Considering this and prayers, we have two possibilities:

a) The thing a believer asks for is already in God's plan

b) The thing a believer asks for is not in God's plan

If the prayer is in accordance with the Plan, a believer will get it regardless if he or she prays for it. If what he or she asks is not in accordance with the Plan, he or she will not get it no matter how long he or she prays.

So, the question arises, why pray at all?

There is no evidence that payer has ever accomplished anything, and the hard work of one, has always done more than the prayers of millions.



Measuring the Power of Prayer

Let's try an experiment in praying. Let's flip a coin 20 times (make it 100 times if you want statistically better data). Make notes how many times you got heads or tails.

Now, take a coin and pray to the Jesus Christ to make every flip heads side up...pray hard. If you need help ask a believer to pray with you.

Gather your family and friends and ask them to pray for it. You didn't get your prayer fulfilled did you? Maybe you even got less heads than the first time you flipped it.

After you have compared the data, prepare another coin, but before you start flipping pray to your car, your kitchen table, or to your toothbrush. Pray hard and then start flipping.

The odds are you got near 50-50 ratio all three times, you were flipping. You didn't get 100 heads. Not praying, praying to Jesus Christ and praying to a random object got you nearly the same results.

Time and time again...nothing fails like prayer.



Repentance

Don't Think, Don't Question, Just Believe!

Repent The Christian Church teaches us that all non-Christians will end up in hell. It is not important if they were good persons or bad, if they helped others, did good deeds, and were an inspiration to other good people... They will go to hell.

On the other hand, the worst criminals in human history, serial killers, rapists, torturers will end up in paradise if they repent before death.

Hitler, the most negative person in the newer western history could be in heaven right now, laughing, because he repented just before he died. Coincidentally Hitler was not an atheist, but in fact a theist and gave many references to God in his speeches as well as his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle).

The Church, of course, profited many times because of this handy rule. Many people throughout history gave all of their assets to the church in exchange for a last minute pardon.



Jesus Saves?

Jesus, as a son of God, is as perfect as God is. How is it possible, then, that he so failed at his mission on Earth? His mission was to spread the word of God and to save us from our sins.

If he is perfect, his mission should have been accomplished perfectly. Nevertheless, looking at this world during history and today, we can easily see that he failed miserably. There are many religions, even more sects. Christians are not even the majority among people on this planet. Even worse, not even all Christians can agree about religion and God; far from it. Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses... they are all Christians.

His message of peace was ignored by the church itself, so how will it not be from the rest of the humankind?

People in America and Australia only heard of His existence many centuries after he died, Jesus never visited them to spread the word of God.

How is it possible that he did his mission so poorly, despite his perfection and his perfect knowledge of human species?

Dying on the cross, Jesus said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Would a person dying voluntarily for us say those words? Those words more likely would suit a person whose plans did not develop as he/she imagined it. A person who did not think he or she would find him or herself in that position.

How can Jesus save us if he can't save himself?



Satan

By now we all know that God is the most powerful force in the Universe and can do anything. He created everything including his own adversary, and although God is all powerful, he just can't seem to abolish this enemy. God makes many wagers and plays many games with Satan (as in the Story of Job). He is Omnipotent, yet He allows Satan to exist and wreak havoc on the world. God is Omniscient yet he still makes wagers knowing already what the end result will be...after all He knows everything, He is Omniscient. God is Omnipotent which means He transcends time, yet He enjoys watching how His game plays out...knowing already how it will end.

So, this is all just a cosmic arm wrestling match with humans being the prize. If Satan wins he gets our "soul" and if God wins (which of course he already knows the outcome) we get to spend an eternity worshiping and praising him. God has a rule book, but I am not aware of one by Satan...I might voluntarily let Satan have my soul when I am dead, if He offers a better after-life than praising a self-pretentious Deity. I do not feel it's fair that I have been only told one side of the story.

I am not worried about spending eternity in Hell anymore than I am looking forward to spending eternity in Heaven because I know both are just fictional places that do not really exist.



Original Sin

According to the Bible, Adam and Eve sinned (for acquiring knowledge) and God cast them out of paradise.

The Bible claims God will punish someone for a sin they have committed. However, is it just to also punish all of their descendants? What kind of God would punish the great-great- great-great- great-great- great-great... grandsons for the sin an ancestor committed?

How would a believer feel if he or she was punished for his or her father's sins? How would he or she feel if someone remembered the sins of his or her grandfather and punished him or her for them? What if they punished the children for it? Would he or she be able to describe that person as someone merciful and full of love?

Even in the Bible itself, it is written that children must not be punished for the sins of their fathers:

Deuteronomy 24:16 - The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.

Ezekiel 18:20 - The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father; neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.

So where does the idea of original sin originate from?



Gods Displeasure with Man

As Genesis 6:5-7 states, a perfect God, which in advance knew what kind of world and men He was creating, in the end was not pleased with His creation. Therefore, He decided to drown everybody except Noah, his family and the animals on the Ark. How is it possible that an all-knowing God, in the end, is not satisfied with His creation? He must have known how it would turn out.

Homosexuality-

The Church teaches us that homosexuality is dirty, unnatural and sinful.

By observing nature and animals on this planet, men noted more than 450 species that practice homosexual relationships. They never noted a homophobic behavior among those species.

Only humans feel homophobia, mostly because they were raised that way, in Christian spirit.

It is no wonder, as the Bible (Romans 1:24-32) states that lesbians and homosexuals deserve to die.

But how could a God that created everything and knows everything be angry with something that He not only created, but knew in advance that he would do, and what the results of that creation would be? Did he change his mind later? Does not seem like the work of a perfect God to me.



The 10 Commandments

At some point God feels the need to scribble down his top ten list of things that humans are to abide by. This list not only includes the things we should not do such as kill, rape, and steal, but also those things we should do...like praise God of course. As for the things we should not do, these things seem very obvious. I am sure mankind already knew these things even if they did not always follow them, but etching them in stone did not seem to fix this problem either. As for the things we should do, God made sure that most of these commandments would be self-pretentious acts to further serve Him of course.

1. You shall have no other gods before me. (Self-pretentious)

2. You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Self-pretentious)

3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain. (Self-pretentious)

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. (Self-pretentious)

5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you. (Self-pretentious and obvious)

6. You shall not murder. (Obvious)

7. You shall not commit adultery. (Obvious)

8. You shall not steal. (Obvious)

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (Obvious)

10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's." (Obvious)

Without these 10 commandments would man have never known that murder, rape, and theft were wrong? The obvious ones are rules which most people would agree with as being rules people need to live by in order to sustain an orderly and functioning society. The rest of these commandments are nothing more than the self-pretentious masturbatory fantasies of a God that has a personality disorder.

What is listed above is the most commonly known list, but there is actually another version that is not known by most people:

1. Thou shalt worship no other god:

2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep.

4. All that openeth the matrix is mine...All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.

5. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest.

6. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end.

7. Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the LORD God.

8. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.

9. The first of the first fruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God.

10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

A little confused?

Read more in: "Which Ten Commandments?"



Bible Contradictions

There are many places in the Bible where it is wrong, or is simply contradictory to itself. Here are only a few examples; you can easily find many other on the internet:

Genesis 1:11-12 and 1:26-27: Trees came before Adam.
Genesis 2:4-9: Trees came after Adam.

Genesis 1:20-21 and 26-27: Birds were created before Adam.
Genesis 2:7 and 2:19: Birds were created after Adam.

Genesis 1:24-27: Animals were created before Adam.
Genesis 2:7 and 2:19: Animals were created after Adam.

Genesis 1:26-27: Adam and Eve were created at the same time.
Genesis 2:7 and 2:21-22: Adam was created first, woman sometime later.

War or Peace?

EXO 15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.
ROM 15:33 Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen.

Who is the father of Joseph?

MAT 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
LUK 3:23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli.

God be seen?

EXO 24:9,10; AMO 9:1; GEN 26:2; and JOH 14:9
God CAN be seen:
"And I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my backparts." (EXO 33:23)
"And the Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend." (EXO 33:11)
"For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." (GEN 32:30)

God CANNOT be seen:
"No man hath seen God at any time." (JOH 1:18)
"And he said, Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and live." (EXO 33:20)
"Whom no man hath seen nor can see." (1TIM 6:16)

Both versions can't be correct if God were to be perfect.

There are more contradictions than I can list here. Doing a simple Google search you can find many more.



Christian Science?

Do You Believe in Dinosaurs? According to the Bible, Earth is about 6,000 years old. So, how do we explain the abundance of fossils that scientists have proven are much, much older? Using radiometric dating and stratigraphy, scientists have determined the age of our planet and have shown that Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Fossils enable us to see how species evolved during hundreds of thousands of years.

Some believers would say that science was wrong before. That is true. Nevertheless, radiometric dating and stratigraphy are hardly the only methods scientists use. Radiocarbon dating method, Samarium-neodymium dating method, Rubidium-strontium dating method, Potassium-argon dating method, Uranium-lead dating method, Uranium-thorium dating method...The list goes on.

But evolution can be observed on much shorter time periods as well. All serious scientists will confirm organisms change during time. This can best be seen in case of viruses and bacteria that multiply very fast compared to bigger animals. Faster reproduction means better chance of mutation. That is why you can read about a strain of bacteria that is resilient to antibiotics. It mutated and adopted in order to survive.

Of course, the Church does not recognize evolution, despite much scientific evidence, because it contradicts the Bible. Let us not forget, it was the church that taught the Earth was flat and at the center of the Universe, not science. When scientists tried to contradict this, they were jailed or killed.

After so many proofs, clinging to the 6,000 years story is just stubborn and shows a lack of intellect.



Evolution

Many theists will insist that Evolution has not been proven (although some churches are finally accepting this as fact) even though it has been. Of course most theists hold on to their belief that Evolution has not been proven, because if they admit otherwise, they also would have to question their belief of Creationism. If they are wrong about Creationism, then their entire belief system is finished, and they are not about to let that happen, so they deny Evolution. Yes, Evolution is real and has been proven, and many times.

Theists love to misrepresent what Evolution really is. Richard Dawkins explains Evolution in this short clip Why are there still Chimpanzees? Of course there is a lot more to it than this and there are many books and videos that you can get that will explain exactly how Evolution works.

I am not going to spend a lot of time on this section, because many theists will simply dismiss it anyway. At some point they will have no choice but to finally accept this, much like they had to accept that the world is not flat, nor is it the center of the Universe.



The Genetics Problem

In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve. They were the only members of the human race on the planet. Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel, two boys. Cain killed Abel, so that left Adam, Eve and Cain as the only members of human species on the planet. The Bible states Cain married and got a son, Enoch.

[Genesis 4:16-17]

And Cain went out from the face of the Lord, and dwelt as a fugitive on the earth, at the east side of Eden. And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived, and brought forth Henoch: and he built a city, and called the name thereof by the name of his son Henoch.

Wait a moment...whom did he marry? There were other people on the planet? Where did they come from? If God created them, why hasn't the Bible stated it? Perhaps, Eve had more children and Cain married his sister?

Cain was the first born son of Adam and Eve, and Abel was the second. In Genesis 4 we read how Cain kills his brother and is sent east of Eden where he marries a woman and "lays" with her. Because Adam and Eve were the first humans - from whom all people come - Cain's wife was his sister - and, consequently, all of the early Biblical relationships were incestuous (with the exception of Adam and Eve).

Cain, incidentally, was the guy that caused so much trouble for the Mormon's who believed that the cursed "Mark of Cain" meant black skin, leading them to forbid blacks from entering the Mormon priesthood (God "revealed" that they were allowed to let black skinned people in to the priesthood in 1978).



Jesus a False Prophet?

When he spoke about his return, Jesus Christ said the following:

Matthew 16:27 - For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. {16:28} Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

He also said:

Matthew 24:30 - And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

He continues:

Matthew 24:34 - Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, until all these things be fulfilled.

Mark confirmed those words:

Mark 9:1 - And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

Therefore, Judgment Day was supposed to happen soon after those words were spoken. "This generation shall not pass." Some of the people listening should have been alive when that happened.

Why didn't Judgment Day arrive shortly after? The Bible clearly announced it would.



It's Just a Test


Believers often say that God is testing us.

Everything bad can be explained as a test of one's faith. "My family died, they had to cut off my legs and now I'm blind as well... It must be God testing me."

Why would He have to test anyone? He is all knowing.

He does not need to tempt or test anyone with anything. He knows all the possible outcomes in advance.

As the story goes, there was an extremely righteous man named Job, who was very prosperous and had seven sons and three daughters. Constantly fearing that his sons may have sinned and "cursed God in their hearts", he habitually offered burnt offerings as a pardon for their sins. The "sons of God" and Satan (literally "the adversary") present themselves to God, and God asks Satan his opinion on Job.

Satan answers that Job is pious only because God has put a "wall around" him and "blessed" His favorite servant with prosperity, but if God were to stretch out his hand and strike everything that Job had, then he would surely curse God. God gives Satan permission to test Job's righteousness.

All of Job's possessions are destroyed; the 500 yoke of oxen and 500 donkeys carried off by Sabeans, the 7000 sheep were burned up by 'The fire of God which fell from the sky,' the 3000 camels were stolen by the Chaldeans and the house of the firstborn collapsed, due to a mighty wind, killing all of Job's offspring, but Job does not curse God, but instead shaves his head, tears his clothes and says, "Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return: Lord has given, and Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of Lord."

Once again, why a test in the first place? Wouldn't God have already known the answer to Satan's question? Can God really be that petty that he would have allowed Satan to tempt Him?

Once again we see the sociopathic behavior of "God".




Noah's Ark

According to the Bible 8 people 600 years old (people also lived to be 900 years old in Biblical times) constructed a wooden ship large enough to carry 2 of every life form in the world; a magnificent accomplishment indeed.

How large would a ship have to be in order to accommodate the many millions of mammals, reptiles, birds, insects that are on this planet? By best estimates, there are between 10 million and 50 million different species on Earth. That would mean Noah would have had to build an ark large enough to house between 20 million and 100 million species.

How did Noah manage to gather all of the species, from all over the world? Some of them live only on other continents that were unknown to men at that time? What about the different climates that would be needed for different species? Can polar bears, which require a cold climate, coexist with elephants, which require a warm climate? Was the ark climate controlled?

Of the millions of species of insects, arachnids, and other bugs on earth, and how did they survive for such a long period when some of them have a lifespan that is measured in hours?

Where did he get all of the food; they didn't all eat the same things? How large would the ship have had to been in order to store all the food for all the animals for a period of 40 days?

How did they manage to take care of that many animals, feed them? What about all the waste that would have been produced? What about some of the animal's special diets? For instance, pandas eat only bamboo plants. What did the carnivores eat; lions, tigers, dogs or other animals?

What happened to all the plants on the planet? They died as well, because they were drowned.

What did the animals eat once they got off the ark? Plants are gone. Other animals are gone. Herbivores have nothing to eat; carnivores can eat only animals that survived. Why didn't the carnivores eat the herbivores?

What happened when some of them became sick; was Noah also skilled in veterinary medicine? Why, among the thousands of types of dinosaurs, were only crocodiles and alligators saved? After nearly a year at sea, how did he manage to put them all back in their respective places?

Where did all the water (enough to cover Mount Everest at 29,000 feet) come from? Why did the massive influx of fresh water not kill the ocean creatures, which require salt water in a certain salinity, temperature, and pressure range?

Which was it, two or seven?

Ge 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.

Ge 7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. 7:3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

Didn't anyone else have a seaworthy boat? After all, they would only have to care for themselves, not two (or maybe seven) of every beast on the earth. Any oceangoing fishing boat would do.

Given that some parts of the Bible are to be taken as literally true and others are metaphors or parables, how do you decide which is which? Is a passage true until you decide that it doesn't make sense? Is it possible that the life of Jesus is a parable itself - a collection of stories gathered about various people and things, melded together to teach a moral lesson? How do you know for sure? The stories of creation and Noah's ark are presented as history, not parable - why was God not more clear in delineating which is which?

There is also no evidence any of this ever happened. Just as with Moses spending 40 years in the desert with three million Jews, there is not one shred of evidence to support this. If millions of people had been in the desert for that many years, would there not have been some archaeological evidence to support this?


This article is continued in part 4 of, Is God Just Pretend?