Bible: Contradictions and Absurdities

Recently I came across the book All that’s Wrong 

with the Bible: Contradictions, Absurdities, and 

More by Jonah David Conner. Conner was born into a protestant family and spent his youth studying the Bible and spreading the word of God. However, as he dwelled more into the finer points of the holy book, he realized that it contained several contradictions, absurdities, and ‘other problems'. The book is an attempt at elaborating them. In the course of time, he became an atheist.

Some interesting thoughts and quotes from the book:

Turning to God and becoming more devout as a 

result of a personal crisis is an emotionally driven transformation. Emotions fluctuate like the weather and when you overcome the crisis, you turn away from God only to return when faced with another crisis.

“The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible.”  

-  Mark Twain

“Most of what discredits Christianity comes from within Christianity. You don’t have to go outside of religion to tear it apart.”  -  Dan Barker

Why do contradictions matter? They give concrete evidence that at least some parts of the Bible cannot be true. And if some parts are not true, then it cannot be of divine origin.

Contradictions are of two types:

Type A (simple negation) when a latter phrase negates a former. (E.g., John is short; John is not short.) and

Type B (incompatible concepts) when two phrases 

have incompatible concepts. (E.g., John is ugly; John is handsome.) 

I       Some types of contradictions:

Contradictions in names and numbers:

A: Who killed Goliath?

1 Sam.17:50     David killed Goliath of Gath (a Gittite)

2 Sam. 21:19    Elhanan killed Goliath the Gittite (Some versions have changed to the brother of Goliath)

B: Who was Joseph’s father?

Mt.1:16     Joseph’s father was Jacob

Lk.3:23     Joseph’s father was Heli

Contradictions of events and ideas:

A: Can someone see Yahweh’s face and live?

Gen.32:30         Jacob saw Yahweh “face to face.”

Ex.33:20   “No one can see Yahweh’s face and live.”

B: When did Satan enter Judas?

Lk.22:1-7 Satan entered Judas before the Passover meal.

Jn.13:27   Satan entered Judas specifically during the Passover meal, the instant when Judas took the bread.

Contradictions regarding life, death, and 

the resurrection of Jesus:

A: Did Jesus come to judge the world?

Jn.9:39     “I have come to judge the world.”

Jn.12:47   “I have not come to judge the world.”

B: What time of the day was Jesus crucified?

Mk.15:25 Jesus was crucified at the third hour.

Jn.19:14   Jesus was crucified after the sixth hour, since he was still before Pilate at “about the sixth hour.”

C: Who was at the tomb when Mary Magdalene (and others) arrived?

Mt.28:2     One angel was at the tomb.

Mk.16:5    One young man was at the tomb.

Lk.24:4     Two men were at the tomb.

Jn.20:11-12      Two angels were at the tomb.

Note: Some have insisted that ‘man’ and ‘angel’ can be two ways of describing the same thing since angels in the Bible typically take human form. But the Greek had a word for ‘angel’, another for ‘young man’, and another for ‘man’. Again, there remains the discrepancy of numbers.

II     Absurdities in the Bible:

The word ‘absurd’ is understood as something 

‘unreasonable. unsound, incongruous, extremely silly, or ridiculous; having no rational or orderly relationship to human life. (Webster)

Whether Christians admit it or not, the Bible condones polygamy, slavery, genocide, misogyny, and racism. They cannot argue that such teachings were inspired by a loving, merciful, and immutable god. One excuse is that the Bible was written in a very different period by people with a totally different view of social justice.

Some examples:

1.   Yahweh drowned every child on the planet in the flood. Gen.7:22-23

2.   Human sacrifice was acceptable if done for Yahweh. Gen.22; Lev.27:28-29; Jud.11:31-39.

3.   Polygamy was acceptable (for men only). Ex.21:10; Dt.21:15

4.   Adultery was a capital crime. Lev.20:10 (There are many nuns, priests, Bishops and Cardinals who are relieved that this mandate is no longer obeyed!)

5.   Israel was to burn certain prostitutes alive. Lev.21:9 (only applied to priests’ daughters)

6.   It was alright to steal foreign women and have sex with them. Dt.21:10-21

7.   Yahweh wants women to be silent in the Church and call their husbands “Lord.” 1Cor.14:34-35; 1Pt.3:6

Theological absurdities – Some examples

1.   Yahweh regretted making man and was “sorry in his heart.” Gen.6:6

2.   Yahweh lost his temper and killed 14,700 people in the process. Num.16:41-50

3.   Yahweh created evil. Is.45:7

4.   Jesus cursed a fig tree. Mk.11:12-14,20-21 (The curse was for not bearing fruit out of season! If it was out of season, why would he get angry?)

Factual absurdities and exaggerations – some examples:

1.   The creation accounts. Jen.1,2 (There is ample evidence to prove that the Genesis account of the manner of life’s origins and the development of animal species is totally wrong.)

2.   Adam lived 930 years, Methuselah 969 years, etc. Gen.5:27

3.   Samson killed 1000 men in a single day with the jawbone of a donkey. Jud.15:15. (Did they just line up and wait for Samson to come along and hit one by one on the head with the jawbone?)

4.   Joseph Basebeth killed 800 men in a single day with a spear. 2Sam.23:8. (Like Samson above, how in the world is this possible?)

5.   Solomon sacrificed 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep in one week. Chr.7:5. (With a total of 142,000 animals, they would have to do 850 sacrifices per hour 24/7. Would there be any animals left in the whole of Israel after this?)

6.   Matthew makes extraordinary additions to the resurrection narrative. Mt.27:51; 28:15. (Earthquakes, the resurrection of saints, bribing of Roman soldiers.) No other Gospel writers mention any mass resurrection in which “many saints came out of their tombs, went into the holy city and appeared to many.”

III      Changes made by copyists to the New Testament – some examples:

1.   Matthew 1:16 was tampered with to emphasize the virginity of Mary, Jesus’ mother. A copyist added ‘the virgin Mary’ to emphasize the pure and divine conception of Jesus.

2.   Some scribes added that Jesus “resurrected” to Romans 14:9. The original read “Jesus died and lived again.”

Conclusion

The presence of so many discrepancies can be 

excused if one were to regard the Bible as a human book imperfectly written, copied and edited over many centuries. But, for most believers, it is a holy book, directly inspired by God. They accept it as such and do not bother to study it in detail to discover the numerous discrepancies and contradictions. The average Christian is “intellectually lazy and embarrassingly ignorant.” Most go to Church, listen to random fragments of the Bible followed by subjective interpretations by the priest and forget everything the moment they step out of the Church. All they are looking for is to ways to avoid hell and go straight to heaven!

The typical attitude of the brainwashed believer was expressed by one when she told me: ‘Do not use reason or intellect when dealing with the word of God, just believe it!!’

Catholic Church and its obsession with sex - Part 3

Why did sex become dirty for the Catholic 

Church?

Why was human sexuality regarded as ‘degraded and unholy at worst and a necessary evil at most’? James Tabor, an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian origins, in his book “Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity”, has an interesting take on this matter.

Spiritual life = non-sexual life

In Greco-Roman culture, the material world, and thus anything to do with the body, was regarded as lower, and of less value than the heavenly spiritual world. This view is known as ascetic dualism. Humans were trapped in two worlds – the material and spiritual, with two modes of being – that of the body and the spirit (dualism). Those who denied the body and lived a celibate life, placing emphasis on the higher spiritual things ‘above’, were viewed as holy and free from the taint of the lower material world (asceticism). Generally, this outlook has not found a comfortable home within Judaism because of the emphasis in the Bible upon the goodness of God’s material creation (Genesis 1). But there are exceptions. Philo of Alexandria, the 1^st century BCE Jewish philosopher, honors Plato, the great advocate of ascetic dualism, next to Moses himself. Philo’s influence, not to mention Plato’s, was enormous on both Jewish and Christian thinkers. Apostle Paul built his theology around an essentially dualistic view of the cosmos in which the earthly was denigrated in favor of the heavenly. He advocated celibacy as a higher spiritual way, though he did not absolutely forbid sex. According to Paul, marriage was an antidote for the spiritually weak who might be tempted toward sexual immorality. It is easy to see how spiritual life began to be equated with nonsexual life.

There you have it. If you are nonsexual, you are spiritual!! The consequences of this mode of thinking, not found in the teachings of Jesus, but borrowed from Greek Philosophers, had wide-ranging and dire consequences for the lives of Christians throughout the centuries to come and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Monasteries and religious congregations were founded on the idea that virginity and chastity were most pleasing in the eyes of Jesus and God. Priests and nuns took the vow of chastity, having been brainwashed during years of formation, novitiate, and probation that the chaste life is a short cut to heavenly bliss. The psychological damage suffered by many in the religious life forced to live against nature and the guilt complex created in the consciences of Catholic laymen, obeying dogmas based on outmoded moral philosophies of ancient men who were the products of completely different social systems, is beyond imagination. 

Neocheating by early Church Leaders

Around 300 CE., Christian theologians discovered the 

ultimate ‘neocheating’ technique to control the faithful.

Neocheater is one who creates false realities or myths in order to gain unearned wealth, as opposed to someone who profits by producing valuable goods and services for society. The success of the neocheater relies on irrationality or mysticism in others.

Christian neocheaters’ technique was to link 

sex with guilt. 

Using this technique, the Catholic Church rose to its 

height in power, causing western civilization to crumble into the mystical dark ages as human well-being and happiness sank to the lowest level in recorded history.

A brief history of neocheating in the early 

Church

During the period 100 CE – 385 CE, the Roman 

empire still appeared vibrant but was surrendering to a new religion, Christianity, whose adherents plunged Rome into altruism and asceticism.

Roman pagan emperors began persecuting those 

Christians who became altruistic and ascetic fanatics and who used any means to meet their goals of destroying the life-enhancing and productive aspects of Roman civilization. Those neocheating Christian leaders had the dual objective of wiping out the pleasures of human life as well as destroying the high standard of living enjoyed by the Romans.

From 385 CE began the rise of the unkempt ascetics in Egypt based on Christian self-torture and denial (e.g., St. Simon, the stylite or pillar saint who achieved notability for living 37 years on a small platform on top of a pillar).

Christians became increasingly preoccupied with sex as they struggled against lust (e.g., by burning off fingers to resist temptation). Thinly veiled, neurotic eroticism steadily increased within the church.

St. Augustine (born 354 CE) promoted guilt through 

his invention of original sin. The sin of disobedience committed by two imaginary human beings Adam and Eve in an imaginary garden Eden eating an imaginary apple is transmitted through human sexual reproduction! Thus, by connecting sex and guilt, he used guilt to turn the goodness and pleasures of man against himself. St. Augustine became a master neocheater by creating problems where none existed.

The decline into dark ages coincided with the rise of 

Christianity. Collapsing under the Christian stranglehold, 6th century Rome was repeatedly ravaged and looted. Rome was abandoned as Christianity took hold.

By 585 CE Catholics argued that women did not have souls and debated if women were even human beings! Sex was reduced by Christianity to an unromantic, harsh, ugly act. Women became pieces of disposable property. Clergy and popes turned to prostitutes and neurotic sex.

By the 9th century, women were considered the 

property of men. The Church sanctioned wife-beating. For the Catholic clergy, sex without values (e.g., prostitute sex, orgy sex, even forced rape or sadistic sex) was not a serious offense, but sex with values (e.g., loving or valuing a woman) was a high sin with severe penalties. St. Jerome had stated that he who too ardently loved his wife was an adulterer.

Christian marital sex was performed only in one 

position and then only to conceive a child. Sex was never to be performed during lent nor on Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays, or holiday seasons. The major Christian sin was not sex, but pleasure.

The result of linking sex with guilt was to 

exponentially increase the number and gravity of sins committed by the faithful. Additionally, there was eternal damnation and unimaginable torture awaiting in hell for anyone committing sexual sins. This, naturally, forced more and more of the faithful to flock for sacraments, especially confession. The ultimate result: A Church with enormous power and limitless wealth.

The world of today is drastically different from that of the dark ages. However, the thinking and teachings of the Catholic Church have not undergone much change. Attend any so-called ‘conventions’ held by Christian priests and pastors. There you can still hear them brainwashing the naïve faithful linking sin and guilt with sex.

Until and unless a dead person comes back to announce that there is nothing beyond death, the neocheating and brainwashing will continue unabated. 

Catholic Church and its obsession with sex - Part 2

How did Rome get sex so wrong?

Greek philosophy, particularly Stoicism, had a great influence on the formation of doctrines in the early Church. Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy developed by Zeno of Citium around 300 B.C., which teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions. Seneca, a stoic philosopher, who lived in the first century CE, held the following opinion: “sexual pleasure (libido) is a destructive force fixed in the innards; its only justification is reproduction in marriage”. The Church followed this idea and taught that marriage had only one purpose: the child.

Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430 CE) reinforced this 

idea justifying it with his invention of the bizarre concept of ‘original sin’. (Please refer to my earlier blogs on Augustine and original sin).

According to him ‘Inter faeces et urinam nascimur, 

we are born betwixt piss and shit’. Augustine thought his out-of- control genitals were diabolical.

The only perfect marriage was sexless, the one 

between the Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph.

Instead of marrying and overcoming the guilt over his illicit affairs and for fathering a son, Augustine infected millions with it. With him began Rome’s great manufacture of sexual sins. 

The sexualization of sin was his invention. A single 

act of disobedience by one imaginary man, Adam, changed the structure of the universe – a most preposterous idea to enter the mind of man. The Church of Rome still clings to it and bases much of its teaching and practices on it.

With his ‘crime of eating an apple’, Adam messed up 

God’s plan. Nature itself was ‘denatured’. It ceased to be what it once was as God intended it to be: benign, deathless, with no sweaty male drudgery or female labor pains.

As the First Man, he represented everyone. His sin 

was everyone’s sin, like a hereditary disease. Augustine developed this crazy idea of inherited sin.

The Genesis myth of Adam’s disobedience was originally introduced by Paul; he needed this idea since his ‘idea of redemption hinged upon the contrast between the sin of Adam and the death and resurrection of Jesus.  For as in Adam all die, so in Christ, all will be made alive’. Up till then the transgression in the Garden of Eden had not been given great significance.

Rome still believes that this Genesis myth, initiated 

by Paul and grotesquely elaborated by Augustine, is a historical reality.

In the first 300 years, the Church followed Jesus to 

the letter. Had they foreseen the radical changes brought about when Constantine became Emperor in the 4^th century, they would have despaired. Christians enlisted as soldiers; bishops became civil servants of the hitherto hated Roman Empire. Popes began as Vicars of Peter who had nothing but an old boat. In time they lived like Emperors, dressed like them and spoke like them, ruled like them, stole their titles, lived in palaces with hundreds of rooms. Through all these changes, they still pretended to represent a Fisherman and a Carpenter. Critics never need to lie about the Catholic Church, only tell the truth.

[I am greatly indebted to Peter De Rosa for most of these ideas.]

Catholic Church and its obsession with sex - Part 1

Introduction

The two basic urges/instincts of humans and animals 

are self-preservation and self-propagation.

The Instinct of Eros — Life Instinct:

It is popularly known as the life instinct or love instinct or sex. It is also called the pleasure principle. The energy of the life instinct which finds its outlet in bringing people into close physical contact is called libido. Libido means the energy of sex motive or the urge of life. It is not the life instinct itself, but only a part of the life instinct. Life instinct is the source which goads one to develop the need for self-preservation.

It is the instinct which motivates one to preserve oneself. Otherwise known as the instinct of Eros, it impels us to do whatever possible to preserve ourselves in society. The sexual life is also derived from the instinct of Eros.

Catholic Church's obsession with sex

The most serious sins that trouble Catholics, right from early childhood, are those of a sexual nature, 

whether by commission or omission. Cardinal sins 

like anger, pride, greed, envy, laziness, and gluttony are insignificant in comparison with sexual sins. Even sins against the Ten Commandments like thou shall 

not steal, honor thy father and mother, etc. fade into insignificance. I have always wondered why the Church suffers from this obsession with sex. 

I found a great deal of clarity in this matter in a book that I came across recently: Sex, The Catholic Church has got it all wrong by Peter De Rosa. This book is a sequel to his best-selling book Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy and from which I have frequently quoted in my earlier blogs. In this book, he analyses the development of the Church’s obsession with sex. In two parts, I shall try to summarize some of his findings. All credit to him.

De Rosa starts off with the “Ten Catholic 

Commandments” of the Church which, for all practical purpose, seem to have replaced the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses by God.

1.   Thou shalt not sin against chastity for that is always a mortal sin.

2.   Thou shalt not consent to impure thoughts for that is always a mortal sin.

3.   Thou shalt not sexually arouse thyself for that is always a mortal sin.

4.   Thou shalt not have sex before marriage for that is always a mortal sin.

5.   Thou shalt not interrupt the sex act for that is always a mortal sin.

6.   Thou shalt not use condoms/contraceptive pills for that is always a mortal sin.

7.   Thou shalt not engage in vitro fertilization for that is always a mortal sin.

8.   Thou shalt not abort a one-minute old conceptus for that is always murder.

9.   Thou shalt not engage in homosexual acts for that is always a mortal sin.

10.  Thou shalt not divorce and marry for that is to live in mortal sin.

The first observation is that every sexual sin is mortal, never venial. With this kind of sin, there is no chance for a stay in purgatory; it deserves eternal damnation. 

De Rosa gives several reasons for this heavy 

emphasis on sex.

Rome is both a power structure and a religion. When 

the two clashes, as in the case of clergy sex-abuse scandal, religion goes out of the window.

Rome controls through its sexual discipline

1.   Rome controls the clergy through celibacy or non-breeding. Celibacy makes priests creatures of the system.

2.   Rome controls the laity by regulating their breeding habits.

One interesting observation is the oddity in the “Ten 

Catholic Commandments”. There is no reference to 'love' of any kind as taught by Jesus. Another oddity as compared with the Big Ten of Moses is that it allows for no exceptions.

Take some commandments of the Big Ten of Moses. 

For example, ‘Thou shall not kill’. Rome is ready to qualify it in many ways. You can kill in self-defense; you may kill in a just war; you can hang a murderer for his crime. In the case of ‘Thou shall not steal’, is it wrong for a starving child to steal some food?

Why is it that sexual sins are always grave sins with 

no exceptions?

Part 2 will discuss how Rome got sex so wrong.