The Foundational Falsehood of Religion is the lie that sacred scriptures are the Word of God.
When believers are challenged over their beliefs, their usual response is, “who are you going to believe: the Word of God or the Word of Man?” This is based on the faulty presupposition that human inquiry is incapable of contradicting their fables and fairy tales. Except, when they say “the Word of Man”, they mean things like science, history, archaeology, etc. And when they say “the Word of God”, they’re referring to myths written about God by men (and when I say men I mean male authors). Sure the authors may have claimed to have received revelation from God or gods or angels, but they were still written by men, not angels or gods or God.
If there really is a Creator God who revealed his wisdom and knowledge to humanity, there would only be one “Word of God”. It would have no off-shoots or parallels in any other religion or culture because human thought wouldn’t be able to compete with it. It would reveal wisdom and morality far beyond anything humans could come up with. And you wouldn’t need faith to believe in either, because every claim and aspect of it would be objectively verifiable. But what we see in reality is the exact opposite: Multiple different religions based on multiple different texts spinning-off in different directions. The Christian Bible, the Jewish Torah, the Quran of Islam, the Book of Mormon, the Kitab-i-Aqdas of the Baha’i Faith, the Hindu Vedas, the Avesta of Zoroastrianism, the Adi Granth of Sikhism, and the Urantia Book all claim to be the revealed word of the one true god and that all the others are merely deceptions. The only rational conclusion is that they’re all being deceived. None of these texts have any particular advantage over the others: each one presents claims that either can’t be proven or have been disapproved, each privileges faith over reason, and each one presents prophecies that are either too vague to be properly interpret or have failed to come to pass.
For example, in Ezekiel 26 it is foretold that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon would destroy the city of Tyre and that God would sink the city beneath the ocean so that it would never again be found. This prophecy failed in every conceivable way: Alexander the Great was the one who conquered the city, not Nebuchadnezzar, and the city didn’t sink beneath the sea never to be found again as the ruins of the original city are still present on the island. As another example, in Ezekiel 29 it is foretold that Nebuchadnezzar would conquer Egypt and render it a desolate wasteland. This never happened. Even Isaiah 7:14, which is said by many to be a prophecy about the birth of Jesus, isn’t accurate. First, the Hebrew word actually means “young woman”, the word “virgin” is a mistranslation. Second, if you read the verse in context, it’s pretty clearly referring to an event that was supposed to happen in Isaiah’s day. The actual prophecy said that a young woman would get pregnant and have a child named Immanuel, and that once the child was old enough to tell different tastes apart, Israel would triumph over Syria. Of course, when the woman didn’t get pregnant then Isaiah got her pregnant, and then he forgot to name the kid Immanuel. And Israel ended up getting defeated by Syria. So this prophecy was still a colossal failure. Jesus foretells on three different occasions (Matthew 16:24, Mark 9:1, Luke 9:26-27) that some of his disciples “will not taste death” until the Second Coming happens. The latest we could reasonably give as an expiration date is the end of the first century. So, since it’s been over 1900 years since the due date, I think it’s safe to assume that Jesus isn’t coming back. The only Biblical prophecy that could reasonably be given as having “come to pass” is Ezekiel 37, which foretells the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Israel. However, it also says that Israel would be recognized by the world (it isn’t), that it would know peace with its neighbors (it doesn’t), that God would be recognized as the founder of Israel (he isn’t), and that an army of the dead would be raised to help reestablish Israel (yes really). So even this was massive failure.
Of course, failed prophets and prophecies are throughout the Bible. Jesus himself claimed to be the Messiah (sometimes), but he didn’t actually fulfill the criteria to be the Messiah. According to The Jewish Response To Missionaries, the criteria for the Messiah are as follows:
He must be Jewish. (Deuteronomy 17:15, Numbers 24:17)
He must be a member of the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10) and a direct male descendent of both King David (I Chronicles 17:11, Psalm 89:29-38, Jeremiah 33:17, II Samuel 7:12-16) and King Solomon. (I Chronicles 22:10, II Chronicles 7:18)
He must gather the Jewish people from exile and return them to Israel. (Isaiah 27:12-13, Isaiah 11:12)
He must rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. (Micah 4:1)
He must bring world peace. (Isaiah 2:4, Isaiah 11:6, Micah 4:3)
He must influence the entire world to acknowledge and serve one G-d. (Isaiah 11:9, Isaiah 40:5, Zephaniah 3:9)
There are other cases of failed prophecy as well. Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, claimed that based on coded messages in the Book of Daniel and measurements he personally took from the Great Pyramid, that the Second Coming was going to occur in 1914. After that date came and went and nothing happened, Russell claimed that he had made a miscalculation and that the Second Coming would occur in 1925. This also failed. Joseph Smith of Mormonism foretold that the Second Coming would occur in 1891. This failed. Both Russell and Smith were dead by the time their due dates showed up, but not everyone is. In 1982, Pat Robertson claimed that a planetary alignment that would occur that year would cause a polar shift and bring about the End Times. No apology from him when that event came and went and nothing happened. Doomsday preachers claimed that September 23rd, 2015, would see a comet strike and the beginning of the End Times. No apology from them when this event came and went and nothing happened. In 2011, Harold Camping claimed that the Rapture and the beginning of the End Times would occur on May 20th, 2011. No apology from him after the date came and went and nothing happened. In fact, Camping even said he didn’t know why his prophecy failed, except his roster was leaked a few days earlier, showing that Camping still had meetings and appointments scheduled up to months later. So Camping knew that his prophecy was bullshit and he just made it up to scam some money out of his followers.
Of course, other religions have failed prophecies as well. Here’s one from the the Bhagavada Purana:
Then in the beginning of the Kali Yuga, the supreme lord Krishna will appear as Buddha, the son of Anjana, in the province of Gaya, for the purpose of deluding the atheists who are envious of the faithful theists. (Canto 1, chapter 3, verse 24)
This is clear evidence that the Bible and other religious texts are man-made. Another clear piece of evidence is the various contradictions within the Bible. As a few examples (because there are a lot):
Genesis 1 says that God created plants on the third day, birds on the fifth day, land animals on the sixth day, and that Adam and Eve were created last and at the same time. Genesis 2 says that God created Adam first, then created land animals, birds, and plants at the same time (all in one day), and that Eve was created the next day.
Matthew 27:3-7 says that Judas Iscariot returned the pieces of silver to the Chief Priests, went out to a field and hung himself, and the priests bought the field. Acts 1:18 says that Judas Iscariot kept the money, purchased the field himself, and then fell headfirst into a ditch and split his guts open.
Matthew 1 traces the genealogy of Jesus through King Solomon and says that Joseph’s father was Jacob. Luke 3 traces the genealogy of Jesus through King David’s son Nathan and says that Joseph’s father was Heli (some apologists have tried to defend this by arguing that the genealogy in Luke 3 was actually Mary’s, but this can be easily demonstrated to be false by just reading the text).
The reason for this is because there were multiple different authors of the Bible. Different authors, who lived in different time periods, in different historical, cultural, philosophical, social, political and theological contexts, whose work was then stitched together at a later point. Dr. Paul Maier said in an interview with Penn and Teller’s Bullshit:
Well I wouldn’t call them contradictions as much as commentaries, the one on the other. Again, let’s point out, we probably do have two different authors here, whose work was blended together then, in an editorial revisioning, somewhat.
He’s right about there being more than one author for the Bible. Modern scholarship has identified at least four authors for the Torah (the Wellhausen Documentary Hypothesis):
The Yahwist Source (J) (c. 950 BCE)
The Elohist Source (E) (c. 850 BCE)
The Deuteronomist Source (D) (c. 600 BCE)
The Priestly Source (P) (c. 500 BCE)
Modern scholarship doesn’t credit Moses as the author of anything for two reasons: 1) There are many aspects of the Torah that Moses couldn’t have written (such as his own death and burial) and 2) Because Moses evidently didn’t exist. As Rabbi David Wolpe pointed out in a 2001 Passover Sermon:
The truth is that virtually every modern archaeologist who has investigated the story of the Exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.
The story of the birth of Moses is taken from the story of the birth of King Sargon of Akkad. As Lloyd Graham documents in Deceptions and Myths of the Bible:
This myth woven about the legendary Sargon I, 2750 B.C., strikingly resembles the early history of Moses, that is, his infancy. This part is given only by the Elohist, “… when she, Moses’ mother, could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bullrushes and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink” (Exodus 2:3). And on the tablets of Kouyunjik, Sargon tells his story.
4. My mother, the princess, conceived me; in difficulty she brought me forth.
5. She placed me in an ark of rushes with bitumen my exit she sealed up.
6. She launched me in the river which did not drown me.
7. The river carried me to Akki, the water-carrier, it brought me.
8. Akki, the water-carrier, in tenderness of bowels, lifted me …
In appreciation, Sargon named his capital Agadi, called the Semites Akkad, and Akkad was near the city of Sippara. Now note that Moses’ wife was “Zipporah.”
The story of Moses parting the Red Sea is taken from the legend of the Pharaoh Snefru and the magician Djadjaemankh. As AronRa documents in The Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism:
Egypt provided another precursor in the form of Djadjamankh, chief ritual priest of the Pharaoh Snefru, from the 4th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom in the twenty-fifth century BCE. One of the five tales included on the Westcar Papyrus details a voyage wherein Snefru took a score of buxom beautiful girls, stripped them all naked, and enjoyed the view of his crew as they each took an oar and rowed his long boat across a lake. One of these girls accidentally dropped a turquoise bauble over the side and got so upset about losing it that the Pharaoh called on his high priest for help. Djadjamankh then chanted an incantation spell that folded half of the water in the lake onto the other half, as though he were looking under a blanket. Thus the Pharaoh could appear a hero to a topless rowing maiden.
Okay, so it’s not quite Cecil B. DeMille, but it does cause one to wonder how the story of Moses parting the Red Sea could be considered original in the same land that had already dreamt this satirical farce up well more than a thousand years earlier.
Even the law of Moses is largely taken from the Code of Hammurabi (which was also given atop a mountain by a deity). However, the Code of Hammurabi exists on an 8 ft. pillar currently on display in the British Museum, while the Ten Commandments are located in the Ark of the Covenant, which only exists in movies.
Many Biblical stories from the Old Testament are taken from pre-Jewish pagan sources such as:
The Sumerian King List,
The Enûma Eliš,
The Epic of Atrahasis,
The Epic of Gilgamesh,
The Avesta of Zoroastrianism,
The Egyptian Book of the Dead,
The religion of Amen-Ra,
The astrology of Helel bin Shahar
The Eridu Genesis
Genesis 1 is taken from the Babylonian creation myth of the Enuma Elis, with the world being created in the same order over the course of seven generations of gods, with the sixth generation creating man so that the seventh generation can rest. Genesis 2 borrows elements from the Epic of Atrahasis, with man being created out of dirt by essentially a golem spell (though in Atrahasis, blood was used). Elements of Genesis 2 and 3 are taken from the Sumerian legend of Enki. In the legend, the god Enki trespassed on the sacred garden and ate of its forbidden fruit. The goddess Ninhursag cursed him for it and he fell. Then she forgave the fallen immortal and bore seven daughters to cure his wounds. One of them, Ninti, was “lady of the rib,” for she was born to close the wound to his side. Does that sound familiar? The story of Noah’s Ark and flood (which can be easily disapproved by multiple scientific fields) was taken from the Epic of Gilgamesh (Utnapistim), the Epic of Atrahasis (Atrahasis), and the Eridu Genesis (Ziusudra), all of which are based on the Flood of Shurapak c. 2900 BCE. Even the story of Jesus in the Gospels borrowed elements from pre-Christian pagan gods (though not all the parallels you hear about are valid), such as Krishna, Osiris, Mithras, and Dionysus (to name a few). As Justin Martyr pointed out:
And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre?
…
As to the objection of our Jesus's being crucified, I say, that suffering was common to all the aforementioned sons of Jove [Jupiter] . . . As to his being born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance that. As to his curing the lame, and the paralytic, and such as were cripples from birth, this is little more than what you say of your Aesculapius.
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It having reached the Devil's ears that the prophets had foretold the coming of Christ, the Son of God, he set the heathen Poets to bring forward a great many who should be called the sons of Jove. The Devil laying his scheme in this, to get men to imagine that the true history of Christ was of the same characters the prodigious fables related of the sons of Jove.
The demonstrable facts that these texts are “borrowing” from pagan sources, is further evidence that texts like the Bible are man-made. Now, some may have noticed that I’ve primarily critiqued Christianity and the Bible, and the reason for that is because I am a former Christian and feel a responsibility to primarily critique Christianity. Christianity of course didn’t come about as the Bible depicts either. The Bible (somewhat) depicts Christianity as a united movement, but this isn’t the correct history. Early Christianity was primarily divided into three sects:
The Ebionites, who believed that Jesus was a fully human prophet and wasn’t divine in anyway.
The Docetics, who believed that Jesus was a purely divine being and wasn’t human in anyway.
The Gnostics, a pre-Christian belief system that taught that the world was inherently wicked and that “knowledge through faith” was the path towards salvation.
These three sects were later merged into Christian Orthodoxy, while other sects (like the Marcions and the Luciferians) were discredited by further Biblical revisions and were thus persecuted. In 325 CE, the Council of Nicaea (which settled the issue of the deity of Christ) was called to settle the dispute between Orthodoxy (the belief that Jesus was equally God and man) and Arianism (the belief that Jesus was divine, but was only a created being). The former position was defended by Athanasius (c. 296–298 CE –May 2nd 373 CE) and the latter position being defended by Arius (250 or 256 CE–336 CE). The Council voted in favor of the position of Athanasius, affirming the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. Arianism was eventually spread into Arabia, where it may have influenced Islam and the Quran.
Church councils like the Council of Nicaea also helped developed the Biblical canon. The Church developed the Biblical Canon by accepting texts that match their ideology and rejecting texts that contradicted their ideology. As Dr. Paul Maier pointed out:
The way the canon developed was by what was being read on Sunday in the centers of Christianity. What do you read on the second Sunday after Easter in the church in Jerusalem? What’s the church of Rome reading at this time? And they found that again and again, they were zeroing in on the same stories in the gospels. And so the core of the canon kind of developed from the usage of the early church.
So the Biblical Canon was developed according to what churches were reading at the time. And yet they still removed several books that were referenced by other books of the Bible:
Removed from the Old Testament:
The Book of the Covenant (Exodus 24:7)
The Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14)
The Book of Jasher (Joshua 10:13:2 and Samuel 1:18)
The Book of Statutes (1 Samuel 10:25)
The Book of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41)
The Book of Nathan (1 Chronicles 29:29 and 2 Chronicles 9:29)
The Book of Gad (1 Chronicles 29:29)
The Prophecy of Ahijah and Visions of Iddo (2 Chronicles 9:29, 12:15, and 13:22)
The Book of Shemaiah (2 Chronicles 12:15)
The Book of Jehu (2 Chronicles 20:34)
The Acts of Uzziah written by Isaiah (2 Chronicles 26:22)
The Sayings of the Seers (2 Chronicles 33:19)
The Book of Enoch (Jude 14)
The Assumption of Moses (Jude 9)
Removed from the New Testament:
An Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 5:9)
An Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians (Ephesians 3:3)
An Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans (Colossians 4:16)
The Prophecy that Christ should be a Nazarene (Matthew 2:23)
The Predictions known to the scribes in Jesus’ day that Elias must restore all things before the coming of Christ (Matthew 17:10)
There were several gospels that were removed by the Church for contradicting their ideology, including but not limited to:
The Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Philip
The Gospel of Mary Magadalene
The Gospel of Judas
The Revelation of Peter
The Revelation of Paul
Even today Christians can’t agree on the Biblical Canon. The Protestant Bible contains 66 books. The Catholic Bible contains an additional 15 books (the Apocrypha) and some additions to Daniel and Esther. The Orthodox Bible contains even more than that. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church includes the Book of Enoch as a part of the Old Testament. If the Bible was honestly written by God, why would he let humans try to develop the Biblical Canon instead of just telling them which books should be included or not?
The Bible wasn’t written by men. The Bible can’t be taken literally as it is scientifically wrong about almost everything. The Bible says the Earth is a flat disc (Isaiah 40:22), divided to four areas (or corners) (Isaiah 11:12), sits upon pillars (1 Samuel 2:8), and is unmovable (1 Chronicles 16:3, Psalms 93:1). All of this was contained in a firmament (Genesis 1:7), which also contains the Sun, Moon, and stars (Genesis 1:14, Ezekiel 1:22), and had fountains and windows to let water in (Genesis 7:11). Oh, and it also says that the Sun and Moon can be stopped in the sky (Joshua 10:12-13), that the Sun can be made to set at noon (Amos 8:9), that stars can fall from the sky (Matthew 24:29), and be stomped out (Daniel 8:10). The Bible just isn’t a scientific text. It’s a book that believes in talking animals (Genesis 3, Numbers 22:1–35), witchcraft (Leviticus 14), astrology (Genesis 1:14–15; Job 38:32; Isaiah 14:12–14; Matthew 12:32, 28:20, Luke 21:25), ritual spells (Leviticus 14, Numbers 5), and enchanted artifacts (Exodus 7:8–12; 1 Samuel 5:6–9; 5:69, 6:19). This is a book that says that if you have a priest shave your head and sprinkle bird blood on you it will cure you of leprosy. This is a book that says that rabbits chew cud (Leviticus 11:6), bats are birds (Leviticus 11:13–19, Deuteronomy 14:11–18), whales are fish (Jonah 1:17 compared to Matthew 12:40), and Pi is a round number (1 Kings 7:23, 2 Chronicles 4:2). This is a book that says that if you have livestock mate in front of speckled branches they will produce speckled offspring (Genesis 30:37-43). Obviously, the Bible doesn’t know anything about science, and as a moral guide, the Bible is an abject failure considering the fact that the Bible condones and promotes:
Murder (Exodus 2:12, 21:15, 22:17, Leviticus 20:9-10, 13, 27, Deuteronomy 13:13-19, 17:12, Judges 9:5, 11:29-39, 14:9, 2 Samuel 18:15, 1 Kings 2:24-25, 29-34, 46, 9:27, 10:7, 2 Chronicles 21:4, Proverbs 20:20)
Genocide (Genesis 6:11-17, 7:11-24, Exodus 17:13, 32:27, Numbers 21:3, 35, Deuteronomy 2:33-34, 3:6, 7:2, 20:16, Joshua 8:22-25, 10:27-40, 11:8-23, 1 Samuel 15:3, 7-8)
Slavery (Exodus 21:27, Leviticus 25:44-45, Number 31:31-35, Ephesians 6:5, 1 Timothy 6:1-2)
Abuse of Slaves (Exodus 21:7, 20-21, Luke 12:47-48)
Rape (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
Pedophilia (Numbers 31:14-18)
Incest (Genesis 4:1-17, 9:1, 19:30-38, 20:11-12, 2 Samuel 13:1-15)
Torture (Revelation 9:5-6, 20:10-15, 21:8)
Child Abuse (Genesis 22, Deuteronomy 20:30, 21:18-21, 22:15, 23:2, 13-14, Psalms 137:9)
Spousal Abuse (Number 5:5-31, Deuteronomy 22:13-21)
Animal Cruelty (Joshua 11:6, 2 Samuel 8:4)
Blood Sacrifice (Genesis 4:4, 31:54, Leviticus 1:9, 9:18, 2 Kings 16:15, Ezekiel 39:17)
Human Sacrifice (Exodus 22:29, 34:19, Leviticus 27:28-29, Numbers 3:11-13, 31:31-40, Judges 11:29-39, Ezekiel 20:25-26, Hebrews 10:10)
Cannibalism (Leviticus 26:29, Deuteronomy 28:53, 2 Kings 6:29, Isaiah 46:29, Jeremiah 19:9, Ezekiel 5:8-10)
Pillaging (Genesis 34:13-29, Numbers 31:7-12, Deuteronomy 20:13-14)
Lying (Genesis 8:21 compared to 2 Peter 3:10-11, Genesis 22:2, 1 Kings 22:23, Ezekiel 14:9, 2 Thessalonians 2:11)
Racism (Exodus 23:23, Leviticus 25:46, Numbers 21:35, Deuteronomy 3:6, 7:1, Joshua 6:1-27, Ezra 9:11-14, 28, Matthew 11:21-24, 15:22-28)
Misogyny (Genesis 38:16-24, Leviticus 12:1-8, 14, 15:19-30, 18:19, 19:20, 21:29, 27:3-7, Numbers 1:2, 20:13-15, 30:3-16, 31:14-18, Deuteronomy 21:10-14, 22:23-24, 28-29, 25:11-12, Judges 9:53-54, 19:22-29, 21:10-12, Zechariah 14:1-2, 1 Corinthians 11:3-10, 14:34-35, Ephesians 5:22, 1 Timothy 2:11-15, 5:9)
Homophobia (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13, Deuteronomy 22:5, Romans 1:27)
Bigotry against other religions (Throughout the Bible, specifically in 2 Kings 10:19-27)
The Bible is just a text full of myths and values and teachings about the universe that demonstrate quite clearly that it was written in a much more primitive time. If you believe that the Bible and other religious text should be taken seriously, then they can’t be taken literally. This is the fundamental truth about religious texts:
They were written by humans. Not gods, but mere, fallible, human authors.
Oh, and full credit goes to AronRa who inspired this for me.