6. Noah's Ark

Here is something the literalists can most assuredly not escape from. We are told that Noah and his family gathered at least 2 from each the species of animals into his Ark, and that they survived for 40 days and 40 nights in it.

Now, the estimates for the number of land species alone range from 6 million to 30 million. Further, fish and other marine organisms are sensitive to changes in salinity , pH and temperature, so most would have to be stored on the Ark. Could you store 12 million animals in an Ark? How about with food - and Koalas, for example, only eat Eucalyptus leaves so they wouldn't be able to feed off the main food supply, water and climate control (for the Polar Bears, among others)? Consider that the dimensions given for the Ark give a volume of 43,006 cubic meters. Assuming that we take the lower estimate of 6 million species, that gives each animal a box with sides of 15 cm. Perhaps in DNA form that'd be possible, but that's almost as silly as believing the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

How about gathering all the species of animals? Ah, maybe God told them all to go to the site of the Ark. Right. Mass stampedes of animals and a veritable zoo at Noah's doorstep would have alarmed no one, I'm sure.

Now about the flood. The 40 days and 40 nights of flooding supposedly covered the tops of all mountains. Mount Everest is 8,848m tall, so to cover it in 40 days of rain you'd need 9.21m of rain falling per hour. Whoa. Would the water pressure not crush the Ark like a tin can? Even assuming the Ark was protected - where did all this water come from and where did it go to later? And how come the massive weight of this water did not warp the ocean floors and the former land?

How about after the flood? Can you imagine re-establishing an entire species from just 2 animals? The inbreeding would quickly lead to the animal going extinct. And there�s the question of the dead animals - we don't see a sudden spike in the fossil record at a certain time.


7. The Age of the Earth

I have no wish to go too deeply into this. Suffice to say that, when presented with overwhelming evidence, those who believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old like to claim that the scientific constants (like the freezing point of water and the speed of light) may not have been the same always, that when God created the Earth he made it look old on purpose, or that scientific methods of dating have been proven wrong sometimes.

Now, just because Carbon dating and the like have been proven wrong before does not mean that they are inaccurate. A failure rate is always present, so just because dating gives the wrong result 1 out of a 100 times does not mean that it is wrong 100 out of 100 times. Further, most of the dating errors were discovered by scientists checking the results of their work � something theists often neglect to do. By the same logic, I could say that since God has been proven wrong before, and his word has been proven fallible et al, he is always wrong, or that he doesn't exist. Humph. And the suggestion that the scientific constants haven�t always been constant sounds like a flimflam explanation borne out of sheer desperation.

And as for God creating the Earth to look old - we can also propose that this God created the Earth 2 seconds ago and implanted all the memories we have into our minds.


A short list of Biblical Contradictions:

Exodus 20:13 "Thou shalt not kill. "
Leviticus 24:17 "And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death. "

Ephesians 2:8,9 "For by grace are ye saved through faith . . . not of works. "
James 2:24 "Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. "

Ezekiel 24:14 "I the Lord have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent. "
Exodus 32:14 "And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people. "

James 1:13 "Let no man say . . . I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. "
Genesis 22:1 "And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham. "

II Kings 8:26 "Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign. "
II Chronicles 22:2 "Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign. "

Hebrews 6:13-17 "For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself . . . for men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath. "
Matthew 5:34-37 "But I say unto you, swear not at all; neither by heaven . . . nor by the earth . . . . Neither shalt thou swear by thy head . . . . But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. "

Genesis 7:15 "And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. "
Genesis 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. "

I Kings 4:26 "And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen. "
II Chronicles 9:25 "And Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen. "

Matthew 2:1: "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, " (Ed: Herod died in 4 BC)
Luke 2:1-2: �And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) � (Ed: Judea only came under direct Roman Rule in 6 AD)

Matthew 1:16: And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
Luke 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,

Matthew 27:46: "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? "
Luke 23:46: "And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost. "
John 19:30: "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. "

I trust that that is more than enough to convince anyone that the Bible is not infallible. Could a Perfect God have written such an Imperfect Bible? Incidentally, one explanation offered for contradictions in the first 5 books of the Bible is that 2 versions existed originally, and one person reconciled the two and combined them, ergo the discrepancies.

With such an imperfect Bible, is it safe for anyone to rely on its word as the supposed Word of God, infallible, eternal (when he has changed his mind so often) and totally accurate? I think not.

In JC 1, we had lessons on Thinking Skills, and some propositions were posited to us, urging us to question:

It is in the newspapers, so it must be right.
It is in the Bible, so it must be right.
Lee Kuan Yew says it, so it must be right.

Food for thought, indeed.

I suspect the reason why most literalists cling on so stubbornly is that they have built in their minds a whole fortress of thoughts and beliefs about their religion around the cornerstone of Biblical infallibility. Remove it, and they will be incapable of preventing the whole edifice from crashing down around them. So even faced with undeniable proof of the fallibility of the Bible, cognitive dissonance ensues and they resort to arguments and explanations so ludicrous that only a 6-year-old child - or a convinced literalist - could believe them.


6) Disingenuous arguments - being trapped by the circular logic of religion

Let us examine some Catch-22 situations in religion.

Finding God

People often ask how to find God, and the answer given is frequently that if you search for him sincerely, you will find him (or rather, he will find you). This passage was quoted to me: Jeremiah 29:13-14 - "You shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart. I will be found of you". From there, it is but a simple step to concluding that if you can't find God, it must be because you aren't looking hard enough, or with all your heart.

There are many assumptions here (among them being that there is a God and that he wants to be found, and that he will let himself be found - basically that this passage is the infallible and eternal word of God), but the problem is that there is no escape route! If someone is not touched or found by God, he can be told that he is not looking hard or sincerely enough. He can then spend his entire life searching and die a broken, disappointed man. Hell, I can make up my own God, or use a pre-existing one - Baal, say, and insert this clause into my Holy Text. Then my adherents will be locked in forever! How fortuitous. For those very strong in their faith, on the other hand, they will "feel" the presence of my "God" psychosomatically, due to their mind conjuring up mirages and will feel vindicated. Their faith will lead to their perceived existence of my God being a self-fulfilling prophecy!

Getting God to work through you

Another instance of this fallacy can be seen in an argument I had with Timothy about whether homosexuality was abhorred by God. I cited instances where, even under Church programmes including praying, homosexuals were unable to change their sexual orientations. He dismissed these instances, claiming that it didn't work because the priests were "doing it wrongly", or trying to "cast out the demon wrongly". So it is impossible for a gay to become straight if the praying et al is done correctly - while the criterion for whether the praying is done correctly is that of the gay person becoming straight. A wonderfully circular argument, if you ask me. God is supposed to understand our prayers, and in other instances, we do not tell him HOW to do what we need, just what we need. We are supposed to just pray, and let God do all the work, so how come we need to do the rituals correctly? When you go to a carpenter you tell him what sort of chair you want, but you do not tell him how to construct the chair and poke your nose into his work. He knows how to do it better than you do.

On faith

Adherents of religions are frequently told to have faith. With faith, nothing is impossible. There is a problem with this argument, however. Faith means belief and trust in something. However, one can have faith in many things. I can have faith that the Moon is made of Green Cheese, that NASA didn't really visit the Moon, or that Jews are evil and were behind the September 11th attacks, or even that God is a rabbit. What makes religious faith so different from other types of faith, apart from the traditional air of sanctity given to it?

What is needed is vindication of faith. If that is not present, how do we know what we have faith in is true? I could come up with my own religion, and exhort adherents to have faith, and they would be worshipping a false god all the way.

What we need, then, is the divine spark. The Godly touch to know that the generalities are correct (and who cares about specifics? Let theologians argue till thy kingdom come) - a vindication of faith. A spark which many believe has come, but many more have never felt.