Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[robvalue]

It doesn’t make sense, because it represents an all-powerful god needing help from a man. This can’t be the case. So god must be involving the man out of choice, when he could easily achieve whatever outcome he wanted alone. He made the whole of reality a few pages ago, remember. Now he needs help with population control? This is busywork, or some sort of lesson to the man.

God must have some hidden agenda for the unnecessary involvement of the man, and the unnecessary time it would take. Is this for the benefit of the man himself, and his family? Or is it for the benefit of those eventually hearing this story? It can’t be for the benefit of all the people and animals he’s going to kill. It could only benefit those in the future through hearing of this story, not directly because of the man's actions, which he could have easily done himself.

If it was just for the benefit of this one man and his family, then that leaves us the problem of why it’s in this book at all, as well as why god would bother with this. However, if the benefit is in the telling of the story to future generations, then it crucially makes no difference whether it happened or not. So why do it at all, and not just get the man to write down the story? Perhaps god is just fucking around for his own amusement. Why did he create anything in the first place? There were no problems to solve. Ultimately his own amusement is the only motivation.

My self-congratulatory logic leads us to the conclusion we already know: religions aren’t concerned with facts. They are concerned with what we can learn from stories. In this way, people can consider themselves wise and feel some sort of benefit, regardless of whether they are reading a book of historical accuracy or a fictional tale. Either serves the same religious purpose.

---

PS: this point ties in really nicely with a video I watched yesterday.