I’m not convinced we’re living in a simulation, but I often notice patterns that lead me to believe I somehow have the ability to send commands from my subconscious that will run different scripts for reality. This tends to happen the most at times when I’ve felt 100% certain about a decision I’ve made in life. for example:  I once told the manager of a company I was working for that I planned on sticking around forever. It was only a day later when I was offered a completely different job opportunity that caused me to quit within that same week. Similar situations have surprised me in less dramatic reconstructions of my behavior, such as reneging on commitments to exercise and the decision to not drink. Yet, every one of these moments left me with the feeling that I had personally sabotaged my own plans against my will.

This leads me to the actual topic I wanted to talk about, which is religion. Stick with me, because even if none of what I just said reminds you of the ambiguous Lord Almighty, you must have noticed that the last word in that paragraph I’ve just written was “will,”  as in “free will,”  which I’m convinced we don’t have. Now, I’m sure there is some psychological explanation for why I believe I might be sabotaging my life on a regular basis, but that could also just be another piece of code in the simulation, and I honestly don’t believe someone could prove this one way or the other. However, I was once introduced to a thought experiment that proved to me how our subconscious minds react to inputs much faster than our conscious minds do, and to me, that is more reflective of something automated rather than something chosen.

Try this. Think of a breakfast cereal. Did you come up with Pops? I did. Why is that? Did you cycle through every type of cereal you could think of alphabetically from some file in your head, or did something just show up there? It showed up there. Didn’t it? Maybe you thought of 2, but I’ll bet you anything that one of those came into your head before the other. You didn’t do that. Your brain did. Now, think about how many times a day that gray jelly-like substance underneath your skull does something similar without you even noticing. You might be saying something like, “I chose Lucky Charms, even though I thought of other cereals first, and therefore I have free will,”  all the time glossing over the fact that you thought of those other cereals first. You had no choice. Your brain does stuff like that all the time, and you know it. It makes you scared of things. It makes you laugh when no one else is laughing. It jerks you awake at night with a spasm because it made you feel like you were falling. Your mind plays tricks on you, but you can’t play tricks on your mind.

So, free will is out the window. What else you got? I admit, this is just a philosophical argument against religion, which honestly, I’m not a fan of, but when we’re talking about decisions being made in the mind, what else are you going to do? When you’ve got nothing but philosophy, you end up getting into Presuppositionalism, Occam’s Razor, the Cosmological Argument, Pascal’s Wager, and many other things that just can’t ever be decided upon as truth. I’d rather stick to the facts, which from here on out is what I’m going to do. Next let’s talk about origins.

Yahweh

Let’s talk about Yahweh, shall we? A quick Google search will tell you that Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible and that he appeared to Moses from a burning bush, created everything, and ran a stint for a while as CEO of planet Earth. He basically wrote the S.O.P. for life. But if you look deeper into his history, you’ll find much to debate.

Thanks to a clumsy plowman in 1928 who knocked over a stone and discovered the ancient city of Ugarit, we now know that people were talking about this guy Yahweh long before the Bible was ever written and that in some texts, he wasn’t even the main God. In fact, he served another God called El (who also has a presence in the Bible, by the way), and conveniently, the religious folk, who knew that most people wouldn’t have the energy to look it up, decided that they would just tell everyone that the two different names actually reference the same person. Of course there is no way to prove this one way or the other, but for me personally, I like to put my faith in the story that came first.

Listen, if you’re not some lunatic who denies the efficacy of carbon dating, you’ll believe the scientists who tell you that the stones they found in the city of Ugarit are in fact 200 years older than the first chapters of the Bible. If you don’t already know, it’s Deuteronomy and Judges that are said to be written first. Do a little research for yourself (that’s right, I’m not here to give you all of the answers), and you’ll see that these ancient Canonical stories from Ugarit are much older.

What’s my point? There’s no way to tell who’s correct. In other words, there’s a lack of evidence for God when you just try looking up his name. In a true dichotomy, you could say either Yawheh is God or Yahweh is not. But if he isn’t, then what is he, someone who worships El? Do we throw out the chapters where he teaches us stuff and only pay attention to the ones where El is mentioned? What about Jehovah Jirah, El Shaddai, El Elyon, Jehovah Shammah, or Adonai? That’s right. This guy’s got a lot of different names in the Bible. At least 24 by my count, and I’m betting most people don’t know even the origins of one. So who really is this Yahweh?

Nebuchadnezzar

Ever heard the story of Nebuchadnezzar? It was first brought up to me as infallible proof of the Bible’s ability to predict the future and, therefore, a method that could be used to authenticate the existence of God. Look, even if the Bible did have the ability to predict the future (it doesn’t), that wouldn’t get us any closer to establishing the creator of everything that exists around us. It would just mean that somehow someone knew what was going to happen.

Once again, I return to the facts. If you don’t know, Nebuchadnezzar was a Babylonian king responsible for the destruction of Jerusalem. The Bible tells the story of a dream he had that tormented him and caused him to call upon astrologers, sorcerers, and basically anyone around who might be able to interpret it and explain to him just what the hell was going on in that unsettled mind of his. The whole thing plays out like some dramatic tale of poetry and symbolism where a statue with a gold head, silver arms, a brass stomach, iron legs, and clay feet represents a handful of kingdoms not worthy of keeping things together inside the presence of a great king; at least that’s what Daniel had to say. I’m sure all of it was completely true, and that Daniel was surprised when the King showered him with gifts and made him the ruler of Babylon. Surely he didn’t think stroking the ego of a king who thought dreams had meanings would get him anywhere in life. That’s sarcasm, by the way. No, if you look at the facts, everything kind of falls into place. You see, it’s believed that the kingdoms Daniel was referring to were Babylon, Medo Persia, Greece, and Rome, and that Nebuchadnezzar’s dream predicted the outcome for all of them. That would be fine and good if Nebuchadnezzar’s story was written before any of it ever happened. However, thanks to science, we know that the Book of Daniel was written roughly 165 years later. So, could you really call that a prediction? I’d have to say it is not.

So there’s no good evidence for God when you look up his name, and there doesn’t seem to be any validity in the predictions. I know I only gave one example, but to be honest, that kind of evidence doesn’t hold much water for me. I said it before: even if you could prove that the book made a prediction, that wouldn’t prove the existence of a God. So, where does that bring us next? Eye witness testimony? I’ll get into that soon, but first I want to go over some more facts.

The Enuma Elish

So, apart from the tablets found in the city of Ugarit that coincidentally tell similar stories to what is told in the Bible, there is another book accomplishing the same feat. Some time in the mid 1800’s, a couple of Assyriologists discovered the Enuma Elish while excavating the ruins of the library of Ashurbanipal. It’s a mouthful, I know. In short, there are even more tablets predating the Bible that tell similar stories. The most famous one happens to be a breakdown of what transpired over the 7 days that it apparently took to create the entire planet. The Enuma Elish may be using a different nomenclature, but I can assure you the results are the same. For example, according to the Bible, on the first day God created light and separated it from darkness. On the first day of the Enuma Elish, the sky is separated from the earth. Both stories separate water on the second day and create land on the third. Then, on the fourth day, the Bible puts the sun and moon up in the sky to shine light down on Earth from the heavens. In turn, on this same day, the Enuma Elish puts the God of the Sky into place in order to look down on earth from the heavens. Both stories create man on day six, and then God takes himself a big old nap on the seventh because, boy, was he tired. I’m sure he just needed to snuggle up with some pillow clouds, kick off his sandals, and have himself a nice recharge with some good old-fashioned sleep. An all-powerful God would need that, right? Yeah, I wouldn’t really think so, either.

So, the fact that we know the original stories of the Bible were all passed down orally in the beginning before ink ever met paper leaves us with much to question. Where did these stories come from? Was it the Enuma Elish? Was it the city of Ugarit? Were they eyewitnesses? If they were, how do we know they were telling the truth and not just repeating stories that they themselves were told their entire lives? Who were these eye witnesses, anyway?

We know that the gospels were written by anonymous authors. That’s just another fact. Recent Bible’s even go as far as stating that within the pages themselves. You can often find a disclaimer at the very beginning of the New Testament admitting that the authors Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John are not their actual names and that no one really knows who the authors truly are. With this information, how is it even possible that anyone could come close to believing that everything they’re reading is true? You might say, “Well, if the Enuma Elish was written first and talked about the same things we see in the Bible, then that just means that the stories must be true.” The problem with that line of thinking is that you’d have to accept all of the other things as well, such as the fact that there are two Gods in the beginning of the Enuma Elish, not just one like there is in the Bible. Or the fact that Tiamat, a God of the Sea, is defeated by Marduk and not the very famous God who does in fact battle and tame the chaotic sea at one point within the Bible. Is God Marduk? Now, we have yet another name to reconcile with.

Let’s also talk about the fact that the Enuma Elish was written first, actually written and carved into tablets hundreds of years before any page of the Bible was. So we had a written story about the creation of the earth long before the most popular of the written stories. Well, the most popular, at least on this side of the planet. Some folks in the Middle East would disagree with an Abrahamic God’s popularity entirely. I won’t even get into that just yet. But, yeah, keep it in mind. There are other religions out there, just as popular, and with just as much evidence as the Bible. How do you dispute that? The Enuma Elish at least has the proof of time on its side. It existed before most of the others. Being first doesn’t necessarily make it true, but it does make it extremely susceptible to plagiarism.

Revelation

Another problem the Bible has, when we’re talking about its facts and history, is that we know how the book of Revelation became canon. It’s a complicated story, which I’ll try and simplify for you, and if you haven’t already heard it, I advise you to pay close attention, because it’s a good one.

A long time ago there was this emperor of Rome named Constantine, and let’s just say that during his reign, he did a lot for Christianity. There was no actual Bible during his time, so what he did was translate a bunch of ancient texts and put together the first drafts, if you will, the very first versions of the Bible as we know it today. That’s an extremely abbreviated version of what took place, but I’m trying to move this along and get to my point.

One of the main problems Constantine had to deal with was Arianism, which at its core posed Jesus as someone who was not ultimately divine. As we all know, that’s not really a concept that is going to work since people believe God is divine and that Jesus is God and all of the other amazing, fantastical things that come along with that theory. People were losing faith in the church, and Arianism was a mindset that had to be changed.

In comes rolling this failed Pope named Athanasius. After being exiled five times and spending 17 years living in the desert, this guy had to come up with some kind of life-altering plan, and boy did things work out for him. You see, he found this little piece of war propaganda written in code that turned out to be just vague enough for him to give his own meaning to, and he convinced people to make it the last chapter of the Bible. Yeah, it’s what we all know today as Revelation, and it almost didn’t make the cut.

Originally written by John of Patmos to encourage followers of Jesus and to defame the city of Rome, Revelation became something entirely different. It ended up as the perfect solution to the Arianism problem that Constantine was dealing with. You see, John couldn’t have written what he really wanted to say because death was a penalty for such a thing at the time. So, what he did was write metaphors that coincidentally fit really well into the Bible. Honestly, some scholars would argue that they don’t actually fit and probably shouldn’t be there at all, but the gullible people of Rome during that time believed otherwise. Instead of reading John’s metaphor for Rome as the whore of Babylon, they took things literally and actually thought there was a mother of all harlots riding around on some demon, and when John wrote about that demon, a seven-headed beast, which actually referred to the seven hills of the city, people just figured he was talking about the whore of Babylon’s truly terrifying mode of transportation. In the end, Jesus would be coming back to save us all. So, goodbye Arianism, and hello restored faith in the church. Athanasius no longer had to sleep on the couch.

So, I ask you, knowing these facts, do you still believe that the Bible is true? I just explained how the most important feature, which is Jesus’ return, was just slapped on to the ending in order to redeem a failed pope, and it wasn’t even part of the original texts. We know who wrote it. We know why he wrote it. We know exactly what all of it means. If you still believe, you might as well be a scientologist at this point, because just like John of Patmos, L. Ron Hubbard was a very real person with a very real motive.

The ArK

Ah, the Ark. This one has been debated so many times, it’s exhausting. I’ve even argued with myself about going down this rabbit hole, but in the end I decided it’s definitely on topic and worth talking about here. I’ve heard a lot of different perspectives on this one, read the facts in books and on the internet, and of course read the chapters in the Bible. But I’ve never seen them all put together in one place, which is what I’m going to attempt to do.

Let’s start out with the actual text from the King James Version.

“Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt though make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window though shalt make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second and third stores shalt though make it.”

“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”

In short, Noah was told by God to build a wooden boat, gather two of every sort of animal, male and female, and keep them all alive with him during a flood. I realize I skipped the flood part, but I’m pretty certain we all know the story by now. God was unhappy with mankind, so he flooded the entire planet and saved only Noah, his family, and every animal in existence, and this was the way he did it.

I like to talk facts, so let’s start out with cubits. This is very reminiscent of Dr. Evil from Austin Powers being laughed at when he asked for one million dollars, because clearly when this chapter of the Bible was written, people didn’t realize how big boats were actually going to be one day. A cubit is described as being roughly 18 inches long, so three hundred of them translates to about 450 feet. To put that into perspective, the Titanic, which wasn’t even close to the largest boat in existence, was 883 feet long, almost twice the length of the ark. The Titanic housed about 2,240 people. The ark, if Noah accomplished what God had asked, would have housed over 2.16 million animals. That means a boat half the size of the Titanic is believed to have had the ability to accommodate 800 times the amount of people. Honestly, even more because we’re talking about animals, elephants, giraffes, bison, and things that are two or three times the size of human beings. Just picture all of that squeezed into one boat. What about the food for all of those animals? Where was that stored? How did they breathe? God only told Noah to make one window, and what about Noah and his family? Weren’t they on the boat, too? Can you imagine being locked in a wooden capsule with two million animals going to the bathroom, expelling gas—I would even have to guess some of them were dying—and only having one window to let all of that awfulness out? It just doesn’t seem possible, and let’s not forget there were only 8 people to take care of them: Noah, his 3 sons, and all of their wives. You’re telling me that 8 people rounded up every type of animal on the planet, on foot, mind you, and got them through one door on one tiny boat, in a very particular place on the planet.

The location of this event raises questions as well. Where did the ark land after the flood? That’s also something that’s debated. The common answer is Mount Ararat in Turkey. Let’s grant that for a second. How did the polar bears get home? How about the penguins? Did Noah and his clan hop back in the boat and Uber those suckers back to their only places of existence, which happen to be on opposite sides of the planet? I think I missed that chapter. If they migrated back, there would be a fossil record, and so far there are none.

Do you know what else the fossil records tell us? There was never a flood. All of the sediments have been explained. There are arguments about sea fossils being found at the tops of mountains, which is true, but all of that has been explained as well. By looking at rocks (again, if you’re not completely ignorant of science and you believe this stuff), we know that millions of years ago the land masses were different and that many of the highest places on earth today were not the highest places on earth yesterday, so yeah, they were once covered by water. The land moved; the water didn’t go anywhere. Did you know that the water we see in our oceans and swim in today is the same water that the dinosaurs were swimming in millions of years ago? That’s fact. When water evaporates, it doesn’t leave the atmosphere. It forms clouds and rains back down on the planet, so if the entire planet were flooded, all of that water would still be here, and the only things floating above would be the skeletons of Noah, his family, and some animals on a boat.

The last thing I want to talk about is my favorite. It’s a little thing called the Enuma Elish. You might remember I mentioned it earlier. Those tablets that predate the original texts of the Bible by a few hundred years. They had a flood story too. A man named Gilgamesh was being punished by God for killing a bull and displaying his free will. Hey, that sounds familiar. Wasn’t there a story about someone using their free will to eat an apple in the Bible, and therefor was punished? Anyway, Gilgamesh sought out a god named Utnapishtim who told him about some other gods (yes, there were a lot) who would save him. He only needed to tear down his house, rid himself of all of his belongings, build a boat, and take with him his family and the seed of every creature on earth to survive a terrible flood set loose by the vengeful God Enlil. I don’t know. It definitely seems like we’ve heard this one before.

Filling in Gaps

So now I have to go into territory I don’t often breach. I want to talk a little about some philosophical aspects of religion instead of talking about facts. In the previous chapter, I was making statements about how I couldn’t see the possibility of putting every animal on earth onto one boat. Admittedly, that’s just my thought and opinion, not a fact. The fact is a book says it happened. So, even I have to go to a place of defending my beliefs with logic from time to time. If everything made sense in my mind, I never would have started investigating this whole thing to begin with, and so I have to travel down certain paths to remind myself that even I don’t know what happened back then. Saying I don’t think it’s possible and pointing out similarities to a book that predates the Bible doesn’t prove anything at all, other than the fact that I think the whole story is made up. I am going to start out by talking about facts, however. Then I’ll explain how people sew versions of these facts together with their own philosophies to make them work, just like I previously took things apart with my own philosophy to make them not work. In the end, we’re all full of garbage. Right?

​Here are the facts. In the Bible, there is a chapter that says Judas Iscariot hanged himself. But there is another chapter that says he burst open in the desert and his guts fell out. Let’s take a look at both of the verses.

Matthew 27:5

“Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself.”

Acts 1:18

“Now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle, and all of his entrails gushed out.”

I’ve heard this blatant contradiction disputed so many times with the statement, “His guts could have fallen out after he hanged himself.” But that’s not what it says. You’re filling in the gaps if you do that. I could easily say that Mathew (whoever the author was), maybe he killed Judas. Maybe he cut him. through the middle and left him in the desert to die, then went home. and wrote up a suicide note for the man. Maybe later on, whoever wrote the book of Acts, came walking along and saw Judas right at his final moment, where he fell headlong and burst open after being cut by Matthew. You might also say that maybe he was hanging for such a long time his body began to rot, and then eventually the rope snapped and he fell headlong into the desert. That’s fine, but the other scenario is just as plausible. We have two conflicting stories, and we’re trying to make them work. Maybe one of them was false. If that’s the case, which one?

How about the discovery of Jesus’s empty tomb, the most important event in the entire Bible? How can we be so sure of the way it happened? Mathew and Mark seem to be on the same page. about it. Luke is extremely vague, and John has all of the events laid out differently from Mark and Matthew, but yet somehow he is the most specific. Who’s telling the truth? Who remembered it correctly? Mark and Mathew say Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (which always makes me laugh) found an empty tomb after an earthquake along with an angel hanging out as if he was waiting to talk to them because he knew they’d have questions about what happened. Luke says, “they.” went into the tomb, but there were two men there, not one angel, and John said Mary Magdalene found the empty tomb first, then went and got the others, including other Mary, and found two angels, not men. You really have to do a lot of Mad Libs to make this work. People say, “All of them said that the tomb was empty, though, and that’s the important thing.” I mean, they’re right about that. They did all say the tomb was empty. But what does that mean? Picture this: I go to visit my father’s grave, and I find two men standing there in an empty tomb, and they’re like, “Oh…uh…yeah. So, your dad’s not dead. He’s just, um…remember that time he said he’d see you again in the afterlife? Well, uh, yeah, so, he’s doing that whole thing. ” Wouldn’t that be suspicious? My father isn’t half as popular as Jesus was. How do we know these guys (or guy) weren’t up to something? Did an angel move the stone, or did an earthquake move the stone? An earthquake is mentioned in these chapters. What if there were an earthquake, and the whole tomb collapsed, so they couldn’t find his body, so they made up the whole story about him coming back to comfort themselves and fulfill this prophecy he had talked about so that people can just go on making up stories and waiting for his return? We don’t know. What we do know is we have four stories that don’t line up and wouldn’t convict anyone of anything in a court of law.

This is why I don’t like to talk about hypotheses and the philosophical aspects of religion. For one, that’s really all there is. It’s thousands of people reading a book, interpreting it in different ways, and trying to answer some very fundamental questions about life. There’s no hard evidence for any of it. If we’re talking about a history that was passed on for hundreds of years by word of mouth (which we are), there is no way to use facts and connect any of it together. It’s just my word against yours.