Evaluating Christianity: The Definitions of God and ... What Exactly is the Bible?

In investigating the "sophisticated" arguments for God's existence I have noticed a problem that should be elemental in any philosophical discussion of this type. The arguments seldom specify exactly what type of God they are actually arguing for. They appear to imply that any argument for any God is an argument for their particular God. But these arguments use different definitions of God. In order to increase clarity I thought I would define three different types of God that Christians often argue for..

The first type of God I will refer to as a MINIMALIST GOD. What are the minimal properties that God can have and still be thought of as God? My definition of such a God is AN INTELLIGENCE THAT CREATED THE UNIVERSE. That is all that is needed. The Minimalist God does not have to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, outside-of-space-and-time, or any of those qualities. The only qualities he has to have is some type of intelligence -- this rules out a natural phenomena such as vacuum fluctuations from being God -- and he has to have created the universe. There is no requirement even that he specially plan for life to arise.

In my evaluation of some of these particular arguments I will use an example of a hypothetical minimalist God. The one I have in mind is a multidimensional high-school computer geek that created our universe as a science project on his computer. This scenario leads to no logical contradictions with respect to what we know of the universe. Of course this minimalist God does not set a standard for morality nor does he necessarily need or deserve worship ... especially since he may have no idea that we actually exist within his simulation.

The second type of God I will specify for these discussions is an OMNIMAX GOD. In addition to the minimalist qualities, this type of God is omnipotent (able to do anything that is logically possible to be done), omniscient (knows everything that is logically possible to be known past, present, and future), omnibenevolent (desires the best for all beings within his creation), omnipresent (is aware of everything within every part of the universe).

The third type of God is the BIBLICAL GOD. This is God as portrayed in the bible. This will be the most controversial type since there is little agreement on exactly what the attributes of the biblical God is. For instance, most Christians believe the biblical God to be an omnimax God as well. However, no one who reads the bible without self-imposed blinders can possibly believe that.

I have found that whenever I use the bible to justify some heinous attribute for God, for instance destroying every living animal on the earth except 8 humans and a pair of all other species[1] in a global Noachian flood, invariably I get someone saying that God isn't REALLY like that. That may be true if you are talking about some God other than the biblical God. And that brings us to part 2 of this post ... Exactly what is the bible?

Either God has a message for us or he doesn't. As I see it there are two ways that he could have gotten a message to us. One way is personal revelation. God could speak to us directly. Many if not most Christians claim to have had just such personal revelations. God answers their prayers (I will strenuously argue that he doesn't); they talk with God and out of nowhere they get a sense of purpose and direction in life (I will argue that any sense of purpose or direction is internally generated); God watches over them allowing them to avoid unforeseeable disasters (I will argue that he doesn't).

The other way God can get us a message is to have inspired others to pass along his message to us. Most Christians claim this is what the bible is ... the inspired word of God [2]. If this is the case, then what the bible says of God is exactly what God wants us to know about him. I will take the bible at face value. If it says something, then I will assume it actually means what it says. I will hold it accountable.

This will be the source of most disagreements between Christians and me with respect to the biblical God. They don't hold the bible accountable. They will often say that the bible doesn't really mean what it says, and they will go to some other part of the bible and quote something that directly refutes the offending part. But this only says that the bible contradicts itself, which is still the death knell for a God-inspired bible. In order to explain away the apparent contradiction one must explain what the offending text means as well. If it is in apparent error, you cannot willy-nilly say that God actually meant something that is not said simply to brush aside the error. You need to justify God having said what is in the bible the way bible says it.

For instance, The Gospel of Matthew [3] gives Jesus genealogy as so:

While the Gospel of Luke list Jesus' ancestors as so:

By all rights they should be the same. Except they aren't. There is very little agreement with respect to Jesus' ancestors between David and Joseph. Obviously something is wrong. Apologists have tried numerous rouses to overcome this obvious error. Perhaps the most prevalent way is to claim that Luke actually gives Jesus' genealogy through Mary not Joseph. This is blatant bullshit. Nowhere in Luke's account is Mary even mentioned [4]. Furthermore Matthew list 25 generations between Jesus and David while Luke list 41. Are we supposed to believe that Mary's ancestors were birthing at 60% faster clip than Joseph's? If that isn't enough Matthew says that Jesus' ancestors include the Kings of Judah, but he doesn't even get them right. He leaves some out.

Let's compare the Old Testament Kings to what Matthew says:

Kings....................Matthew
Rehoboam............Rehoboam
Abijam..................Abijah
Asa.......................Asaph
Jehoshaphat.........Jehoshaphat
Jehoram...............Joram
Ahaziah*
Athaliah.
Joash/Jehoash*
Amaziah*
Azariah.................Uzziah
Jotham.................Jotham
Ahaz.....................Ahaz
Hezekiah...............Hezekiah
Manasseh.............Manasseh
Amon...................Amos
Josiah...................Josiah
Jehoahaz
Jehoiakim*
Jehoiachin.............Jeconiah
Zedekiah

Ignore the differences in spelling. The above are arranged so the names on the same line refer to the same person. Some of the descrepancies are not errors. Athaliah was Ahaziah's mother and shouldn't be included in the ancestry. Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim were brothers so only one could be an ancstor. Zedikiah was an uncle of Jehoiachin. But that still means that Matthew screwed up leaving out Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah and Jehoiakim.

With all these discrepancies, claiming that the apparent conflict between the genealogies of Matthew and Luke can be resolved by Luke's being Jesus' genealogy through Mary (even though Luke plainly says it is through Joseph) falls a bit flat. A reasonable person should see that there is an error here.

So why is it not generally acknowledged to be an error? Because if it is an actual error, then there is a problem. Why does God's inerrant word have an error? Why did God inspire Matthew or Luke (or both) to report the wrong facts? If the error (wherever it may be) was not an inspiration from God then not all the bible can be God's message to us. If that's the case, then what is and what isn't God's inspired word? What is his true message? How do you reject one thing and accept another? What criteria do you use to determine what is the true word of God and what is the error?

And even more importantly, WHY WOULD GOD ALLOW HIS MESSAGE TO US TO BECOME MIXED IN WITH BULLSHIT? Could he not have prevented that? These questions have no answers that have rational reasons behind them. It boils down to you believe whatever it is that you want to believe and reject whatever it is that you don't. This makes the bible nothing more than a big Rorschach Ink Blot. You look at the Ink Blot and you try to find something in it that will give you insight into your own life. People do that and sometimes they do find meaning. But the meaning isn't in the ink blot ... it is in one's own personal interpretation of it. The meaning didn't come from the ink blot ... it came from the person.

But, one may claim I am being too hard. What does it really matter if Jesus' grandfather was Heli (Luke) or Jacob (Matthew)? The genealogies aren't that important.

NOT IMPORTANT?!?! This is the genealogy of Jesus, God's son, and possibly even God himself. At the time that Matthew and Luke was written the people would have considered it very important. The Messiah was supposed to be from the line of David [5]. If one genealogy is wrong, then where did it come from? The obvious answer is that it is made up ... it was myth or if you prefer - legend. It shows that there were early legends about Jesus. Legends that no one corrected. Legends that no one even realized were legends. How could that be? It could very easily happen if no one knew very much about Jesus in the first place. If early Christianity consisted of pretty much autonomous groups with their own traditions about him. It could easily happen if the historical Jesus was a virtual tabula rasa for peoples hopes and desires.

I will argue that this is what the bible is. There is very little of the real historical Jesus in the bible, and what there is VERY difficult to distinguish from the legendary Jesus. So for anyone claiming that they follow the teachings of Jesus, I have this to say. I don't know what Jesus' teachings were, and what is more ... you don't either.

With this set up, I will address in my next set of blogs the argument from the reliability of the bible. I will try to set out the positive side for the argument first and then I will go into detail (a lot more detail than I have now) why I think it is bullshit. To do so and keep the thrust of the blogs readable some blogs will consist only of tables with information. These will be data blogs. I do this so I will be able to link to them and still keep the argument blogs of readable length.

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NOTES

[1]The bible says a single pair of all animals, and it ALSO says seven pairs of clean ones. This is another discrepancy in the bible. Few people realize it but there are actually two versions of the Noachian flood intertwined in the bible. Scholars who support the documentary hypothesis see Genesis 6:9-22 where God tells Noah to take a single pair of all living things into the ark as coming from the P or Priestly source, and Genesis 7:1-5 where God tells Noah to take seven pairs of all the clean animals as coming from the J or Jawistic source.

[2] Here are examples from official creeds of several major Christian sects concerning the bible:

from http://www.utm.edu/staff/caldwell/bfm/2000/1.html

from http://www.pcanet.org/general/beliefs.htm

from: http://www.efca.org/about-efca/statement-faith

from: http://linetap.com/trinity/trinity2.htm#Bible

The Roman Catholic Cathechism (see Appendix Additional material on Holy Scripture here) also says the scriptures are the inspired inerrant word of God, only that one will have a very hard time grasping that without the teaching of the church.

[3] All bible quotes unless otherwise noted are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and can be verified online by using the oremus Bible Browser (http://bible.oremus.org/)

[4] Interestingly Mary IS mentioned in Matthew's account ... "... and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary ..." This specification makes it clear that Matthew cannot be referring to Jesus' genealogy through Mary, so apologists have create ambiguity in Luke's account.

[5] Biblical scholars generally agree that the Gospel of Mark was the first one to be written (evidence for this will be presented in a later post). The Gospel of Mark appears to imply that Jesus WAS NOT from the line of David: