Ten is the basis for our decimal system based on the number 10. It has a symbolic meaning beyond its obvious appearance, being the first number that requires two symbols. We have 10 fingers and 10 toes. 10 is the score given to an attractive person. Letterman has the top 10 list. The Bible has The 10 Commandments, etc. So, I picked 10 reasons why God may well be missing from our universe. I have a ten-year-old granddaughter and we often discuss the hereafter. She loves to hear the Greek fables of the gods and goddesses. The other day she turned her head skyward and said, “God are you up there? Can you talk?” That is the question millions have asked, have fought wars over, lost many gallons of blood, and to this day cannot answer. The Christian Bible implies that God has given plenty of proofs of His existence, and if you don’t accept that you shall be damned to hell for an eternity. It seems a bit overkill for using our “God-given” intellect to look at the evidence and reject ancient superstitions. The populations of the world follow the belief that has been in their region for centuries. People of India are primarily Hindu, while in China the teachings of Confucius are held sacred, Buddhism is prominent also in China and South East Asia. All those people are damned to hell primarily because of where they were born. Does that make any sense? Jesus missed a few places to spread his Gospel. Here are the 10 reasons that make God’s omnipresence dubious.
#1. If it is so important to believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (and apparently it is) why have we not been given a clear, unambiguous, message from up there? Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of Rome, got a clear sign, a burning cross in the sky with a Latin subscript saying: In hoc signo vincet (Under this sign, you shall conquer). Would it be too much to ask if the rest of us could get some similar incontrovertible evidence? It is difficult to accept someone’s claim about water walking, or feeding thousands with one fish and one loaf of bread, without having been there. If I claimed to have driven evil spirits out of people, and had these spirits entombed in a herd of pigs, you would be perfectly within your rights to question such an outrageous claim. Even “Doubting Thomas” could not believe that Christ had risen until he touched the wounds of Jesus himself. Why are we expected to do more, to accept without any proof, to believe things that are not believable?
#2. There are now seven billion people inhabiting earth and only two billion of them are Christian, the rest a variety of religions, as well as Agnostics and Atheists. In fact, the later are dangerously close to a billion strong now. If the President’s approval rating goes below 50% it becomes major news. By comparing the number of Christians to everyone else on earth, the Trinity’s approval rating is below 30%. Whoever was responsible for the PR work to get the word out did not do their job very well. The Omniscient One knew, or should have known, that the message got garbled by a book that has one too many mixed messages, and one too many mistakes and contradictions to be acceptable by most everyone. The Pythagorean Theorum along with the rest of Geometry has more adherents than the Bible, and it was created by a Greek who did not claim to be inspired by supernatural forces. It was also in more or less the same time frame. Why could we not have had someone like Pythagoras write a book that was in plain language, understandable and not subject to multiple interpretations? There are now 41,000 Christian denominations reported, each with their own ideas as to what the good book says. So which interpretation is the right one?
#3. The world wide scientific community is mostly agnostic or downright atheistic. If that segment of the population that is most skilled in critical thinking rejects ancient fables, how can we be blamed for doing likewise? Albert Einstein, possibly the most well known and learned of them, wrote in a letter to a friend one year before his death: ” The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”
#4. Epicurus, another ancient Greek born in 341 BC said, “Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to and cannot, his is impotent. If he can but does not want to, he is wicked…” You can’t have it both ways, an omnipotent god who is all good, and who at the same time allows evil. And you can’t blame the devil either. The stronger force is still responsible. Furthermore free will does not explain all the natural evil that befalls mankind, like 200,000 people getting washed away by a Tsunami, or 100,000 that get killed by an earthquake. One child dies every minute from starvation. What kind of benevolent being would allow that? The other option, of course, is that God is weak, and the devil really calls the shots.
#5. Having been created in God’s image is not all it’s cracked up to be. The human body has countless flaws and structural weaknesses that make us subject to physical and mental diseases, aging, failures caused by the elements, micro-organisms, genetic errors, and a variety of unknown phenomenon such as cancer. If we were created in his spiritual image instead of physical image, that too is problematic. The human spirit has many foibles: greed, jealousy, deceit, betrayal to name a few. If God loves us why does he kill us without exception to a man and woman often in a most cruel and inhumane manner?
#6. The Christian Bible tells us that the world is 6000 years old. This has been calculated to be the case by Archbishop James Ussher. How is it that radio-carbon dating, geological evidence, and astronomical calculations puts us at 14 billion years old, a very reproducible number by various different methods?
#7. We were created by God, Adam from mud and Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. Yet 99% of our DNA matches chimpanzees. What a coincidence? The geologic layers have a very steady progression from simple life forms to more complex. Not one skeleton is out of place. It shows a clear progression of evolution. If these layers were put there by someone to fool us into thinking that there is a relationship between all life forms He certainly did a very good job. If you compare the overall accuracy of geologic and genetic evidence of evolution to the historical evidence presented in the Bible, there is quite a discrepancy.
#8. If you study all the world religions, it becomes quite obvious that there are similar elements. Many had a world flood. The first one was described in the epic Babylonian poem of Gilgamesh. Jesus was not the only product of a virgin birth. At present there are at least sixteen others, among them Prometheus, Adonis, Athena, Bacchus, Mithras, Zoroaster, Buddha, Osiris, Horus, and Virishna. Some of them became blood sacrifices to save humanity (sound familiar?). There were also several trinities. The Sumerians had a god for each sector of the universe that in their construct was three: the earth belonged to Enlil, the waters was ruled by Ea, and Anu had the sky. Babylonians represented their trinity by a triangle. In Egypt it was Osiris, Horus, and Isis. While in India it was Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto formed the triumvirate in Rome. In fact the idea of three in one is found in most pagan religions. Much of Judaism is found in Islam and Christianity. Makes one think there was some plagiarism going on.
#9. Prayer has failed to show any effect when put to unbiased examination. Actual published double blind, controlled, peer reviewed scientific studies have shown not one benefit. Even when Jesus prayed to the Father, “Do not forsake me”, it was ignored.
#10. Where is He? God are you up there? Can you talk?