My First List of Issues with Sky Daddy

Here are some of the things that I was taught about God and the Bible as someone who grew up very rural and as someone who was quite involved in the United Methodist Church in a few different phases of my life. Once as a teenager and once as a young parent.

• God Created the heavens and the earth in seven days. This is incorrect. Evolution is true. The big bang is true. And things evolved over billions of years, not in the matter of a week. Many theologians agree with this to a degree. How could you not? Fossils are not pretend. We don’t truly know how we got here. But, Genesis ain’t it. 

• I think about the old testament like the whole thing is just a collection of fairytale stories written in metaphors to help soft headed uneducated humans of the past have a way to explain things before science was a thing. There aren’t any geological findings that can help prove things like the flood, the ark, the garden of eden, parting of the Red Sea or any of that stuff. I mean, look at the story of Adam and Eve it makes absolutely zero sense. The idea that these two people were created as adults and could immediately speak and understand one another, and fully grasp the human experience in such a way that they were farming, able to carry on a traditional marriage, and somehow single handedly populated the world/ I’m sorry, no. There is so much about this story that is obviously not to be taken literally. Same with Noah’s Ark. Nope, never happened. That’s ridiculous and also disturbing and it makes no sense, scientifically. There are so many plot holes in the old testament.

• God of the Bible loves to test the faith of his most important followers quite a bit.

• Old testament God was a real dick. Who am I kidding, Bible God is a huge dick!! The first Bible story to really make me question everything was the story of Abraham. First of all, that guy was a huge douche. He cheated on his wife and fathered a son with another woman that was eventually totally cast out along with his mother, after God made good on his promise of making Abraham’s elderly wife get pregnant (which is messed up as it is). Finally, he has Isaac, his promised golden child and God is like, “If you really love me you’ll murder your son for me.” And gets him to actually stand over his son, whom he waited hundreds of years for, ready to sacrifice him and God is like, “Oh, I was only kidding. I just wanted to see if you’d do it or not. Man, you sure are a great guy, Abraham, for proving how much you love me. Now you win a prize!” That is so messed up. What kind of loving God asks someone to do this? It’s just arrogant! PROVE YOUR LOVE FOR ME! Don’t even get me started on poor Job. That guy was completely tortured for God’s amusement. “See, even after all that awful stuff I put him through, he still loves me. THAT’S how great I am.” I’m sorry, what!? I mean, if Satan had been attacking Job and God was like, let me save you, son! That I would get. But, God literally torturing him for fun and to prove some sick point to himself is messed up. 

• God made man in his own image and likeness.

• This is something the church teaches with their mouths and then does NOT practice in the world. The church has a whole list of people they will not accept. If we are all made in the image of God then there is no room for exclusion. None. There is also the fact that nobody really even knows what that really means, being made in his image and likeness… I think this is why people think God is a guy.

• God gave man free will.

• Okay, this one really messes with my head. And the teachings on this depend on your “brand” of Christianity. Some branches teach about free will and others teach about how everything is already pre-determined. I was taught a hybrid theory where everything is part of God’s plan, but we have the option not to go along with God’s plan. That is our free will. This makes me have so many follow up questions. I will talk more about this later. 

• God is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. Meaning he knows everything, sees everything, planned everything and is everywhere at the same time. 

• If all of these are true then God is either really neglectful or really bad at planning things. This is one of the things about the God in the Bible that I seriously question. If he did everything so perfectly and everything is always going according to his big master plan, then why is everything always so fucked up? Because of free will? Does everything happen for a reason or does it not? Why do we need to pray, then? If God is so perfect and all knowing and such a good planner, why does the Bible give so many examples of his plan being fucked up and him having to address that?

• Everything happens for a reason. It’s according to God’s will.

• Here we go again with the plan. If this big plan was so amazing and perfect, why did God have to keep going back to the drawing board with humans due to their behavior and why did he have to eventually create a loophole to make it so people could actually come out the other side of their life (that he gifted them) without ending up in this other place that’s very terrible, when they couldn’t fit the mold he made for them? He literally made the rules and then he had to remake his rules later on. What!? Doesn’t sound like a perfect plan to me. If he knew he was going to have to create Jesus and send him to die to fix his terrible plan all along, then why did he plan it that way to begin with? For funzies? 

• Don’t like how humans are behaving? Kill nearly every living thing in a flood. Don’t like how humans are behaving again later? Kill everyone’s first born son or destroy two entire cities. Don’t like how humans are behaving again later? Make a bunch of rules that are impossible to follow, that will teach them. Unhappy with how humans are behaving later on, but also feel sort of guilty about it? Send a version of yourself to earth as a baby and then have yourself killed as an adult, therefore creating a loophole to allow them to bypass all those other rules you made so long as they still agree to worship you and tell you how great you are at least twice a day. But, also remember that everything is part of this perfect plan you had from the start…. Oh, and why it abortion looked at as the HUGEST sin on the planet but it was totally cool for God to send an angel to Egypt to kill all of the firstborn sons. HMMM??? Killing babies is either evil all the time or it’s not…

• Also, why would he make it required that people believe in him in order to get to heaven and then not give people actual evidence that he exists? It is assumed that he could do it if he wanted. The people in the Bible didn’t need faith since God was interacting with them regularly, in a literal fashion. How can people of today be expected to believe something they cannot investigate at all? Just like, he loves us so much he wants to spend eternity with us, except you have to somehow learn about him on your own, believe in him the way he wants and worship him, or you will suffer an eternity in hell. I’m sorry, but that’s dumb as fuck. 

• Man is born a sinner into a fallen world. 

• Why is that? If God created everything and everything he created is good, then did God create the devil and hell or no. And if everything he does is good, then his creating those things would be…. Good? For who?? Why did he need to do that? To punish people who don’t agree to acknowledge and worship him? If God created everything, then God created evil. I mean, God in the Bible is pretty evil, so I guess that makes sense, with all that murder and infanticide and stoning women who were victims of rape and allowing fathers to sell their daughters into slavary, among other atrocities. Sure. But, why was creating the devil and hell even necessary at all? In all things there is a balance, there is dark and light. So, if because God exists, the devil then also must exist then that would make the devil as powerful as God. And if God did create his opposite, because he created everything, then he did it all knowing exactly what would happen as a result. Again, not a very well thought out plan. 

• God sent his son Jesus to save the human race by dying for our sins.

• Went over this a little already, but it does seem to go against the rest of the narrative of the Bible. If God is all perfect and all knowing then why did he need to create a loophole to save mankind from the rules HE MADE? Does all of this mean that free will was a mistake? All the problems always seem to stem from the fact that man can choose for himself. So, does that mean God screwed that up?

• And, poor Jesus. God screwed up with humanity so many times he had to send his son to earth, who was also himself and then had his son, who was also him, killed to create a loophole for the world, except for that whole needing to believe thing. Sounds legit. Not to mention there are zero eye witness accounts of this. 

• God created heaven and hell.

• Touched on this already. But, again. If God loves everyone fully and completely, how could he ever send any person to hell, simply for failing to meet some confusing criteria. It sounds so arrogant. “Worship me or else!” Sometimes I wonder if we aren’t already in hell.  

• People who knowingly live a “sinful life” and refuse to repent will be sent to live eternity in hell. 

• There seems to be some real issues with defining what constitutes an offense worthy of hell and what doesn’t and it all depends on who you ask. This is a fear tactic used to get people to comply and to obey the laws of the church. These laws are archaic at best.

• Didn’t Jesus reportedly die to forgive everyone’s sins? Wouldn’t that void the need for hell? So confusing.

• The Bible is the only word of God and must be trusted as written. 

• The Bible is the word of man and cannot be fully trusted. When you learn about the Bible and you learn about where the writings come from, when they were written, by whom they were written and who translated them and who chose what books to include and exclude, it becomes very clear that this is all a thing made up by some dudes. Some dudes with an agenda. It is far from the infallible word of God. Sorry.

• God loves us more than anything. 

• I do not believe, based on what I have read, been taught and learned on my own through studying that the God of the Bible loves humans more than anything. Actually it kind of seems like we are just a major form of entertainment for him. 

• God doesn’t make mistakes.

• War, death, disease, childhood cancer, toture, genocide, racism, rape, incest, pedophelia, abuse, neglect, poverty, hunger, crime, corruption, greed; you sure about that? A little baby getting sexually abused is all part of God’s plan? A little boy dying of terminal cancer is all part of God’s plan? Really?? If he doesn’t make mistakes then why did he have to keep torturing and  killing off people in the only testament when they weren’t doing what he wanted? The flood, the plagues of Egypt, the Red Sea, Sodom and Gomorrah, his own son?? A christian will answer this by pointing out that these things are caused by man and not God. I would argue that if God created man, it is his fault. Also, a lot of the evil in the world is done in his name. Holy wars of all kinds. 

I would like to address the fact that I am not saying that there is no higher power or entity or supernatural being out there. I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that the way God is portrayed in the Chrtistian Bible and all other Abrahamic religions is bologna. It’s a bunch of stories made up by some dudes to explain things to dummies a long time ago because they needed a way to explain things to people before science could. I saw a tweet where the Bible was called “The Iron and Bronze Age Sheep Herder’s Guide to the Galaxy,” and I cannot stop thinking about how hilarious and accurate that is. I am not making the leap from lifelong Christian to Atheist. I am not sure at this point if I am an Atheist at this juncture in my life. I have seen and experienced too many amazing things to think everything is just random and there’s nothing else.