What The Bible Really Says About God

Is God all-seeing, everywhere and all at once all-being, all-capable, and infallible?

The religious answer is yes. But how do we know that? By reading the Bible? And can we trust what the Bible says, given that the Bible has some major contradictions in it?

Here are just two of the Bible's contradictions:

In Genesis 1:26 and other places, God is many because he says "us" and "our"; but in Exodus 3:6 and other places, God is one because he says "I".

In Genesis 1, God creates beasts and then man and woman. In Genesis 2, God places man in Eden and then creates the beasts and then creates woman from one of man's ribs - beasts after man instead of before him.

I wonder if someone has already published a longer list?

So the Bible has some contradictions in it.  Do the contradictions, and also the presence of several distinct writing styles, mean that people wrote the Bible as we know it?  If God really did give us the Bible as it is, and if God is infallible, then God must have meant to include the contradictions for some reason. Otherwise he is either fallible or he did not give us the Bible as it is.

Regarding the contradictions I have two broad views: if they are intentional, the Bible either intends to confuse man's mind and therefore control him with irrationality, or they are intended to help us grasp something deep, or it's a sort of time-lock so that the Bible can guide men's actions until such a time when they are wise enough to understand why they should live a certain way and then discard the Bible because of its flaws. Or, if the contradictions are not intentional, they are evidence that God is fallible (if he wrote it), or that the entire thing was written by men and God never existed at all, or that God exists and doesn't care that we are messing things up.

Since I can't outwardly observe God and ask him what is the truth, all I can do is review Exhibit A and draw my own conclusions...

Exhibit A: The Bible

The Bible offers us three distinct kinds of information about God:  what God says, what God does, and what people believe about God. Also, what God says can be divided into two sub-categories: waking stories and dreaming stories.

Going back to the contradictions, in Exodus 3:6, God tells Moses: I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. He then continues speaking and uses the word "I" to refer to himself. So this implies God is one. But in Genesis 1:26, God says "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness". Also in Genesis 3:5 the serpent tells Eve to eat the fruit so she can "be as gods" - who later, in Genesis 3:22 say, "behold the man is become as one of us". And in Genesis 11:7, God says "let us go down and confound [man's] language". So this implies God is many. These are supposedly direct quotations from God. It's plausible that anything God told man was passed down through generations as a great story. But who was there to hear God say "let us make man in our image", or to know anything about creation for that matter? 

In Genesis 25:23, God answer's Rebekah questions about her unborn children, but does not use any noun or pronoun for himself, so it does not imply either God is one or God is many. It cannot be assumed either way from such verses.

In Genesis 3:9 God is walking in the Garden of Eden and calls to Adam "where are you?". If he is all-knowing, he would already know where Adam is and he would already know that it was the serpent who convinced Eve to eat the fruit and that it was Eve who then gave the fruit to Adam. But God asks anyway. Why? Did the honest answer change the consequence? We cannot know. When in Genesis 2:27 God told man not to eat the fruit, if that was important then God could have made two separate gardens or he could have put the guardian angel next to the tree from the start instead of letting man eat the fruit then kicking man out and then putting the guardian angel at the entrance to the garden to keep man from coming back... after it's already too late because man already ate the fruit.  

In Genesis 3:22-23, God kicks man out of the Garden of Eden so he won't eat from the tree of life and become immortal. And in Genesis 6:3, God says that man is mortal and his life is limited to 120 years. Yet in Genesis 9:5 Adam dies at 930 years, in Genesis 9:29 Noah dies at 950 years old, in Genesis 11:32 Terah dies at 205 years old, in Genesis 25:7 Abraham dies at 175 years old. In Deuteronomy 34:7, Moses dies at 120 years old - in the last book of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. The only person born after Moses who lived beyond 120 is Jehoiada the priest, who dies at 130 years old in 2 Chronicles  24:15, but this is a book not part of the Torah. So are all the lifespans greater than 120 from Adam to Moses a contradiction of God's decree? Or are they evidence that through a deliberate process the maximum human lifespan was being reduced to 120 years?  And by deliberate I mean, The longest-living person in modern history was Jeanne Calment, a French woman who was born in 1875 and died 122 years old, but after her the second longest-living person was Sarah Knauss, an American woman who was born in 1880 and lived to be 119 years old. Do we chalk up Jehoiada and Jeanne Calment as outliers to God's general rule? Why did it take 27 generations (if you believe the Bible story) for man's maximum lifespan to be reduced to 120 years? If God is the one who imposed the lifespan limit in some way does this mean his method has limits? Or is God did not impose the limit himself and was merely remarking on it how did God know what would happen to man's lifespan in the future? Or has man's maximum lifespan always been 120 years and the ages in the Bible are incorrect? It wouldn't be the last time that someone "fudged" the data to support a desired conclusion.

In Genesis 18:21, God says that he will go to Sodom to see how bad things really are. Needing to go there means that God has a limited perception that must be focused. Therefore his knowledge is limited.

In Genesis 6:11-17, God says the earth is corrupt and full of violence and for that he will destroy everything, and he instructs Noah to make an ark so that he can escape the destruction. Causing a world-ending flood is very powerful - but it's not all-powerful. God has tools and methods and although they are very powerful, they have limits and he has to work within them.  If God is all-powerful, could he not have simply caused all the violent men and beasts to die? Could he not have created a world without the violence he hates? He obviously didn't get it right on the first try. And does he even have more than one try? There are plenty of references in the Bible to God knowing or predicting the future, but none of him going back into the past to change anything. I also have some ability to predict the future. My children will grow (I know this because I studied biology) and they will graduate high school (I know this because I intend to be a good parent) and they are going to face challenges (I know this because I have experienced life) and they are going to overcome them and fall in love and have children (I know this because I understand human nature and statistics). So it makes sense that, if God knows the nature of man, he can predict many things. And since there is rarely a time limit on his predictions, they all eventually come true because they are all consequences of man's nature. 

In Exodus 12:7, God tells Moses to tell all his people to put lamb's blood on their doorposts so that later in Exodus 12:23, when God moves to kill all the Egyptian first born, he will recognize the houses of Israel by the blood on the door posts and skip or "pass over" them. Does this show that God is not all-knowing? If he were all-seeing or all-knowing he would know which houses belong to his people. 

If God is not all-seeing and all-knowing, then God cannot be all-powerful. In the Exodus example, an all-powerful God would be able to strike down Egyptian first-borns without needing his people to mark their own houses for him first. Since he needed the marks, he has limits. Having limits means he is not all-powerful - not to the extreme that religious people make him out to be. The story certainly shows that he cannot be everywhere at once throughout all time because if he could then he would already know which house is which because he would know who lives there and where they came from. 

There are stories in the Bible of God having much knowledge and power, but not of being all-seeing, all-knowing or all-powerful. There are verses in the Bible that say he is these things - but these verses are found later, many in Psalms and in the New Testament, and all the ones that I have reviewed have been men speaking their opinion about God. I can see how, given the things God did do, he may have appeared to man to be very powerful, and given man's propensity to make connections and exaggerate, it was only natural for man to declare that God is all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful... but that in essence is a fact about man, not about God. It is man who needed God to be all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful. 

So if God is not all-seeing, everywhere and all at once all-being, all-capable or all-powerful, and infallible, WHAT IS HE? 

Genesis tells us that God is someone who is part of a group. God has identity but wants to keep it secret: [3:14]. There may be one God, but he is not alone - in the same way that there is just one me, but I am not alone. God is someone who created humanity to be like his group [Genesis 1:26]. God is someone who has children [Genesis 6:2] who are sexually compatible with humans [Genesis 6:4]. God is someone who wants mankind to grow and to control his environment [Genesis 1:28]. God is someone who makes mistakes [Genesis 2:17 and 3:24]. God is someone who repeatedly makes covenants with man [Genesis 9:11 and others]. God prefers meat over fruit or vegetables [Genesis 4:4-5]. God asks rhetorical questions [Genesis 4:9]. God wants man to be mortal [Genesis 3:22 and 6:3]. God wanted man to be conquerable [Genesis 11:6-7] but changed his mind - since he didn't stop us from building nuclear weapons or space stations. God walks with humans - Adam, Enoch, Noah, and Moses. God changes his mind [Genesis 8:21 and Genesis 18:26-32]. God uses tools to do his work [Genesis 19:24]. God uses reason [Genesis 11:6-7]. 

God seems very much like us, which makes sense, since either he created us to be like him [Genesis 1:26] or we invented him and because God is our invention he naturally has a very human twist even when we try to make him something more. 

One way God could be present everywhere at once, including the past, present, and future, is if he exists outside our existence. Not necessarily another dimension or another universe, but just outside of our existence. Ideas about our universe being an artificial reality such as portrayed in "The Thirteenth Floor" or "The Matrix" concretely show how a God outside our reality would be able to see everything and be everywhere at once. Interestingly enough, in those two stories the men (or machines) running the simulations still have a limited capacity to see and to do things within the simulation although, compared to the men living inside the simulation their power is still very great. With enough computing power, the scientists in "The Thirteenth Floor" could have paused the simulation at any moment, rewound it to some past state, and replay it from the past and interfere and change things. To see how the future unfolds they could simply let the simulation run. If they are not satisfied they can then return it to a past state, warn people about the future, or make changes to alter the future. 

We can never have any evidence that God exists outside of existence, because if it were true then by definition the evidence wouldn't exist here. God could even appear himself and tell us all about it and we still wouldn't have any evidence - because we would be seeing and hearing him in this existence. Any evidence God brings into existence to show us that he is also outside of it will necessarily become part of our existence and therefore fail as proof that there is something beyond. We may choose to believe but we can never have proof.  Also, if God exists outside of our existence there are absolutely no consequences for us. Nothing changes - that we know of. Life continues as it has been, as he has allowed it to be. We make choices as we have been. The meaning and purpose of our life does not change. If God wants to do something, he only has to appear and say it. I think if he appears with a show of force most people would be afraid enough or inspired enough to obey immediately. 

Whether God is limited or unlimited, existing only in this world or also outside of it, we have our lives to live and our choices to make. 

I think most people want to have a good life whether God exists or not. And I know that there are people who, regardless of whether they believe in God or not, say the hell with it and they are going to have a lot of fun and do anything they want regardless of the consequences to them in this life or beyond it. They don't care what happens to them and they place their whims before any other cause. Are these people a problem? If they act irrationally but they hurt only themselves they should be free to do that. But if they act to hurt other people, we have each other for defense. 

Maybe the promise of fruitfulness in the covenant is fulfilled when we follow God's teachings. His commandments tell us about authority, government, society, the good merit of study, how we should work for ourselves and together, how we should relate to each other. 

Whether or not other people believe in God, my own actions will be consistent with my values. And whether or not I believe in God, something I do value is my life and my actions will be consistent with that. 

The weird stuff happens when people believe in God and they do evil. Does that mean God is a bad idea? I think given all the good people in the world who believe in God we cannot say that God is a bad idea. I think that people who believe in God and do evil should be judged for what they do, not for what they believe, the same as with any other idea such as capitalism, human rights, communism, fascism, environmentalism. Some ideas more than others may facilitate warped values that encourage evil action and this should be evidence for us that those ideas are not good for us. But it's not as simple as saying belief in God is good or bad. It's what you believe about God that can warp your values. Even if we could identify every person whose beliefs and values will lead to evil, we cannot convince them all of this. We just have to deal with it with it happens. 

I think the best way to deal with is to talk in terms of what they have done and our need to defend ourselves from them. Just be objective. 

In Numbers 35:15-28 God says we should have places for people who are accused to hang out until their guilt is determined, and that if they are guilty they should be punished, and that if they don't want the protection of the sanctuary they are on their own. In Numbers 35:30-32 God says we should not testify falsely and we should not take any pleasure in punishments - do what you have to, get it over with, and move on.

The Bible says that God values human rights, including our right to life and liberty and property, and that he advocates self-defense and punishment (which he does not reserve) in order to enforce those rights. So go and live a great life and do great things and respect other people's human rights. You have permission!

Philosophy

I've been reading about philosophy and I got annoyed by these two examples I read on wikipedia:

Kant claimed that dialectic method was sterile because it led to contradictory conclusions? The dialectic method as it is was used by the famous philosophers itself was not the cause of the contradictions. The cause must have been undetected errors in the logic of the arguments presented within that method. Just like our more modern scientific method for arriving at actual physical knowledge doesn't work if you don't reason well within each step.

I read that in Hegel's "The Logic", Hegel talks about how quality and quantity are related, using the temperature of water was a really bad example. Clearly the fact that the water changes from liquid to steam at a 100 degrees Celsius does not stem from the relationship between quality and quantity, it stems from the nature of water. Would he have come to a different conclusion if he had instead used the number of molecules of water as the quantity to change instead of temperature?

Reason is a tool, but you get out of it what you put into it... if your facts or premises are faulty, or if your connections are faulty because you're not diligent at checking for contradictions or gaps, you will arrive at faulty conclusions. Reason is just a process. To use reason reliably we need to take careful steps and check each other's work critically.

Reason is a team sport!

We Need Rational Solutions

All of us who advocate freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are separated into two camps: Those who believe such freedom can only be achieved with government controls in every industry, a myriad of wealth redistribution schemes, and the religious opinions enacted as law; and those who believe that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness can only be achieved only with perfect government - that is, a government in which there is nothing left to take away.

Most of the country is in the first camp, as evidenced by the election of both Democrats and Republicans into office at every level of government in every election. Both Democrats and Republicans are in the first camp, the only difference between them is they disagree on which controls are most important. So by electing one and then the other into office, we get the worst of both. I think very few people can look at our current situation and rationally say we got the best of both - that would mean happiness with nearly intractable and growing national debt, decade-long involvement in a "war" in two foreign countries where our politicians refuse to allow our military to actually fight an enemy, a disturbing trend happening now where citizens are being prosecuted for filming police actions due to past embarrassment this has caused, to name just a few.

I'm in the second camp. Those of us in the second camp need to continue pointing out contradictions and evils in the present state of things but we also need to present rational and comprehensive solutions to legitimate problems that may be caused by a freer society. I'm talking about offering more than just "the free market will naturally lead to best results" - I mean offering detailed, rational, solutions to such problems as how to protect our environment from irrational people who would dump waste products into lakes because it's cheaper than disposing of them safely, from irrational people who would cut down our forests to the last tree to make another dollar, from irrational people who would cruelly invade one military family's funeral service in order to get media coverage for their hate against homosexuals -- oops, that last one is allowed by our courts somehow basing their argument on free speech for the religious nut at the expense of the mourning military family.

In a free, capitalist system, how are we going to maintain our common areas? What principle is going to ensure that we don't ruin our little area of the planet for our grandchildren? What principle works when applied in any scale - town, county, state, country, world - so that others can copy it if they like our results?

Irrational, abusive, people are part of reality and any proposal that we make needs to account for their existence and their most likely and most dangerous courses of action. In essence these courses of action violate other people's individual rights [to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] in some way. We need to talk about prevention, deterrence, and punishment. We need to demonstrate how a rights-based solution can really work. Only then can we have a hope of turning the tide and restoring America to a path of individual freedoms and national prosperity.

Courage Campaign Crossed the Line

So I receive emails from the Courage Campaign which fights for equal rights for minorities.

Today I got an email from them about Obama and how terrible it is that he is proposing more cuts to the budget than what was already agreed and that he "already gave the republicans what they wanted" so he should be focusing on creating jobs instead of cutting spending.

I replied to the email and here is what I wrote:

you better stick to full equality issues... providing jobs is NOT the government's purpose

this isn't about "giving republicans what they wanted", this is about a serious and grave challenge to our entire country. 

don't you understand? even with a balanced budget  (which 1.5 trillion doesn't do) we won't be rid of the national debt, because to get rid of it we need to have a NET GAIN every year... for many, many years.   

in order to have a net gain we would have to cut so many programs and eliminate so many tax shelters for the mega-rich that practically everyone in the country would be angry at the government. 

it would require an American toughness at least the magnitude that was suffered during the world wars.  to do it willingly before we are forced to, now THAT requires courage.

people naturally get more conservative during tough times.  if Americans suffer because we've reached the end of the rope, instead of voluntarily taking responsible action, then we will lose a lot of ground in the fight for personal freedoms.  but if we convince people to willingly sacrifice their favorite programs by eliminating or greatly reducing them, or by paying more taxes (those of us with money to speak of) then we can have economic recovery without the rash changes in attitude.

that's what the courage campaign should be advocating... hey all, let's put our war face on and figure out how to get by without social security, without welfare, without tax shelters, without pork barrel projects, without paying for senators traveling internationally, and without literally a million other things that sound great on paper but that all together are bringing our country to its knees. 

The Police Shot A Man In San Francisco

The story I read about this said that the man was hanging around in the subway, drunk, who threw his liquor bottle at the cops who were called to reign him in and then pulled a knife to attack the cops.  They shot him, and he died.

If that's the way it happened, it's unfortunate that he died but it's not the cop's fault that he chose to get drunk in a public place and chose to assault the cops. It could have ended differently for him had he made different choices.

Why are did people riot against the police? And why did they choose to do it in the subway where they interfere with the travel of people who had nothing to do with it?  That certainly wouldn't win my support if my travel plans were interrupted because some people are angry.

If the public judges that the police are being too aggressive perhaps it would be better to stage a demonstration in front of the police station or town hall, or talk to their city council.

Destabilizing the Security Situation

I get annoyed when I read news like "the bomb may have been intended to destabilize the security situation". If one bomb can do that, it must have already been unstable.

The detonation of a bomb, the assassination of a leader, the murder of innocent people, these are not things that reflect the security situation. It is the way the government responds to them that reflects the security situation. If the government has the means to bring the criminals to justice, there is potential for security... If the government pursues the criminals and brings them to justice, then it is working. There is nothing unstable about that. If the government, because of corruption or lack of means, is not able to pursue the criminals, then the more people know this and take advantage, the worse the security situation becomes.

Ultimately, the security situation is each citizen's perception about their ability to live in peace, about the government's ability to deal justice. The security situation is the deterrent to crime and the actual capacity for enforcement.

Some people's perceptions may be swayed by one attack but the actual capacity for enforcement cannot be significantly degraded by just one attack. Therefore the security situation cannot be destabilized by just one attack. That's why I get really annoyed when I see someone writing such drivel - because the writer is typically speculating about the attacker's motive, and I think in most cases writers give attackers too much credit. Most of the attackers, whether it's in the USA or in one of our "war" zones, are just unstable paranoid delusional misguided immoral self-righteous fearful violent scum. They try to justify their crimes in any way they can and writers just do them a favor by publishing their bullshit.

I would prefer for the serious news publishers to abstain from propagating analysis until after the facts are actually available, because often people read the first version of the story and then aren't interested in the updates... not to mention that most of the time the updates don't get the same level of placement as the original story, as if they are less important.

And now, in mocking fashion, I present you other news: An ignorant blog writer attacked a common news publishing practice today, in a possible attempt to destabilize the already deteriorating journalism situation...

Crying for America: In The Valley of the Shadow of Debt

So Congress finally passed a budget bill... but it's terrible.

First, they raised the debt ceiling, which is practically a guarantee that our national debt will increase by the allowable amount.

Second, they committed to spending cuts but didn't specify what they will be. They are just pushing the tough decisions to someone else... or until after they get re-elected. That's cowardly. Any proposal for cuts is sure to be met with strong opposition... either by the other party who hates the proposal or by the leader's own party who hates the sacrifice. They got elected to be leaders not to campaign for their next election. I don't care if they get re-elected, I just want the country's problems solved!

Third, they require a vote next year on measures to cut the budget... but they can just vote against the cuts and still meet the requirement!

Fourth, they only require 2.4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years... but we have almost 15 trillion dollars of debt. So that's not nearly fast enough. We need to cut spending NOW to levels that will reduce our deficit by about 1 trillion a year... so that we have a hope of getting out of this mess in 15-20 years and not saddle our children with this problem.  By the way, this means that we can't just balance the budget... we have to tilt it in the other direction.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans have what it takes to solve the nation's economic trouble. Only Libertarians have what it takes to cut the government's spending to sustainable levels.