3:AM Magazine

By Jim Martin.

I’m told that the Holy Bible is the word of God on earth. This book contains truths that can move the faithful to tears of joy and reverance. And the facts in the bible provide the irrefutable proof that Jesus Chris is the living son of God who died and was risen again. You can point to proof of the existence of this man and to proof that at least somewhat backs up the facts of the bible. It’s all very real, they say, and those things you cannot prove should be accepted on faith. The funny thing is that Intelligent Design, like many other modern alterations to the faith, is little more than just another gaping hole in the armour of faith.

We accepted Creationism for an awful long time. Some of the more frightening salvaged souls still believe it in the face of a shocking amount of data to the contrary using the same sorts of logical refutations as holocaust deniers and eight year olds. But Darwin came along with his whacky theory of evolution and put out the kind of visible and verifiable proof that many Christians simply couldn’t argue against. So they did the next best thing. They adapted. They evolved. They said, “Fine, we now accept evolution, but we’ll call it Intelligent Design and say that it was the means by which God created life on earth.” It’s certainly a simplistic means to absorb the change offered by Darwin and maintain the faith, but that is simply at a surface level.

Beneath the surface lies the truth. By needing to adapt, what they’re saying is that there are factual errors in the Bible. And honestly, we’ve known that it contained plenty of these for ages. More and more we’re learning that the book is full of inconsistencies and untruths. Through modern archaeological findings we’re learning that the truth behind the plight of the Jews in Egypt is far different from how the stories make it out to be. We know through our advances in geology that dinosaurs did not roam the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve but had in fact died out millions of years before the first appearance of man. We know through the historical record that the books are inconsistent with historical facts and are also inconsistent with other examples of the same book. They were tampered with many times by many fingers, adding whatever bits made the most sense to them at the time.

At what point do thinking people finally ask themselves how this all works? If the proof of Christ’s divinity is in the truth of the bible and we know that the bible isn’t true, doesn’t that cast natural doubts on Christ’s divinity? What can we trust from the source if we know more and more that it is full of untruths?

Believe in God if you must. Believe in a kindly creator (kind enough to have unleashed the plagues of Egypt on his favorite people’s enemies) if that’s what gets you through the night. But can we please stop pretending that this book has any facts in it at all? It’s innaccurate and anachronistic at best, and we know better now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jim Martin is a former editor of 3:AM, front man for the obscure punk rock band Johnny Incognito, and just a heck of a nice guy.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Thursday, October 4th, 2007.