Logic versus Faith

sent in by Nicholas Brosz

Logic versus religion. Thus is the concept that many people have fought and died for throughout humanity's existence. Some have fought and died for it, while far more have fought and died against it. Here is the result of my thoughts concerning the Bible and stories/miracles mentioned therein.

First, one of the most logic-defying miracles appears in Joshua 10:13. "So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on [ Or nation triumphed over ] its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day." Now, in order for the sun to stand still, the earth naturally would have had to cease rotating. However, this would have caused not only gravity itself to cease, but also this would have caused worldwide temperature changes, a temporary changing of the Earth's magnetic field (causing all creatures that use said field for navigation to be thrown into turmoil as their "north star", so to speak, disappeared) as well as giving everyone on the bright side of the Earth a potentially lethal dose of UV radiation due to the deflection power of Earth's magnetic field being temporarily "shut off". And then, if the world had suddenly gone from rotating at 465.11 m/s (at the equator) to no movement at all, everything on the earth would have been shot out into space as if from a slingshot.

Second, according to Genesis chapter 17, Abraham's wife managed to give birth to a son despite having passed menopause. Even if she had a single egg cell left in her ovaries, the chances of that egg being fertilized by Abraham during the narrow window in which it would be possible is so unlikely, it could practically be called impossible.

Third, Noah's Ark. In order to build a boat large enough to hold two of every species of creature on Earth as well as the food required would have without a doubt caused the Ark to be so heavy, it would have undoubtedly sunk. Furthermore, such a construction task would have taken one man's family many decades to build working alone, especially since according to the technical specifications the Bible gives for the ark, it was 450x75x45 feet, which would be 1,518,750 cubic feet, hardly enough to hold 2 of every unclean animal and 7 of every clean animal on Earth (including many species that are now extinct, such as dinosaurs). And then there's the problem of food. How would he feed these creatures for the 150 days in which he resided in the Ark? How would he and his family have managed to single-handedly give all these creatures fresh water (since the new oceans of the Earth would have been quite undrinkable if not due to salt content then due to the microbes from all the decomposing creatures that had died in the flood), cleaned out the dung (which, again, would have gone into their water source), and kept the animals from fighting or in any other way getting riled up? My parents claim that God put them all into hibernation, but that still doesn't explain how they would all fit on the Ark, and most creatures wouldn't be able to go into hibernation and be sustained for 150 days on nothing but body fat (reptiles included, don't store near enough body fat to survive a 150-day hibernation without any food and then, when it was all over, having to wait until other creatures either reproduced or flora returned before they could eat). Then, Noah was informed of the water having drained from the earth (apparently to an undisclosed location, since there doesn't seem to be that much water on Earth now) by a dove having brought him back an olive tree leaf. The problem with this is that olive trees need "average" rainfall. Being submerged for 150 days would have been more than enough to drown any olive tree (and probably any other tree as well for that matter) or at least cause it to die due to lack of sunlight. Furthermore, it would have taken much longer than just a the few days that the water was drained for a new olive tree to sprout and grow to the point of bearing leaves.

Of course, there's also the miracles in which the dead are brought back to life. The problem with this is that by the time 3 days had gone by (in the case of Jesus or Lazarus), the body would have gone into an extended state of decay, all tissue in the body being dead and the brain having suffered irreversible damage. Unless Jesus and Lazarus (and others who were resurrected) could spontaneously regain the chemicals and electric signals that made up their memory (which defies all proven laws of the inability for matter to appear out of nothing), they would have been brought back to life with almost complete memory loss, not to mention their muscles being stricken with rigor mortis (which beings after 3 hours and takes over 72 hours to dissipate), which would have made them unable to even hold their bodies upright and stand.

I could go on, but it is unnecessary. Suffice it to say that I realized how many impossible (by proven scientific facts, versus faith and biblical theory) many (if not most or all) the miracles described in the Bible are. From there I came to realize that religion was not worth what it asked for (not including the weekly church donations that costs my family some 5,000 to 7,500 dollars or more yearly) and the blinding of people to what could be a foreseeable truth, meaning if a scientist discovered groundbreaking evidence that could change the way Humanity worked but would contradict the Bible, Christians, against all logic and reason would stick to their false faith rather than go towards what may cause Humanity and the Earth as a whole to become enlightened.

McLaughlin
South Dakota
United States of America
Joined: Approx. 4
Left: 17
Was: Assembly of God member, Baptist, non-segregated church member
Now: atheist, logician, free thinker, idealist
Converted because: Because I was brought up believing it was the correct way to live.
De-converted because: After much thinking I realized the Bible has no proof.
email: nhbfan AT gmail DOT com

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