Why I Am Not a Bible Believer

I used to be a devout "on fire for Jesus" fanatic fundamentalist Christian, and I firmly believed that we are living in the End Times and that Jesus Christ was going to return in power and great glory to rapture his church during my lifetime. And then there would be seven terrible years known as the Tribulation period for the world while we Christians enjoyed the marriage supper of the Lamb. And after that... HEAVEN WITH JESUS FOREVER!!

But all of that has changed now. I don't believe that the Bible or the Christian faith are actually true. I don't believe that Jesus Christ was God or that he was raised from the dead. I don't believe that Jesus Christ fulfilled any prophecies. And I don't believe that Jesus Christ was the Jewish Messiah. 

I am convinced now that the Bible is just a collection of ancient religious mythology and ancient fiction. I believe that the Bible is ancient fiction that is a product of the times in which it was written. I don't believe that the Bible speaks of the distant future or our current day at all.

I changed my mind about a lot of things and walked away from my faith -- the very faith that gave me great joy and happiness and peace and hope for an amazing future. I would like to explain why I walked away.

I have been studying the Bible for most of my adult life and I am almost 59 years old. I was taught in church that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God. So right away we have a serious problem.

From the very first verse of Scripture in Genesis we have a serious problem because the two contradictory creation accounts are dead wrong. They contradict everything we know from science about biology and cosmology and the origins of our species.The universe was not created by a god, and the universe and our world did not come into being simultaneously. Our universe is 13.8 billion years old and our world is 4.55 billion years old. 

THE FLAT EARTH 

The Bible clearly teaches that the earth is flat and that it is covered by a solid dome firmament in which the stars are fixed. The biblical universe is small and three-tiered. There is the firmament, the flat Earth, and the underworld, and God lives just above the solid dome firmament, which is where the Bible locates Heaven. 

From https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/bible-verses-about-flat-earth/

Top Bible Verses about Flat Earth

Isaiah 40:22 ~ It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;

Revelation 7:1 ~ After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree.

Psalm 104:5 ~ He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.

1 Chronicles 16:30 ~ Tremble before him, all the earth; yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.

Job 26:7 ~ He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing.

Matthew 4:8 ~ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

Psalm 93:1 ~ The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt. Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.

Job 37:18 ~ Can you, like him, spread out the skies, hard as a cast metal mirror?

Isaiah 11:12 ~ He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

I find it very ironic that Isaiah 40:22 is often used as a proof for the spherical earth when it in fact clearly teaches that the earth is flat!

GENOCIDE 

There are numerous horrifying verses in the Bible where mass murder and genocide are clearly ordered or advocated by God.

https://www.openbible.info/topics/genocide

The Bible contains hundreds of meaningful contradictions, many myths and fables (the creation myths, the global Flood, and the Tower of Babel, etc.), many hilarious absurdities, and many horrific atrocities. It also contains a great deal of non-historical history. 

So... the Bible is the inerrant and infallible Word of God? Hardly. And I no longer believe it or revere it as such. It's just a collection of ancient religious mythology and fiction. Period. End of story.

Society Flourishes Without Religion!

I have known for a long time that the less religious societies are, generally the less violent and more peaceful they are. But this morning I came across these videos on YouTube that offer sociological proof that societies where religion has freely given way to secularization are more moral and ethical and peaceful.

You can watch these videos by sociologist Phil Zuckerman here and here. 

The Rapture Is a Mythological Religious Event! It Will Never Happen!

Relax! The rapture is not going to happen today, tomorrow, on October 9th, or any other future date that rapture-obsessed Christians guess and try to make a case for.

Scripture makes it very clear that the rapture event was supposed to happen back then, not 2000 years in the future. Jesus Christ said that he would return before the people who were standing before him tasted death (Mark 9:1) and before his disciples had made it through the cities of Israel (Matthew 10:23). And the apostle Paul and all of the New Testament writers clearly expected the rapture event and the end of the world to occur during their lifetimes. The apostle Paul clearly believed that he would be alive when the rapture event happened:

1 Thessalonians 4:15 NKJV

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.

And there are over 100 verses in the New Testament that make it very clear that the authors believed that they would live to see the rapture event and the end of the world.

The rapture is a false doctrine taken from an ancient, failed apocalyptic cult. It didn't happen 2000 years ago,  and it is not going to happen during our lifetimes, and it is never going to happen. It's a false hope from a demonstrably false religion.

The non-return of Jesus Christ was a serious problem by the end of the first century and it's why the book of 2 Peter was written. And the apocalyptic message in the anonymously written Gospels was toned down over time, and the message changed from the imminent apocalypse and end of the world to eternal salvation. 

The Bible is a collection of ancient religious mythology and fiction. It contains hundreds of meaningful contradictions, myths, fables (stories involving talking animals), numerous hilarious absurdities, unicorns and satyrs and cockatrices, and lots of non-historical history. And it is a flat Earth book from cover to cover, and several major Christian doctrines depend on the cosmology of the Bible, which features a flat Earth covered by a solid dome firmament in which the stars are fixed. The Bible is fiction! It is a product of the times in which it was written, and it does not speak of the distant future or our current day at all.

The Christian faith is very easy to prove false. What we know now from science about biology and the evolution of the human species proves the Adam and Eve myth false. Adam and Eve never existed, and we were not created by a god. We evolved over the course of several million years from a long line of hominid species, and this fact is easy to verify. So... No original couple, no Garden of Eden, no fall into sin and no need for redemption. There was never a first Adam, so no need for Jesus Christ to be the second Adam. In addition to that, there is no geological evidence that a global flood has ever taken place, and there has never been a time when the human population was whittled down to just eight people on a boat.

THE BIBLE IS FICTION!

Carry on! Relax and enjoy your life and stop wasting your time and emotional energy worrying about ancient religious mythology and mythological religious events.