Almost 7 years ago, I wrote a post about "Why I gave up Christianity" and a follow-up on "How to Choose your Faith". Today, with 7 more years of experience under my belt, I would like to amend my public opinion on this matter. I now believe a ton of truth, knowledge, and wisdom can be gleaned from the Bible, and Yeshua is exactly who he claimed to be.
The root of my prior abandonment of Christianity is that 99% of pastors have been deceived by propaganda and teach things that contradict their professed Scripture. They worship the government and teach the traditions of men. How can all of these pastors be led by the Holy Spirit (aka the Spirit of Truth) and yet be so blind to obvious truth and contradiction?
I knew enough about human history to know that the powers that be will rewrite history to fit their preferred narrative and frequently kill those who disagree. How, then, is someone to trust a book passed down through 4000 years of history? Even worse, how is one to trust a translation of a translation? Given the history of lies, deception, and censorship by the "elite" combined with the gullibility of the masses, I became determined to not trust anything anyone claimed without testing it against logical consistency and personal observations.
In this post, I will show that the English bible is not infallible and any translation is prone to errors; however, these errors are no different than the fallibility of a measuring tape or any other scientific instrument. We don’t conclude science and scientific instruments are worthless pursuits simply because the tools we use to search for the truth are imperfect. Likewise, in searching for the truth regarding the existence of God, Heaven, Hell, and His Word, we can utilize the same imperfect tools and imperfect translations and still draw meaningful and useful conclusions.
Provably Wrong Translations
Least you think that I have lowered my standards for the pursuit of truth; I will first strengthen my argument against trusting the Bible as infallible. What most of us can easily "know" about Christianity comes from the Bible, but what if we cannot trust our translations to be infallible? How would we know we have the "word of God" vs. the “imagination of man"?
This claim of infallibility actually undermines the legitimate arguments for the trustworthiness of the Bible and the trustworthiness of those who claim it. If I can find even one provable “flaw,” then I can undermine the entire basis of anyone’s blind faith in the Bible and demonstrate that the person holding this view lacks discernment.
Here is a single verse that I know to be false in every English translation of the Bible I checked because the translators were apparently ignorant about the context. Matthew 26:17 is typically translated "On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, "Where shall we prepare for You to eat the Passover?”
That statement cannot be true because the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread is a High Sabbath (meaning no work may be done) and starts after the Passover lamb has been slaughtered (too late to prepare). A better translation of the Hebrew would have been "Before the Feast of Unleavened Bread…”, but after looking through dozens of translations on BibleGateway, I only found one that attempted to resolve this in a dubious manner by adding a phrase to imply that the Feast started in days before Passover while they were removing leaven from their house. I have to give credit to 119ministries.com for their relentless testing and searching for logical consistency and providing a better interpretation of this passage.
If every common English translation can get something so obviously, and factually wrong, then we English speakers have a major problem. We cannot claim that what we are reading is the infallible Word of God. At best, we must now rely upon experts who study Hebrew and Greek enough to provide better translations and interpretations than our English Bibles provide. This is a major problem when you consider that 99% of pastors can't even be logically consistent in their application of the English translations in the first place. This almost takes us back to the days when the common man had to “trust” the Catholic priests to tell them what was in the Bible and what it meant. We clearly don’t want to rely upon any single person or ministry to define “God’s Word” for us.
So if we cannot rely upon the Bible being 100% infallible in our native language, then we must apply the scientific method to understand the meaning of God's Word. We would make a hypothesis and test that hypothesis against other Scriptures, histories, and physical evidence. Only the logically consistent interpretations that factor in all of the information we can gather can be "trusted," and they are always subject to being disproven. In other words, knowing God's Word is not as easy as reading a book at the surface level. God did not super-naturally facilitate perfect translation and its preservation through the ages. More importantly, the Bible doesn’t claim this.
What we do know is that there have been relatively few changes in the Old Testament text in the past 2000+ years. The Dead Sea Scrolls show us that the text was largely preserved. However, these scrolls also show us, without any doubt, that some of the modern text was changed by the Jews to discredit Yeshua. In other words, my theory that you cannot trust people in power not to “rewrite history” is proven yet again. That said, The Dead Sea Scrolls add credence to the prophecy of Yeshua’s first coming. A skeptic could claim that 1st-century writers, having access to this text and prophecy could have easily adapted their stories to be consistent. To know what is more likely to be true would require more evidence.
Note that pursuing the question of God’s existence or non-existence means having an equally open mind to both outcomes. Why should one side have a greater burden of proof or the presumption of truth?
God's Works
The next way that we can study God is by studying His works, His creation. We call this science, and science can help us "prove" things that must be in alignment with God's word. Creation and physical evidence provide the second witness to the written Word. The challenge we face is how to resolve any apparent conflicts between science and the written Scriptures.
When we engage in science, we always interpret things from a certain set of assumptions. Atheists will assume there is no God and therefore only consider facts and circumstances that fit their narrative. Christians are often guilty of the exact same thing. Given a crime scene, there are many ways of interpreting the "facts," but none of them are able to actually prove what happened in the past.
Evidence against Naturalism (Evolution)
I recently started doing my own thought experiments with the evolution of information contained in DNA. If you start with 100% perfectly optimized and perfectly fit DNA, then the random mutations that cause things to "evolve" would have to result in loss of information and devolution. Unless this perfectly fit organism was able to prevent DNA mutations from generation to generation, the information contained in the DNA would decay faster than it could randomly produce and “select the fittest.” Under these conditions, an organism would go extinct, even in a stable environment. It would require a computer-like digital precision in copying information, and computers require advanced algorithms like error-correcting codes to mitigate copy mistakes. A species advanced enough to preserve its DNA without mutations would also be a species that ceased to evolve and is unlikely to be the first randomly created life form.
As a computer scientists and software engineer, I am very familiar with genetic algorithms and how they can be used to optimize a large number of parameters and even train artificial intelligence systems. The success of these algorithms depends heavily upon how the “fitness function” scores the quality of individuals along with the “selection” algorithm. In theory, you want to retain the fittest, discard the least fit, and add just the right amount of randomness so that the “search space” is thoroughly explored. If any of these functions and variables are not properly tuned, the genetic algorithm will fail completely.
Biology has a very coarse selection algorithm - does the organism live to reproduce. Most mutations will have statistically insignificant impacts on whether or not an organism reproduces; therefore, most errors will propagate, and few errors will “randomly” self-correct. Nature lacks the robustness and precision tuning required by software genetic algorithms; therefore, these software algorithms provide more evidence against evolution than for it. Most critically, biological life has a limited life span so it isn't possible to preserve and mutate only the most fit over and over until something better comes along.
It is hard enough to maintain information once achieved, but going from non-life to life has been shown to be so statistically unlikely that questions about life evolving after that are moot. For example, we cannot produce even the simplest parts of single-cell organisms by natural processes. In most cases, producing these simple parts with artificial processes is impossible. More to the point, given a cell that was recently alive, we cannot figure out what we must add to restore life.
This gives strong evidence that life is not derived from matter following undirected processes over billions of years. I am not going to make the full case here because others, such as Answers in Genesis, have done a fantastic job for those who are open-minded enough to seek out the information.
Since I cannot in good faith accept the theory of evolution, then my choice of explanations for what I see around me is greatly limited.
Consciousness
Every theory that starts with consciousness coming out of matter is no longer credible given the evidence I have seen to date. So we are left with two options: our consciousness created everything or God created everything. It boils down to subjective, internally defined reality, or objective, externally defined reality. I had previously adopted a subjective reality perspective.
The internally, subjectively defined, reality assumes no standard of right or wrong because, by definition, we get to define right and wrong. The externally defined reality takes power away from us and subjects us to the will and values of a Creator.
The only way for us to know the will of this higher power is for God to communicate with us by some means. After all, His thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are His ways our ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways.
So we are now left with a choice of defining right and wrong or attempting to understand God's ways by some means. Many choose to remain ignorant because it requires a substantial amount of work to define a logically consistent morality or to understand God’s law.
Does Life or Death Matter?
From both the evolutionary approach and the subjective, internally defined, reality perspective our "life" and the "life" of others do not objectively matter. From the materialist perspective, from dust we came and to dust we will return. Our life would be a random expression of the "Big Bang". If you allow a multi-verse then anyone you kill in this life lives in another multi-verse and anyone you spare in this life is killed in another multi-verse. All moral codes and all choices are therefore permitted.
From the perspective of "everything is a creation or reflection of our consciousness" we can never really die, we merely "wake up" from this dream we think is "real". There is therefore no logical rationale to live or let live. We "assume by faith" that there are no eternal consequences for our actions in this physical reality because who we are is either "bigger than this body" or nothing but dust blowing in the wind.
Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. It is also meaningless that everything is meaningless. So we either create our own meaning which cannot be right or wrong (subjective view) or we trust God’s meaning (objective view) to the extent we can reliably ascertain God’s view.
We are “meaning making machines” and cannot help but give meaning to things so that we can act. Therefore, we must be very careful what meaning we choose to give things. The wrong meaning can lead to a quick death and the right meaning may extend this life; however, the calculous is more complicated if the death of our body is not as important as the death of our soul.
Universe as a Simulation
This theory posits that everything we see is part of a simulation. From my perspective, this theory is equivalent to belief in a Creator. Under this simulation we are fundamentally unable to transcend from the "simulated world" to the "real world" any more than a computer game character can transcend the computer.
Does it matter if we live or die under a simulated universe? I suppose that depends upon the nature of the simulation and does the simulation include a simulated Heaven and Hell. These higher-order dimensions of reality are impossible to understand from the lower-order dimensions without the higher-order dimensions communicating information down to us. It would be like a virtual machine attempting to learn information about the host machine that was not intentionally disclosed by the host machine to the virtual machine.
So if there really is a place our soul goes to be tormented for a simulated eternity then there are indeed fates worse than physical death (from our subjective simulated perspective).
Communication from God
If we are not just the result of randomness and there is a Creator, what reason do we have to believe this Creator is communicating with us? I like to take the approach of evaluating the logical consequences of assuming the Creator isn’t communicating with us. This is the assumption that an agnostic would have to make because they claim “you cannot know” and therefore “there is no communication”.
Without communication it follows that it is impossible to be disobedient to God simply because it is impossible to be obedient to someone who has not communicated with you. Any consequences in this life would have to be indistinguishable from randomness or we would have some kind of signal which would constitute communication. However, interpreting consequences as “good” or “bad” would be challenging unless you assume that God’s values are aligned with your values. In which case your “suffering” is bad and your prosperity is “good”. One could conclude that those who rule the world through lies and violence have prospered and therefore must be acting in alignment with evolutionary success and God’s values.
Someone with some libertarian philosophy would conclude that, absent communication to the contrary, moral behavior should be defined by rules equally applied to all people. Rules such as “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want others to do to you.” and “Live and let live”. This philosophy breaks down when one considers that individual people are part of the body of mankind like a bee is part of the body of the hive. We need individuals to be self-sacrificing for the whole yet this needed behavior is not logically consistent with every individual putting their own interests ahead of others so long as they don’t use force or violence.
Furthermore, this libertarian rule of “don’t do to others…” is defined by the subjective “ what you don’t want them doing to you”. Some people seem to like pain, suffering, and being victimized. One must assume a set of objective universal values in order to guess at God’s law without communication.
Understanding God’s law is only relevant if there are consequences to not following it. This means that if God has not communicated his law, then He is dolling out consequences for people who have no way of knowing what the rules are. No individual person would be able to appeal to a higher authority when condemning the choices made by others.
A further consequence of God not communicating with his creation would be that there are no miracles and everything that happens is either from randomness or deterministic behaviors. A miracle would be a form of communication unless all miracles (deviation from randomness and determinism) were themselves random, unearned, falling on the good and the bad people equally.
Under the assumption of no communication, then we have no more basis for choosing our behavior than we do under the meaningless, nihilistic and hedonistic life.
God Must Communicate
So far I have concluded that our Creator must communicate with us by some means or there is no logical basis to define "right" or "wrong" nor any basis to deny that the "end" justifies any means. Without communication from a higher demension we have zero information about what happens after death. And without this information it is not logical to assume there is a Heaven, a Hell, nor assume that there is nothing at all. Without a Creator who must have had a reason to create us, there is no intrinsic value to anything. All value is subjective value and might-makes-right.
One could make a case that assuming there is a "Judgment Day" is a far better philosophy than assuming there is no Judgment Day. After all, without a Judgment Day there is no basis for anything but the most hedonistic, self-serving, narcissistic life you can get away with — to hell with future generations. Without a Heaven, this life is "all we get" and our "death" must be avoided at all costs. Our attempts to extend our life at the expense of other people's lives become justified. How then can we fault those who seek power by any means at any cost?
Therefore, I draw the conclusion that God must be communicating with us in some manner or there is no right and wrong. There must be some absolute higher standard by which we are judged; therefore, there must be a Heaven and a Hell.
The most obvious way God communicates with most people is via our conscience which, when not intentionally suppressed or ignored, gives us a strong indication when we are doing something wrong. You could argue that our conscience firmware was installed at creation and that God is no longer involved; never the less, we have all the information we need to know God's moral will from what He has created.
In my book, More Equal Animals, I argued that the means must justify themselves regardless of the "end" because no end is final and "now" is all that can be known to exist and the "means" are the only thing that exists in the "now". From this we can conclude that doing the right thing is always justified even if it means death and even if the desired "end" appears unlikely to be achieved by the "right" means (as far as we can understand).
Math & Logic
Math is the language of God and all of creation appears to follow His mathematical laws. Logic is a branch of math; therefore, one can assume that God is indeed logical and that logic can reveal everything we need to know about God to the extent that higher-level dimensions can be un