The Bible: A Critical Analysis of Its Historical and Scientific Accuracy, Papers of World Religions

Download The Bible: A Critical Analysis of Its Historical and Scientific Accuracy and more Papers World Religions in PDF only on Docsity! Christopher Jones Mr. Ryan Keefe ENGL 1105 The Bible An old professor once told me, “You aren’t actually human until you question that in which you believe in.” Following his advice I began questioning every basic aspect of my existence, from why I write with my right hand to why I go to school every day. One thing that always puzzled me was why I attended church every Sunday. Coming from a very religious Christian family wasn’t enough; it didn’t make sense to listen to sermons week to week about fictitious miracles from a book claimed to have come from an ethereal being itself. Personally, I haven’t had any experiences with rivers parting miraculously, or mystical talking burning bushes, so research led me to question not religion, whose goals are based off of interpretation, but The Bible itself. The Bible represents a written foundation for a long list of religions, most of which are different solely on their interpretations of different passages. Through these passages, people have united and religion has become the basis of culture and human nature. More specifically The Bible has become a source of “Good News”1 and hope for many societies. But through this hope are fictitious heroics and supernatural abilities that seriously lead me to doubt the factuality of the book itself. To clarify, I believe The Bible to be fictitious first, and through consequence, religion itself. The easiest way to decipher the truths of The Bible is to analyze each section and use historical and scientific evidence to recount for its validity. 1 In reference to the Good News Bible. 2 Genesis is Latin for beginning or origin. Genesis is the first story in the Old Testament of The Bible, and as its name suggests2 it describes the origin of mankind. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was empty, a formless mass cloaked in darkness. And the Spirit of God was hovering over its surface. Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that it was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day" and the darkness "night."” These first lines of Genesis represent the religious answer to where life began. In The Bible, every known object on this earth, and beyond, was made by God, an invisible being who resembles the father of the universe, and is known to Christians as “The Almighty”. It continues with the story of Adam and Eve, and how God created both man and woman, told them one thing, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." After being tempted by a serpent who told Adam and Eve that through eating the fruit, they will become like God himself, humanity disobeyed God’s orders and was kicked out of the Garden. The Bible’s theory of the beginning of life and humanity contradicts against two known scientific theories, the big bang3, and evolution4. These two theories suggest that science is the answer to how life and the universe were made. The big bang theorizes that small atoms colliding together formed the universe we know today, and cosmologists have concluded that the universe is expanding every second. The colliding of atoms contradicts Genesis’s word that God created everything, and the expanding of the universe factualizes the big band theory. Furthermore evolution has evidence of life mutating throughout generations and branching off into other species. They conclude that human beings have evolved throughout the ages, and have mutated into what we are today from an animal similar to the believe that the Bible, and in fact religion itself is a place for people to call home, a refuge from the outside world. Religion in a sense is a universal language that brings people together in the hopes of better both themselves and others around them. My theory is that even all people who worship the Bible as it is know that it is not all true, but they keep worshipping it anyway instead for the messages that it speaks. For example, most people would agree that the creation of the Ten Commandments by Moses from the mouth of God himself is a little far from the truth, but not many would say that the actual commandments are not worthy of worship. These Ten Commandments, “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Honor your father and mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.” are still, just like the Bible, a major part of religion today not because of their story, but because of their words. The Bible, much like human evolution itself, is an ancient relic that has stood the test of time though its mutation and involvement in human nature today. Despite the infactuality of the book itself, it is still important to understand how the Bible has impacted society today. However it is more important to understand not the how’s and why’s of this book, but that what’s still make this book fictitious. Works Cited 3: http://www.big-bang-theory.com/ 4 http://evolution.berkeley.edu/ 5: http://archaeology.about.com/cs/educationalresour/a/history3.htm 6: Harrison, John B. and Richard E. Sullivan. A short history of Western civilization. New York: Knopf. 1975