Why belief? It seems that humans have a predilection towards belief. The earliest humans, observing powerful natural forces at work in their world, felt helpless. Without the understanding of such forces as lightning, earthquakes, or tsunami the primitive human could only imagine the causes behind them. Imagine they did. They didn’t have the facts, so by golly they decided to make some up. Gods have been invented by the gross to explain things like thunderstorms, volcanoes, and comets. God’s even made up the heavens, outlined in the twinkling lights seen in the night skies. Well, that was then, we have the answers to these simple questions now. Have the Gods vanished from the scene?

For the most part, they have become only stories. Some, however, yet linger. If their stories are examined critically it is clear they are of no more substance than any that have ever existed, yet these hold-overs from the bronze-age continue, passed from generation to generation like some hideous genetic disease. Their usefulness in explaining the mysteries of nature long past, they are molded, fashioned, to encompass the little that remains to be explained. No doubt if even the few mysteries that remain are answered (how life began, how the universe began) some way will be found to preserve foundationless belief. Perhaps God exists in some other plane, perhaps one of those parallel universes, they will say. Perhaps, they might conjecture, he is at the boundaries of our universe, aware of all, knowing all, and caring for those pitiful humans- on a small rock in an arm of an average Galaxy, a Galaxy among billions.

Despite these acrobatics, despite the glaringly evident silliness of this badly spun tale, they insist in its truthfulness, its plausibility. Here are some reasons that none of it is likely to be true.

• Jesus did not write anything whatsoever about his exploits. He was a carpenter, usually well off and educated in those days.
• There is no mention of Jesus outside of the Bible. There were some attempts to forge some which were soon found out and discredited.
• All of the four most beloved books were not even written by their purported authors.
• Even the earliest of these four books was written over a generation, perhaps two, after the event.
• Paul didn’t even know of Jesus’ exploits (possibly because they hadn’t been invented yet), never met him (except in a hallucinogenic vision), knew only of his death, and resurrection.
• Myths before and after the time in question depict numerous similar beings as Jesus.
• The New Testament was obviously written using the Old Testament as a template.

Of course there is much more, enough to fill a dozen large tomes, I might guess.

Over the centuries Christians have tried in vain to extinguish any evidence of the lies upon which it is based. The truth exists but is ignored by the faithful. Many have had the story pumped into their minds from hapless youth. Such indoctrination is not easily expunged. Even if a small portion of reason is ignited within their minds it may do no good if they have lived a life entrenched in the myth, making it all the more difficult now to admit they have been duped. Should they be convinced entirely that the whole of it is a fabrication, for sake of family, friends, they may well continue, at least, going through the motions.

In this time our science has advanced well beyond anything the ancients could fathom. We can see a Universe with countless stars in countless Galaxies thanks to Hubble, the space telescope. Such immensity cannot be a mirage, it certainly seems real. Yet despite this immensity there are those who would think that a God that created it all would devote its energies solely to create a human being on a tiny orb around an average star in an uninteresting arm of an average Galaxy-one among billions!

Read the Bible, from it you will find that this God is every bit the same as man. Jealous, vengeful, over-bearing, and at times full of rage, it is clear that God did not create man, man created God. Everybody should have known that as the job was shoddy from the start.