I’d be among the first to admit that the existence of spirit beings is something that can neither be proven nor disproven. You and I are limited to our five senses, and spirits by definition cannot be sensed by any of these senses. After all, even the Bible admits that “No one has ever seen God.” (John 1:18) Even the Governing Body doesn’t claim to hear their god’s voice, and I’ve never heard anyone say that they have smelled, touched, or tasted a spirit. Spirits are thus unknowable to us. This means no one knows more about spirits than you or I do: which is exactly zilch.

This limitation includes knowledge of their very existence.

Having said that, I am still prepared to tackle the question: “Can God exist?” Why? Because we’re going to focus in on one particular god. This god has a defined set of attributes and is claimed to interact with the material world. That gives us something we can actually work with even given our five-sense limitation.

So, does this particular god exist? We’ll answer this question in a moment. But first, let’s take a look at exactly whom we are dealing with:

A Brief History of Jehovah

The Watchtower has borrowed its god from the Protestants, who borrowed him from the Catholics, who borrowed him from the Jews, who borrowed him from the Canaanites.

The Canaanites? Yup, that’s what I said. It seems that originally there were these two Canaanite gods:

• El [aka Elohim, or Elyon], from Syria [biblical Aram].
• Yahweh, from Edom.

The former was favored by the 10-tribe kingdom of Israel, and the latter by the two-tribe kingdom of Judah. Merging the two traditions, Yahweh became one of the sons of El, and was allotted the people of “Jacob” as his inheritance:

When the Most High [Elyon CJB] gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the LORD’s [Yahweh’s WEB] portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.
—Deut 32:8-9 (ERV)

From the Egyptians, with their short-lived monotheism, the Jews added the god Aten (aka Adonai) to the mix. In a savvy political move (probably by Jeroboam I) to establish Israel’s dominance over Judah, all of El’s sons were killed off [which, as we’ve just seen from Deuteronomy, would have included Yahweh], and the Jews embraced monotheism. This is demonstrated in the Bible at Psalm 82:

God [Elohim CJB] presides in the great assembly. He judges among the gods…

I said, “You are gods, all of you are sons of the Most High. Nevertheless you shall die like men, and fall like one of the rulers.”

— Psalm 82:1,6-7 (WEB)

The Jews were thereafter prohibited from calling their god Yahweh: instead, they now had to say “Lord” (Adonai) or “God” (El, as that god became synonymous with Adonai.) This is the real reason why the Jews do not speak the name Yahweh to this day, and the real reason why Yahweh is not found mentioned anywhere in the “New Testament” [other than in bogus “translations.”]

An interesting, little known fact about Yahweh is that he had a wife! No, it wasn’t Mary; we all know that was just casual sex with a woman who was betrothed to another man [which, awkwardly, resulted in a bastard son that had to be killed.] No, Yahweh’s wife was the goddess Asherah. She was worshiped right next to Yahweh’s altar in the temple. (2 Ki. 21:7.) Her worship was so prevalent among the Jews that the writer of Deuteronomy found it necessary to explicitly forbid putting her symbol (a wooden pole with big boobs) next to Yahweh’s altar for worship (Deuteronomy 16:21) . But Yahweh must’ve divorced Asherah somewhere along the way — you know how jealous the old guy was: he couldn’t bear “sharing his glory” with anyone.

From his humble beginnings as the war god of an ancient barbaric tribe, and despite having been killed off, and having his very name banned, this god has risen to prominence among millions of Jehovah’s Witnesses (not that any of them have really ever actually witnessed him.) Their preferred name for Yahweh is Jehovah, thanks to a creatively bogus latinized version of the name dreamed up by a Catholic monk in the thirteenth century.

But, can this god possibly exist?

You and I are both atheists when it comes to thousands of other gods. Click here for a partial list of the gods I trust that you don’t believe exist. (And no; they are not just different names for the same god. Many of them have opposing attributes and histories. Some were contemporaneous in the same polytheistic cultures.) When it comes to all of those gods we are both atheists. I just disbelieve in one more god than Witnesses do: Yahweh.

Why don’t I believe that Yahweh exists? Well, for the same reasons we don’t believe the other gods exist. These gods were stupid, cruel, jealous, and vain. They were obviously patterned after barbaric tribal chieftains whose behavior was evidently regarded by their ancient subjects as admirable.

But there are more reasons specific to the particular god Yahweh.

Yahweh’s Attributes

This god’s attributes were well defined by Catholic theologians long ago, and they have carried across Protestantism and down to the Watchtower religion with no appreciable changes.

Here they are:

• Omnipotence or being All-Powerful (“The Almighty God”)
• Omniscience or being All-Knowing
• Omnipresence or being All-present (being everywhere at once)
• Omnibenevolence or being All-good

That last attribute includes being a “god of love”; all merciful, meting out perfect justice.

In addition, this god is held to be the creator and sustainer of the universe.

The “Problem of Evil”

When considering the evil present in the world, Epicurus (a Greek philosopher from the third century BCE) put it succinctly:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?

A moment’s reflection will prove the truthfulness of those words. We live in a world filled with evil. I’m not talking about “human-caused” evil such as rap music and Brady Bunch reruns: I’m talking about disease and what are referred to in the insurance industry as “acts of God.” Humans have never caused a hurricane, tornado, lightning strike, earthquake [with the possible exception of the oil industry with its fracking], or a tsunami. So we can’t blame these evil things on people nor on their freewill.

How can such things exist if there is an all-powerful all-good god of love watching over us at all times and in all places? To paraphrase Epicurus: this god either doesn’t care about human suffering or it is powerless to prevent it. Either way we see that the evidence does not support all of the attributes assigned to this god. If an entity has incompatible attributes then we know it cannot possibly exist any more than a square-circle can exist. People can claim to believe in a square-circle only if they don’t understand the definition of those shapes. Once you understand the incompatible attributes of a square and a circle you cannot believe that a square-circle can possibly exist — try though you might.

The evidence proves that this god, as it has been defined, cannot possibly exist.

The Watchtower’s rebuttal to this is that their god is both all-powerful and all-good, and loves us. But, his sovereignty has been challenged, and his perfectly loving and just response to that challenge has been to:

• Allow evil and untold suffering into the world
• Demand the sacrificial offerings of untold numbers of animals
• Have his own son executed
• Plot the ***Coming Soon!*** violent deaths of over seven billion people.

Huh?

“Well,” Witnesses tell us, when we look incredulously at them: “it’s all because this god gave us freewill. Unfortunately our first parents used their freewill to disobey this god, and we are bearing the just consequences of their action to this day.” That’s why children die of leukemia, and hurricanes devastate us: Adam ate a piece of fruit 6,000 years ago.

Can Freewill Rescue This God’s Attributes?

No, it can’t. Here’s why.

First, the obvious and most important reason: no one has ever used their freewill to choose hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, or cancer.

A second reason is that freewill is incompatible with the inspiration of the Bible (the source of the freewill excuse!)
This story about our first parents disobediently “choosing Satan’s rulership over them instead of Jehovah’s” is based on the Bible. Why do we believe the Bible? One of the main reasons the Watchtower gives for believing the Bible is that it prophesied many things which came true. This, in itself, is highly debatable, but let’s assume it’s true.

In order for this god to have prophesied the future accurately (assuming such prophecies were not just lucky guesses) it would have to know the future. This accords with its attribute of being all-knowing.

But here’s the problem with knowing the future: if the future is a knowable thing then freewill cannot exist.

Permit me to elaborate on that very important italicized point above: If this god has foreseen our future actions, then we have zero freedom to act in any other way than what this god has foreseen. If Jehovah has foreseen that I will marry Jasmine tomorrow, I cannot now decide that I love Lulu better, break off my engagement with Jasmine, and marry Lulu instead. If I were to go my own way then it would make this god wrong, but this god can never be wrong because it is omniscient.

We even have examples in the Bible of this god forcing men to do his bidding as he “hardens their heart” [Pharoah and his men] or “gives them a new heart.” [King Saul] in order to carry out what was foreseen rather than what they as individuals might do of their own freewill.

The only way out of this predicament would be to say that the future is not a knowable thing. However, that limits this god’s omniscience attribute, as well as invalidating the inspiration and truthfulness of the Bible (where we got this whole excuse from in the first place!) So, it really doesn’t help.

• If freewill exists, then we’ve lost the “prophets” (because they depend on the future being a knowable thing, which destroys freewill) and we’ve pretty much lost the Bible as a whole (and with it our belief in the Bible’s god.)
• If freewill cannot exist (because this god knows the future), then we’ve lost our excuse for the existence of evil.
  • If we’ve lost our excuse for the existence of evil, then god cannot be all-good and all-powerful.
  • Since the god we have defined is all-good and all-powerful, this god cannot exist.

If we have freewill, I assume Yahweh has it in spades. Since this god is the all-powerful law-maker, he certainly would be above the law (else the law would be more powerful than this god.) So, if this god came upon a circumstance where its omnibenevolence would call for a law to be superseded, it surely would not hesitate to act in the interests of love over law.

So, let’s take a look at this god’s son, begging him in the garden of Gethsemane to rescue him from his coming execution. Why doesn’t Yahweh rescue him? Christian theologians will answer that a human sacrifice to himself was needed, and not even the love he had for his own son could move him to break his own law. This calls into serious question both the omnipotence and the omnibenevolence of this god, as well as his love and justice. If this god had no choice but to follow the law requiring a blood sacrifice, then he lacked freewill.

The same can be said of the condemnation of Adam and Eve and their descendants; if this god were truly all-powerful and all-loving he would’ve forgiven them [and by extension: us] on the spot: law or no law. (Especially since they didn’t know right from wrong until after they ate from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”)

If this god does not have freewill, then what are the chances that we lowly humans possess it?

In any case, the combination of omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and freewill simply cannot exist together in this god, given the existence of evil, or even just the Bible story that is meant to give an excuse for the existence of evil.

So, How Did the Universe Come About, Then?

This favorite question of believers can be classified as an “argument from ignorance”: a logical fallacy. If we don’t know exactly how the universe came into being, or how life began, that doesn’t mean that Yahweh created them.

One thing we know for certain: the stars were not created by Yahweh or El in the manner the Bible states. There we read that this god created the stars on the fourth day.

And God went on to make the two great luminaries, the greater luminary for dominating the day and the lesser luminary for dominating the night, and also the stars… And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

—Genesis 1:16,19 (NWT)

Now, according to the Watchtower religion, each creative day was “thousands of years long” (not millions or billions, mind you, but thousands.) In fact, they used to insist that each of these days was exactly 7,000 years long — but Armageddon would’ve been here by now if that were true, so now they think that each of these days was slightly more than 7,000 years.
That would mean that all of the stars were created within a span of a little more than 7,000 years, and they were created about 27 thousand years ago. However, in reality we have light reaching the Earth from stars over 13 billion light-years away. That means it took the light from those stars over 13 billion years of traveling through space before we could see them from the Earth (which hadn’t even formed when the light from those stars began its journey.) So, these stars could not have been created just 27 thousand years ago. When we see these stars we are looking back into the far distant past of those stars: a past that could not exist if the Bible’s creation story were correct. So, the physical evidence proves that the Watchtower’s creation event is wrong by an order of magnitude of at least 48,518!

The Watchtower tries to weasel out of this by saying the stars were already in existence prior to the fourth day, and were just “made visible” to the Earth on that day. But that is not what the Bible says. Reread Genesis 1:16: it clearly states that the stars were made on the fourth day.

The evidence also shows that the universe is expanding. This means that at some earlier point in history everything was closer together. Go back far enough and you come to a densely compacted single entity which exploded (in a “big bang”) to form the expanding universe that we see today. We even have background radiation from that event that we can listen to.

Now, could this explosion have been caused by some entity in an “adjacent universe” (or “spirit realm”?) We can’t know, and so can’t rule it out. Maybe our universe was some kid’s science project in another universe: he blew it up, showed it off at school, and now it’s sitting in a shoe-box in the back of his closet: forgotten. Maybe this kid’s name was Yahweh, and his father El helped him with it. We can’t rule that out any more than we can rule out the existence of your fairy godmother. But as soon as we claim that this kid cares about us and every little sparrow and is constantly watching over us with loving care, I think we can safely holler Bull Sh*t!

But, back to our Christian concept of Yahweh. If this god does nothing without a purpose, then what was the purpose of creating so many stars? [Or, for a question closer to home: why create hundreds of thousands of species of beetles?] We know that there are at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars out there (that’s roughly a million stars for every grain of sand on Earth.) Most of these stars cannot be seen with the naked eye, and none will ever be reached by humans (we’d be long dead before we ever arrived in our spacecraft — if it could somehow survive the journey.) So, other than the Sun, these stars serve no purpose for humans (except for astrologers — whom Yahweh reputedly hates.)

Our ancient ancestors didn’t know what we know today. When a boulder rolled down a hill and wiped out half a village, they assumed the gods were angry, and they’d sacrifice a goat (or a virgin girl) to appease them. Today we know about gravity. We realize that when our ancestors said “God[s] did it” they were just ignorant of the real cause. As more knowledge was gained, the “God[s] did it” explanation was needed less and less, until eventually it was no longer needed at all. Now we can see that god was just our ignorance.

Our ancestors assumed that there was some big chief in the sky who made everything, and designed it specifically for man’s use. Today we know better. Cancer cells, for instance, are not made for our benefit. Nature does not reveal a perfect creator. We have evidence of many things in nature that, if they were designed, were poorly designed.

Take our eyes, for example. In vertebrates, the nerves and blood vessels block the light, causing a blind spot due to their lying on the surface of the retina instead of lying behind it as they do in many invertebrate species.

Want another quick example? Just ask any guy if he thinks it’s a good design to have his ever-so sensitive and vulnerable testicles hanging between his thighs.

We also have vestiges of things that nature tried and abandoned (the trial and error of evolution, or the mistakes of a perfect all-knowing being?) Again, we need look no further than our own bodies to see some of the evidence.

I am a male, but I have nipples that no offspring will ever find nourishment from. Why is that? We’re told that Yahweh doesn’t do anything without a good purpose, so why would he give men nipples when they serve no purpose? It makes no sense. For this and other perplexing questions, evolution has the answer while Yahweh’s supporters are left without a clue. The answer, by the way, is that we all start out in the womb as female, until about day 60 when — if you have a Y chromosome — testosterone kicks in and starts changing your genitals. But by then the nipples are already developed, and natural selection doesn’t eliminate them since they are harmless.

Christian apologists explain male nipples as God’s use of “economy in creation” — conveniently forgetting that Adam was supposedly created first (with nipples, according to every Christian painting and even every Watchtower illustration of the man) and Eve was just an afterthought, taken from his rib!

We also have evidence of things lacking economy, such as the recurrent laryngeal nerve which unnecessarily loops around the aortic arch on its way from the brain to the larynx (resulting in a superfluous twenty feet of extra nerve in the case of the giraffe!) When presented with such evidence, of course, the apologists simply change their tune to saying “God’s an artist; not interested in optimal design.” [Though no one but an anatomist would see such “artwork.”]

Can you wiggle your ears? I can: slightly. The muscles controlling ear movement are vestiges from a time when our evolutionary ancestors relied more on their hearing for survival. They also left us with: a remnant of a nictitating membrane (the plica semilunaris — which you can see every time you look in the mirror); “goosebumps” (for raising the thick hair that no longer covers our bodies); a tailbone; a plantaris muscle (for grasping things with our feet as chimps do); and the appendix [though the latter may still have some reduced functionality.] That’s just to name a few. We even have a gene that synthesizes vitamin C! This gene is active in most mammals, but unfortunately is vestigial in us.

Why would Yahweh — the all-knowing god of love — create these useless and/or poorly designed things, especially when some of them can cause us serious health problems, such as a ruptured appendix or scurvy? Pointing the finger at our sinful first parents can’t account for it: the non-human animals also suffer from poor design. To take one example, the recurrent laryngeal nerve commonly causes health problems in horses.

The evidence around us in nature (“red in tooth and claw”) and even in our own bodies shows the trial and error of an uncaring evolutionary process rather than an intelligent, loving designer.

“Creation Demands a Creator”

Jehovah’s Witnesses will commonly make the statement: “Things don’t come from nothing. They must’ve had a creator.” But that is begging the question. If everything that exists requires a creator, and Yahweh exists, then who created Yahweh?

If the answer is “No one created Yahweh,” then the Witness has just put the lie to their first premise, and it turns out that it isn’t true that “everything that exists requires a creator.”

By introducing a god into the equation all one has done is push the question of existence back a level, which solves nothing. If the Witness will allow an uncreated creator then they should have no objection to an uncreated single entity. The two propositions are not equal. We have evidence for the latter, and it doesn’t require that we believe in the everlasting existence of a powerful all-knowing spirit being.

Conclusion

There is no more reason to believe the god Yahweh exists than to believe in the existence of the god Zeus or Thor or (my personal favorite) Aphrodite. Take a moment to look at her picture and compare it to the one of Yahweh we saw at the beginning. Which one do you honestly find more adorable?

The existence of a god with Yahweh’s attributes is inconsistent with the evidence. The only logical conclusion is that Yahweh does not exist.

Since Yahweh does not exist, there is nothing to “witness,” and the appellation “Jehovah’s Witness” is seen to be pointless.

Next:
Did Jesus Christ exist?

See Also:

• Can God Exist?
• Wikipedia: Vestigiality
• Wikipedia: Argument from Poor Design

What if the Bible was not “God’s word” after all? That would mean the entire basis of the Watchtower religion [along with other Christian religions] would be, well: baseless!

But, can we prove that the god Jehovah didn’t inspire the writing of the Bible? Well, yes and no. As always, we must first determine what we mean by “inspire.” I may be inspired by the television show Monk to write a fan-fiction piece featuring Adrian Monk and his cast of regulars. Did Monk “inspire my writing”? Yes: the premise of the show was  my inspiration: the idea inspired me to write more about it. But that’s not to say that my fan-fiction will be “the word of Monk” or that the fictional character Monk somehow supernaturally guided my typing fingers.

So too, the idea of El, Adonai, and Yahweh may have inspired the writers of what we now call the Bible. But I think we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that none of these non-existent gods actually guided the writers or supernaturally influenced or oversaw their writing.

First, let’s put the Bible in context, shall we? None of the people mentioned in the Bible had a Bible. If you mentioned the Bible to them they wouldn’t have had a clue what you were talking about.

Sure, there were Jewish scrolls. But in biblical times these were not collected together even to form what we today call the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures. Even the “Torah” — the first five books of our Bible, traditionally but erroneously attributed to Moses — were unknown to all of the biblical characters at least until the 18th year of the reign of King Josiah (c. 622 BCE) when they were supposedly found by priest Hilkiah and presented to Josiah. After reading the scroll, Josiah made drastic reforms to start putting “the Law of Moses” into effect.

In the eighteenth year of his reign, King Josiah sent the secretary, Shaphanson… to the temple of the Lord. He said: “Go up to Hilkiah the high priest and have him get ready the money that has been brought into the temple of the Lord…

Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.” He gave it to Shaphan, who read it. Then Shaphan the secretary went to the king and reported to him: “…Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read from it in the presence of the king.

When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes. He gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest… “Go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the Lord’s anger that burns against us because those who have gone before us have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us.” (2 Kings 22)

To put this in context: this was about 350 years after the death of King David.

But scholars say that this is not when such all-important books were suddenly “found” but rather when they began to be written (probably by Hilkiah et al. in an early example of deceptive priestcraft.) If a god had really issued the six-hundred plus laws we find in these works, and thousands of people had witnessed the miracles that preceded and attended the giving of the law, they surely wouldn’t have just tossed these scrolls behind the altar of the temple and forgotten all about them for centuries!

This also explains why the Israelites up until Josiah’s time were constantly breaking the “covenant” they’d made with their god: they’d never heard of it because it hadn’t been written yet!

The rest of the “Old Testament” was written by anonymous authors using the pseudonyms of legendary figures such as Isaiah and Solomon. The “prophetic” books were written long after the events they purported to prophesy.

In the course of time there came to be dozens (if not hundreds) of such writings. By the time Saul/Paul started writing his epistles a collection had been made in Greek called the Septuagint (which Paul quotes from.) In addition to the Old Testament works, the Septuagint contained the following works not found in present-day Protestant Bibles:

• Tobit,
• Judith
• Wisdom of Solomon
• Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach
• Baruch
• Letter of Jeremiah
• Additions to Daniel (The Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Children, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon)
• Additions to Esther
• 1 Maccabees
• 2 Maccabees
• 3 Maccabees
• 4 Maccabees
• 1 Esdras
• Odes
• Prayer of Manasseh
• Psalms of Solomon
• Psalm 151

These were the “Scriptures” Paul would have been referring to in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 when he wrote:

All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness, so that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work.

He would have, at least, had Paul actually written 2 Timothy:

Most modern critical scholars argue that 2 Timothy was not written by Paul but by an anonymous follower, after Paul’s death in the First Century. (Wikipedia article on 2 Timothy)

In any case, when Paul was writing his letters no one thought his letters were “Scripture.” Nor were the Gospels written yet. So, if we were to accept the statement in 2 Timothy at face-value as true, then it would mean that to be “fully equiped” the “man of God” needs the books of Macabees, Tobit, Barcuch, et al., but not any of the “New Testament!”

At the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, they were still disputing about which books were and which books were not inspired. Who were these people, and how did they know? Well, they were Catholic bishops, and they couldn’t have known, and if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness (or any other flavor of Protestant) you’ll agree that they did not know; they got it wrong by including the “Apocryphal” books. These books were later thrown out by the Protestants.

Now, here’s the thing: Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that the Catholic Church and all Protestant religions (other than their own religion) are part of “Babylon the great empire of false religion” and are in league with the Devil:

…religion is a snare of the Devil and the Devil’s associates and is operated as a racket against the people.
Again let the people be reminded that religion is a snare and a racket, originating with the Devil, the leader of the demons, and forced upon the people by the demons: the snare of the Devil, in which to catch the people, and the racket of the religious leaders to rob the people. All the practitioners of religion, and the adherents thereto, will find no place of safety or escape at Armageddon.
…religion is wholly an invention of the Devil.”
Religion (Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, 1940) pp. 88,104-105, 125

Yet somehow, these religions of Satan: the opposer of God, were the ones deciding which works were “inspired by God” and gave their blessing on the works that constitute the basis of the “one true religion”: Jehovah’s Witnesses! How can that be? Why would Satan go through all the trouble of sifting through this mass of religious writings and come up with just the right mix of works that were inspired by his arch-nemesis, and make that available to the Witnesses?

It makes as much sense as Satan’s organization naming Jehovah himself!

By combining the vowel signs of ‘Adho.nay and ‘Elo.him’ with the four consonants of the Tetragrammaton the pronunciations Yeho.wah’ and Yehowih’ were formed. The first of these provided the basis for the Latinized form “Jehova(h).” The first recorded use of this form dates from the thirteenth century C.E. Raymundus Martini, a Spanish monk of the Dominican Order, used it in his book Pugeo Fidei of the year 1270. Hebrew scholars generally favor “Yahweh” as the most likely pronunciation.
–Aid to Bible Understanding (WBTS, 1971), pp. 884, 885 (emphasis added)

The “false-religionists” would have to have been inspired too — just like the Bible writers —  in order to make the correct choice of works. Yet we’re told they work for Satan! Go figure.

Here’s what it comes down to: ancient anonymous men (mostly barbaric, to judge from their writings) wrote fabulous tales of what they thought their god did and was like. Mostly they did this to assuage their consciences over their own war crimes and/or for self gain (such as the priests writing about how their god wanted them to have the best cuts of meat, leaving the smoke of the sacrificial cooking to satisfy their god.) These writings were later judged by “Babylon the Great empire of false religion” to be truly “God’s word” — though they got it wrong, and were re-judged by the “snare and racket” of Protestant religious folk, to be eventually accepted by Jehovah’s Witnesses as the basis for their “truth.”

Someone then told you that the Bible was “God’s word.” Why did you believe them? Did they really prove it to you? Or did you just accept what they were saying because you thought they knew what they were talking about? Trust me; they didn’t know what they were talking about.

So we now have this eclectic collection of writings called the Bible with:

• bats that are birds (Lev. 11:13-19)
• whales that are fish and who swallow humans, swim around for three days with them in their tummies, and then vomit them out safe and sound (Jonah 1:17; MT 12:40)
• rabbits that chew their cud (Deut. 14:7)
• four-legged birds and insects (Lev 11:20,23)
• dragons (Malachi 1:3)
• satyrs (Isaiah 13:21)
• unicorns (Isaiah 34:7)
• purple robes that are scarlet (MT 27:28; John 19:2)
• plants that thrive for 7,000+ years without sunlight (Genesis 1:11-19 [According to the Watchtower, each creative “day” lasted at least 7,000 years.])
• men who fly, unaided, up into the sky (2 kings 2:11; Acts 1:9)
• asses that talk (Numbers 22:28)
• serpents that talk (Gen. 3:1)
• men who walk on unfrozen water without sinking (Matthew 14:25-31)
• the Sun standing still in the sky (i.e. the Earth ceasing to rotate, and even rotating in reverse) — with no one else on Earth noticing (Joshua 10:13; 2 Kings 20:11)
• 3 (even) as the value of Pi (1 Kings 7:23)
• 3 days and nights between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning (MT 12:40; MK 15:42-43; MK 16:1-6)
• all species of animals, along with a year’s supply of their food, gathered onto an egregiously over-crowded boat by a 600 year-old man and his small family (Genesis 6-7)
• nations who suffer genocide coming back in full force (Num. 31:7-18; Judges 6:1-5)
• a “god of love and mercy” who can’t forgive a naive couple or their descendants for having eaten a piece of fruit — until he sacrifices his own son (Rom. 5:18-19)
• stars stuck in a “firmament” a little ways above our heads so that they can “stand over” a particular house on Earth (MT 2:9)
• a god who “cannot repent”: repenting (Num. 23:19; Gen. 6:6)
• a god who “cannot change”: changing (1 Sam. 15:29; Exod. 32:14; Amos 7:4-6)
• a “god of love” who orders genocide, approves slavery, demands the subjection of women and the stoning of sassy children, leaves us with Satan as ruler of the Earth, and plans the bloodiest war in history: once again exterminating the vast majority of humankind

(The list of absurdities and impossibilities goes on and on.)

But once the books making up the Bible were finally decided upon, most people still didn’t have access to it. There were a few hand-written copies, housed in cloistered monasteries, and written in Latin. It was not until 1455 that Gutenberg printed the first Bible — again in Latin. The first English translation wasn’t printed for another 80 years.

If people need the Bible to guide their lives and find the means of salvation, what are we to say of all the people prior to the year 1535 who couldn’t access “God’s word”? What do we say of those after that date who still didn’t have access, or were illiterate? Even today it is estimated that 3.9 billion people have never heard the “gospel message”! If God had something so important to say to us, don’t you think he’d have chosen a better way of reaching all humankind — right away — with his message? And if he decided on this odd collection of books, poems, songs, and letters, don’t you think he’d make sure that they didn’t get filled with absurd legends, impossibilities, factual errors, and — wait for it —  contradictions?

Yes, it’s high time we mentioned the contradictions. The Bible, being a collection of writings spanning many centuries and opinions, abounds in contradictions. There are too many to do them justice here. I wrote an entire book on the subject which you can read for free online right now: The Cure for Fundamentalism: Why the Bible Cannot be the Word of God.

I will just share one contradiction here. The contradiction is pervasive: it does not rely on just comparing a couple of verses. It’s not just a contradiction of words, but of ideas. You will recognize it immediately, without having to look up any Scriptures, if you have any familiarity with the Bible, but I’ll give you some verses just in case you aren’t.

We are told that the god of the Bible ordered, demanded, and desired animal sacrifice. Chapter after agonizing chapter details the precise rules of which animals are to be used and how they are to be ritually slaughtered. We are told these sacrifices were a “sin offering” to be made “for all generations” and that this was part of this god’s law which was to be followed “forever.” In the gospels, even Jesus — who supposedly “did away with the Law” — tells us that we must follow every jot and letter of the Law (which would include animal sacrifice.) Failure to do so would result in dire consequences.

And thou shalt burn the whole ram upon the altar: it is a burnt offering unto the LORD: it is a sweet savour, an offering made by fire unto the LORD. — Ex. 29:18

This shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your generations at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD: where I will meet you, to speak there unto thee. — Ex. 29:42

And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the goat, and kill it in the place where they kill the burnt offering before the LORD: it is a sin offering. — Lev. 4:24

The priest shall then offer the other as a burnt offering in the prescribed way and make atonement for them for the sin they have committed, and they will be forgiven. — Lev. 5:10

For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. — Lev. 17:11

And you must love Jehovah your God and keep your obligation to him and his statutes and his judicial decisions and his commandments always. — Deut. 11:1

Be ye mindful always of his covenant; the word which he commanded to a thousand generations … an everlasting covenant. — 1 Chron. 16:15-17

Think not that I [Jesus] am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. — Mt. 5:17-19

And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, …if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. –- Mt. 19:16-17

But we are also told in the Bible that its god never desired, demanded, or ordered animal sacrifice! He did not find them to be “sweet” or pleasing. We are told that animal sacrifice cannot possibly forgive sin, and that we no longer have to offer such sacrifices!

Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. — Ps. 40:6

For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. — Ps. 51:16

To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. — Isa. 1:11-13

Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto me. — Jer. 6:20

Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices.– Jer. 7:21-22

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. — Hosea 6:6

It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. — Hebrews 10:4

First he [Jesus] said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them” — Hebrews 10:8

Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. — Hebrews 10:11

Christians are under a new law, “the law of the Christ.” (Galatians 6:2) The former Law covenant given through Moses to Israel came to an end when Jesus’ death fulfilled it. (Romans 10:4; Ephesians 2:15)
— Watchtower Feb 1, 2010 pp. 11-15.

I cannot believe that this god ordered, demanded, and desired animal sacrifices for eternity as a sin offering if I am asked to also believe that this god never ordered, demanded, or desired animal sacrifice; that the sacrifices ended; and that they couldn’t forgive sin. It’s not possible for me, and it’s not possible for you or anyone else. No matter how much we may want to believe, we simply cannot believe contradictory statements once we understand them. This is why, once you know what the Bible actually says — and can look at it objectively for a moment — you have to conclude that the bible cannot possibly be the “word of God.”

Believers commonly hold that there are no real contradictions in the Bible, and that non-believers (and/or Satan) are just trying to trick them into thinking that there are. But if that is so: if the Bible really isn’t a hodgepodge of various contradictory opinions, ask yourself the following: Why are there so damn many sects of Christianity composed of people sincerely doing their best to understand and follow the Bible? If the Bible gave a clear, unambiguous message, we wouldn’t have all these divisions. The fact that we do have these divisions, and that Bible believers  can’t even agree as to how many persons make up God, or whether sinners/unbelievers will be roasted in hell-fire for eternity, or whether “true Christians” will live forever in heaven or on Earth (or both) — is very revealing as to just how contradictory the Bible really is. A smart god would’ve inspired a work that everyone could recognize as clear and truthful.

But, it turns out we’ve just been being nice in providing all of the above information. This is because it’s not up to us to prove that the Bible is not the word of a god any more than it’s up to us to prove that the Koran is bull, the Book of Mormon is bogus, or L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics is baloney. When someone comes to us with a book for which they make extraordinary claims, it is up to them to prove to us that what they say is true. When it comes to supplying this proof, Bible believers have done nothing but fail.
Finally, here’s something from the Progressive Secular Humanist Examiner I just had to share (caption mine):

In writing this article, I don’t want to come across as a pompous know-it-all; I’ll freely admit that I’m no genius. But I have taken several college courses and read many books on philosophy, the scientific method, and critical thinking. It has taken me to the point where I now visibly wince at some of the shoddy thinking I often witness. I’ve been guilty of my share of shoddiness in the past as well, so I just want to share what I’ve learned, and some of the things that would be good for all of us to avoid.

The dirty dozen

Here, then, are a dozen ways not to think, with some great examples (mostly provided by our good friends at the Watchtower.)

1. Make up your mind to avoid thinking.

First of all, if we’re not going to think, then let’s be forthright and determined and make no qualms about it. Here’s a good example of the sort of thing we should explicitly tell ourselves:

Avoid independent thinking…questioning the counsel that is provided by God’s visible organization.
(Watchtower, Jan. 15, 1983 pg. 22)

That’s right: don’t think! Let someone else worry about thinking. The notion of “Group Think” is a great substitute for thinking yourself. If you decide to let a group think for you (as the Watchtower recommends, above) be sure to never question their counsel — as questioning involves thinking.

Instead of thinking, latch onto this group as the ultimate authority on every subject, and believe everything from that source no matter how absurd or how many times it contradicts itself or is proven wrong.

2. Fully embrace confirmation bias.

This just means that you should only pay attention to the things which tend to confirm your beliefs, and ignore those which might lead you to question your conclusions.

For instance, many people believe that crazy things happen during a full moon. I’m sure they’re right, but they’re ignoring the crazy things that happen when the moon is not full. If they took them into consideration they would realize that the craziness is not caused by the moon being full.

Here’s another example: At one point in my life–many a decade ago–I thought I was having precognitive dreams. I was astounded when something I dreamed actually happened the next day. But I was forgetting about the thousands of dreams I had that never came true. When I factored them in, the small percentage of “hits” was easily explained by coincidence.

But let’s turn to our favorite source for some examples:

The Watchtower dutifully reports on the complications that can sometimes occur with blood transfusions. But they don’t report on the other millions of units of blood successfully and safely transfused each year–a statistic which renders blood transfusion one of the safest of all routine medical procedures. This confirmation bias assists Witnesses in the belief that they are not missing out on anything worthwhile when denying their dying children this life-saving medical procedure.

It’s easy to use this beneficial tactic to avoid thinking, especially when you have a group that will do the work for you of sifting through the data and picking out just the fragments that agree with your preconceived notions and actively suppressing the rest. Witnesses are truly blessed in this regard!

The Watchtower takes confirmation bias to a whole new level: Instead of just relying on our human tendency to only pay attention to what tends to confirm our beliefs, they actually know full well that the abundance of evidence is against them, and deliberately suppress it: shielding Witnesses from ever having to even consider its existence! What a “blessing from Jehovah!”?

For a blatant example of this type of mental dishonesty, please see: Did Jesus Die on a Cross or a Stake?

3. Throw away Occam’s Razor.

“Occam’s razor” [aka “the principle of parsimony”] refers to the simple idea that you shouldn’t come up with some elaborate, convoluted explanation for something when there’s a simple explanation that fits the facts equally well or better. More precisely, it states that you should choose the explanation which makes the fewest assumptions.

For instance, let’s take two competing explanations for the lack of historical records about Jesus.

One explanation is that Jesus didn’t exist as depicted in the Gospels (i.e. as a wonder-worker.)

The other explanation is that there is an invisible malevolent spirit being (i.e. “Satan”) who prevented historians from taking note of Jesus.

Occam’s razor would cut away the second explanation since it requires an additional assumption: the existence of influential spirits.

Turning to a Watchtower example: what are the possible explanations for their prophecy regarding 1914 being the “end of the time of trouble”?

One explanation is that they are false prophets.

Another explanation is that they had the date right, but the events wrong, and then subsequently got the events right but the consequences wrong (preaching for over 50 years that the generation that witnessed the events in 1914 “would not die” before Armageddon), so they “adjusted their understanding” only to get it wrong again (thinking the generation referred to worldly people) until finally(?) deciding upon the current “overlapping generations” understanding. If this current understanding is true, then 1914 was not a “false prophecy” but just the result of the “light getting brighter.” or so the argument goes.

Occam’s razor would cut away the second explanation with its multiplying assumptions which feebly try to “save the hypothesis.” This would leave us with the former simple explanation: they are false prophets.

4. Don’t listen to Your Critics.

Critics may point out flaws in your arguments, causing you to rethink your position. We want none of that! In sticking to our goal of not thinking, it’s best to ignore critics. Or better yet: denigrate them as mentally incompetent evil “liars”– giving yourself a justification for paying their criticisms no heed. In addition–though it may not be honest–not having to consider the other side of your arguments is a great time-saver, and less anxiety producing.

Once again, the Watchtower serves as a sterling role model in this regard:

Well, apostates are “mentally diseased,” and they seek to infect others with their disloyal teachings. Jehovah, the Great Physician, tells us to avoid contact with them.

What is involved in avoiding false teachers? We do not receive them into our homes or greet them. We also refuse to read their literature, watch TV programs that feature them, examine their Web sites, or add our comments to their blogs. – Study Edition of the Watchtower, July 15th 2011, paragraphs 6-7

 

 

5. Compartmentalize your beliefs.
Just because you use a logical argument to support one of your beliefs, don’t feel duty-bound to consistently use that same logic on another of your beliefs if the logic would invalidate it.

For instance, the Watchtower uses the argument that Jesus is Michael the archangel because Michael does things Jesus is supposed to do. But Jehovah also does things Jesus is supposed to do (such as act as “our only savior.”) But they certainly don’t see that as a reason to drop the Jesus = Michael argument or draw the conclusion that Jesus = Jehovah.

But my favorite example is this: the Watchtower outlaws birthday celebrations based on the argument that in the only places in the Bible where birthdays are mentioned, the participants were “pagans” and murders occurred. Yet in the only place in the Bible where a siesta is mentioned the participants were “pagan” and a murder occurred. But the Watchtower sees no need to apply their logic consistently by either outlawing siestas or legalizing birthday celebrations.

 

6. Use circular “reasoning.”
Thinking often involves drawing conclusions and following a flow of logic. Circular reasoning neatly short-circuits this process by providing us with a thoughtless shortcut.

The classic example of this is proving the Bible is God’s word “because the Bible says it is.”

Another example is how we know that the Governing Body is the Faithful and Discreet Slave: “Because they say they are, and the the Faithful and Discreet Slave would never lie.”

7. Use rhetorical tricks to defend your beliefs
Lots of people don’t understand what logic is, or comprehend the principles of critical thinking. So, instead of crafting well thought-out arguments, it’s often easy to fool them with rhetorical tricks instead, such as the following:

Straw-man: Misrepresent an opposing view by either exaggerating some non-essential aspect, or by just making something up about it. Then attack that aspect as if you were disproving the view. A long time favorite is to claim that evolution says we descended from monkeys, and then ask why monkeys are still around.

Ad hominem: Instead of having to think about what a person is saying who is challenging your beliefs, just attack the person. Even though despicable and/or biased people can make perfectly valid and true points, most people don’t realize this, so you can win the argument by attacking the person instead of the argument — without ever having to think about it!

Practice fall-back strategies: These are good to use when you haven’t a clue as to how to possibly save face when your belief has been conclusively shown to be impossible. Repeat after me:

• “Anything’s possible.”
• “After all, nothing can really be proven or disproven.”
• “You have to have faith.”
• “New light is coming.”
• “Smarter people than you believe my way.”
• “You’re just twisting my words and taking them out of context.”
• “Eight million people can’t all be wrong.”
• “Let’s wait on Jehovah.”?

Tell only part of the truth: When the whole truth would reveal a fatal flaw, tell only part of it. That way you can kid yourself into thinking you’re still an honest person (since you didn’t lie outright.)

One example is when the Watchtower tells the media that “blood transfusions are a matter of personal conscience.” They neglect to mention that a transfusion is a disfellowshipping offense that carries the punishment of shunning and a threat of everlasting death.

When backed into a corner, lie your way out. The Watchtower has made it plain that some people don’t deserve to be told the truth, and that it’s okay to lie to them in order to further “the truth”(?!) So, we can avoid having to struggle to come up with a reason for our challenged belief by simply lying about it, and then forgetting all about the challenge.

Great examples of this abound in the Watchtower’s many rewrites of their history. One pearl is when the Watchtower claimed that they never said that the resurrection of the “ancient worthies” in 1925 was a certainty.

8. Practice Kripkean dogmatism.

Named after the person who defined this psychological phenomenon (Saul Kripke), Kripkean dogmatism is yet another useful tool in our thoughtless endeavors. It is as simple as can be: since we know that we are right in our beliefs, it follows that anything opposed to our beliefs must be wrong. We may not be able to figure out a reason why they’re wrong, but we needn’t bother about it: they’re wrong because we’re right and that’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter a whit if we can come up with any possible reason to explain why they’re wrong. So, we can safely put our minds in neutral and smugly smile to ourselves as we pass by their arguments.

9. Devalue evidence.

1. Remember not to base your beliefs on evidence: you walk “by faith, not by sight.”
2. Don’t bother providing evidence to those who challenge your beliefs.
3. When your own group makes a claim, don’t expect evidence to be provided.
4. But, should your group happen to provide some sort of evidence, temporarily forget about point #1, and whatever you do don’t examine the evidence closely!
5. Most important of all, be sure to ignore all evidence of those who disagree with your group’s beliefs.

10. Ignore context.
It’s so much easier to just take everything at face-value than to try and figure out how the context may alter the meaning.

The other day when I got home from work my wife of thirty-years announced “The divorce papers are in the mail and on their way.” Without knowing the context of that statement you would conclude that we are in the process of a divorce. But we’re not, and it would take some explaining of the context to get you to understand that and to see what she really meant. But that involves thinking, and so we’re not going to go there.

Another example is the first century Christians making the statement “abstain from blood.” It’s much easier to take that at face value (as a command for all future Christians to not use blood) than to examine the context and see that it was a temporary measure for a particular set of circumstances current at the time.

The Watchtower, true once again to its impeccable record of eschewing thought, proudly relates how Witness children have lost their lives due to the Watchtower adamantly refusing to consider context.

11. Make good use of the non sequitur.

The non sequitur [Latin for “it does not follow”] is your friend. Use it to construct seemingly good arguments without worrying about their validity. Here’s one:

1. Christmas has pagan origins.
2. Christians are not pagans.
3. Therefore Christians should not celebrate Christ’s birth.

Here, the conclusion (#3) does not follow from the premises (#1 and #2). But, only a thinking person would care about that. It sounds like a good argument. So what if almost everything has pagan origins which Christians (including Witnesses) go along with? Yielding to that argument would not only be abandoning our love for the non sequitur, but would also be a violation of our principle: 5. Compartmentalize your beliefs. As explained above.

12. Force the issue with a false dichotomy.

False dichotomy (aka false dilemma) helps simplify our world into black and white choices rather than a plethora of shades of gray and a rainbow of colors.

When Witnesses are thinking of leaving the organization they are typically asked: “Where else would you go?” Then, to help make clear the proper answer, the wicked world with its “satanic” governments and false religions is pitted on one side against the “spiritual paradise that is Jehovah’s Organization on Earth” on the other. No mention is made, of course, of a good life lived in freedom; that would muddy the waters of the clear choice that is to be made.

Another very popular form of the false dichotomy is the argument from ignorance. Although people-who-think will rightly mention that you can’t prove anything from ignorance, that’s no reason to stop us committed non-thinkers! On one side of the argument we will place ignorance. On the other side we place our chosen belief. Then we simply pretend that these are the only choices. For instance, we can say: “Look, you don’t know exactly how life came about on Earth, therefore Genesis is correct: God created life!” [It’s best to change the subject immediately after such a statement lest someone should speak up and say that it’s therefore just as likely that Herman the giant hedgehog created life.]

Let’s make it a “baker’s dozen” and throw in this bonus point:

13. Find patterns in meaningless random data.

Humans have an evolved tendency to see patterns, even where none actually exist (technically known as apophenia). This is why people see a face in the moon or on Mars (or canals on Mars). It’s also why they see faces everywhere (including the face of Jesus and/or Mary in a taco or whatever.)

Pattern recognition can give you a sense of “truth” (or a corroboration of your “truth”) without thinking! Good examples are the stories in the Bible that the Watchtower has taken and applied its day-for-a-year formula to represent world history.

The Watchtower’s founder, Charles Taze Russell, famously used pattern recognition to bolster his prophetic chronology by faulty measurements taken of the great pyramid of Giza (where bogus “pyramid inches” were used to represent years.) Meanwhile, the patterns of bumps on his head were published in order to impress his followers that he was specially chosen by God for his “great work.”

 

Conclusions

If you faithfully adhere to the above principles of how not to think, you are entitled to the following certificate:

Note that you needn’t print out the above certificate if you already have a baptismal card; the one will serve as well as the other for certification.

On the other hand…

We could have as easily entitled these dirty [baker’s] dozen: “How not to arrive at the truth.” Yet, it is exactly how the Watchtower has arrived at what it deems “the truth.”

Falling for any one of these thirteen errors will likely lead you astray. The Watchtower has used them all at one time or another to establish or defend their beliefs. Thinking people won’t fall into the same trap. We have thought, and so we will not be Jehovah’s Witnesses.