First Steps to Disbelief

In this post, I'd like to recount what, as best I can recall, were my first steps toward disbelief. I call these first steps baby steps since these events did not immediately make me a non-believer. In fact, it took another 5 or 6 years.

Isaac Asimov said, “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” Indeed, this was how my journey to my current state began.

Around 2000 or 2001, I went to a men's retreat wherein the pastor recounted a story of a young man (a teen, I think) read the entire Bible in one month. Now I had read the Bible before in its entirety—at least twice—but, I'd never read it with the intensity I'd usually reserved for a good novel. So I resolved I would try to read the Bible in one month. I almost made it. If it hadn't been for the Thanksgiving holiday, I would made it. With the wind out of my sails, it took me another couple of months to finish. However, the damage had been done.

It was in someways an unremarkable experience: long genealogies, lots of laws, depressing psalms and prophetical rants about how Israel disappoints God. Nevertheless, when you attempt to read the Bible as a single unit and quickly enough, you notice things you didn't notice before. For example, in Job one of the speakers says how God is able to make man eat grass like a beast of the field. Plowing on ahead, within a day or two you read that Daniel tells of Nebuchadnezzar's insanity using almost exactly the same phrase: making man eat grass like a beast of the field.

This seems trivial and in some ways it is, but growing up I was told that Job was probably the oldest book in the Bible. The reason for this seems to be that the places associated with Job's friends have no archaeological evidence for existing. The problem seems less troubling if we assume that the book is older than Moses and the places have been ground into dust. Finding the similarity in language usage suggested to me that perhaps the book was comparatively recent and was written during the Babylonian period. For some, this may be a problem but it needn't be. The story could have been maintained by oral tradition. It may not have happened at all, but rather the book was a play written to explain evil. After all, since Jesus told parables perhaps the author of Job was inspired to write this parable. Oddly, you rarely hear of a religionist taking the position that the Song of Solomon is a literal retelling of someone's sex life. Obviously, it is a metaphor for the relationship between God and Israel or the church depending on whether the theologian is representing Judaism or Christianity, respectively. (Incidentally, there is works explaining just how graphic this book is.) If one insists on the Song of Solomon being a metaphor, then certainly one should allow that Job is a parable. Does being a parable reduce the meaning of Job? If so, should Jesus have told stories of real people instead of telling parables?

As it turned out, my guess was right. That is, many modern Bible scholars consider Job a rather recent work. Their reasons probably don't include mine which is just as well since my guess is probably just a spurious correlation of text. I may be right on my example, but I haven't researched it.

What I learned from this that there are those that will impose an explanation to preserve a preconception. In this example, this is where we need as literal a translation as possible and therefore insist on an ancient dating for Job contrary to whatever evidence exists. (Ironically, the need to avoid the suggestion that sex can be sexy overrides literalness of the Song of Solomon.)

The second discovery was the almost complete absence of Satan in the old testament (the Hebrew Bible for our Jewish friends). In fact, he is explicitly referenced 3 times: 1) in 1 Chronicles 21:1 where he is said to tempt David to number the people, 2) in Job where he bargains with God to torture Job, and 3) and Zechariah 3, where he argues against Joshua (not the Joshua) becoming high priest. Conspicuously absent here is Genesis chapter 1 where the serpent tempts Adam and Eve. Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible is Satan accused of tempting in the Garden. In fact, Jewish tradition has Satan as a functionary in God's court carrying out the role analogous to Prosecuting Attorney. The word satan means accuser.

In Zechariah, Satan accuses Joshua. In Job, he accuses Job. I Chronicles is a little bit of a mystery, but even Christians in attempting to harmonize this passage with 2 Samuel 24 will rely on Satan being the instrument of God's punishment of David. (2 Samuel 24 say God moved David to number the people.)

Typically, Isaiah 14 is used as a description of the fall of Lucifer along with Ezekiel 28. Interestingly, the Rabbis associate these passages with who the passages reference (Imagine!), those being the King of Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar) and the Prince of Tyre, respectively. (The name Lucifer was the name of the morning star and modern translations have no reference to Lucifer anywhere. So Satan has no name given in the Bible, although I'm told in Jewish tradition his name is Samael.) Ezekiel, interestingly, refers to the Garden of Eden. Nevertheless, as noted the Jews have no trouble understanding this as metaphor.

It would seem that to the Jewish mind that God is an absolute sovereign. This is more consistent with the omnipotent God of Christianity. Nothing including evil happened without God's say so. I don't want to speculate too much on the Jewish mindset since it would only be gleanings. Still here are some references that support this position:

1. “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7
2. “Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?” Amos 3:6
3. “Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?” Lamentations 3:38

Alright, so what? The question that arose for me was how did Satan arise to such prominence in the New Testament. Or why? After all, if Satan is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour and if Satan “hath desired thee that he might sift thee like wheat”, where are the warnings that seem necessary to our survival in the Old Testament? Didn't the Jews require them? Didn't they need warnings? As noted above, this apparently wouldn't have been consistent with the Jewish mindset, but if Satan were real and really evil seeking our destruction, why wouldn't there be warnings?

So where did Satan come from? One could suppose the Jesus invented him. However, of the many things that the Pharisees and Sadducees argued with Jesus about, the doctrine of Satan wasn't one of them. The disciples questioned Jesus on many things but not the teachings about Satan. It seems, therefore, a reasonable guess that Satan became a notable personage before Jesus was born.

This is another place where the dating of the documents is useful. All of the documents that reference Satan date from the Babylonian exile. In the intervening years between then and Christ, the Jews were captive in Babylon, the Medo-Persians, the Greeks and then the Romans. Sometime after the beginning of the Babylonian captivity, the Zoroastrian religion started. In this religion, Ahura Mazda is the all-good god. Evil originates from Angra Mainyu. At the end of all things, those souls that were banished will be reunited with Ahura Mazda. Note that we see God and Satan, heaven and hell with universalism thrown in for good measure.

I don't know if my speculations are valid about the source, but my point is that it certainly is plausible that these “Jewish” belief originated with the Pagan with whom they were forced to associate.

So we have that Judaism arrives in the first century CE having been corrupted by the pagan religions they came in contact with. Jesus, however, in his many corrections of Judaism doesn't correct these perceptions. Nobody questions his teachings on hell. Nobody questions his teachings on heaven. Nobody questions his teachings on Satan. And yet, today's Judaism has none of these things nor does the Hebrew Bible from which it has its grounding.

If this is right, Jesus' teachings are pagan. Either God revealed information to the pagans so that it might purposefully seep into Jewish teaching, or Jesus was subject to the culture in which he found himself. This in and of itself wasn't too troubling to this budding theologian. The book of Philippians (2:7) has it that Jesus emptied himself of the God head. From this we get the fancy theological term, kenosis. We use this to say that Jesus didn't know everything. If Jesus was to be tempted in every way “such as we”, then it is only fair that he faces that on the same terms else it would be a pointless exercise. C. S. Lewis uses this when he says not only is it evident that Jesus didn't know when the second coming would be (actually Jesus says this explicitly) but Jesus was wrong when he says it would be soon. Here is the reference:

The apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, "This generation shall not pass till all these things be done." And He was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else. This is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible. (Essay "The World's Last Night" (1960), found in The Essential C.S. Lewis, p. 385)

It is to Lewis' credit that he admits this. In addition, I admire his unwillingness to equivocate on the straightforward meaning of Jesus' words.

So I found myself with this weird emphasis on Satan and confronted by fellow Christians who find him hiding behind every rock. I found this strange evidence that Satan was invented after the Babylonian captivity and that this invention was uncorrected by Jesus or Christianity—though oddly, Judaism itself dropped the teaching assuming I'm correct that it had had it.

This then was the beginning as I remember it of my journey to discover what the truth was. It was the beginnings of understanding that our beliefs are often habitual and unquestioned. It was the beginning of the conviction that we should not hold unquestioned beliefs. This is the beginning of my understanding that beliefs without evidence should not be entertained.