Being raised non-religiously, there was never a point in my life at which I believed in God, fate, heaven, hell or any such thing. When I was four years old, I couldn’t sleep, because I was scared of being abducted and dissected by aliens – a topic for another time. In order to calm me down, my dad told me about how the whole universe started with the big bang, and that everything was made of atoms. Looking back, it was a great tactic. Talking to a four-year-old about science? I was asleep within moments. All jokes aside, that was a very influential evening for me. Ever since then, my beliefs have been unwavering – even though I went to a catholic primary school, I do consider myself an atheist. Although I don’t carry any religious beliefs, there are some things whose existence one cannot deny. One of these things is the Bible, the text upon which all Abrahamic religions are based, the best-selling book of all time, often considered one of the greatest pieces of literature ever conceived. What exactly is it about then?
Why the Bible is so fascinating to me
A book greater than life and death itself, it is a collection or anthology of many different religious texts which have influenced the beliefs of religious people and the values by which they live. The Bible, however, is special in a way that few other books are. To religious people, it is everything. To me, it is just a book. Perhaps a comparison will illustrate the way I see the bible. Take a look at an old family portrait of a strange family. You think to yourself: this is a nice picture, but I don’t really care for it. You know what would make this cooler? A fire breathing dragon or some such. Now, show that same picture to an actual member of the depicted family, they just might start to cry because of their intense personal connection to it. Returning to the topic at hand, the Bible is still extremely interesting to me as a person who occasionally enjoys reading a book or two. I mean, consider this – a book so good, people have been living under its influence for millennia. This, to me, begs the question of who wrote it.
Authorship of the Bible
To no surprise, after my patented nine second research, I found that the debate around the authorship of the bible is just as old as the bible itself. To me, all of the theories that I thoroughly skimmed are highly irrelevant. They speak of divine inspiration in a way that an atheist like myself could never believe. From an atheist’s point of view, who could have written the bible? The answer to that question will of course forever elude humanity, but it is my opinion that, if religion truly is not a truthful reflection of the world, the true author of the Bible is not only just some guy, but quite possibly the greatest con man to ever do it. Why, you ask? Have you actually read the Bible? I of course, have not read the whole thing as well – but that’s only because I didn’t find it very interesting. And there we have the kicker, the reason why this hypothetical author has to have been one of the best. Because he got billions of people to care about a book that objectively sucks. If it were to be released today, as an experimental novel, it would be slammed by critics. The Bible may truly be one of the only books that is not looked at from a stylistic view, only its contents are under debate. Instead of critiquing the fact that it is at some parts incomprehensible drivel, people try to change their viewpoint in order to understand it. This is because they think it was conceived by some higher will. But what if it was just a really creative, bored guy? What if Mary, mother of Jesus, wrote it on a whim over night when Joseph asked her how she could be pregnant even though she said she is a virgin?
Conclusion
Just imagining what would happen if God’s existence were to be disproven, and all these people realizing they have based their lives upon what is basically just a two-thousand-year-old fantasy novel – priceless! And even though I’ll never know if I’m right in believing that the Bible is just a book, conceived by some person long ago, I still want to have said that if it is true – the person who freestyled that book all those years ago would be the only person I would ever consider a god.