https://www.blinkist.com/en/app/books/the-god-delusion-en/
- American scholar Bart Ehrman explains that the Bible's stories are a result of both accidental and intentional alterations made by various scribes.
- It took thousands of years for a species in existence today to develop because natural selection is a long cumulative process in which every little step is slightly improbable but not impossible.
- What they don't say is how God, the so-called first cause, could have come into existence without a cause himself.
- The Bible has changed over time and is loaded with contradictions.
- Religion is an evolutionary byproduct and serves no purpose in and of itself.
- Our morals shouldn't come from the Bible, as its values contradict those of our modern society.
- But if God is truly omnipresent and omnipotent, why couldn't He just have forgiven our sins and spared Jesus' life without such a dramatic sacrifice?
- When taken literally, the scriptures have a negative effect on society's moral values.
- Just think of attitudes toward homosexuality, something that, as a direct result of scriptural decrees, is still not fully accepted in modern society.
- The battle against abortion is another example of a fight in which religious activists don't hesitate to spill blood.
- Shouldn't we always stick to the most plausible explanations? So while evolution might appear unlikely, God is, statistically speaking, even less likely. And God couldn't have been produced by evolution because something would have had to come before him, which is impossible given that he is supposedly the first cause. The existence of any force capable of creating something as improbable as human life is itself even more unlikely than human life.
- In fact, it paints a picture of a quick-tempered, jealous, and vengeful God, while promoting values that are completely inconsistent with modern standards of behavior. The Old Testament is actually full of cruel tales that contradict our morality.