The Healing at the Pool

Here's one of many interpolations that completely crush the Bible's credibility.

The gospel of John reads, "Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, withered. (see footnote) And a certain man was there, who had been thirty eight years in his sickness. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had been a long time in that condition, he said to him, 'do you wish to get well?' The sick man answered him, 'Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps in before me.' Jesus said to him, 'Arise, take up your pallet, and walk.'" (John 5:2-8, NASB)

The footnote reads, "many authorities insert, wholly or in part, 'waiting for the moving of the waters; V.4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from which ever disease with which he was afflicted.'" (NASB)

Does this footnote not have the aroma of myth? Imagine the superstition and hearsay that would have fuelled such a childish story. If some priest took it upon himself to add (or subtract) to this story, how are we able to trust the many other supernatural stories in the Bible? Can we know with certainty that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that an angel appeared to some shepherds, or that the dead walked the streets after Jesus' death?

Either we ignore the manuscript discrepancies and blindly accept that 2000 years ago an angel used to come down to stir the waters of a pool and the first man to jump in became healed, OR we have to admit that the text has a serious interpolation problem, thus sinking all the supernatural tales of the Bible to the ocean floor of myth.

The Trinity

Another excerpt from the great Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899):

Christ, according to the faith, is the second person in the Trinity, the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost the third. Each of these three persons is God. Christ is his own father and his own son. The Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both. The son was begotten by the father, but existed before he was begotten -- just the same before as after. Christ is just as old as his father, and the father is just as young as his son. The Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and Son, but was equal to the Father and Son before he proceeded, that is to say, before he existed, but he is of the same age of the other two.

So, it is declared that the Father is God, and the Son God and the Holy Ghost God, and that these three Gods make one God.

According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one we have but one. Each one is equal to himself and the other two. Nothing ever was, nothing ever can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the Trinity.

How is it possible to prove the existence of the Trinity?

Is it possible for a human being, who has been born but once, to comprehend, or to imagine the existence of three beings, each of whom is equal to the three?

Think of one of these beings as the father of one, and think of that one as half human and all God, and think of the third as having proceeded from the other two, and then think of all three as one. Think that after the father begot the son, the father was still alone, and after the Holy Ghost proceeded from the father and the son, the father was still alone -- because there never was and never will be but one God. At this point, absurdity having reached its limit, nothing more can be said except: "Let us pray".

3500 Years Ago

Imagine yourself in the shoes of a man living around 1500 BCE; no cars, no airplanes, no space flights, no telescopes. It shouldn't be surprising that the author of Genesis had a radically different understanding of the cosmos than we do.

The author of Genesis believed the earth was flat. He believed the sky was like a dome covering the earth with the sun, moon and stars placed neatly inside. He believed water was above and below the earth, separated by the expanse of the sky.

Genesis states, "And God said, 'Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.' So God made the expanse and separated the water from under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse sky" (Genesis 1:6-8).

and,
"God made two great lights - the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth" (Genesis 1:16-17).

The expanse of the sky separating water from water actually makes sense from the perspective of a man with a very rudimentary understanding of the universe. We shouldn't assume he knew anything about the evaporation process. Wouldn't it seem obvious to him that a great storehouse of water must reside above the earth if rain falls out of the sky (which is also blue like the oceans)?

More passages referring to water above and below the earth: Genesis 7:11, 8:2, Exodus 20:4, Psalm104:3, 136:6, 148:4, Jeremiah 10:13.