The futility of theology and apologetics

The futility of theology and apologetics

Apologetics: 1. systematic argumentative discourse in defense (as of a doctrine) 2. a branch of theology devoted to the defense of the divine origin and authority of Christianity
Hermeneutics: 1. the study of the methodological principles of interpretation (as of the Bible)2. a method or principle of interpretation (Merriam Webster Dictionary)

I felt it was important to define those two words above in this article to try to bring to the understanding of my readers how believers (particularly Christians) interpret the bible, and also manipulate the text to fit their beliefs. First off let me let you know from the start that I consider the so called study of theology to be completely and utterly useless, since it is based on a book or books of myths. The study of God in the Christian sense is a dead end road in my opinion, since the facts of God's existence aren't there. Their source is a book written approximately 5 thousand years ago if you include the Old Testament with the New Testament. Arguing from the information provided in the bible regarding the attributes of God is an exercise in futility.

The main reason that I think it is futile to argue about God and his attributes from the bible is because to do so you have to first accept on faith that the bible is in fact the divinely inspired word of the God they claim to believe in. I have always stated that a revelation is only a revelation to the one claiming to have had it, to the rest of us it is nothing more than hearsay. If you are the second person that is told this revelation, you have to take the person that is telling you this on his word without any evidence since it cannot be proven, that is unless the deity decides to show up again and confirm it to you as well. There are many things in my opinion that contradict the bibles claims for divine inspiration, but the one that stands out the most is that a lot of the so called historical events in the scriptures have not been confirmed by secular historians. Aside from this, granted the bible was not meant to be a book on science it nonetheless makes scientific claims regarding biology,cosmology etc. Taking into account this fact, a lot of the so called science that is represented in the bible has been disproven thoroughly by the scientific community.

Aside from these problems there is nothing in the bible that screams divine inspiration, in fact when I read it it confirms even more to me that the biblical god is nothing more than a divine representation of man. The biblical god has all of the good and bad qualities of man, thus this leads me to conclude that man is not made in the image of God but rather that God is made in the image of man. Man created gods and have been doing so since time immemorial, what separates the Christian God from the other mythological gods is that it was embraced by the Roman empire and empowered by the state to overthrow any and all myths that were considered pagan or even heretical. This power that was gained by the Christians put them in a position of dominance and they used that power to eradicate all other competing belief systems in the region, thus expanding their empire and implementing laws that were enforced on their behalf by the Roman state.

Due to the many modern discoveries of science, religion was forced to sort of change with the times, they did this by reinterpreting scriptures to conform to scientific discoveries. Generally there are three main ways to interpret scriptural texts: literal, allegorical, and typical. One of the things Christians do well is circular argumentation, they can keep you on a merry go round forever if you let them. Here is how they do it: if a text or story makes no literal sense then they allegorize it and say that it is meant to illustrate a truth, or they typify it and say that it is representative of something else as in Adam being the type of Christ in the N.T. Quite frankly if you were to interpret the bible in a literal sense in its entirety you would have some huge problems trying to explain away the many absurd events and occurrences that supposedly happened in the biblical narratives. So to make sense out of nonsense you must use other methods of interpretation to try to save the text and maintain its integrity against any and all forms of scrutiny.

Christians were right to name the defense of biblical doctrines apologetics, notice the similarity between the word apologetics and apology? Taken in this sense although inaccurate, makes sense. They should be sorry for deceiving countless generations into believing in a delusion with several ulterior motives, namely: power and control through intimidation and fear of the masses. Theists would love nothing more than to turn the world into a theocracy based on the Christian tenets of belief, although this has been achieved in history it has proven to produce disastrous results. The maiming and killing of all those deemed pagans, heretics, witches, gays, etc. in the name of God is something that you cannot ignore or simply sweep under the rug. Apologetics is simply a means to maintain your faith against all evidence to the contrary through the manipulation of biblical texts and their interpretations.