God is a fictional character.
Consider the fact that thoudands of years ago the Christian
god was just a god amongst many. (See
http://www.crystalinks.com/sumergods.html
or
http://www.usfca.edu/westciv/Sumerian.html
or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sumerian_gods
or
http://www.geocities.com/garyweb65/sumgods.html
or
http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/sumer-faq.html#A1.3.1
) Thousands
of years ago, God was known as "An" or the "Sky God" of Sumerian
mythology. We know this because the Bible claims Abraham came from
Ur which was located in Sumer. (See http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/
)
According to http://www.stevesdinner.plus.com/swd17.htm
,
"Orthodox tradition represents Abraham as a member of a Semitic tribe
from Ur. He probably spoke Akkadian, and the Akkadian counterparts of
the Sumerian gods Enki, An, Enlil, Utu, Nanna, and Inanna would have
been known to Abraham as Ea, Anu, Bel, Shamash, Sin, and Ishtar.
Abraham's tribe left Ur and travelled to Harran in southeastern
Turkey."
There's also the similarity between Sumerian mythology and the Bible:
in Sumerian mythology, the first man was named Adapa! Later the
world was destroyed by An in a great flood from which there was only
one
survivor who survived by building a boat that carried him, his family
and all their animals! These similarities are pointed out on
http://www.historel.net/english/orient/03mesop.htm
which is a theist
site that doesn't seem to mind admitting the similarity between the
Bible and other mythology! Yet it still refers to "God" as if he
actually existed!
Besides mentioning that Abraham came from Ur in Sumer, the Bible also
mentions the city of Babylon and the "Tower of Babel" that was
supposedly built there. The Babylonians were hated by the Hebrews
and to this day "to babble" means to speak nonsense. The Garden of
Eden was also located in Sumer according to Genesis 2:10-14:
"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it
was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is
Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where
there is gold; And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium
and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the
same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name
of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the
east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates."
The Euphrates river ran through Sumer, which is now Iraq.
It is worth noting that http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/
is actually a theist site! They refer to Anu as " the one God" but
claim that "Ea" and "Bel" were just other names for the same god.
This contradicts the fact that Anu, Ea and Bel were wor****pped
separately in Sumer as three distinct Gods. (Anu was the god of the
sky, Bel was the god of wind and Ea was the god of water. Sumerian
mythology claimed that humans were created by Ea.)
According to http://www.crystalinks.com/sumergods.html
"Enki unraveled the secrets of life and death. His emblem was two
serpents ... entwined on a staff - the basis for the winged caduceus
symbol used by modern Western medicine." As Ea was the god of
knowledge, was the guardian of the "Tree of Life" in Sumerian
mythology and he was symbolized by a s****, it stands to reason that
the s**** in the myth of the garden of Eden represented Ea. Bel was
similarly hated by Hebrews: according to the old testament, God told
the Hebrews to kill wor****ppers of "Baal" if they didn't obey his
first commandment to "not have other gods before Him".
What is interesting is that theists today are willing to accept that
their god was the god An of Sumer but they don't see why this should
be a challenge to faith.
( http://www.christianblog.com/blog/thomas/abram-was-from-sumer-after-all/
) An was the most powerful god in Sumerian mythology and hence it is
understandable that Abraham would choose him as the "one true god"
and dismiss all the others but then the question would be if Anu
(God) exists then what about all the other gods.
So God is just a myth created by man to explain the world around him
and give him comfort. If that's not good enough for you, consider
the fact that God had been used in the past to explain everything
from storms to floods to earthquakes to volcanic eruptions but that we
now
have scientific explanations for all of these calamities and thus
don't need to use any gods (let alone God) to explain them.
The fact is that scientists can perform measurements today that agree
with the predictions of quantum theory to ten digit precision and
accuracy. The so called "God of the gaps" has become so
infinitessimally small that we can feel confident that it doesn't
exist at all.
Martin
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