The Bible of Bibles; Or, Twenty-Seven "Divine" Revelations

by Kersey Graves; Lydia M. Graves

32. A deity who becomes so tired and physically exhausted with six days' labor as to be compelled to stop and rest, physiology teaches would be liable to physical disease; and, if physically diseased, it might terminate in death, and thus leave the world without a God (Godless).

33. The Bible tells us "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground" (Gen. ii. 7); but philosophy teaches that dust possesses no vital properties, and that it would have been less difficult to make man of a stone or a stump, owing to their possessing more adhesive properties. One writer suggests that the negro must have been made of coal-dust.

34. According to the Bible, a serious blunder was made by Jehovah in the work of creation, by exhausting all the materials in the process of world-making and man-making, so that nothing was left to make a "helpmeet" for Adam; and this blunder caused the necessity of robbing Adam of one of his ribs.

35. But common sense teaches us that a small crooked bone but a few ounces in weight could not furnish half the material necessary to constitute a woman. The Parsees, with a little more show of sense, tell us that the rib was used merely as a back-bone, around which the woman was constructed; which revives in memory Erin's mode of making cannon, which consisted in "taking a round hole, and pouring melted metal around it." The Tonga-Islanders have a tradition about as sensible as that of Moses with respect to the origin of the first woman. Their God made the first man with three legs, and amputated one of them to make a "helpmeet for him?" This is an improvement, as a leg can be better spared when there are three than a rib: it also possesses more material than a rib.

36. The Bible teaches that man was created upright, but fell. If it means physically, it can be easily accounted for, and must be ascribed to his creator; for depriving him of one of his ribs would leave him in an unbalanced condition, so that he would be liable to fall.

37. The Bible imparts to us the strange intelligence that "the Lord God brought all the beasts and birds to Adam to see what he would call them" (Gen. ii. 19). What an idea for Omniscience or Infinite Wisdom to engage in the business of chasing bears, lions, tigers, elephants, and hyenas, and all manner of beasts great and small, and all manner of birds, also hissing, crawling, biting reptiles, and every living thing which he had created, and taking them to Adam "to see what he would call them"! Not having sufficient intelligence to find names for them himself (pardon the thought), his curiosity was no doubt aroused to see what an ignorant being of his own creation, who had not sufficient intelligence to clothe himself, would call the innumerable host of beasts, birds, &c., before any language was known, or even a single letter was invented to spell names with. (We are very far from desiring to wound the feelings or encroach upon the reverence that any man or woman may cherish for "a God of infinite love, wisdom, and goodness;" but let it be kept constantly in mind we are not presenting the history of such a being here, but the mere imaginary God of Moses and the Bible.)

38. As the Bible teaches that Adam named all the beasts, animals, and birds, it must have occupied a great number of years for the Lord God of Moses to have caught and taken the several hundred thousand species to Adam to receive names in all the three thousand languages, and then convey them back to their respective climates.

39. The question naturally arises, Why should Adam give them names by saying, "This is a horse, that is an ass, the animal yonder shall be called a hippopotamus," &c., when there was nobody present to hear it and be benefited by it? And nobody could have remembered half the names had they been present. Here we wish to call the attention of the reader specially to the fact that all the thoughts and language we have so far cited as being either that of God or Moses sounds like the utterance of ignorant children, and unworthy the dignity of an intelligent and sensible man much less that of a God.

40. The Bible teaches that "God made man in his own image." The reverse statement would have been true, "Man made God in his own image;" for this is true of all nations who believe in a God.

41. Here let it be noted the Bible contains two contradictory accounts of creation; one found in the first chapter of Genesis, the other in the second. In the first, animals are created before man; in the second, after man.