An Open Minded Bible Study - The Gospel of Mark

I've been emailing a friend about Christianity. In his email he suggested this, "Try actually reading the bible, I’d recommend any book from the Gospel and just take another look, with fresh eyes and see where it takes you."

I did... and this is where it took me:

I chose Mark, because it's supposed to be the oldest of the gospels, written at about 70 AD, according to Wikipedia. I would be lying if I said the fact that it's also the shortest was not a factor. I find it interesting that it was written forty years after the events. It does make me wonder why the author waited so long, and how he would have gathered the information, because it's obviously not possible to remember the exact words of Jesus for forty years.

I can summarize the book quite easily, because it's written simply and contains the same theme throughout:

Most of the book is about Jesus doing four things:
- Healing sick people
- Casting out demons / evil spirits
- Continuously telling people not to tell anyone what he's done, or who he really is.
- Proclaiming the good news or gospel, which was simply the fact that the Kingdom of God would come within the lifetime of some of the people that he was preaching to.

It then ends with Jesus being crucified and raised from the dead. I'm not going to consider Mark 16:9 onwards as part of Mark, because that part was not in the oldest manuscripts, and scholars believe that it was added later. According to Wikipedia, "It was likely composed early in the 2nd century and incorporated into the gospel around the middle of the 2nd century." So I'm only going to comment on the original book. With that said, however, I don't know anything about the author of Mark, so I actually have no reason to trust him or the author of Mark 16:9 onwards. Mark 16:17,18 onwards does say

And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”

Which does sound really far fetched... It's basically saying that Christians are able to drink deadly poison without being hurt at all. So, again,... I'm going to ignore that section.

Back to the summary:

- Jesus heals many sick people.

- Jesus casts out loads of demons.

This is quite an interesting concept. There were obviously loads of demon possessed people in those days. There was one guy who could break chains because of his possession, and another guy who had seizures.

This brings me to the obvious problem of "Where are these demons today?"

If this is all true, then at some point after the second bit of Mark was added, demons still possessed people. (I said I wouldn't use this bit, but it does seem to indicate that demons were still a problem after the second century)

So, where are they? It seems likely that the simpler theory is usually the correct one. The simpler theory is that people in those days believed in demon possession, but instead they were actually just rumours, or epileptic fits. If that's the case, then it would completely destroy the validity of any book in the bible that mentions demon possession.

- Jesus continuously tells people not to talk about him.

I could guess this is because he didn't want to become too famous at the time... needed a bit of breathing space.

- Jesus repeatedly says that the Kingdom of God is about to come within the lifetime of those listening.

So the obvious questions here are: "What is the coming of the Kingdom of God?" and "Did it happen at the time Jesus specified?"

Here are some verses that describe the coming of the Kingdom of God

- Mark 9:1 (It would come within the lifetime of those he was talking to, confirmed again in Luke 9:27, and Matthew 24:34) - And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

- Mark 9:47 (The Kingdom is something that you can enter - as apposed to hell) And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell

- Mark 13:2-8 (Gives the impression that it's going to be catastrophic) - 2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?”

5 Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 6 Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.

- Mark 13:17 onwards (Describes a pretty massive event, even referring to heaven and earth passing away) - 17 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 18 Pray that this will not take place in winter, 19 because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again.

20 “If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them. 21 At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. 22 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 23 So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.

24 “But in those days, following that distress,

“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
25 the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[c]

26 “At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

28 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 29 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it[d] is near, right at the door. 30 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

The Day and Hour Unknown

32 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be on guard! Be alert[e]! You do not know when that time will come. 34 It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.

35 “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. 36 If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. 37 What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’”

So, the question on my mind is "Did this happen?" As I understand, this is the event that Christians refer to as "Armageddon", "The end of the world", or the "Second coming". The bible, however, clearly describes this event as something that would happen in the 1st century.

The book obviously has some good points, with Jesus talking about being good, and loving your neighbour, etc., but the nonsense about demon possession and the end of the world completely destroys any kind of validity that the book has. I also find it interesting the Jesus doesn't even mention that people have to believe in him in order to be saved... the rule that many Christians believe to be one of the fundamental principles of Christianity.

Statistically, are we mortal?

There's a type of bad statistics that's used whenever you only have only one piece of information... it's called a point estimate.

Here's how it works in this context:

I am currently alive, therefore chances are that I am normally alive.

Of course this is bad statistics, because one needs many samples for statistics to be accurate, something which cannot be done, because we are each only one consciousness / soul / point of experience... whatever you want to call it.

Another way to say this is: I existed after presumably having not existed (before being born), therefore it is probably possible to exist again (in a different form of course).

Another way to do a point estimate like this is, to try and calculate the odds of now being a point in time in which you're alive: e.g. 13 billion years / 70 years = presuming you only exist once, the chance that you're currently alive now is 1 in 185,714,285. That means either you're REALLY lucky, or you don't just exist once.

Free Will is a Myth

Free will is a delusion which is confused with complexity.

Don't believe me? You probably don't, so let me explain:

Imagine humans were much, much simpler. The only thing they could do was push a blue button or a red button. The only thing they knew was that the blue button would give them pleasure and the red button would give them pain.

If the above described everything that a human was, all humans would push the blue button and no humans would push the red button... ever.

Perhaps you're wondering, but wouldn't they push the red button out of curiosity? Since the humans I've described above are extremely simple, then no, they do not have curiosity, so they would not push the red button.

But lets suppose they did have curiosity, an exact amount of curiosity, which would lead a human to push the red button from time to time. Lets also presume that there are ten such humans, all exactly the same, and all placed in exactly the same environment. All of the humans would push exactly the same buttons at the same time.

This is because every single action that a human does is due to a reason. If all humans have the same reasons, then all humans will do exactly the same things.

So, let's add some more complexity to this problem: Pushing the blue button causes someone else to feel pain, and pushing the red button causes someone else to feel pleasure. The buttons have the opposite effect on other people to what they have on the person pushing the button. The humans now have a bit of intelligence, and are also aware of the effect of their buttons.

Now that the humans are able to affect other people, they have the ability to show compassion.

Now what will happen if there are ten identical people in exactly the same environment? Will they each do different things based on their supposed "Free Will"?

The answer is "No". They will do exactly the same thing, because they have exactly the same reason. The reason might be their emotions this time, but because they have exactly the same emotions, they will do exactly the same thing as all the other humans.

Let me put this a different way:

When someone goes to court to be tried for murder, they have a psychological evaluation to see if they might have committed the crime due to a psychological problem. The fact is that ALL murderers have a psychological problem. Unfortunately if we let all murderers go free then there would be a lot more murder going on, so we don't lock people up to take revenge on them; we lock them up to reduce the chance of future murders.

Imagine that you were born as the murderer. You had the same parents, the same body, the same friends, the same experiences, etc... do you think you would have done anything differently to the murderer?

You wouldn't have, because there is no reason for you to do anything different. The murderer had a reason for committing the murder and you would have had the same reason. If you don't believe me, what makes you so special, that you would not have committed the murder?

Perhaps you had a better upbringing, or watched less violent television, or had enough money that you never needed to consider committing a crime.

We are the product of our genetics, our memories, our emotions and our intelligence, not the product of free will.