Jesus in an Alternate Universe

A few months ago I wrote an alternate version of the story of Abraham nearly sacrificing Isaac, one that values reasonable skepticism over faith. Below is the story of the healing of the centurion's servant, which I've reimagined in a similar way.

As Jesus entered the town of Capernaum, a centurion came up to him and pleaded, "Lord, my servant is lying at home in bed with a grave illness."

"I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm not a doctor. What do you want me to do about it?" asked Jesus.

"Ahahah! A holy prophet of God and a comedian!" the centurion exclaimed. "Well, I suppose I could ask you to come to my house and heal him, but to be honest I don't think I'm even worthy of you entering under my roof. But I believe in you, Lord. I know your power is so great that all you have to do is give the word, and my servant will be healed. I have a bit of authority myself—all I have to do is bark an order to my soldiers and they'll carry it out immediately. I'm sure that you can do the same."

Jesus was shocked. "My good sir! I have to tell you, I've never seen faith like yours before in my life! Not in Israel or anywhere else."

"Oh, thank you! What a great honor it is to hear you say that."

"Er... what? Why on earth would that be an honor?"

"Why, Lord!" the centurion exclaimed. "Just last week the local potter told me that his niece said, that her neighbor said, that you said that just having faith the size of a mustard seed would let one move mountains! I may not have that much faith, but I hope I have enough to ask you this one favor."

Jesus sighed. "I see people have been twisting my words again. What I said was that it makes no difference whether your faith is the size of a mustard seed or a mountain: what matters is your actions. Honestly, why would anyone think that believing something really hard is enough to accomplish anything? And without any good reason to believe it, no less?"

"Oh, but I do have good reasons! I've heard all the stories about you. Why, just the other day my wife told me that her brother told her that—"

"Wait just a minute!" Jesus interrupted. "You think I can do miracles just because someone told you they heard that I could? What kind of reason is that?"

"So... you can't do miracles?"

"That's beside the point. What I'm saying is that you can't just believe everything you hear, especially about something as amazing as healing the sick or turning water into wine."

"You can water into wine?" said the centurion excitedly.

"Oh for goodness' sake. Stop yammering and pay attention! Even if I seemed to turn water into wine right in front of you, that still shouldn't be enough to convince you that I actually did it. There are men who make good money profiting from gullibility like yours, men who can make things appear to happen when they really didn't."

The centurion stared, eyes wide with a mixture of solemnity and confusion. "They must be very powerful sorcerers indeed."

"Are you even listening to me? All right, forget it. Sir, please go find a doctor for your servant as quickly as possible. I have to go now."

With that, Jesus continued to walk towards the center of Capernaum. The centurion, stunned for a moment, blinked and followed after him, shouting, "Lord, wait! If you won't heal my servant, could you at least direct me to those sorcerers you mentioned?"

Abraham in an Alternate Universe

In the original story of Abraham nearly sacrificing Isaac, God praises Abraham's faith and willingness to do whatever he says, regardless of the end result. This "alternate universe" version represents how the tale would have gone if God were truly loving and just, demanding reasonable skepticism rather than faith.

One day, God appeared to Abraham and said, "Take your only son, Isaac, into the mountains and sacrifice him as a burnt offering to Me."

Abraham was distraught. I love my son, he thought, but I have to obey God. Besides, I'm sure He knows what He's doing. So he reluctantly but dutifully chopped wood for a burnt offering and took Isaac up to the peak of a nearby mountain.

"Where's the lamb that we're using for the sacrifice?" asked Isaac.

Abraham forced a smile. "Don't worry. God will provide one."

Abraham tied Isaac up with rope, ignoring the confused and desperate shouts of protest. He laid his child down on the flat boulder that he would be using as an altar and surrounded him with firewood. God, please don't make me do this, Abraham prayed.

"Father, what's going on?" cried Isaac. "Are you really going to kill me?"

"Believe me, my son, this is not my wish," said Abraham. "But God's commands are always righteous and just." He swallowed hard. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. He prayed one last time, but heard nothing in response. Abraham raised the gleaming knife high into the air, and...

...just as he was about to bring it down and slice into his beloved son's soft flesh, God appeared to him as a ball of blinding light encompassed by a whirlwind.

"What. Are. You. DOING?"

"My Lord! I... I was only carrying out the instructions you gave me!" said Abraham, shaking but relieved.

"You would really do anything I say, even if it means killing your own son? What on earth is wrong with you?"

The Deity's voice reverberated throughout Abraham's entire body. "I didn't want to. It was so terrible I could hardly bear it. But Lord, I know that your commands are always good. I was hoping that you would change your mind, but if you bid me to kill my son, then that's what is right, and that's what I must do!"

"You fool!" roared God. "Is your faith so blind that you would do anything I say, no matter how obviously immoral?"

Abraham's mouth opened and closed like a fish drowning in air.

"I gave you a brain, and I expect you to use it! Don't just follow every instruction I give like some mindless drone. Why should you assume that I'm some ultimate standard of righteousness just because I'm powerful and have treated you relatively well?"

"B–But you said you would always c–care for and protect me if I had fai—" stuttered Abraham.

"And give me one good reason you should take me at my word regardless of the circumstances."

"Well I..." Abraham started, but after a few thoughtful minutes his mind was still blank.

"I thought so," said God. "And besides, let's assume for the sake of argument that I am the ultimate standard of goodness. What if it wasn't me who commanded you to kill your son? What if you were actually talking to a demon in disguise? Or what if you were hallucinating?"

"I... guess that never occurred to me."

"Well, in the future I expect you to be skeptical of your God. Ask questions, think for yourself, and if the consequences of your commands are clearly out of step with your moral compass, for My sake, say no."

Then the light faded away, the whirlwind dissipated, and Abraham realized by the look on his son's face that he had some serious explaining to do.

The 10 Commandments, Version 1.5

The Ten Commandments are undoubtedly the best-known moral instructions in the entire Bible. Some Christians exalt them as the basis from which we get our laws, and even insist that we have statues of the two ancient tablets in front of our nation's secular courthouses. Yet in terms of their actual usefulness in regulating human morality, they're really a mixed bag. Here's a summary:

1. You shall not have any other gods than Yahweh.
2. You shall not make any carved images (i.e. idols).
3. You shall not take Yahweh's name in vain.
4. Keep the Sabbath day holy by refraining from work.
5. Honor your father and mother.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not lie.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or possessions.

Some are great commandments, others not so much. Ebon Musings has an essay in response to them entitled "The New Ten Commandments" that lays out ten completely new commands for the modern world. All of them are great, but they got me thinking: we don't even have to totally rewrite the Ten Commandments in order to massively improve them. A little tweaking could go a long way. This is what I might expect to find if the Bible was really an inspired book:

1. Respect Yahweh and have no other gods than him.
2. You shall not persecute those who do not follow Yahweh.
3. You shall not own other humans as slaves.
4. You shall not kill or mistreat animals unnecessarily, or sacrifice them.
5. Honor your parents except in cases of abuse.
6. You shall not kill humans except in self-defense.
7. You shall not commit rape or adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not lie with the intent of causing harm.
10. You shall not treat others as inferior due to race, gender or sexual orientation.

Now let's take a look at what I changed. First I condensed the four God-related commands into one. Even if Yahweh actually existed, things like not taking his name in vain and honoring the Sabbath shouldn't be anywhere near that high on the list of important commands. Of course Yahweh still shouldn't be respected if he goes on killing sprees. But I wanted to keep the new set of commandments plausibly religious, and it's still an improvement overall. To balance this out, I made the next one a command against religious persecution. The two after that are meant to explicitly forbid two of the worst elements of the Old Testament: slavery and animal sacrifice.

I only needed to make relatively minor changes to the next bunch. Honoring one's parents is a good sentiment, but it could be misused to apply even to extreme cases. I made the "kill" commandment less vague by forbidding all cases except self-defense (which could apply to defensive wars as well). Adultery, while certainly immoral, pales in comparison to the evil of rape. I couldn't think of any obvious scenarios where it would unambiguously acceptable to steal, so that's the only commandment I left untouched.

I added "with the intent of causing harm" to the ninth commandment to allow for "white lies" that avoid offending people, and for scenarios such as lying to Nazis to hide Jews. And finally, as others have pointed out in the past, coveting isn't necessarily a bad thing at all. In fact, it's an extremely useful trait in a capitalist society. I replaced it with a broad commandment against racism, sexism and homophobia—wiping out centuries of intolerance against countless groups with just one sentence.

Are my revised Ten Commandments perfect? Certainly not—nor are they meant to be. But as with my reworked version of Genesis 1, I would expect an omniscient and all-good God to come up with something even better than a lowly human could. The fact that I could improve upon the holy commandments of the Almighty so easily suggests that they are not, in fact, what they claim to be.

Genesis 1, Version 2.0

I've already posted on why I don't believe in theistic evolution. But here is an abbreviated version of what I would expect to find in Genesis 1 if it was truly a divinely inspired work.

"1 In the beginning, God created the universe. 2 And the universe was a mere speck in the void, but the Spirit of God surrounded it.

3 Then God said, "Let the universe expand." And when He said it, it became so. 4 And God said, "Let the dust of the universe slowly form stars to bring forth light, and planets also." And it was so. 5 From the planets God chose one and called it the earth. And He said, "Let the earth bring forth small living creatures," and again it was so.

6 And God said, "Let the creatures slowly change into many new and different beings. 7 Let the fish become amphibians, and let the amphibians become reptiles, and let the reptiles become birds and mammals, 8 and let there be plants and many other creatures also." And after a long time had passed, it was so. 9 Then God said, "Let mammals slowly bring forth humans that are in My image." And so it was that man arose upon the earth.

10 From men God chose one man and named him Adam, and to Adam He bestowed intelligence above all other men, 11 for it was to Adam alone that God would reveal Himself. 12 And God saw that all that He had made was very good."

It's worth noting that I, a weak-minded and fallible human being, wrote this in just a few minutes. I acknowledge that there may be several problems with this reworked passage – for example, it's too short, it vastly oversimplifies evolution and the formation of the universe, and some of these concepts likely didn't exist in the original Hebrew. However, I would still expect a God who has infinite knowledge, and can therefore come up with literally the best possible combination of words to describe these phenomena, to produce something significantly better than this.

Yet what we find instead is a text riddled with entirely unnecessary scientific errors. This points strongly to the conclusion that the Bible is not the inspired word of God.