The Egocentric Nature of Religion

In a memorable game vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers, Denver Broncos quarterback, Tim Tebow, threw a pass to receiver Demaryius Thomas that resulted in a game winning touchdown in overtime. The team’s deeply Christian leader then dropped down to one knee and gave thanks to his god for the win. Yes, Tim also famously gave some love to Demaryius Thomas but we all know who Tim really believes deserves the credit. He has no doubt that the god he worships prefers one team to win over another and that out of all the players casting their desperate pleas God’s way on any given Sunday, that Tim’s prayers are the ones he finds worthy enough to act upon. You will be hard pressed to find an interview in which Tim is being asked about his performance in a game where he doesn’t give credit to his god. Inspiring, yes? The message seems to be that anyone can be a good quarterback as long their god is a fan. So stop practicing, everyone, and start praying. Oh, and never, ever have sex. God will not help you if you have sex.

Understandably, Tim’s fellow Christians love him.

Atheists love him too.

You see, Tim Tebow is the absolute perfect example of the egocentric nature of religion. Most religious people truly believe that their god has so much time on his hands that he will regularly interfere in their lives, in often the most trivial of ways, in order to make their lives just a little bit better. He loves them that much. And honestly, how can you not find such an idea appealing? If I worship the “right” god he will help me to achieve my goals and even protect me from life’s daily inconveniences. Neat!

All of us have heard the testimonials of people giving their god credit for influencing their lives in the most superficial and trivial of ways. Apparently God truly cares whether or not your child gets into that specific school. Apparently God didn’t want you to get pulled over for speeding and be late for that important job interview. Apparently it really matters to God if you get that line of credit. Apparently God favored that particular actor/rapper/singer over the others during award season. Apparently the outcome of just about every sporting event rests in God’s hands. Apparently God didn’t want you to get into a fender bender when you ran that stop sign while texting your mother the address of the restaurant where you two were supposed to be meeting. Apparently God felt bad about letting your dog run away and so helped get him back to you (all those posters you stapled to every telephone pole in town had nothing to do with it). Apparently God is invested in the outcome of every political election (though he clearly has no specific political affiliation, otherwise the Holier Than Thou Party would win every time). Apparently God loves drunk drivers … and priests who rape children in his churches … and televangelists who pilfer the life savings from the desperate and lonely … and on and on and on. The religious seem to believe that their days are often filled with moments where their god intervenes in the daily occurrences of their lives.

And how incredibly egomaniacal you must be to believe that.

You see, in the exact moment that Tim Tebow believes his god was influencing the outcome of that particular football game, somewhere in the world an innocent child was being raped. In that exact moment that your god was helping to reunite you with your lost pet, somewhere in the world an innocent child was starving to death. In that exact moment that your god helped you avoid getting into an accident when you ran that stop sign, somewhere in the world an innocent child was being murdered. In that exact moment that you were giving your god credit for whatever trophy it is that you were just awarded, somewhere in the world an innocent child was being diagnosed with cancer. In that exact moment that your god helped you get elected, somewhere in the world an innocent child was dying of thirst. In that exact moment that your god was revealing that last box to be the final gold bar you needed in your scratch off ticket, somewhere in the world an innocent child was being born … to someone who didn’t want him. In that exact moment that your god was proving to you how special you are, somewhere in the world an innocent child is suffering.

In that exact moment.

Every time.

How do the religious reconcile their adoration of a god who acts on their pettiest of wishes but ignores the suffering of innocent children? How can the religious, in all their arrogance, even pray for their own selfish needs while every second of every day there are innocent children suffering in a myriad of ways throughout the world?

When Barack Obama was elected and took power, if he refused to help anyone else in the world except those specific individuals who voted for him (no SSI, no Medicaid, no unemployment, etc), and once more, he wouldn’t even listen to those who didn’t vote for him, he would be considered a monster. Adolf Hitler supported only a very specific collection of people, all the rest he persecuted. According to what many religious people appear to believe, their god seems more like a discriminatory dictator than a deity deserving of one’s devotion.

Once upon a time I myself worshiped the Christian God and I often pleaded with him to grant me my petty wishes as if he were a fast talking blue genie. But once I realized that faith was simply a synonym for hope, I found I could no longer dedicate myself to a fantastical being who I hoped was real, especially when all the evidence, which I was finding increasingly difficult to ignore, seemed to prove otherwise. But I have recently come to understand that even if one of the religious multitude were able to convince me that their god was real, still I would not drop down to my knees in supplication to him. For if god were real he could fall into only two categories: He has the power to help the innocent, suffering children of the world but chooses not to or he would help them if he could but he is unable to. You are therefore left with only one of three choices: You can either worship a neglectful god, worship a helpless god, or worship no god at all. The world may be complicated but religion is not. For a rational thinker, the choice is a simple one.

The decision of whether or not to worship a god is a deeply personal one and that is especially true when a person decides to stop worshiping a god. Therefore, I truly believe that it is not the non believer’s duty to try and “convert” the believers into their way of thinking. It is simply our duty to supply the information that helped guide us out from under the blanket of subjugation in the hopes that the gleaning of this knowledge may help do the same for another.

One last thing. To all those people out there who are having fun with the whole Tim Tebow thing. You know what I’m referring to; the douche bag who successfully bounces a ping pong ball into a cup of beer and immediately drops down into that silly pose, or the girl who finds she aced her mid term exam, whoops and does the Tim Tebow. It’s becoming a bit of an epidemic. Yes, Tim has sort of become the clown prince of Christianity but there is something you should remember. Whenever you’re jokingly dropping down into that silly pose after a somewhat remarkable accomplishment, remind yourself that this guy, this grown adult male, is completely serious.

And that, my friends, isn’t funny, it’s just sad.

 

Thomas Keane (DoubtingThomas)

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

The Mythological Origins of Christianity Pt. 1 of 3

 

 

The Mythological Origins of Christianity

–Part One of Three–

 

 

By Thomas Keane (DoubtingThomas)

 

 

 

“The Hebrews merely used for their poetic imagery the characteristic beliefs of the people to whom they made direct reference.” — E. E. Goldsmith (from Ancient Pagan Symbols, p. 94)

 

“The religion of the Masters – the Babylonians and Assyrians – was transferred almost bodily into Christianity.” — Madame Blavatsky

 

 

 

Far from “the word of God”, the bible is simply a collection of stolen pagan mythology. The story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden were taken from the Babylonian account. The Hebrew word Eden comes from an old Babylonian name for Mesopotamia, Gan-Eden, the garden of the Middle East. Noah’s Flood is just one of around four hundred flood accounts and the equivalent of the Ark and Mt. Ararat can be found in many of them. Even the names given to Noah’s sons are not original. And the recycled mythology continues with Moses, who is clearly fashioned after the Syrian Mises, and the ‘laws’ found in Exodus are obviously influenced by Hammurabi’s code. Egyptian scriptures even supplied the biblical Messiah. Between Jesus and the Egyptian Horus there are hundreds of similarities, much like those between Christ and Krishna. One of the oldest known civilizations, the Sumerians, were one of the first to keep a written record of their beliefs. The similarities between the stories written on these surviving clay tablets and the ones contained in the bible are so striking and so numerous it would be easier simply to direct you to a few websites that thoroughly catalog the parallels. You can find them here: 1, 2.

 

And let’s consider the numerology that is so prevalent in the bible. The bible is Hebrew mythology and this is why so many events in Jewish history take seven days or take place on the seventh day or year and require forty days or years to occur. SEVEN appears in the bible (KJV) a total of 668 times and the number FORTY appears a total of 158 times. Seven is the word for week in Hebrew but the world/universe being created in seven days fable is by no means original as almost every ancient cosmology was based on it. The Greeks believed their gods created the world in a week of seven days, and in the Hindu Purânas, Brahma does the same. You can find the names of these seven days in Hindu manuscripts as early as 5,000 B.C. And it wasn’t the Hebrews who first made the seventh day a sacred day. Hesiod (eighth century) said, “The seventh is the sacred day.” Plato wrote: “The gods, pitying the laborious nature of men ordained for them as a rest from all their labors, the succession of religious festivals.” The first of these was every seventh day. The sun god Apollo had the seventh day of every month dedicated to him, thus Sunday. Even the word Sabbath didn’t originate with the Hebrews. Derived from the Babylonian word Sabattu, meaning day of rest, it was observed by the Babylonians long before the Hebrews adopted it.

 

And consider the “tree of life”. Every ancient race has had its “tree of life.” Zeus gave the Hesperides a tree that bore golden apples (Gogard). Zeus placed Ladon, a serpent, at the base of the tree to guard it; with the Norse it was Yggdrasil, the ash, at the foot of which was Nidhogg, their serpent. For the Tibetans, the “tree of life” was Zampun, and with the Persians, it was Homa. The Hindu god, Siva, sent a fig tree to woman and prompted her to tempt her husband with the fruit. She obeyed, telling the man it would grant him immortality. After the man ate, Siva cursed him. “The mundane tree of life” was symbolized by the oak tree with the Druids. Even the Chinese had their “tree of knowledge,” Sung-Ming-Shu.

 

Even the name Adam is not Hebrew in origin. Adam Adami can be found in Chaldean scriptures that predate those of the Hebrews. Among some ancient Babylonian clay tablets an account of creation identical with that of the bible was found. The name of the first man? Adamu. And in The Prophecies by Ramutsariar, a Hindu book predating the bible by two thousand years, the creation myth is again almost identical. And the name of the first man? Adama. Oh, and the name of the first woman? Heva. Strange how the authors of the bible thought that simply removing a single letter was enough to lay claim to another’s work. This is the reason why one shouldn’t confuse the Ethiopia of the bible for the African Ethiopia. Return the A to the front of the word and you discover it comes from the Greek Aethiopia (mythic land of darkness and mystery).

 

So the God of the bible put Adam to sleep and removed a rib (bone) to create woman? Nothing new there. According to the Tahitans, their god, Taaroa, “put men to sleep for long ages,” and he also took a bone (Ivi) from man, and it became a woman.

 

Regarding Noah’s Ark, the word ark is Egyptian. It means a chest or box for preserving something sacred. Another idea that is by no means original; the Hindus had their Argha, the Greeks, their Cista, the Argonauts, their Argo. And don’t forget Pandora’s box. And the numbers in this story are obviously symbolic. Seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven. So many sevens.

 

And let’s consider Noah sending forth a raven and later three doves while seeking signs of land’s return. The Babylonian Noah, Utnapishtim, sent a dove, then a swallow, and finally a raven. The Babylonian ark rested on Mount Nisir, the Hindu ark on Mount Himalaya, and the Greek ark on Mount Parnassus. And the word Ararat, or Arath, is the Aramaic source of the word earth.

 

When Noah and his crew finally find dry land, they quickly build an altar and start making sacrifices to God. First, which animals were sacrificed? In other words, which animals were rendered extinct by this reckless and needless slaughter? The bible says God both saw and smelled these sacrifices and was pleased by their “sweet savor” and thus came the covenant with Noah to never again destroy the earth by a deluge. But to make sure he didn’t forget (!) his promise, God made a rainbow in the sky as a reminder. So, are we supposed to believe that the basic law of refraction hadn’t operated before this? So no rainbows resulted from the interaction of the sun and the rain in Adam’s day, not to mention during all those endless “begats”?

 

Zeus, Jupiter to the Romans, also became offended with his own creation. He also decided to drown them all, sparing only Deucalion, and Pyrrha, who had “found grace” in his eyes. He allowed them to escape in a boat which finally landed on Mt. Parnassus. The Babylonian account can be found on the tablets of Assurbanipal. Here Enlil, again, also offended by man’s wickedness, decides to destroy him with water, but Ea, the god of wisdom, learns of Enlil’s plan and tells a man, Utnapishtim, about it. Like Noah, Utnapishtim is tenth in line from the first man, and walks with Ea. Ea tells him to build a enormous boat, one that will hold he and his family and also, you guessed it, all the beasts and birds and creeping things. And as soon as it was finished it began to storm, a storm so great that even the lesser gods “trembled in fear.” It stormed for six days and nights and on the seventh it stopped. The boat floated around until it finally came to rest on Mount Nisir. It should be noted that Mt. Nisir sits between Medea and Armenia, making it practically identical with Ararat. Utnapishtim also sent out a dove, swallow, and raven when seeking land. He also built an altar upon making land and offered incense upon it. And, yes, the gods smell the “sweet savor” and gather around; and, Ishtar, “the lady of the rainbow,” hung out her multicolored necklace.

 

With the Persian and Hindu myths it is not physical birds and beasts that are brought into the ark but their seeds — “… (take) the seeds of sheep, oxen, men and women, dogs, and birds and every kind of tree and fruit, two of every kind, into the ark seal it up with a golden ring and make in it a door and window.” An avatar of Vishnu warns the Hindu Noah, Vaivasvata, about the flood and tells him to build a vessel for his family and bring on board plant seeds and a pair of animals. After the flood the boat comes to rest on Mount Himalaya. And the number of days the storm lasted coincides exactly with the number in the Hebrew account.

 

The Tepanecans of Mexico also reported a great flood that lasted exactly forty days and nights. The Society Islanders say the god Tangaloa, again angered by the wickedness of man, created such a mighty flood to punish them that only the mountaintops remained. And according to Inca mythology, the god Viracocha promised by the rainbow to never drown mankind again. And Bochica, a god of the Chibehas of Bogota, perched on a rainbow and quelled the flood. And even among the Jews there were additional Deluge myths; one depicting an angry God scalding the sinful antedilvians.

Many bible believers would try and argue that these other accounts were copied from the Hebrew account, however, it should be noted that the Chaldean, Hindu, Babylonian and Egyptian accounts predate the Hebrew versions by many centuries.

Also consider the names of Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Taken from Maurice’s history of Hindustan: “It is related in Padmapooraun that Satyavrata, whose miraculous preservation from a general deluge is told at large in the Matsya, had three sons, the eldest of whom was named Jyapeti, or Lord of the Earth; the others were Charma and Sharma, which last words are in the vulgar dialects usually pronounced Cham and Sham …” In The City of God, St. Augustine uses these same forms, also Chanaan for Canaan.

 

Following the flood a man named Nimrod wanted to build a tower (tower of Babel) out of anger at God for drowning the race. He didn’t believe God would keep his promise (why would he) and thought there could be another mass murder. To quote Josephus verbatim: “He wanted to avenge himself on God for the destruction of his ancestors (weren’t they spared in the ark?) thus: he would build a tower so high that the waters of another flood, with which the world might be afflicted, would not be able to submerge it.” The Babylonian parallel ends similarly: “But all this they did only from fear of another deluge.” Even the name Babel (gate of God) came from the Akkadian Summerian Babili, about 3900 B.C., and means Gateway of God, one with the Greek “Gateway of the gods.”

 

Bible believers think the scriptural Pharaohs were three Egyptian kings. The fact that outside of the bible there is no account of these specific kings, particularly the cruel Pharaoh, doesn’t seem to bother them. There is also no record of Joseph, Moses, or even the captivity. The bible depicts Moses as practically destroying Egypt, yet if this were literally true, there should be some record of these events but there are none. And why is it that no direct reference to the Exodus can be found among any Egyptian inscription?

 

Speaking of Moses, this is another myth that is shared by many other mythologies. As depicted in the Orphic hymn to Bacchus, Mises was also found in a box floating upon the waters. Also, like Moses, Mises’ laws were written on … wait for it … two slabs of stone. Again like Moses he had a rod that he worked miracles with, and what could the rod turn itself into? That’s right, a serpent. Mises uses his rod to divide the rivers Orontes and Hydastus and he even strikes a rock with it to provide water for his thirsty army. The Egyptian Osiris was also put in a coffer or coffin and set adrift on the river Nile. Moses was discovered and raised by Thermuthis, which was also the name of a serpent sacred to Isis. The Greek lawgiver, Dionysius, was said to have held up two tables of stone on which the law was engraved.

 

Hammurabi of Babylon, a contemporary with Abraham, was given a code of laws by Shamash, the great sun god, which he delivered to his people. This code predates the Mosaic code by more than a thousand years. Regarding this similarity, I. Elliott Binns remarked: “The variety of cases provided for is much greater than in the Mosaic codes, but where they deal with the same matters there is an extraordinary similarity in their ordinances, especially in phraseology.” Was it the biblical God or this older code that was the source of the Mosaic code? The answer seems obvious.

 

The Egyptians, whom the Jews believed to be morally inferior, in fact had a well-developed sense of morality. You can find evidence of this in the Egyptian “Oath of Clearance,” which contains six of the ten commandments and existed thousands of years before the Jews were ever heard of.

 

It reads in part as follows:

 

I have not committed fraud and evil against men.

I have not diverted justice in the judgment hall.

I have not caused a man to do more than his day’s work.

I have not caused a slave to be ill-treated.

I have not taken milk from the mouths of children.

I have not stolen cattle.

I have not been weak.

I have not been wretched.

I have not been impious or impure…

 

 

This is the end of Part One.

 

Part Two can be found here:

 

https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/the-mythological-origins-of-christianity-pt-2-of-3/

 

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

The Mythological Origins of Christianity Pt. 2 of 3

 

 

The Mythological Origins of Christianity

–Part Two of Three–

 

 

By Thomas Keane (DoubtingThomas)

 

 

Continued:

 

The story of Daniel, who the bible shows to be a contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar, was written in Aramaic, a language not adopted by the Jews until centuries later.

 

The scriptures call Belshazzar a king, but the historical Belshazzar was only regent for Nabonidus, never king. Also he was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar AND it was Nabonidus, the last of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, who became ill not Nebuchadnezzar.

 

And what of King David’s son, Solomon (both men completely fictional characters). According to 2 Chronicles 9:23: “… all the kings of the earth sought his (Solomon’s) presence.” Odd then, that none of them mention him. He was supposed to have lived just prior to Homer and Hesiod, but these men never mention this richest and wisest one. Herodotus who traveled throughout the entire Middle East never mentions Solomon OR even the Jews!

 

Solomon’s “holy temple” is exalted as one of the greatest of all buildings, yet if you judge it by its measurements it was fairly small, only about 40 by 125 feet, and the chancels built around it were comparatively insignificant. Nagkon-Wat in Cambodia is 769 by 588 by 250 feet and is covered in elaborate carvings and surrounded by great columns. The stonework depicts approximately 100,000 figures, one picture spanning 240 feet. Three different times the bible states that Solomon built the walls of Jerusalem, yet in the fourteenth century B.C. the historical Jerusalem was already a walled city. Also historically false, the suggestion that Solomon began to build the temple four hundred years after the Exodus from Egypt. And when Ezim-geber, said to be the site of Solomon’s navy yard, was excavated an article stated: “Not a vestige was found of the cradles and ways where for centuries the ships of the Jewish navy were built and launched.” Truthfully it’s very unlikely that the Jews of that time ever had a ship larger than your basic fishing boat, and it is even more unlikely that they ever had a mighty kingdom, king or temple. Ancient Israel’s military power is constantly touted in the bible, but this was likely as mythical as its naval power. In fact, whenever other nations even mentioned the Jews in their military accounts, it was only ever to record their triumph over them. The literature of the Jains of India tells a very similar story as that of Solomon. And Proverbs 22:17-23:11 is almost a word for word translation of The Wisdom of Amenemope, an Egyptian book written about 1,000 B.C.

 

And what about the second Jewish captivity? There is just as little proof for it as there was for the first. Around the time the scriptural “return” was happening, the Greek historian Herodotus visited Babylon, yet he makes no mention of it. And his history of ancient Egypt reveals no mention of the first captivity. In fact, Herodotus never mentioned the Jews; neither did Homer, neither did Plato; neither did Socrates. But this doesn’t bother the die hard believer.

 

So Elijah was supposedly taken up bodily into heaven in a fiery chariot? Romulus, the founder of Rome, was also taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. Similarly Mithra of Persia. But it only really happened with Elijah, right? The other stories are clearly fictional, why not the biblical one as well?

 

The story of Jonah and the whale is clearly a fairy tale, but is it an original fairy tale? In the Heracleid it is said that Hercules was also swallowed by a whale, and how about this, it occurred at exactly the same place, Joppa. And how many days did he remain in the whale’s belly? You guessed it, three. The Persians say that Jamshyd, their hero, was eaten by a giant sea monster and was later vomited out safe and sound upon the shore. And in the Samadeva Bhatta, and even older mythology from India, we learn of Saktadeva who was swallowed by a giant fish but was able to step out later completely unharmed.

 

And then we come to the Messiah. A story that is clearly unique, right? But wasn’t Hercules also born of a virgin, Alcmene, and didn’t he also have a god for a father (Zeus)? The mother of Sosiosh, the Persian was also a virgin, as was Nana, the mother of Attis. Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were sons of the god Mars, so it was with Bacchus, Aesculapius, Zarathustra, and many others. And Sanchoniathon tells us that Saturn offered his “only begotten son” to his father Uranus.

 

There were many historians that lived during and around the time of Jesus and some of them were the most illustrious of all time – Tacitus, Plutarch, Livy, the two Plinys, Philo and Josephus, etc. Not to mention many other men of note such as Seneca, Martial, Juvenal, Epictetus, Plotinus, Porphyry, Vergil, Horace, and Ovid, the latter living till Christ, if real, would have been twenty-two. All these men were deeply interested in the doctrines and morals of their day and were all men of great intellect. So one must ask why they didn’t record this wonder-working Savior of the race? Is it because they wrote about historical matters and not mythological ones?

 

Livy died before Jesus began performing his miracles, however he was alive at the time of two of the most sensational and unnatural events in human history; the Immaculate Conception and virgin birth, and yet he failed to mention them. Plutarch was alive from about 46 to 120 A.D. (A(fter) the D(elusion)) but apparently never heard of Christ. Pliny the Elder was Christ’s contemporary, yet makes no mention of him. The younger Pliny, 62-110 A.D., mentions the Christians of Pontus and Bithnia but as for Jesus, he is only referred to as the object of their worship and never as a man. And Tacitus and Pliny had nothing but contempt for this new religion. Seneca, brother of Gallio, was proconsul of Achaia when Paul is said to have preached there. Seneca documented many lesser things but nothing of Paul or the wonder-working Christ. How could Jesus’ miracles, virgin birth, etc. not have been worth mentioning? Philo, a philosopher historian, lived both before and after the time of Christ, yet never mentions him. This would trouble me if I were still a believer in Christian mythology.

 

When Justin Martyr was attempting to convert the Jews to Christianity, he encountered a Jew named Trypho who had this to say: “Now Christ, if he has indeed been born and exists anywhere, is unknown and does not even know himself and has no power until Elias come and make him manifest to all. And you, having accepted a groundless report, invent a Christ for yourselves and for his sake are inconsiderately perishing.” Trypho also referred to Jesus as “that Jesus who you say was crucified…” A clear and very early Jewish denial of Christ’s existence.

 

Matthew 1: 22&23 — “Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.”

 

This passage was translated from the Greek text which used the word parthenos, which does mean virgin, but in the original Hebrew, from which the Greek was taken, the word used is almah, which translates simply to young woman. The error was corrected in the later Greek translation, the proper Greek equivalent neanis being substituted. But, of course, the Church chose to leave it in its “virgin” Greek, and so it remains. Just another example of how these multiple revisions are less about creating a more accurate bible and more about manipulating man into believing a lie.

 

Matthew 2:11 – “And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.”

 

Why do none of the other gospels mention these gifts? Could it be because the author of Matthew was clearly copying earlier mythology? When Socrates was born, 469 B.C., “Magi came from the east to offer gifts at Socrates’ birth, also bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh” (The Anacalypsis). At the birth of Krishna, 1200 B.C., “angels, shepherds and the prophets attended, gold, frankincense and myrrh were brought to him.” And when Confucius was born in 598 B.C., “Five wise men from a distance came to the house, celestial music was heard in the skies and angels attended the scene” (The Five Volumes).

 

Rabbi Wise, an eminent scholar of the nineteenth century, searched the records of Pontus Pilate’s court, still extant, for evidence of Jesus’ trial but could find nothing.

 

The cross was used by the Aztecs and they never heard of Christ until his followers came to rob, rape, and murder them. Like all Christian paraphernalia, the cross is just another appropriation of pagan mythology.

 

Justin Martyr thoroughly chronicled the early Christians and yet never mentioned Paul or his Epistles. The same with Tertullian, who stated that “The Epistle to the Hebrews” was written by Barnabas. And the second century writer, Marcion, said The Epistle to the Ephesians was formerly called the Epistle to the Laodiceans.

 

The title originally given to Jesus was Chrest but by the time the Christians got done with it, second and third century, it was Christ. In his Apology, Justin Martyr calls his coreligionists Chrestians. Massey said, “In Bockh’s Christian Inscriptions, numbering 1,287, there is not a single instance of an earlier date than the third century wherein the name is not written Chrest or Chreist.” The devotees of this somewhat obscure doctrine were called Chrestianoi. Their headquarters was located in Asia Minor, specifically Antioch, and it was here, not in Jerusalem, that they first became known as Chrestians, now written Christians. The Judean sect didn’t even call themselves Christians; they preferred Nazarenes, Galileans, and Brethren. It was only later, disdainfully, that the label Christian was applied to them.

 

Regarding the teachings of Jesus, almost identical principles were suggested by Hillel: “Judge not thy neighbor until thou hast been in his place.” “Do not do unto others what thou wouldst not they should do unto thee; this is the whole of the law…” And similar ideas were taught by Socrates and Plato, Buddha and Confucius. “The doctrine of our master (Confucius) consists in having an invariable correctness of heart, and in doing towards others as we would that they should do to us.”

 

In his History of Moral Philosophy, Staeudlin said, “In reading Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius or Seneca, I often believe myself hearing the sage of Nazareth. The dignity of man, the all surpassing value of virtue, the independence and fortitude of the righteous man, the superior value of spiritual qualities as compared to all worldly goods, the sacrifices of selfish enjoyments and of life for the sake of virtue and truth – all these ideals, so worthy of reverence, we find in the one as well as in the other. The striking resemblance between the Christian and the stoic doctrine … cannot escape being noticed by all.”

 

 

This is the end of Part Two.

 

Part Three can be found here:

 

https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/the-mythological-origins-of-christianity-pt-3-of-3/

 

 Part ONE can be found here:

https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/the-mythological-origins-of-christianity-pt-1-of-3/

 

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

Why Our Labels Always Fail To Define Us

What is an Atheist? What is a Christian? Why our labels always fail to define us.

 

By Thomas Keane

(AKA DoubtingThomas)

  

A·the·ist (ā’thē-ĭst): noun, One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.

Chris·tian (krĭs’chən): noun, (1) One who professes belief in Jesus as Christ or follows the religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus. (2) One who lives according to the teachings of Jesus.

Which of these labels define me? Which of these labels define you? Does the fact that I went to church and Private Christian School for the majority of my life define me as a Christian? Does the fact that I no longer worship the god depicted in the bible or any other god define me as an Atheist? Can you be an Atheist and have doubts about the Theory of Evolution or the Big Bang? Is it possible to be a Christian and question the validity of the story of Noah and the Ark or whether or not there was ever an actual Garden of Eden? Just how accurate and reliable are the labels we carry and for whom do they really exist? Who do they benefit the most? Is it the person being labeled or the person doing the labeling? Clearly it depends on the label.

People might be surprised by how many labels they carry. Are you pro-life? Pro-choice? Democrat? Republican? Christian? Catholic? Atheist? Feminist? Chauvinist? White? African American? Man? Woman? Parent? Child? Teenager? Senior Citizen? Upper-class? Middle-class? Experienced? Inexperienced? Employed? Unemployed? Blonde? Brunet? Bald? Obsessive Compulsive? Manic Depressive? Chemical Dependant? Drug Addict? Alcoholic? Anal? Slob? Neat Freak? Irresponsible? Punctual? Aries? Sagittarius? Husband? Wife? Heterosexual? Homosexual? Vegan? Carnivore? Stubborn? Open Minded? Anorexic? Obese? Buff? Ugly? Beautiful? Average? Victim? Criminal? Citizen? Immigrant? Doctor? Patient? Sweetheart? Asshole? Prude? Whore? Do any one of these labels truly describe who you are? Does any combination of them describe you in your entirety? I would bet that if each and every one of us sat down with pen and paper and tried to list all the labels that we currently carry; first, none of our lists would be complete, and second, no matter how inclusive we may have managed to make our lists, the list still wouldn’t paint an accurate picture of who we are.

Bill Gates, Penn Jillette, Sam Harris, Salman Rushdie, Diane Keaton, Warren Buffett, and Gore Vidal are all self described Atheists. However, none of them have the exact same beliefs about religion, the bible, Evolution or the origin of life. Just as an Evangelical Christian, a Jehovah’s Witness, a Mormon, a Presbyterian and the Amish don’t have the exact same belief about Christianity, the bible and the origin of life. All of us are far more complex than any label or combination of labels could ever hope to encapsulate. So again we must consider who it is that benefits most from a label’s simplification of a complex set of opinions, or a lifestyle, or a belief system, or a pattern of behavior, etc.? Certainly not those who find themselves constrained by the implied boundaries of whatever category they’ve been assigned. And yet, it isn’t unusual to find that someone has assigned themselves with one or more of these labels, often times embracing them. Clearly it takes a lot less effort to describe oneself using a single word rather than an entire paragraph but aren’t we slighting ourselves when we chose to do so? Aren’t we being slighted when someone else does the same? If my personal list of labels came to a total of twenty-three (and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head), how can being referred to by any one do me any favors? And what about those people who assign themselves a label they don’t deserve. How does the cop who plants the gun on the body of the pimp, he mistakenly thought was armed, warrant calling himself ‘just’? How does a Pope call for the assassination of the Queen of England and still call himself ‘pious’? How many teenage girls regard themselves as ‘fat’ or ‘ugly’ when they aren’t? How many of our self imposed labels would be considered accurate?

A label can change not only the way others perceive us but how we perceive ourselves. It was once thought that the labels applied to an individual influenced their behavior, particularly the application of a negative or stigmatizing label (such as criminal or deviant), creating a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. A person would become a criminal if society were to label that person as a criminal. This was commonly referred to as Labeling Theory (also known as Social Reaction Theory). If a parent calls their child stupid enough times, will that child grow up believing that they are, indeed, stupid and, as a result, neglect their education and avoid anything that would test their intelligence? You can see a similar, self imposed reactionary response from those who believe in Astrology. Someone is labeled an Aries, reads that an Aries is aggressive, willful, powerful, and assertive, and actually alters their personality traits accordingly. And consider how many people identify themselves as black even when one of their parents was Caucasian, or Spanish, or Asian. Often times these children will have skin that would be considered tan at most, but if they have ‘black features’ inevitably someone will label them as black regardless of their actual racial makeup or pigmentation. These children commonly grow up identifying with blacks, focusing on black issues and embracing black culture. They practically ignore, and certainly neglect, the fact that they have a white parent. But do bi-racial people really have a choice? Society labels you as black, therefore you are black.

And then there are the labels, the uses of which have provoked some of mankind’s most shameful acts. In 1231, Pope Gregory IX instituted the papal inquisition for the apprehension and trial of Heretics, heresy being defined as a deliberate denial of an article of truth of the Catholic faith. The atrocities committed against those labeled as Heretics are legendary. And although many were reportedly killed long before this; as the result of a judicial sentence of an inquisitor, the first documented Witch (Hugues de Baniol) was burned to death in 1275 in Toulouse, France. Do I even need to mention the Salem Witch Trials? In many parts of the world women are still being assaulted and murdered as a result of being labeled a Witch. And to be labeled a Jew in 1940s Germany was the equivalent to being labeled a dog. Many were even forced to wear their label in the form of the Star of David, their own version of the scarlet letter. And, as we now know (holocaust deniers aside), millions of those labeled Jew were executed for this reason alone. Even being called a Christian or an Atheist was once a potential death sentence in certain parts of the world. Some could argue it still is.

As a group, children are clearly the most affected by being labeled. Almost as soon as they enter the school system they are placed in some sort of category. Even when children are left on their own they will often split off into groups, groups based on some sort of perceived similarities (usually race, sex, and/or class). And when a child joins any type of distinctive organization; whether it is the A/V club, Chess Club, Basketball Team, Band, they will almost immediately be branded: Jock, Nerd, Band Geek, Brain, etc. The school bully just loves to pummel their victim with a good, vicious label. But perhaps the worst distinction a child can receive is one that has almost become an epidemic. A child misbehaves or acts out and they are promptly labeled as having ADHD and are encouraged to begin taking a medication infamous for its detrimental side effects. Is the ever increasing percentage of children being identified as having ADHD the result of more and more children actually suffering from this illness or is it the result of too many people too quickly embracing a blanket diagnosis that clearly benefits the person doing the labeling more than the one being labeled?

According to Bruce Perry, co-author of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook, “There is no doubt that we are labeling children more. [In Fact], in order for clinicians to get reimbursed, they have to label. There is also a tendency on the part of both educators and parents to want to get an answer. They are very uncomfortable with ambiguity.”

Robert Sternberg, psychologist and Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, says there are numerous, complex factors involved in the increasing use of labels. “One reason is that in order for them to get special services, kids often need to be labeled. A second reason is for testing. In order to get accommodations like extra time, they need that label.”

Because a diagnosis is often required before insurers will cover medical treatment, the rising use of psychiatric medications is also tied in with the trend toward labeling. Is it any surprise that over 3 million children in the United States are taking medication to control behaviors associated with ADHD? Since the year 2000, the use of Ritalin has increased 700%, a trend that is assuredly bolstered by pharmaceutical advertising (AKA drug pushing). These figures are not likely to decrease until parents force themselves to resist the urge to shove their children into neat little categories. Sometimes that satisfying label only serves to conceal more problems behind its supposed answer. And we mustn’t forget that when labeled individuals are separated into groups that serve to establish a sense of disconnection between “us” and “them” a label can quickly become a stigma. The end result of stigmatization is always discrimination.

When something occupies a neat little category, we are comforted, believing that everything that resides in that category can be defined by it. This is rarely, if ever, the case. We must never forget this. If someone identifies themselves as an Atheist, it may mean that you can rightfully assume that they don’t believe in a god, but it doesn’t mean that you should assume you now know their feelings on religion, yours or anybody else’s. Nor can one assume they know who a person is simply because they call themselves a Christian. If history has taught us anything, it’s that many of those who have referred to themselves as Christians, if judged on actions alone, would not have been labeled as such by anyone else. And just because a person doesn’t worship a god doesn’t mean that they are more likely to live a life filled with drugs, drunkenness, tax evasion and promiscuous sex.

No single label or collection of labels will ever be able to completely define any one of us. Our complexities are what individualize us. It could be argued that each person’s collection of labels are as unique as their fingerprints. Even two of the most pro-life, vegan, P.E.T.A. supporting, Feminist, Texas native, Republican, Born Again Christians are going to find themselves on opposite sides of an issue at some point. Inevitably when we dismiss someone, or accept someone, simply because they share the same label as us, eventually we will find ourselves with a disastrous mismatch. On the other hand, if we refrain from making hasty judgments, the list of potential mistakes we could avoid making is endless; joining that law firm, dating that coworker, moving in with that roommate, marrying that significant other, going ‘All In’ with two pair, etc. We must learn to never be satisfied by the label someone has assigned themselves or one which we have assigned to someone else. Encounter someone on a Friday and you would most likely form a completely different opinion of them than if you had met them on a Monday. Remember there is always something new to learn about a person, something that could possibly completely alter your perception of them. Imagine how the world would benefit if we would all just stop assuming we knew who a person was based on the fact that they were labeled an Atheist or rich or a Democrat or a woman or overweight or Mexican or a police officer or pretty or an alcoholic or a teenager or a homosexual or a Sagittarius, etc. So the next time we encounter someone, whether they be a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger, let’s take a moment to reconsider what we truly know about them, sans labels, and perhaps marvel at how much more there is to discover.

 

DoubtingThomas

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the top Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

THE POWER/POWERLESSNESS OF GOD

 

“For me, religion is serious business — a farrago of authoritarian nonsense, misogyny and humble pie, the eternal enemy of human happiness and freedom.” – Katha Pollitt

 

**This post was recently revised to simplify things. It now contains all the separate posts together in one. When you wish to comment on a specific point please copy and paste it at the top of your comment so as not to confuse anybody. Also, if you wish to review any past comments all you need to do is click the THE POWER/POWERLESSNESS OF GOD link in the categories section at the top right of my main page and scroll down. You will find the original, individual posts. Click on one and read any comments and responses there.

 

• A Question of Will Power – The bible suggests that God is responsible for everything that happens, it’s God’s plan. But when horrible things happen, Satan often will get the blame. So is God then not powerful enough to overcome Satan’s wishes?

 

• How Can A Perfect God, Who Makes No Mistakes, Regret? – God orders Saul to kill all the Amalekites but Saul fails to do so. Even though God himself chose Saul to be the first Jewish king, God says, “It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king.” I Sam 15:11

 

• The Curious Times God Chooses To Punish – King Herod, who earlier was responsible for the slaughter of so many innocent babies and little children, is making a speech and acting all mighty and god-like. God doesn’t like this so he decides to intervene and use his superpowers. Acts 12:23 – “And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.” So King Herod isn’t either punished nor prevented from his earlier atrocities but, oh boy, act a little full of yourself and God personally interferes in the lives of his creation.

 

• If the Statement is True, Your Religion Is Vile – God created man imperfect & allowed Satan to cause their downfall, after which he would re-instate them only when he had forced them to kill him, ingest his body and rejoice in this plan for salvation.

 

• How To Spread The Word Of God? – How was God’s word supposed to be spread? If he was unwilling to reveal himself & speak his message himself, how? Most of the world was illiterate. There was very little written communication & even less travel, many areas of the world not yet discovered. 2,000 years have elapsed and most people are still destined for hell, either because they have not heard of Christianity or because the salvation legend is especially vulnerable to skepticism.

 

• Show Me One Example Of Perfection – If God is perfect and without fault why does he consistently make such blundering errors? The civil war in heaven, the flawed creation of humankind on multiple occasions that often lead to mass murder on God’s part, which he occasionally apologizes for (w/ a rainbow, gee thanks), etc.

 

• To Be Fair, Jacob DID Stop Bathing A Month Before The Match – In Gen. 32:24-32 Jacob wrestles with God! During this bizarre incident God touches Jacob’s thigh and dislocates it. But Jacob still prevails over God! God pleads with Jacob to release him but Jacob will only release him after God blesses him. As a result of this incident, Jews will not eat of “the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh.” Are the Jewish people insane? How do they justify such a bizarre reasoning?

 

• Only the loner is welcome – Are only hermits welcome in heaven? Matt 19:29 – “And everyone that hath forsaken horses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my names sake, shall receive an hundred fold and shall inherit everlasting life.”

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the top Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

THE CRUELTY OF THE CREATOR

 

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.” – George Bernard Shaw

  

**This post was recently revised to simplify things. It now contains all the separate posts together in one. When you wish to comment on a specific point please copy and paste it at the top of your comment so as not to confuse anybody. Also, if you wish to review any past comments all you need to do is click the THE CRUELTY OF THE CREATOR link in the categories section at the top right of my main page and scroll down. You will find the original, individual posts. Click on one and read any comments and responses there.

 

• Die Fag!!!! Oh, and Praise Jesus – Lev. 20:13 – If you are gay, you should die. “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

 

• A Perfect Example of the Ugliness of the God of the Bible – Only Lot, his wife and his two daughters are deemed worthy of being sparred God’s wrath. Once again, much like with Noah, it’s conveniently all in the family. AND YET, even though God just moments before had deemed her worthy of living, when Lot’s wife (she never has a name) looks back and witnesses her family and friends being murdered by God, she is no longer worthy and God kills her. As a result, Lot’s two daughters end up having sex with Lot in order to produce an heir. Gen 19:32-36 “Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.”

 

• The God of the Bible is a Monster – Jephthah promises God to make a burnt offering of the first thing that greets him if God will give him victory in battle. He assumes it will be a dog. The all knowing God knows it won’t be a dog and agrees, giving Jephthah the victory he desires (again, more personal interference from God). Only when Jephthah returns from battle it is his young daughter that rushes out to greet him. No mercy from God. Jephthah burns his daughter to death to keep his promise to God. And God, no doubt, reveled in it. Judges 11:30-39. The only thing you can assume from this story is either God knew it would be his daughter that would run out to greet Jephthah and not the dog and agreed to his bargain anyway OR God himself held the dog back and encouraged the daughter to run out to teach Jephthah a lesson. Either way God is a monster.

 

• God Punishes More Innocent People Than Guilty – Why does God insist on punishing the innocent throughout the bible? Ex 34:6,7 – “… and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children & upon the children’s children, unto the third and fourth generation.” And there are many, many more examples.

 

• Sorry About Getting Your Husband Killed. Wanna Get Married? – I Sam 25:38 – “And it came to pass that the Lord smote Nabal that he died.” This was to punish Nabal for not offering food to David and his men, total strangers to Nabal. Was this a lesson to Nabal or us? Oh, and David marries Nabal’s widow. Lucky her.

 

• God Wants You To F**k Your Dead Brother’s Wife – Gen. 38 – Onan refuses to have sex with his dead brother’s widow so God kills him.

 

• Your Wife Looks Just Like Your Sister – Gen 12 – Abraham passes his wife Sarah as his sister. The Pharaoh, believing this deception, offers Abraham many animals and slaves to take Sarah into his palace (for what purpose we can only imagine). Abraham agrees to this deal because he is afraid to have his deception revealed. The Pharaoh, unaware that he had taken another man’s wife into his home, is punished by God (no punishment for Abraham) for doing just that with a number of great plagues falling upon his household.

 

• Wife, Sister, It’s All The Same In The Bible – Gen. 20 – Abraham repeats his Sarah is my sister not my wife deception on yet another king (Abimelech), who also offers animals and servants for her. God, again punishing the wrong people, punishes the innocent by cursing all the women of the king’s family with being barren. Gen. 26:7-11 has Isaac pulling the same scheme because Rebekah is so smoking hot he is afraid if people know she is his wife they will kill him to have her. But her being his sister would prevent this how?

  

• Am I Supposed To Be Impressed Or Repulsed? – Zech 8:10 – “For I set all men, every one, against his neighbor.” This is God speaking.

 

• Isn’t this also a punishment of David? – II Sam. 6:20-23 – Michal, David’s wife, reprimands him for cavorting naked before the Ark of the Covenant in sight of the maidservants. God punishes her by not allowing her to have any children until the day of her death. Isn’t this also a punishment of David?

 

• Hey, At Least God Gets You Drunk Before He Kills You – Jer. 13:13, 14 – “Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land, even the kings… and the priests, and the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with drunkenness. And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together, saith the Lord: I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them.”

 

• I’d Really Rather You Didn’t – Jer 8:17- “For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you… and they shall bite you, saith the Lord.”

 

• More Innocent Slaughtered By God – Jer 11:22, 23 – “Behold, I will punish them: the young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine: And there shall be no remnant of them: for I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth…”

 

• Fouls of the Heaven is more like it – Jer 15:3 – “And I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the Lord: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy.”

 

• What Does He Do To His Non-Chosen People – Jer 15:5, 7, 9 – “For who shall have pity upon thee, O Jerusalem? or who shall bemoan thee? … I will bereave them of children, I will destroy my people since they return not from their ways … and the residue of them will I deliver to the sword before their enemies, saith the Lord.”

 

• Do You Need Any A-1 With That? – Jer 19:9 – “And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend…”

 

• What ever happened to do unto others…? – Jer 50:15 – “…for it is the vengeance of the Lord: take vengeance upon her; as she hath done, do unto her.” What ever happened to do unto others…?

 

• The Ugliness of God Revealed In The Book of Ezekiel # 1 -`Ez 5:10 – “Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in thee…”

 

• The Ugliness of God Revealed In The Book of Ezekiel # 2 – Ez 23: 46-47 – “For thus saith the Lord God; I will bring up a company upon them, and will give them to be removed and spoiled. And the company shall stone them with stones, and dispatch them with their swords; they shall slay their sons and their daughters, and burn up their houses with fire.”

 

• The Ugliness of God Revealed In The Book of Ezekiel # 3 – Ez 5:13 – “Thus shall mine anger be accomplished, and I will cause my fury to rest upon them, and I will be comforted…”

 

• The Ugliness of God Revealed In The Book of Ezekiel # 4 – Ez 7:4 – “And mine eye shall not spare thee, neither will I have pity…”

 

• The Ugliness of God Revealed In The Book of Ezekiel # 5 – Ez 9:6 – “Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women…” This is God’s command.

 

• God Never Misses An Opportunity To Slaughter The Innocent – Daniel 6:24 God’s response to Daniel being mistreated. “…they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces.” Again with the innocent women and children being punished.

 

• Woe unto them who are not Jewish  – Deut 20:17 – “Thou shalt utterly destroy them.” Referring to the Gentile. Jer 4:7 – “Saith the Lord, the Lion (Jesus) is come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the … Gentile is on the way.” God is clearly a bigot.

 

• I’m Sure This Didn’t Put A Strain On Their Father-Son Relationship – Isaac’s father is commanded by God to slaughter his own son in order to appease God with his blood. Isaac’s father agrees (!) but at the last possible minute God changes his mind. Wow, thanks God for leaving the image of my father standing over me with knife in hand burned forever into my consciousness. Not traumatic at all. And thanks dad for worshiping a God who would demand such a thing. And then turn out just to be playing one of his typical mind games.

 

• It Pleases God To Watch People Be Murdered – To appease God the seven sons of Saul are hanged. II Sam 21:1-9

 

• Overkill, as usual – Ex. 12:29 depicts God needlessly killing all firstborn in Egypt, even the firstborn of the captive in the dungeon and all the firstborn cattle.

 

• Golden Images of Your Genital Boils? – To punish those who captured the Ark of the Covenant, God curses them with boils (emerods) “They had emerods in their secret parts.” And not only them but the inhabitants of any city where they take the Ark. And is only appeased when they make offerings to him of golden images of their emerods (and golden mice). Who in his right mind would worship such a god? God is one twisted fuck. I Sam. 5, 6.

  

• No Child Left Behind – There is not one instance in the bible where God spares the life of even one innocent child from the slaughter of his bloodthirsty servants. On a few occasions it may appear that he does just that when he has the female children (virgins) set aside but this is not out of kindness, these are to be ‘used’ by the conquerors. The sexual reward is always the favorite of the God fearing.

 

• How, Exactly, Does God Come Up With These Punishments? – Jer. 19:9 – “And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend.” God’s words.

 

• A Religion Trapped In Barbaric Blood Rituals – Hebrews 9:22 – “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.”

 

• It Sucks To Be You (Jew) – Even God’s chosen people aren’t immune to his cruelty, in fact it could be argued they are treated most cruelly of all. God sells Israel to the king of Mesopotamia for 8 years because the Israelites intermarried with Gentiles & worshiped gods other than him Judges 3:8. He ‘smites’ Israel and delivers the Jews to the Moabite Kings for 18 years Judges 3:14. He sells the Jews to the king of Canaan for 20yrs Judges 4:2. He delivers the Jews to the Midianites for 7 years Judges 6:1. He allows Jerusalem & Judah to fall into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years and to be under the rule of the Babylonia for 70 years Judges 13:1.

 

• Congratulations! Now F**k Off! –  After many years of service and sacrifice, Moses is forbidden from entering the Promised Land because he struck a rock in anger while trying to produce water. He had early succeeded in this by God’s own instruction. Moses’ son Aaron is also forbidden from entering even though he did nothing wrong. Num 20:11, 12 & Deut 34.

 

• He Never Said He Was A Fair God – The only way into heaven is through Jesus Christ. If anyone ignorant of Jesus and Christianity dies, they are doomed to eternal torment and torture in Hell’s eternal hellfire. Yes, that’s fair. John 3:36 – “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” SO, a life of pure thoughts, good deeds, selflessness, sacrifice & abstinence will be rewarded by God with eternal hellfire. Nice.

 

• Abortionist to the world – Abortion is the worst thing a Christian can think of but they worship a deity who drowned countless children, babies and pregnant women, and who slaughtered all the first born of Egypt, a direct response to Pharaoh’s refusal to ‘let my people go’. Of course, Pharaoh refused because God ‘hardened’ the Pharaoh’s heart so he would refuse. And then there are all the babies, children and pregnant women in Sodom & Gomorrah.

 

• Pray To God That He Doesn’t Tempt You – God seems to enjoy ‘tempting’ man into doing things they will be punished for. Gen 22:1 – “God did tempt Abraham.” Matt 6:13 – “And lead us not into temptation.”  This is from the Lord’s Prayer. We are encouraged to beg God nightly not to tempt us.

 

• What Happened to Free Will? -In Romans 9:17-21 it is described how God made us and indeed decides our behaviors but he will still punish those that misbehave even though they are simply obeying God’s will.

 

• God Is Responsible For What Happened To Jacob & Israel – Isaiah 42:24 – “Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not the Lord?” This is God himself asking the question.

 

• Got Your Nose. No, Seriously, I Got Your Nose – King Azariah fails to get rid of all the altars to idols so God makes him a leper.

 

• Here’s My List Of All The Ways I’m Gonna F**k You Up – In Deut 32 God describes the ways he will punish Jews who are disloyal, one of which states, “…the young man and the virgin, the suckling (baby) also with the man of gray hairs (elderly).” More punishments listed in Deut 28 & Lev 26.

 

• Again, You Want Me To Worship This Guy? – Ez 14:9 – “If the prophet be deceived, I the Lord have deceived that prophet and will stretch out my hand and destroy him.” So God is responsible for the deception and murders the one he deceived for being deceived.

 

• He Creates Evil, Makes Use Of Evil Spirits, Is God The Devil? – I Sam 19:9 – reveals that God makes use of evil spirits, he even send one upon Saul, causing him to hurl a Javelin at David.

 

• None Who Create Evil Can Be Considered Good – Isaiah 45:7 – “I form the light, and I create darkness. I make peace, and I create Evil. I, the Lord, do all these things.” God creates the evil in the first place.

 

• Why Wouldn’t You Want To Worship This Guy? – Isaiah 13:9, 15, 16 – “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it … Everyone that is found shall be thrust through: and everyone that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.”

 

• How Does God Decide Who He Will Personally Murder? – I Sam 2:25 – “Notwithsatanding they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them.”

 

• How Imperfect Can One God Be? – Nahum 1:2 – “God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the Lord revengeth, and is furious; the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.”-A strange emotional flaw for an all-powerful, omnipresent, ‘loving’ god to have.

 

• Hell is Full Of Children – Children are not capable/allowed to make any decisions for themselves except whether or not to dedicate their eternal soul to God. Whether or not a child goes to heaven or hell is completely up to the child. If a parent or guardian fails to introduce them to the church soon enough and they die, they go to hell. Period!

 

• Not Even A Baby? – When God murders everyone in Sodom & Gomorrah not a single child, infant, mother or elderly person is spared. Praise God!

 

• Foreskin: God’s Most Bizarre Obsession – Because Moses’ child with a Midianite woman isn’t circumcised, God loses it and nearly kills Moses. Moses is only saved because Moses’ wife chops off the child’s offending foreskin with a sharp stone, casting it at Moses’ feet. Maybe if God would have made the male body right the first time we wouldn’t need this barbaric surgery.

 

• Always With The Overkill – Deut 20:12-17 – “…thou shalt smite every male therof with the sword.” “…thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them.”

 

• What The Hell Is Strange Fire? – Lev 10:1, 2 – For “offering strange fire before the Lord”, two sons of Aaron, priests of the Tabernacle, are killed by God. What the hell is a strange fire anyway? Good luck getting God to explain himself.

 

• These People Never Shut Up – Num 11:1 – After being forced to march through the desert & suffer for years by God, if an Israelite complains (understandably) God will burn them with fire.

 

• God Throws A Fit, All The Quail Die – Num 11:31-33 – When the Jews complain of the lack of meat to eat during their forced march through the desert for forty years, God gets mad (again) & sends quail to cover the ground a days travel in each direction and piled up three feet high. He then smote the Jews with a very great plague.

 

• Woman, Know Your Place! – Moses’ sister, Miriam, criticizes Moses for marrying an Ethiopian, something God disapproved of and was contrary to Jewish custom, but even though she was in the right, God punishes Miriam, not Moses, by making her a leper.

 

• God Hates A Complainer – Num 14 – Because the Jews weren’t thrilled with the idea of moving to Canaan, God was furious (what’s new) and cursed the entire congregation (even those who had not complained. God, being fair as usual) to wander one year for each of the 40 days (40 years) Moses’ spies had spent on the scouting expedition.

 

• What About If You PLAY Pick Up Sticks? – Num 15:35, 36 – A man who picks up sticks on the Sabbath is stoned to death for this as commanded by God.

 

• Were These ‘Alternate’ Laws Written Down Anywhere? – Num 16:32, 35 – For the horrible crime of challenging the authority of Moses, God murders the wives & children of the two princes who dared to do so.

 

• Isn’t This An Example Of Moses Defying God’s Will? – Num 21:5-9 – After complaining about the lack of bread and water and sick of manna, God sends fiery serpents to bite the Jews & many die as a result. Does God decide to stop them? No. Instead, Moses has to use Old Testament magic & fasten a brass serpent to a pole & whoever sees it will be cured.

 

• God Rewards Those Who Kill The Best – Nice Work! A man murders the son of an Israelite prince and a Midianite (Gentile) princess by ramming a Javelin through them. God is very pleased by this, declaring, “Behold I give unto him my covenant of peace … because he was zealous for his God.” Num 25:8, 13

 

• Exactly What Quantity Of Blood Is Required To Please God? – In order to please God’s bloodlust, during the dedication of the Temple at Jerusalem, Solomon slaughters 22,000 oxen & 120,000 sheep. I Kings 8:63, 64. Is that the exact number God needed to be happy or could the slaughter have stopped at ten?

 

• Justice, Followed By Injustice – Josh 7:24-26 – During the battle of Jericho, Achan, a Jewish warrior, secretly takes some spoil for himself. This is clearly wrong and he is justly punished by being stoned to death. Oh, and so is ALL HIS FAMILY! And then an altar is built over their bodies.

 

• Nice Save! Now Die!!! – II Sam 6:6, 7 – When the Ark of the Covenant was dipping over, Uzzah stops it by grabbing a hold of it. He is rewarded by God instantly killing him. Even David is not thrilled by God’s behavior here.

 

• And David Is God’s Favorite! – II Sam 12:11-14 – To punish David for fucking Bathsheba, God says he will give David’s wives (women have no say) to David’s neighbor and will kill David and Bathsheba’s child (the innocent are always the ones to receive God’s ‘justice’). How many people suffer because of the poor behavior of God’s chosen?

 

• More Innocents To Suffer – II Sam 21 – Because Saul killed some Gibeonites, God brings three years of famine upon his chosen people (whom he clearly loves to torment). The famine is finally ended only when David gives seven sons (who weren’t involved) of Saul to the Gibeonites to be hanged up unto the Lord.

 

• How Dare You Take A Census! – II Sam 24 – When David commits the horrible sin of taking a census, God is furious and gives David the choice of one of three punishments. David, of course, chooses the one that will have the most negative impact on the most people.

 

• More Innocents Must Die – I Kings 20:42 – “Thus saith the Lord; Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man (king of Syria) whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore shall thy life go for his life, and thy people for his people.” Again, more innocent people punished for another’s sin, and in this instance, those that benefit the most are those who are opposed to and do not worship God.

 

• God LOOOVES Children … To Slaughter! – II Kings 2:23, 24 – Because some (42) children tease him about his bald head, Elisha curses them and calls upon God to punish them for this horrible sin. God obliges and sends two she bears to tear the children to bits.

 

• To Er is Human – Jacob’s grandson Er is so hated by God that, “Er was evil in the sight of the Lord and he slew him.” I Chron 2:3. God then kills Er’s brother, Oman. Not because he was evil as well, but because Oman refused to fuck Er’s widow. Gen 38: 7, 9, 10.

 

• The Inspiring Story Of Job – In order to prove Job’s loyalty, which Satan has questioned, God torments Job with numerous horrible tests, a few of which are the deaths of his servants (innocents), his children (more innocents), the loss of his wealth and his health. Job 1, 2. This story is supposed to be inspiring? I’m sorry but a god that would torture someone like this simply to win a bet with another god is not worthy of worship.

 

• Why Does Your God SOOOO Love To Punish The Innocent? – If one doesn’t obey the Mosaic Law they will be cursed by God and that curse shall “…be upon thy seed forever.” Deut. 28:46. Again with the punishment of those who did no wrong.

 

• Who needs Zoloft, I’ll just go kill some kids – Psalms 137:9 – “Happy shall be he that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” The ‘little ones’ are the children of Babylon. The words are Gods.

 

• God Encourages Rape & Infanticide – Isaiah 13:15, 16 – “Everyone that is fouled shall be thrust through and everyone that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.” So according to the Lord, in certain circumstances, children deserve to be murdered and women deserve to be raped.

 

• Hmmmm, A Spanking Or Thrust Through With The Sword? – Zech 13:3 – “… and his father and his mother … shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.” According to God, a parent should murder their own children if they speak of any other religion.

 

• Again, What Merciful God? – Deut 7:1, 2 – God has his Jews invade and conquer the seven nations of Canaan, saying, “…And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant (peace) with them, nor show mercy unto them.” Merciful God? What Bible are they reading?

 

• Just what part of No Other God Before Me did you not understand? – Ex 32:27 – Just what part of No Other God Before Me did you not understand? The punishment for those who worshiped the golden calf, “Take every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and  every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.” So if your neighbor worships a god other than the Christian God, you can be killed for their ‘sins’?

 

• You Want Me To Worship This Guy For What Reason Again? – Num 16:1-40 – This section depicts both how fallible God is and how ‘merciful’. A couple of Levite Princes challenge Moses’ leadership and God gets very upset by this and wants to murder the entire congregation. Moses, however, points out to God the injustice of this course of action. Astonishingly, the infallible Almighty sees his error and concedes to Moses’ logic. So instead, God the Merciful, buries alive the wives, sons and ‘little children’ (once again, all innocents) of the two princes and sends a fire to consume the remaining princes. What in the world was God’s original punishment going to be? Thank God Moses talked him out of it. OH, in response to these horrible killings by God, a large number of Jews rebel, so God sends a plague (his favorite weapon) to wipe them out. Num 16:41-49.

 

• Don’t Forget To Slaughter The Little Ones – Moses sums up the slaughter of the Amorites, under God’s order, “We … utterly destroyed the men and the women and the little ones.” Num 21:25 and Deut 2:34. God nearly has as many women and children killed as men.

 

• Ahhhhhh, Will You Look At That Sunrise – Num 25:4-9 – God’s instructions to his favorite hit man, Moses, about the 24,000 Israelites (God’s chosen people) who were worshipers of Baal and co-habited with Moabite women, “And the Lord said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun…”

 

• Good Guess, Now Die! – After some Philistines guess Samson’s riddle, the spirit of the Lord came upon him and he killed 30 of them. Judges 14:19.

 

• The Innocent Always Suffer – A few people glance into the Ark of the Covenant as it happens by and God kills 50,070 (innocent) people as punishment. I Sam 6:19. This is just one of many examples where God punishes the innocent, the blameless, the wives and children, instead of those actually guilty.

 

• Maybe bottle feeding would be preferable – God’s orders, “Slay both man and woman, infant and suckling…” I Sam 15:3, 7.

 

• LAME! – II Sam 5:6, 7, 8 – “…and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind…”

 

• A Merciful God? – I Sam 27:8, 9 – “…leaving neither man nor woman alive.” Never spares the women, who are usually innocent as they aren’t warriors or kings.

 

• Way To Satisfy Your Bloodlust, God – I Kings 20:28, 29, 30 – After the children of Israel slaughter 100,000 Syrian footmen, God personally kills the remaining 27,000 by causing a wall to fall onto them. High five God! Nice assist!

 

• God Loves Killing Children – II Kings 9:8 and II Kings 1:1-11 – God calls for the 70 children of King Ahab of Israel to be destroyed. Their heads are put into baskets at the gates of the city.

 

• More Dead Children – II Kings 10:12-17, 30 – More children killed by God or in God’s name, this time the 42 children of King Judah.

 

• In God’s Own Words: I Am Not Perfect – Ex 20:5 – “…for I am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.” Jealousy is an imperfect, emotional response. How then does God possess such a flaw?

 

• Adam, Eve, David, Moses, Don’t Expect To Meet Them In Heaven – Paul states that Adam, God’s first human, is not in heaven! He claims Adam’s death was an eternal death. The promise of eternal life can only come with belief in Jesus Christ. Peter agreed with this. Paul also stated that those that lived between Moses and Christ aren’t eligible for everlasting life.

 

• God Is Such A DIIIIIIIIIICK!!!! – Hebrews 3:10, 11 – Paul, speaking for God, about the Jews who escaped Egypt. “Wherefore I was grieved with that generation and said, they do always err in their heart, and they have not known my ways. So I swear in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest.” No heaven for you!

 

• No heaven for you, David! – Acts 2:34 – “For David (God’s chosen) is not ascended into the heavens.”

 

• God hates the Naive – Gen 27, 28, 29, – Jacob tricks his brother, Esau, into selling him his birthright and disguises himself in order to fool his father into blessing him and granting him this. As a result, and apparently also deceived, God comes to Jacob in a dream (of course dreams are never just dreams in the bible) and blesses Jacob and all his seed. Also an eventual result of Jacob’s deception, God states quite clearly that he hates Esau (Malachi 1:3, Romans 9:13)! Jacob later carries out a scheme to obtain an unfair share of his father-in-law’s livestock.

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the top Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

The Abuse of Women in the Bible

 

“Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest!” – Émile Zola

**This post was recently revised to simplify things. It now contains all the separate posts together in one. When you wish to comment on a specific point please copy and paste it at the top of your comment so as not to confuse anybody. Also, if you wish to review any past comments all you need to do is click the THE ABUSE OF WOMEN link in the categories section at the top right of my main page and scroll down. You will find the original, individual posts. Click on one and read any comments and responses there.

 

• Hey, Woman, God Says To Zip It! – I Cor. 14:34, 35 – “Let the women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but let them be in subjection, as also saith the law. And if they would learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home: for it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church.” These are more of the woman hater Paul’s words. I guess women preachers, priests, nuns, etc. should not be permitted then.

 

• Great Guy, Horrible Father – When the men of Sodom demand Lot send out two angels they believe he is housing (because that was such a common occurrence back then), Lot refuses (so brave) but does offer the men his two virgin daughters instead. Are these the same daughters that sleep with their loving father after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? Gen 19:8 – “Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes….” Remember, this is the Lot who is later deemed by God as the only man worthy of sparing the horrors that are soon to befall the populace of Sodom and Gomorrah.

 

• Occam’s Razor (look it up) – Women in the bible are often depicted as being barren but strangely men are never sterile. An act of God is often used to cure the women of their barren wombs. Doesn’t it seem a little more plausible that the men were the ones that were infertile and couldn’t get their wives pregnant, but when the women got pregnant by another man they concocted some story to explain it?

 

• A Shame Women Have To Be Mentioned At All – Women are often times nameless. They are just the woman, or so and so’s wife, or so and so’s mother. I’m sure it begrudged the writers of the bible to mention them at all.

 

• Are all women in the bible barren? – Judges 13:3 – Describes Samson’s mother (another nameless woman) as being barren. But an Angel of the Lord, or the Lord himself, comes to her and she conceives. For some odd reason her husband, when he meets this angel, doesn’t recognize it as an angel. He just sees a man.

 

• Another barren woman – I Sam. 2:21 – “And the Lord visited Hannah, so that she conceived, and bare three sons and two daughters.” Hannah was barren until the Lord ‘visited’ her. And just how many times did the Lord ‘visit’ Hannah (three sons and two daughters)?

 

• Do women even count? – Whenever a group or multitude is counted or one of the frequent censuses taken, the total announced in the bible is always the tally of the men, “…besides the women and children.”

 

• Women: Fodder For God’s Punishments – Women are often used by God as punishment for those God does not favor. “Therefore I will give their wives unto others.” Jer 8:10. “And the city shall be taken and the women ravished.” Zech. 14:2.

 

• Good to know –“It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman.” Prov. 25:24

 

• Wives, Submit To Your Husbands – Eph. 5:22, 24 – “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: …. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.”

 

• Women: Created By God To Serve Man – I Cor. 11 – “A Man is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man: for neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ: and the head of the woman is the man: and the head of Christ is God.” These are more of the woman hater Paul’s words.

 

• No Equality As Long As Religion Exists – I Tim. 2:11, 12 – “Let a woman learn in quietness with all subjection. But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness.” These are more of the woman hater Paul’s words. Do women really expect any better treatment in heaven?

 

• Rape as a reward – Num. 31:15-18 Moses’ words – “…kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

 

• Abortion is a sin, right? – II Kings 15:16 – “All the women therein that were with child he ripped up.” Describing the actions of Israel’s King Meabem (Meahem). Abortion is a sin, right?

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the top Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

SEX IN THE BIBLE

 

Steven Weinberg – “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

**This post was recently revised to simplify things. It now contains all the separate posts together in one. When you wish to comment on a specific point please copy and paste it at the top of your comment so as not to confuse anybody. Also, if you wish to review any past comments all you need to do is click the SEX link in the categories section at the top right of my main page and scroll down. You will find the original, individual posts. Click on one and read any comments and responses there.

 

• Rape anyone! – Moses sends all the Jewish forces back to finish off all the male children & women of Midiam but saves the girl babies and virgins. Considering how little worth women had at the time I wonder what the intention was. Rape anyone!

 

• Got Raped? Lucky You! Bible Says You Get A Husband – Deut. 22:28, 29 – Describes how if a man rapes a woman and is discovered, “…then he shall give unto the damsel’s father 50 shekels of silver and she shall be his wife…” What happens if they are not found during the act? But hey, lucky for the rape victim, right? She gets a husband! Woo Hoo!

 

• You’re Both Grounded – Gen 34 – Jacob’s daughter Dinah is raped by Shechem, a prince of the Hivites. Shechem agrees to be circumcised so he can marry his rape victim. He also has all the males in his city get circumcised (against their will, no doubt). A few days later Dinah’s brothers Levi and Simeon come and kill every male in the city, rescue their sister, spoil the city and take captive the women and children and animals. Their reward for rescuing their sister is to have their father scold them for doing so.

 

• Isn’t this type of behavior punishable by death? – If women of God are supposed to be so virtuous, then how do you explain Ruth’s behavior? She is a widow, her mother encourages her to get dolled up and wait for Boaz to get drunk and pass out, and then sneak into his bed and do what he tells her to do. Ruth 3:3-8. Isn’t this type of behavior punishable by death?

 

• It’s All About Sex – Solomon whiles away his time with 700 wives and 300 concubines. I Kings 11:3. Are we supposed to believe that the reason for all these wives and concubines wasn’t sex? King Rehoboam has 18 wives and 60 concubines, 28 sons and 60 daughters. II Chron. 11:21. King Abijah has 14 wives, 22 sons, 16 daughters. II Chron. 13:21.

 

• Kinky! – According to the bible, infidelity is ok for certain people on certain occasions. Many men in the bible have multiple wives and many concubines. Sarah, Abraham’s wife, who is barren, gives her maid Hagar to her husband so they might have a son (Ishmael). Gen 16:1-4.

 

• Incest is the Best – There are nineteen specific cases of incest in the bible, not counting necessary shenanigans of Cain and Seth and starting with Abraham’s marriage to his half sister Sarai. David’s son, Amnon, pretends to be ill so his sister, Tamar, will tend to him and he can make a move on her. And this is following the advice of a friend (II Sam. 13). And don’t forget that Lot’s two virgin daughters get him drunk in order to have sex with him in order to produce an heir. Gen 19:32, 36 “Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.” This is neither punished nor even referred to in a disapproving manner. Gen. 38 describes the events of Judah’s daughter in law Tamar, who pretends to be a harlot to have sex with him. She conceives twins.

 

• SLUT! – II Sam. 13 – David’s son Amnon has desires for his sister, Tamar. His friend suggests he act sick and have her treat him so he can make a move on her. Amnon follows this advice and ends up raping Tamar. Afterward he hates her and sends her away.

 

• Women Were Valued For Only One Thing – Women were expected to have only one sexual partner in life whereas men could have plural marriage and concubines.

 

• If God Wants You To F**K Someone, You Do It! – Gen. 38 – Onan refuses to have sex with his dead brother’s widow so God kills him. ALWAYS screw who God asks you to, dummy.

 

• How Dare You Allow Yourselves To Be Used For Sex! – When David’s son, Absalom, sexually uses David’s concubines (the nerve!), David punishes the concubines by imprisoning them for life. II Sam. 16:22 and 20:3.

 

• You Know, You’re Not As Hot As I Thought – Deut. 22:21 – If after consummating the wedding night, the groom were to go to the brides parents & claim she was not a virgin and the parents were unable to produce evidence (blood stained sheets) to dispute his claim, the bride must be brought to the door of her father’s house, “…and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die.” How many men, who unhappy with the choice of a wife, made this claim to free themselves from an unwanted marriage.

 

• As Usual, In Religion It’s All About The Sex – Deut. 21:11-14 – Describes how the conqueror should take women amongst the captives to have sex with and if they don’t want to stay with you after, to send them on their way. “And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and thou hast a desire unto her, and wouldest take her to thee to wife; then thou shalt bring her home to thy house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; and she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thy house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife. And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not deal with her as a slave, because thou hast humbled her.” Where would a captive, divorced, possibly widowed ‘slave wife’, no longer a virgin if she was before, go exactly? Where would she be welcome?

  

• Make Some Noise Ladies! Or Die! – Deut. 22:23, 24 – States that if a betrothed virgin is raped in the city and is not heard to cry out, she shall be stoned to death.

 

• All Sex Is Unclean – Under Mosaic Law sexual relations are unclean. Paul was especially against the sex act, “…it is good for a man not to touch a woman … I say therefore to the unmarried and widows; It is good for them, if they abide even as I … Now, concerning virgins … I say it is good for a man so to be … Art thou bound unto a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife..” I Cor. 7 It’s Understandable why he would think that sex was unclean, just think about how rarely anyone bathed back then. Yuk! I agree with Paul.

 

• More abuse at the hands of God – God punishes David for his misconduct with Bathsheba by giving his wives to his neighbor to have sex with them. “Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house; and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.” II Sam. 12:11. On top of this God is clearly condoning polygamy. He clearly never condemns it or speaks ill of it.

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the top Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

NOAH AND THE ARK

 

The Bible is “what fools have written, what imbeciles command, what rogues teach.” – Voltaire

**This post was recently revised to simplify things. It now contains all the separate posts together in one. When you wish to comment on a specific point please copy and paste it at the top of your comment so as not to confuse anybody. Also, if you wish to review any past comments all you need to do is click the NOAH AND THE ARK link in the categories section at the top right of my main page and scroll down. You will find the original, individual posts. Click on one and read any comments and responses there.

 

• Luck They All Had Such Good Taste In Women – God so despised (so much for ‘good’) the offspring of the first nine generations of his creation he decided to not only kill them all (why bother with trying to save them?) but to kill every other living thing upon the face of the earth! No exception was made for children, pregnant women or even babies. Only Noah, his three sons and their four wives were spared. How convenient that Noah and his sons had such perfect taste in women.

 

• Did God Cause The Worlds First Abortions? – In the time it took Noah to gather up all the animals (7 of every ‘clean’ beast & 2 of every ‘unclean’ beast & 7 of every fowl of both sexes (14 each) , and a male & female of every ‘creeping thing’) and construct the ark (even working with his sons and the wives it would have taken years), how many women became pregnant? How many gave birth? How many babies did God murder with the flood?

 

• No Concern For Friends And Loved Ones? – How is it neither Noah, his sons, nor their wives were at all concerned about worshiping and blindly obeying a God (really Noah as he was the only one in direct communication) who was determined to kill all their friends and family? Did they all really believe everyone they knew deserved to be murdered?

 

• Where’s A Sears When You Need One? – The tools required to build such a large vessel (100? times larger than any built at the time) didn’t exist at the time.

 

• Simply Not Enough Trees For Such A Vessel – The lumber required to build such a large vessel (500ft long, 85ft wide, 60ft & 3 stories high) wasn’t readily available & would have been VERY expensive. Gen 6:15 – “…The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.” The size is the equivalent of 522 standard stock cars or 8 freight trains of 65 cars each.

 

• Um, is the water supposed to be coming through the windows? – The weight of the ark, filled to capacity with animals, food and supplies would result in a non-buoyant vessel.

 

• Origin of the Species – How did all these species of animals migrate across numerous foreign continents in their return home after the flood and yet leave no trace behind? The fossil record should basically show that all species originated wherever the Ark landed (Turkey).

 

• And Two of Every Parasite? – How did Noah keep the birds from eating all the insects? And what about the parasites they (and the other animals) carried? Do those count for the two of each living thing?

 

• The Crew of The Ark – It would have been impossible for Noah, his wife, his three sons and their three wives, (8 people total) to both crew the vessel and care for and feed and clean up after all the animals.

 

• Did God Provide The Blue Prints Too? – Only an expert ship builder could hope to construct a vessel never before imagined and hope to make it sea worthy.

 

• The Big Question – Why all the trouble? Again, why didn’t God just snap his almighty fingers and poof there is the ark and snap all the animals are on board? Did he want to sit and stew in his anger while Noah and his sons attempted to obey his command. And better yet, why not just snap his almighty fingers and all the bad people just drop dead or disappear in a puff of smoke? Why the need to kill every living thing?

 

• Pity The Fool Who Had To Wrangle The Brown Recluse – Insects must have been included (creeping things maybe) in the to be saved list, otherwise the majority would have drowned.

 

• No Room For Fish? – Were all fish excluded? What happened to the fresh water fish when the seas rose and mixed with their water? And vice versa?

 

• The Story of Noah’s Ark (Or How To Guarantee The Extinction of All Life) – As any zoologist will tell you, a male and female of any species aren’t necessarily compatible as mates and there is no guarantee if they were that they could produce an offspring.

 

• The Big Question (AGAIN) – And in case any believer suggests at any point that God interfered in order to guarantee his plan worked out (i.e. all animals mated and produced offspring, never attacked one another, no sickness on board) I again ask why not just snap his almighty fingers and make all the offending humans fall dead? I mean if he is going to use his infinite powers to take part in the great plan, why not that?

 

• Such A Drama Queen! – How many ‘clean’ or ‘unclean’ beasts are carnivores? How about the 14 of each fowl? And the creeping things? How many extra animals were brought on board to feed them? Or did God once again conveniently interfere to make the lions herbivores for the duration of the voyage? And if God is going to interfere at all, why not just strike down all those who truly deserved to die instead of murdering the whole world?

 

• Just How Long After The Flood Were Lions Vegans? – And what about after the voyage? What did all the carnivores eat then? How many generations of animals would have to be born before they could all safely start preying on one another again?

 

• Glad God Picked You, Noah – Noah, one of only 8 people on earth God deems worthy of sparing his wrath, at one point lies about naked and is spied on by his son, Ham. He gets drunk from wine of his own vineyard. How long does it take to get a vineyard going? How much priority was given to creating wine when they needed to repopulate and regrow the entire world? Gen. 9

 

• After the Flood, Only Death and Disease – After the waters receded the whole of the earth would have been covered in rot and death. Disease would have been unavoidable.

 

• Pork too? – After the flood, of the few remaining animals left on earth, God tells Noah, “…every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you.” Gen. 9:3 How quickly would each species become extinct if such an occurrence had actually taken place? And what happened to kosher?

 

• Every Living Thing – “And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth; and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.” Gen 7:23 Please don’t suggest that fish, or whales, or plants survived God’s tantrum.

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the top Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

MARY – The Mother of God?

 

“The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.” – Abraham Lincoln

 

**This post was recently revised to simplify things. It now contains all the separate posts together in one. When you wish to comment on a specific point please copy and paste it at the top of your comment so as not to confuse anybody. Also, if you wish to review any past comments all you need to do is click the MARY link in the categories section at the top right of my main page and scroll down. You will find the original, individual posts. Click on one and read any comments and responses there.

  

• The immaculate conception was a lie – Only Matthew and Luke claim that Mary was a virgin when she conceived. The rest of the New Testament ignore that fact and even deny it. Clearly Matthew and Luke were of the belief that anything to do with sex was dirty and couldn’t have the son of God created in this way. There is no explanation as to why or how Matthew & Luke came to this conclusion and no one else even mentions it. Wouldn’t this have been a huge miracle that everyone would have mentioned on a regular basis when defending/supporting Jesus? And Matthew doesn’t mention telling Mary, only Joseph is told, and only as he is considering putting her away privately (whatever that means) for being pregnant before he had had sex with her. But Luke states that an angel pre warns Mary even before God ‘visits’ her.

 

• Just when did they reveal their amazing secret (lie)? – Clearly neither Mary nor Joseph told anybody about Mary being pregnant before sleeping with Joseph because no one would have believed him and she would have been stoned to death. Just when did they reveal this to others?

 

• Why was the purification ritual necessary for Mary? – If Mary’s conception was indeed ‘immaculate’ and she wasn’t defiled by the act as with regular sex, then why did she have to go through the purification rituals of the law of Moses as stated in Luke 2:22 – “And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished…” And also the 40 days of cleaning rituals after Jesus’ birth.

 

• Why Neglect Jesus – Why do Catholics hold Mary in such high regard when Jesus held her in such low regard?

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the top Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS CHRIST

 

“The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.” – Robert Heinlein

**This post was recently revised to simplify things. It now contains all the separate posts together in one. When you wish to comment on a specific point please copy and paste it at the top of your comment so as not to confuse anybody. Also, if you wish to review any past comments all you need to do is click the JESUS H. CHRIST link in the categories section at the top right of my main page and scroll down. You will find the original, individual posts. Click on one and read any comments and responses there.

  

• Why do Christians have such a high opinion of this guy? – Matt 15:22-28 – Describes an encounter between Jesus and a Gentile woman who begs him to heal her daughter. Jesus ignores the woman. She persists and he finally says to her, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not meet to take the children’s (Jews) bread and to cast it to dogs (Gentiles).” Woman won’t give up and eventually Jesus finally relents and heals the child. Christians want us to worship a God who refused to heal an innocent child until he was pressured into it. Wow.

 

• How conveeeeeeenient – How convenient that almost (maybe all) all demons cast out of someone by Jesus immediately identify him as the son of God (for the benefit of those witnessing the spectacle). Luke 8, Luke 4:41, Mark 3:11, Mark 1:23 – 28…
• How conveeeeeeenient II – Malachi’s prophecy that told of the arrival of the Messiah clearly states that Elias (Elijah) would return before the Messiah does. When Jesus is confronted with this fact he states that Elias did come … but no one noticed. Matt 17:12. Simple enough! I guess we’ll just have to take his word for it. It’s not like he could have an ulterior motive or anything. He even tries to pass off the identity of Elias onto John the Baptist to help cement him as the Messiah but John denies that he is Elias. John 1:20, 21.

 

• Jesus was a bigot – Matt 10:5, 6 – depicts Jesus instructing his workers to go out and spread his word, but only to the Jews. “Go not into the way of the Gentiles … but rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

 

• Not really the welcome I was expecting, guys – In Luke 24:37 when Jesus rises from the dead and appears to the eleven apostles, they are terrified. Didn’t they know he would be returning? How little faith did they have in their own Messiah? Why so little preparation for his return? Most of Jesus’ followers just went back to life as normal or went into hiding. Lazarus’ return from the dead was met with more enthusiasm.

 

• Was Jesus cool with animal sacrifice? – The people Jesus so dramatically drove from the temple were merchants who sold doves for the sacrifices people regularly made there. Yet Jesus never condemns the sacrifices themselves.

 

• What’s with this guy? – Matthew 10:35, 36 – What is Jesus’ deal? “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” These are Jesus’ words.

 

• As with all religions, at its core, it’s all about sex – Matt 25:1-13 – Jesus tells an allegory explaining how everyone must be prepared for his arrival at the end of the world: He tells of ten virgins (of course) awaiting their one bridegroom, but five forget to bring extra oil for the lamps and run out to get some. While they are away, the bridegroom arrives. When the virgins return to a locked door they implore him to open to them. He replies, “Verily I say unto you, I know you not.” This story is creepy not because it reflects the exclusive quality of Christianity, but for its depiction of ten virgins for one bridegroom.

 

• Sorry, I didn’t recognize you Penis, er, I mean, Jesus – What did Jesus wear upon resurrection? He was in his same body but Luke 24:12 clearly says his grave clothes were left behind. Yet when he shows up with the apostles, he makes no mention of clothes nor do they. Is he naked?

 

• Hey, aren’t you that Messiah fella? – If Jesus was so popular, why then did he need to be identified by Judas in the garden of Gethsemane?

 

• Jesus wasn’t even the best Messiah – Considering the number of people claiming to be Messiah back then, it would have been nice if there could have been just a few unbiased witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. After all, one ‘false’ Messiah had 400 followers when he was executed, that’s 280 more than Jesus had.

 

• Jesus is kind of a dick – Luke 9:59-62 – depicts Jesus recruiting his disciples. When one asks if he can bury his recently deceased father, Jesus says, “Let the dead bury the dead.” And when another wishes to say farewell to his family back home, Jesus says, “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God.” In Matt 4:21, 22 two other disciples are forced to leave their father to mend the fishing nets by himself.

 

• What happened to Honour thy father and thy mother – John 2: 1-4 – Jesus to his mother, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”

 

• Please Jesus, chop it off – Matt 19:12 – reminds us that sex with women is unholy and Jesus gives extra commendation to eunuchs, especially those who castrate themselves.

 

• Jesus: Not an Environmentalist – Matt 21:19 & Mark 11:13 – When Jesus gets hungry & finds a fig tree bearing no fruit, the reason being that it’s out of season, he curses it. “Let no fruit grow on thee henceforth forever.” The tree withers away on the spot. No one is with Jesus at the time so we’ll just have to take his word for it.

 

• Jesus, so full of love and kindness – Matt 11:20-23 – Jesus damns whole cities to hell. “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! … And thou, Capernaum … shalt be brought down to hell.”

 

• Check out the big ego on Jesus – Matt 12:6 – “In this place is one greater than the Temple.” Matt 12:41 – “Behold, a greater than Jonas is here.” Matt 12:42 – “Behold, a greater than Soloman is here.”

  

• Do as I say, not as I do – In Matt 5:22 Jesus says not to call anyone a fool but in Matt 23:17 he says of the Pharisees, “Ye fools and blind.” Matt 23:33 – “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” Matt 12:34 – “O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things?”

 

• Fools for taking Jesus at his word – Luke 21:32 – Jesus, speaking of the second coming –“Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.” The Apostles actually believed they would be the first occupants of heaven from the rapture, not as a result of death. How could they have been so wrong?

 

• Not even an original Messiah – Every one of Jesus’ so called miracles was preformed by another non Messiah in the bible before and/or after him.

 

• Another odd choice – Why does Jesus choose Peter to be the foundation/cornerstone of the church when Peter earlier famously lies and denies Christ three times and later frightens two early converts to death over the matter of a few coins? And Jesus calls Peter ‘Satan’ at one point. Matt. 16:18, 23, Acts 5, Matt. 26:69-75.

 

• Jesus: Not a member of PETA – Jesus casts a horde of demons out of a couple of protesters (because they must be possessed if they don’t dig the Messiah) and per the demons wishes, casts them into a herd of 2,000 pigs. The pigs then run violently into the sea and die. That herd must have been of great value to he who owned them but Jesus does not compensate this person. Besides, to eat swine they must have been Gentiles, so fuck ‘em! Matt. 8:28-33 and Mark 5:13.

 

• Some of the ridiculous teachings/commands of Jesus: Accumulate no wealth; turn the other cheek; judge no ones behavior; don’t use your mind but be as children; do not question or philosophize; love those who mistreat you; avoid associating with the ‘dogs’ (Gentiles) of this world; sell all your possessions and give it to the poor (now you’re poor! Hoorah!); have no thought for the morrow (make no plans); everything you do and have is probably a sin; take no pleasure in this world; love those who treat you cruelly as much as those that are kind to you; mutilate yourself; be 100% certain Jesus bought your way into heaven through his torturous death; if the sight of someone of the opposite sexually arouses you, pluck out your eye; for special approval with God, become a eunuch; Servants, obey your masters; citizens, obey your rulers unquestioningly; children, obey your parents in all things; love your enemies; abandon your family and be rewarded in heaven; do not assert yourself; do not achieve prominence in this world, for the first shall be the last in heaven; if a criminal robs you of $50.00, give him another $50.00; etc. (By the way, how can love be a command? Love is an emotional response and can not be controlled.)

 

• Bad Career move  – John 21 – describes how after Jesus’ resurrection, some disciples go back to their fishing jobs but somehow have totally forgotten how to do it. It takes Jesus telling them to toss their nets off the other side of their boats for them to catch anything. They catch so many (153) that they can’t haul up their nets (thanks a bunch, Jesus!). In the bible this suggestion is treated as another of Jesus’ miracles.

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the top Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

IN THE BEGINNING

 

“A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.” – James Feibleman

 **This post was recently revised to simplify things. It now contains all the separate posts together in one. When you wish to comment on a specific point please copy and paste it at the top of your comment so as not to confuse anybody. Also, if you wish to review any past comments all you need to do is click the IN THE BEGINNING link in the categories section at the top right of my main page and scroll down. You will find the original, individual posts. Click on one and read any comments and responses there.

  

• What light through yonder window breaks? – On the first day God separated the light to rule the day & the lesser light to rule the night, also the stars. Gen 1:16. And yet the sun, moon and stars aren’t set into the formation until the fourth day.

 

• Define Good – God declares everything is ‘good’. Does that mean good = deserts, swamps, frozen wastelands, germs, viruses, bacteria, beasts of prey, leeches, hornets, poisonous snakes & spiders, tsetse flies, fire ants, plague carrying rats, malaria bearing mosquitoes, extreme climates, storms, floods, earthquakes & volcanoes?

 

• How can the innocent sin? – Adam & Eve are deemed the first sinners. How can anyone who doesn’t know right from wrong be expected to practice obedience? How can the innocent sin?

 

• God is NOT a member of PETA – To help Adam & Eve hide their shame (their nakedness) God fashions skins for them to wear. Does he kill the animals he has just created just for their skins (fur)? Does he sew? Does he teach them to sew? What do they use? Bone and pig gut? So God is pro fur then?

 

• Always the innocent suffer – After the devil deceives Eve, God, in all his infinite wisdom, punishes the serpent that the devil disguised himself as. God’s punishment is to have it crawl upon its belly from that day forward. Are we to believe a serpent was a legged animal before this point? Just how many legs would be required for a snake to get along? Are there any records of any mammal or reptile (non insect) ever with more than four legs?

 

• A bloodthirsty God – Clearly God is not a vegetarian. His disdain for the ‘fruit of the ground’ resulted in the first murder, by the first offspring, by his very first creation. Didn’t he judge all his creation ‘good’? What kind of being could only be appeased by blood shed? Why did an innocent animal have to be slaughtered to satisfy God’s bloodthirst? How many lives, both animal and human, were lost in order to appease God’s need for bloodshed?

 

• You can’t blame the parents – What kind of parents were Adam and Eve if their first son becomes a killer? Could they really be expected to have done any better? Cast out by a thoughtless, heartless, vengeful, evil God for being too innocent to see through the deceptions of a being almost as powerful as God himself, left to fend for themselves with little or no guidance from their creator (we didn’t ask to be created, you know!), it’s no surprise they did such a piss poor job.

 

• Who were these companions of God? – As revealed in Gen 1:26 & Gen 3:22 God had companions in the ‘nowhere’ he existed in before he created everything. If not angels, who were they?

 

• Flawed from the start – A ‘vast’ number of angels side with Satan in the rebellion in heaven. Matt 25:41. Why is it, that even before the earth and humanity is created, already those who know God are dissatisfied with him?

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the top Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

BIBLICAL INCONSISTENCIES

 

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” – Albert Einstein

**This post was recently revised to simplify things. It now contains all the separate posts together in one. When you wish to comment on a specific point please copy and paste it at the top of your comment so as to not confuse anybody. Also, if you wish to review any past comments all you need to do is scroll down and click the original individual post titles located just below this one.

  

• I see you! No you don’t! Ex 33:20 –“Thou canst not see my face, for there shall be no man see me and live.” AND John 6:46 – “Not that any man hath seen the Father.” Jesus is speaking. BUT THEN Ex 33:11 – “The Lord spake unto Moses face to face.” And Jacob claimed, “For I have seen God face to face & my life is preserved.” Gen 32:30. AND DON’T FORGET Deut 34:10 – “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.”

 

• Who and how many? John 10:30 – “I and my Father are one.” (Jesus’s words). John 14:9 – “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” John 17:22 – “…even as we are one.” (Jesus’s words). AND THEN – John 14:28 – “My Father is greater than I.” (Jesus’s words). Luke 18:19 – “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? None is good, save one, that is, God.”

 

• Jesus can’t be the Messiah – If Jesus is the son of God and Joseph’s seed had nothing to do with his creation (Mary was a virgin after all), then he isn’t Joseph’s son and is not of the line of David which is a requirement of being the Messiah.

 

• Stop confusing the two – Luke is the only book to mention the angel of the Lord visiting any shepherds to tell them of Jesus’ birth. And only Matthew mentions the ‘wise men’. There is absolutely no evidence that the shepherds and the wise men are the same people.

 

• Why can’t anyone agree on such an amazing event? – Matthew, Mark and Luke mention the following events at the crucifixion: the veil of the temple being rent and it becoming dark from the sixth to the ninth hour, however only Matthew mentions that there was an earthquake, and the graves opened and bodies of the saints arose and went into Jerusalem, appearing to many (so beating Jesus to the resurrection). Only John speaks of Jesus’ side being pierced.

 

• Jesus, such an inapropriately shy guy – Only Matthew mentions that the Jews asked Pilate for a guard to prevent the body of Jesus from being stolen by the disciples, and for the tomb to be sealed. No wonder the Jews don’t accept Jesus as the Messiah. Considering Jesus made no appearances to any who wasn’t already a believer after his ‘resurrection’, the Jews who believed the disciples would try and steal the body must have believed that is exactly what occurred.

 

• An Inconsistant Resurrection – Matthew says that there was an earthquake at Jesus’ tomb and an angel came down, rolled back the stone and sat upon it, then spoke to Mary Magdalene and Mary, mother of Jesus. Then Jesus appears and they go to tell the disciples. Mark says that the women who visited the tomb found the stone rolled away, entered the tomb and saw an angel sitting on the right side. The angel speaks to them and Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene. Luke says the women found the stone rolled away and entered the tomb. Two angels appeared to them. John says Mary Magdalene found the stone rolled away and told Peter and John, who went to the tomb and entered it. Mary stooped down and looked into the tomb, sees two angels, one at the head and one at the feet. They spoke to her. Jesus the appeared to her, but she fails to recognize him at first!

 

• Does any of this make a lick of sense to anyone? – Whom Jesus appeared to after the resurrection once again differs depending on the book. Matthew says an angel at the tomb told the two Marys, and that Jesus also told them, to tell the disciples to meet him in Galilee (thank God they were there). The disciples then went to a mountain previously agreed upon, and met Jesus there. This would be Jesus’ only appearance, except to the two Marys. Matthew devotes only five verses to this visit with the disciples. Mark says that Jesus walked with two of the disciples in the country, and that they told the rest of the disciples, who refused to believe. Later he appeared to the eleven disciples at mealtime. Luke says two followers went, the same day that Jesus rose from the dead, to Emmaus, a village eight miles from Jerusalem, and there Jesus joined them but was unrecognized. It wasn’t until later, while eating a meal together that they recognize Jesus, who then promptly disappears. Returning with impossible haste back to Jerusalem, they told the disciples their experience, and suddenly Jesus appeared among them, frightening them. Jesus then eats and preaches to them. John says Jesus appeared to the disciples the evening of the day he arose, in Jerusalem, where they were hiding. He breathed the Holy Ghost upon them (?), but Thomas was not present and refused to believe. Eight days later Jesus joined the disciples again at the same place, and this time he convinced Thomas. Once more Jesus made an appearance to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias but again was not recognized. After telling them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat, Jesus becomes known to them and prepares bread and fish for them. They all eat together as they converse.

 

• I’m sorry but you’re not on the list – Both Paul and Peter claim that none who lived between Moses and Christ are eligible for everlasting life AND YET, Jesus says, “When ye shall see Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets, in the Kingdom of God…” Luke 13:28.

 

• Why the big hurry? – Mark 16:19 – In Mark Jesus rises from the dead, gets everything done and ascends into heaven all in one day.

 

• Why are there armys of God at all? – II Kings 19:35 – Why does God need men to die fighting his battles at all if he can send an angel, who in one night, kills 185,000 Assyrians who are threatening Jerusalem?

 

• We may need a judge’s ruling on this one – Lev 19:15 God says, “In righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor.” But in Matt 7:1 Jesus says, “…judge not that ye be not judged.”

 

• Yes, but it doesn’t say impossible! – Prov 18:11 “The rich man’s wealth is his strongest city.” But in Mark 10:25 Jesus teaches, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

 

• Here forever, gone tomorrow – Eccles. 1:4 – “The earth abideth forever.”  But in II Peter 3:10 – “The earth … and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”

 

• Keep it holy, unless the game’s on – Ex 20:8 – “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” But in Romans 14:5 Paul equivocates: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”

 

• Don’t forget to turn the other cheek before you pluck out his eye – Ex 21:24 – “An eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But in Matt 5:38, 39 Jesus says to turn the other cheek.

 

• Sunday, Bloody Sunday – Ex 20:13 – “Thou shalt not kill.” Relayed by Moses, a murderer. He would also mastermind the slaughter of thousands during the long march to reach Palestine. And not long after laying down this holy law, in Ex 32:27 Moses ordered: “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.” And in Luke 22:36 even Jesus said, “… and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” What is a sword for but to kill another?

 

• Should a sinner never procreate then? – Ez 18:20 – “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father…” But God told Moses in Ex 20:5: “…for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation…”

 

• God is Love … Unless you piss him off! – Jer 17:4 – “…for ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn for ever.” These are God’s words. But in I John 4:16 “God is love.”

 

• Mercy, mercy me – I Sam 15:2, 3 – “Thus saith the Lord … Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” AND Ex 12:29 – “And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.” Oh, but James 5:11 – “…that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” People who abhor the killing of babies sing praises to this author of wholesale bloodshed against them.

 

• It’s all about the bloodshed, baby – In Romans 15:33 Paul speaks of “…the god of Peace.” And Christians refer to Jesus as the Prince of Peace. But Jesus himself said in Matt 10:34 – “…I came not to send peace, but a sword.” And in the Old Ex 15:3, God is described thusly, “The Lord is a man of war”

 

• It was the Aliens I tell ya! – Both Elijah (II Kings 2:11) and Enoch (Gen 5:24) were taken bodily into heaven but Jesus claims this distinction only for himself in John 3:13 – “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.”

 

• Depends on who you ask, I guess – In Matthew 5:32 that a man may divorce his wife for ‘fornication’. But in Luke and Mark Jesus says divorce is not permitted for any reason and, “Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.” Luke 16:18.

 

• Vampirism – The Old Testament God made a covenant with Noah and Abraham that the eating of blood would not be part of the Jewish diet, but Jesus offers his blood symbolically to be drunk by the disciples during the Last Supper. The Catholics actually believe the ceremonial wine they drink ‘becomes’ the blood of Jesus upon consumption.

 

• Make room for the Gentile ‘dogs’ – The bible makes it very clear that only the Jews are the chosen people, Jesus even calls Gentiles “dogs”. But in Romans 2:10 it says God will give “glory, honor and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile.” So the Gentile is welcome, but needs to know their place (beneath the Jew).

 

• Paul: Writer of his own rules – According to Paul, “Where there is no law (before Moses) there is no transgression.” Romans 4:15. So God killed all those people for nothing then? Certainly Adam and Eve were punished before any law was laid down.

 

• Are these guys two different people or something? – Paul’s ‘biography’ is outlined in Acts and his ‘autobiography’ is written in Galatians. They are completely contradictory.

 

• The Son of God, NOT the Son of Joseph – When listing the ancestry of Jesus (which should only be one: God), Matthew compromises 28 generations and Luke lists 43. Only David, Joseph, Salathiel and Zorobabel appear in both lists. Jesus is simply not an ancestor of David as Joseph’s seed had nothing to do with his creation. Therefore, Jesus could not be the Messiah. AND YET, Jesus states in Rev. 22:16 “I am the root and the offspring of David.”

 

• What? No one had a watch? – The time of the crucifixion is reported in Mark as the third hour (9am) but in John it is the sixth hour (noon).

 

• So they couldn’t tell time either? – The time of the resurrection, according to Matthew, was Sunday at dawn, and in Mark the sun was rising, and in John it was dark.

 

• Same event, SO many different versions – According to Matthew, those witnessing the crucifixion are: many afar off, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and the mother of Zebedee’s children. But Mark and Luke tell of many afar off, Mark includes Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James the Less. John states Jesus’ mother stood at the cross, along with her sister and Mary Magdalene.

 

• Was there a guard or not? – Only the book of Matthew depicts a request for a guard to be placed at the door to Jesus’ tomb and for it to be sealed.

 

• More evidence that the bible can’t be relied on – Those who visit the tomb, according to Matthew, the two Marys. Mark says it was the two Marys, Joses and Salome. Luke says the two Marys, Joanna, other women and Peter. John says Mary Magdalene alone (!?), and later Peter and John.

 

• Yeah, that makes sense – In the book of Matthew it says the guard at the tomb of Jesus was paid to tell everyone that the disciples stole Jesus’ body. No other Gospel mentions this. So let me understand, the guard requested by the Jews, who believed the disciples were going to steal Jesus’ body, and assigned by Pilate to guard Jesus’ tomb, claims to have witnessed the disciples stealing Jesus’ body just as the Jews had feared would occur and that Jesus wasn’t in fact resurrected from the dead and Matthew quickly explains that, oh yeah, he was paid to say that.

 

• The Inconsistincies of The Ascension – Matthew & John do not mention the ascension of Jesus into heaven at all. Mark casually states Jesus was received into heaven after talking to the disciples in Jerusalem. Luke says Jesus led the disciples to Bethany and while he blessed them, he was parted from them and carried up into heaven. Such a significant event and yet treated so off-hand and perfunctory and only two of the apostles mention it and they can’t agree on the location. But then Acts contradicts all four stating that Jesus visited the apostles for forty days and “…while they beheld, he was taken up: and a cloud received him out of their sight.” Acts 1:3-11. AND Paul states 500 people saw Jesus, even claiming he (Paul) saw him. I Cor. 15:6, 8. AND it reveals the primitive way the writers of the bible thought. WHERE DID THEY THINK HEAVEN WAS? Floating on some cloud somewhere so Jesus could just glide on up and come in for a perfect landing on an airstrip made of gold?

 

• Why doesn’t the math in the bible EVER add up? – According to Matthew there were 63 generations between Adam and Jesus. How can this be if men such as Adam (930 years) and Methuselah (969 years) lived so long? And did any women live that long? If not, why not? Is that why men had so many wives and concubines?

 

• NEW vs. OLD (different religions, different gods) – The Old and New Testaments seem to represent two different religions and two different gods. The God of the Old is all about the Jews and the Gentiles (non Jews) are basically doomed. The God of the New basically reverses this, even consigning his former favorites to burn in hell for continuing to trust in the ‘Old Promise’. AND if one believes the words of Joseph Smith (Mormonism) then God changes his mind once again (and in a pretty drastic way, at that), the same of one who believes in Mohammed’s words.

 

• The Two Gods of the Bible – God of the Old Testament would enact great and immediate revenge on those who opposed him or challenged him. The New Testament God, by comparison, is practically impotent. Are people aware that the reason the old and new testament are usually separate books is because they represent two different religions and two different gods?

 

• I need a little clarification here – John 3:36 says only belief on Jesus is necessary to get into heaven but James 2:26 says “…Faith without works is dead.” suggesting that more than just belief in Jesus is required. So which is it?

 

• Incest is best … or not – Why is incest or brothers having sex with brother’s widows etc depicted in the bible but in Lev. 18:6, 9, 15, 16, 20 it clearly says it is a no-no? “None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness:… The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover … Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter in law: she is thy son’s wife; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness … Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife: it is thy brother’s nakedness … Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour’s wife, to defile thyself with her.”

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the top Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

ANGELS

 

“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” – Susan Brownell Anthony

**This post was recently revised to simplify things. It now contains all the separate posts together in one. When you wish to comment on a specific point please copy and paste it at the top of your comment so as to not confuse any body. Also, if you wish to review any past comments please click on the comment archive link just beneath this post (or just click here).

  

• All I need is one provable sighting to renew my faith – Why are angels so commonly seen and interacted with and active in the bible but now … nothing but empty claims?

 

• Were/are the angels minorgods? – The angels seem to be gods themselves. They are powerful and, like God, they existed before the earth’s creation, some even rising up against God in a rebellion. The bible seems to suggest there were many gods and God was either just the most powerful or simply the first to act to take charge.

 

• And you are? – Judges 13:16 – “For Manoah knew not that he was an angel of the Lord.” Why do people sometimes not recognize an angel for what it is?

 

• Was the earth really created to hold the cast out angels? – Matt 25:41 – has Jesus declaring that hell was prepared for the Devil & his angels. And just when did God prepare hell for Satan & his host if Satan & the other angels rebelled and were cast out before earth was created.

 

• When to send in the muscle – II Kings 19:35 – depicts an Angel who kills 185,000 Assyrians overnight, all by himself. Why didn’t God just always put the Angels to work in this manner? Why the dramatics with Sodom and Gomorrah and the Flood? Why all the God started wars and invasions? If Satan and all the other Angels that stood with him were all as powerful as this Angel, what must the rebellion in heaven been like? Are angels gods? In any other religion they would be.

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the top Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

A Manipulative God

 

“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.” – Robert M. Pirsig

**This post was recently revised to simplify things. It now contains all the separate posts together in one. When you wish to comment on a specific point please copy and paste it at the top of your comment so as to not confuse any body. Also, if you wish to review any past comments please click on the comment archive link just beneath this post (or just click here).  

 

• So Unnecessary – As a direct result of his own actions (curses, humankind born sinners, etc.) God must come to earth as a specimen of his own creation & cause himself to be put to a hideous death in order to redeem humanity from the condemnation which he himself imposed upon it. And don’t forget the resulting deaths for those who followed Jesus. 

 

• Voter Tampering – Romans 11:7, 8 – “What then, Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for, but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded according as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear.” Isn’t this voter tampering. This is a major crime now. 

 

• So vile, this god’s behaviour – Another example of how God manipulates man. In order to bring about his desired outcome (the death of King Ahab), I Kings 22:20-23 says, “And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramothgilead? …And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him … I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he (God) said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee.” Now check this out – Ez. 14:9 “And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him.” Why not ‘stretch out’ your hand and destroy King Ahab? 

 

• Reign O’er Me – James 5:17 states that in answer to Elijah’s prayers, God made it not rain on earth for three years and six months! If this really happened, all life on earth would have come to an end, but perhaps those in the sea. As a result of God’s actions a great famine causes some Jews to eat their children.

 

• Quick, get an editor in here! In Josh. 10:12-14 Joshua, desiring a longer day for his armies, commands the sun and moon to stand still. And they do. Here the level of ignorance of the workings of the universe by those who wrote the stories of the bible is in evidence as the sun is already still. It is the earth itself that is moving. “So the sun stood still in the midst of the heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.”

 

• Moon Light – Isaiah 13:10 – “The moon shall not cause her light to shine.” How can an all knowing God allow such ignorance of the world be depicted in His Holy Word?

 

• Hornets from God – Ex 23:28, 30 – Describes how God wanted Moses and the Jews to overrun & seize the seven nations of Canaan & how God would send hornets to drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite and the Hittite. Another example of God being directly involved. Why doesn’t he send swarms of hornets against the Palestinians in current Israel? 

 

Please visit my main page (https://doubtingthomas426.wordpress.com/) to gain a better understanding of where I am coming from. There you will find all my observations regarding religion and the bible categorized on the top Right hand side of the page. Please feel free to read through them and leave a comment or two if you like.

Phyllis Diller

Phyllis Diller: (1917– ), American comedian.

“Religion is such a medieval idea. Don’t get me started. … Aahh, it’s all about money…”

Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler – English novelist, essayist and critic, 1835-1902: “[If] God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.”

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce (1842 – 1914) US author & satirist:  Ocean: A body of water occupying 2/3 of a world made for man…who has no gills.

Cardinal Bellarmine

Cardinal Bellarmine,  [Galileo’s inquisitor] – To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov (1920 – 1992) US science fiction novelist & scholar: ”The Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”

Susan Brownell Anthony

Susan Brownell Anthony [1820-1906], American reformer and leader of the woman-suffrage movement: – I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

Aristotle

Aristotle: “Men create the gods after their own images.”

Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte – Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

Napoleon Bonaparte – Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

Steven Weinberg

Steven Weinberg, US physicist, Nobel Prize winner (1933 – ):

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

“Anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.”

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie, Novelist [1947-]: 

 I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in.

 If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it. 

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas – uncertainty, progress, change – into crimes. 

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln – The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.

Robert Heinlein

Robert Heinlein – The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.

Bill Gates

Bill Gates – “Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.”

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein – “I cannot conceive of a God who would reward or punish his creatures, or who has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves.” 

Albert Einstein – A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Robert G. Ingersoll – Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains. 

Robert G. Ingersoll – Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that hope.

Robert G. Ingersoll: The Bible presents a “God who upholds slavery, commands soldiers to kill women and babies, supports polygamy, persecutes people for their opinions, and punishes unbelievers forever.”

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell – What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires — desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

 Bertrand Russell – I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion is anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.

Henry Mencken

Henry Mencken –  “We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart.” “Puritanism – the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” “Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration – courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.”

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson: (1743-1826), third U.S. president.“I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies.”“Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man. … perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind … a mere contrivance [for the clergy] to filch wealth and power to themselves.”“In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty, he is always in allegiance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own. … History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. … Political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves [of public ignorance] for their own purpose.”“I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.”

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass: (1818-1895), African-American abolitionist leader.“I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”“The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. … For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done!”“We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand in hand.”

Phil Donahue

Phil Donahue:

From Donahue’s 1985 book The Human Animal:“Science may have come a long way, but as far as religion is concerned, we are first cousins to the !Kung tribesmen of the Kalahari Desert. Except for the garments, their deep religious trances might just as well be happening at a revival meeting or in the congregation of a fundamentalist TV preacher. … As we move further from the life of ignorance and superstition in which religion has its roots, we seem to need it more and more. … Why has religion become a force just when we’d have thought it would be losing ground to secularism?”

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins:

“Could we get some otherwise normal humans and somehow persuade them that they are not going to die as a consequence of flying a plane smack into a skyscraper? … The afterlifeobsessed suicidal brain really is a weapon of immense power and danger. It is comparable to a smart missile. …Yet … it is very very cheap. …To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.” – 2001

“[A letter to a U.K. newspaper] says ‘science provides an explanation of the mechanism of the [December 2004 Asian] tsunami but it cannot say why this occurred any more than religion can.’ There, in one sentence, we have the religious mind displayed before us in all its absurdity. In what sense of the word ‘why’, does plate tectonics not provide the answer? Not only does science know why the tsunami happened, it can give precious hours of warning. If a small fraction of the tax breaks handed out to churches, mosques and synagogues had been diverted into an early warning system, tens of thousands of people, now dead, would have been moved to safety. Let’s get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering.”

Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine – Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.

Thomas Paine describes the Bible as “a book of lies and contradictions, the work of a demon” more than “the word of God,” and denounced its “obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries . . . the unrelenting vindictiveness.”

Thomas Paine, in The Age of Reason, asked: “Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.”

Thomas Paine talking about the Bible:

“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.”

Sam Harris – There is No God (And You Know It)

Sam Harris

There is No God (And You Know It)

 Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe — at this very moment — that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?No. The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want. It is worth noting that no one ever need identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (eighty-seven percent of the population) who claim to “never doubt the existence of God” should be obliged to present evidence for his existence — and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible, and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.Consider: the city of New Orleans was recently destroyed by hurricane Katrina. At least a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and over a million have been displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: these poor people spent their lives in the company of an imaginary friend. Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm “of biblical proportions” would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. And yet, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that eighty percent of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.As hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran. Indeed, their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace. Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is — and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all. Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man. There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion — to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources — is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.This is an excerpt from An Atheist Manifesto, to be published at www.truthdig.com.

Richard Dawkins – Why There Almost Certainly Is No God

Richard Dawkins

Why There Almost Certainly Is No God

America, founded in secularism as a beacon of eighteenth century enlightenment, is becoming the victim of religious politics, a circumstance that would have horrified the Founding Fathers. The political ascendancy today values embryonic cells over adult people. It obsesses about gay marriage, ahead of genuinely important issues that actually make a difference to the world. It gains crucial electoral support from a religious constituency whose grip on reality is so tenuous that they expect to be ‘raptured’ up to heaven, leaving their clothes as empty as their minds. More extreme specimens actually long for a world war, which they identify as the ‘Armageddon’ that is to presage the Second Coming. Sam Harris, in his new short book, Letter to a Christian Nation, hits the bull’s-eye as usual:

 It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver-lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ . . .Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and ¬intellectual emergency. Does Bush check the Rapture Index daily, as Reagan did his stars? We don’t know, but would anyone be surprised?My scientific colleagues have additional reasons to declare emergency. Ignorant and absolutist attacks on stem cell research are just the tip of an iceberg. What we have here is nothing less than a global assault on rationality, and the Enlightenment values that inspired the founding of this first and greatest of secular republics. Science education – and hence the whole future of science in this country – is under threat. Temporarily beaten back in a Pennsylvania court, the ‘breathtaking inanity’ (Judge John Jones’s immortal phrase) of ‘intelligent design’ continually flares up in local bush-fires. Dowsing them is a time-consuming but important responsibility, and scientists are finally being jolted out of their complacency. For years they quietly got on with their science, lamentably underestimating the creationists who, being neither competent nor interested in science, attended to the serious political business of subverting local school boards. Scientists, and intellectuals generally, are now waking up to the threat from the American Taliban. Scientists divide into two schools of thought over the best tactics with which to face the threat. The Neville Chamberlain ‘appeasement’ school focuses on the battle for evolution. Consequently, its members identify fundamentalism as the enemy, and they bend over backwards to appease ‘moderate’ or ‘sensible’ religion (not a difficult task, for bishops and theologians despise fundamentalists as much as scientists do). Scientists of the Winston Churchill school, by contrast, see the fight for evolution as only one battle in a larger war: a looming war between supernaturalism on the one side and rationality on the other. For them, bishops and theologians belong with creationists in the supernatural camp, and are not to be appeased.The Chamberlain school accuses Churchillians of rocking the boat to the point of muddying the waters. The philosopher of science Michael Ruse wrote:We who love science must realize that the enemy of our enemies is our friend. Too often evolutionists spend time insulting would-be allies. This is especially true of secular evolutionists. Atheists spend more time running down sympathetic Christians than they do countering ¬creationists. When John Paul II wrote a letter endorsing Darwinism, Richard Dawkins’s response was simply that the pope was a hypocrite, that he could not be genuine about science and that Dawkins himself simply preferred an honest fundamentalist.A recent article in the New York Times by Cornelia Dean quotes the astronomer Owen Gingerich as saying that, by simultaneously advocating evolution and atheism, ‘Dr Dawkins “probably single-handedly makes more converts to intelligent design than any of the leading intelligent design theorists”.’ This is not the first, not the second, not even the third time this plonkingly witless point has been made (and more than one reply has aptly cited Uncle Remus: “Oh please please Brer Fox, don’t throw me in that awful briar patch”).Chamberlainites are apt to quote the late Stephen Jay Gould’s ‘NOMA’ – ‘non-overlapping magisteria’. Gould claimed that science and true religion never come into conflict because they exist in completely separate dimensions of discourse:To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God’s possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can’t comment on it as scientists.This sounds terrific, right up until you give it a moment’s thought. You then realize that the presence of a creative deity in the universe is clearly a scientific hypothesis. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more momentous hypothesis in all of science. A universe with a god would be a completely different kind of universe from one without, and it would be a scientific difference. God could clinch the matter in his favour at any moment by staging a spectacular demonstration of his powers, one that would satisfy the exacting standards of science. Even the infamous Templeton Foundation recognized that God is a scientific hypothesis – by funding double-blind trials to test whether remote prayer would speed the recovery of heart patients. It didn’t, of course, although a control group who knew they had been prayed for tended to get worse (how about a class action suit against the Templeton Foundation?) Despite such well-financed efforts, no evidence for God’s existence has yet appeared. To see the disingenuous hypocrisy of religious people who embrace NOMA, imagine that forensic archeologists, by some unlikely set of circumstances, discovered DNA evidence demonstrating that Jesus was born of a virgin mother and had no father. If NOMA enthusiasts were sincere, they should dismiss the archeologists’ DNA out of hand: “Irrelevant. Scientific evidence has no bearing on theological questions. Wrong magisterium.” Does anyone seriously imagine that they would say anything remotely like that? You can bet your boots that not just the fundamentalists but every professor of theology and every bishop in the land would trumpet the archeological evidence to the skies.Either Jesus had a father or he didn’t. The question is a scientific one, and scientific evidence, if any were available, would be used to settle it. The same is true of any miracle – and the deliberate and intentional creation of the universe would have to have been the mother and father of all miracles. Either it happened or it didn’t. It is a fact, one way or the other, and in our state of uncertainty we can put a probability on it – an estimate that may change as more information comes in. Humanity’s best estimate of the probability of divine creation dropped steeply in 1859 when The Origin of Species was published, and it has declined steadily during the subsequent decades, as evolution consolidated itself from plausible theory in the nineteenth century to established fact today.The Chamberlain tactic of snuggling up to ‘sensible’ religion, in order to present a united front against (‘intelligent design’) creationists, is fine if your central concern is the battle for evolution. That is a valid central concern, and I salute those who press it, such as Eugenie Scott in Evolution versus Creationism. But if you are concerned with the stupendous scientific question of whether the universe was created by a supernatural intelligence or not, the lines are drawn completely differently. On this larger issue, fundamentalists are united with ‘moderate’ religion on one side, and I find myself on the other.Of course, this all presupposes that the God we are talking about is a personal intelligence such as Yahweh, Allah, Baal, Wotan, Zeus or Lord Krishna. If, by ‘God’, you mean love, nature, goodness, the universe, the laws of physics, the spirit of humanity, or Planck’s constant, none of the above applies. An American student asked her professor whether he had a view about me. ‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘He’s positive science is incompatible with religion, but he waxes ecstatic about nature and the universe. To me, that is ¬religion!’ Well, if that’s what you choose to mean by religion, fine, that makes me a religious man. But if your God is a being who designs universes, listens to prayers, forgives sins, wreaks miracles, reads your thoughts, cares about your welfare and raises you from the dead, you are unlikely to be satisfied. As the distinguished American physicist Steven Weinberg said, “If you want to say that ‘God is energy,’ then you can find God in a lump of coal.” But don’t expect congregations to flock to your church.When Einstein said ‘Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?’ he meant ‘Could the universe have begun in more than one way?’ ‘God does not play dice’ was Einstein’s poetic way of doubting Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle. Einstein was famously irritated when theists misunderstood him to mean a personal God. But what did he expect? The hunger to misunderstand should have been palpable to him. ‘Religious’ physicists usually turn out to be so only in the Einsteinian sense: they are atheists of a poetic disposition. So am I. But, given the widespread yearning for that great misunderstanding, deliberately to confuse Einsteinian pantheism with supernatural religion is an act of intellectual high treason.Accepting, then, that the God Hypothesis is a proper scientific hypothesis whose truth or falsehood is hidden from us only by lack of evidence, what should be our best estimate of the probability that God exists, given the evidence now available? Pretty low I think, and here’s why.First, most of the traditional arguments for God’s existence, from Aquinas on, are easily demolished. Several of them, such as the First Cause argument, work by setting up an infinite regress which God is wheeled out to terminate. But we are never told why God is magically able to terminate regresses while needing no explanation himself. To be sure, we do need some kind of explanation for the origin of all things. Physicists and cosmologists are hard at work on the problem. But whatever the answer – a random quantum fluctuation or a Hawking/Penrose singularity or whatever we end up calling it – it will be simple. Complex, statistically improbable things, by definition, don’t just happen; they demand an explanation in their own right. They are impotent to terminate regresses, in a way that simple things are not. The first cause cannot have been an intelligence – let alone an intelligence that answers prayers and enjoys being worshipped. Intelligent, creative, complex, statistically improbable things come late into the universe, as the product of evolution or some other process of gradual escalation from simple beginnings. They come late into the universe and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it.Another of Aquinas’ efforts, the Argument from Degree, is worth spelling out, for it epitomises the characteristic flabbiness of theological reasoning. We notice degrees of, say, goodness or temperature, and we measure them, Aquinas said, by reference to a maximum:Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus, as fire, which is the maximum of heat, is the cause of all hot things . . . Therefore, there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.That’s an argument? You might as well say that people vary in smelliness but we can make the judgment only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God. Or substitute any dimension of comparison you like, and derive an equivalently fatuous conclusion. That’s theology.The only one of the traditional arguments for God that is widely used today is the teleological argument, sometimes called the Argument from Design although – since the name begs the question of its validity – it should better be called the Argument for Design. It is the familiar ‘watchmaker’ argument, which is surely one of the most superficially plausible bad arguments ever discovered – and it is rediscovered by just about everybody until they are taught the logical fallacy and Darwin’s brilliant alternative.In the familiar world of human artifacts, complicated things that look designed are designed. To naïve observers, it seems to follow that similarly complicated things in the natural world that look designed – things like eyes and hearts – are designed too. It isn’t just an argument by analogy. There is a semblance of statistical reasoning here too – fallacious, but carrying an illusion of plausibility. If you randomly scramble the fragments of an eye or a leg or a heart a million times, you’d be lucky to hit even one combination that could see, walk or pump. This demonstrates that such devices could not have been put together by chance. And of course, no sensible scientist ever said they could. Lamentably, the scientific education of most British and American students omits all mention of Darwinism, and therefore the only alternative to chance that most people can imagine is design.Even before Darwin’s time, the illogicality was glaring: how could it ever have been a good idea to postulate, in explanation for the existence of improbable things, a designer who would have to be even more improbable? The entire argument is a logical non-starter, as David Hume realized before Darwin was born. What Hume didn’t know was the supremely elegant alternative to both chance and design that Darwin was to give us. Natural selection is so stunningly powerful and elegant, it not only explains the whole of life, it raises our consciousness and boosts our confidence in science’s future ability to explain everything else. Natural selection is not just an alternative to chance. It is the only ultimate alternative ever suggested. Design is a workable explanation for organized complexity only in the short term. It is not an ultimate explanation, because designers themselves demand an explanation. If, as Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel once playfully speculated, life on this planet was deliberately seeded by a payload of bacteria in the nose cone of a rocket, we still need an explanation for the intelligent aliens who dispatched the rocket. Ultimately they must have evolved by gradual degrees from simpler beginnings. Only evolution, or some kind of gradualistic ‘crane’ (to use Daniel Dennett’s neat term), is capable of terminating the regress. Natural selection is an anti-chance process, which gradually builds up complexity, step by tiny step. The end product of this ratcheting process is an eye, or a heart, or a brain – a device whose improbable complexity is utterly baffling until you spot the gentle ramp that leads up to it.Whether my conjecture is right that evolution is the only explanation for life in the universe, there is no doubt that it is the explanation for life on this planet. Evolution is a fact, and it is among the more secure facts known to science. But it had to get started somehow. Natural selection cannot work its wonders until certain minimal conditions are in place, of which the most important is an accurate system of replication – DNA, or something that works like DNA.The origin of life on this planet – which means the origin of the first self-replicating molecule – is hard to study, because it (probably) only happened once, 4 billion years ago and under very different conditions from those with which we are familiar. We may never know how it happened. Unlike the ordinary evolutionary events that followed, it must have been a genuinely very improbable – in the sense of unpredictable – event: too improbable, perhaps, for chemists to reproduce it in the laboratory or even devise a plausible theory for what happened. This weirdly paradoxical conclusion – that a chemical account of the origin of life, in order to be plausible, has to be implausible – would follow if it were the case that life is extremely rare in the universe. And indeed we have never encountered any hint of extraterrestrial life, not even by radio – the circumstance that prompted Enrico Fermi’s cry: “Where is everybody?” Suppose life’s origin on a planet took place through a hugely improbable stroke of luck, so improbable that it happens on only one in a billion planets. The National Science Foundation would laugh at any chemist whose proposed research had only a one in a hundred chance of succeeding, let alone one in a billion. Yet, given that there are at least a billion billion planets in the universe, even such absurdly low odds as these will yield life on a billion planets. And – this is where the famous anthropic principle comes in – Earth has to be one of them, because here we are.If you set out in a spaceship to find the one planet in the galaxy that has life, the odds against your finding it would be so great that the task would be indistinguishable, in practice, from impossible. But if you are alive (as you manifestly are if you are about to step into a spaceship) you needn’t bother to go looking for that one planet because, by definition, you are already standing on it. The anthropic principle really is rather elegant. By the way, I don’t actually think the origin of life was as improbable as all that. I think the galaxy has plenty of islands of life dotted about, even if the islands are too spaced out for any one to hope for a meeting with any other. My point is only that, given the number of planets in the universe, the origin of life could in theory be as lucky as a blindfolded golfer scoring a hole in one. The beauty of the anthropic principle is that, even in the teeth of such stupefying odds against, it still gives us a perfectly satisfying explanation for life’s presence on our own planet.The anthropic principle is usually applied not to planets but to universes. Physicists have suggested that the laws and constants of physics are too good – as if the universe were set up to favour our eventual evolution. It is as though there were, say, half a dozen dials representing the major constants of physics. Each of the dials could in principle be tuned to any of a wide range of values. Almost all of these knob-twiddlings would yield a universe in which life would be impossible. Some universes would fizzle out within the first picosecond. Others would contain no elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. In yet others, matter would never condense into stars (and you need stars in order to forge the elements of chemistry and hence life). You can estimate the very low odds against the six knobs all just happening to be correctly tuned, and conclude that a divine knob-twiddler must have been at work. But, as we have already seen, that explanation is vacuous because it begs the biggest question of all. The divine knob twiddler would himself have to have been at least as improbable as the settings of his knobs.Again, the anthropic principle delivers its devastatingly neat solution. Physicists already have reason to suspect that our universe – everything we can see – is only one universe among perhaps billions. Some theorists postulate a multiverse of foam, where the universe we know is just one bubble. Each bubble has its own laws and constants. Our familiar laws of physics are parochial bylaws. Of all the universes in the foam, only a minority has what it takes to generate life. And, with anthropic hindsight, we obviously have to be sitting in a member of that minority, because, well, here we are, aren’t we? As physicists have said, it is no accident that we see stars in our sky, for a universe without stars would also lack the chemical elements necessary for life. There may be universes whose skies have no stars: but they also have no inhabitants to notice the lack. Similarly, it is no accident that we see a rich diversity of living species: for an evolutionary process that is capable of yielding a species that can see things and reflect on them cannot help producing lots of other species at the same time. The reflective species must be surrounded by an ecosystem, as it must be surrounded by stars.The anthropic principle entitles us to postulate a massive dose of luck in accounting for the existence of life on our planet. But there are limits. We are allowed one stroke of luck for the origin of evolution, and perhaps for a couple of other unique events like the origin of the eukaryotic cell and the origin of consciousness. But that’s the end of our entitlement to large-scale luck. We emphatically cannot invoke major strokes of luck to account for the illusion of design that glows from each of the billion species of living creature that have ever lived on Earth. The evolution of life is a general and continuing process, producing essentially the same result in all species, however different the details.Contrary to what is sometimes alleged, evolution is a predictive science. If you pick any hitherto unstudied species and subject it to minute scrutiny, any evolutionist will confidently predict that each individual will be observed to do everything in its power, in the particular way of the species – plant, herbivore, carnivore, nectivore or whatever it is – to survive and propagate the DNA that rides inside it. We won’t be around long enough to test the prediction but we can say, with great confidence, that if a comet strikes Earth and wipes out the mammals, a new fauna will rise to fill their shoes, just as the mammals filled those of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And the range of parts played by the new cast of life’s drama will be similar in broad outline, though not in detail, to the roles played by the mammals, and the dinosaurs before them, and the mammal-like reptiles before the dinosaurs. The same rules are predictably being followed, in millions of species all over the globe, and for hundreds of millions of years. Such a general observation requires an entirely different explanatory principle from the anthropic principle that explains one-off events like the origin of life, or the origin of the universe, by luck. That entirely different principle is natural selection.We explain our existence by a combination of the anthropic principle and Darwin’s principle of natural selection. That combination provides a complete and deeply satisfying explanation for everything that we see and know. Not only is the god hypothesis unnecessary. It is spectacularly unparsimonious. Not only do we need no God to explain the universe and life. God stands out in the universe as the most glaring of all superfluous sore thumbs. We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can’t disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can’t disprove, we can say that God is very very improbable.

Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the author of nine books, including The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker and The Ancestor’s Tale. His new book, The God Delusion, published by Houghton Mifflin, is a NEW YORK TIMES bestseller, and his Foundation for Reason and Science launched at the same time (see RichardDawkins.net).

Will Power

The bible suggests that God is responsible for everything that happens, it’s God’s plan. But when horrible things happen, Satan often will get the blame. So is God then not powerful enough to overcome Satan’s wishes? Whoes will is stronger?

How Can A Perfect God, Who Makes No Mistakes, Regret?

God orders Saul to kill all the Amalekites but Saul fails to do so. Even though God himself chose Saul to be the first Jewish king, God says, “It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king.” I Sam 15:11

The Curious Times God Chooses To Punish

King Herod, who earlier was responsible for the slaughter of so many innocent babies and little children, is making a speech and acting all mighty and god-like. God doesn’t like this so he decides to intervene and use his superpowers. Acts 12:23 – “And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.” So King Herod isn’t either punished nor prevented from his earlier atrocities but, oh boy, act a little full of yourself and God personally interferes in the lives of his creation.

If the Statement is True, Your Religion Is Vile

God created man imperfect & allowed Satan to cause their downfall, after which he would re-instate them only when he had forced them to kill him, ingest his body and rejoice in this plan for salvation.

How To Spread The Word Of God?

How was God’s word supposed to be spread? If he was unwilling to reveal himself & speak his message himself, how? Most of the world was illiterate. There was very little written communication & even less travel, many areas of the world not yet discovered. 2,000 years have elapsed and most people are still destined for hell, either because they have not heard of Christianity or because the salvation legend is especially vulnerable to skepticism.

Show Me One Example Of Perfection

If God is perfect and without fault, why does he consistently make such blundering errors? The civil war in heaven, the flawed creation of humankind on multiple occasions that often lead to mass murder on God’s part, which he occasionally apologizes for (w/ a rainbow, gee thanks), etc.

To Be Fair, Jacob DID Stop Bathing A Month Before The Match

In Gen. 32:24-32 Jacob wrestles with God! During this bizarre incident God touches Jacob’s thigh and dislocates it. But Jacob still prevails over God! God pleads with Jacob to release him but Jacob will only release him after God blesses him. As a result of this incident, Jews will not eat of “the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh.” Are the Jewish people insane? How do they justify such a bizarre reasoning?

THE CRUELTY OF THE CREATOR

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.” – George Bernard Shaw

God Punishes More Innocent People Than Guilty

Why does God insist on punishing the innocent throughout the bible? Ex 34:6,7 – “… and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children & upon the children’s children, unto the third and fourth generation.” And there are many, many more examples.

Sorry About Getting Your Husband Killed. Wanna Get Married?

I Sam 25:38 – “And it came to pass that the Lord smote Nabal that he died.” This was to punish Nabal for not offering food to David and his men, total strangers to Nabal. Was this a lesson to Nabal or us? Oh, and David marries Nabal’s widow. Lucky her.

God Wants You To F**k Your Dead Brother’s Wife

Gen. 38 – Onan refuses to have sex with his dead brother’s widow, so God kills him.

Your Wife Looks Just Like Your Sister

Gen 12 – Abraham passes his wife Sarah as his sister. The Pharaoh, believing this deception, offers Abraham many animals and slaves to take Sarah into his palace (for what purpose we can only imagine). Abraham agrees to this deal because he is afraid to have his deception revealed. The Pharaoh, unaware that he had taken another man’s wife into his home, is punished by God (no punishment for Abraham) for doing just that with a number of great plagues falling upon his household.

Wife, Sister, It’s All The Same In The Bible

Gen. 20 – Abraham repeats the ol’ Sarah is my sister not my wife deception on yet another king (Abimelech), who also offers animals and servants for her. God, again punishing the wrong people, punishes the innocent by cursing all the women of the king’s family with being barren. Gen. 26:7-11 has Isaac pulling the same scheme because Rebekah is so smoking hot he is afraid if people know she is his wife they will kill him to have her. But her being his sister would prevent this how?

You’re Both Grounded

Gen 34 – Jacob’s daughter Dinah is raped by Shechem, a prince of the Hivites. Shechem agrees to be circumcised so he can marry his rape victim. He also has all the males in his city get circumcised (against their will, no doubt). A few days later Dinah’s brothers Levi and Simeon come and kill every male in the city, rescue their sister, spoil the city and take captive the women and children and animals. Their reward for rescuing their sister is to have their father scold them for doing so.

Am I Supposed To Be Impressed Or Repulsed?

Zech 8:10 – “For I set all men, every one, against his neighbor.” This is God speaking.

Isn’t this also a punishment of David?

II Sam. 6:20-23 – Michal, David’s wife, reprimands him for cavorting naked before the Ark of the Covenant in sight of the maidservants. God punishes her by not allowing her to have any children until the day of her death.

Hey, At Least God Gets You Drunk Before He Kills You

Jer. 13:13, 14 – “Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land, even the kings… and the priests, and the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with drunkenness. And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together, saith the Lord: I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them.”

I’d Really Rather You Didn’t

Jer 8:17- “For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you… and they shall bite you, saith the Lord.”

More Innocent Slaughtered By God

Jer 11:22, 23 – “Behold, I will punish them: the young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine: And there shall be no remnant of them: for I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth…”

Fouls of the Heaven is more like it

Jer 15:3 – “And I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the Lord: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy.”

What Does He Do To His Non-Chosen People

Jer 15:5, 7, 9 – “For who shall have pity upon thee, O Jerusalem? or who shall bemoan thee? … I will bereave them of children, I will destroy my people since they return not from their ways … and the residue of them will I deliver to the sword before their enemies, saith the Lord.”

Do You Need Any A-1 With That?

Jer 19:9 – “And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend…”

What ever happened to do unto others…?

Jer 50:15 – “…for it is the vengeance of the Lord: take vengeance upon her; as she hath done, do unto her.”

The Ugliness of God Revealed In The Book of Ezekiel # 1

Ez 5:10 – “Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in thee…”

The Ugliness of God Revealed In The Book of Ezekiel # 2

Ez 23: 46-47 – “For thus saith the Lord God; I will bring up a company upon them, and will give them to be removed and spoiled. And the company shall stone them with stones, and dispatch them with their swords; they shall slay their sons and their daughters, and burn up their houses with fire.”

The Ugliness of God Revealed In The Book of Ezekiel # 3

Ez 5:13 – “Thus shall mine anger be accomplished, and I will cause my fury to rest upon them, and I will be comforted…”

The Ugliness of God Revealed In The Book of Ezekiel # 4

Ez 7:4 – “And mine eye shall not spare thee, neither will I have pity…”

The Ugliness of God Revealed In The Book of Ezekiel

Ez 9:6 – “Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women…” This is God’s command.

God Never Misses An Opportunity To Slaughter The Innocent

Daniel 6:24 God’s response to Daniel being mistreated. ”…they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces.” Again with the innocent women and children being punished.

Woe unto them who are not Jewish

Deut 20:17 – “Thou shalt utterly destroy them.” Referring to the Gentile. Jer 4:7 – “Saith the Lord, the Lion (Jesus) is come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the … Gentile is on the way.” God is clearly a bigot.

Die Fag!!!! Oh, and Praise Jesus.

Lev. 20:13 – If you are gay, you should die. “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

I’m Sure This Didn’t Put A Strain On Their Father-Son Relationship

Isaac’s father is commanded by God to slaughter his own son in order to appease God with his blood. Isaac’s father agrees (!) but at the last possible minute God changes his mind. Wow, thanks God for leaving the image of my father standing over me with knife in hand burned forever into my consciousness. Not traumatic at all. And thanks dad for worshiping a God who would demand such a thing. And then turn out just to be playing one of his typical mind games.

It Pleases God To Watch People Be Murdered

To appease God, the seven sons of Saul are hanged. II Sam 21:1-9

Why The Firstborn Cattle Too?

Ex. 12:29 depicts God needlessly killing all firstborn in Egypt, even the firstborn of the captive in the dungeon and all the firstborn cattle.

Golden Images of Your Genital Boils?

To punish those who captured the Ark of the Covenant, God curses them with boils (emerods) “They had emerods in their secret parts.” And not only them but the inhabitants of any city where they take the Ark. And is only appeased when they make offerings to him of golden images of their emerods (and golden mice). Who in his right mind would worship such a god? God is one twisted fuck. I Sam. 5, 6.

Isn’t this type of behavior punishable by death?

If women of God are supposed to be so virtuous, then how do you explain Ruth’s behavior? She is a widow, her mother encourages her to get dolled up and wait for Boaz to get drunk and pass out, and then sneak into his bed and do what he tells her to do. Ruth 3:3-8. Isn’t this type of behavior punishable by death?

No Child Left Behind

There is not one instance in the bible where God spares the life of even one innocent child from the slaughter of his bloodthirsty servants. On a few occasions it may appear that he does just that when he has the female children (virgins) set aside but this is not out of kindness, these are to be ‘used’ by the conquerors. The sexual reward is always the favorite of the God fearing.

How, Exactly, Does God Come Up With These Punishments?

Jer. 19:9 – “And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend.” God’s words.

A Religion Trapped In Barbaric Blood Rituals

 Hebrews 9:22 – “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.”

It Sucks To Be You

Even God’s chosen people aren’t immune to his cruelty, in fact, it could be argued they are treated most cruelly of all. God sells Israel to the king of Mesopotamia for 8 years because the Israelites intermarried with Gentiles & worshiped gods other than him Judges 3:8. He ‘smites’ Israel and delivers the Jews to the Moabite Kings for 18 years Judges 3:14. He sells the Jews to the king of Canaan for 20yrs Judges 4:2. He delivers the Jews to the Midianites for 7 years Judges 6:1. He allows Jerusalem & Judah to fall into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years and to be under the rule of Babylonia for 70 years Judges 13:1.

Congratulations! Now F**k Off!

After many years of service and sacrifice, Moses is forbidden from entering the Promised Land because he struck a rock in anger while trying to produce water. He had early succeeded in this by God’s own instruction. Moses’ brother Aaron is also forbidden from entering even though he did nothing wrong. Num 20:11, 12 & Deut 34.

He Never Said He Was A Fair God

The only way into heaven is through Jesus Christ. If anyone ignorant of Jesus and Christianity dies, they are doomed to eternal torment and torture in Hell’s eternal hellfire. Yes, that’s fair. John 3:36 – “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” SO, a life of pure thoughts, good deeds, selflessness, sacrifice & abstinence will be rewarded by God with eternal hellfire. Nice.

Abortionist to the world

Abortion is the worst thing a Christian can think of but they worship a deity who drowned countless children, babies and pregnant women, and who slaughtered all the first born of Egypt, a direct response to Pharaoh’s refusal to ‘let my people go’. Of course, Pharaoh refused because God ‘hardened’ the Pharaoh’s heart so he would refuse. And then there are all the babies, children and pregnant women in Sodom & Gomorrah.

Pray To God That He Doesn’t Tempt You

God seems to enjoy ‘tempting’ man into doing things they will be punished for. Gen 22:1 – “God did tempt Abraham.” Matt 6:13 – “And lead us not into temptation.” This is from the Lord’s Prayer. We are encouraged to beg God nightly not to tempt us.

Obey My Will And Be Punished

In Romans 9:17-21 it is described how God made us and indeed decides our behaviors but he will still punish those that misbehave even though they are simply obeying God’s will.

God Is Responsible For What Happened To Jacob & Israel

Isaiah 42:24 – “Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not the Lord?” This is God himself asking the question.

Got Your Nose. No, Seriously, I Got Your Nose.

King Azariah fails to get rid of all the altars to idols so God makes him a leper.

Here’s My List Of All The Ways I’m Gonna F**k You Up

In Deut 32 God describes the ways he will punish Jews who are disloyal, one of which states, “…the young man and the virgin, the suckling (baby) also with the man of gray hairs (elderly).” More punishments listed in Deut 28 & Lev 26.

Again, You Want Me To Worship This Guy?

Ez 14:9 – “If the prophet be deceived, I the Lord have deceived that prophet and will stretch out my hand and destroy him.” So God is responsible for the deception and murders the one he deceived for being deceived.

He Creates Evil, Makes Use Of Evil Spirits, Is God The Devil?

I Sam 19:9 – reveals that God makes use of evil spirits, he even sends one upon Saul, causing him to hurl a Javelin at David.

None Who Create Evil Can Be Considered Good

Isaiah 45:7 – “I form the light, and I create darkness. I make peace, and I create Evil. I, the Lord, do all these things.” God creates the evil in the first place.

Why Wouldn’t You Want To Worship This Guy?

Isaiah 13:9, 15, 16 – “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it … Everyone that is found shall be thrust through: and everyone that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.”

How Does God Decide Who He Will Personally Murder?

I Sam 2:25 – “Notwithsatanding they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them.”

How Imperfect Can One God Be?

Nahum 1:2 – “God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the Lord revengeth, and is furious; the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.”-A strange emotional flaw for an all-powerful, omnipresent, ‘loving’ god to have.

Hell is Full Of Children

Children are not capable/allowed to make any decisions for themselves except whether or not to dedicate their eternal soul to God. Whether or not a child goes to heaven or hell is completely up to the child. If a parent or guardian fails to introduce them to the church soon enough and they die, they go to hell. Period!

Not Even A Baby?

When God murders everyone in Sodom & Gomorrah not a single child, infant, mother or elderly person is spared. Praise God!

Foreskin: God’s Most Bizarre Obsession

Because Moses’ child with a Midianite woman isn’t circumcised, God loses it and nearly kills Moses. Moses is only saved because Moses’ wife chops off the child’s offending foreskin with a sharp stone, casting it at Moses’ feet. Maybe if God would have made the male body right the first time we wouldn’t need this barbaric surgery.

Always With The Overkill

Deut 20:12-17 – “…thou shalt smite every male therof with the sword.” “…thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them.”

What The Hell Is Strange Fire?

Lev 10:1, 2 – For “offering strange fire before the Lord”, two sons of Aaron, priests of the Tabernacle, are killed by God. What the hell is a strange fire anyway? Good luck getting God to explain himself.

These People Never Shut Up

Num 11:1 – After being forced to march through the desert & suffer for years by God, if an Israelite complains (understandably) God will burn them with fire.

God Throws A Fit, All The Quail Die

Num 11:31-33 – When the Jews complain of the lack of meat to eat during their forced march through the desert for forty years, God gets mad (again) & sends quail to cover the ground a days travel in each direction and piled up three feet high. He then smote the Jews with a very great plague.

Another great example of one of the absurd stories of the bible. Does anybody really believe this happened? Seriously?