The truth of this world is very strange.
The book I was brought up to respect,
the book I read a thousand times as a child,
is full of more hate, violence and cruelty
than any other book on my shelf.
We ignore this by simply not reading those sections.
But they are still there.
And if you ever do decide to read the whole Bible,
you will be horrified.
Unbelievably, I would describe the Bible
as
by far
the most evil book
I have ever read.
If someone wrote such a book today
it would be classified as hate speech.
Rape In The Bible:
"few people know that the Bible often condones and even approves of rape. How anyone can get their moral guidance from a book that allows rape escapes me."
Slavery in the Bible:
"slavery is rampant throughout the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. The Bible clearly approves of slavery in many passages, and it goes so far as to tell how to obtain slaves, how hard you can beat them, and when you can have sex with the female slaves."
Murder in the Bible:
"In much of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, there are laws that command that people be killed for absurd reasons such as working on the Sabbath, being gay, cursing your parents, or not being a virgin on your wedding night. ... There are also countless examples of mass murders commanded by God, including the murder of women, infants, and children."
The author expresses well how I feel about the Bible:
"There are a lot of books that come close to inerrancy, but the bible
is not one of them. And its errors are not confined to [typos]
and poor choice of words.
Of all the books that I know of, the bible is the most errant.
It is by far the worst book I've
ever read.
I know of no other book, for example, that commands you to kill homosexuals, Sabbath breakers, nonbelievers, rape
victims who don't cry out loud enough, relatives if they believe differently than you, etc."
There are many ancient apocryphal writings that are regarded by the churches
as not divinely inspired.
There is, of course, disagreement about which ones are.
How can anyone decide?
If this is God's great opus, his rules for humanity
produced after long thought,
then why is it so useless?
There is no prohibition of rape,
rape of slaves,
sex with children,
wife beating, violence against children,
forced circumcision,
gender discrimination,
sexual orientation discrimination,
religious discrimination, ethnic discrimination,
witch hunting,
racism,
ethnic cleansing,
or even slavery.
There is no defence of freedom of religion.
There is no defence of freedom of speech,
freedom of the press,
or freedom of sexuality.
There is no defence of democracy
or a free society.
There is no opposition to dictatorship and oppression.
There is no clarification of the rules of war,
treatment of prisoners,
targeting of civilians,
the death penalty, and so on.
There is no clarification on premarital sex, masturbation,
coitus interruptus,
contraception, abortion,
mixed-race marriage,
divorce or homosexuality.
It is obvious that this is man-made
- just a set of arbitrary, confusing and hopelessly incomplete rules
written by primitive desert nomads
from an age best forgotten.
The Ten Commandments.
Why are they so rubbish?
From here.
See terms of use.
The Brick Testament
A mother trying desperately to save her child
during
The Flood.
One of the more moving images
from
The Brick Testament
by Brendan Powell Smith.
A blasphemer is stoned to death by Moses.
His Israelite mother and Egyptian father
weep for him.
Start the story
here.
From
The Brick Testament
by Brendan Powell Smith.
Verses
Disturbing verses from the Bible
Actually reading
the Bible is probably not a good idea for a believer.
For some relief after all that, the sexiest chapters of the Bible must be
Ezekiel 16 and
Ezekiel 23.
Read slowly, and savour the imagery,
though be warned that the ending is pretty gross, disturbed even.
Falsifiable statements are rare in any religion,
and most of the good ones were falsified long ago, in the early days of science.
Probably the only statement from the Bible to be falsified in our lifetime
is
Genesis 6:3,
"My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years." -
which was falsified by Jeanne Calment
when she reached the age of 121 in
1996.
Dawkins
nicely points out that our morality, even that of religious people,
comes not from scripture
but from the secular liberal consensus around us,
which determines which bits of scripture we pick and choose from,
and which we regard as "of their time".
Finally, the last word on the Bible must go to
this guy.
"It is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of
Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentence toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to
redeem it.
Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct
morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much
untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from
the same being."
- Thomas Jefferson,
private letter.
"merely the ravings of a maniac,
no more worthy, nor capable of explanation than the incoherences
of our own nightly dreams."
- Thomas Jefferson,
private letter, on the
Book of Revelation.
Since 1995.
