God Hates You: Making Sense of the Bible Page 2
Really? Is this his best effort? My god, I can literally walk into any Border’s bookstore blindfolded, march directly to the self-help section and find more wisdom in ‘Awaken the Giant within’ or ‘Chicken soup for the soul’ and these respective books are just full of pseudo pop-psychology at best and utter meaningless bullshit at worst!
To borrow Lewis Black’s comedic wisdom:
“…even if the Bible is a dead-on accurate transcription of God’s words, it’s rather shocking that God only had two books in him, the Old and the New Testament. I’ve actually written two books and I am sure God would have written more than me. Two books? That was all he had to say to us? You think he would have put at least a pamphlet in response to the Holocaust. And if not, a pamphlet, a couple of well placed fire-balls, for crying out loud. This is the Supreme Being we’re talking about, who whacks Sodom and Gomorrah and turns Lot’s wife to salt and Hitler doesn’t get so much as a twisted ankle? It seems a little suspicious to me.”
It becomes obvious, then, that the Bible is far from the writings of an omniscient, super-intellectual being, but rather the often incoherent rants of a few violent, self-serving, nomadic Middle Eastern yokels, who created these writings, with not only the intention of explaining the inexplicable but also for the moral justifications of slavery, subjugation of women and domination of neighboring societies to steal their land, rape their women and plunder their treasures.
Who better to put this all into some realm of reality than the great late comedian Mr. George Carlin?
“When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ‘til the end of time! But He loves you.”
If the God of the Bible is all-powerful and therefore omnipotent, then his wickedness is second to none. To be omnipotent means that not only did he create evil but he does nothing to prevent it. When small children were being thrown alive into burning furnaces during the Second World War, God did nothing to prevent their agonizing deaths, therefore permitting evil to take its course. Or put another way still, by the time you have completed reading this page, another few hundred children will die of thirst or starvation. Epicurus, the Greek Philosopher, had the common sense to write way back in 300 BC:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
‘God’ and ‘evil’ in the one sentence surely challenges the public relations spin of God being a loving, just, peace-endorsing heavenly father. With ‘spoiler alert’ disclaimer up front, this examination will ultimately lead you to one of the following two conclusions, that either:
• God is just a creation of man’s imagination or,
• God is an evil bastard.
Be assured that my caricature of the celestial cloud merchant is not just something that I have grasped on my own, as much smarter men than I contend similar. Take Richard Dawkins’, biologist and author of God Delusion, depiction of God from chapter two of his book:
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive blood thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, megalomaniacal, capriciously malevolent bully.”
And don’t be fooled into thinking that anti-God rhetoric is confined solely to 21st century scientists. To the eternal surprise of American Christians, Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of America, shared his biographical portrayal of God with Dawkins more than 200 years earlier when he wrote:
“The Christian God is a being of terrific character — cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.”
If your knowledge of the Bible is confined to the religious preacher sound bites, then I am sure the aforementioned quotations from Messrs. Dawkins and Jefferson come as a bit of a shock. But I dare anyone to come up with a better personality profile of the God of Abraham having read the Bible from Genesis right through to Revelations. This God created by the Hebrews is far removed from the propaganda spun by priests, pastors and popes, who use these pithy sound bites of ‘love thy neighbor’ and ‘do unto others’, or ‘turn the other cheek’ as means of packaging Christianity for sale. The Biblical reality is that this particular God will smote you for working on the wrong day; wearing the wrong clothes; sex with the wrong person; thought crimes such as wanting a new car, a new boat, or a holiday; complaining about a lack of food; complaining about the quality of the food; eating the wrong food; occupying land allotted for his ‘chosen’ people; talking back to your parents; questioning authority; looking back to see his destruction of a city; breaking the rules for owning or buying slaves; and ultimately hates you for not being an Israelite, to name but a few. He truly punctuates the air with far more reasons to hate the human condition than love it.
Henceforth, for every ‘love thy enemy’ there are dozens of God’s commands endorsing the rape and killing of thy neighbor. The sprinkles of self-evident moral ideals are well and truly outnumbered by some truly wicked ideas, barbaric rituals and genocidal endorsements. The God of hate is revealed within the Bible and therefore my intent is to demonstrate that assertion throughout my summary of the ‘Bad Book’.
So, the claim that God is a tyrannical monster has been made – let’s find the proof of such a contrarian assertion within the passages of the Bible. But before we do I just want to tackle the issue of religion and morality. The argument of morality is the tip of the sword that Christians use in defence of their beliefs.
So, what about morality? A question often posed to atheists and agnostics. Where do we get our morality from if not the Bible? This is a daft question that many free thinkers take utter umbrage to. Especially so when one considers that morality is older than religion itself. As human beings with a higher consciousness to our fellow mammals in the animal kingdom we have an innate sense that what is good for our society is also good for us. Gene survival in social animals depends on the principle of looking after one’s peers. The ‘I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine’ ideal is law of nature. This is a nice segue for introducing our cousins the chimpanzees.
Consider that chimpanzees are socially evolved enough to take care of their young and elderly; perform roles in social teams; and are able to compete for social promotion for what zoologists label the principle of social service. They are able to do all of this without a sky-god to watch over them, without the benefit of a book written 4000 years ago by other chimpanzees. With this in mind why do Christians, Muslims and Jews continue the self-loathing and self-doubting assertion that the Bible forms the framework for human morality? Laughable isn’t it? Like the chimps, we have a mutual investment and moral empathy in ensuring that perpetrators of deeds that cause harm to us are ultimately isolated from us, whether by imprisonment or ostracization. The reality-show ‘Survivor’ makes a dim-witted case in point for this dynamic. Watch any elimination episode and it is primarily those individuals that offer no altruistic value to the tribe, whether physically or politically, who are sent home for an early shower.
To defend the Bible as an argument for morality places one on a very slippery slope. By what standards or framework do
we cherry-pick the Bible? What do we leave in and what do we omit? And who decides? Do we stone our daughters to death for working part-time at Burger King on the Sabbath? Or do we remove the law that demands we take our sons to the edge of the city limits and execute them for calling their fathers, “A cranky old bastard”, in a heated teen-angst moment? And if we are picking and choosing the laws worthy of following, then aren’t we playing God ourselves? Furthermore, if we accept that it is barbaric in the 21st century to sell our daughters into slavery, then it is evident that morals, like everything else in the human experience evolve. Resulting in the conclusion that moral evolution is at the behest of man and not by God.
Further, if belief in God were inextricably tied to morality then it would be fair to assume that statistical, analytical or anecdotal data would demonstrate that societies with a higher degree of religiosity would be safer places to live, as those citizens abided by the moral code prescribed by the respective religion. What we find, however, is the opposite. This data is best described by Sam Harris in his ‘Letter to a Christian Nation’:
“While political party affiliation in the United States is not a perfect indicator of religiosity, it is no secret that the ‘red (Republican) states’ are primarily red due to the overwhelming political influence of conservative Christians. If there were a strong correlation between Christian conservatism and societal health, we might expect to see some sign of it in red-state America. We don’t. Of the twenty-five cities with the lowest rates of violent crime, 62 percent are in ‘blue’ (Democrat) states and 38 percent are in ‘red’ (Republican) states. Of the twenty-five most dangerous cities, 76 percent are in red states and 24 percent are in blue states. In fact, three of the five most dangerous cities in the U.S. are in the most pious state of Texas. The twelve states with the highest rate of burglary are red. Twenty-four of the twenty-nine states with the highest rates of theft are red. Of the twenty-two states with highest rates of murder, seventeen are red.”
Harris’ social data is consistent with a paper published in July 2009 on the online journal Evolutionary Psychology by Gregory Paul. Paul finds that countries with the lowest rates of social dysfunction – based on more than 20 indicators, including rates for poverty, unemployment, crime and sexually transmitted disease – have become the most secular or anti-religious. Whereas those nations listed as the most socially dysfunctional including the US, are listed as the most religious. Hasn’t history taught us well enough that when you oppress or prohibit a certain behavior the ‘blowback’ is double? So, with the continual decline of religion and with a collective awakening around the world that if there is a God then surely there can’t be just one path to him, the question becomes what part will religion play in the future? I will let you ponder that as you read this book, but in the interim you may want to consider Harris’ brilliant hypothesis, included in ‘End of Faith’:
“What if all our knowledge about the world were suddenly to disappear? Imagine that six billion of us wake up tomorrow morning in a state of utter ignorance and confusion. Our books and computers are still here, but we can’t make heads or tails of their contents. We have even forgotten how to drive our cars and brush our teeth. What knowledge would we want to reclaim first? Well, there’s that business about getting food and building shelter that we would to get reacquainted with. We would want to relearn how to use and repair many of our machines. Learning to understand spoken and written language would also be a top priority, given that these skills are necessary for acquiring most others. When in this process of reclaiming our humanity will it be important to know that Jesus was born of a virgin? Or that he was resurrected? And how would we relearn these truths, if they are indeed true? By reading the Bible? Our tour of the shelves will deliver similar pearls from antiquity – like the ‘fact’ that Isis, the goddess of fertility, sports an impressive pair of cow horns. Reading further, we will learn that Thor carries a hammer and that Marduk’s sacred animals are horses, dogs and a dragon with a forked tongue……and when we will want to relearn that premarital sex is a sin? Or that adulteresses should be stoned to death?”
Harris further contends that if the above all-humanity memory loss were to occur, then our relearning of all things of relevance would place the Bible and Qur’an on the shelf next to Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ and the ‘Egyptian Book of the Dead’.
Alright, enough with the Theology 101 lesson, let’s have some fun in exploring the ancient Biblical world of murder, barbarism, bestiality, rape and plunder.
PS: God doesn’t know you are reading this book, so don’t be scared.
The Books of The Pentateuch
Chapter One - The Book of Genesis
“Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists?”
Bertand Russell (London, 1927)
Genesis is the first book of the Bible of Judaism and Christianity, and the first of five books of the Pentateuch or Torah. It recounts Judeo-Christian beliefs regarding the world, from creation to the descent of the children of Israel into Egypt, and contains some of the best-known stories of the Old Testament, including Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel and the biblical Patriarchs.
For Jews the theological importance of Genesis centers on the covenants linking God to his Chosen People and the people to the Promised Land. Christianity has reinterpreted Genesis as the prefiguration of Christian beliefs, notably the Christian view of Christ as the new Adam and the New Testament as the culmination of the covenants.
The Creation
The very first sentence of Genesis and therefore the Bible states:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1 NIV)
That’s it! Doesn’t tell us how he made it; what building materials were used; if any of the work was outsourced to India; or from where he sourced the materials. The Bible’s explanation of the creation of the universe is paramount to the smart-ass kid in the classroom telling you, “It just is and you wouldn’t understand it even if I told you anyway!” Imagine how confusing the creation of the universe by the Hebrew God 6,000 years must have been to the Sumerians as they watched on from their huts drinking beer, and using glue.
The next time someone says there is still a debate between our modern cosmological understanding of the universe versus the Biblical creation, know that on one hand we have a library full of hundreds of years of scientific research cataloguing our galaxy, the relationship between stars and planets; and the wondrous beauty of evolutionary development, and on the other hand, that being the Bible, the good book has compressed all that natural world wonderment into a single pithy sentence. Magic! Scientists are the first to admit that there are still some missing links in understanding the finer details as to the creation of the universe, but any ‘gap’ that we currently have today is not logically resolved by the Bible’s explanation of ‘wham here it is’!
The remainder of the opening sentence of Genesis continues:
“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (Genesis 1:2 NIV)
So, the question becomes what was God doing with himself all that time? Sitting idle in the formless empty darkness? How long was he sitting on his ass flicking between channels waiting for something interesting to watch? Did he create us out of sheer boredom, in between inventing the dinosaurs 35 million years ago and then man 7,000 years ago? It’s reasonable to ask what he was doing during this extraordinarily lengthy hiatus. Evidently, he was indeed content with floating around in the dark until, all of a sudden, he says to himself, “Fuck it, I want to create a planet, a heaven, some people and sit back and watch them destroy each other in my honor because Monday Night Football is still 6,000 years away.”
This Genesis explanation for the origins of our universe is based on less rationality than
the Hindu belief - the universe is a cosmic egg that cycles between expansion and total collapse. Sure, evolution may not have all the answers and there are a few gaps in the evolutionary timeline that science is still figuring out the answers to, but to argue that an invisible man floating around in the cosmos just decided on a whim one day to wave his hands and bang everything familiar to our natural physical environment appeared out of literal thin air – is too far a stretch even for the most deluded individuals, many of whom are sadly confined to a life in a padded cell, and should be.
From a scientific point of view, and I am armed only with a 5th grade scientific mind (the kids on ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader’ routinely kick my ass), the errors, follies and fables of the Bible begin with that very first sentence of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. This is completely untrue and unequivocally at odds with what we know of our universe today. The truth is that in the beginning a natural event created the universe as we know it and the earth did not form until billions of years later, thus an immediate booboo on behalf of the desert nomads who wrote this. For example, the Bible says that light and darkness are created after the water but before the sun. Discovery and Discovery Channel, have proven that the sun came first, then the planet and its rotation, which gives us light and darkness and day and night, and then the water, and this all happened over millions of years.