Marriage: a Christian love story – Deuteronomy 22:28-29
22:28 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;
22:29 Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.
Isn’t that’s just breathtakingly beautiful?
(Image from https://www.facebook.com/WFLAtheism)
Matthew 6:26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
Matthew 6:26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
Matthew 19:14 But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
From the picture it looks to me like the heavenly father is certainly helping a fowl of the air to get a meal. I guess the bit that says “Suffer the little children” was meant literally.
God is love. Christians love to say that. God is love. Like so many things in Christianity the phrase is uttered along with a disturbing lack of understanding on the part of the utterer (how awesome is that word?).
I’ve been thinking about this subject for the longest time, usually in the context of the massive amount of contradictions in the Bible. The Bible is brim full of contradictions, so disturbingly many you have to wonder how it’s possible for such a large bunch of people to display the cognitive dissonance required to be Christian in the first place.
I recently read a post by Greta Christina discussing a post by William Lane Craig where he essentially defends the horrors of the Old Testament. Greta takes a dim view on the things said by Craig, and rightly so. If I had been afforded the opportunity I would have re-posted her entire post here. It’s brilliant and I’m not sure I can do it justice by discussing it here but I’ll make an attempt anyway. Read Greta’s full post here: http://bit.ly/emnPcU (shortened URL because the actual URL is long…)
The basic premise of what Craig wrote is that the atrocities committed in the Bible (genocide, infanticide, slavery, rape) was OK because God commanded it and whatever God commands is good and anyway, the Canaanites were fine to be murdered because they had gone against this God. For like, a long time!
To quote Greta’s paraphrasing:
When guilty people got killed, they deserved it because they were guilty and bad… and when innocent people got killed, even when innocent babies were killed, they went to Heaven, and it was all hunky dory in the end.
This is some of what Craig had to say:
So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged?
Greta goes on to say that Craig isn’t some extremist or “drooling wingnut” but is rather a well-educated, widely published author. Mostly normal then. I agree with that, Craig seems pretty normal (comparatively) and I think he is representative of average Christianity.
The problem with what Craig is saying is that as long as God commands you to kill somebody, it’s entirely OK. Babies, children, women, men, anything, as long as God tells you it’s OK, then it’s OK. Many people, most Christians I would imagine, share his views on this.
In her post, Greta makes two very good points. The first is that the rest of us, the ones not dragged down by the millstone that is the horrors of the Bible can look back at history and rightly say that those things were terrible, we’re not proud of our history but it’s behind us, we accept it was disgusting behaviour and that we’ll go out of our way to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
The second point she makes is that the religionuts can’t do that, don’t have that option since their holy book defends and praises these actions. They can’t look back and say it was terrible because in doing so, they have to agree that their deity is an evil bastard. Instead:
They have to either a) cherry-pick the bits they like and ignore the bits they don’t; or b) come up with contorted rationalizations for why the most blatant, grotesque, black-and-white evil really isn’t all that bad.
Option A leaves you where most Christians are today, ignoring the horrors in the scripture and believing some made up bullshit fairy tale that ISN’T reflected in their perfect unchanging operating manual, otherwise known as The Holy Bible. Option B is where Craig is, defending the indefensible atrocities ordered by his deity.
Craig spends some time trying to defend this indefensible position, sprouting idiocies like:
By setting such strong, harsh dichotomies God taught Israel that any assimilation to pagan idolatry is intolerable. It was His way of preserving Israel’s spiritual health and posterity. God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel.
Again, the almighty creator of the universe seems more than just a little impotent, unable to fix the situation without commanding the murder of little babies and the rape of virgin woman. I’ve made this point many times before: a being able to conceive of the entire universe, create it and run it somehow can’t fix a couple of insolent people without having to pack every species of animal in a boat and flood the entire planet? The only conceivable way he can correct the evil behaviour of middle eastern city states is to command his ‘chosen people’ to engage in campaigns of genocide that involves bashing little baby heads against rocks. Seriously? And Christians believe this crap?
So here’s the brass tacks: The Christian God thinks genocide is a great way to accomplish things. He feels that bashing babies heads open is an awesome thing to do for them. He feels slavery is an awesome thing to do to heathens (or your own people, less harshly though).
And if you’re a Christian, you have to either agree and defend that or ignore it altogether. If you do either: fuck you. Fuck, you.
Do Christians understand what it is that they are defending? Do they GET the horror of what they worship? Can you conceive of just how fucking awful the things are we are talking about here.
Let’s explore some of that. Christians should study what comes next, their God fucking LOVES this shit. Hundreds of pages in The Holy Bible go on and on about it. Obviously I can’t possibly convey the abject horror and terror and… there aren’t words to describe what it is adequately.
Not strictly part of genocide but good God DID say to murder some babies. Here's one. Clearly fucking dead. Probably not Christian. Definitely not a Jew. God must be so fucking happy.
Some lovely genocide of heathens. Rejoice followers of Yahweh! For they fucking had it coming.
Some Armenian genocide victims! I guess those non-Yahweh lovers had it coming right? Of course they did. Praise god for this particular awesome.
Divine justice if ever you saw it hey Christian soldier?
Divine Yahweh approved justice. Awesome. Three in one justice it seems like. They must not have been virgins. God prefers you keep those for yourself.
I’ll leave out the references to the horror in the Bible so there’s an opening for some pious dick head to say something so I can get another post out of it.
God is love. Tell me another one asshole.
My wife and I were sitting on our balcony yesterday discussing a previous discussion on religion. We are both atheists and have some strong views on atheism and religion not entirely (OK, not even a little) shared by the rest of our families. We are both quite clear on the ridiculousness of religion, Christianity in particular (since Christianity in general most closely matches what the rest of our families believe).
During our discussion it was mentioned that we know there is no god, there isn’t even a question about that; however, wouldn’t it be great of there really was an all good, all-powerful, all loving, caring God out there who had our best interests at heart? Wouldn’t it be great?!?
Well, no. It is, in fact, the worst possible thing I can imagine.
If you’re a Jesusianismist, you probably find that quite strange, startling and possibly even a little ludicrous. Let me explain with a short parable.
John Smith, tired from a long day at work at an investment bank on Wall street, was walking through central park on his way home. He always got the cab to drop him on the corner of 5th avenue and East 72nd street. He would then walk across the park to his apartment on West 73rd street where he lives with his wife and two children, twins, a boy and a girl aged 7. These children were John’s life and he loved them more than anything in the world. He was very fond of children in general and coached the second grade soccer team at the local school.
As John was walking through the park this fine evening, whistling to himself, he heard what sounded like a muffled scream coming from some bushes in the distance. Curious as to what caused the commotion, John walked over to investigate. As he walked around a bush he struggled a bit to make out the scene in the quickly fading light of dusk. As his eyes adjusted to the light, what was going on became a little clearer.
In front a bush, not thirty feet away was the small naked body of a girl, perhaps 7 or 8, tied up, hands and feet. Her eyes wide with terror, staring at John, pleading. A couple of feet to the left was a large man, dressed in black from the waste up, busy raping another girl, perhaps the same age.
The man paused momentarily as he saw John, who held up his hand and said, “Sorry, didn’t want to interrupt”.
“He’s probably going to kill these girls”, thought John as he cast his eyes across the scene.
“He’s probably that serial rapist that was on the news last night”.
John looked at both girls terror filled eyes and quietly said, “Don’t worry girls, it will be over soon”, turned around and walked away without another word.
John quietly whistled to himself as he crossed the road to his apartment, wondering what his wife had made for supper and what his kids had gotten up to that day while trying to put the thoughts of the man raping the child out of his mind.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find somebody who wouldn’t take issue with the actions of the fictional Mr. John Smith. In fact, what was described in that short story is something we call “gross criminal negligence” and possibly “accessory” to rape, kidnapping and murder. The actions of Mr. John Smith are both illegal and morally abhorrent and nobody in their right mind would disagree.
We could all probably agree that were any sane person to find himself in the shoes of Mr. John Smith they would either do something to stop what was happening or at the very, very least make a damn good effort to get the authorities involved to stop what was happening.
And that is why the worst possible thing I can imagine is for a god, especially the child loving god of the Christians, to exist.
If an omnipotent God exists, it means he has, for thousands of years sat and watched the most horrifying things imaginable get done to children, woman, mentally disabled people, animals, you name it and he didn’t do a damn thing to stop any of it. He has watched children being raped, and worse, sometimes in his own house, sometimes by his own ordained representatives while listening to their horror filled pleas and he pretty much ignored it.
He listened to the cries of six million Jews being slaughtered and did nothing. He watched as hundreds of thousands were murdered in his name and sat on his hands. He watches every day as thousands die of starvation in Africa without so much as lifting a finger. He watched as a tsunami drowned a hundred thousand people, babies and children included without warning anybody. He sat still as an earthquake crushed a hundred thousand in their sleep, babies, woman and children. He has watched every conceivable disturbing thing in all of history happen and he has let it happen; he has the self-proclaimed ability and authority to stop any and all of it, but doesn’t.
This is not a being I could like or respect, let alone worship.
God works in mysterious ways and we cannot understand the greatness of his plan one might say? It is beyond human comprehension? Bullshit, if God exists, he is without a doubt the most offensive thing in the universe. I do not need to understand any divine plan to know that I find the torture of children offensive in the extreme. The only part of this that is beyond my human comprehension is how people can delude themselves into believing that God loves them and their children and has the ability to protect them from anything but fucking doesn’t.
Let’s imagine for a second though, that all of this horror does actually have a point and there is, by some miracle, a good reason for God to allow suffering on a scale that is too horrific for normal people to comprehend.
Let’s imagine that you’re a devoted parent with a daughter. You love her, you raise her properly. You educate her as well as anybody can be educated. She grows up to be a magnificent, intelligent woman who devotes her life to the service of others and saves the lives of countless people through her selfless actions.
Let’s imagine now that because your daughter is educated so well, she is completely unable to accept Christian mythology as the truth and instead sees it for what it is: the creation stories of a clan of savage bronze age tribesmen. Let’s imagine your daughter ends up an atheist.
You and your daughter die together in a car accident, you a devoted Christian and your daughter an unapologetic atheist. By some miracle, your version of religion turns out to be true and Yahweh and his son Jesus meet you both on judgement day.
The verdict, as it turns out, is that you get to go to heaven and be happy with Jesus himself for all eternity. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to spend eternity, perpetually happy, yet knowing that your daughter, along with billions of other people are being tortured, all day and all night, forever, without any possibility of respite. Because, at least in your daughter’s case, your deity Yahweh, couldn’t put a credible story together?
How do you live with that? How is it that an omni-benevolent deity invents the single most horrific thing that any human being could imagine?
There is no god.
I can live with a universe where bad things happen to people because shit sometimes just happens and there isn’t anything anybody can do about it. I cannot live with a universe where an apathetic deity watches people suffer and does nothing, just to go and make them suffer some more, but this time without respite for eternity simply because that deity cannot come up with a story that can be believed by rational people.
If a human being had to act the way the gods of human invention act, they would get locked up for gross criminal negligence at best and executed as mass murdering tyrants at worst.
The reason hell is the most horrifying thing a human being can imagine is because it is from the twisted imagination of a human being.
Thank god there is no god.
NZ Science Blogs
One Furious Llama 