#bible morality

[gramarobin]

[gramarobin]

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"The bible is a terrible moral compass, if you think about it. Of course, you can cherry pick the verses that you like, which means the verses that happen to coincide with our modern secular consensus, but then you need to have a rationale for leaving out the ones that say stone people to death if they break the Sabbath, or if they commit adultery. It's an appalling moral compass."

-- (Clinton) Richard Dawkins

It also makes divine morality subservient to human morality. When believers refuse to include all divine instructions and rules, they refute the entire concept of an “objective morality.”

[gramarobin]

Seriously, if we are banning books that are terrible, why isn't the Bible banned? Have you read it!? Gory stuff, just horrible...and it's ok to read to kids - but the kids book All are Welcome is banned!? wth?

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“A Second Look at Religion” - Freedom From Religion Foundation, 1980.

Sheila Thompson: Ruth, I know you were a churchgoer for over half a century. What happened? What changed your mind?

Ruth Hurmence Green: You might say I was a half-hearted Methodist. I wasn't happy or comfortabe with religion. I wasn't totally committed. I had doubts, I just didn't deal with them. What lead me to my present commitment was the suggestion by a relative that the Bible might not be all that I thought it was. And this suggestion lead me to investigate for myself.

I read the Bible with an open mind, I was ready to accept it. But I hadn't gotten very far into it before I saw that it was very different from what I imagined it to be.

Sheila: Different in what way, Ruth?

Ruth: Well, I'd been told that the Bible was a good book, an inspirational book. I can remember singing a song in church about those "Wonderful Words of Life." And these were the words that I expected to find.

Instead, I found a record of, how shall I put it, such superstitious silliness and ignorance, such moral obscenities, such ghastly atrocities as I'd never even imagined. I found the Bible personalities, God's favorites, and even God himself to be utter reprobates.

In this book, where I'd expected to find ethical guidelines, every kind of behavior that was repugnant to me was glorified and rewarded. Even perpetrated and commanded by God himself. I felt betrayed. I was outraged that this book should be exerpted in this way and misrepresented.

Sheila: You say you felt betrayed. How was that?

Ruth: Well, after all, I'd been more or less exposed to this book all my life, without knowing that hardly anyone in it, God included, could serve as a role-model for a reputable person who didn't want to end up in prison or on death-row.

It was this kind of disillusionment that lead me to say I detested the Bible, as Thomas Paine said he detested it in "The Age of Reason." There wasn't one page of this book that didn't offend me in some way. In fact, after a session of reading it, I always wanted to go and take a bath in grandma's lye soap.

If there is human or divine behavior that is too vile to merit description, you'll find it in this book.

Sheila: What specific instances shocked you the most?

Ruth: I think God's behavior offended me the most. After all, I thought it would be beyond reproach. But the Bible tells me that this lord of the whole universe comes down to this little speck of Earth, and picks out a small group of warring tribes to be his favorites. And he doesn't do anything but hover over them and live among them for 4000 years. He despises everybody else in the world, because they have other gods. And he makes his chosen people despise everybody else too.

Sheila: You have said that the Bible is a book that shouldn't be given to children. Why do you say that, Ruth?

Ruth: I feel deeply that immature minds should not be exposed to the Bible for several reasons. After all, this book is supposed to be the perfect behavior guide. But instead, it's full of violence and depravity and twisted morality. After all, if we tell our children that it's a beautiful act to cause your own child to be killed to appease your anger, I don't know what we can teach them that's reprehensible.

And this leads me into my main objection. Which is that I don't think children should be exposed to the terrors of the Christian religion. I say this from my own experience. When I was growing up, I didn't like the awful Bible stories. I was terrified, many hours, that the end of the world was coming. I shuddered at any mention of torture or the crucifixion. I still feel that way today. Easter was a time of horror for me, I wanted to retire from the world.

I feel sad that this Christian torture symbol, the cross, is being imposed more and more upon our landscape, and even worn as jewellery. And often there's a suffering, bleeding figure attached to it. I don't think we would tolerate this replica of a hangman's noose being used in this way. I think this whole thing is brutalizing.

This emblem of suffering and shame that old hymns, that we used to sing about is pictured as something beautiful. When actually, it's just a grizzly holdover from the old pagan superstition that the gods had to be appeased with human sacrifice. And this became a basic tenet of Christianity.

In fact, Paul says that without shedding of blood is no remission. I don't think that children should be taught these old superstitions. Of human sacrifice and ghosts and devils and demonology and exorcism and signs and wonders. I think these are horrors of the past and we should bury them. Our children shouldn't be made to eat the body of a god, or drink his blood, however symbolically.

Of course there are good teachings, some good teachings in the Bible, it would be strange if there weren't considering the number of people who contributed to it, and the length of it. But, I think that hunting out good behavior in the Bible is like wading through a sewer to find a gem. We shouldn't have to sift our morality from a book, one of whose main themes is the sacrifice of innocent animals and human beings. There are superior teachings in other books, they're all lined up in your library shelves.

Sheila: But Ruth, what do you say to those people who think that the Bible is a book about love?

Ruth: I studied every page of this book, and I didn't find enough love to fill a salt shaker. God is not love in the Bible. God is vengeance, from alpha to omega. He doesn't any more than get people created until he curses them and withdraws from them, and he finally comes up with a plan whereby he's gonna damn most of them forever.

Sheila: Do you mean God actually did this on purpose?

Ruth: Yes, deliberately. He is the potter who molds the clay to honor and dishonor. Which totally nullifies any free will. Jesus says that the way, the understanding is deliberately withheld, even from people who want to know it. And he knows that his plan of salvation is going to be damnation for most of the people in the world, because he says "strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, and few there be that find it." Predestination is taught all through the New Testament. It makes it very clear that the names of those who are saved are already written in the Book of Life, from the beginning of the world.

And not only is this not love, I think it is the most diabolical unfairness that was ever taught or devised.

Sheila: Say Ruth, what does the Bible have to say about the Christian family we hear so much about today?

Ruth: Personally, I think the Christian family should be called the Christian fantasy. When the Lord sets up the sexual system, he's very interested in multiplying, but he says nothing at all about the family as the nuclear unit. In fact, he decimates families every time he has a chance.

Jesus is rude to his mother and his siblings, he denies his family. He doesn't marry or father children and he makes the disciples abandon their family. He says that anyone who wants to follow him must forsake all their loved ones and everything that they have. He never once uses the word "family." In fact, that word appears just once in the New Testament.

Besides, sex is sinful in the Bible. Women defile men. I just don't see how that attitude is very conducive to producing families.

Sheila: You've told audiences, Ruth, that the Bible is a dangerous book. Why?

Ruth: The Bible is one of 27 holy books, all written by human beings. If you can make people believe in a god, and then convince them that this god revealed himself in a book, call that the "Word of God," you have a very powerful tool. And you're not about to relinquish that book. You're gonna make it unassailable. And we may not be dragged out of our beds and burned at the stake any more, but we're still in danger from this book. Because it's still being used to influence our lives, to deny people their equal rights and freedom of choice.

I feel that the Bible is a grab-bag - I call it a behavior grab-bag. Because it can be reached into for justification of any kind of behavior. Of any kind of crusade or vendetta against any group or person that you want to make your target.

There was a song, popular, several years ago, you may not remember it, but it was called the "Three Little Words." Now, these were nice words: "I love you." But the three little words that I hate to hear most today, that I dislike to hear the most are: "the Bible says." Just let somebody say something sensible, or a reasonable conclusion be arrived at, and someone pops up with the words, "but... the Bible says."

I feel that we should stop wasting our time trying to please the supernatural, and concentrate on improving the welfare of human beings. I think that we should use our energy, our initiative to solve our problems and stop relying on prayer and wishful thinking. I believe that if we have faith in ourselves, we won't have to have faith in gods.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

And obviously so.

[gramarobin]

🤔 I mean, its the inerrant Word of God-right!?

[gramarobin]