I got a message from someone who was very polite and friendly, but who wanted to take me to task for having continually cherry-picked the bible, seeking out all of its ugly bits. “After all,” he (she?) said, and I quote, “you have to admit that the vast majority of the contents of the Bible is of love, forgiveness and justice”…
Here is an expanded version of my response.
________________________________
There’s no doubt that atheists like me go picking out all the revolting aspects of the bible that we were never taught in Sunday school, and that are never heard as adults from the pulpit. I wouldn’t really have any argument with your message except for your saying “you have to admit that the vast majority of the contents of the Bible is of love, forgiveness and justice”. I couldn’t agree less.
The old testament, which is about 7/8 of the bible, is horrendous, and its ethical precepts would be out of place in any but the most backwards, cruel, and barbaric of societies. It’s absolutely not about love and forgiveness, but retribution, anger, jealousy, and violent military conquest. Really, if you were judging the bible by the balance of nice stuff to awful stuff, you could not come to any conclusion other than that it was a ghastly book filled with absolute horror.
In fact, that’s the conclusion that I and many other atheists have come to. It’s a ghastly book filled with absolute horror.
The scale of the horrors it contains and is largely brushed off by apologists and defenders: I mean, striking thousands of babies dead for the sins of a nation’s king? How did the mothers of these babies feel, waking up to find a cold corpse in the cradle? As ‘payback’ for some King’s iniquities, that they had nothing to do with? That’s astonishingly awful!
Or drowning the entire world in a slow miserable death? As punishment for moral ‘corruption’? That’s like punching someone’s teeth out as punishment for being violent!
Or asking David to choose between two or three horrible afflictions that the Lord insists on decimating his nation with? Imagine someone’s tied up a loved one of yours, and you have to choose whether he kills her with a chainsaw, a scalpel, or a power-drill? Well, David had to choose between his nation dying from famine (starvation), certain defeat in war, or a decimating period of pestilence.
Of course, I think it’s fiction, so it would be crazy to be angry at Yahweh, who doesn’t really exist any more than Zeus, or Baal, or Molech. I do, however, find it worthwhile seeking out and pointing out these things, because I believe that the appalling morality of this book has been, and is, clouding the issues of ethics and morality in our society and world, up to today.
It certainly clouds the better judgment of individuals. I see it often. For example, as an atheist, I can utterly, utterly condemn the practice of throwing rocks at people until they die of the injuries caused. Same goes for the punishment of burning living people to death. Even if you support a death penalty, would ANY civilized society choose one of these methods over, say, the electric chair or a lethal injection? We consider those ‘humane’ for good reason, given the alternatives presented by the god of love. Had Yahweh not heard of hanging, which is relatively quick in most cases? Did it absolutely have to be stoning?
Now, I can’t speak for everyone, but generally speaking, a Christian believer, who believes that stoning and burning alive were once the favored punishments of all-loving, all-holy Yahweh, has something that compels them to at least halt somewhat before utterly condemning those practices as being an obscene violation of justice, ethics, or morality. They have to, or else, as they know, they’re describing their god as utterly violating morality in the most revolting way. I’ve tried the experiment often, asking believers on youtube whether or not stoning someone is as bad as, say, committing adultery or telling an egregious lie. Obfuscations abound, and I’m repeatedly amazed that such a thing could even come under question. The usual comeback of “Well you’re an atheist, so you don’t have any basis for your morality” only makes me sigh at what the obfuscation is avoiding- What good is a basis of morality when it can’t guide you towards differentiating between the ‘evil’ of consensual sex outside of marriage, and that of roasting a fellow human being to death with fire?
I can’t think what is is like for people to have such double-think going on. “God is perfect love and perfect justice and perfect forgiveness, way beyond anything that a mere human could come up with, but yes, in the past, He just liked to see non-virgin brides murdered on their fathers’ doorsteps by mobs of angry men pelting her with rocks until her skull was smashed in or she died of massive internal bleeding”.
What did the father of the bride, or the mother, think of Yahweh’s perfect love, justice, and forgiveness, as they buried the violently bruised, still-bleeding corpse of their teenage daughter? Imagine witnessing the scene. Imagine the girl’s screams as those faithful men carried out ‘God’s will’. This might help: Have you ever seen footage of the Taliban cutting someone’s head off in the public square, as I have? Or shooting a woman through the head at point blank range, as she kneels on the ground in front of an audience of spectators? What would you think of a person who defended their idea of ‘justice’? Well, I’ve had stonings and burnings defended by Christians time and time again, as having been ‘appropriate’ in their cultural context.
No, the central representation in the bible about the character of its god is NOT primarily about love and forgiveness and mercy. You have that about 180 degrees wrong. One may as well read Mein Kampf and come away claiming it is a book about equality, tolerance, and peaceful diplomacy.
You’re thinking about that addendum tagged onto the end about the hippy who came up with better, kinder, more humane ideas. But who then also threatened eternal torture in a scalding lake of fire to those who don’t follow him. Ughhh- this obsession with pain, violence, and torturous insanity is inescapable within Judeo-Christianity, even in the new testament. What is it that finally satiates God The Father’s anger over mankind’s sinful nature, after a few thousand years of ritual animal slaughtering not quite cutting it? Of course – an act of violent torture against a perfect god-human. Torture and suffering is like a currency for this god – it even dishes it out unto itself for its own satisfaction.
Absolutely insane.
And to think there are religions out there who have their adherents vow such things as “to not cause harm to any living being”.
Imagine if a God of the universe taught that, and led by example. Wow, what a different world this would be. But look what we’re stuck with instead.
So, to end: Why bring up these obsceneties in videos about the most believed-in god in the world, ever? Because if stoning people and burning them alive can be excused in some ‘contexts’, … then what on Earth can’t be?
99 comments
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kraut
November 21, 2012 at 1:57 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
What gets me in the context is the claim that god is perfect.
Aside from the fact that perfection includes not having desires and needs (desire brings need leads to action to fill those needs. any desire means perceiving imperfection waiting to be corrected)this god violates his own laws.
He is a jealous god, and jealousy is an envy for adoration or the need to be loved exclusively. Envy is one of the seven deadly sins…so draw your iwn conclusions about a perfect jealous god.
Utter nonsense, this bible is…
John Kruger
November 21, 2012 at 2:01 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
People have done tallies of murders and other nastiness in the bible. This one puts god’s murders conservatively at 2,476,633.
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-many-has-god-killed.html
Tally up the acts of love and forgiveness, and perhaps we can make a comparison. I will not hold my breath, though. A “vast majority” that eclipses nearly 2.5 million murders should be pretty obvious. It is amazing how few people bother to learn what is actually in that book while so many purport to be following what it says.
LuminiferousEthan
November 21, 2012 at 2:01 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
That is really quite profound. I love that. I’ll never understand the “Context!” argument. I don’t know how anyone who has actually sat down and read the bible as a book, which is it, can find any sort of context in which smashing children’s skulls on the rocks is justified. Oh, right. It’s because a lot of them haven’t read it.
jamessweet
November 21, 2012 at 2:07 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
So I thought to myself, what if you picked a random verse of the Bible? Would you be more likely to find something nice or something awful? (My guess is you’d be most likely to find something boring — Ishtar begat Fleekoh — but that’s another story)
As an experiment, I googled for “random Bible verse”. And lo and behold, almost all of the results are pages that will serve you a random passage of scripture from a preselected list. This seems to me like an obvious tacit admission that the Bible is loaded with, if not horrible travesties, at best with worthless crap.
I did finally find this guy, who puts his money where his mouth is and serves up a truly random verse: http://www.stevenmarkford.com/random-bible-verse/
With my brief playing, I got about 40% boring (I seriously got a “begat” within 4 clicks, and I had already made the “begat” joke!) and about 60% maybe-nice-maybe-evil: Stuff of the genre “Your life will be totally awesome if you just believe in me and praise me forever”… Is that moral or immoral? Believers and atheists are going to have a different perspective on that one. I know what I think.
After 10-15 clicks, I didn’t get anything obviously morally objectionable.. but I didn’t get anything obviously insightful or helpful. Like I say, 40% boring, 60% “Believe in me or else!” (Although in fairness, most of the latter were about the good things that will happen if you do believe, not the bad things that will happen if you won’t…)
jamessweet
November 21, 2012 at 2:09 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
It took me about 20 to find a horrible slaughter. A little before that, I found one that OUT OF CONTEXT sounded very nice, something about God restoring you and making you whole. But it was from the Book of Job, so… we know how that story goes…
hexidecima
November 21, 2012 at 2:12 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
With one glance, I can see that these “polite and friendly” Christians have obviously never read their supposed holy book when they claim “you have to admit that the vast majority of the contents of the Bible is of love, forgiveness and justice” At best that shows only their ignorance, at worst it shows them as an inept liar.
Another bit of horror from the bible. God murdering David’s son because David supposedly sinned. In “context”, this shows the bible god to be a liar since earlier this god promises not to murder peopel for the sins of others, and of course also says that he will do exactly that.
NonStampCollector
November 21, 2012 at 2:12 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
@Luminiferous @3
Why thankye. I came up with it just now doing a final touch-up.
Moistly
November 21, 2012 at 2:13 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I’m sure Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot could of been considered nice most of the time. They would of been asleep for about a 1/3 of their lives.
I’m sure for, what, the first 16 years or so they would been pretty good, perhaps a few signs of insanity emerging.
They were only *really* bad for a small percentage of their time. So it’s a unfair that we should only concentrate on the tiny bit of genocide commited
NonStampCollector
November 21, 2012 at 2:16 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
@jamessweet @4,
I got this on my fourth click: Ezekiel 11:21 At that time Joshua attacked and eliminated the Anakites from the hill country – from Hebron, Debir, Anab, and all the hill country of Judah and Israel. Joshua annihilated them and their cities.
Cool link, thanks!
Zinc Avenger (Sarcasm Tags 3.0 Compliant)
November 21, 2012 at 2:21 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
It never fails to amaze me when atheists are called “moral relativists”.
Arkady
November 21, 2012 at 2:37 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
It’s not just the horrific stuff either, so much of the bible is incredibly trivial. I’ve been reading it as ‘bore-myself-to-sleep’ material, and the 10 commandments were dwarfed in length by the description of the Ark and the tabernacle that were built to contain them.
I’ve known plenty of nice christians (admittedly selection bias, I prefer being friends with nice people!) but they all ignored the old testament and focused on good-works stuff, without ever being preachy.
oolon
November 21, 2012 at 3:02 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
@jamessweet, cool game, I got this first click and I have no idea what it means but it sounds violent…
Maybe an early internet meme.. Who would win in a fight? A Goat or a Ram?
Dexeron
November 21, 2012 at 4:08 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
First click, got Joshua 13:10.
A description of some lands, and where they extend to. Seems innocuous, right?
Go to the beginning of the chapter. It’s a description of lands God is promising to “deliver” to Israel from the people already living there. Yay, more genocide!
SallyStrange: Elite Femi-Fascist Genius
November 21, 2012 at 4:46 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I got Job 1:19 on the first try: and suddenly a great wind swept across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they died! And I – only I alone – escaped to tell you!”
busterggi
November 21, 2012 at 4:58 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Could be worse – could be the BOM where there is a 50% chance that a randomly selected verse will say, “And it came to pass.”
Michael
November 21, 2012 at 5:18 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I enjoyed your essay, but I would have avoided Godwin’s Law with the Mein Kampf reference.
I’m glad to see how regularly you post things. I’m occasionally disappointed by how infrequently some of my favourite freethoughtbloggers post.
larianlequella
November 21, 2012 at 5:38 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I like to point people to this page (a page I’m sure you are all aware of): http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/
They have an icon where you can pick out “The Good Stuff” as opposed to the horrible, silly, and downright bizarre. I suppose it’s ebough to get a couple years worth of sermons out of, but it still makes up a minority of the bible…
bobo
November 21, 2012 at 5:52 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I have ‘debated’ pro-life christians on the interwebz, and one particular devout christian has told me that she would:
1) rather I die than donate a kidney to save my life
2) hopes that my arms and legs get ripped off in a car accident
All cuz I am pro-choice and atheist!
What happened to the love and forgiveness? I thought she walked in Jesus footsteps?
/boggle
hexidecima
November 21, 2012 at 7:18 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
very fun random bible app:
third in:
1 Timothy 1:20 Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.
several more in:
“Philippians 3:2 Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh!”
aka Jews
“Jude 1:7 In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.”
Nice one to support the idea of a burny type hell.
“Jude 1:9 But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”
Seems that the OT forgot to mention this?
“Ecclesiastes 1:18 For with great wisdom comes great frustration; whoever increases his knowledge merely increases his heartache.”
And, so saith the Lord, be ignorant.
nohellbelowus
November 21, 2012 at 10:01 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
The cruel realities of death, territoriality, and most importantly, the competition for mates, explains 99.99% of Christianity and Islam, in my opinion.
artarius
November 21, 2012 at 10:11 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Maybe I’m just lucky, but my first two clicks were these:
Genesis 8:21 And the Lord smelled the soothing aroma and said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, even though the inclination of their minds is evil from childhood on. I will never again destroy everything that lives, as I have just done.
2nd: Job 36:21 Take heed, do not turn to evil, for because of this you have been tested by affliction.
Pretty bad
charlesminus
November 21, 2012 at 11:07 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Just for the sake of argument. I don’t think hanging was an option because they prbly didn’t have any trees out there in the desert and had prbly never heard of rope. These people were backward. The only think they had was f***ing rocks!
Minus
Serena
November 21, 2012 at 11:57 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Hmm a quick search on the history of hanging as execution; wiki mentions only “Hanging has been a common method of capital punishment since medieval times, and… the earliest known use of the word in this sense was in A.D. 1300.”
However http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/execution/readings/history.html mentions “there is evidence that Jews used many different techniques including stoning, hanging, beheading, crucifixion (copied from the Romans), throwing the criminal from a rock, and sawing asunder. The most infamous execution of history occurred approximately 29 AD with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ outside Jerusalem.”This page lists a reference but I admit to being ignorant of how to read the reference “[3] Ibid., p.72.”
So originally I was going to wonder if hanging was even a known execution method during the times in question, but that’s as far as I went to research it, heh.
Serena
November 21, 2012 at 11:59 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Also, incidentally, a nearby tree is not at all required to perform a hanging nor to conceive of one. Also, I sound really creepy with all this knowledge of hanging >_>
Tim
November 22, 2012 at 12:22 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
There is no such thing as objective morality
NonGodCollector
November 22, 2012 at 12:38 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Wish you make videos about islam and quran too
Roy G
November 22, 2012 at 12:52 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
@16
The thing is that Godwin’s Law is about overuse and irrelevant use of Nazi comparison; when you look at what atrocities the biblical god has committed, it isn’t really that irrelevant…
hannah's dad
November 22, 2012 at 3:28 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I’m visiting a bible-less house so I can’t provide exact cites, I’m operating from memory, but if you check out Acts in the NT you will find the story of a fella who was killed by god cos he didn’t give all his money to the church as Pete ordered – he only gave some of it, hid the rest whatever.
The verses that follow detail how the murdered fella’s wife suffered the same fate immediately after.
Moral: give all your wealth to the church or die.
aziraphale
November 22, 2012 at 10:50 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
@28
No place that has an internet connection is bible-less.
Kees
November 22, 2012 at 12:39 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Using the link provided by jamessweet @4, I went through 60 (out of the 31.000ish) verses and their surrounding verses:
Self-praise / Jealousy: 4
Good : 6
Evil : 17
Vacuous / Boring : 10
Ridiculous / Hippy : 13
Neutral / Descriptive : 10
Self-praise / Jealousy is basically God blowing his own trumpet or going on about how shitty other gods are compared to him. Good speaks for itself. Evil ranges from pettiness (can’t eat this kind of grain), to piling corpses in the streets. Vacuous / Boring is things like genealogies. Ridiculous / Hippy is usually about how to get on with Jesus and how awesome he is. All talk of ‘praying in the Holy Spirit’ and ‘casting out demons’ is in this category. Neutral / Descriptive are storytelling elements (the king gathered his counselors about him. Bob traveled with his ass to Egypt. Gary married Trudy).
Obviously the verses are open to interpretation into which category they belong, and some can be placed in more than one.
With this exhaustive and clearly not even remotely biased statistical research, I can conclude that 10% of the Bible is good.
LuminiferousEthan
November 22, 2012 at 3:03 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Ha! On my very first random verse:
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 22, 2012 at 6:06 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I self-identify as an agnostic Christian; I’m not sure what I really think about all of this, (apart from this: I know that as an individual, if my religion causes me to be immoral, I must abandon it.) But one of the reasons I’m still leaning towards belief in the Christian god is that I always viewed the overall arc of the biblical narrative as being primarily about grace. The main character in the Old Testament is the Isrealite people, and it is a story of repeated betrayal on their part, and repeated forgiveness on God’s part. The individual parts may exhibit the evil you speak of, and are troubling regardless of context. But the main message certainly seems, to me, to be one of grace. It seems that most atheists should be alright with the primary message, even if the details are disturbing, and even if a good argument can be made that the details delegitimize the primary message.
Reading random sentences from any work can give you good information about general truths about all of the individual sentences. It is a pretty horrible way to understand the work as a whole, though.
Serena
November 22, 2012 at 6:27 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
^ Classic ‘context’ argument.
My problem with ‘grace’ is that it implies that there’s something to be spared from (destiny) and that this ‘grace’ is ‘just’. According to wikipedia “Generally Grace means the blessings that come from above regardless of merit.”
To me, that is nothing good at all. It’s yet another admission that your life (and works on earth) don’t matter. Who needs to live a ‘purposeful (LOL)’ life if there’s always the promise of grace?
This is all completely beside the fact that the idea of being spared from a destiny by the same entity who imposed that destiny is the same as thanking the mob-boss for calling off his goons.
Didaktylos
November 22, 2012 at 6:29 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I always had the impression that the point about stoning was that the execution was carried out by the entire community with no specific individual needing to feel that it was they who had struck the fatal blow.
Didaktylos
November 22, 2012 at 6:33 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
And further to that – because it was done from a distance, no one would actually get blood on their own hands.
Don Quijote
November 22, 2012 at 7:07 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
What’s an agnostic Christian?
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 22, 2012 at 7:27 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Serena: I believe that the discussion you bring up is a different discussion than the one I was attempting to participate in. Nevertheless, it is an interesting and significant discussion for people like myself who are trying to develop a more accurate view of the value of Christianity.
The value of grace is, in my mind, independent from the existence of a deity. God can exist or not, I still think that grace is a beautiful thing. If the Old Testament is at least a partially beautiful depiction of grace, it doesn’t matter as much if the system of guilt is false or morally flawed. (If Hitler created an amazing painting, his personal evil does not remove the painting’s value entirely)
To me, grace, as a concept, is a beautiful thing, regardless of if it comes from an unjust diety who does not exist or from an unquestionably existent friend whom I have wronged. Or for that matter, from a mob boss. And I, currently, find the Old Testament overall to be a beautiful depiction of grace, even if it may also have individual sections that are objectionable. And even if the diety depicted is more like a mob boss. (Which I do not currently find to be the case, but it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable reading to me.)
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 22, 2012 at 7:35 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Don Quijote: An agnostic is someone who doesn’t know. I get so aggravated at the Christians who believe because they have made a decision to believe. That’s such a horrible way to exist, regardless of your specific beliefs, that I feel necessary to distance myself from them by adding a modifier to my self-description that hopefully says “I can’t know this definitively, so if you bring evidence against my views, I, as someone trying to be moral, must be ready to change them.
dysomniak, darwinian socialist
November 22, 2012 at 7:40 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Mark, I’m guessing you’re a fan of John Shelby Spong? You want to take whatever value you can from christian teachings and aren’t particularly concerned with empirical truth?
So why the Bible? Why not the Bhagavad Gita, the Prose Eddas, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 22, 2012 at 7:51 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Dysomniak, I am very concerned with empirical truth, but it’s pretty hard to have absolute confidence of having discovered it. But I do find value in the Bible apart from my belief that it is, in some sense, empirically true. As to your second question, if find the Bible to be more beautiful than any other work, regardless of its veracity, because I find grace to be the highest beauty. But I do find enormous value in other works, including works of fiction.
I’m not familiar with John Shelby Spong. Perhaps I should be.
Serena
November 22, 2012 at 8:05 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Mark, maybe we are talking about two different things here, and if so I apologize. Still, I am failing to understand your basis for grace being ‘beautiful’ in any other way than that it’s something you personally feel is true. (Apologies again if I am putting words into your mouth.)
I have found no evidence of Biblical Grace being anything greater than the mob-boss analogy (of which I am not the author). I would absolutely love to hear more/better information about this, I am certainly open to changing my mind.
At the risk of sounding like I’m just spouting references, I suggest you youtube Dan Barker’s “You Don’t Have to go Down in My Basement”.
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 22, 2012 at 9:30 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
You shouldn’t be expected to understand my basis for grace being beautiful, since I haven’t posted anything supporting that view of mine. My point is that if I find beauty in forgiveness from a friend whom I have wronged, I think I should also find beauty in forgiveness from a mob boss (or unjust non-existent deity.) If you don’t find any beauty in either type of grace, then that is indeed a different discussion than the one I thought I was in. (Still possibly an interesting discussion to have, though.)
The individual happenings in the Old Testament might indeed lend themselves to supporting the mob boss view. (I don’t think that’s an unreasonable reading even though I disagree with it, currently.) I don’t think that the god-as-mob-boss view cheapens the value of grace, and I also don’t think that a god-as-mob-boss view of the Bible means that the central message isn’t the message of grace.
I hope to watch the Dan Barker video soon.
Don Quijote
November 22, 2012 at 9:42 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Mark Schwartzkopf: I know what an agnostic is. I’m not sure what your belief or disbelief is other than some vague thing about grace. I neither feel the desire nor the inclination to bring you evidence against your views. The OT bible, written from texts that have been changed accidently and sometimes on purpose to promote various political agendas probably bear little resemblance to the originals that nobody living has seen. Anyway, most if not all of those stories can be found in earlier superstions and myths. The NT suffers the same mistakes and changes but they were written by people eager to endorse the stories from the OT. What a mess they made of that.
Up to you to find the evidence your looking for. I can find more graceful stories and writing in other books.
echidna
November 22, 2012 at 10:16 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Grace from a non-existent source is a beautiful thing? I would say it is a non-existent thing. Your logic is turning my brain into a pretzel.
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 22, 2012 at 10:21 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Don Quijote: My beliefs are the same as those of most Christians, apart from my epistemology. Hence the modifier.
You may find other books to have more grace, but my point is that regardless of how good of a job the Bible does at supporting the ideal of grace, grace is its primary value. It may fail at its task of supporting the ideal of grace, but I still think that is its clear purpose, regardless of how successful it is in it. Also, I’m not sure how a discussion of political agendas influencing the text of Bible is more damning than the biblical stories of God-sanctioned genocide brought up in this blog.
I am not prepared to defend the specific actions of the Old Testament deity, but I do think that if you don’t see the Old Testament as being a story about grace, you are missing the point of the story. My point is that, while it may be hard to find grace in God’s interactions with the side characters in the narrative of the OT, the story of the main characters is unquestionably about grace. I’m not raising a disagreement with the main point of the blog, I’m just saying that it is an incomplete view of the OT. (I do disagree, I think, with the main point of the blog, but I don’t think that I, personally, have anything of significant value to say about that here.)
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 22, 2012 at 10:23 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Echidna: You don’t find any beauty in fiction? I can’t relate to that; I love movies and fiction books.
nohellbelowus
November 22, 2012 at 10:33 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
“I think I should also find beauty in forgiveness from a mob boss (or unjust non-existent deity).”
Yes folks, this is a sentence that “the Lord” hath made.
Likewise, I find beauty when I cease pounding my head against the wall.
echidna
November 22, 2012 at 10:37 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Mark: I don’t find any beauty in your sliding between reality and fiction as if the distinction doesn’t matter. In what sense is the OT “empirically true”?
I also disagree with the idea that the old testament is primarily about grace. Let’s even stick to main characters:
Adam and Eve and all their descendants being punished for thousands of years for a deed before they were even given the knowledge of right and wrong is about grace? Eve’s fault, of course.
Noah’s story is about grace? Where almost the entire world’s population drowns?
Lot’s familial line continuing by getting his own daughters pregnant is grace (blaming the women for the incest, of course)?
The slaughter in Maccabees, where God declares he will turn is back on his people for 10,000 years is about grace?
What evidence do you have to back your assertion grace is the OT’s clear primary purpose?
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 22, 2012 at 10:49 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Nohellbelowus: I would also find beauty in a painting by Hitler if it were beautiful. I’m not sure why this would be unreasonable.
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 22, 2012 at 10:52 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Nohellbelowus: The point I am making is that a painting or action has a beauty independent of the morality of who paints the painting or does the act.
nohellbelowus
November 22, 2012 at 11:06 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Mark Schwartzkopf says:
“The point I am making is that a painting or action has a beauty independent of the morality of who paints the painting or does the act.”
Imagine you had never seen the Mona Lisa. Now, imagine that DaVinci had painted a scrawling FUCK YOU, GREEKS (in Latin, of course) across his (otherwise unchanged) masterpiece.
Would that be beautiful, to your eyes?
Leviticus 18:22 embellishes the “beautiful” bible in a similar way, wouldn’t you agree?
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 22, 2012 at 11:08 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Echidna: in terms of the discussion about whether the Bible is “mainly nice” it doesn’t really matter if it is true. It depicts the same deity and tells the same stories, regardless of how true they are. If we found out that the story of Romeo and Juliet is true, we wouldn’t appreciate it much more or less, I think. It’s value is not based on its fiction or non-fiction classification.
If the Bible claims to be non-fiction, but, in fact, is fiction, that is a huge problem with it, but that does not change its main point. And that is not what I was attempting to talk about. If we can’t talk about fiction actions as having beauty, or being moral, then we can’t talk about them as being ugly, or immoral, either. If you believe that, then you have as much of a problem with NonStampCollector as you do with me. The entire blog entry is about the evil of the biblical depiction of God.
My two main points are: 1. The two main characters in the Bible are the Israelite people and God. 2. The story is one of repeated betrayal by the Israelites and repeated forgiveness by God.
I have conceded, repeatedly, that the individual smaller stories are problematic. I continue to agree with all of you about this, you don’t need to continue to try to convince me.
echidna
November 22, 2012 at 11:12 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Mark,
The primary story of the OT is, in my eyes, the story of battered person’s syndrome, where humanity is the battered person and God is the batterer. The “grace” that you find so beautiful can also be seen as the moments where the batterer “makes nice” to keep control of the victim. The genocides are never the fault of God, because humanity was at fault, somehow, for failing to adore God enough.
From Wikipedia:
The OT, and Christianity, is all about control. Not beauty.
echidna
November 22, 2012 at 11:19 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
No-one has said that we can’t talk about fictional actions in any way. But before a meaningful discussion can take place, it is a good idea to be clear about the work’s fiction/non-fiction status. Whether a story is allegorical or historical or sheer fantasy or some combination thereof is important for understanding the meaning and context.
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 22, 2012 at 11:22 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Nohellbelowus: That’s an absurd metaphor. I did not say that a mob boss demonstrating forgiveness whilst saying “Fuck You!” is as beautiful as a wronged friend demonstrating forgiveness. Painting “FUCK YOU GREEKS” on the Mona Lisa changes the work itself. However if the Mona Lisa was still the Mona Lisa, but I found out that Da Vinci was a serial murderer, I wouldn’t find the painting to then be worthless. Would you?
A mob boss demonstrating forgiveness is laudable even if he puts a hit out on somebody the next day. The alternative is him not being forgiving at all. You seem to be making the argument that a mob boss turning his life around is morally equivalent to a mob boss continuing to be evil. Why can’t we celebrate the mob boss renouncing his evil ways? A beautiful act is a beautiful act. If I want my friend to forgive me, why is it bad for a mob boss to forgive me?
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 22, 2012 at 11:41 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Echidna: I agree that the actual fiction/non-fiction status of the Bible is of great importance in a discussion about the value of Christianity. However, I think that, even if I ultimately come to the conclusion that it is false, I will still value the depiction of grace in it.
About “battered person’s syndrome” that is a significantly more interesting thing to talk about, to me. But if this is an accurate description of the story of the Bible, then, for me, it would change the Bible from being primarily a story about grace to being primarily a crappy story about grace. The intent of the writing is to demonstrate God’s grace. If it fails because it has a insufficient view of what grace should be, that doesn’t change its primary objective. The main point of the story still seems to be grace and forgiveness.
nohellbelowus
November 23, 2012 at 12:02 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Mark Schwartzkopf @55:
Your quotes:
“As to your second question, [I] find the Bible to be more beautiful than any other work, regardless of its veracity, because I find grace to be the highest beauty.”
“And I, currently, find the Old Testament overall to be a beautiful depiction of grace, even if it may also have individual sections that are objectionable.”
“Painting “FUCK YOU GREEKS” on the Mona Lisa changes the work itself.”
Now, please address my point — and dispense with the chatter about mob bosses. We’re not talking about the authors of the bible — the book of Leviticus is an intrinsic part of the bible. It’s one of the “chapters” of the book, for chrissakes. How can such a book be an example of “the highest beauty” — when it advocates the murder of human beings because of their sexual preferences?
This ugly book belongs on a dusty shelf, in the basement of a library, next to copies of The Necronomicon.
echidna
November 23, 2012 at 12:03 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Please provide evidence from the text to explain why you think the main point is grace and forgiveness. Please understand that I, like many atheists, know the bible very well.
Serena
November 23, 2012 at 12:21 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
“The alternative is him not being forgiving at all. ”
No, the alternative is him not being a mob-boss.
notsont
November 23, 2012 at 12:36 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
If the bible is about “grace” I sure hope we don’t see anymore “grace” anytime soon.
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 23, 2012 at 1:06 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Nohellbelowus: I addressed your point in the first comment I made, in that I tried to say that I don’t think I have a significant disagreement with you there. I have repeatedly conceded here that little pieces like Leviticus can be very disturbing. But they don’t change the primary arc of the story. Leviticus isn’t even part of the story, it’s a law book from within the story. It is far from an average book of the Bible. The thesis I’m defending here is not that Leviticus is ok. Leviticus is clearly very problematic. The thesis I’m defending is that if you take a good look at the whole picture, the primary story is about grace. I, personally, find it to be of the highest beauty, but that is a different topic. You can reasonably find it to be a horrible attempt at being a story about grace. But that still appears to be its primary purpose. My point is that looking at individual sentences is not a good way to get an understanding of a whole work. Looking at sentences can give you good, meaningful, important information, but it will be incomplete information.
I can absolutely envision that at some point I could change my mind and come to agree with you about the individual acts by God in the Old Testament being evil. That’s why I’m not arguing with you about that point. I think it’s much less likely that I will stop believing that the primary focus of the story is grace.
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 23, 2012 at 1:17 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Echidna: You yourself said that you found the OT to be the story of battered person syndrome. Do you not think that in situations of battered person syndrome, the narrative that the abusive individual is trying to present is one of grace? We can say that it’s a crappy, false narrative, but it seems it’s clearly the ruse that they’re trying to pull. I obviously don’t view the story of the Bible the same way that you do, but it sounds like we can agree that it’s attempting to be a story about grace, even if we disagree about how successful it is in the attempt.
nohellbelowus
November 23, 2012 at 1:46 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
@Mark Schwartzkopf #61
Here’s a beautiful poem:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
Its loveliness increases; it will never
pass into nothingness …
―John Keats
Now let’s change only one word — just one little piece:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
Its loveliness increases; it will never
pass gas into nothingness …
―John Leviticus Keats
(I know, you’ll say it’s not a fair comparison, blah blah blah.)
Although it’s a classic Godwin, may I remind you that the “primary arc” of the Nazi story was the dream of building a beautiful, utopian society. That “little piece” regarding Auschwitz doesn’t unduly besmirch it.
I bet you’re a Lance Armstrong fan, too.
We’ll simply have to agree to disagree. You find the bible to be of the highest beauty. I say it’s an odious pile of horse dung.
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 23, 2012 at 2:46 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Nohellbelowus: I have never said that you can’t change beautiful things into ugly things, and while I do find the Bible to be a beautiful book, that has not been my contention here. I have not argued that the “little pieces” aren’t extremely problematic; in fact I’ve said that they are.
You appear to be arguing against someone who is not me.
But since you brought it up Godwin, let’s Godwin it up. I am a Republican, but I have found Republican rhetoric lately to be more and more like Nazi rhetoric. Since I want to find a way to understand, and hopefully minimize that sort of dangerous language, it’s important for me to understand the arc of the Nazi narrative. It is not enough for me to acknowledge that they did a bunch of evil stuff.
If you want to minimize the negative effects of Christianity, I support you, but you should understand more than just a few individual isolated stories from the Bible. You should have some sort of understanding of why people like myself value the Bible.
nohellbelowus
November 23, 2012 at 3:34 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I do. My mother will always be a devout Catholic, much to my chagrin.
Although it’s not a Republican’s hangout, have you ever ventured onto The Huffington Post and made a comment below one of the posted articles? The website has a feature whereby other readers can “Fave” your comment if they agree with it, or find it humorous.
I’ve been astonished… nay, shocked, at the number of “Faves” I will get for even the most offhand, sophomoric remarks (I’m an acknowledged master of these — just ask anybody). The lesson to me, was that if I ever started a church and needed a following, it would be quite easy to find.
Unfortunately, these are also the kinds of people who will read your subtle & nuanced endorsement of the bible as a book of the highest beauty — and very likely won’t have the ability to ascertain the problems with books like Leviticus.
Evidence? I often use the internet at a coffee shop attached to a large mega-church called Cornerstone in the Bay Area of California. Just last Sunday, the preacher told the story of Nehemiah, but ended with by exhorting everyone to read Kings, Matthew, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Just that quick, the names of the books virtually rolling off his tongue, without any qualifications or caveats.
I believe this is one of NonStampCollector’s reasons for posting this article. Some people can pick & choose the “good parts” of the bible and discard the bad, while others cannot and merely swallow it wholesale.
Doctors wouldn’t be shot at abortion clinics, and gay people wouldn’t be hung on barbed-wire fences, if everyone understood the “primary arc” of the bible in the fashion you’re suggesting.
Why not just edit the damn thing, for instance? You and I both know the answer to that question.
No One
November 23, 2012 at 4:43 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Grace? More like a neurotic attempt at justification for the foibles of nature and humanity. They are forgiving themselves. It’s not grace, it’s self delusion.
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 23, 2012 at 5:26 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Nohellbelowus: I would say that Nehemiah, 1st and 2nd Kings and especially Mathew are integral parts of the grace narrative in the Bible. I mostly agree with you though, and I would say that the disturbing herd mentality exhibited by many Christians is the primary thing that makes me question my religion’s value. (One of the reasons that it hasn’t yet convinced me to renounce my faith yet is that I don’t see religion in general or Christianity in particular as having a monopoly on irrational thought. That’s a whole other discussion, though)
bobo
November 23, 2012 at 5:57 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
the ‘grace’ in the OT is kinda like Savita Halappnavars ‘graceful’and ‘beautiful’ death for her ‘child and ‘the lord’
ie, utter bullshit
echidna
November 23, 2012 at 8:23 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Mark:
I don’t even understand what you are saying here. Define what you mean by “grace”, and show me an example from the OT to illustrate it.
Mark Schwartzkopf
November 23, 2012 at 9:45 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Echidna: I thought what you were saying by the comparison with battered person syndrome was that the biblical narrative presents a false guilt that an abuser-god can then forgive. Perhaps I misunderstood your comment.
My definition of grace is the normal Christian definition: unmerited favor. Forgiveness is grace, giving gifts is grace.
As to an example: the whole book of Judges is pretty representative of the OT narrative. It has many of the sorts of things that you and I find problematic about the OT, and many sorts of things that I find beautiful. The book is an account of the cycle of disobedience, punishment, forgiveness, and repentance. It is a great book to use to make a good case for your battered-person-syndrome reading, I think, but the way I currently read it is as a story of repeated forgiveness. However, regardless of which of us has a more accurate view of it, it seems that the overall intent of the book is to show God’s mercy. It does not seem that the intent is to just list a whole bunch of stories, many of which are disturbing and not “nice”. There is a pattern to the narrative that is attempting to present the story of a merciful god, especially when taken in context with the prophets and the New Testament.
Again, we can disagree on how well it does the job of depicting a merciful god. I think there are certainly reasons to think that the depiction is of an asshole god, instead of a merciful god, and I won’t fault you for believing that. But I think we can agree that the intent of Judges, and of the whole Bible is to depict a god of mercy. To me, it seems much more reasonable to say that it fails in that attempt than to say that the intent is not there.
echidna
November 23, 2012 at 12:07 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Mark,
No, we don’t agree. Let’s leave it there.
Serena
November 23, 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I get the premise that the bible can be taken merely as a story (which clearly many of us do); what I’m not getting is how any ‘broad narrative arc’ within it can be seen as ‘narrative that is attempting to present the story of a merciful god’. Using the same logic, I could say that Bill & Ted’s Adventure was a story about the future evolution of society. But would that be the feeling you walked away with?
I really want to reiterate my point that grace, in any of its forms, is always something given by someone with some kind of power. Be it the combat nurse who tends wounded soldiers or the battering husband who ‘was nice this week’, the problem with grace is that there even *are* situations where they are applicable. We don’t need a god to create horrible situations to spare us from, but we did create them in the hopes that we’d be spared the horrible situations we do live with. What’s gross is that morphed into baggage, piling ‘sin’ on top of our already difficult lives. Want a ticket out of this suffering, a free ride to paradise? Great, all you do is have to suffer all your life! Just like you would before, only a *little* more guilt. Mercy is something people give to each other and is entirely to humanity’s credit. People came up with that, not any gods.
michaelbrew
November 23, 2012 at 3:35 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
@Mark Schwartzkopf
I would actually argue that grace is a horrible, sick concept. You don’t even seem to get the actual concept of grace, which may be the problem. In the Christian conception of grace, it’s a privilege granted to a few random people without consideration as to whether they deserve it and a majority of people who may have deserved favor will end up on the receiving end of God’s wrath. You know what a real analogy is for grace? The boss appoints his grandson, a high school dropout, the new CEO of his company making six figures, and fires a person with the advanced business degree and decades of experience and accomplishment. An even better one: a gunman comes into your place of business and shoots everyone there, except he left one chamber empty, and you are the only person to survive because of that. Do you view what the gunman did as beautiful? Do you thank the gunman for leaving one chamber empty? If you would, you have a messed up sense of morality, because what the gunman is doing there is masturbatory. The gunman is basically thinking “I’m going to leave one chamber empty because I have so much power I control life and death, bwahahahahaha!” It sure as Hel isn’t out of the goodness of his heart that he spared you.
Grace is not the same as “giving gifts” or “forgiveness” in the conventional human sense. I usually give a gift to someone with whom I have some kind of relationship. I favor that person because that person has some kind of attribute that I like. Even if I give a gift to a stranger or to charity, I’m generally assuming that a person who deserves it will get it and not someone who’s going around killing and raping people. I wouldn’t want my gifts to go to a person like that, but if I were “graceful” that wouldn’t matter. God will save the child rapist but condemn the person who spends their whole life taking care of children and doing nothing overtly immoral. Similarly, I forgive someone on the assumption that 1) they won’t do it again and may even make it up to me and 2) because I know that I’m not perfect and I’m more likely to be forgiven in the future if I forgive others and 3) because it’s hard to hold a grudge against someone for too long. And, of course, forgiveness does and should have its limits.
Finally, your assertion that the bible’s main message is intended to be about “grace” is also flawed. First, there were a whole lot of authors of the books of the bible and it is very unlikely that they were all thinking, or even a majority were thinking, “hey, I’m going to make this book about grace or expand on the theme of grace set in the last book.” The Christian concept of grace is–as you might have gathered–Christian. That is, it emerged some time after the OT was written, and probably after at least some of the NT was written. Judaism doesn’t seem to have that concept, so the writers of the OT weren’t intending their book to be about it. They intended it to be about the importance of following laws and if you broke them God was going to jack you, and possibly the whole nation, up. The grace is an ad hoc narrative pasted over the Bible that only makes sense with the retcons the NT adds in, and even then it doesn’t completely since you have to misinterpret several OT passages.
bobo
November 23, 2012 at 4:03 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
#73 “God will save the child rapist but condemn the person who spends their whole life taking care of children and doing nothing overtly immoral. ”
Something like this did happen. A man raped his 9 year old stepdaughter, she ends up pregnant with twins, her mother manages to procure the girl an abortion to save the girls life. RCC hears about it, excommunicates the judge, the nurses, the doctors and the mom. The only reason the little girl was not excommunicated is b/c she was so young.
The rapist? (who had started raping her from the age of 6), well he is going to heaven, as long as he respents for his crime…
Grace in action, no?
Charly
November 23, 2012 at 4:46 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
So you admit it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, yet you insist that it is a chicken.
All you wrote is nothing more than ad hoc piffle. You assume that bible is about grace and that grace is good, and you interpret everything in the light of those assumptions. And everyting that contradicts the validity of those assumptions you try to wave away as somewhat “not inteded” like that.
Face the reality. Bible looks like horrendous book describing horrendous god, because it is horrendous book describing horrendous god.
michaelbrew
November 23, 2012 at 5:06 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
#74 The sick thing is, if he had been apart of one of the many Calvinist protestant sects, the rapist wouldn’t even need to repent. If he was chosen by God before he was even born to receive grace, he would have no choice and literally nothing he could do would void that particular blank check.
No One
November 23, 2012 at 5:51 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Yep. Forgiveness from an imaginary being. Psychological band aid.
Durchbrechen
November 23, 2012 at 6:04 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Just arrived at NSC blog, happy of being here. Just my brief take about the old testament issue. Indeed a great chunk of christianity itself rejected it. Gnostical currents, Marcionites, Cathars, Albigenses and a lot of other eretical branches have always been coming back in history condemning the old testament as utterly evil-inspired. There are no traces in nowadays christianity of these sects just because their members (a lot of people, they were at the point of take over christianity) have been decimated by crusaders and the inquisition. Anyway, there aren’t books inspired or written by God. All sacred books are the story of humankind’s attempt to grasp and think of the Absolute. I like the idea of a non personal Absolute – kind of the Plotinian One or the Advaita Vedanta divinity. Non-personal but linked to our personal existence. It’s also the point of accordance of the mystical thought of many religions, from Meister Eckhart in christianity to Ibn Arabi in islamic sufism. Notwithstanding many enlightened people burnt at the stake organized religions could not stop them all.
John Morales
November 23, 2012 at 10:55 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
[OT + meta]
Durchbrechen, mysticism is entertainment; fun to ponder, but silly to take seriously.
(PS Your English is quite good)
bobo
November 24, 2012 at 5:58 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Another, and more simple explanation, that I’ve heard (sorry, forger where) of “God’s Grace” is this:
“all human beings are vermin, born sinners, and it is only through Gods Grace that the almighty doesn’t just burn everyone alive RIGHT THIS MINUTE.”
godlesspanther
November 25, 2012 at 3:00 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I don’t think that anyone would deny that there is some material in the Bible that represents some high standards of goodness. On the other hand nobody can reasonably deny that there are parts that are utterly abhorrent.
Sure, most contemporary Christians just ignore the horrible, crazy, nonsensical, illogical, just plain wrong, or absolutely irrelevant parts and just accept the good stuff.
I read a response to a suggestion that one just take the good parts of the Bible and ignore what you don’t like. The response went something like:
Imagine someone brought you a plate. On that plate there was some good food and some shit. And you were instructed to just eat the stuff you like. The shit on the plate is going to destroy your appetite altogether.
I thought that was a good analogy. I can’t respect a book, even the good parts of it, that contains such horrible things that the Bible does.
John Morales
November 25, 2012 at 6:38 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
godlesspanther:
I hereby deny that there is some material in the Bible that represents some high standards of goodness.
(There you go)
Trina
November 25, 2012 at 8:20 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I got Jeremiah 20:4 For the Lord says, ‘I will make both you and your friends terrified of what will happen to you. You will see all of them die by the swords of their enemies. I will hand all the people of Judah over to the king of Babylon. He will carry some of them away into exile in Babylon and he will kill others of them with the sword.
and then Nehemiah 8:13 On the second day of the month the family leaders met with Ezra the scribe, together with all the people, the priests, and the Levites, to consider the words of the law.
anat
November 25, 2012 at 6:05 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
To Mark Schwartzkopf: I agree that the main narrative of the Tanakh is the story of the relationship between Yahweh and the Israelites (or Judahites). This relationship is dysfunctional from the get-go. The narrative places the blame for the dysfunctionality entirely on the disloyalty of the Israelites, but this is obviously not true. If the Yahweh character were a balanced and moral person he’d realize early on that he is not the preferred partner of the Israelites. They had other gods that were working fine, making the crops grow and babies be born. Instead of getting all jealous, threatening the Israelites and then assaulting them and causing them lasting physical and psychological damage until they begged forgiveness he should have ended the relationship, so they could each go their own ways. Then he should have taken a long break, grown up a bit and maybe at some later time formed a more mature relationship with someone else. There is nothing admirable in the actions of the Yahweh character as described in Tanakh.
Scott
November 26, 2012 at 12:37 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Thank you for censure of this carp.
F
November 26, 2012 at 9:48 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I think it’s mainly carbon.
alwayscurious
November 26, 2012 at 4:23 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I’m glad that every story of grace doesn’t end with the recipients in exile, told that if they are really good and only whimper a little bit they might be allowed back a small piece of everything taken from them.
Certainly there are stories about grace, beauty, etc. in the old testament. But you’re kidding yourself if you think that somehow excuses the other messages of justified war, violence, and oppression. Remember that the old testament is a collection of SEPARATE works that was assembled after the fact. It was bundled by Christians, intending to lead you to a few prearranged conclusions–full on expecting that the average person would never read nor understand it.
Pierce R. Butler
November 27, 2012 at 2:36 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
The old testament, which is about 7/8 of the bible…
I downloaded the King Jimmy Version from Project Gutenberg and put a page/section break between each “book”.
The total page count (omitting a couple of pages of PG tags at the end) comes to 975; the NT begins on page 738, or a smidgen over 75% of the whole.
A closed-eyes, random-scroll-around-&-click selection produced Matthew 16:27 -
- which can be read as a promise or a threat, depending.
echidna
November 27, 2012 at 12:50 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
It might be closer to 7/8 if you add the books that were omitted by the Protestants:: Wisdom, Maccabbees, and so on.
BradC
November 27, 2012 at 3:25 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Not sure if this discussion is still in progress, but I had to respond to this post by Mark Schwartzkopf (post 42):
The only reading of this that makes any sense at all is that you are profoundly misunderstanding the “mob-boss” analogy. If that’s the case, let me fully flesh it out here:
You own a small neighborhood store. On Monday a well-dressed man backed by two impressive thugs comes into the store, suggesting you pay him “protection money”, because “this is a tough neighborhood” and “you never know what could happen” and “we can make sure your store stays safe.”
You initially refuse, and in the following week, the store is broken into twice, the front windows are shattered by bricks in broad daylight, and finally you are robbed at gunpoint by a tall masked man who looks suspiciously like “Thug #2″ from your Monday encounter.
You talk to the police, and it is clear that they don’t have the resources or will to do anything more than take a report on these incidents.
The following Monday the well-dressed man returns, asking if you’ve thought any further about his offer. You quickly do the math in your head, adding up the insurance deductibles for the week, as well as the years taken off your life as you stared down the barrel of a 44-caliber revolver.
You pay the money, and the following week the store is left peacefully alone.
This isn’t “grace”. This isn’t “forgiveness”. This is extortion. This is a protection racket. This is injustice. This is EVIL.
The Christian God demands we worship him, or he will punish us with the hell that he created. God is the one who set up the old testament rules that he knew we couldn’t keep (because he created us), then punishes us for doing what we couldn’t help but doing. And then demands we accept the “good news” that he killed himself to save us from his own wrath because of rules he created.
This isn’t “grace”. This isn’t “forgiveness”. This is extortion. This is a protection racket. This is injustice. This is EVIL.
Bottom line: even if there were any reason to think that the Bible was actually true (which there really isn’t), the message of the gospel is a message of injustice, not a positive message of hope and grace and forgiveness.
See also Dan Baker’s summary of the “good news” of Christianity here (“You don’t have to go down to my basement”):
Sansgerd
November 27, 2012 at 10:43 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Mark I have a question. You say you identify yourself as a Agnostic Christian, but in order to be a Christian don’t you have to 100% believe that Genesis is true (original sin) first. Then you get the Sacrifice of Jesus to save humanity from it?
As an agnostic you are not sure, so therefore not giving the sincerity that god requires for entrance to heaven…which I am guessing is your real reason for believing in the first place (fear of where you go after death).
Serena
November 27, 2012 at 10:58 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Thank you BradC, yours was the post I was trying to write; that clip is exactly the reference I was hoping to show.
Tony ∞2012 recipient of the coronal mass erection∞
November 29, 2012 at 10:56 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Mark:
Leaving aside the notion that there is no way to know the intent of the many people who wrote & re-wrote the bible (since they are all dead), how do you know the intent of these writers without being a mind reader? I do not look at the bible as conveying grace. The central message is IMHO one of submission to or control by an authority above all else. You and I read two different things into the bible. How are you able to determine intent without being inside the head of the biblical writers? Rather than read the bible for what it says, it appears you have somehow comfirmed your own bias. You are already inclined to look upon the bible with favor, so your interpretation is one of grace. Being an atheist, one could say I am biased against the bible. However, I am not attempting to interpret the book. I am not trying to infer intent. I am reading the passages as is. If you stopped trying to find deeper meaning in the bible and just read the words on the page, you might come away thinking something other than “this book is about grace”
madcheddar
December 3, 2012 at 5:14 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
i don’t know if i picked this up somewhere, but my understanding of stoning is that no one person is the executioner – it takes a community working together to kill you in this way. throwing two or three stones at you is very unlikely to kill you, so if i throw a couple of stones at you, when all is said and done i don’t have to carry the guilt/blame/sin of having killed you. and likewise, a critical mass of stone-throwers is necessary to surround you and prevent you from running off – you could pretty easily defend yourself from a few stone-throwers (assuming you’re not buried up to your head or tied to something), but if the community is in agreement that you should be stoned, you’re going to have some trouble deflecting/dodging all those rocks.
so the “why stoning” question comes down to diluting the guilt of murder-by-stoning to the point where the stoners do not feel they are individually to blame for the death, and likewise serves as somewhat of a check/balance so that a judge cannot condemn someone to death (in the case of the crimes/sins outlined in the OT as stoning offenses) with the aid of just an executioner – rather, it also takes the will of some critical mass of the community to enforce the judgement. and if it’s just a few people throwing stones? their malice will be obvious to the rest of the community, and it will be obvious that your blood is on their hands when you’ve been killed. societal pressure what it is, there’s a good chance those few could be shamed into not going through with killing you. basically – death by stoning gives the community the chance to collectively say “yes, you deserve to die for this sin, but we can’t go through with this gruesomeness, so you’re forgiven.”
barbaric? yes. do i agree with it? no. divinely commanded? probably not. i definitely think that the good old human race came up with this particular punishment, and that it does have some merit, in the fact that it requires a community to agree about your guilt (and perhaps also agree that your sin/crime is unforgivable). given how easy it is to sway/enrage a mob, though, its merit may be impractical.
Nathanael
December 3, 2012 at 9:32 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
The random Bible verses really are mostly trivialities; bits of story.
“Acts 10:23 So Peter invited them in and entertained them as guests. On the next day he got up and set out with them, and some of the brothers from Joppa accompanied him.”
“2 Chronicles 31:14 Kore son of Imnah, a Levite and the guard on the east side, was in charge of the voluntary offerings made to God and disbursed the contributions made to the Lord and the consecrated items.”
What also shows up frequently is slavish bowing and scraping:
“Psalms 119:64 O Lord, your loyal love fills the earth. Teach me your statutes!”
Some of it is weirder, and I think needs context to make any sense:
“Ezekiel 35:2 “Son of man, turn toward Mount Seir, and prophesy against it.”
Oh-kay, I looked up the context, and God is ordering the destruction and desolation of a *location* for its “disobedience”. Yeah, like that makes sense. Much of this part of Ezekiel seems to be hostile rants directed at the freaking *geology*. I admit I hadn’t read through the Prophets before. There’s some *nutty* material here. Wow.
Nathanael
December 3, 2012 at 9:38 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
FWIW, all the textual evidence shows that the different bits of the Bible were written by people with *very very* different theologies. They’re not consistent because the people writing them had different ideas.
The earliest sections are openly polytheistic; there are several gods with different names wandering around as well as repeated references to “the gods”. Unfortunately, these sections also have one of the most damaged textual histories, since our oldest copies are already mashups of multiple sources filtered through centuries of different religions interpretations.
The later sections can be traced a little better, and have settled down a little more conceptually, but again, the theology of the author of Kings is clearly different from that of the author of Chronicles, and by the time you get to the Prophets the theological ideas have changed again.
Nathanael
December 3, 2012 at 9:44 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Mark S. wrote:
“My two main points are: 1. The two main characters in the Bible are the Israelite people and God. 2. The story is one of repeated betrayal by the Israelites and repeated forgiveness by God.”
I contend that the Bible is not a coherent story. There are sections where the two main characters are the Israelite people and God (this theme starts somewhere in Exodus and ends somewhere in the Prophets).
The first such story involves, in actual fact, repeated betrayal by *God* — look up how many times he breaks his promise to bring the Israelites into the promised land.
Another story is mostly about King David violating the laws set down in Leviticus (all worship to be done in outdoor tents, NO TEMPLE ALLOWED), and explaining that because he’s the chosen of God, he gets to change the law.
Then there are a bunch of stories about random wars by the Israelites, with God interfering intermittently on one side or the other as his mood takes him…
So, Mark S. I contend as a matter of literary analysis that you are wrong on your two main points.
Nathanael
December 3, 2012 at 9:48 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Anyway, thanks for the link to the truly-random-Bible-verse website. Fun stuff.
Neoglitch
January 17, 2013 at 4:14 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
“Because if stoning people and burning them alive can be excused in some ‘contexts’, … then what on Earth can’t be?”
Well Nosco (blame JP Holding for that nickname hehe), after watching some videos and having a couple of short discussions with some Christians I’ve come to understand that:
1. To them, if God does it, it is right by definition… no matter how immoral it is. As William Lame Craig writes in an article on Reasonable Faith, Yahweh doesn’t have to adhere to the moral standards he created himself, because he is God. The massive genocide of the Canaanites? It is morally good if God says it’s ok! The massive flood? If God does it, it’s ok! He can kill his own creations and have his children kill each other because he is God!!
2. Those Christians that are exposed to the horrible immorality of the Old Testament quickly rationalize that yes, the “harshness” of the law was “harsh” in the past, but because of the sacrifice of Jesus that harshness is no more!! Oh, but you still have to follow the Ten Commandments… but you can’t punish offenders of the law by stoning them to death as Yahweh wrote in his perfect and inerrant book… well, not any more, because of Jesus!! Who… is also Yahweh…
The way Christianity makes Xtians blind to blatant immorality is incredible. Change Yahweh for Cthulu in the Bible and these Christians would say “Indeed, that deity is a complete monster!”