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The Old Testament is unethical and crazy. It is a sad fact than billions of people are brainwashed into supporting this book and have become emotionally tied to its teachings which have infected their moral compasses. The book supports slavery, cases of rape, war, animal sacrifice, sexism, homophobia, dictatorships or unconstitutional monarchs, and an interesting and senseless variety if dietary and sexual taboos.
"The religions of one era become the literary entertainment of the next. " People in the future will wonder how man was ever so cruel, superstitious, and foolish. If there was a benevolent higher power, independent of past and current dogma, it must be asleep. God is not the problem. It is his followers. As George Bernard Shaw put it, “No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.”
"Historically, (and currently) Gods are authoritative sources to justify crimes against Humanity" For example the Pope's god did not want a war with Iraq, but G. W. Bush thinks God asked him to start a war with Iraq. Both men believe they worship the same God. It is a cloak of authority to hide behind. No one should claim a monopoly over God AKA the ultimate authority (which no one really has access to b/c it doesn't exist). Anyone can invent what they want God to say, so we are left with the Bible, and the Bible, folks, is pretty scary, silly, and highly unreliable source of information. As a system to develop a moral code, Mother Goose does a better job and each is about equally realistic it terms of epistemology.
Scare tactic aside why should someone believe in and follow the Old Testament of the Bible? Religion has had the disastrous effect of placing vitally important concepts, such as morality, happiness and love, in a supernatural realm inaccessible to man's mind and knowledge. Morality and religion have become so intertwined that many people cannot conceive of ethics divorced from god, even in principle - which leads to the assumption and misconception that a non-theist is out to destroy values.
The Old Testament is not moral. There are many moral atrocities and practices upheld in the Old Testament. It is shocking to many people who have never actually read the Old Testament to discover that it clearly advocates slavery, abuse of women etc…. So to base a moral system that does not accept slavery, rape and possible, insanity on the Old Testament one would have to do an enormous amount of rationalization.
For example, what kind of God sends bears to kill forty two children for making fun of a bald guy?
2 Kings 2:22-24
“So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake
2:23
And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
2:24
And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.”
The Old Testament speaks of such outrageous things as offering ones daughter to a mob to be gang raped to death and then cutting up the body into twelve pieces. Read in Judges 19: 22-29
22 While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, "Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him."
23 The owner of the house went outside and said to them, "No, my friends, don't be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don't do this disgraceful thing.
“24 Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But to this man, don't do such a disgraceful thing."
25 But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go.
26 At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.
27 When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold.
28 He said to her, "Get up; let's go." But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.
29 When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel.”
The man was already offering his virgin daughter and then his concubine. Never mind the fact that he even has a concubine, he sent her to her brutal rape and death.
In fact sometimes women were prizes of war. Deut 21:11-13
When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the LORD thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive,
21:11
And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife;
21:12
Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house, and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails;
21:13
And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife
There is a book in the Bible with a woman’s name as the title, the book of Ruth. Ah yes, Ruth who was purchased by Boaz, can not represent anything progressive. As we can read Ruth 4:10
“Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day.” [emphasis added]
Even if a man were to sleep with the slave of another man the woman gets punished not the man. The great book of Leviticus between the odd animal sacrifices we read:
Lev 19:20 “And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman, that is a bondmaid, betrothed to an husband, and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given her; she shall be scourged; they shall not be put to death, because she was not free.”
Let’s not forget about the witches and sorcerers. The Bible says not to suffer such things to live. IN Exodus the same book that the Ten Commandments are wriiten in, we can read this strange rule:
EX 22:18 “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
This might just be laughed off, but even after over four thousand years since this had been written had pasted, Believers were burning ‘witches’ in Massachusetts. Women not witches were brutally burned by the Old Testament reading God fearing mobs that pollute this continent which was inhabited by Native Americans who were also killed off in a similar manner by god fearing freaks under the flag of Manifest Destiny. This is not funny, this is horrible. Many other so called ‘witches’ and ‘sorcerers’ were burned in Spain under its many inquisitions AKA the re- allotting of land holdings.
The Old Testament clearly advocates slavery. No where is there a commandment condemning slavery. However there are rules for how to buy slaves, how to punish them, and how to take captives as sex slaves.
"Then thou shalt take an awl, and thrust it through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant for ever. And also unto thy maidservant thou shalt do likewise (Deut. 15:17, KJV )."
Now, many Bibles have changed the word ‘slave’ to ‘servant,’ in an attempt at damage control. Some say ‘bondman,’ but any one with a high school education knows that it is talking about slavery. A servant for life is a slave.
Slavers were not reserved to a particular pigment of the skin. It seemed that any non Jew would do. After all Jews are the chosen race of the God they invented, meant to multiply over the earth and subdue it. This is simply fascist.
“Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and you can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly ( Lev. 25:44-46, NIV )."
Slavery was even part of a reward and punishment system. And it was tied to a kind of ethnic nationalism for Hebrews who became Jews.
I (the Lord-ed) will sell your sons and daughters to the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, a nation far away (Joel 3:8, NIV )
It would be very difficult to explain the selling of ‘servants’ and trading people like commodities and property between nations. Also see, Ex. 21:2-6, Deut. 15:12, 28:68, and Jer.27:8,12 there are too many to even name.
The chapter right after the Ten Commandments talks about beating your ‘servant’ or more accurately your slave.
"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property (Ex. 21:20-21, NIV)
Even if this were a servant who one was allowed to beat, this would be wrong all by itself. There was no Eleventh commandment saying “thou shall not owe slaves.” In fact two to the Ten Commandments advocate slavery. To observe how ridiculous the Ten Commandments still are, let’s have a look at some of them. The fourth commandment is about the keeping the Sabbath day holy, but interestingly it mentions that even slaves do not have to work on this day. The tenth commandment dictates that, “…thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife, ox, or slaves.
A certain element of Christian fundamentalist and other psychotic factions were behooved that the out of date Old Testament’s Ten Commandments had to be removed form a court room in Alabama. The fanatics claim that the ways of our nation’s court system and even the legitimacy of our constitution necessitate a belief in their God and their practices.
Nothing could be further form the truth than this backwards thinking. The foundations of our constitution, which was written primarily by Deists and atheists, (as if an appeal to an outside authority is even necessary), is based on man, “we hold these truths to be self evident.” Were one to follow the form of government that the Bible professes then we would have to live under a king in a feudal society based on bloodlines. The divine right of kings which derived its authority from religious dogma is the very thing that our founding fathers were rebelling against. Remember Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ which was a popular pamphlet that undermined the power of the king. A republican form of government is a step away from the religious rhetoric of Christians and Jews. Conveniently and typically the religious currently neglect to mention or read about its deep roots in justifying monarchies, the birth rights of first sons, and other equally asinine practices like killing sheep, the subjugation of women etc…
I for one, think no more witch burnings, the acceptance of women’s liberation, the human status of American Indians, emancipation and desegregation are all good things. I hope homosexuals, Palestinians, non-Christians, Abortion doctors, and others suffering from the fundamentalists’ sexual and racial, taboos that these bigots cling to will find their liberation from dogmatic fear too. The Bible is NOT a good source for morality or ethics.
No matter how far you twist it, even if you got rid of all the sexual taboos, the scientific untruths like the sun going around the earth and talking donkeys , Samson's magical hair, Jonah living in a whale's belly for three days , the entire creation story, the morally unacceptable and politically unacceptable institutions that the Bible supports like oh, Slavery, and a non-constitutional Monarchy, even if you get rid of the common sense flaws like animal sacrifices , exorcisms, witches, giants , demons, the super status of first born sons, and all the bigotry toward all other religions, and the economic retardation of things like tithing and collecting money for God, and the psychological problems of a hierarchical system of authoritarianism and the type of families and governments that tends to promote, and combined with the chronic guilt for things that help self esteem like pride, free thinking, wisdom (read Ecclesiastes-literally the book of life) and so on make sexually dysfunctional child molesters and war mongering freaks, even if you strip down of all the ugly and are left with the good parts like ‘love your neighbors as thy self’ and don't kill, steal, or lie,-things even a four year old knows better than to do, and hardly warrants a religious text to comprehend them, even if you do all these things and come out with a good form of Christianity (in my opinion the Quakers would be that form) you still have a fundamental flaw and that is that the myth doesn't even make sense b/c of the god coming dying and requiring this knowledge and worship so he doesn't burn you thing is plainly and simply just stupid.
Unless you want to agree with slavery then you would have to selectively ignore parts of the Old Testament and one would have to ignore the concept of a ethnically superior chosen race of God which is the back bone of the OT. The scientific untruth are another matter, but even with those aside, one would be hard pressed to justify or rationalize all the horrible treatment of women, mythical beings, and all the people who were victims of war and slavery.
Also many innocent animals were killed not only as sacrifices but also God flooded the entire earth when he was man at man and cruelly drowned all the none sea dwelling animals with the exception of seven or two of each depending on its category.
The next time anyone thumps on the Old Testament as a source of moral values or condemns some alternative, just ask them to read it. One good read of these books and any moral thinking adult will come to their senses. The best argument against the Old Testament is reading the Old Testament.
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