Tag Archives: Morality

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 26.2: The Bible is the Word of God

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WritingRight on cue, after my post on the Bible as ‘the Word of God’, Mike Ratcliff over at the intense Possessing the Treasure, posted his own item on the forged 2 Timothy 3.16-17, using it to show how the Bible is truly God’s Word.

You should know that Mike will not be contradicted in any way. You’re wasting your time posting a comment about his ‘exegesis’ of biblical texts because his musings – and there are many, many of them – are without any sort of error. Mike doesn’t make mistakes! He explains in his post how the Bible is ‘inspired, infallible and inerrant’. Many evangelical Christians hold this view of the Bible, which is as mistaken as it is idolatrous.

Infallible literally means ‘incapable of failure’ and ‘trustworthy’, but as I’ve attempted to show in many of my previous posts, the Bible fails in all sorts of ways:

It fails as science. It claims light existed before the sun was created; it claims the sun goes round the Earth, which it thinks is the centre of the universe. It has no idea about the order in which life-forms developed; no idea about evolution; no idea about life-forms that cannot be seen with the naked eye. It describes insects as having four legs and gives animals the power of speech.

It fails morally. It endorses slavery, polygamy, rape, incest, genocide and cruelty to both animal and human life. It denigrates women, children, the disabled and gay people. It prescribes brutal and barbaric punishments for those who infringe its petty laws.

It fails in its promises and prophecies. None of its promises ‘work’, none of its prophecies have come true (except those made after the event they’re meant to be predicting.)

Can something that fails so spectacularly and consistently be considered trustworthy? Yes, say Christians like Mike. No, says anyone capable of a little elementary reasoning.

Inerrant means incapable of error. As if the errors in the ‘failure’ category aren’t enough, the Bible is littered with mistakes and contradictions. The gospels, for example, all have different visitors to the tomb of the supposedly risen Jesus. These visitors are all met by different strangers – one man, two men, angels and their dog, Spot. More importantly, the New Testament can’t decide how a person is saved. Paul’s formula is radically different from Jesus’, and different again from the message Luke puts into his mouth in Acts. In total, there are eight different and conflicting ways to find salvation in the New Testament*.

Inspired literally means ‘breathed out’; Mike Ratcliff and others insist that the Bible is ‘breathed out’ by God. Apparently, he ‘breathed out’ his confused, contradictory message into and through fallible tribesmen, and first-century hallucinatory zealots, causing the former to exaggerate their own importance and success and the latter to create those eight different routes to salvation. He didn’t, however, see fit to give them a clear picture of who Jesus actually was, nor a precise formulation of the so-called Trinity (that fanciful nonsense had to be worked out much later), nor of what would happen to believers after death. He did, though, inspire forgeries and fakes like 2 Timothy and left it forty to a hundred years to prompt four individuals who had never met Jesus to write the muddled tales of his adventures on Earth. He didn’t think it important to preserve the originals of any of the manuscripts he’d inspired, nor did he take steps to prevent them from being altered both deliberately and accidentally throughout the ensuing years**. Perhaps he ‘breathed out’ the alterations and errors too.

The real problem with the inspiration argument is though that it is circular; the Bible ‘proves’ God and God proves the Bible.

No, the Bible is not infallible. Nor is it inerrant, nor inspired. It is an all too human creation, fallible and error-ridden. There is greater consistency and style in the works of Shakespeare than there is in the shambolic collection of books cobbled together as the Bible in 397CE. Those who see it as something more, see what they want see and are wilfully blind to its many failings. God’s Word it isn’t.

 

Notes:

* For the eight (at least) salvation plans in the New Testament see my book, Why Christians Don’t Do What Jesus Tells Them To …And What They Believe Instead, chapter 6.

** For errors, alterations and the non-preservation of any original documents see Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed The Bible And Why.

 

 

 

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 23: Jesus shows us how to live

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Doctor

Was JC a great moral teacher?

No, the best things he said – do unto others, love your neighbour – had already been said eons before he came along. Some of the other stuff he came out with was ridiculously impractical – give away all you have; live only for today; turn the other cheek – that his followers have been unable to do from day one.

Did what he said about God turn out to be right?

No. He said God would establish his Kingdom on Earth while the disciples were still alive.

Did he commit himself to long-term responsibility for others and their needs?

Another no.

Did he experience the infirmities and difficulties of old age?

Nope.

Did he suffer from any of the serious illnesses we mere mortals are prone to?

Apparently not.

Did he give over his entire life to raising children or taking care of elderly relatives?

Not that we know of.

Did he have to work each day to earn a living?

No. He sponged off gullible female fans (Luke 8.1-3).

Did he have any understanding of science and of how the world works?

Erm, no. He thought people became ill because of sin and demon possession and that Heaven was in the sky.

Was he interested in anything but his own futile ‘mission’?

Yet another no.

Apart from his last few days did he know suffering, the everyday frustrations of life or the daily struggle to make ends meet?

Not so’s you’d notice.

Did he, in short, know anything of the life as it was lived and is lived by ordinary people?

Emphatically not.

There was nothing marvellous about Jesus. He was out of touch with ordinary people and at loggerheads with those cleverer than he was. He was a failed prophet who was turned into a supernatural being by those who came along afterwards – mainly Paul, who’d never met him – and is worshipped today by those who ignore most of what he said.

 

 

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 22: Jesus is gentle and humble

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Humble

Without any humility, Jesus boasts in Matthew 11.29 about how gentle and humble he is. Let’s see how he qualifies:

He insists people should love him more than their own families (Matthew 10.37).

He says he’s not a peacemaker but intends creating strife (Luke 12.51).

He claims anyone who doesn’t follow him deserves to be burnt (John 15.6).

He wants the world to be destroyed by fire (Luke 12.49).

He commands people not to call others ‘fools’ (Matthew 5.22) but tells those he doesn’t care for that they’re ‘swine’, ‘dogs’, ‘snakes and vipers’, ‘whitewashed tombs’, and, yes, ‘fools’ (Matthew 7.6; 15.26; 23.33; 23.27; 23.17 & Luke 11.40).

He deliberately speaks in riddles so that people won’t understand him and won’t find forgiveness (Mark 4.12).

He tells his followers to love their enemies but says he’d have his own killed (Luke 19.27 & Matthew 13.41-42).

He endorses slavery and the cruel treatment of slaves (Luke 12.47-48).

He says people would be better off if they cut off their hands, plucked out their eyes and castrated themselves (Mark 9.43-48 & Matthew 19.12).

He endorses the Jewish law that demands the death penalty for those who disrespect their mother and father (Matthew 15:4-7).

He disrespects his mother (Matthew 12.48-49).

He tells people not to get angry but loses his own temper (Matthew 5.22 & Mark 3.5).

He callously kills a herd of pigs and, in a fit of pique, destroys a fig tree (Matthew 8.32 & Matthew 21.19).

He takes a whip to people (John 2.15).

He tells his mates he’ll soon be king of the world and promises them that they’ll rule alongside him (Matthew 19.28).

So, the marks of a gentle, humble man? Or the characteristics of an unpleasant, delusional megalomaniac?

The evidence is in front of you. You decide.

 

 

A Story From The Bible…

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Luke 10.29-37 accurately translated from the original Greek

 Jerry&Sam

…And so Jesus told them a story to explain what he meant:

“There was,” he said, “a young man called Jerry Cohen who was making his way across the city late at night when he was set upon by some yobs. They kicked him to the ground, stole his wallet and phone and left him for dead. He lay in the doorway of a shop, blood seeping from the deep cut to the back of his head and pooling into the shadowed corner. With his teeth broken and ribs cracked, Jerry slipped into unconsciousness.

By chance, a group of people from a local church were out that night witnessing to the young people partying in the bars and pubs of the district and for whom, let’s be honest, this was an unwelcome intrusion. Some of these well-meaning church-folk noticed Jerry lying in the doorway as his life ebbed away, but as they couldn’t see all the blood they simply assumed he had passed out from an excess of alcohol. They decided to leave him where he was to sober up. ‘Let’s give him the Good News to read when he does,’ said one, tucking a tract called Salvation through the Redemptive Power of the Cross into his top pocket. 

Minutes later, an evangelist happened to pass Jerry, still curled foetally on the floor, and noticed that the premises next to where he was seemed to be one of dubious repute. Its lights blazed even at this late hour and there were over-sized, suggestive pictures of athletic-looking young men in the windows. He didn’t want to look too closely because he didn’t want the taint of sin to cling to him but it seemed obvious that if the shop was what he thought it was, then the boy next to it could only be a homosexualist, hell bent on foisting his perverted lifestyle on everyone and destroying traditional marriage in the process. And so he walked swiftly on, quietly quoting Romans 1.27 to himself: Men commit shameful acts with other men, and receive in themselves the due penalty for their error. ‘If ever there was a sign that the end times have arrived,’ he thought to himself, ‘it’s the likes of that degenerate individual over there.’ As he crossed the road, he failed to see another young man approaching in the opposite direction.

Sam Harrington wasn’t a homosexualist either – because really there’s no such thing – but he was a homosexual. He’d had been working late and was eager to get home so he too was taking a short cut through the centre of the town. He spotted Jerry in the doorway and before he could even think what he was doing, he had pulled his phone out of his pocket and had dialled the emergency number. While he waited for the ambulance to arrive, he cradled Jerry’s head in his lap, holding closed the gash to stop further blood loss and helping it start to heal. When the ambulance arrived, Sam went with Jerry to the hospital where he sat anxiously in Accident and Emergency for  two hours, waiting to hear how he was. When, finally, a nurse came to tell him that now the young man’s jaw had been wired together and his head stitched there was every chance he would pull through, Sam wept unashamedly.

With the last bus long gone, he began his long walk home. He didn’t have enough money for a cab and he didn’t like ringing his partner in the early hours of the morning to ask for a lift.”

“So tell me,” Jesus said finally, “which of the three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the yobs? Who showed him real love?”

His followers looked around blankly at each other, for surely this was a question that was impossible to answer.    

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 17: You get saved by being washed in the blood of the lamb (Romans 5.9 etc)

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Sermon

Not according to Jesus you don’t. And you’d think he being the Son of God – not to mention ‘the lamb’ in question – he’d be in a position to know. So how does Jesus say you find salvation? No magic formula for him; no quick-fix like the one Paul invents after Jesus’ death.

So how does Jesus reckon you get right with God? For once, he couldn’t be clearer:

If you want to receive God’s forgiveness, first you have to give it:

For if you forgive men their trespasses your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6.14)

If you want to avoid God’s judgement… then don’t judge others:

Judge not that you be not judged. For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. (Matthew 7.1-2)

If you want God to show you mercy, first show mercy yourself:

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. (Matthew 5.7)

If you want to experience God’s riches and blessings, first you have to be generous yourself:

Give and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back. (Luke 6.38)

If you want God to show you compassion, first be compassionate yourself:

The King will say to those at his right hand… I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me… Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord when did we see the hungry and feed thee or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee?… And the King will answer them, Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’.

Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me… Truly I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it not to me’. (Matthew 25.34-46)

That’s right, Jesus sees being saved as a ‘measure for measure’ arrangement and uses that exact term repeatedly in order to get the message across. According to the ‘Son of God’, you get what you give. And, what’s more, his death has nothing to do with it. He starts preaching his ‘gospel’ message long before he’s crucified (Mark 1.14) and it most definitely doesn’t include any mystical piggy-backing on a death that hasn’t happened yet in order to gain God’s favour. Even Matthew, Mark and Luke don’t add it to their stories of Jesus, even though they wrote them after he died and after Paul’s invention of his magic salvation formula.

Jesus’ ‘measure-for measure’ gospel is very different from Paul’s – the two are incompatible in fact, though Christians refuse to see this. Jesus’ gospel is practical and moral: the way to God’s heart, he says, is through treating others, even those who might despise us, with kindness and compassion.

This, though, is too hard for Christians. They find Paul’s spiritualised, self-centred version of salvation much more to their taste.

What’s this ‘Biblical morality’ we keep hearing about?

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Is it feeding the hungry? Helping the poor? Visiting the sick and the imprisoned? Opposing injustice? Fighting against oppression? Giving away your possessions? Going the extra mile? Turning the other cheek? Respecting others? Loving your neighbour? Loving your enemies?

Or is just about sex? To read Christian web-sites and blogs, you’d think so. Jesus’ followers today are obsessed with it, which is why the God they make in their image is too. Sex that other people might be having, before marriage, during it; sex when it makes babies and when it doesn’t; sex with yourself; sex in the head, on the screen and in different positions; sex with too many partners, with the wrong partners and with partners of the same sex (the worst sin of all, apparently). They write about little else, because you see, what other people do in bed together is of great concern to God. It’s more important to him – or his self-appointed representatives on Earth, anyway – than hunger, oppression, slavery, injustice and genocide combined.

If only we all had sex like the Christian experts say we should (because it’s in the Bible) then we’d all be so much better off; civilisation wouldn’t be slipping into the abyss, God wouldn’t be so upset with us and we wouldn’t all be destined for hell.

End

But morality isn’t just about sex. In fact, it has little to do with who we sleep with and when. Rather, morality is about how we treat others, as Jesus said (Luke 6.31). Of course, how we treat others in a sexual context is important, but it’s no more important than how we treat them in other contexts. That’s because morality is, or should be, all embracing. It’s long past time Christians stopped banging on about it as if it was the only concern of morality. Instead they could start treating those who do sex differently from them as they themselves would like to be treated. That, if there really is such a thing, would be true Biblical morality.

Christians ignore Jesus

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Optional

Christians are commanded to ‘take up their crosses’ to follow Jesus (Luke 9.23). That means, amongst other things, doing what he commands. Yet Christians don’t just fail to do as he tells them, they replace his agenda with their own and completely ignore him. Being a Christian, according to Jesus – and you’d think he’d know – is not about pointing out the failings of others, nor about defending God’s honour (as an omnipotent being he’s more than capable of doing that himself) and it isn’t about condemning those you don’t agree with. It’s about treating others as you’d like to be treated, loving your enemies… things like these, in fact –

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get (Matthew 7.1-2).

Yet Christians judge relentlessly and tell us they’re justified in doing so: ‘you’re a sinner’, ‘you’re going to hell’, ‘gay people are of the devil’, ‘you’ve got the wrong set of beliefs’. We can only suppose they’ve don’t have a problem with the judgement they themselves will face as a result (because they don’t really believe there’ll be any such judgement.)

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5.44).

What Jesus really meant to say here, surely, was ‘criticise those you don’t like, claim they’re infringing your rights, sue them if need be’. Yes, that’s it.

Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you (Matthew 5.42).

Really? Let’s give it a go. Beg a Christian to pay off your mortgage or ask to borrow the cash for new car. See how far that gets you. The problem here, as with all of these commands, is that Jesus really has no idea. No wonder Christians ignore this one.

How can you say to your neighbour, ‘let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye’ (Luke 6.42).

Another ‘don’t judge’ command, to which Christians respond, ‘What log? Your speck is more of an eyesore than my log. My log doesn’t impede my vision at all. It’s you who can’t see.’

If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt (Luke 6.28).

Yeah, right.

Do to others as you would have them do to you (Luke 6.31).

From which we can only conclude that Christians really must want to be treated as shabbily as they treat others (see links above)  

So how about it Christians? Maybe if you were doing what Jesus commands instead of judging the rest of us, we might take you a little more seriously. And, assuming he’s up in Heaven watching you – though even you know he isn’t or else you’d be doing as he tells you – so would Jesus himself.

As he says in Luke 6.46: ‘Why do you call me “Lord, Lord,” and don’t do what I tell you?’

Why_Christians_Don't_Cover_for_Kindle

For more on this topic – Christians’ failure to take any notice of Jesus’ commands – see my book Why Christian Don’t Do What Jesus Tells Them To …And What They Believe Instead, available from Amazon.

It’s time you all believed in my religion!

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Reblog

Picture reblogged from GodlessEngineer via Friendly Atheist.

My God doesn’t like people who don’t worship Him in the right sort of way (the way I do).

My God thinks people – except people like me – don’t behave properly.

My God has sent a special book to me and my mates his chosen people. It’s a bit muddled but non-believers ignore it at their peril.

My God says followers of all other religions have got it wrong.

My God says Christians need to be cured of their unhealthy behaviour.

My God says Christians shouldn’t be allowed to ‘marry’ because they don’t do sex right (the way I do).

My God says it’s not hateful to say these things. The fact I’m telling you shows how loving I am, pointing out how everyone else has got the wrong beliefs, the wrong morals and doesn’t do sex right. If you’ve any sense, you’ll start to believe in my God and then you’ll be saved like me.

And when you do that, my God will like you too.

One rule for the church, another for everyone else

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PopeSays

Which of the following is the odd one out?

Bill Roache

Dave Lee Travis

Rolf Harris

400 Catholic priests

Yup, you got it. It’s the 400 Catholic priests. The other three are celebrities currently facing trial for alleged sexual misdemeanours in the 1960s and ’70s because, unlike the USA, there’s no statute of limitations in the UK. The priests, however, all of whom molested children, haven’t had to stand trial and have got away scot free. All that happened to them was that former Pope Benedict XVI defrocked them during 2011 and 2012, while he was still in office. And that, as they say, was that. USA Today explains:

 The maximum penalty for a priest convicted by a church tribunal is essentially losing his job: being defrocked, or removed from the clerical state. There are no jail terms and nothing to prevent an offender from raping again.

So there you have it. You want to escape the penalty of the law? Then hide behind Jesus and the might of the Catholic church and all will be well, whatever you’ve done – and might do again – to the children in your care.

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 15: The Bible is the ultimate standard for morality

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Plucking

Jesus claimed that his morality came from the only scriptures he knew, those Christians now refer to as the Old Testament. Here’s how he puts it in Matthew 5.18 & 19: 

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of heaven’.

Today’s believers like to pretend that they too derive their morality from the Bible. One Christian web-site tells us that ‘the Bible becomes our source of morality because the Bible is the very Word of God in written form.’ Overlooking the fact, for now, that the Bible is not, for a whole host of reasons, ‘the Word of God’, what sort of moral guidance does it provide us with? Here’s a small sample:

Stone to death anyone who works on the Sabbath. (Exodus 35.2 and Numbers 15.32-36)

A slave is his master’s property; if you beat him so severely that he takes a day or two to die, you won’t be punished. (Exodus 21. 20-21)

Kill publicly children who dishonour their father or mother. (Leviticus 20.9);

Stone to death anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord. (Leviticus 24.16);

Execute a married couple who have sexual intercourse during the woman’s period. (Leviticus 18.19);

Put to death those involved in adultery. (Leviticus 20.10);

Execute any man who lies with another man, as with a woman. (Leviticus 20.13)

Stone to death at her father’s door any woman who is not a virgin on her wedding night. (Deuteronomy 22.13-14 and 20-21).

Cut off ‘without pity’ a woman’s hand if, during a fight, she seeks to rescue her husband by grabbing his opponent’s testicles. (Deuteronomy 25.11-12)

Isn’t this just the kind of ‘morality’ promoted by the Taliban? Well, the good news is Jesus approves! And he’s got some corkers of his own. How about these for great moral teaching?

Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. (Matthew 18.8 & 9 AV).

So, no, very few Christians today get their morality from the Bible. Their moral sense has evolved, like that of the rest of us, without the Bible’s assistance and without any reference to god. Thank goodness for that, even if there are some who would like to see a return to the kind of moral barbarism the Bible, and Jesus, promote.