Tag Archives: christian culture

October 13, 2017

10 Ways The Bible Will Drive You Insane

By wise sloth
in·sane
adjective

 

1: The Bible teaches everyone is wicked.

Isaiah 64:6-7 says, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind, our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have given us over to our sins”

The Bible teaches you that you suck, and you have to spend the rest of your life making it up to your disappointing God-parent and hope he doesn’t shoot you in the head anyway. That’s a crippling guilt trip that doesn’t have to exist.

 

 

2: The Bible teaches believers are righteous.

The Bible teaches that if you take part in Christianity’s indoctrination rituals, they will transform you into a higher form of life who deserves eternal peace and joy. That might not be such a bad thing, but since the Bible also teaches you that you’re a bad person, it teaches contradicting messages. You’ll experience anxiety and stress as you try to come to terms with this and many other riddles in the Bible.

 

 

3: The Bible teaches non-believers are evil and deserve to suffer for all eternity.

John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, so that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.”

Everyone else is so evil and depraved that they deserve to be tortured for all of eternity. This isn’t an accurate assessment of reality. That matters, because it sets Christians up to pass judgment on sinners and non-believers. Christians have killed people because of this.

 

 

4: It teaches your self-worth is based on believing in a story.

The determining factor between what makes someone deserve to burn for eternity and what makes someone deserve paradise for eternity is believing in a story. Believing in a story doesn’t have anything to do with anything. That’s not a valid factor to determine anyone’s self-worth by.This is a warped perception of reality that sets up Christians to judge and hurt others at worst and sets them up to waste their fleeting lives chasing fairy tales.

 

 

5: The Bible teaches psychotic morals that you’re not going to follow anyway

Most Christians don’t want to sell their daughters into slavery, beat adulterers to death with rocks, give away everything they own or avoid wearing clothes with mixed fabric. So they ignore the rules they don’t like, but they’re set up to feel guilty about it. And they have to come to terms psychologically with the fact that they’re committing acts of evil in complete disregard for the threat of Hell. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

 

 

6: The Bible teaches you to repress your sex drive.

Humans are sexual creatures, and that’s good because having sex ensures the survival and evolution of the species. That’s why sex feels so good. If God designed us, then God designed us to crave and enjoy sex. That rule was written into our DNA by God. It’s a commandment written in God’s own handwriting… yet the Bible tells us that lust is evil. We should feel ashamed for wanting sex, and we should kill people who have too much of it. This is not a sane perception of reality. It’s a crippling guilt trip and a recipe for deep-rooted anxiety.

 

 

7: The Bible discourages critical thought.

The cornerstone of sanity is critical thought. The Bible commands you to turn that part of your mind off. From beginning to end the Bible constantly stresses the importance of faith. The definition of faith is “belief without proof.”

Since the Bible claims to be the word of God and constantly stresses the importance of faith, a lot of Christians have extrapolated those two facts to come to the conclusion that the Bible has all the answers you’ll ever need in life and is the only book you’ll ever need to read. It would be unhealthy to believe everything you need to know about life you’ll learn in school. It’s far more crippling to believe that about one archaic book.

Doubt isn’t immoral. Doubt is the door to truth. Faith is close-minded, willful ignorance. And anytime anyone tells you it’s immoral to question their authority, you can be sure you’re being manipulated.

 

 

8: The Bible teaches false science and false history.

The Bible teaches false science and false history beginning on page one. Believing things that aren’t true is the definition of insanity. If you believe the Bible you will believe things that aren’t true, and that will make you automatically, by definition, insane. Understanding science and history are important because it’s the bedrock of your understanding of life. In order to survive and thrive in the real world, you need to know how the world really works.

 

 

9: Prayer is just talking to yourself and wishful thinking.

The Bible teaches that if you believe in Yahweh with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, then you’ll have the power to move mountains. God is listening, and He has the power and the motivation to give you guidance and create personal miracles for you.

That’s not how reality works. Wishing and begging an imaginary friend doesn’t accomplish anything. Your prayers aren’t going to be answered, and when they’re not, you’re going to have to come up with an excuse to explain the disconnect between your expectations and reality.You’re also going to waste valuable time that could be spent on growing and solving your own problems.

 

 

10: The Bible teaches you to believe in psychotic imaginary beings.

You will believe in a mysterious God who loves blood so much that He came to Earth as a mortal to die for it. Yet He hates women’s menstrual cycles, You’ll believe in an evil tyrant who lives in a lake of fire and plots against you all day for no reason. You’ll believe in invisible minions who serve both of these characters. You’ll believe in superpowers and magic. You’ll believe in an invisible universe just around the corner from our own just as fantastical as Narnia or Middle Earth, and you’ll be so convinced of your delusions that you’ll believe anyone who doesn’t accept this fantasy is insane. That’s insane. Living like that is a waste of your potential.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

The Bible is mythology
Christianity is Harmful to Society
Preaching, witnessing and arguing with Christians
Christian Culture
My Tweets About Religion

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October 12, 2017

What I Think About Satan

By wise sloth

Etching of Satan, a distraught man with dragon wings and horns, leaning against a rock

 

One of my readers E-mailed me recently and asked what I thought about Satan. This was my response:

 

“I don’t think much about Satan, but I did write a comic about Satanism, which says a lot about how I feel about Satan:

This Was Your Life: The Satanist

The Bible is full of enigmas like Satan that theologians could study and argue about for centuries, but in the end, since the Bible is mythology, devoting one’s time to studying and talking about Satan is tantamount to obsessing over Hades in Greek mythology. You might be able to glean some moral truths out of the stories, but psychology and logic are far better tools for measuring morality.

My Secular Theory on Ethics

Another Attempt at Explaining my Theory on Ethics

Since you asked though, I will say that I always found the idea of Satan illogical. I know the Bible says the wisdom of man is foolishness and God is unknowable, and I used to believe those “truths.” But even then, the idea of Satan seemed suspicious. An all-powerful God wouldn’t choose or need to create an all-evil creature and give it leeway to mislead God’s most precious creation into needless eternal torture.

Some people say Satan and Hell are just the lack of God, but the Bible seems to indicate Satan was a specific individual who God sent to live in exile, which sounds a lot like a story you’d read in Greek mythology.

It’s possible the word “Satan” just means “bad guy,” similar to how the Virgin Mary may have just been a young woman, and we’ve been taking these mistranslations too seriously. Frankly, at the end of the day, the Bible is about as clear about what Satan is, as it is on what the Holy Trinity is. There’s just not enough information to make sense out of either of them. You can come up with a lot of good sounding theories, but ultimately, they’re all just conspiracy theories you either heard or made up.

I identify as an agnostic theist. So not only do I concede the possibility of something existing in the universe that fits some definition of God, I’m also pretty impressed by the evidence, which I explain in this blog:

An Agnostic Take on Intelligent Design

When I look at the stars or diagrams of atoms, I see a grand design so elegant, it has a one-in-infinity chance of existing on accident. Scientific laws look like God’s thumbprint to me, and the universe we live in provides for us, but it doesn’t play favorites or hold grudges. The universe is an impartial and perfect machine. If God’s creation is any reflection of God’s nature, God wouldn’t choose or need to create anything resembling Satan.

The only person who would invent Satan, or at least the idea of Satan, is a human being who wants to design a theocracy that controls its civilian population by indoctrinating them into believing a mentally and physically abusive mythological state-religion. In other words, the most logical explanation of Satan is that he’s a boogeyman invented to scare children into ostensibly obeying God, but in practice, they’re obeying the leaders of the theocracy.

The Jewish leaders who wrote the Torah would be amazed to see how their state-sponsored boogeyman spread around the world via knock-off versions of their mythology and then diffused into other cultures, creating new hybrid mythologies. I wonder if they’d do it again, knowing how their cult would spread and come back to haunt the nation of Israel.

Ironically, the lesson to be learned from their mistake is that actions have consequences in this life. If that much is true, it sets a precedent that actions could have consequences after death. I fear I may have to pay the piper for some of the things I’ve done, but again, I see nothing in the universe that makes me believe its creator would needlessly torture any of its creations for eternity, let alone appoint one of his exiled rivals as the ruler of Pain Land.

Even if I had done something as morally reprehensible as writing a viral mythology to brainwash people into following and obeying me, I’m confident the universe is reasonable. It’ll more likely give me what I need than take out its anger on me.

In summary, there is no Satan. If there is a God, it’s not Yahweh, and we’re in the best position we can be to hope for the best.”

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Agnosticism 
Atheism
Secular Living
Islam
The Bible is mythology
Christianity is Harmful to Society
Preaching, witnessing and arguing with Christians
Christian Culture
My Tweets About Religion

 

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October 12, 2017

46 Bible Questions Christians Struggle With That Non-Believers Can Answer In 4 Words

By wise sloth

 

If you try to base your life on the Bible, you’ll run into at least 46 big questions that non-believers can answer in four words: “The Bible Is Mythology.” See how many mental gymnastics you have to do to answer these questions. As your explanations pile up and start sounding stranger and stranger, consider the possibility that the reason it’s taking so long to answer these questions is you’re using cognitive dissonance to justify an irrational belief.

 

 

  1. What is the Holy Trinity?
  2. What does it mean that Jesus is the son of God?
  3. Why does God want blood sacrifices?
  4. Why did Jesus say, “God, why have you forsaken me,” before he died?
  5. Was the universe really created in 6 days, about 6000 years ago?
  6. Was the Garden of Eden real? If not, is original sin real? If not, why did Jesus have to die?
  7. Did the entire world really flood, and did Noah really fit two of every animal on a boat for 40 days?
  8. Why did the story of Noah’s ark first appear in the Epic of Gilgamesh?
  9. Why does God kill people for petty reasons in the Old Testament?
  10. Why are there no longer talking animals?
  11. Why are there no more prophets?
  12. Should you eat shellfish and wear clothes with mixed fabrics?
  13. Why can’t people perform miracles at will anymore?
  14. What is sin?
  15. Does God approve of polygamy?
  16. What did Jesus mean when he said he came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it?
  17. Why was it so important to God to include long lists of lineages in His one book of instructions to humans?
  18. Why does God approve of slavery?
  19. Why did Jesus turn water into wine instead of doing more important things with his infinite powers and short time on Earth?
  20. Why does the God say to stone adulterers to death and then say, “He who is without sin, throw the first stone?”
  21. Does God have a plan for you?
  22. What would God want you to do?
  23. Does God give people signs?
  24. Should you go to church?
  25. Should you give money to churches?
  26. Which church, if any, does God approve of, and how do you know?
  27. How do you repress your sexual instincts?
  28. Why is it so important to God that you repress your sexual instincts?
  29. How much fun and self-indulgence is too much?
  30. Should you punish yourself for sinning?
  31. How can you love sinners and non-believers if they’re evil and deserve to go to Hell?
  32. How do you cope with the fact that most of the people you know and love are going to Hell?
  33. Why do you need to be baptized?
  34. Do babies who haven’t been baptized or believe in Jesus go to Hell?
  35. Do people who never heard of Jesus go to Hell?
  36. Do mentally handicapped people go to Hell?
  37. Should you pray to an all-powerful, all-knowing being?
  38. What does anything in the book of Revelation mean?
  39. Do you only need faith to be saved, or do you need good works also?
  40. Should you give away everything you own? If not, how much should you give away?
  41. Why aren’t there any first-hand accounts of Jesus’s existence?
  42. Why were the Jews God’s chosen people?
  43. Why would God choose one ethnic group as his favorite group of people?
  44. Why did God need a house built for him in Jerusalem?
  45. Why are there contradictions in the Bible?
  46. How do you know you can trust The Council of Nicaea?

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

The Bible is mythology
Christianity is Harmful to Society
Preaching, witnessing and arguing with Christians
Christian Culture
My Tweets About Religion

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October 1, 2017

4 Questions Every Christian Needs To Answer About Exodus 21

By wise sloth

Exodus 21 

New King James Version (NKJV)

 

The Law Concerning Slaves

21 “Now these are the judgments which you shall set before them: 2 If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years; and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing. 3 If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4 If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. 5 But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ 6 then his master shall bring him to the judges. He shall also bring him to the door, or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him forever.

7 And if a man sells his daughter to be a female slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. 8 If she does not please her master, who has betrothed her to himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt deceitfully with her. 9 And if he has betrothed her to his son, he shall deal with her according to the custom of daughters. 10 If he takes another wife, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, and her marriage rights. 11 And if he does not do these three for her, then she shall go out free, without paying money.

The Law Concerning Violence

12 He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death. 13 However, if he did not lie in wait, but God delivered him into his hand, then I will appoint for you a place where he may flee.

14 But if a man acts with premeditation against his neighbor, to kill him by treachery, you shall take him from My altar, that he may die.

15 And he who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.

16 He who kidnaps a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death.

17 And he who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.

18 If men contend with each other, and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, and he does not die but is confined to his bed, 19 if he rises again and walks about outside with his staff, then he who struck him shall be acquitted. He shall only pay for the loss of his time, and shall provide for him to be thoroughly healed.

20 And if a man beats his male or female slave with a rod, so that he dies under his hand, he shall surely be punished. 21 Notwithstanding, if he remains alive a day or two, he shall not be punished; for he is his property.

22 If men fight, and hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman’s husband imposes on him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

26 If a man strikes the eye of his male or female slave, and destroys it, he shall let him go free for the sake of his eye. 27 And if he knocks out the tooth of his male or female slave, he shall let him go free for the sake of his tooth.

Animal Control Laws

28 If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, then the ox shall surely be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be acquitted. 29 But if the ox tended to thrust with its horn in times past, and it has been made known to his owner, and he has not kept it confined, so that it has killed a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned and its owner also shall be put to death. 30 If there is imposed on him a sum of money, then he shall pay to redeem his life, whatever is imposed on him. 31 Whether it has gored a son or gored a daughter, according to this judgment it shall be done to him. 32 If the ox gores a male or female slave, he shall give to their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.

33 And if a man opens a pit, or if a man digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls in it, 34 the owner of the pit shall make it good; he shall give money to their owner, but the dead animal shall be his.

35 If one man’s ox hurts another’s, so that it dies, then they shall sell the live ox and divide the money from it; and the dead ox they shall also divide. 36 Or if it was known that the ox tended to thrust in time past, and its owner has not kept it confined, he shall surely pay ox for ox, and the dead animal shall be his own.”

This chapter of the Bible raises at least four serious questions Christians should be asking themselves before trying to convert nonbelievers:

 

1. Did you even know these rules were in the Bible? 

I hope you didn’t know these instructions were in the Bible. If you made a conscious decision to tell people they need to base their life on “The Good Book,” knowing the full details of Exodus 21, then you’re a terrifying human being.

If you know the Bible includes commandments on how to properly buy and sell men, women and children, and you don’t mention it’s part of the product you’re selling, then you’re marketing your brand unethically.

You’re running a bait and switch scam. You lure recruits in with tales of love and peace. Then you pressure them to make a commitment before they have time to read the fine print. Only after they’re invested, do you tell them the book they just agreed to follow includes rules on how to purchase and beat slaves.

 

Lucy holding a football as Charlie Brown falls down after trying to kick it before Lucy moved it. Charlie Brown is saying, "Aaargh!! The old bait and switch again."

 

It would be impossible to convince anyone to believe in Christianity without using the bait and switch technique, because if the first verse you share with nonbelievers comes from Exodus 21, nobody will want to believe in your stone age god or his psychopathic teachings.

If you didn’t know you were trying to convince people to base their life on a book that says the punishment for letting your ox gore your neighbor’s slave, is to pay them thirty shekels, then you need to stop preaching immediately. Don’t start again until you’ve read the entire Bible and highlighted every rule so you know exactly what you’re getting people into.

 

2. Have you doubted your own arguments enough to be sure it’s safe to bet your soul on them?

I’ve asked Christians to explain Exodus 21, and they said human hands corrupted the original texts in some places, which explains the inclusion of obviously flawed morals. So we don’t have to take the barbaric stuff seriously.

But Exodus 21 isn’t an isolated incident. It’s par for the course in the Old Testament. When you put all its commandments in context, they paint a picture of a primitive, tribal theocracy that wrote its existing cultural values into their history, government, and religion.

 

Picture of a ginger pointing to highlighted text in the Bible, "If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct 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." Go ahead and tell me I'm taking it out of context.

 

To put Exodus 21 in context, The Ten Commandments are in Exodus 20:1-17. God’s commandment that slave owners have to set their slaves free if they beat them so hard it crushes their eye, is just a few pages away, in the same list of rules, written by the same author, which, given the culture at the time, was probably a slave transcribing the words of his king/high priest.

If the scribes who wrote the Bible really did make mistakes, then how can you be sure you’ll know them when you see them? Obviously, the stakes are life and death. If you didn’t catch this hole, you could have easily sold your daughter into slavery.

If you believe the Holy Spirit will help you and your converts catch the rest of the men’s mistakes in the Bible, consider that Hitler, David Koresh and the entire Westboro Baptist church all believed the Holy Spirit led them to the truth. The Holy Spirit tends to guide Christians to their preconceived beliefs so often, it could be evidence the Holy Spirit doesn’t guide you anywhere; it could just the feeling you get when you use your subconscious to make decisions.

 

Photo of the sign in front of the Westboro Baptist Church with the words, "FAG MARRIAGE CAME TO KANSAS! STILL A CRIME! LEVITICUS 18:22"

 

There are hundreds of religions in the world. Billions of people have felt their own version of the Holy Spirit lead them to different conclusions, which they’re dead certain are true, and they use the inexplicable realness of their experience to justify believing in whatever mythology was most popular in the society they were raised in.

Statistically, you probably believe in a dubious mythology for selfish reasons. If there’s even a 1% chance you might have fallen for the same trap, you owe it to yourself to question your conclusions more than your opponents’ evidence.

 

3. Can you be 100% sure Jesus abolished these rules?

If you ask enough Christians to explain Exodus 21, sooner rather than later, a smart person you respect, will quote Jesus’s words from Matthew 5:17:

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” 

Then they’ll wave their hand dismissively and say something like, “See? This passage means the pre-Jesus laws are obsolete, and God made a new covenant with man. So you don’t have to literally make blood sacrifices on a stone altar to please God any more or follow any of his laws that bear a shocking resemblance to the cultural values of an ancient tribal theocracy.”

 

Painting of Hebrews killing and burning animals on a stone altar

 

This settles the issue nicely unless you put the passage in context. It goes on to say in Matthew 5:19-20:

“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

It seems pretty clear Jesus expected all the rules to stay in place, with the implied exception of the few laws he specifically reversed Yahwe’s original stance on. Contrary to the creator of the universe’s original commandments, Jesus said communities are no longer supposed to form well organized lynch mobs to beat adulteresses to death with rocks or ranchers who try to rescue an ox that’s fallen in a well on the Sabbath.

I could be misinterpreting this passage, but so could your Christian mentors. You owe it to yourself to get a thousand different opinions on whether or not we’re all supposed to follow all the rules in the Old Testament.

 

DON'T: Homosexuality- Leviticus 18:22, Eat shellfish- Leviticus 11:9-12, Shave- Leviticus 19:27, Eat pork- Leviticus 11:7, Wear mixed fabrics- Leviticus 19:19... DO: Child abuse- Proverbs 22:15, Slavery- Exodus 21:7, Rape- Deuteronomy 22:28-29, Prejudice- 2 John 1:10, Misogyny- 1 Timothy 2:12

 

Even if everyone you ask agrees the only requirement to get into Heaven is faith, they could all still be wrong. Biblical scholars have been arguing for centuries if God still expects Christians to obey all his laws, including the ones about slavery.

If you’ve ever told a non-Christian it’s safer to believe in God and hope you go to Heaven, then to stray and be wrong, then you should be enforcing the Bible’s rules on slavery just to be safe. Or you should be questioning why you believe in a book that encourages selling your daughters and kidnapping foreigners.

 

"The children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall you buy. And they shall be your possession. And you shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you to inherit them for a possession. they shall be your bondmen forever." Leviticus 25:45-46

 

Even if Jesus did retire some of the Old Testament rules, the following verses from the New Testament indicate slavery wasn’t one of them:

Ephesians 6:5

“ Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.”

1 Peter 2:18

“Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.”

Matthew 10:24

“The student is not above the teacher, nor a slave above his master.”

1 Corinthians 7:20-25

“Each person should remain in the situation they were in when God called them. 21 Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so. 22 For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person;similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave. 23 You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of human beings. 24 Brothers and sisters, each person, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.”

 

4. Why don’t you obey Exodus 21?

If you truly believe the Bible is 100% divinely inspired, then you should be honoring all of Exodus’s laws and many more like them. But you don’t, and you never will, because they’re in direct contradiction with everything you believe about right and wrong. If a Jewish or Christian dictator enforced these laws in a real country, you’d support America bombing it out of existence.

 

This is not a bag of trail mix. You can't just pick out the pieces you like and ignore the rest.

 

You don’t, won’t and can’t obey Exodus 21, because your sense of right and wrong were already well established before you ever read the Bible. Every Christian has to cherry pick which passages to believe or make excuses for, because at least half of the morals in the Bible are obsolete.

 

"The Bible is either absolute, or it's obsolete." Leonard Ravenhill

 

If you don’t believe me, put yourself and your fellow Christians to a test. Show this list of Bible verses to the Christians you respect most. Ask them which passage’s moral values they agree with and live by, and which ones they disagree with and don’t obey.

The passages they don’t take seriously will be the ones that conflict with modern culture, which proves they cherry pick the teachings in the Bible they’re willing to accept, based on what they already believe. Chances are, you’ll accept/reject the same values, which should make you question how much you really believe in the Bible and whether you should continue coercing other people into accepting it as the ultimate authority on reality.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

 

The Bible is mythology
Christianity is Harmful to Society
Preaching, witnessing and arguing with Christians
Christian Culture
My Tweets About Religion

 

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in The Bible is Mythology

October 30, 2009

10 Ways The Bible Ruins Society

By wise sloth

1. The Bible’s archaic, arbitrary code of ethics is ineffective in the real world.

There are a few common sense rules in the Bible that are good, but when you take every single rule into account you find vagueness, contradictions, absurdities, immorality idolized and morality demonized. The rules in the Bible are all over the place. To make matters even worse, the determining factor of whether or not you’re forgiven or punished for violating these vague, contradictory, absurd rules is whether or not you believe in a story.

Here’s why that’s bad. Imagine if you were trying to control a class of 6 year old children and you gave them an arbitrary set of rules and told them that the only way to escape punishment for breaking the rules is to believe in a story. What would happen? Chaos would break out.

Children who are raised their entire life on vague, contradictory, arbitrary rules grow up into adults with a warped perception of reality. They often feel guilty for doing innocent, natural things, believe they deserve to go to Hell, believe in magical spirits and powers, distrust science, fear pleasure and celebrate selflessness to a fault. These are not the habits of an enlightened society. They’re irrational, and they contradict reality. If you live your life according to beliefs that contradict reality you’re going to have a bad time.

Also, children who grow up believing the archaic, haphazard morals in the Bible, will grow up and become politicians who often try to pass laws enforcing or favoring those morals.

 

List of Bible verses that condone behavior generally accepted as evil including: Proverbs 20:30, Leviticus 25:44-46, Exodus 21:15

 

2. The Bible grants you immunity for your crimes.

If you firmly believe that the threat of the death penalty is strong enough to dissuade people from breaking the law then you had better believe that the promise of unconditional release and immunity is strong enough to entice people to break the law. Christian doctrine creates an environment that encourages, or at least excuses, inhumane behavior by removing the perception of consequence for those who believe.

 

3. Christianity places subservience as one of its top virtues.

This is great for a nation if you want everyone to be slaves. This is terrible for a nation that wants to progress and grow uniformly strong. If you want a nation to excel, you need to teach your children that genius is the highest virtue. A society raised on that value will create beauty you could never imagine possible, but we’ve chosen not to go down that path. We’ve taught people they’re dogs who deserve to be beaten. We’ve taught them that logic is evil and ignorance is strength. It should come as no surprise that every night on the news are stories about people acting like beaten dogs and tearing each other apart.

 

"Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel." 1 Peter 2:18

 

4. Christianity places faith as one of its top virtues.

The bible teaches that blind faith is virtuous and doubt is evil. Every atrocity committed in history was done by people with blind faith in an ideology. Blind faith is a recipe for exploitation and oppression.

On the other hand, every advancement we’ve made in science, government, economics, the humanities, etc. were achieved by doubting, questioning and improving on the ideas our ancestors came up with. Curiosity and doubt open the door to truth, clarity and genius. Christianity takes those keys away from individuals and society as a whole.

 

5. Religion siphons money from the public that could be spent saving the world.

 

"If churches paid taxes, it would pay for all the food stamps for every person on welfare with enough left over to house the entire homeless population."

 

6. Making pleasure taboo is harmful.

The teaching of the Bible inspired countless people to regret and deny their sexuality, adopt an austere lifestyle and even revel in suffering. All of that sacrifice is irrational. There’s no sane reason to deny yourself any pleasure or happiness to honor the creator of the universe. All that accomplishes is making the world a less enjoyable place for you and everyone around you.

 

7. Christianity has a long tradition of holding back scientific progress.

There have been Christians who have made invaluable scientific breakthroughs. For example, a monk named Gregor Mendel proved the existence of genetically inheritable traits. However, Christianity has a long history of stifling scientific thought.

The Catholic church forced Galileo to withdraw and deny his research that proved the Earth is not the center of the universe. Christians regularly pressure public schools to teach children that the creation story in the book of Genesis is real and humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe if false. Christians have opposed the use of condoms and blocked stem cell research. Children have died because Christian parents had faith that God would save their sick child. I’ve even once heard an elderly Christian say that humans didn’t need psychology since the Bible is all you need to solve any problem in the world. When the majority of a population hates the instruments of progress then it becomes much more difficult for that society to progress.

 

8. Life sucks for everyone else when Christians rule the world.

The Apostle Paul ordered Christians to spread the Gospel until everyone in the world believed in Christianity. Christian missionaries have a good track record of converting entire societies to the point that Christianity became merged with those society’s governments. It happened in Rome, Germany, The United States of America and many other places. All of those governments created laws that oppressed and punished people who didn’t live by Christianity’s archaic, vague ethical code.

Christianity likes to claim it loves everybody, but if you study the history of Christianity you’ll spend an awful lot of time looking at bloody warfare, economic exploitation, the oppression of minorities and slavery. Whenever you have a group who is supposed to be more favored by God than everybody else, and everybody else is so horrible and evil that they deserve to be tortured for eternity, blood will be spilled eventually.

 

9. Prayer is useless.

Somewhere out there in the world right now someone is praying to God, asking Him to help a starving third world child. Somewhere else out there is a starving child in a third world country praying for some rich, SUV-driving, Starbucks-drinking, Gucci purse –carrying, church-attending Christian to do something about the problems in the world.

Prayer doesn’t work. You know what does work? Work. That’s how every advancement in human history has ever and will ever happen. Prayer keeps that from happening.

 

10. The Bible teaches people to loathe themselves.

When you tell an entire nation that their righteousness is like filthy rags and they deserve to burn in Hell you’re going to create a nation of self-loathing people. You won’t have the time or motivation to fulfill your potential if you spend your days loathing yourself. And since people tend to treat others the same way they treat themselves, they’re probably going to treat others worse than they deserve.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

The Bible is mythology
Christianity is Harmful to Society
Preaching, witnessing and arguing with Christians
Christian Culture
My Tweets About Religion

 

16 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in toxic christianity

October 29, 2009

A More Realistic Take On The 10 Commandments

By wise sloth

Stained glass window depicting the Ten Commandments

 

Note: Whenever I quote the bible I’m quoting the New International Version.

 

1. “You shall have no other Gods before me.”

If a modern day Christian child were to ask their parents the question, “Why did God say you shall have no other God before me if He’s the only god?” A modern day Christian parent might reply that it’s a figure of speech.

No, it’s not, and two sentences later the author of Exodus makes that clear. Here’s Yahweh’s reasoning for why He only wants you to worship him: “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” Why should you only worship Yahweh? Because he’s jealous of the other gods. Not because he’s the only god.

More importantly, if you don’t worship him he’ll torment you and all your descendants. Don’t overlook the significance of the Jewish tribal leaders who wrote the Ten Commandments threatening their tax-payers’ family. In near prehistoric times (and especially for nomads) family life was all you had. Your family was absolutely everything. To threaten an ancient Jew’s family was a billion times harsher of a threat than to threaten a modern American’s family. Think about how serious that is. That’s how seriously the Jewish religious leaders wanted control.

 

2. “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.”

This is pretty ingenious. First, it directly ends the problem the Jewish religious leaders had been having of people worshiping any shiny statue that impressed them. Secondly, if you don’t have a shiny statue to worship then how are you going to commune with god? Through the religious leaders of course.

 

3. “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.”

Let’s simplify things, every time you see the word LORD, replace it with GOVERNMENT, because LORD is GOVERNMENT in the time and place were talking about. So this commandment is really saying, “You will not question the government or you will be punished.”

 

4. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”

The military has an ingenious way of indoctrinating its members. When soldiers walk outside they have to put their hat on. When they walk inside they have to take their hat off. The reasoning for that rule isn’t to keep the sun out of soldiers’ eyes or to keep them from looking tacky inside. This rule exists because it prevents soldiers from forgetting that they belong to the military, and it forces them to police each other. The Sabbath works the same way. It’s a weekly reminder never to forget that your theocracy rules your life. Other than that, it serves absolutely no productive purpose.

 

5. “Honor your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”

This commandment is written in Exodus 20:12. Exodus 21:17 says, “Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.”

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 says, “If a man has a stubborn a rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of the city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones.”

This commandment establishes the elder’s power over the young. It also justifies and indoctrinates the cultural values the Jews were already practicing.

 

6. “You shall not murder.”

This is the first commandment that lays down a functional civil law, and what civil law is more important than not killing each other? If any group of people were to sit down and come up with laws for society, this is the first law they would all come up with first. In fact, other governments around the world have come to the same conclusion without Yahweh’s divine inspiration. It’s certain this law existed in Jewish culture before the person who wrote the Ten Commandments was born..

 

7. “You shall not commit adultery.”

Biblical marriage law is based on the premise that men buy their wives from their father in-laws, and women are property to be owned and controlled completely by their husband. That means adultery is equivalent to stealing property. That’s why forbiding adultery was so important to the authors of the Ten Commandments that he had to put it in the top 10 list.

 

8. “You shall not steal.”

This is another rule that makes good civic sense. It doesn’t take God to come up with this rule, and it was almost certainly around long before the Ten Commandments. Why else would the Hebrew language have the word “steal?” Or do you believe that word wasn’t invented until Yahweh revealed to the Jewish leaders that stealing was wrong?

 

9. “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.”

This rule doesn’t say, “Don’t lie.” It doesn’t say, “You shall not give false testimony to your neighbor.” It expressly says, “…against your neighbor.” It’s saying you will not lie about your neighbor.

In Jewish culture at the time, your personal reputation and your family’s reputation basically determined your status in society. That’s why preserving peoples’ reputations was one of the top ten priorities of the authors of The Ten Commandments This law reveals yet again that the Ten Commandments are culturally, as opposed to divinely, inspired.

 

10. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

This is the most morally bankrupt commandment in the list. It relegates women to pieces of property less valuable than a house but more valuable than a common slave or a donkey. Either that’s how much the creator of the universe considers women are worth or that’s how much one ancient Middle Eastern tribe once considered women were worth.

But that’s beside the real point of the commandment. Why was this commandment necessary? Commandment #8 already said not to steal. So if you’re not going to steal then what’s wrong with just wanting stuff? Because people who don’t want a better life are easiest to control.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Agnosticism 
Atheism
Secular Living
Islam
The Bible is mythology
Christianity is Harmful to Society
Preaching, witnessing and arguing with Christians
Christian Culture
My Tweets About Religion

 

 

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in The Bible is Mythology