Tag Archives: toxic christianity

October 1, 2017

4 Questions Every Christian Needs To Answer About Exodus 21

Exodus 21

New King James Version (NKJV)

The Law Concerning Slaves

21 “Now these are the judgments which you shall set before them: ²If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years; and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing. ³If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. ⁴If 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. ⁵But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ ⁶then 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.

⁷And if a man sells his daughter to be a female slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. ⁸If 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. ⁹And if he has betrothed her to his son, he shall deal with her according to the custom of daughters. ¹⁰If he takes another wife, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, and her marriage rights. ¹¹And if he does not do these three for her, then she shall go out free, without paying money.

The Law Concerning Violence

¹²He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death. ¹³However, 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.

¹⁴But 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.

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

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

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

¹⁸If 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, ¹⁹if 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.

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

²²If 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. ²³But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, ²⁴eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, ²⁵burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

²⁶If 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. ²⁷And 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

²⁸If 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. ²⁹But 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. ³⁰If there is imposed on him a sum of money, then he shall pay to redeem his life, whatever is imposed on him. ³¹Whether it has gored a son or gored a daughter, according to this judgment it shall be done to him. ³²If the ox gores a male or female slave, he shall give to their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.

³³And 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, ³⁴the owner of the pit shall make it good; he shall give money to their owner, but the dead animal shall be his.

³⁵If 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. ³⁶Or 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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

¹⁹Whosoever 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.

²⁰For 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.

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.

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. ²¹Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so. ²²For 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. ²³You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of human beings. ²⁴Brothers 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.

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: bible ethics, christian culture, christian ethics, evil bible verses, exodus bible verses, immoral bible passages, problems with christianity, The Bible is Mythology, tian mythology, toxic christianity | 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.

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.

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.

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: