If you read the Bible from the
beginning, as a mere work of literature, you find immediately that the most
interesting character is…Jehovah. This character is childish, cruel,
capricious, jealous and emotionally insecure, constantly demanding love and
attention, imposing impossible demands, and throwing appalling tantrums when he
doesn’t get his way. He’s Scarlett O’Hara with a taste for mass murder.
Only people who are truly gullible could possibly stick with this “God”
The guys who claimed to be God’s spokesmen, Moses and Aaron, said that God made a promise to his people in the Old Testament. God then allowed his people to be thrown out of the allegedly “promised land” by unbelievers, driven into exile and slavery by Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians, overrun by Romans, chased all over Europe for 2000 years, and exterminated in the millions by Hitler. The middle third of the Bible – a full third of the book – is loaded with references to Jehovah’s decision to break his word and throw the Jews out of Israel, and send them off to Babylon – and all along the way, the Israelites insist that they deserved it.
The Jews who obeyed the Torah got hosed. Pagan idolators who did everything imaginable to break God's laws, like the Romans, the Huns, the Goths, and then the feudal lords of the Middle Ages -- they got to conquer the world. A little practical joke on the "chosen people"? Like Tevye the dairyman said -- yeah, Lord, I know we're the Chosen People, but could you choose someone else for a change? And God’s people stuck with him.
Only people who are truly gullible could possibly stick with this “God”
The guys who claimed to be God’s spokesmen, Moses and Aaron, said that God made a promise to his people in the Old Testament. God then allowed his people to be thrown out of the allegedly “promised land” by unbelievers, driven into exile and slavery by Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians, overrun by Romans, chased all over Europe for 2000 years, and exterminated in the millions by Hitler. The middle third of the Bible – a full third of the book – is loaded with references to Jehovah’s decision to break his word and throw the Jews out of Israel, and send them off to Babylon – and all along the way, the Israelites insist that they deserved it.
The Jews who obeyed the Torah got hosed. Pagan idolators who did everything imaginable to break God's laws, like the Romans, the Huns, the Goths, and then the feudal lords of the Middle Ages -- they got to conquer the world. A little practical joke on the "chosen people"? Like Tevye the dairyman said -- yeah, Lord, I know we're the Chosen People, but could you choose someone else for a change? And God’s people stuck with him.
The greatest empire of all, Rome, swears loyalty to your God, under Constantine. Instead of looking after his people, God allows the empire to collapse into a century of civil war and then destruction by hordes of pagans who ain’t never heard of your God. And God’s people stuck with him.
Let’s see, the Crusades. God’s
self-appointed spokesmen told all Europe that God wanted the Holy Land in
Christian hands, and that God would never allow you to lose if you led an army
to retake it. Six or seven armies you sent there, and God abandoned you. You
even led an “army” of thousands of children to their deaths. And God’s people
still stuck with the Man Upstairs.
The Black Death. God sent a
pestilence to destroy Europe. Fifty million God-fearing Christians, a small
army of priests, prayed to God for mercy, and were slaughtered anyway. And
God’s people still stayed with the program.
For fifty years you had a pope in
Rome and a pope in France, each insisting that he was infallible and the other
was an imposter. A century later your popes indulged in such an appalling
pattern of corruption and vice that the Protestant reformation was virtually
inevitable. Yet again, rival churches, each claiming that only their church had
the true link to the Almighty. Shortly thereafter, Spain’s inquisitors were
killing in the thousands, and exterminating hundreds of thousands in the New
World. And Gods people stayed with the team. Or, now, teams.
A guy named Galileo proved the Bible
wrong; instead of admitting they were wrong, the men of your church threatened
him with torture if he didn’t shut up. Later Darwin shot more holes in the Big
Book, and explorers from Yuri Gagarin onward saw heaven firsthand, and there
was no God there. And through it all, God’s people stuck to him.
God’s spokesmen claim to be the
world’s moral authority. So...the Holocaust. Biggest moral issue of the last
century. The world waited for the Pope to denounce the Holocaust. Nada....This
was all while your priests were molesting generation after generation of altar
boys and schoolchildren.
Your religious leaders were caught
in one sexual peccadillo after another. Bakker, Swaggart...And you stuck with
them.
Oral Roberts capped his lifelong
career of lies by claiming that if the God’s People didn’t give him eight
million dollars, God would kill him. The God people not only believed him, but
actually gave him the money.
Your religious leaders told you
abortion was murder, and if you gave money to them and to the Republican party,
it would be outlawed. You gave them hundreds of millions of dollars, and they
never came close to banning abortion. And now they’re planning to hornswoggle
you with yet another doomed holy war against gays.
So how many times does Lucy pull
away the football and watch Charlie Brown fall on his ass, before Charlie Brown
gets the message?
Most
importantly: the first main story of the history of the Jews, the escape of the
Israelites from slavery in Egypt and the trip across Sinai – never happened.
Totally made up. And that means that Moses’ trip to Sinai and the revelation of
the commandments – also made up. And that means that the rest of the laws in
the Torah, including the ban on homosexuality weren’t “divine revelation”
either – priests made it all up. It wasn’t divine revelation.
