God Is Pro-Life?

From *The Skeptical Review Online*:

by Farrell Till

The longer I live, the more puzzled I am by the way that people will cling to beliefs that are clearly disputed by the realities that they see around them each day. These could be social, political, or just any kind of testable beliefs, but religious beliefs are the most tenacious of all. With earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, mudslides, tsunamis, avalanches, famines, epidemics, and other natural disasters killing thousands of us each year, people will still believe that a benevolent, loving deity watches over us, and some will believe that this deity even assigns personal guardian angels to protect us. When disasters such as those just mentioned create a cognitive dissonance between personal beliefs and the realities of the disasters, those who desperately wish to believe in a benevolent, caring deity will close their eyes to reality and continue to believe what they want to believe.

What Will the Bible Tell the Court?

Number 2 of 17 in the *Twilight Zone* Series:

by Farrell Till

[Editor's Note: This article in the Twilight-Zone series was based on a murder committed by Michael Griffin, a born-again "Christian," who has since been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.]

Back in the days of black-and-white television, the Twilight Zone was a fictional place where reality was so distorted that anything was possible. In discussions with Christian fundamentalists, I sometimes characterize their belief in biblical inerrancy as a journey into the Twilight Zone, because, like characters in the old TV series, Bible-believers often find themselves in situations where they cannot distinguish the real from the unreal, the possible from the impossible, or the rational from the irrational.

A case in point would be the born-again Christian who assassinated a doctor at an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida. After attending an Assembly of God Church on Sunday and asking the congregation to pray with him for Dr. David Gunn, Michael Griffin "allegedly" shot the doctor three times the next day at point-blank range. During his arraignment, Griffin asked the court's permission to serve as his own attorney and to keep his Bible with him "as one of [his] legal documents." One can only wonder what kind of journey into the Twilight Zone this twisted mind will make as Griffin looks for biblical justification of his actions, but, unless the prosecutor is completely ignorant of the Bible, the defense just may find itself in serious trouble.

Yahweh And Abortion

The following is from the Yahoo group, Xianity, March 2014. My comments are in blue:

Till's point is well taken, that the stance taken by the Hebrew/Christian god Yahweh in the OT is contrary to what fundamentalist Christians believe about abortion. Exodus 21:22 is noteworthy because it is a law given to the Israelites BY Yahweh, that if a pregnant woman is accidentally injured when two men are fighting has a miscarriage as a result, the penalty for such depends on whether the fetus is developed enough to survive. If the fetus is "imperfectly formed", i.e., not viable outside the womb then only a fine is levied. But if the fetus is "perfectly formed", i.e, viable outside the womb then, depending on the severity of the injury, "he shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." (Septuagint).

Till accurately sums up the situation in the following quote from the article:

"In other words, the law was apparently recognizing the difference in the death of an unborn child in the early stages of pregnancy, when it had not had time to form "perfectly," and the death of one in the later stages of pregnancy, when it had had time to form perfectly. The way this law was worded seemed to recognize a difference in the importance of an embryo that had not yet taken human form and one that had. An injury that caused the death of the former was punishable by just a fine, but an injury that caused the death of the latter called for imposition of the eye-for-an-eye-law or, in other words, imposition of the death penalty. This passage, then, certainly is not friendly to the often heard pro-life view that abortion at any stage of pregnancy is the same as murdering a person, because Hebrew law, which fundamentalist Christians believe was God's law, extracted a lesser penalty for the killing of an embryo in its early stages than was extracted for the killing of an embryo that had advanced far enough to be fully formed. One could say, then, that this law was consistent with modern court rulings that allow abortions in the early stages of pregnancy but restrict them in the latter stages."

The trial by ordeal of a woman who is suspected of infidelity is also particularly telling concerning the Yahweh of the OT for his uncaring attitude toward a fetus in such a situation. Of all the ways that he could have chosen to show the guilt or innocence of an accused wife, he chose a barbaric ritual common to other primitive people who were neighbors of the Israelites. One in which, if such rituals actually happened, caused the deaths of untold numbers of fetuses at all levels of maturity. The procedure is found in Numbers 5:11-31. Till's comments from the article, again, are accurate:

"This passage describes a trial by ordeal, which was a primitive way of determining guilt or innocence. As the article linked to explains, this type of "judgment" usually involved fire or water. An accused person, for example, would have to walk through fire or retrieve a stone from boiling water or experience some similar trial. If the "ordeal" caused no injury or just slight injury or if the injuries healed quickly, the accused was judged to be innocent. Otherwise, he was considered guilty. The premise of the trial by ordeal was a superstitious belief that the gods would protect the innocent from harm during trials by ordeal. That the Bible contains an example of trial by ordeal commanded by the Hebrew god Yahweh should be proof to rational people that it is not the inspired, inerrant 'word' of an all-knowing, loving, merciful deity but is instead a collection of writings that simply reflected the beliefs of the primitive, superstitious times in which it was written. Enlightened people today would understand that the reaction of women to a trial by ordeal like the one described above would depend on the individual strengths and weaknesses of their immunity systems and not on their actual guilt or innocence. No doubt, many innocent wives were condemned by the results of this trial by ordeal, and likewise many guilty wives with stronger immune systems were "exonerated" by it. Christians today, then, who demand that "biblical principles" be imposed on society at large, are really crusading to turn the clock back to a time when morality was determined by cultural superstitions and taboos rather than by rational considerations.

Be that as it may, the passage quoted above described a trial by ordeal that women had to submit to when their husbands suspected unverifiable infidelity. This particular ordeal required the suspects to drink a "water of bitterness" that was concocted by mixing "holy water" with dirt from the tabernacle floor. As the ordeal was described, some women would experience 'bitter pain,' 'discharge from the womb,' and a dropping of the uterus. Of course, those who experienced such effects were 'determined' to be guilty of the infidelity of which their husbands had accused them. As noted above, any rational person would know that grievous effects like those described in the trial by ordeal could in no way determine actual guilt. That, however, is irrelevant to the reason why I introduced this passage into the controversy. We could imagine that over the course of the centuries that the Hebrew culture existed, this trial by ordeal was used many times when men suspected that their wives were guilty of infidelity. We could also imagine that in at least some of those cases, the accused wives were pregnant, either from sexual intercourse with their husbands or from the adulterous relationships they had been accused of, so just think seriously and, if possible, unemotionally for a moment. If pregnant women were subjected to an ordeal that could cause 'bitter [abdominal] pain' or 'discharge from the womb' or a fallen uterus, they would surely have aborted the fetuses they were carrying. If, then, abortion is the horribly immoral act that Christians believe their god is so opposed to, why would he ever have commanded a trial by ordeal that would have resulted in the abortion of at least some unborn children?"

The Yahweh of the OT didn't seem to be too concerned about children outside the womb either, evidenced by his orders to kill all the children, even babies of the Amalekites and Midianites (except of course the young virgin girls of the Midianites. They were to be saved for the pleasure of the Israelite men)--not to mention the innocents who would have been drowned in the alleged flood. Yahweh, what a sweetheart, certainly a God who is merciful and full of compassion!

 

Christian Idiocy

The utterly idiotic conclusion that must be drawn from biblical belief, especially considering the New Testament teaching that many will wind up in hell and few in heaven, Mt 7:13-14. From  *The Skeptical Review*, Mailbag 1995 / July-August:

Yet another argument that could be used in refuting the fundamentalist justification of the Bible god's orders to kill infants (that all who die before reaching the "age of accountability" get to go to heaven) is that such actions are unfair to those who die after reaching that "age."

Unlike the rest of us, those babies whom the Bible god wanted killed got to go to heaven for eternity without having to make the conscious decision to accept the right religious creeds. They had no trial period that could've jeopardized their eternal fate. Since all of us were babies before, and since babies don't have much control over what happens to them, it is an absolute travesty of justice that some have gotten to go to heaven simply because they were lucky enough to die during their infancy. It is simply a matter of chance that those of us who didn't die during infancy didn't.

Hope we can set up another debate with you. Keep up the good work.

(Mr.X, name and address withheld by Is It God's Word? blog))

EDITOR'S NOTE: [Mr. X] makes a point similar to what I have argued with fundamentalists who try to justify the Yahwistic massacres of children and babies in the Old Testament on the grounds that they went to heaven instead of growing up to become wicked like their parents. I suggest to those who make this asinine argument that instead of being so eager to send out preachers and missionaries to save the lost, churches should organize hit squads to go into maternity and pediatric wards and kill all of the innocent babies and children so that they will go to heaven instead of growing up to become wicked like their parents. They would probably send far more souls to heaven than they have been doing through evangelization methods. I might also add that rather than bombing abortion clinics and assassinating those who work there, fundamentalists should set up their own clinics and encourage women to use them. Just think how many more souls they would be able to send to heaven. As for the eternal destiny of those who participated in such baby massacres, we would think that a just, benevolent god would surely reward them for their good deeds.

A Good Question...

                 A Good Question But Not A Good Answer Part One
                                              by Farrell Till

A reply to:Good Question ...

by Glenn Miller

The archived source of this historic written encounter between Farrell Till and inerrantist Glenn Miller did not have all of the links live, sorry. Till had a total of seven replies to Miller. Each can be downloaded in a link at the end of each reply.(kwh)

The barbaric nature of the Hebrew god Yahweh has led many former believers to reject their faith in the Bible. In "God Is Pro-Life?" I examined several biblical examples of Yahwistic barbarism that should convince reasonable people that the God-Is-Prolife slogan of anti-abortionists is biblically unsustainable, because the Old Testament is full of claims that Yahweh many times either sent destruction upon children, infants, and unborn babies himself or else ordered others to annihilate them. The barbarism of the god Yahweh, however, extended beyond the massacre of children and unborn babies to include efforts to exterminate entire tribes and nations. The Old Testament depiction of this deity should be enough to turn any morally sensitive person away from the notion that he is a loving, merciful god, but, unfortunately, it isn't. Diehard Bible believers seem determined to make all sorts of excuses to "explain" why Yahweh's commands to kill Canaanites, Midianites, Amalekites, and other non-Hebraic people were morally right.

Yahweh's Character Shines Through Again

The marvelous, loving god of the Bible shines

through again. I wonder how many Christians are
aware of this part of Yahweh's character. From
the Errancy II discussion list, 7/21/07:

Augat

Someone explain to me how this command from

Yahweh was objectively moral:

"But if the thing is true, that the tokens of virginity where not found in the young woman, then you shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones..." Deuteronomy 22:20 As a Registered Nurse, we learned in our maternity classes that a large percentage of women do not bleed or have "the tokens" of losing their virginity during their first intercourse. So, was this command from Yahweh moral or not moral, considering the number of innocent virgins that were stoned on their wedding night.

TILL

A political problem in Illinois has been the refusal of some pharmacists to fill prescriptions for drugs like Plan B (also known as the morning-after pill), which they think could possibly result in the termination of a pregnancy in its initial stages. The refusal is illegal, but some pharmacists continue to do it. Women who are raped in this area know not to go to the Catholic hospital in Peoria, because the staff will refuse to administer anything that might interfere with a pregnancy.

I wonder if any of these health officials, who no doubt base their morality on their objective Bible source, ever stop to think about the biblical command to stone those who committed adultery. If they won't administer Plan B to a woman who was raped and taken to the hospital an hour or so later because they are afraid that they might terminate a pregnancy, then surely the practice of stoning women accused of adultery in biblical times resulted at least sometimes in the killing of the "persons" who had been conceived a short while ago in their wombs.

Farrell Till