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 Kind Of...Deity...?

From the Errancy Discussion list, 10-28-97:

TILL

...I have to wonder what difference it makes what the population of Bethlehem may have been. If the massacre actually happened [Mt 2:1-16], it would be bad enough if just one child was killed. Have you thought about posing these questions to biblicists: what kind of omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity would cause his son to be born in a place and circumstances that would cause children to be massacred, and why would such a deity take special efforts to see that his son, who is omni-everything himself and therefore eternal, was saved from the massacre but leave the other male children to be killed? Didn't any of their parents merit dreams in which an angel warned them to take children and flee? Wouldn't raising issues like these be more likely to cause readers to question their beliefs on this moreso than speculations about how many male children were killed?

What Would An Omni God Have Done?

How could a omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent 
God who has no needs, Acts 17:24-25 [thus there was 
no need that hell even exist] create a humanity with 
free will and the ability to sin--knowing the horrific  
outcome Mt 7:13-14, when he could have created this 
humanity, like him, with free will and the inability to sin?
Thus in truly loving fashion, preventing billions of humans 
from suffering ETERNAL, unimaginable agony in hell-and 
the Bible actually teaches that he doesn't want anyone 
to go to hell 2 Peter 3:9! So there is no reason he couldn't 
and wouldn't have accomplished this--IF this alleged god 
of the Bible has all of these omni characteristics the Bible 
writers claim that he has.

From the Errancy  Discussion list, April 17, 1998:

Suffer, Little Children

From *The Skeptical Review* Jan/Mar 1993:

by Farrell Till

If you couldn't believe what you were seeing while reading the foregoing article [in The Skeptical Review, kwh] you probably have no background in Christian fundamentalism. A Christian writer who believes that the massacre of entire civilian populations in time of war, even to the point of genocide, is morally good! Is it possible that anyone living in a modern civilized society could really believe such a thing? Well, I assure you that your eyes weren't playing tricks on you. Bible fundamentalists really do defend all the bloody deeds that were presumably ordered by the Hebrew god Yahweh. Standing by this ancient war-god, even to the point of defending his commands to massacre babies, is an albatross that they must wear around their necks or else surrender their belief in Bible inerrancy. Apparently unable to bear the thought of life without their Bible-inerrancy security blanket, they choose to take a stand for killing babies.

New Testament Family Values (5 of 5)

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1997 / May-June:

by Farrell Till

By request, the series on biblical family values is being extended another issue so that we can look at what the New Testament teaches us on the subject by both example and decree. For some reason, Christians seem to believe that Old Testament accounts of atrocious conduct on the part of God and famous biblical characters are unimportant, because, after all, those things were written in the Old Testament and not the New, as if the two testaments are not inextricably bound together in the traditional Christian claim that everything in the Old Testament happened to lead the way to God's plan of salvation in Jesus Christ. Christianity, then, must be held accountable for the god and biblical heroes in whom their own religion is firmly rooted. Christians can't just wave aside matters like those noted in previous articles in this series by saying, "Oh, well, that was in the Old Testament."

Family Values (4 of 5)

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1997 / March-April:

by Farrell Till

The Christian Right touts the need for biblical family values in modern society, but when the lives of famous biblical characters are examined, as was done in previous articles in this series, we quickly see that they were not the kind of role models that most parents today would like for their children to emulate. Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob were all listed in Hebrews 11 as great "heroes of faith," but their individual stories in the Old Testament depict them as people who lied and practiced various other types of deception, who granted sexual favors for personal gain and sometimes engaged in polygamous relationships, who showed favoritism to their children, and did many other things that no decent family today would consider morality worthy of emulation.

Family Values (3 of 5)

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1997 / January-February:

by Farrell Till

Our last quest for biblical family values left us contemplating the public promiscuity, deception, sibling rivalry, parental favoritism, and ethnic prejudice of the family of Isaac and Rebekah. When we left them, Rebekah, fearing that her favorite son Jacob might be killed by his twin brother Esau for having cheated him out of his birthright, had convinced her husband Isaac to send Jacob to live with her brother Laban in Paddanaram, ostensibly to look for a wife among the daughters of Laban but actually to protect him from Esau, who had threatened to kill him.

Family Values (2 of 5)

From *The Skeptical Review* 1996/ November-December:

by Farrell Till

In our first article on family values, we left Abraham and Sarah in Gerar collecting the proceeds from Abraham's second attempt to pass Sarah off as his sister. Each time, she caught the eye of a king, and each time Abraham was given sheep and oxen and servants, both male and female, but the second time King Abimelech gave him a thousand pieces of silver as a "covering of the eyes to all that are with you" (Gen. 20:16). Hmmm, it sounds a lot like hush money, doesn't it? But such was the way of "family values" in those days.

Jacob an Old Geezer?

From *The Skeptical Review* 1996 / November-December:

by Farrell Till

There is no scarcity of fanciful tales in the Bible. An especially quaint one tells about the duel of the handmaids when Jacob, the grand patriarch of Israel, was siring his sons who subsequently became heads of the twelve Israelite tribes. It is a story that simply cannot pass the how-likely-is-it? test that was discussed in the Autumn 1993 issue and applied to the Israelite Exodus.

Family Values (1 of 5))

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1996 / September-October:

by Farrell Till

We hear a lot these days about family values. The Christian right has made this such an issue that political candidates have been conditioned to believe that mentioning family values frequently in their campaign speeches is an easy way to score points with voters. Of course, if a candidate also associates "family values" with the so-called biblical principles on which our country was founded, he is certain to score even more points with the Christian right. It has become a cheap way to get votes.

Child Abuse Yahweh's Way

Number 16 of 17 in the *Twilight Zone* series:
A great "hero of faith" considered loyalty to an oath more important than the life of his own daughter.

by Farrell Till

Only in the Twilight Zone of biblical times could one become a "hero of faith" by killing his daughter in order to keep a foolish oath. In in our last trek through the twilight zone, we saw that vows were serious business in those days. None of the Israelite fathers, for example, felt free to give their daughters in marriage to the 600 males who had survived the massacre of the Benjamites, because "the men of Israel had sworn an oath at Mizpah, saying, `None of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife'" (Judges 21:1). In the law of Moses, it was written, "When you make a vow to Yahweh your God, you shall not delay to pay it; for Yahweh your God will surely require it of you, and it would be sin to you.... That which has gone from your lips you shall keep and perform, for you voluntarily vowed to Yahweh your God what you have promised with your mouth" (Deut. 23:21,23).

Pioneers of Loophole Religion

Number 15 of 17 in the *Twilight Zone* series:
The Israelite rationalization of a problem they had created shows that loophole religion is as old as the Bible.

by Farrell Till

Our last trip into the Twilight Zone left God's chosen people grappling with a terrible problem. They themselves had virtually wiped out the tribe of Benjamin in a battle described in Judges 20, only to realize that they were responsible for practically destroying a tribe of Yahweh's pet nation Israel. Six hundred had survived the Benjamite massacre, but these were all males, soldiers, who had retreated to the rock of Rimmon (20:47). Our last trip found the Israelites in the "house of God" pondering what they could do to rebuild the tribe of Benjamin. They couldn't give their own daughters to the Benjamite survivors, because they had sworn with an oath at Mizpah before the massacre that "(n)one of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife" (21:1,7), and neither could the Benjamite survivors violate Yahweh's holy law and marry foreign women (Dt. 7:3-4; Ex. 34:12-13).

Even Holy Massacres Can Have Their Drawbacks

Number 14 of 17 in the *Twilight Zone* series:
The silly results of an intratribal holy war are examined.

by Farrell Till

In the Twilight Zone of biblical literature, silliness occurs in direct proportion to the length of the story. Our last two journeys into the Twilight Zone concerned events that followed the rape and murder of the Levite's concubine. After twice having Yahweh's counsel lead them into military disasters inflicted by the Benjamites defending the city where the atrocity against the Levite's concubine had occurred, the Israelites directed a third inquiry to Yahweh that brought them success, if a victory that had cost 40,000 lives can in any sense be considered a success. Anyway, in their third attack against the city of Gibeah, the Israelites withdrew in apparent defeat to trick the Benjamite forces into following them out of the city and into an ambush where "ten thousand select men from all Israel" were lying in wait (Judges 20:32-34). We are told that the battle was "fierce" and that "Yahweh defeated Benjamin before Israel" (v:35).

How to Inquire of Yahweh

Number 13 of 17 in the *Twilight Zone* series:
An incredible tale of how the Israelites kept inquiring of their god after he had twice led them into defeats.

by Farrell Till

The rape of the Levite's concubine, the subject of our last journey into the Twilight Zone, so enraged the Israelites that they "gathered as one man before Yahweh at Mizpah" (Judges 20:1). When everyone was assembled, the leaders said to the Levite whose concubine had been killed, "Tell us, how did this wicked deed happen?"

The Book Of Job

The following is an excerpt from Robert Ingersoll's lecture, *On Hell*. A shining example of the the twisted "morality" of Christianity's god:

Read the book of Job; read that! God met the devil and asked him where he had been, and he said: "Walking up and down the country," and the Lord said to him: "Have you noticed my man Job over here, how good he is?" And the devil: "Of course he's good, you give him everything he wants. Just take away his property and he'll curse you. You just try it." And he did try it, and took away his goods, but Job still remained good. The devil laughed and said that he had not been tried enough. Then the Lord touched his flesh, but he was still true. Then he took away his children [i.e., killed them, kwh], but he remained faithful, and in the end, to show how much Job made by this fidelity, his property was all doubled and he had more children than ever Job 42:12-15. If you have a child, and you love it, would you be satisfied with a God who would destroy it, and endeavor to make it up by giving you another that was better looking? No, you want that one; you want no other, and yet this is the idea of the love of children taught in the Bible (Applause.)

A Story Your Sunday School Teacher Never Told You

Number 12 of 17 in the *Twilight Zone* series:

by Farrell Till

Once upon a time in the Twilight Zone, a certain Levite and his concubine, overtaken by darkness on a journey home from visiting the concubine's father, stopped in the town of Gibeah and found no one willing to give them lodging (Judges 19:10-15). Luck was on their side, however, because an "old man" returning from work in his field saw them sitting in the street and offered them shelter in his house (vs:16-21). So the kind old man took them home, fed their donkeys, washed their feet, and gave them food.

Quotes

God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That's not free will. It's like a man telling his girlfriend, do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out. When a man says this we call him a psychopath. When god says the same we call him "loving" and build churches in his honor. ~William C. Easttom II

Did The Judge Of All The Earth Always Do What Was Right?

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1998 January /February :

by Farrell Till 

Elsewhere in this issue (pp. 4-5), Roger Hutchinson continues his losing battle to prove that when Yahweh killed David's son, there was no violation of the biblical principle that children should not bear the iniquity of their fathers. This principle was stated in Deuteronomy 24:16, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." It was repeated in Ezekiel 18:20, "The soul that sins, it shall die: the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." My position has been that the killing of David's son for his parents' act of adultery was a clear violation of this principle, but Hutchinson has resorted to all sorts of verbal maneuvers to deny this conclusion.

I have decided that the best way to bury this issue is to let my rebuttal of Hutchinson's latest effort (pp. 5-7) and its predecessor articles speak for themselves as I take readers through the Bible to show other examples of where Yahweh violated his own moral code and held the innocent accountable for the "sins" of others. I hope that Hutchinson will go along on the trip and see for himself that he is trying to ride a dead horse.

An Omni God And His Eternal Hell (2)

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

The Bible presents its god, Yahweh, as having amazing supernatural characteristics:

1) Omniscient- It is claimed that this god knows all, past, present and future. One very interesting bit of knowledge that this god is claimed to have is found in Mt 7:13-14. This verse teaches that man's ultimate destination is either heaven or hell. And that this god knew before creating the first human, that if he went ahead with this plan to create man found in the Bible, that this version of man would be so flawed that most would wind up in hell.

Muddled Thinking

The muddled thinking of Christians who attempt to defend 
the vicious god of the Bible. From the Errancy discussion 
list, April 29, 1997:

Izz
Such a Lord, who murders innocent babies, is not 
good. God is not good. Of course, the story is a 
myth, it  never really happened. That is besides the 
point. God, as described in the Bible, makes Hitler 
look saintly.  Unfortunately, Hitler was real, but, 
thank God, God isn't. Still, how can you Christians 
worship a God who murders babies? Don't you
people have any morals? Its  bad enough you believe 
in God; what's worse, you are blind to his evil nature. 
You people worship an imaginary baby-killer.

Paul writes:
If this life were all of existance, you might have a point; however
Christians believe that we are primarily "spiritual" creatures made 
in the image of God (Gen. 1:26). This life is not all that matters. 
How cruel it would have been to preserve all of those babies of 
hard-hearted idolaters to mature and become like their parents 
only to lose their souls in eternity; but a loving and merciful God 
now has in his care the souls of those innocent children.

TILL
According to this logic, God should see that the children and babies 
of all sinful people are killed before "the age of accountability" so 
that this loving and merciful God could have in his care the souls 
of "these innocent children"? What made the Amalekite children so 
special that God wanted to "preserve" them any more than the 
children of other idolatrous people? We know from archaeological 
discoveries that Aztecs and Incas were idolatrous nations, who 
even  sacrificed children to their gods. Why didn't Yahweh 
"preserve"  their  children so that they wouldn't have grown up 
to be like their  "hard-hearted" idolatrous parents?

This "explanation" of the many Yahwistic massacres recorded in 
the OT is simply a last-ditch effort to explain a problem that is 
completely incompatible with both the biblical inerrancy doctrine 
and  the claim that God is loving and merciful. If for some reason 
the Amalekites, Midianites, Canaanites, etc. had to be ethnically 
exterminated, there was no reason at all to massacre the children 
and infants too. Why couldn't they have been brought back as 
captives, adopted into Hebrew families, and reared in the way 
that  Hebrew children were? That way, they would not have grown 
up to  be "hard-hearted" idolaters, any more than the Israelites 
themselves  were at times hard-hearted idolaters (but that's 
another story). I'd like to hear Paul's "explanation" of this.

Farrell Till