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.

Do We Have A Deal? I Didn't Think So

Does "God" want people like Farrell Till and me saved 
or not? It seems like "God" would value skepticism in 
regards to outlandish claims that are contrary to all of 
our experiences over rank gullibility. I think I know my 
own mind and I know what it would take to convince 
me of Yahweh's existence. And if I know what it would 
take then certainly Yahweh, if he's really "God", would  
know too. So what is he waiting on, he allegedly doesn't 
want me to be lost, I Timothy 2:3-4? Well, I think we all 
know the answer to that question, don't we?

From the Errancy Discussion list, 8-10-96:

PATRICK

And the sovereign God of the universe can perform to satisfy

your petty ratiocination. And would you be convinced?

TILL

Why shouldn't the "sovereign God of the universe" perform to 
satisfy my petty ratiocinations? He didn't seem to mind 
performing for the petty ratiocinations of others. Have you 
ever read the following story from the "inspired, inerrant 
word of God"?

Judges 6:11 Now the angel of Yahweh came and sat under the

oak at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his 
son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it 
from the Midianites.

12 The angel of Yahweh appeared to him and said to him,

"Yahweh is with you, you mighty warrior."

13 Gideon answered him, "But sir, if Yahweh is with us, why then

has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds 
that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, 'Did not Yahweh bring 
us up from Egypt?' But now Yahweh has cast us off, and given us 
into the hand of Midian."

14 Then Yahweh turned to him and said, "Go in this might of yours

and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian; I hereby commission 
you."

15 He responded, "But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the

weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family."

16 Yahweh said to him, "But I will be with you, and you shall strike

down the Midianites, every one of them."

17 Then he said to him, "If now I have found favor with you, then 
SHOW ME A SIGN that it is you who speak with me.

18 Do not depart from here until I come to you, and bring out my

present, and set it before you." And he said, "I will stay until you 
return."

19 So Gideon went into his house and prepared a kid, and

unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour; the meat he put 
in a basket, and the broth he put in a pot, and brought them 
to him under the oak and presented them.

20 The angel of God said to him, "Take the meat and the

unleavened cakes, and put them on this rock, and pour out 
the broth." And he did so.

21 Then the angel of Yahweh reached out the tip of the staff that

was in his hand, and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes; 
and fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the 

unleavened cakes; and the angel of Yahweh vanished from his 
sight.

22 Then Gideon perceived that it was the angel of Yahweh; and

Gideon said, "Help me, Lord GOD! For I have seen the angel of 
Yahweh face to face."

23 But Yahweh said to him, "Peace be to you; do not fear, you

shall not die."

24 Then Gideon built an altar there to Yahweh, and called it, Yahweh

is peace. To this day it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the 
Abiezrites.

25 That night Yahweh said to him, "Take your father's bull, the

second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that 
belongs to your father, and cut down the sacred pole that is beside 
it;

26 and build an altar to Yahweh your God on the top of the

stronghold here, in proper order; then take the second bull, 
and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the sacred pole 
that you shall cut down."

27 So Gideon took ten of his servants, and did as Yahweh

had told him; but because he was too afraid of his family and 
the townspeople to do it by day, he did it by night.

28 When the townspeople rose early in the morning, the altar of

Baal was broken down, and the sacred pole beside it was cut 
down, and the second bull was offered on the altar that had been 
built.

29 So they said to one another, "Who has done this?" After

searching and inquiring, they were told, "Gideon son of Joash 
did it."

30 Then the townspeople said to Joash, "Bring out your son, so

that he may die, for he has pulled down the altar of Baal and cut 
down the sacred pole beside it."

31 But Joash said to all who were arrayed against him, "Will you

contend for Baal? Or will you defend his cause? Whoever contends 
for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him 
contend for himself, because his altar has been pulled down."

32 Therefore on that day Gideon was called Jerubbaal, that is to

say, "Let Baal contend against him," because he pulled down his 
altar.

What Have These Sheep Done?

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1999 July/August. This article is absolutely devastating to the biblical inerrancy doctrine:

by Farrell Till

One of the most puzzling tales of the Bible is told in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. Yahweh or Satan (depending on which account you want to believe) "moved David to number Israel" (v:1). Since biblical inerrantists argue that the Bible is completely free of errors, we will assume that in some sense Yahweh moved David to number Israel. One would think that if Yahweh moved David to number Israel, Yahweh would have been pleased if David did as he had been "moved" and took the census, but if you think this way, you are reasoning like a rational person, and Bible stories aren't necessarily rational. In fact, they many times tax the imagination of those who try to find rationality in them.

That's the case with this story about David. He conducted the census just as Yahweh had "moved" him to do, but for some reason known only to Yahweh and the Gleason Archer type of "apologists" who entertain us with verbal gymnastics that supposedly explain biblical discrepancies, Yahweh was ticked off after David had done exactly what he had been "moved" to do, and so he sent Nathan the prophet to call David on the carpet for taking the census (2 Sam. 24:12). That wasn't really necessary, because David had already realized that in doing what Yahweh had "moved"him to do, he had somehow sinned. That's what the inspired word of God says: "But afterward, David was stricken to the heart because he had numbered the people" (v:10). Why taking a census would be a sin, especially after God had moved David to do it, is anyone's guess. Well, not anyone's guess, of course, because the professional "apologists" like Gleason Archer, Norman Geisler, John Haley, etc. were apparently blessed with special insights that enabled them to know that the Bible didn't really mean what it plainly said. Just read their books, and you'll find all of the answers if you can stop laughing long enough to read them all the way through.

More Trouble For The Perfect-Harmony Theory

An absolutely devastating article for the perfect-harmony Bible theorists. From The Skeptical Review, 1995:

by Farrell Till

The Bible is so perfectly harmonious from cover to cover that only divine inspiration can explain its unity. You don't believe it? Well, just ask any Bible fundamentalist, and he will assure you that it's true. 

Critical works of the past two centuries have shot the perfect-harmony theory so full of holes that by now it should be lying rusted out at the bottom of an ocean of biblical scholarship. Instead, Christian fundamentalists continue to proclaim to gullible pulpit audiences that there are no contradictions or inconsistencies in the Bible. As we have shown repeatedly in past issues of The Skeptical Review, this claim is patently false. Let's take as an example the fact that the Bible plainly teaches that God is no respecter of persons: "(F)or there is no respect of persons with God" (Romans 2:11, KJV). Acts 10:34, Ephesians 6:9, Colossians 3:25, and 1 Peter 1:17 all claim that God judges all men fairly without respect of person. In boasting of having stood his ground against the pillars of the Jerusalem church who wanted to force Titus to submit to circumcision, the apostle Paul said that the positions of prominence held by his opponents in the dispute didn't matter to him, because "God shows personal favoritism to no man..." (Gal. 2:6, NKJV). There is no doubt, then, that the Bible teaches that God is impartial toward all men. 

Well, okay, let's see how consistent the Bible is in presenting God as an impartial deity. We could begin by pointing out that God at one time favored an entire nation, because he selected the Israelites to be his chosen people "above all peoples that are upon the face of the earth" (Dt. 7:6). That certainly sounds like favoritism to me. If a teacher should select Bobby to be her chosen student above all students that are in the class and even proclaim to the world that she had done so, who would argue that she was not showing favoritism? 

Inerrantists are fond of arguing that God had a plan of redemption for mankind that required him to select a special people. Bible fundamentalists constantly use this marvelous "plan of redemption" to cover a multitude of divine shortcomings, and they apparently can't see that an omniscient, omnipotent deity would not have been required to select a plan of redemption that necessitated racial favoritism, because such a deity could have redeemed mankind in any one of several ways that would not have entailed racial favoritism and the various atrocities committed against the non-Hebraic people of biblical times. To argue otherwise is to argue that God is not omniscient and omnipotent. At any rate, this is the quibble that inerrancy defenders resort to in this matter, so I'll just let the readers evaluate the merits of it so that we can go on to other examples of divine favoritism that will give the inerrantists plenty more to cavil about. 

The Biblical Way To Treat Women With Dignity (3 of 3)

From The Skeptical Review, 1998:

By Farrell Till 
As noted in previous articles, a popular claim of Christianity is that the Bible has accorded women a status superior to that in societies dominated by other religions. Those who make this claim are either very ignorant of what the Bible teaches or else have no scruples against misrepresenting facts to try to further the cause of Christianity. Many of the deplorable attitudes toward women found in the Bible have already been examined, but none were more flagrantly sexist in their scope than a "test" in Numbers 5 that Yahweh required of women accused of adultery.

If any man suspected his wife of "going astray" but had no evidence to confirm his suspicion, he was entitled to take her to the priest, "if the spirit of jealousy comes upon him" (vs:11-15), and the priest would subject her to a trial by ordeal, which she had to pass in order to prove her innocence. The man was required to bring a meal offering, which the priest would put into the woman's hands. He would then take a concoction of "holy water" and dust from the tabernacle floor, which was called "the bitter water that brings a curse," and say an incantation over the woman:

If no man has lain with you, and if you have not gone astray to uncleanness while under your husband's authority, be free from this bitter water that brings a curse. But if you have gone astray while under your husband's authority, and if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has lain with you... Yahweh himself make you a curse and an oath among your people, when Yahweh makes your thigh rot and your belly swell; and may this water that causes the curse go into your stomach and make your belly swell and your thigh rot" (vs:19-22).

At this point, the woman was required to say, "Amen, so be it" (v:22). Who says that Yahweh didn't have a sense of fairness?

The priest would then write "these curses" into a book and "scrape them off into the bitter water" (v:23), at which point the "bitter water" would contain not only dirt from the tabernacle floor but apparently any other contaminants that may have been in the "ink" and on the surface of the book that was scraped. After this, the woman was required to "drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and the water that brings the curse shall enter her to become bitter" (v:24).

Keep Them Barefooted and Pregnant (2 of 3)

The following is an article by Farrell Till from TSR 1997. Yahweh's rules for women and how they are to be treated are just a few examples of his embarrassing and disgraceful teachings found throughout the "Holy" Bible; and what should be considered an insult to any person's intelligence:

by Farrell Till

A popular claim of Christianity is that the Bible has given women a dignity and status far superior to societies that are dominated by other religions. That the ranks of Christianity include so many women is evidence that there must be some truth to the axiom that says if a lie is told enough times, some will believe it, because only someone who is relatively ignorant of the Bible could believe that it is in any sense complimentary to women. From beginning to end, the Bible insults women and speaks of them with a disdain that one would think women in modern times would no longer tolerate. But tolerate it they do, for the membership rolls of churches probably include many more women than men. 

The men who wrote the Bible wasted no time getting down to one of their favorite themes: all the pain and suffering, sorrow and grief that the human race has to endure is the fault of women. Right in the opening chapters of God's inspired word, the first woman ate a fruit that God had told her not to eat, and that's why men have to earn their living by the sweat of their brows. Never mind that this grievous offense also caused women to have to endure the pain of childbirth (Gen 3:16). What are a few labor pains compared to the men's ordeal of having to till soil that brings forth thorns and thistles (v.18)? 

Ever since the Genesis writer put the blame on Eve, God's emissaries have continued to lay it on thicker. Paul, the chief apostle not just of Christianity but of blatant sexism too, used Eve's sin as an excuse to put women into the basement of Christianity, which they have yet to climb out of. Writing by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who is presumably another person in the one "godhead," Paul told women that they were welcome in the churches as long as they kept their mouths shut: "Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says" (1 Cor 14:34). Well, gee, if women are not permitted to speak in the churches, how can they be expected to learn things they may need to know? Not to worry; Paul had the answer to that: "And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church" (v.35). It's hard to see dignity and respect for women in any of this, but obviously many women have bought it and meekly acquiesce to the sexist rantings of a religious mystic whose denigration of half the world's population has been rivaled only by other religions that have enshrined the same primitive, male-chauvinist nonsense. 

"God's" Opinion of Women (1 of 3)

From The Skeptical Review, 1995:

by Farrell Till

When I was an active Christian minister and missionary, I noticed that women were generally more zealous church workers than men. As I learned more and more about the Bible, I began to wonder why. In my younger days, I had often heard preachers cite the elevated status of women as one of the wonderful achievements of the Judeo-Christian religions, but this was not what I was seeing in my own private Bible studies. I was finding instead a shockingly disdainful attitude toward women in a book that had been presumably written by divinely inspired men.

Time would fail me if I tried to cite every biblical example of contemptuous attitudes toward women, so I will have to limit myself to just a few. King David's affair with Bathsheba while her husband Uriah was away on military duty produced an embarrassing pregnancy. David first tried to conceal his indiscretion by bringing Uriah home on furlough apparently so that he would sleep with Bathsheba and later think that the child was his. When Uriah's loyalty to his unit proved so strong that he refused to indulge in the pleasures of a conjugal visit, David sent him back to the front with a letter ordering the commander of his unit to put Uriah in "the forefront of the hottest battle" and then withdraw so that he would be killed. The order was executed, and when word of Uriah's death reached David, he took Bathsheba and added her to his harem ( 2 Samuel 11).

If there is such a thing as contemptuous conduct, then David's actions in this matter certainly qualify. One would think that if this deed called for divine wrath, David would have been the rightful target of it. But the Bible tells us that God chose to punish David only by inflicting pain and death on the members of his family, beginning with his wives. Nathan the prophet, sent to reprimand David for his sin, delivered this message from God: "I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor, and he will lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun" (2 Samuel 12:11). One could imagine that this would not have been a pleasant thing for David to witness and would have in that sense constituted "punishment," but we must look past that to the fact of what God was threatening to do. David had sinned grievously, but God was going to punish him by having some unnamed "neighbor" rape his wives "before all Israel and before the sun" (v 12). According to the story, David repented and so his wives were spared the indignity of public rape, but that is beside the point. The fact that David's god would even threaten such a thing raises serious doubts about the Bible's claim to be the verbally inspired word of an omnibeneficent deity. Certainly, this story in no way reflects the "elevated status" that preachers say the Bible has brought to women. If it does, I have to admit that I can't see it.