A Jerusalem Lunatic Asylum

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum. ~ Thomas Paine

Yahweh, The Embarrassment Of Christianity

Anyone who has done an honest critical analysis of the Bible has to be shocked at the portrayal of God in the form of Yahweh. Thomas Paine called it blasphemy to attribute to the Creator the behavior found in the Bible's god Yahweh. 19th century deist, Elihu Palmer observed that there are commands "which are said to come from God, which would disgrace the character of any honest man, and make him a candidate for prison." (Principles of Nature--1801). 

I plan to give some examples of this "behavior" by the god of Christianity in the coming weeks.

"...wide appeal for those predisposed to believe..."

The following is a letter to Farrell Till in the mailbag section of *The Skeptical Review*, 1995 May-June issue:

As one of your fans, I can't resist the urge to toss a few words and ideas in your direction. I warn you; I have a problem with brevity. 

I like the quotation on your banner: "It is wrong, always, and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence" (W. K. Clifford). That reminds me.... One way to attack nonsensical religious ideas seems all too obvious to me, yet it's one I have never heard. It's highly intuitive and goes like this: 

ONE: We can be quite sure Jack Ruby shot Oswald. A number of people were present and saw it happen. Millions of people saw it on TV as it happened. Video tapes are available for review. It's a non-arguable point. 

TWO: We can be only partly sure that Bruno Hauptmann kidnapped the Lindbergh baby, since there were no eyewitnesses. There was a lot of circumstantial evidence, such as the ladder, which pointed to his guilt. A jury convicted him, yet some say he was innocent. It's an uncertain matter, at best. 

THREE: We really can't be confident that young George Washington chopped down a cherry tree. There is no supporting evidence and only he and his father, so the story goes, would have had direct knowledge of the event. It's an appealing story but really can't be relied upon. It's a popular legend. 

FOUR: The story of Jesus of Nazareth being born of a virgin has no supporting evidence whatsoever. It arises out of hand-me-down stories. Only one person could have had direct knowledge of the event, and the only written accounts were drafted many years after her death. Like the cherry tree story, it has wide appeal for those predisposed to believe it, and for that reason it has endured. It has all the earmarks of a myth. Now think of it. One of the major religions of the world turns on an event for which there is no supporting evidence. Christians love to beat on the Mormons and the Joe Smith tales and the Mormons' silly ideas of advanced civilizations in the Americas many centuries ago. They sneer because there is neither supporting evidence for Smith's claims nor for the civilizations. Yet the same folks will swoon and rattle their beads over the event recounted as #4 above. 

TSR brings me the recurring idea that extreme religiosity destroys the reasoning power of the minds of the believers. Isn't it a good thing that Jonas Salk was born into a Jewish home that respected learning and inquiry instead of a Christian "Science" household? Has a Christian fundamentalist ever made an information-based contribution to the world? I can't think of any.... 

(Thomas T. Wheeler)

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Mr. Wheeler is making essentially the same point about historical information as Richard Rich did in an earlier "Mailbag" column (Winter 1995, p. 13): people tend to accept ancient records of ordinary events, which are possible or probable, even though they aren't necessarily true. As I noted in "Evaluating Historical Claims," pp. 9-11 (this issue), Thomas Paine made this same point in Age of Reason : reasonable people accept ordinary claims that were recorded by ancient historians but reject the fantastic or extraordinary. As the article also noted, the works of early historians like Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, etc., all contain accounts of miraculous events that no rational person can believe really happened even though they are no more fabulous than many biblical stories. This should tell Bible fundamentalists something, but of course it doesn't. Nothing can budge a confirmed bibliolater from his irrational belief that all events written in the Bible happened exactly as recorded.

Miracles And Testimony

The following is an excerpt from Thomas Paine's, The Age of Reason, Part First, Section 14:

Suppose I were to say, that when I sat down to write this book, a hand presented itself in the air, took up the pen, and wrote every word that is herein written; would anybody believe me? Certainly they would not. Would they believe me a whit the more if the thing had been a fact? Certainly they would not. Since, then, a real miracle, were it to happen, would be subject to the same fate as the falsehood, the inconsistency becomes the greater of supposing the Almighty would make use of means that would not answer the purpose for which they were intended, even if they were real.

If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of the course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that course to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such miracle by the person who said he saw it, it raises a question in the mind very easily decided, which is, is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie .

No Respecter Of Persons?

"...Thomas did not believe the resurrection [John 20:25], and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas." ~ Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

And if Yahweh is "no respecter of persons" as the Bible claims him to be, then I am well within a reasonable level of expectation that Yahweh present me also with ocular and manual demonstration of Jesus' resurrection. Especially when consideration is given to the advantages that Thomas allegedly already had: he knew resurrection was possible; he had seen Jesus raise people from the dead on several occasions and Jesus had given him the power to raise the dead himself!

An Answer To A Friend

The following is a letter Thomas Paine sent to a friend in response to a letter his friend had sent to him concerning Paine's book The Age of Reason. From, The Online Library of Liberty:

AN ANSWER TO A FRIEND.

Paris,

May 12, 1797.

In your letter of the 20th of March, you give me several quotations from the Bible, which you call the word of God, to shew me that my opinions on religion are wrong, and I could give you as many, from the same book to shew that yours are not right; consequently, then, the Bible decides nothing, because it decides any way, and every way, one chooses to make it.

Biblical Blasphemy

The following is an article by one of our country's greatest Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine:

The church tells us that the books of the Old and New testament are divine revelation, and without this revelation we could not have true ideas of God.

The Deist, on the contrary, says, that those books are not divine revelation, and that were it not for the light of reason, and the religion of Deism, those books, instead of teaching us true ideas of God, would teach us not only false but blasphemous ideas of him.

Hearsay Evidence

The following is an excerpt from Part First, Sections 1 and 2 of *The Age of Reason*, by Thomas Paine:

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication — after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a legislator, could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention.

 

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the same kind of hearsay [hearsay, def. from answers.com, 1. Unverified information heard or received by another; rumor. kwh] evidence and second-hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not to believe it.

When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we have not even this — for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so — it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence.