Philosophy
 

Bible

From Atheism

The Bible is a collection of Mythology. It consists of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Christians imagine the Bible is true. Fundamentalists believe that every word of the Bible is true and inerrant. They believe this despite numerous contradictions, absurdities and other problems with the Bible. Liberal Christians accept that much of the Bible is not literally true.

Contents

Perverted moral teaching

The Bible teaches a moral system that is in some places cruel. For example:-

Rape

  • Rape victims are aparently required to marry the rapist. (Deuteronomy 22:28)[1]
  • Divorce was afterwards not allowed. It’s quite feasible that this requirement drove some unfortunate women to suicide or to an early grave.
Lay hold of her suggests rape to me. Consensual sex is not usually humbling. The context suggests rape as the previous verses clearly refer to rape. Here is another example where humbling seems to mean rape.
Judges 19:24 Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing.[2]

Christians and Jews both argue that this verse applies to consensual sex rather than rape and as we are not able to read the original Hebrew we can’t easily decide that here. There is still the problem of why an all loving and all wise God would give a message that can be misinterpreted in such a vile way.

Divorce

  • Luke 16.18 can make divorce difficult for Christians. Christians, especially Christian women can be under pressure to stay in abusive relationships. It is impossible to estimate how much unhappiness this causes to the spouses or to the children living daily in unhappy homes. Born again Christians have a higher divorce rate than the national average despite pressure on them to stay married. There are no statistice about how many stay in unhappy marriages because they believe anything else would be a sin.
While it may be alarming to discover that born-again Christians are more likely than others to experience a divorce," says Barna, "that pattern has been in place for quite some time. [3]

Child abuse

  • Disobedient and disrespectful children should be stoned to death. (Exodus 21:17) [4] Stoning is a slow and cruel death. Stoning to death is the prescribed Old Testament punishment for many different types of sins. In the new Testament Jesus confirmed that disobedient children should die. [5]

Slavery

  • Slavery is tolerated.[6] In the Confederate States white slave owners used the Bible to try and justify themselves.

See also

External Links

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