Horror of the bible

amhartley

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Hello,
In his signature block one of our JREF members quotes Thomas Paine:
"To read the bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man."
I just mailed this member that I'd be starting a thread on this intriguing statement.

It is quite true that Christianity is horrific. The Old Testament Jews were scared to death of seeing God. Upon meeting Jesus in the New Testament, the demons shrank back. In the present day, we are so afraid of the Biblical God that we replace Him with a benevolent grandfather who "loves and accepts us just the way we are." It is just what you'd expect from human nature.

But the Biblical God is a holy, righteous terror, Who doesn't put up with sin or any imperfection, in you or me. That's one of the greatest proofs that humans didn't make Him up; we would have created (in Paine's words) a more "tender, sympathising, and benevolent" God.
-Andrew
 
Coincidentally I've just quoted these loving, kind and heart warming words of the living God in another thread:

Matthew 10:21-22, 34-39

Brother will betray brother to death, and the father his child; children will turn against their parents and send them to their death. All will hate you for your allegiance to me; but the man who holds out to the end will be saved….You must not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a son’s wife against her mother-in-law; and a man will find his enemies under his own roof. No man is worthy of me who cares more for father or mother than for me; no man is worthy of me who cares for son or daughter; no man is worthy of me who does not take up his cross and walk in my footsteps. By gaining his life a man will lose it; by losing his life for my sake, he will gain it.
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amhartley said:
That's one of the greatest proofs that humans didn't make Him up; we would have created (in Paine's words) a more "tender, sympathising, and benevolent" God.
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Rather, that's one of the greatest proofs that religion was propagated by the sadistic "ruling" class, who certainly do not share the general benevolence of the rest of their species.
 
amhartley said:
Hello,
In his signature block one of our JREF members quotes Thomas Paine:
"To read the bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man."
I just mailed this member that I'd be starting a thread on this intriguing statement.
Click to expand...
Ah, yes, that is a common quote of Thomas Paine. Perhaps you’d be interested in the whole paragraph from which that particular sentence was taken.
It is not the antiquity of a tale that is any evidence of its truth; on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for the more ancient any history pretends to be, the more it has the resemblance of a fable. The origin of every nation is buried in fabulous tradition, and that of the Jews is as much to be suspected as any other. To charge the commission of acts upon the Almighty, which, in their own nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are crimes, as all assassination is, and more especially the assassination of infants, is matter of serious concern. The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. To believe, therefore, the Bible to be true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of God; for wherein could crying or smiling infants offend? And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.
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You can read Paine’s The Age of Reason here, online in its entirety.
 
amhartley said:
That's one of the greatest proofs that humans didn't make Him up; we would have created (in Paine's words) a more "tender, sympathising, and benevolent" God.
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This is a common miscnoseption and a fallacy about human nature. In fact humans are diverse and the many and diverse dieties that they demonstrably do make up change from culture to culture. One only need look at the Greek and Roman panoply to find gods that were not tender, sypathising or benevolent. By your logic the greek gods are real.
 
amhartley said:
Hello,
That's one of the greatest proofs that humans didn't make Him up; we would have created (in Paine's words) a more "tender, sympathising, and benevolent" God.
-Andrew
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By this logic, you'd have to believe that Quetzalcoatl and the various destroyer gods from Hinduism like Kali are also real.
 
I'm glad to see that my signature file, and the wisdom of Mr. Paine, has sparked a discussion. I don't have a lot to contribute at the moment, but I'll paste in my reply to Andrew's PM:

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your PM, and welcome to the forums. I'm with you right up until the last part, but frankly I think there are plenty of very persuasive reasons why the elite members of ancient Jewish society would have created a terrifying rather than benevolent deity; it all goes to establishing and maintaining social order and, of course, keeping those at the top of the hierarchy in their place. It's also a way of psychologically coping with the brutal world in which they found themselves. Moreover, your argument that humans would have invented a kinder, gentler deity rather falls flat when one considers that many other cultures worshipped bloodthirsty gods which we can, I hope, agree were purely figments of their imagination? Christianity is far from being the only religion founded on human sacrifice, after all.

I don't have a lot of time to get into this at the moment, but I look forward to discussing it further in your thread.

James
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amhartley said:
But the Biblical God is a holy, righteous terror, Who doesn't put up with sin or any imperfection, in you or me. That's one of the greatest proofs that humans didn't make Him up; we would have created (in Paine's words) a more "tender, sympathising, and benevolent" God.
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You point out that the god of the bible is not the kind of god you would have created. You consider that proof of the god of the bible's existence? Most of us have set our bar of what constitutes proof just a wee bit higher than that.

LLH
 
Considering in the old testament God was very scary, and in the new one he got quite a bit more cuddly, one could argue that Jesus was there to save god more then humans. Who can love a monster?
 
Godmode said:
Who can love a monster?
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But the Old Testament god wasn't particularly concerned with being loved, was he? He was all about obedience and terror. Which no doubt worked quite well in keeping a culture intact in the rather brutal conditions of the ancient Middle East.
 
Scott Haley said:
By this logic, you'd have to believe that Quetzalcoatl and the various destroyer gods from Hinduism like Kali are also real.
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Would the same logic necessarily apply in the case of polytheistic pantheons? Those gods are balanced out by other deities with different attributes, after all.
 
ceo_esq said:
Would the same logic necessarily apply in the case of polytheistic pantheons? Those gods are balanced out by other deities with different attributes, after all.
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What logic? It is an argument based on a false premise.

If man crated God, God would be nice.
God isn’t nice.
Therefore, man did not crate God.

The first premise is incorrect. There is no reason to believe that a God crated by man would be nice. In fact, it is quite the contrary. A God designed to invoke fear would be far more useful in instilling obedience than a God that is "tender, sympathizing, and benevolent".
 
It must be true, because no one could make this stuff up!

(I'm more sympathetic to religion than the average JREFer, but this argument is one that I just can't wrap my mind around.)
 
I don't think Andrew has a sufficiently dark view of human nature.

If people invented a warm fuzzy cuddly God, they could not use divine orders as an excuse for their horrid and vicious behavior. Even when some corrupter like Jesus Christ comes along and tries to veneer the old bastard with love and forgiveness and all that crap, we find a way to turn it around so we can oppress and kill each other with holy zeal. Except for the superpowers, Jehovah is the most human of gods.
 
bruto said:
I don't think Andrew has a sufficiently dark view of human nature.

If people invented a warm fuzzy cuddly God, they could not use divine orders as an excuse for their horrid and vicious behavior. Even when some corrupter like Jesus Christ comes along and tries to veneer the old bastard with love and forgiveness and all that crap, we find a way to turn it around so we can oppress and kill each other with holy zeal. Except for the superpowers, Jehovah is the most human of gods.
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If you're interested in a good argument as to why man would create a ~cuddly diety; read Shermer's How We Believe. A fair amount of the book deals with that issue.
 
I less than three logic said:
What logic? It is an argument based on a false premise.

If man crated God, God would be nice.
God isn’t nice.
Therefore, man did not crate God.

The first premise is incorrect. There is no reason to believe that a God crated by man would be nice. In fact, it is quite the contrary. A God designed to invoke fear would be far more useful in instilling obedience than a God that is "tender, sympathizing, and benevolent".
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Exactly. If someone sat down to create a god, one might do that -- from our perspective.

But as religion developed from a combination of superstition and, hey, people will give me money for nuthin', well, a scary god does a better job of explaining superstition as well as convincing people to give you money, also a superstitious behavior. See also: prayer, sacrifice
 
amhartley said:
That's one of the greatest proofs that humans didn't make Him up; we would have created (in Paine's words) a more "tender, sympathising, and benevolent" God.
-Andrew
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As others have said, if that's one of the greatest proofs, boy howdy--I'd hate to see some of the weaker ones!

Does this mean that because Jesus was tender and sympathizing, it's proof humans DID make him up?

In order to make this argument with a straight face, you'd first have to prove that humans never invented a mean, powerful, vicious god, and that all gods invented by humans were tender and sympathetic. This still wouldn't prove that humans didn't make up Jehovah, mind you, it'd just prove that, were it a creation, it would be a unique one. However, the issue won't arise, 'cos, I can think of a half-dozen examples of big mean powerful deities that must be appeased the world over without breaking a sweat, and that doesn't even get into Cthulhu and other such modern creations, or the various small, capricious, judgemental critters of susperstition like fairies that have the same irrational and arbitrary cruelty goin' on, on a much smaller scale.

I don't think your argument holds water. Do you have any way to prove that humans are incapable of creating a mean god, and thus the mean god must exist, that wouldn't apply equally well to Kali, Rangda, the Lords of Xilbalba (surely if humans had invented them, they would have picked kinder and more benevolent names than "Scab Stripper" and "Lord of Pus"!) etc, etc?
 
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