The Logical Atheist

In an earlier incarnation many, many years ago, I would be getting ready to celebrate Passover . This is the holiday that commemorates Yahweh's liberation of the children of Israel from enslavement in Egypt (long before the Arabs got there). Yahweh did this, according to the Good Book, by inflicting collective punishments on the Egyptian people -- ranging from turning the Nile River and other water sources into blood, to sending swarms of frogs, gnats, flies, and locusts throughout the land, to killing all first-born persons and cattle, even those of slaves (non-Israelites, presumably) -- 10 "plagues" in all. As unjust as that collective punishment seems, it was Yahweh's response to the recalcitrance of Egypt's absolute ruler, the Pharaoh. According to the story, he repeatedly changed his mind about "letting [the Israelite] people go" after promising Moses he would do so. That's why Egypt, that is, all Egyptians, kept getting hit with plagues.  Howe...

  If you want to know what a leading Israeli archaeologist has to say about the stories told in the Hebrew Bible, you can make a good start by listing to a 26-part conversation with Israel Finkelstein, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University and the head of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa. These half-hour conversations, conducted by Matthew J. Adams of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, are directed at interested laymen, and I highly recommend them. Finkelstein's book, The Bible Unearthed:  Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts , written with Neil Asher Silberman, is a thoroughly enjoyable read. You already realize that the biblical stories are fiction (with a smattering of historical references), but these conversations will fill out your understanding in eye-opening ways. The important matters -- such as the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, the conquest o...

Moses, Mahomet, and Jesus, can lay as little claim to moral merit, or to the character of the benefactors of mankind, as any three men that ever lived upon the face of the earth. They were all of them impostors; two of them notorious murderers in practice, and the other a murderer in principle; and their existence united has, perhaps, cost the human race more blood, and produced more substantial misery, than all the other fanatics of the world.  --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species

To show fully the immoral character of Moses, it would be necessary to quote almost every chapter in these "holy and inspired" books. Believers in revealed religion, who still believe that Moses was a pious and meek man, ought, once more, to pass in review the conduct and transactions which the Bible has attributed to him.... If there be any member of the Christian church who can believe that God and Moses ever united in the execution of those barbarous decrees and immoral sentiments stated in these books, he must be lost to all clear ideas of justice, and must have abandoned every principle of humanity by which the life of man is to be rendered comfortable and happy. The author of "The Age of Reason", has placed these enormities in a striking point of light, and, with his wonted acuteness of discernment, has presented, in the way of Bishop Watson, difficulties which no Christian bishop will ever be able to surmount. Murder and theft are crimes of so detestable a na...

The causes which have produced personal celebrity are numerous, and diversified by a thousand indescribable shades in their modes of operation. It also sometimes happens that the means of popular exaltation and perpetual fame have been either of a passive or uncontrollable nature. Such is the fact in the present case. Moses and Mahomet were active villains, whose characters cannot be examined without horror and detestation. They were both eminent murderers, and their debaucheries have been signalized by acts of barbarous brutality, of which the love-struck Solomon seems to be more destitute. The military ferocities and immoral decrees of these two "celestial" impostors, have placed upon their characters an indelible stain, which the pretended sanctity of the priesthood can never wipe away!    Believers in Christianity, in reading the history and conduct of Moses, ought to blush for his crimes, and spurn at his blasphemy in attributing these crimes to the God whom he pretended...

The title is an odd question, I know, but it's worth asking. The Hebrew Bible is full of lines that suggest that the Israelites were being cajoled and threatened into choosing Yahweh from among multiple possible alternatives. According to  My Jewish Learning , the second commandment states in Exodus 20:3-6 is "You shall have no other gods beside Me.... You shall not bow down to [graven images], nor serve them, for I, the Lord Your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." Does this sound like a deity claiming to be the one and only? I don't think so. It sounds more like a claim against other deities. And who could Yahweh be jealous of? This sort of idea can be found throughout what is known in Judaism as the Five Books of Moses.  In Exodus 6:6-8, we "hear" Yahweh telling Moses, "I will take you [Israelites] as my own people, and I will be your God." Why wouldn't The One ...

The faculties of man ought to be circumscribed only by that extensive circle which embraces the full extent of their native and accumulated activity. When religious prejudices are permitted to mingle their gloomy effects with the exalted conceptions of enlightened reason, the important cause of truth and the dearest interests of humanity become perceptibly retrograde, and darkness instead of light pervades the moral world. When Moses, by authority pretendedly divine, diffused light over the world previous to the creation of the sun, Superstition greedily swallowed the holy absurdity; but when Galileo asserted the sphericity of the earth, they cried heresy, and armed against science and philosophy, and yet the latter was an important truth in the system of nature; the former, a stupid blunder of ignorance and fanaticism. Such, O Superstition! are thy pious efforts to blind the human mind, the better to subjugate its powers, and rob man of the fruits of his industry. --Elihu Palmer (176...

Christians and Deists have sometimes coincided in their opinion that Jesus was a good character. This opinion, so far as it was acceded to by some of the first unbelievers, was either the result of ignorance, or an effect of fear. The Christian exalted this same Jesus into the character of a God, and, by their doctrines, made him equal to the Creator; such a circumstance struck terror into the human mind, and the idea of associating crimes with the divinity prevented independent inquiry.  The New Testament, so far as proof of this kind goes, furnishes us with facts and circumstances which make strongly against the moral character of Jesus. Beside the general duplicity which characterizes his answers to the multitude, he is guilty also of sending his disciples secretly to take and carry away a colt which did not belong either to him or his disciples. The doing of such an act in modern times would be denominated theft, even by pious Christians themselves. He is guilty of sowing the s...

To show fully the immoral character of Moses, it would be necessary to quote almost every chapter in these "holy and inspired" books. Believers in revealed religion, who still believe that Moses was a pious and meek man, ought, once more, to pass in review the conduct and transactions which the Bible has attributed to him: especially those details which are contained in the books already mentioned. If there be any member of the Christian church who can believe that God and Moses ever united in the execution of those barbarous decrees and immoral sentiments stated in these books, he must be lost to all clear ideas of justice, and must have abandoned every principle of humanity by which the life of man is to be rendered comfortable and happy. The author of "The Age of Reason" [Thomas Paine], has placed these enormities in a striking point of light, and, with his wonted acuteness of discernment, has presented, in the way of Bishop Watson, difficulties which no Christia...

The causes which have produced personal celebrity are numerous, and diversified by a thousand indescribable shades in their modes of operation. It also sometimes happens that the means of popular exaltation and perpetual fame have been either of a passive or uncontrollable nature. Such is the fact in the present case. Moses and Mahomet were active villains, whose characters cannot be examined without horror and detestation. They were both eminent murderers, and their debaucheries have been signalized by acts of barbarous brutality, of which the love-struck Solomon seems to be more destitute. The military ferocities and immoral decrees of these two "celestial" impostors, have placed upon their characters an indelible stain, which the pretended sanctity of the priesthood can never wipe away! Believers in Christianity, in reading the history and conduct of Moses, ought to blush for his crimes, and spurn at his blasphemy in attributing these crimes to the God whom he pretended t...

Of all the superstitions of mankind, this insanity about the "sacred Sabbath" is the most absurd. The idea of feeling it a duty to be solemn and sad one-seventh of the time! To think that we can please an infinite being by staying in some dark and sombre room, instead of walking in the perfumed fields! Why should God hate to see a man happy? Why should it excite his wrath to see a family in the woods, by some babbling stream, talking, laughing and loving? Nature works on that "sacred" day. The earth turns, the rivers run, the trees grow, buds burst into flower, and birds fill the air with song. Why should we look sad, and think about death, and hear about hell? Why should that day be filled with gloom instead of joy?   A poor mechanic, working all the week in dust and noise, needs a day of rest and joy, a day to visit stream and wood—a day to live with wife and child; a day in which to laugh at care, and gather hope and strength for toils to come. And his weary wife...

Another except from Robert G. Ingersoll's "Some Mistakes of Moses" : Let us understand this. An honest finite being uses the best words, in his judgment, to convey his meaning. This is the best he can do, because he cannot certainly know the exact effect of his words on others. But an infinite being must know not only the real meaning of the words, but the exact meaning they will convey to every reader and hearer. He must know every meaning that they are capable of conveying to every mind. He must also know what explanations must be made to prevent misconception. If an infinite being cannot, in making a revelation to man, use such words that every person to whom a revelation is essential will understand distinctly what that revelation is, then a revelation from God through the instrumentality of language is impossible, or it is not essential that all should understand it correctly. It may be urged that millions have not the capacity to understand a revelation, although ex...

Yet more from Robert Ingersoll's "Some Mistakes of Moses" : The statement that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, I cannot accept. It is contrary to my reason, and I cannot believe it. It appears reasonable to me that force has existed from eternity. Force cannot, as it appears to me, exist apart from matter. Force, in its nature, is forever active, and without matter it could not act; and so I think matter must have existed forever. To conceive of matter without force, or of force without matter, or of a time when neither existed, or of a being who existed for an eternity without either, and who out of nothing created both, is to me utterly impossible. I may be damned on this account, but I cannot help it. In my judgment, Moses was mistaken.   It will not do to say that Moses merely intended to tell what God did, in making the heavens and the earth out of matter then in existence. He distinctly states that in the beginning God created them. If this ac...

Robert G. Ingersoll's "Some Mistakes in Moses" goes on: In the time of Moses, it was perfectly safe for him to write an account of the creation of the world. He had simply to put in form the crude notions of the people. At that time, no other Jew could have written a better account. Upon that subject he felt at liberty to give his imagination full play. There was no one who could authoritatively contradict anything he might say. It was substantially the same story that had been imprinted in curious characters upon the clay records of Babylon, the gigantic monuments of Egypt, and the gloomy temples of India. In those days there was an almost infinite difference between the educated and ignorant. The people were controlled almost entirely by signs and wonders. By the lever of fear, priests moved the world. The sacred records were made and kept, and altered by them. The people could not read, and looked upon one who could, as almost a god. In our day it is hard to conceive ...

Yet more from Robert G. Ingesoll's "Some Mistakes of Moses" : If God created the universe, there was a time when he commenced to create. Back of that commencement there must have been an eternity. In that eternity what was this God doing? He certainly did not think. There was nothing to think about. He did not remember. Nothing had ever happened. What did he do? Can you imagine anything more absurd than an infinite intelligence in infinite nothing wasting an eternity?   I do not pretend to tell how all these things really are; but I do insist that a statement that cannot possibly be comprehended by any human being, and that appears utterly impossible, repugnant to every fact of experience, and contrary to everything that we really know, must be rejected by every honest man.

What's the deal with prayer? Think about it: it seems aimed at getting Yahweh to do what he otherwise would not have done. Let's leave out the football players who pray for victory and stuff like that. We'll confine ourselves to serious things: praying that your very sick child will recover, or that you'll be able to feed your family, or that we won't go to war. Why would Yahweh need to be prayed to about such things? Doesn't the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good Supreme Being and Creator of the Universe know the right thing to do without being begged by suffering supplicants? And besides, wouldn't Yahweh have foreseen the whole thing: the tragedy, the prayerful response, and his own response? Is this a game he plays, sort of like the cruel game he and the devil played with regard to Job? I just don't get it. By the way, whenever a pope is deathly ill and looks to be heading to his great reward, I hear Catholics urged to pray for him. Come again? If we...

Well, as one who believes that the one and only reality necessarily is natural and godless, I can't actually resent God. But I can object to teaching vulnerable children and adults who are capable of knowing better that they must worship and adore the God described in the various holy books. Must worship ... or else. We know what "or else" means -- depending on the religious variant, it means death on the spot, eventual annihilation, or eternal spinning on the divine rotisserie. Some loving and merciful God, that. You don't have to read much of those books to be thankful that such a thing doesn't and couldn't exist. (Of course it's all fiction -- the greatest horror story ever told -- but the authors had reasons for telling those stories.) Tens of thousands were killed in God-commanded genocidal biblical wars; individuals, their families, and/or groups were burned to cinders or swallowed up by the earth merely for impudent thoughts and "murmurings,...

Moses and Minimalism: Form Criticism vs. Fiction in the Pentateuch , by Robert M. Price (the always delightful writer and speaker) A Shift in Time: How Historical Documents Reveal the Surprising Truth about Jesus , by Lena Einhorn Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons,  by Richard Carrier On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason to Doubt , by Richard Carrier Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World , by Tim Whitmarsh