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The Most Flagrant Departures from Purity

The wrathful and unrelenting character of the Christian divinity, is not less hostile to the immaculate principles of a sound and excellent morality [than the Jewish version is]; imbittered in anger, and infuriate in his vengeance, he lays his hand upon his innocent Son, and offers him up a living sacrifice for the purposes which reason abhors, and justice utterly disclaims. Under the modification, name, and character of the Holy Ghost, this being introduces himself to a woman, and violates those correct and delicate sentiments which ought to guide an intelligent being in cases of this kind. Under the name and character of Jesus Christ, he exhibits the most flagrant departures from the purity of moral sentiment and moral practice.  --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species

Were the First Monotheists Really Monotheistic?

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 ...

This Malignant Phantom

If this be true [that nature is self-sufficient], in regard to the essential nature of theological ideas, how much more powerfully will it hold upon every sectarian modification of the subject. If pure theism be independent of morality, and morality independent of that, because it rests upon the relations and the properties of human life, then it will be easy to conceive that the subordinate descriptions of sectarian theology must be still more unconnected with the present subject. The character, however, of all the gods of antiquity, is, of itself, a sufficient consideration to exclude them from any participation in the concerns of an exalted virtue. The Jewish God commands theft and murder; he puts a lying spirit into the mouth of his prophets; he repents and grieves for his past conduct; he is a God of fury, wrath, and vengeance. These actions and qualities are all attributed to him in the Old Testament! Is it possible that any man of common sense can believe, that moral principles ...

If We Could Abandon Every Theistical Idea...

If we could abandon, for a moment, every theistical idea, it would nevertheless remain substantially true, that the happiness of society must depend upon the exercise of equal and reciprocal justice. It would also be true, that benevolence is an amiable trait in the character of man; that the cultivation of his faculties is a duty imposed on him, because the faithful performance of his duty extends the circle of his real felicity; that vice is the bane of individual and social existence; that truth is to be preferred to falsehood, activity to indolence, temperance to debauchery, and, generally, that science and virtue claim pre-eminently over ignorance and vice, the universal attachment of the human race. All these, and many other particulars of a like nature, would stand as immortal monuments of the real nature of moral principles, even after cultivated intellect shall have performed the last solemn act of duty relative to the ancient regimen, and shall have recalled bewildered man to...

The Spiritual Quest Against Religion

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In this lecture, historian and divinity professor Alec Ryrie shows that in Elizabethan England it was commonly thought, both by theologians and everyday people, that faith and doubt, rather than being opposed, were in fact two sides of the same coin. He quotes William Perkins, whom he calls Elizabethan England's "greatest theology," saying, "True faith, being imperfect, is always accompanied by doubting." Ryrie noted that a common maxim was that if one did not have doubts about the existence of God, then one did not really have faith.

How to Be a Shakespearean Atheist

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In this lecture, Alec Ryrie points out that in the 1500s, while the stereotype atheist was a depraved amoralist, "real unbelievers" and those portrayed on stage were far from that stereotype. He refers to the "dangerous possibility ... that unbelief might discover ethics of its own." Closing line: "The preachers wanted the atheist to stick to his role as the villain in Christendom's moral economy. They should have known that the problem with an atheist is that he doesn't do as he's told."

All Things Are Wrought by Nature

[The notions of heaven and hell] are devised fables, to keep poor fools in fear.... These things are nothing so: No God nor devil is biding, no Heaven nor Hell I know. All things are wrought by Nature, the earth, the air, the sky: There is no joy nor sorrow after that man doth die. Therefore let me have pleasure, while here I do remain: I fear not God's displeasure, nor Hell's tormenting pain. The Wonderfull Example of God Shewed upon Jasper Coningham , a ballad ca. 1600