The Logical Atheist

Leaving aside all of the logical problems with a supernatural being, how can the Hebrew Bible be the basis for a religion that claims to be about justice, righteousness, and goodness?

Why does Yahweh prefer commandments and punishment to information and advice?

Why did Yahweh create beings who can reason and then not reason with them?

It's not enough for atheists to show that the word god , denoting a transcendent supernatural being, is logically absurd and so cannot even be described, much less substantiated. They must also point out how that notion has led to the harmful Abrahamic religions, which have dominated the world, though they have been waning in some places. The god idea may have begun through a desire to control natural forces beyond our control (crops need rain, etc.), but it ended up as a demand for submission by and to earthly authorities who saw religion as a way to control people through fear, especially of death. The prophets in Jerusalem preached revelation, commandments, and obedience; in contrast the philosophers in Athens favored reason, persuasion, and discretion. That's why Christopher Hitchens called his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything . 

King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, conquered Judah and destroyed the first temple in Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE. It is regarded as one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the Jews. Yet the Book of Jeremiah, 27: 6, says, "And now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant." He calls Nebuchadnezzar his servant in Chapter 25, verse 9, also. His servant? This must mean that Yahweh orchestrated the Babylonian conquest of Judah, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the 70-year exile of many Judahites to Babylonia. In other words, Yahweh is the villain of the piece. Why? According to the prophets, it was divine retribution because the Children of Israel repeatedly sinned by worshipping other gods besides Yahweh. This raises an uncomfortable question. If Nebuchadnezzar was Yahweh's servant, which other antagonists of the Israelites were also just carrying out Yahweh's orders? We can assume that when the Assyri...

The Hebrew prophets are often portrayed as the voices of justice and compassion in opposition to the corrupt kings of Judah and the Children of Israel. But is that really accurate? My reading (so far) detects no focus on justice and compassion. Yes, there is a rare sentence about widows, orphans, and poor people, but those read like something a later editor added. ("This could use a mention of widows and orphans here.") And I see no evidence that the prophets were disturbed by the fact the Ten Commandments say bupkis along this line: "Thou shalt look after widows, orphans, and poor people." (This is not to endorse altruist ethics or the commandment/submission framework of Judaism and its derivatives. I prefer instead the rational egoist Greek philosophical tradition.) So what are the prophets actually upset about? They are upset that the kings and the Children of Israel have consistently disobeyed Yahweh. How so? By worshiping other Canaanite gods, like Baal and Ash...

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." --H. L. Mencken, Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks , 1956.