The Ramblings of Octavo

Often when I quote some of the more disturbing scripture to Christians, their reaction is one of shock. It would seem that relatively few Christians really study the Bible, which I consider pretty poor form given that they believe their immortal soul rests on their abiding by the tenets of Christianity.

Even those who do “study” the Bible, do so with the use of aids and companion books in order to “help” them “understand” the Bible. While I don’t dispute that much of the Bible is metaphor and imagery (much of Daniel and Revelation for instance), this reliance on the interpretation of others is worrying. If you are a Christian reading this, I challenge you to read the Bible as you would any other book. Start at the beginning and read it through to the end. Don’t rely on the interpretations of others, but try and discern the meaning of the words yourself. When you read it, try to remember it for what it is and put it into context. An ancient text, written by a relatively primitive and superstitious people who had absolutely no knowledge of the scientific method and were relatively ignorant about the natural world around them. This is not an attempt to demean them, it is a simple fact. I’m certain that in another 2000 years, my own meager writings will look equally ignorant and primitive.

I guarantee that at the very least, it will give you a very different outlook on your beliefs.

Given the time and the will, I hope to present some of my own Bible study here on The Ramblings of Octavo. I know I just enjoined you to read it yourself and not rely on the interpretation of others, but I need SOMETHING to post about, right? And I’m hoping that putting my own atheist perspective on the scripture may lead you to your own, new insights.

Marriage is a big deal in the Bible and gets a lot of emphasis. The widely accepted biblical doctrine on sexual relations is that either one must remain completely celibate (no masturbation even) or one must be married. Sex before marriage is a big taboo and masturbation is severely frowned on (God kills Onan for it in Genesis 38:9-10).

In Luke 20:27 - 35 the Sadducees (a sect of Jews who didn’t believe in life after death) ask Jesus what happens to someone who has been married several times in heaven. Who exactly are they married to? In Luke 20:35 Jesus says “But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage”.

There are two ways to read this passage and although I personally feel that the language seems clear here, many disagree and point out that the translation may not be 100% accurate to the original meaning. The first interpretation (and the one I contend is clear by the language used) is that married people don’t get into heaven. The second is that in heaven there is no such thing as marriage.

Assuming the second interpretation is the correct one, doesn’t it seem strange that there is so much emphasis on marriage in this life if it is completely irrelevant in the next? One must assume that concepts like love and commitment exist in heaven (although not necessarily romantic love) and given that, it seems strange to me that there exists no mechanism in heaven (where you will spend eternity after all) to come before your God and in His presence declare an everlasting commitment to a loved one.

So if you are a Christian and you are married, there exist but two possibilities for you. 1) You will never reach heaven. 2) You may reach heaven, but you and your wife will no longer be married and there will be no possibility of you ever being married again.

Neither of those options sounds particularly appealing to me…

A bigot is someone who is intolerant of views that differ from his own. It’s a word that can be used to describe just about any sort of prejudice and in this post I hope to show how Christianity has been used and continues to be used as a tool to disguise bigotry. Before I launch into the meat of the post, I wish to point out that I’m not trying to tar all Christians with the same brush. There are many “enlightened” Christians out there who take a more modern view of the Bible and do not subscribe to these disgusting teachings.

While the Bible can be (selectively) used to support just about any prejudice, I wish to focus on the two most obvious and glaring ones. Slavery and homosexuality. The first because it has been defeated and done away with and only the lunatic fringe Christians use the Bible to support it and the second because it is still a serious issue today.

There are several passages in the Bible that undeniably endorse slavery. If you feel like some light reading, try these out: Exodus 21:2; Exodus 21:7; Exodus 21:20-21; Exodus 22:3; Leviticus 22:11; Leviticus 25:39; Leviticus 25:44; Ephesians 6:5; Colossians 3:22. And if you thought it was all in the OT, you’d be wrong: Timothy 6:1; Titus 2:9; 1 Peter 2:18;
For an interesting read, try this http://www.religioustolerance.org/sla_bibl1.htm

Now these passages and many others were used by people to contend that slavery was a normal practice that was accepted biblically. At this point you should be asking yourself how a morally good deity could ever condone slavery, let alone set out rules for how to treat them in His holy scriptures. And before some apologist comments that God laid down these rules to protect slaves or give them more rights, I’d like to point out two things.

1) Exodus 21:20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. 21:21 Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

In other words, if you beat your slave to death you will be punished, but if you beat him to within an inch of his life and he dies a day or two after, you’re all good.

2) Anyone that defends the concept of humans as property in any way has a SERIOUSLY warped moral compass.

And so it is clear that the Bible provides an excellent excuse to support slavery were one so inclined. Of course today, we all realise that slavery is morally repugnant and the slave trade has been (mostly) abolished.

In exactly the same way, you can find many, many passages from the Bible that condemn homosexuality as “against nature” and a sin against God, however this is just another example of bigotry. Prejudice based on sexual orientation.

Now most Christians who use the Bible to condemn homosexuality claim that sexual orientation is a choice and like to term it “sexual preference”. I challenge any honestly straight person to imagine choosing to be a homosexual. Imagine having sex with another person of the same gender. Repugnant isn’t it? Not exactly an arousing thought is it? In fact the thought probably disgusts you a little. I know it does for me. Do you still believe that homosexuals CHOOSE to be that way? Do you not realise that a homosexual probably feels EXACTLY THE SAME WAY about sex with a person of a different gender? That it is repugnant to them, is not arousing and probably even the thought disgusts them a little?

Why would a boy of 11 or 12, just entering puberty CHOOSE an orientation that he knows will make him an outcast, a villian, hated by millions? The simple fact is that he wouldn’t. He was simply born that way and he cannot deny his own nature, just as I cannot deny my own straightness. There is no doubt in my mind that homosexuality is a perfectly NATURAL orientation that a person is BORN with. It occurs naturally in all the higher animals (humans included) to varying degrees. People that claim that a homosexual must have had some trauma or abuse in their childhood or a weak father or whatever are clearly arguing from ignorance. There are literally hundreds of thousands of cases of homosexuals who have perfectly normal families with no abuse and two loving parents.

Whatever your viewpoint, any deity that will condemn a loving, committed couple to eternal damnation simply because they happen to be of the same gender DOES NOT DESERVE WORSHIP.

Someone tried to dissuade me from atheism the other day with a fairly simple argument. First this person made the point that humans learn things through experience. Now I wont delve too deeply into this, as it will eventually lead to the old argument of “are humans capable of original thought?” and that’s not what I am concerned with here.

Once I had tentatively conceded that humans learn through experience, this person pounced with what they thought was an iron-clad argument: Given that we learn through experience, how did humans first come up with the concept of God unless he revealed himself directly and gave that first human the experience of God? I was honestly a bit stunned that someone who is clearly intelligent could not think of a way that a human could come up with the concept of God, except through actually meeting one.

It’s really, terribly simple - all you have to do is change your frame of reference. Imagine that you are a primitive human cave-man. Your knowledge of science and the water cycle are non-existent, but you notice that periodically it rains. Sometimes it goes for days without raining and sometimes it rains a lot all at once. For the most part you don’t give it much thought, until one day you decide to really think about the rain.

You know that somehow these big white fluffy things contain large quantities of fresh water that pour out of them. It must come from somewhere and since there seems to be a never-ending supply of them, it follows that somewhere, SOMETHING must be making them… but what? What force, could be so massive, so powerful that it can suspend an entire river in the air, disguise it as white fluffy things and then make it fall in little drops to the earth? Clearly there is something unseen and powerful out there that causes this and controls it…. and voila - we have discovered the rain spirit. The being that creates clouds and causes them to rain on us. From there it’s not far to a thunder and lightning spirit etc. etc.

Another point to consider is the powerful urge humans have to personify things. We naturally imbue non-living objects with life. Consider what feelings you go through when you hit your knee on a coffee table. Anger at the table is the first and most irrational of feelings. You blame the table for hurting you as if it were conscious. We name our boats, airplanes and even our houses. We refer to our cars as living things and often talk about computers as if they were conscious entities. Is it any wonder then, that once you have a rain spirit concept that you then imbue it with human like qualities?

As I grow older and (hopefully) wiser, I become more and more aware of my own failings as a human. I note with some sense of disappointment that I am quick to anger and can be very offensive when I feel someone is arguing from ignorance. I get the urge to beat them over the head repeatedly with a Dawkins novel.

As a human, I realise that it is my responsibility to improve my behaviour and do what I can to make life on this planet better for everyone and thus I have found a quote by Wafa Sultan (a Syrian-American psychiatrist) that I think will work nicely to quell my more rambunctious side when confronted by God-pushing Christians who annoy me. It goes like this: “You can believe in stones brother, just don’t throw them at me.”

I honestly have no problem with believers. Some of my best friends are devout Christians. The reason I don’t have any problems with them, is that they don’t try and convert me or convince me that their world-view is the correct one. They have by now (mostly) realised that my positions are well-thought out and held for good reason. And it’s hard to argue Christianity against someone who can usually quote scripture just as well as you can.

What really gets to me is people who are arrogant enough to think that they can somehow convert me to Christianity with a few simple arguments, as if to be an atheist I obviously haven’t thought very hard about the universe or God. Or that my life cannot have meaning because I do not believe in God.