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Five articles appear below: 1 Biblical Barbarity K Straughen 2 Biblical Ethics Sublime And Superior… Anonymous 3 Biblical Ethics – A Moral Morass K Straughen 4 Biblical Ethics – Excellent Anonymous 5 Biblical Ethics – A Final Reply K Straughen Biblical Barbarity
Kirk Straughen (Investigator 113, 2007
March)
Introduction
Christian fundamentalists
believe that the
Bible was written under the guidance of an all-wise and morally perfect
being. If this is indeed the case, then Scripture would reflect the
nature
of God, and therefore would not portray this being acting in a
reprehensible
manner or endorsing barbaric acts. However, as we shall see, the
picture
the Bible paints of God is far from flattering which, needless to say,
casts considerable doubt on the fundamentalist's assumption.
Adultery
"Thus says the Lord,
'Behold, I will raise
up evil against you out of your own house; and I will take
your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbour, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun.'" (2 Sam. 12:1 l) If these are the actions of a morally perfect God, then our ideas about ethics are in need of drastic revision. This is a clear example of the Biblical god breaking one of Its own commandments, for by giving the men's wives to their neighbours It has violated: "Neither shall you commit adultery" (Deut. 5:18).
It seems that God is
attempting to solve
a problem by promoting the commission of sin and, needless to say, any
being who advocates such a policy can't be considered morally perfect
because
the commission of further sins can only result in more sin, the very
thing
that God (supposedly) is trying to stop.
Ethnic Cleansing
"Little by little I will
drive them [Hivites,
Canaanites and Hittites] out from before you, until you are increased
and
possess the land ... I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into
your
hand, and you
shall drive them out before you." (Ex. 23:30-31) By now most people would be familiar with the brutal ethnic cleansing campaign, and associated atrocities carried out by Serbian forces in Kosovo, on the orders of the dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic's orders (like the Biblical god's) were nothing more than a brutal land grabbing exercise that appealed to people's prejudices – the belief that certain ethnic groups can be mistreated merely because they are different. If God is good, would It,
like Milosevic,
cause immeasurable harm by cruelly forcing people from their land and
suffer
the privations associated with such expulsions? Indeed, the Biblical
god's
actions are a breach of:
"You shall not wrong a
stranger or oppress
him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Ex. 22:21)
On the one hand the Biblical god says don't oppress strangers, and on the other It persecutes and dispossesses them of their land. This is hypocrisy of the worst kind. Falsehood
According to Titus 1:2,
God never lies. However,
this statement is contradicted by the following passages of Scripture:
"O Lord, thou hast
deceived me, and I was
deceived; thou art stronger than I, and thou hast prevailed." (Jer.
20:7)
"Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2 Thess. 2:11-12) Would a morally perfect god deceive people, make them believe what is false, and then condemn them for believing Its lies? Why not send them a strong antidote to delusion, so that they believe the truth? Genocide
"Pass through the city
after him, and smite;
your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity;
slay old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women..." (Eze. 9:5-6) What kind of god could give such a barbaric order – show no pity, kill maidens, little children? If God really did give such an order, then It is guilty of crimes against humanity. Based on this utterance, I have no choice but to conclude that the Biblical god is more satanic than saintly. Indeed, it is a direct violation of "you shall not kill" (Deut. 5:17). Human Sacrifice
Unfortunately, Jephthah fails to consider the possibility that his daughter might be the first person to come forth from his house and, as this event occurs, he sacrifices her to the Lord. If this story is true, then God's moral perfection goes up in flames. Firstly, God does not
reprimand Jephthah
for attempting to purchase Its aid with a human life, a hideous
proposal
at best. Secondly, It does nothing to stop the sacrifice of the young
girl,
and therefore can be considered to have accepted this barbarous
offering.
As a further example of the Biblical god's cruelty, I cite the
following:
"I defiled them through
their very gifts
in making them offer by fire all their first-born, that I might horrify
them; I did it that they might know that I am the Lord." (Eze. 20:26)
It's pretty clear from
this passage of Scripture,
that the Lord is a psychopathic egomaniac who arranges for people to be
killed, for no other reason than Its own self-glorification.
Injustice
In the following passage
of Scripture, God
is portrayed as punishing David for his sins by killing his child:
"And the Lord struck the
child that Uriah's
wife bore to David, and it became sick ... On the seventh day the child
died." (2 Sam. 12:15-18)
How can a god be
considered morally perfect
when It kills an innocent child as a punishment for someone else's
sins?
If God really did commit this monstrous act, then I can only conclude
that
It has a perverted sense of justice. Indeed, it is a direct violation
of:
"The fathers shall not
be put to death
for the children, nor shall the children be put to death for the
fathers;
every man shall be put to death for his own sin." (Deut. 24:16)
As we can see, the Biblical god is not only a hypocrite, but a murderer of children as well. Rape
"If a man meets a virgin
who is not betrothed,
and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found,
then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put her away all his days." (Deut. 22:28-29) This is another example of
Biblical injustice.
Firstly, the payment of fifty shekels of silver should have been made
to
the woman rather than her father, as she is the victim. Secondly, she
must
become the rapist's wife, hardly the basis for a happy marriage – this
criminal has demonstrated a capacity for violence, and any woman forced
to marry him is in very real danger of being subjected to repeated
sexual
assaults. Not only is the woman a victim of the rapist, she is also a
victim
of unjust Biblical laws. No decent god would endorse this barbarous
statute.
Conclusion
It is impossible for many people to believe that the Bible reflects the nature of a morally perfect being when Scripture portrays God causing adultery, killing children, causing people to believe in falsehoods, ordering the commission of atrocities, accepting human sacrifices, and promulgating unjust laws. If those passages of
Scripture that portray
God behaving no better than an evil man were recorded in a
non-Christian
holy book, most fundamentalists would not hesitate to condemn them.
Indeed,
some might even go so far as to attribute them to Satan. However,
because
they are found in the Bible, the same people would probably defend the
Biblical god's actions with elaborate rationalisations and, in my
opinion,
this shows that there is no limit to human folly, especially where
religion
is concerned.
Bibliography Holy Bible (Revised
Standard Version)
BIBLICAL ETHICS SUBLIME and SUPERIOR but MISREPRESENTED Anonymous (Investigator114,
2007
May)
HUMAN SACRIFICE CONDEMNED The Bible says: "The LORD is just in all his ways, and kind in all his doings." (Psalm 145:17) Mr Straughen (#113), however, claims the Bible sanctions "barbarities" – such as human sacrifice. Carthaginians, Druids,
Aztecs, Canaanites,
etc. practiced human sacrifice and killed millions – but the Bible
condemns
it:
And they go on building
the high place
of Topheth…to burn their sons and their daughters in …every abhorrent thing
that the LORD hates
they [Canaanites] have done for their gods. They would even burn their
sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. (Deuteronomy 12:31;
Psalm 106:34-38)
But didn't Jephthah, a
"hero of faith", give
his daughter as a "burnt offering" to thank God for a military victory?
(Judges 11:30-31Young's Analytical Concordance says: "Burnt offerings … were mere voluntary offerings (unlike sin offerings and trespass offerings, which were compulsory), which, however, were to be presented in a uniform systematic manner, as laid down in Lev. i – iii…" The burnt offering had to be a male bull, sheep, or goat, or a bird – never a person. (Leviticus 1)
Jephthah's vow was:
If you will give the
Ammonites into my
hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when
I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the LORD's, to be
offered
up by me as a burnt offering.
Compare the bold print
with what Hannah said
when she dedicated her son Samuel to serve at Israel's religious
centre:
Hannah: "I will set him
before you … until
the day of his death." (I Samuel 1:11)
The phrase "as a burnt offering" corresponds to "until the day of his death". It's Jephthah's figure of speech to show that his offer is voluntary and permanent. The word "as" here means "similar to". The daughter, like Samuel, became a celibate worker at Israel's centre of worship. She "bewailed her virginity" (11:37) because she would never have children. It wasn't totally bad, however, since she would have the security and status of working with Israel's priests. Jephthah's vow was serious for him too – he would get no bride price and never have grandchildren. Atheistic critics accuse Jephthah of "child abuse". However, in Jephthah's time parents decided if and whom their daughters will marry – and one quarter of the world's people still practice this principle. Let's not forget that
atheistic governments
"sacrificed" 100 million people in the 20th century, not
metaphorically
like Jephthah but actually killed them!
CRIMINALS SHOULD PAY If a man meets a virgin
who is not betrothed,
and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who
lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels
of silver,
and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) Was this
"injustice"? No. It
followed the principle
that criminals should pay for their crimes and not some else. (Ezekiel
18:19-20)
In ancient Israel
marriages were arranged
by family heads. Unmarried daughters had to remain virgins. If they
failed
no man would want them, and marriage and motherhood – the roles that
gave
women status – were virtually barred. A raped woman's choices might
come
down to starvation or prostitution.
The rapist marrying his victim:
The 50 shekels the rapist
paid the father
replaced the bride price, which the father lost due to the woman's vanished
marriage prospects. In Old Testament times fathers often invested this
money for the daughter by buying a field, or retained it as a "trust
fund
for her use in time of trouble". (Madeleine, S. & Miller, J.L.1979
Encyclopedia
of Bible Life, p. 99)
The Law of Moses expired
when Jesus came.
(Ephesians 2:11-16) However, the principles underlying it are still
relevant.
Today the principle that the evil-doer should pay the costs of his
crime,
and allowing for our very different sort of society, would in the case
of a rapist mean making him pay the financial cost of restoring his
victim
medically, psychologically and career-wise.
There are societies today
where the bride
price is still paid. It acknowledges the cost of raising the woman from
childhood and the value of her work. Many Western governments also
recognize,
by payment, the cost of raising children and their future value to the
economy. They pay regular benefits to parents, and sometimes large cash
sums for each child born.
GOD DOES WHAT? The Bible teaches that God
is behind everything – life and death, human actions, the natural
world, the rise and fall of
nations:
About ten days later the
LORD struck Nabal,
and he died. (I Samuel 25:38)
The young lions…seek their food from God. (Psalm 104:21) I [God] will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans… (Joel 3:8) I will heal them and
reveal to them abundance
of prosperity and security. (Jeremiah 33:6)
The Bible
has hundreds of
statements declaring
what God has done, is doing, or will do including actions we recognize
as "evil":
I make weal
[prosperity]
and create woe.
(Isaiah 45:7)
Did not our
God bring
all this disaster
on us? (Nehemiah 13:18)
The Bible, however, also
declares God's "steadfast
love" (Psalm 145:8-9) and says "God cannot be tempted by evil." (James
1:13)
So God "creates woe" but has steadfast love – is this inconsistent?
Evil, woe and suffering
among humans is,
according to the Bible, due to:
In Job 1-2 Satan is
presented as able to
create destructive storms, send nations on plunder missions, and
inflict
sickness. God gives Satan permission to act but sets limits on how much
evil he may do. (Job 1:9-12; 2:6)
However, if God created an environment where good and evil can happen, and if humans need God's guidance to avoid evil but this guidance humans reject and God therefore withholds – in that sense "God brings evil". Consider an analogy:
A local government opens a national park to the public and erects a safety fence below a cliff and a sign "Danger–Falling Rocks". Janet gives the tour-guide the slip, ignores the sign and climbs the fence. At the cliff-top Janet's ex boyfriend deliberately dislodges a rock and splatters her brains. Who's to blame? The government, Janet, the boyfriend and tour-guide contributed to her death in different ways. When "God" does evil it's comparable, in this analogy to what the government did (it opened the park) and to what the tour-guide did (he let Janet disobey the sign). The main blame, however, goes to the boyfriend. We're dealing with different sorts of responsibility. Bible verses that attribute evil to God such as (to use Straughen's words) "punishing David for his sins by killing his child" should therefore be understood as God permitting the stated evil. It's often put in the form of "I will…" to remind readers that God remains in control and decides what to allow/permit/let happen. Once we understand this
division of responsibility
the phrase "I will…" translates to "I will permit…" or "I will not
prevent…"
TRUTH Straughen claims that "God
never lies" (Titus
1:2) contradicts:
For this reason God
sends upon them a powerful
delusion, leading them to believe what is false… (II Thessalonians 2:11)
The PREVIOUS verse,
however, tells about
"the lawless one" who will rule the nations before the end of the
world:
The coming of the
lawless one is apparent
in the working of Satan who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, and
every
kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they
refused
to
love the truth and so be saved. (II Thessalonians 2:9-10) Note that "wicked deception" is blamed on "the working of Satan". What's going on? One verse blames God, another blames Satan. In line with my previous
analysis the Bible
here teaches that God accepts part of the responsibility. "God sends
upon
them…" means "God permits upon them…"
ADULTERY Adam and Eve were husband and "wife" (Genesis 2:25) and the New Testament says, "God will judge fornicators and adulterers." What's so bad about "fornication"? For starters about 250 million deaths in the 20th century from sexually transmitted diseases. (Investigator 48) II Samuel 12:11, however,
says:
Thus says the Lord,
'Behold I will raise
up trouble against you [King David] from within your own house; and I
will
take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbour, and
he shall lie with your wives…
In fulfilment of this,
King David's son Absalom
organized a revolt and made himself king. To publicly demonstrate his
kingship
Absalom had sex with David's wives in a tent on the roof. (II Samuel
16:20-23)
His conduct flouted Deuteronomy 5:21 – "Neither shall you covet your
neighbor's
wife."
Based on my previous
analysis we can rephrase
II Samuel 12:11:
Thus says the Lord,
'Behold I will permit
[or not prevent] trouble against you from within your own house; and I
will let your wives be taken before your eyes, and given to your
neighbour,
and he shall lie with your wives…
WORLDWIDE PEACE The Bible starts with
humans in Paradise,
portrays war as a human invention, and tells about world peace
eventually
being restored:
He [God] shall judge
between the nations,
and…they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and
their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:4) Yet the Bible also has God
commanding the
slaughter of children:
Pass through the city
after him, and kill;
your eye shall not spare, and you shall not show pity; cut down old
men,
young men and young women, little children and women, but touch no one
who has the mark. (Ezekiel 9:5-6)
Ezekiel 9 is a vision the prophet Ezekiel had near 600 BC. (8:1) In the vision one man marked all innocent Jews in Jerusalem who "weep and sigh because of the sins they see around them". After that another six men slaughtered all the unmarked or guilty ones. The guilty Jews had abandoned Jewish law, were worshipping idols (8:14), and filled the land with "bloody crimes". (7:23) The vision was fulfilled when Babylon, the superpower of that time, attacked Jerusalem. The Babylonians were not commanded by God. Their king, Nebuchadnezzar, was following his own agenda of empire-building. The interpretation again
is that God permitted
the slaughter because the Jews had deserted Him and lost His
protection.
Presenting God as commanding the slaughter is a literary device to
express
the certainty of Jerusalem's fate and that it was just:
According to their way I
will deal with
them; and according to their own judgments I will judge them. And they
shall know that I am the LORD. (Ezekiel 7:27)
CANAANITES We saw from Isaiah 2 that
the Bible advocates
world peace. How then do we understand the extermination of the
Canaanites?
We'll study this another time. We'll see that that ancient conflict:
1 Followed ethical principles, which if generally heeded would have prevented all future massacres, genocides and invasions. 2 Followed, with some merciful amendments, the rules of war (or lack thereof) for those times. 3 Saved hundreds of
millions of future lives,
and brought "blessing" to "all the nations of the earth".
Biblical Ethics - A Moral Morass Kirk Straughen (Investigator 115, 2007 July)
Introduction
I have read Anonymous'
related topic on page
46 of No. 114, and am unable to agree with him for reasons I shall now
outline.
Human Sacrifice
Human sacrifice was practiced in ancient Middle Eastern cultures. Passages of Scripture do condemn it. However, this does not necessarily mean that it was eliminated from Israelite culture entirely.
Judges 11:30-31
is
clearly about human
sacrifice to God. The phrase "burnt offering" in this passage refers of
course to the sacrifice – Jephthah's daughter, a fact accepted by
rabbinical
scholars:
For further information the interested reader is also referred to the following website:
www.womeninthebible.net/BIBLE-1.9C.htm
www.usbible.com/Sacrifice/jephthah.htm
Some apologists argue
that
God accepted this
sacrifice to punish Jephthah for making the barbaric proposal. In my
opinion,
this does not absolve Yahweh. For example, suppose I was an
anthropologist
studying a primitive tribe, and that this tribe decided to sacrifice a
maiden in my honour because of some assistance I had given them.
Now, let us further
suppose that, after failing
to dissuade them from their intention, I decide to let the ceremony
proceed
based on the principle that if the natives are so foolish as to
practice
human sacrifice, then I will let them kill the girl as a 'punishment'
for
their own folly.
Now, how many of my
readers accept this specious
reasoning as absolving me, let alone God?
Rape
How many of Investigator's
female
readers would be happy to marry the man who raped them? In ancient
Israel
a rape victim may well have been ostracised, but is having to marry her
rapist really a sensible and humane solution?
Far better if the Bible
clearly taught it
was not the woman's fault, that ostracism was unjustified, and she was
worthy of respect regardless of what happened to her.
Child Murder
Anonymous attempts to
exonerate God by saying
he permits evil, rather than directly engaging in evil acts, such as
killing
children or ordering them to be killed. However, there is nothing in
those
passages of Scripture I have quoted relating to the killing of children
that justifies this interpretation. God clearly and actively is either
doing or ordering the killing.
If the authors of Scripture meant something other than what is plainly indicated, then they should have stated what they meant in certain and unambiguous terms. It is not impossible for this to be done.
Conclusion
Firstly, when it comes to ethics, the Bible is a mixed bag – in it is good, but also evil. Anonymous quotes passages of Scripture that have a positive message. However, it's a bit like a lawyer giving a glowing testimonial of his client while ignoring the fact he has murdered three people with an axe. Secondly, Anonymous has attempted to extricate Scripture from its moral morass by twisting the plain meaning of words and has, as far as I can see, offered no convincing justification for doing so.
Thirdly, if the Bible
really was the word
of an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being, then these
convoluted
apologetics would be completely unnecessary.
BIBLICAL ETHICS EXCELLENT Anonymous (Investigator
116, 2007
September)
A FEW BUTTONS MISSING In his book A Few
Buttons Missing
(1951) psychiatrist James Tucker Fisher wrote:
I dreamed of writing a
handbook that would
be simple, practical, easy to understand and easy to follow.
It would tell people how to live - what thoughts and attitudes and philosophies to cultivate and what pitfalls to avoid, in seeking mental health. I attended every symposium...and took notes on the wise words of teachers and my colleagues who were leaders in the field. And then quite by accident, I discovered that such a work had already been completed. What work did Dr. Fisher
have in mind?
WEIZSAECKER and GANDHI Carl F. von Weizsaecker
(1912-2007) worked
on Hitler's atomic bomb project. After WWII he became professor of
physics
and of philosophy. His books The Responsibility of Science in the
Nuclear
Age, Paths in Danger, The Consequences and Prevention of
War, and The Threatened Peace exerted lasting
influence.
Weizsaecker was Germany's most prominent peace researcher and director
of the Max Planck Institute. To confront problems of war and
over-exploitation
of nature he called on Christians for a "council of justice, peace and
the conservation of creation" based on principles from Jesus' Sermon on
the Mount:
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) was famous for his non-violent struggle for India's independence. After the Round Table Conference (1931-1932) Gandhi said to Lord Irwin, Viceroy to India: "When your country and mine shall get together on the teachings laid down by Christ in this Sermon on the Mount, we shall have solved the problems not only of our countries but those of the whole world." (Stuber & Clark 1949) In his Sermon on the Mount
Jesus gave
great principles to live by and also endorsed other parts of
the
Bible. And the famous British statesman W. E. Gladstone (1809-1898)
called the Bible, "the greatest and best gift ever given to mankind."
(Knight
1956)
Given such positive
comment would we expect
the Bible to condone human sacrifice? Or would such a claim indicate
the
accuser has "A few buttons missing"?
JEPHTHAH K. Straughen (Investigator 113) claimed the Bible teaches that Jephthah, a judge near 1200 BC, sacrificed his daughter literally as "a burnt offering". Straughen's claim is wrong
and was answered
in #114. Jephthah's phrase "as a burnt offering" is a figure of speech
and refers to perpetual virginity and religious duties.
Straughen responded by
citing others with
the same misunderstanding as himself. Repeating an error, however, does
not make it correct.
Furthermore, if one part
of the Bible is
misunderstood, other parts may clear things up. In Hebrews (11:32)
Jephthah's faith is praised, and that's the answer. If Jephthah flouted
the Law of Moses, which condemned human sacrifice, by literally
sacrificing
his daughter, he would not deserve praise. Even the Romans, despite
their
blood-soaked arenas considered human sacrifice barbaric!
What critics call
"contradictions" and "barbarities"
in the Bible can better be called "logical puzzles". They are
statements
that seem incompatible but which further analysis reveal consistent.
Some
people read them and see "barbarity" or "contradiction". Others
read them
and get the
right answer. The
Jephthah story, and its seeming disagreement with Moses' Law, is like
that.
With complex logic there
can't always be
"perfect clarity". But perfect clarity is not always the intention:
…you [God] have hidden
these things from
the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to
babes. (Matthew 11:25)
Straughen also repeated
his criticism about
Israeli women who were raped (when the Law of Moses was in force)
having
to marry the rapist. As explained (in #114) the idea was compensation.
A raped woman in those times had little prospect of marriage, and faced
childlessness and possibly starvation or prostitution.
However, the Law included
clauses that allowed
for negotiation. If the raped woman felt so revolted by the rapist that
she preferred singleness and childlessness she might appeal to the
command,
"You must love your neighbour as yourself." Then, if her father
consented,
some other compensation might be agreed on.
There's also the
probability that a rapist
having to support his victim for the rest of her life effectively
deterred
rape!
NOT A MIXED BAG
Suppose a new immigrant to
Australia wants
to know the rules he needs to follow in Australia. His instructor,
however,
gives him:
The laws
that
applied
to convict prisoners when
White settlement began;
The rules of engaging the enemy on the Western Front; Historical accounts of large-scale killing such as the Cowra breakout when over 200 Japanese were gunned down; News reports of hangings, drug-busts, high-speed car chases, and private vengeance.
The immigrant would get
a skewed notion
of life in Australia. This skewed approach is what critics take with
Bible
ethics. They dig out whatever is not meant to be literally followed and
claim "This is
what the
Bible
teaches."
Used soberly the Bible
helped destroy slavery,
introduce modern science, outlaw widow burning and infanticide (#115),
and inspired numerous laws that now enhance quality of life worldwide.
These are matters of history.
Critics need to allow for
their own shortcomings
such as:
The heart is devious
above all else; it
is perverse – who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
There are some things in them [Paul's letters] hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. (II Peter 3:16) Dr. Fisher's life was
reviewed in Time
(1951) as The Man Who Knew Freud. He was born in 1864, herded
cattle,
turned to real estate, then studied at Harvard, and practiced
psychiatry
almost 50 years. Did you guess what work
Dr. Fisher had in
mind in my opening quote? Here he tells us:
If you were to take the
sum total of all
the authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of
psychologists
and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene – and if you were to
combine them
References:
Fisher, J. T. and
Hawley,
L. S. 1951 A
Few Buttons Missing: The Case Book of a Psychiatrist.
Knight, W. B. 1956 Knight's Master Book of New Illustrations. Schirmacher, W. Allgemeine Zeitung, Mainz, 27 June 1987. Stuber, S. I. & Clark, T. C. (Eds.) 1949 Treasury of the Christian Faith. www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,890111,00.html Biblical Ethics - A Final Reply Kirk Straughen (Investigator 117, 2007 November)
I have read Anonymous Biblical
Ethics
Excellent (Investigator 116) and am unable to agree with him.
Before I begin my analysis
of his arguments
I would like to make it clear that I do not, nor have I ever intended
to
give the impression that the Bible is wholly immoral – that would be an
extreme and untenable position to adopt. However, what I do maintain is
that parts of Scripture are morally reprehensible.
Having made my position as clear as I can, I shall now examine Anonymous' defence of the Bible, which begins with the scrutiny of his assertion that Scripture should be viewed as a kind of logical puzzle that has to be read in a certain way to "get the right Answer" (page 25).
I do not mean to offend,
but to me this sounds
like a case of special pleading – the old "God works in mysterious
ways"
argument. The Bible is alleged to be The Word of God – a document
authored
(through human hands) by an omniscient being, the creator of the
Universe,
an entity whose intellect is so vast that it is beyond human
comprehension.
If this is so then the
book should be easily
understood, with little, if any, confusion concerning the meaning of
its
contents. Yet, when I examine Anonymous explanations that he alleges
satisfactorily
resolve Scriptural contradictions, I find them simply too convoluted to
be plausible.
Further on in his essay,
Anonymous suggests
that critics "dig out whatever is not meant to be literally followed
and
claim this what the Bible teaches" (page 26).
When Anonymous comments
that I use quotes
to support my conclusions and that "repeating an error, however, does
not
make it correct" (page 25) I respectfully suggest that similar
conclusions
can be reached concerning his own predilections.
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