Each religion has its 'skeletons' in the closet that show inconsistent and even hypocritical reasoning. Here is an article that points out a few, including the Bible advocating (in a sense) divorce, racism, and murder. Mostly, it points out the danger moral absolutes (which I think Gao brought up, in between his rants and curses).
losingmyreligion.com
Murder:
"Recently, I asked a fundamentalist author and apologist who had labeled abortion as murder to tell me whether the killing of pregnant Canaanite women by putative divine decree and Joshua's sword was murder. He replied that the unborn babies killed by Joshua went straight to heaven -- which of course does not answer the question of whether God committed murder or whether God is above (or below) moral standards. The point here is not to determine whether the fetus is a person but to call attention to the fact that there is considerable moral and ethical relativism in theology and the Bible."
Divorce:
"According to Ezra 9 and 10 the Israelite exiles returning from captivity had brought a curse on themselves. God had sent a heavy rain to the land as punishment for their sin of marrying foreign women and bringing them back to pollute the land of Israel. Ezra's solution was simple. Those Israelite men who had foreign (even Moabite) wives should demonstrate their faithfulness to God by putting all these wives away. If the story of Ezra 10 reflects an actual historical period, then we must believe that there was wholesale divorce in the land of Israel during Ezra's time. Indeed, Ezra destroyed more than marriages. Upon his command, and in the name of God, the men who had married foreign women were forced to separate themselves from their children as well."
Racism:
"The attempt by some evangelicals to borrow the "progressive revelation" principle in order to make the claim that the later revelation (i.e., the New Testament) stands on a higher plane than the earlier revelation (the Old Testament) collapses when one considers the rage against, and hatred of, most of the human race exemplified in the Book of Revelation. And certainly the threat found in Hebrews 6:4-6 -- which proclaims that God will never forgive a repentant apostate -- is more, not less vicious than anything found in the Old Testament. When theologians try to justify the vendetta that the Book of Revelation describes in lurid detail, they demonstrate just how perverse the human mind can sometimes become." |
