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The Oppression of Religion…?

“If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: “Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.” Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible.”  Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation  My bold emphasis

Religion and Slavery

A person who often replies to this blog…and me…are in a discussion on slavery in the Bible.

I feel that by condoning the practice in many places in the Scripture, the Bible is letting us know that Christianity and the Bible is not ‘Divinely Inspired’ or the actual work of a God.

For those who want to look it up, here are a few places to go:

Exodus 21:4-6 Guidelines for buying, selling, treatment, etc.
Deuteronomy 15:15-17 Handle your maid slaves
Exodus 21:7-9 Sell your daughters into.
Joel 3:8 Sell off your sons and daughters
1 Timothy 6:1-2 Masters are worthy of honor
Matthew 10:24 and John 13:16 Masters are better, maid slaves be submissive in ALL ways
Ephesians 6:5 and Colossians 3:22 ‘Slaves obey your master’
10 Commandments, numbers 4 and 10 recognize and therefore give tacit approval to slavery.
Matthew 8:5-13 Jesus heals Roman centurions slave while praising centurion.
Luke 12:47 Jesus recommends the beating of slaves.
Matthew 24-25 Jesus reminds slaves they are not better than their masters.
Neither the Old nor New Testament condemns slavery. By not condemning, there is tacit approval given.

There is Christian Apologetics out there that try to minimize what they were teaching and practicing.
It took secular leaders and common people to finally get together and condemned it. As you know a war was fought over it…surely a God would know this, and put a verse in the Bible to call Christians together to end slavery…never happened.

If you put yourself into the position of the writers of the Scripture and realize that they were brought up seeing slavery all around them. Their fathers and grandfathers and so on were brought up with the practice all around them. Some of them were slaves maybe. There was no thought that slavery is a BAD (unless you were one) thing…that a God would not allow it, or condone it. So they wrote slavery into the Bible as common everyday stuff.

One of the lines of apologetics for slavery follows:

“Another crucial point is that the purpose of the Bible is to point the way to salvation, not to reform society.” http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-slavery.html

I believe that yes…religion, God, and the Bible’s purpose IS to reform; not only society, but also man himself. This Bible is used all the time as an example to reform man and society. Jesus was set up to be a shining example of how a human should be.

So the Hebrews did not realize when they wrote their ‘holy text’ that slavery wasn’t normal, it wasn’t a Godlike thing to do, and a real God would not condone enslavement. This of course speaks to the Bible not being inspired by God, but written by man.

And lets not forget all those Old Testament babies being bashed against the walls, and the pregnant women being run through with a sword…at God’s direction. No amount of apologetics can explain these actions as the works of a loving God.

The only reasonable explanations for all of the carnage, rape, murder, torture, and slavery that is recorded by the old Hebrew scribes and Paul is…it is a product of human minds…not a God creature.

“Once there was a time when all people believed in God, and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages.”

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Biblical Inerrancy?

“No book of ancient times has come down to us exactly as it left the hands of its author- all have been in some way altered. ”
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14530a.htm

So what does this say about Bible inerrancy for today’s evangelical fundamentalists?  We know that the Catholic Church had unhindered and exclusive access to early Christian writings after about c315-325 CE.  They absolutely controlled what was canonized and passed on, and what was considered heresy (didn’t agree with them) so they could burn or suppress (and they did both) anything they wanted.  They also controlled the scribes and approved copies.

We also know that Eusebius was heavily involved with the picking and choosing of what was included, and was commissioned by Emperor Constantine, sometime after 325 CE, to produce 50 copies of a Bible to send to churches. It is believed that the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus are surviving examples. This also marked the first time the Old Testament and New Testament were produced together.

Most real Biblical scholars agree that Scripture has been edited to agree with the Catholic dogma, or the scribes particular bent, and there can be found alterations made by later Protestants. We can go online to Bible Gateway at: http://www.biblegateway.com/ and find 20 different English versions of The Book, and there can be found very subtle differences that can totally alter the thought or meaning.

We have no existing-original writings of the early Biblical authors. Many of the writers whose name appears in the headings today did not actually write them. Nothing original left to compare modern versions to.  So all of the modern interpretations have to be taken on ‘faith’ 🙂  We also know from extensive histories, that interpretations have varied…in *very large ways…from the time of Jesus to modern days. There is no continuity or consistency to this so-called ‘God’s Word’ or consistency of dogma or worship.  Would this be the hallmark of a real God? Is this a Godly enterprise?  Or could it be made-up by man?  Maybe the real god is ‘out there’ or ‘in there’, waiting to be discovered.

I find it hard to muster up that much faith and enthusiasm for what appears to be a major scam.

*Polygamy, slavery, rights of kings, second class feminine, right of ‘The Church’ to torture and kill in the name of God, etc.   Human slavery is the worst thing a God could have ever sanctioned. There can be no excuse for that little mistake…when this was included as a Godly thing; the Hebrew scribes at that point proved there is no God…in my humble opinion.

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Women are Evil…Bible

There are hundreds of things that are found wrong in the Scriptures. There is not only factual and Scriptural ambiguity and error, but there is intellectual error, there is obvious human interjection of the “Godly” qualities that Yahweh, El, Jehovah, or Elohim displayed. How inexplicably egotistical to say or even think, “we are made in the image of God…that is man wishing/speaking…not God.

I’m going to risk the displeasure of the ‘gods’ here and say that no real god acts or thinks like the god/s of the Christian religion as displayed in the Bible.

There should NEVER have been slavery. I don’t think most Christian believers have even thought about this lately. A “Loving God” is totally incompatible with the fact of Old Testament-God approved-human slavery. Period…no wishy washy crap allowed here

Also a “Loving God” is totally incompatible with making half of the human race less than human. The stronger half of the human race trying to pawn off that any defects in life are the fault of the woman is pure evil, in and of it’s self.

“And a man will choose…any wickedness, but the wickedness of a woman…Sin began with a woman and thanks to her we all must die” Ecclesiasticus, 25:18, 19 & 33.

And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God shall escape from her, but the sinner shall be trapped by her.” Ecclesiastes 7:26,

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power….” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Q92, art. 1, Reply Obj. 1

Everywhere I turn and look, strong evidence comes up that religion is a purely man made phenomenon. The Christian Bible is a fraud. There is no God in residence there.

Paul made up the “original sin” BS. Paul pretty much made up the whole Christianity shtick. Well, Constantine and Eusubius helped it along…300 years later.

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