20120809

Biblical Immorality


According to univironmental determinism (The scientific assumption that whatever happens to an xyz portion of the universe is determined by the infinite matter in motion within and without), morals and ethics are constantly evolving. Morals are mental road maps that help us to negotiate the macrocosm. Morals tell us what goes and what does not go. They help us survive as individuals and as groups. Thus, as the macrocosm changes, morals must change, lest we suffer the consequences. There are indeterministic claims that morals only can be received from on high or that ethicists are needed to help control the unchurched. The fact remains, nevertheless, that we are all ethicists.

As Jerry Coyne pointed out recently, the Bible is one of the most immoral books:

“For lo, if your son is obstinate and wayward, the Lord not only giveth you permission to kill him, but decrees that you kill him, and in a painful manner.  From Deuteronomy, chapter 21:

18If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
19Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
20And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

The same fate befalleth those women taken unto marriage and whose husbands, who do not like them, discover that they have lost their maidenheads (Deuteronomy, chapter 22):

13If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her,
14And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid:
15Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate. . .
20But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel:
21 Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

The stoning-to-death decree also holds for virgins who are betrothed, but "lie with" another man. In that case they both get stoned to death. If you know about stoning, at least as it's practiced in modern-day Islamic countries, it is an excruciatingly prolonged and horrible way to die.” (http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/biblical-morality-part-2-killing-non-virgin-brides-and-rebellious-kids/)

These few passages put the kibosh on biblical inerrancy. Good thing we don’t need the Bible to learn ethics and morality and that otherwise devout believers seldom follow its dictates. 

No comments: