It was inevitable I suppose. In my first post, I stated that I was an anti-theist so eventually I would have to write an article about the dominant religion is all countries in which I myself have lived. That religion is Christianity. I used to be quite fiery in my attacks towards this faith, but this is an attempt at a calm, rational critique of the world's largest religion. If you are Christian yourself and feel offended by some of these things, I apologise. So here goes.
Do you know what the best selling book of all time is? If you think it's the Bible, you're absolutely right. The book the Christian's call "The Good Book" is found almost everywhere. I myself have two of them (both of which where given to me). Is it really a good book though? Well I've tried reading it and I'll admit snakes are inherently evil, but during the absurdly long sequence of begatting I lost interest. It's not exactly a great read. So I've had to settle for second hand accounts of the biblical stories. There's stories about how Moses ordered his men to kill all the men who didn't believe in God and keep the virgins as their sex slaves. Others include Abraham being perfectly fine with killing his son to show his devotion to God. I know these books are part of the Old Testament and Christians say I should look towards the New Testament, but the Ten Commandments are a part of the old Testament. The infamous book of Leviticus which many Christians use to justify homophobia is also in there. There's simply no way that the Bible can be described as "good".
Christians worship the God of the Bible. They say he is a loving, merciful and benevolent god. This is is quite frankly an absurd claim. Let's start with the Old Testament again. This God flooded the Earth because apparently people were wicked. He cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden because they ate an apple. He basically turned Lot's life to shit to win a bet with the Devil. In total he kills more the two million people in the Bible (and that's only counting those times when an exact figure was given). Richard Dawkins really hit the nail on the head when he said "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously, malevolent bully.” There is however one part I disagree with Richard Dawkins on. I can think of a character in fiction more unpleasant than the God of the Old Testament. That would be the God of the New Testament. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild introduced a concept into Christianity that outweighs all the genocide committed by the Old Testament God. Jesus introduces the concept of hell. In other words, infinite punishment for a finite crime. Jesus would send me to hell because I don't believe in God. He would send Mahatma Gandhi to hell for believing in the wrong gods. It's horrific.
I'll end on this note. I know that few Christians take the Bible literally. I am not saying that belief makes someone a bad person. I have a massive amount of respect for Pope Francis because of his progressive attitude to people like me. I just want people to realise that they should have another look at their beliefs and see if they can really follow such a book and worship such a God.
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