Religious texts often contain edicts, many supposedly directly from a higher power, calling for atrocities and oppression, a fact most Christian Americans are comfortable with when applied to the Qur’an or Hadith, less so when shown the Bible is not an exception.

Peaceful religious persons justify or explain these in many ways. Christians for example believe these ways of doing things were declared outdated, no longer necessary, after Christ appeared. That it was part of “God’s Plan” for it to be permissible to kill a homosexual in 200 B.C. but not A.D. 200 (see Either God Changes or He’s Psychotic: Comparing Testaments Old and New).

Seems morally dubious, especially for an all-loving being, and of course ignores the fact that slavery and the oppression of women were upheld in scripture written after Christ died, and that God still killed liars on the spot and Jesus threatened to kill children.

Others insist these edicts and God’s actions must be “taken in context.” While that is usually just a way to excuse the horrific and sickening things a deity, scriptural hero, or religious writer said or did, it is without question a necessity. The context is obvious: religious texts were written in ancient times by very primitive, barbaric tribesmen.

Holy books describe a culture and a culture’s deity during a particular age. While it is a great relief that gods are total fiction, brutal man is not.

Readers are encouraged to look at multiple biblical translations when double-checking verses, in order to find the version used in this piece.

DISTURBING SEXUAL FIXATIONS

In the Bible sexual perversion and depravity occur and are described with nary a second thought, helpful to those who wish to understand what people, societies, and religions were like long ago, but tragic for the victims of such evil.

Hebrew “men of God” delighted in polygamy (Esau, Jacob, Gideon, David, Solomon), including concubines (Abraham, Jacob, Gideon, Solomon). Solomon had 700 wives, 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3).

Lot, the only righteous man God found in the city of Sodom, offered his two daughters to be gang-raped so a crowd of men wouldn’t gang-rape visiting angels (Genesis 19:7-8). In a vile twist of fate, the daughters later rape Lot on more than one occasion and get pregnant (Genesis 19:32-36). Moses orders that all Midianite boys and non-virgin girls should be slaughtered, but that virgins should be kept alive for his soldiers (Numbers 31:17-18). (They captured 32,000 virgins and “gave 32 of them to the Lord,” possibly to be sacrificed alongside the sheep, cattle, and donkeys they seized; see Numbers 31:32-41.) All a bit odd, since one poor Israelite-Midianite couple was run through with a spear for their involvement in Numbers 25:6-8. God warns his people to kill foreigners, “not intermarry with them” (Deut. 7:1-6). We commit a “great evil” and “transgress against our God in marrying strange wives” (Nehemiah 13:23-30).

The book devotes much space to private parts, genital mutilation, menstruation, sexual purity. You will see below that God personally threatens to expose people’s genitals.

God decrees that everyone who touches a woman on her period is “unclean until evening,” and any object that touches or is touched by the woman is also “unclean” (Leviticus 15:19-20). The woman is “unclean” while on her period, naturally (Leviticus 12:5). Not only that, she is unclean for seven days after her “discharge of blood,” and on the eighth day she must “take two turtledoves or two pigeons” to a priest, who will “offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her before the Lord for her unclean discharge” (Leviticus 15:19-30). Menstruation is basically a sin. Men who have sex with their menstruating wives must be exiled (Leviticus 20:18). 

Ezekiel 36:16-17 shows just how highly this god thinks of the natural body function that he created: “Again the word of the Lord came to me: ‘Son of man, when the people of Israel were living in their own land, they defiled it by their conduct and their actions. Their conduct was like a woman’s monthly uncleanness in my sight.'”

God says that if a woman grabs a man’s genitals to break up a fight, her hand is to be cut off (Deut. 25:11-12); some Egyptian men are lewdly described as having donkey-sized penises that ejaculate with the power of horses (Ezekiel 23:18-21); God discriminates against men with crushed testicles or a castrated penis (Deut. 23:1); Song of Solomon is about love and sex, and doesn’t even mention God, with many mentions of breasts, and likely oral sex (4:16, 7:8-9) and anal play (5:4); and King Saul wanted David to bring him 100 Philistine foreskins as a dowry (1 Samuel 18:20-30). He brought more.

Circumcision was a serious business: “You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you… Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people” (Genesis 17:10-14). Moses’ wife saved Moses from being killed by God only when she cut off their son’s foreskin with a rock (Exodus 4:25).

Incest was common, for example Nahor married his older brother’s daughter, his niece (Genesis 11:29, NLT). Abraham marries his half-sister Sarah; they share a father (Genesis 20:12). Isaac and Jacob marry cousins (Genesis 24 and 29). Of course, if one trusts wholeheartedly this work, rampant incest was all part of “God’s Plan,” as Adam and Eve’s children had to populate the Earth somehow, as did Noah’s children later on.

In Genesis 6:1-4, angels (“the sons of God”) copulate with “daughters of humans,” birthing Nephilim, giant men.

THE OPPRESSION OF WOMEN

Obviously, the Bible reeks of thousands of years of patriarchal society that deemed women subservient, less intelligent, and less worthy of life. The language of the text marks it as a book by men and for men. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,” for example, speaks to the only important sex. The record of the ancestral line tracks the only important sex (Genesis 5:1-32, Matthew 1:1-16), as did the Hebrew census (Numbers 1:1-2). Inheritance was for sons unless none existed (Numbers 27:8-11). God is male, naturally, and when Israel drifts from him it is often referred to as a whore (see Hosea 1:2, ESV). None of the 12 disciples are women.

Scriptural heroes and God himself, judging by the laws and punishments they designed, were violent sexists. Male domination has been a major theme throughout world history, and the Hebrews were no exception — even though guided by an “all-loving God.” Upon reading Leviticus and Deuteronomy it becomes obvious “God’s Laws” are much harsher toward women; they are given the death penalty with far greater frequency. You will notice this throughout this article, but particularly in the next section.

God dictates the oppression early on. After her sin, Eve is told her husband “shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16).

God decrees that the woman who gives birth to a boy is somehow “unclean” for seven days, but if she gives birth to a girl it’s two weeks! She must then take 33 days to be purified if she had a son, yet for some reason it takes 66 days to be made clean if she had a daughter (Leviticus 12:1-5). God doesn’t exactly explain why giving birth to a girl makes you more unclean.

Of course, a woman is by nature unclean, from Job’s perspective. “How can one born of a woman be pure?” (Job 25:4). “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing?” (Job 14:1-4). “What are mortals, that they could be pure, or those born of woman, that they could be righteous?” (Job 15:14).

When followers were “dedicated to the Lord,” a man was worth 50 shekels of silver, a woman only 30 (Lev. 27:1-7). God’s own Three-Fifths Compromise.

Divorced couples cannot be remarried if the woman has been “defiled” (Deut. 24:1-4). In other words, a divorced woman who sleeps with another man is unclean. But women whose husbands died were forced to marry and have sex with their deceased husband’s brother (Deut. 25:5-6).

Even in the New Testament, women are forbidden to preach; they are told to be silent and “submissive” while receiving instruction (1 Tim. 2:11-15; “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man”). Woman was apparently made “for man” (1 Corinthians 11:8-9) and must submit to their husbands in everything (Ephesians 5:22-24). Colossians 3:18 says, “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands.” Wives should submit to their men and let their purity show men the truth of the Word (1 Timothy 3:1-2). In the same way that “the head of every man is Christ,” the “head of every woman is man” (1 Corinthians 11:3). 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 reads:

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

Men are instructed not to marry a divorced woman, as this would be adultery (Luke 16:18); apparently divorced women are meant to be alone until death.

EXECUTION FOR NONVIOLENT CRIMES

Laws given by God dictated non-virgins, children, homosexuals, non-believers, and others be stoned to death, an excruciatingly painful death compared to alternatives (see Would a God of Love Order a Stoning?).

If you rebel as a youth against your parents and do not repent you must die (Deut. 21:18-21), if you curse your parents you must die (Lev. 20:9), if you commit adultery you must die (Lev. 20:10). At least if you sleep with a woman on her period you get to be exiled (Lev. 20:18).

A woman found on her wedding night to not be a virgin must die (Deut. 22:20-21).

If you are a psychic or a sorcerer you must be stoned to death (Lev. 20:27), if a priest’s daughter is a prostitute she must be burnt to death (Lev. 21:9), if your son gives false prophecy you must kill him (Zechariah 13:2-3), if you are deformed, blind, disabled, scabbed, a dwarf, have crushed testicles, broken limbs, or a flat nose you cannot go to the altar of God (Lev. 21:17-18); if you go too close to the Tabernacle you must die (Num. 1:48-51), and if you speak against these laws of God you must die (Deut. 13:5).

If your family tries to worship another god you must kill them (Deut. 13:6-10, 2 Chronicles 15:13); if you come upon a city that worships another god you must kill all the inhabitants (Deut. 13:12-15); you must kill anyone of a different faith in your own city (Deut. 17:2-7), and kill those who disrespect priests and judges (Deut. 17:12); if a virgin girl is raped she must marry her rapist (Deut. 22:28-29); an engaged virgin girl who is raped must be executed (Deut. 22:23-24); if you commit a homosexual act you will be put to death (Lev. 20:13); if you work on the Sabbath you must die (Exodus 31:12-15).

One man made the mistake of picking up sticks on the Sabbath; he was executed (Numbers 15:32-36).

The Hebrews declared pregnant Samarian women must be “ripped open” and children “dashed” on the ground for disobeying God (Hosea 13:16, NIV). Coincidentally, a psalmist declared that exact action, dashing children on rocks, will make a person “happy” (Psalm 137:9). The author of Hosea prays for enemies to have “wombs that miscarry,” and God promises to “slay their cherished offspring” (9:11-16). 

Women suspected of adultery were forced to drink a “holy water” that God would use to “make your womb miscarry” — in other words, abortion (Numbers 5:11-23).

SLAVERY

Then there’s slavery. Paul told slaves to “obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.” That’s Colossians 3:22.

Verses upholding and outlining the rules of slave ownership can be found in Exodus 21. They are given directly by God (he begins speaking in Exodus 20:22 and continues throughout chapter 21). Exodus 21 verses 4 and 5 state children born to a man while enslaved will be the master’s property even after the man is freed (same with the wife), and if he wants to stay with his children he must become a slave for life.

Further,

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21)

Exodus 21:7-11 allows a man to sell his daughter into slavery, and, according to scholars, implies she will be a sex slave to her new master. The master can also give her to his son as a wife. Sarah gave her husband Abraham her slave-girl Hagar as a wife, forcing Hagar to let Abraham have sex with her and impregnate her (Genesis 16:1-4). When Hagar ran away after Sarah punished her for being haughty, the angel of the Lord tracked her down and told her to return to Sarah and submit to her (Genesis 16:9).

A thief can be sold into slavery as punishment (Exodus 22:3-4).

For a Hebrew man, one advantage of getting married was you got your bride’s slaves. Leviticus 25:44-46 says, “You may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you…you may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession forever.” Some translations (KJV, NLT, etc.) of 25:45 say children can be bought and sold too. But verse 46 cautions only foreigners should be treated this way, not the people of Israel, yet Exodus 21:2 makes clear Hebrews can enslave other Hebrews. In Deuteronomy 21:10-14, it is decreed that Israeli soldiers can take home beautiful women captured in war — and even though she is being taken by force, “you must not sell or treat her as a slave”! Conquered people will be subject to “forced labor” (Deuteronomy 20:10-14).

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ,” says Ephesians 6:5.

1 Peter 2:18 commands: “Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.” 1 Timothy 6:1-2 declares:

All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. Those who have believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow believers. Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare of their slaves.

Titus 2:9-10 declares slaves should be “subject to their own masters in everything.” No escaping to freedom, no revolution for liberty.

In Luke 12:47-48, Jesus uses the “lashing” and “flogging” of a “slave” (NASB language) to make a point in one of his parables.

Why doesn’t the Bible simply ban slavery? Why didn’t Jesus? Would that not be most ethical? Perhaps because the Bible was concocted by pro-slavery men, in a culture and time when slavery was common.

WAR, CONQUEST, GENOCIDE, AND HUMAN SACRIFICE

God orders all these things.

The Israelites return from Egypt, and God commands them to “destroy” entire peoples in Canaan (Deut. 7:1-2 and 20:16-18; in the former he commands “no mercy,” in the latter, “do not leave alive anything that breathes”). He orders the same in 1 Samuel 15:3 (“put to death men and women, children and infants”) and includes instructions to also kill oxen, camels, sheep, and donkeys. “Slay utterly old and young,” showing no pity, God commands in Ezekiel 9:4-6, “both maids, and little children, and women.” “Utterly destroy,” he instructs in Jeremiah 50:21. Innocent people from city-state after city-state were slaughtered as Israel stole land and plundered, according to these tales anyway. This is genocide.

In Jeremiah 51:20-26, God promises to use the Hebrew armies to kill old men, women, and children. He promises “no mercy on helpless babies,” the rape of wives, and the murder of captives in enemy cities (Isaiah 13:15-18).

Only trees should be shown mercy: “When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees people, that you should besiege them?” (Deut. 20:16-19). But for people? “Do not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deut. 20:16). This war god says he will “make my arrows drunk with blood, while my sword devours flesh” (Deut. 32:39-43).

Even when women and children are spared, men are not:

As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you. (Deuteronomy 20:10-14)

When a few Benjamites (one of the 12 tribes of Israel) rape and kill a Levite’s concubine, God orders the other 11 tribes to attack the Benjamites. Tens of thousands on both sides die (Judges 20). This is just one example of God punishing the many for the sins of the few. You will see more below.

God vows to “stir up” Jerusalem’s enemies: “They will cut off your noses and your ears, and those of you who are left will fall by the sword. They will take away your sons and daughters, and those of you who are left will be consumed by fire” (Ezekiel 23:22-25).

Even when it does not specifically state God ordered a mass murder, he does nothing to stop it.

David sacrificed 7 descendants of Saul to appease another tribe (2 Samuel 21:1-14). In Judges 21:10-24, Hebrew soldiers were sent to Jabesh-gilead to “destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin.” They rounded up and captured 400 virgins, later kidnapping more.

Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down, then Joshua killed every man, woman, child, and animal inside (Joshua 6:21). He does it many more times in Joshua 7-11.

When Moses discovers his people worshipping the Golden Calf, he orders priests to take up swords, and they kill 3,000 people; God allows it and then joins in, sending a plague on the survivors (Exodus 32). He kills nearly 15,000 of his chosen people by plague in Numbers 16:42-49.

Human and child sacrifice were part of Hebrew culture (see footnotes of Lev. 27:28-29). In Judges 11, Jephthah’s faith is put to the test when he promises to God to sacrifice the first person he sees after returning home from a big battle. That turns out to be his daughter. Jephthah is willing to go through with it (painfully obvious by the end of the story), but God doesn’t spare his innocent daughter, as he did Abraham’s son Isaac. She is burnt alive.

But how traumatizing for a boy like Isaac, as well, to think your father is going to kill you! And to live with that memory forever. In Genesis 22, God decides to “test” Abraham, and orders the human sacrifice, which Abraham is willing to do (how traumatizing for him, too, being forced to kill his own child). An omniscient god wouldn’t need to test anyone. He would know what Abraham would do. Perhaps it’s all for Abraham and Isaac’s benefit. What sort of being puts people through such things?

“Give me the firstborn of your sons,” God demands in Exodus 22:29-30. “I defiled them through their gifts — the sacrifice of every firstborn — that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the Lord,” reads Ezekiel 20:25-26. Micah 6:6-8 positions human or child sacrifice as more pleasing to God than animal sacrifice. Hiel obeys the word of the Lord by sacrificing his sons in 1 Kings 16:34.

GOD LYING TO, KILLING, HUMILIATING, AND SELLING PEOPLE

Of course, God’s hands are directly responsible for slaughter, to fill humans with “horror” (Ezekiel 20:25-26). Fire from heaven destroys entire cities like Sodom and Gomorrah, children and all. A flood destroys nearly the entire human race (God, all-knowing, creates mankind knowing he will soon destroy it, as with all his other killings). God sends plagues during which Jerusalem’s enemies’ “flesh will rot while they stand on their feet, and their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongue will rot in their mouth” (Zechariah 14:12). God smites humans with “fever,” “burning,” “tumors,” “madness,” “blindness,” “boils,” and so on (Deut. 28:15-68), and even crushes them with rocks from heaven (Joshua 10:8-11). Estimates of the death toll in this text are in the millions.

Many Jews and Christians have few qualms about this because the victims were supposedly warned to shape up for years or even centuries before judgement arrived, or ignored the obvious power of God demonstrated to them by prophets. Even killing the children was justified: “You can’t leave them trapped in such a sinful place. They’ll grow up to be wicked. Killing them is an act of mercy!” So it’s all permissible, even with more moral alternatives available: God using his power to simply move enemies to another spot on the planet, the Hebrews raising infants as their own instead of slaughtering them, and so forth. Any justification for why God wouldn’t choose a more moral option is undermined by his omnipotence. “The Hebrews adopting child would have led to overpopulation or the corruption of the Jewish culture and faith!” God could have made this not so. This applies to everything else God orders or does as well. He doesn’t have to engage in oppression, pain, and death for this or that, he chooses to. (Why must nonbelievers be tortured for eternity in Hell? Why not a year for every year they lived on Earth, followed by the relief of execution? Why not for a week? Aren’t those more moral options? Isn’t skipping the torture and just snuffing sinners out of existence more moral still?) Because of God’s omnipotence, because he had alternatives on the table that would have done less harm, God is immoral.

On a related note, it does seem difficult to justify calling one faith the only way to God (John 14:6 is cited often) and calling God a moral being. The philosopher Daniel Dennett reminded us that no matter what religion you belong to, the vast majority of humanity doesn’t share your beliefs. Two billion people may belong to Christianity, but nearly six billion do not. Same with Islam. Most humans will be born, live, and die without accepting or even hearing about the “one true religion,” whichever that is — and a higher power that would torture or even mildly punish people for that can hardly be called “good.”

It might also be said that God is an immoral being because he allows innumerable horrible things — rape, disease, starvation, murder — to occur day to day. (Generally, good things that happen to us are “God’s will,” bad things are simply allowed.) Can a divine being truly be good if it just sits by and watches, all while having the power to end such things? At the least, such a god seems less moral than a being that wouldn’t allow trauma, pain, and death on an unimaginable scale. Standard responses about free will and punishment for Adam and Eve’s original sin don’t seem to change this fact. Further, those responses are undermined when one considers miracles. See, God at times does interfere with free will and humanity’s eternal punishment. Can a being truly be good if it prevents some horrific things from happening to some people but not other horrific things from happening to others? A god that interfered in all circumstances for all people sounds more moral than one that is selective, letting some innocent people get tortured or paralyzed in car accidents or killed in the gas chambers of concentration camps. Further, the awful justification that “all terrible things are used by God for good” clearly doesn’t help. God is an omnipotent being. So the Holocaust or a child being raped will somehow bring about Good Thing X…but we know that an all-powerful deity could have brought about Good Thing X without such horrific events! A being that chooses the former path instead of the latter one is not moral — or at least is less moral than a being that would take the latter. Moving on.

This god frequently destroys innocent people for the crimes of others. An angel kills the innocent first-born of Egypt (and their livestock!) because of the pride of one political ruler; he even killed the first-born of Egyptian slave girls (Exodus 11:4-6, 12:29).

“I am about to unsheath my sword to destroy your people—the righteous and the wicked alike,” God tells Israel in Ezekiel 21:3-5.

All humanity is punished for the mistake of the first two humans. All women were given painful childbirth for Eve’s sin (Genesis 3:16-18), and God promises to punish generations of descendants for those who worship other gods (Exodus 20:3-5). He believes in “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation” (Exodus 24:6-7, in the 10 Commandments). “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God,” he says in Deuteronomy 5:8-9, “punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” He promises to kill the children of sinners (Leviticus 26:21-22). All this is repeated in Exodus 34:6-7, Numbers 14:18, 1 Kings 21:28-29, Isaiah 14:21, Jeremiah 29:31-32 and 31:18, and elsewhere.

God visits a plague that kills 24,000 Israelites because a few people slept with Midianites, who worshipped Baal (Numbers 25:1-9). God doesn’t call off the plague until Phinehas commits murder (Num. 25:9). Saul killed Gibeonites during his reign, so God inflicted a three-year famine during David’s reign (2 Samuel 21:1). When David takes a census (apparently a grave sin), God sends a prophet to let David choose between three punishments; a plague kills 70,000 people (2 Samuel 24:10-17, also 1 Chronicles 21:8-14). But “what have they done?” David laments.

5 farmers looked inside the Ark of the Lord, and God killed either 70 or 50,000 people to get even (1 Samuel 6; translations differ). David sinned, so God killed his child via illness (2 Samuel 12:13-18). God also murdered Jeroboam’s son for Jeroboam’s wickedness (1 Kings 14:9-12). The households of Korah and his followers, who challenged Moses’ authority, were eaten up by the earth (Numbers 16:1-35). During the slaughter of the End Times, Jesus will destroy cities that ignored his miracles while he was on Earth (Matthew 11:20), even though all those foolish people are long gone. A “bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation” (Deut. 23:2)! God will not show love to children of adulterers (Hosea 2:4) — can they help who their mothers were? “The Lord had kept all the women in Abimelek’s household from conceiving because of Abraham’s wife Sarah” (Genesis 20:18).

It is also interesting that at times God hardens people’s hearts, making them less interested in letting the Hebrews live in freedom and peace. So God hardens Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 7:3), Pharaoh refuses to free the Hebrews, and God gets to send plagues that cause mass torture and death. Wouldn’t a loving deity have softened Pharaoh’s heart, helping the Jews go free and saving Egyptians from pain? God specifically states that “I have hardened his heart and the heart of his officials in order that I may show these signs of mine among them” (Exodus 10:1-2). He wants to continue his horrors. Between Exodus 9:28 and 14:4, Pharaoh agrees to free the Hebrews four times, and four times God hardens his heart to make him change his mind! In Joshua 11:19-20, it’s revealed nearly all nearby cities refused to make peace with Israel, but “it was the Lord himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy…” In Deuteronomy 2:30-31, God likewise hardens the heart of King Sihon so the Israelites could conquer his kingdom.

God’s other crimes are even more disturbing. In 2 Kings 2:23-24, after a bunch of youths made fun of Elisha’s baldness, God sent bears to kill 42 of them. Job faces “evil that the Lord brought upon him” (Job 42:11). God allows his family to be massacred, his fortune to disappear, and his health to deteriorate (painful boils) all to win a bet with Satan that Job would stay faithful. God sends lions to kill non-believing Assyrians (2 Kings 17:25). When Onan didn’t listen to Judah and declined to impregnate Onan’s sister-in-law, instead spilling “the semen on the ground,” God was displeased and killed him (Genesis 38:8-10).

This deity burns people alive in Leviticus 10:1-3, Numbers 11:1-3, Joshua 7:15-26, 2 Kings 1:10-12, Numbers 16:35, and Psalm 78:59-63. Regarding this first verse, God toasted Aaron’s sons for using the wrong fire in an offering.   

God admits to creating evil (Isaiah 45:7, KJV), speaking evil (Lamentations 3:38, KJV), dispatching an evil spirit (Judges 9:23-24, NASB, 1 Samuel 16:14-16), sending evil upon people (Jeremiah 11:11, ASV), sending poverty (1 Samuel 2:6-7), deceiving or misleading humans (Ezekiel 20:25-26, 2 Thess. 2:11-12, 1 Kings 22:19-23) and even killing a person he deceived (Ezekiel 14:9), hating sinners not the sin (Malachi 1:2-4, Hosea 9:15), making people eat bread cooked over fires burning human poop (Ezekiel 4:12-13), and threatening to smear poop on people’s faces (Malachi 2:3)! God will “turn away from you” if you don’t “cover up your excrement” in your camp (Deuteronomy 23:12-14). Diarrhea is even a chosen curse in 2 Chronicles 21:14-15: “The Lord is going to strike your people, your sons, your wives and all your possessions with a great calamity; and you will suffer severe sickness, a disease of your bowels, until your bowels come out because of the sickness, day by day.” God afflicts people with “tumors” or “hemorrhoids” in 1 Samuel 5:6; translations differ.

When God tells a man to slap a prophet, and the man refuses violence, God sends a lion to kill him (1 Kings 20:35-36). A “man of God” was killed by a lion for eating and drinking at the wrong time and place, but an old prophet who lied to him went unpunished (1 Kings 13:16-24). God kills another for touching the Ark of God to ensure it didn’t fall (2 Samuel 6:3-7). When two people lied in the New Testament, they were struck dead (Acts 5:1-11). God vows to “send wild animals against you” to “rob you of your children” (Leviticus 26:21-22).

God even finds reason to “afflict sores on the heads of Zion’s women…and expose their private parts” (Isaiah 3:17, ISV; the original Hebrew word is “poth,” meaning vagina, literally “hinged opening”; see Godless by Dan Barker). In Exodus 20:26 (NIV), God warns, “Do not go up to my altar on steps, or your private parts may be exposed.” In Jeremiah 13:24-27 (MSG), God says, “I’m the one who will rip off your clothes, expose and shame you before the watching world.” He will strip the adulteress naked (Hosea 2:3). People “have been stripped and raped by invading armies” for their “many sins” (Jeremiah 13:22, MSG). God declares, “I will lift your skirts and show all the earth your nakedness and shame” (Nahum 3:5, NLT). “You will tear out your breasts,” God vows in Ezekiel 23:34 (NET).

Perhaps most horrifically, God himself threatens to bring calamity on David by giving his wives to other men to have sex with “in broad daylight” (2 Samuel 12:11-12). God vows to sinners that he will “give their wives to other men” (Jeremiah 8:9-10).

God even sees cause for cannibalism. When God is destroying people, it will be so terrible, “You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters” (Lev. 26:29). Another time, during a siege, “…you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters the Lord has given you. Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children” (Deut. 28:47-57). He promises that “parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents” in Ezekiel 5:8-10. God says he “will make your oppressors eat their own flesh” (Isaiah 49:26) at one point and “I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh because their enemies will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them” (Jeremiah 19:7-9) at another. Cannibalism by God’s design. 

God intentionally gave or sold his people into slavery multiple times to punish them (Judges 3:8, 4:2-3, 6:1, 13:1). “I will sell your sons and daughters to the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, a nation far away,” God promises in Joel 3:8.

Jesus seems tolerant of beating slaves, castrating yourself (Matthew 19:12; implied in Matthew 5:29-30), or killing fig trees that won’t grow fruit out of season (Mark 11:13-14). In Revelation 2:18-23, Jesus threatens to kill the children of an adulteress in Thyatira. It was he who declared the man who marries a divorced woman is an adulterer (Luke 16:18). He also believes in thought crimes (Matthew 5:28). In Matthew 15:4-10, Jesus is upset that “human rules” have “nullified the word of God,” specifically, “Anyone who curses their mother or father is to be put to death.” He says the same in Mark 7:5-15. In Matthew 5:21-22, Jesus says anyone who calls his brother a “fool” is in danger of burning in Hell! More extreme punishment for nonviolent crimes. It is also interesting that in Mark 14 the disciples have more concern for the poor than Jesus does; the messiah waves off their idea of selling an expensive ointment and giving the profits to the poor in favor of allowing the ointment to be used on his own feet.

Jesus uses the same violent language seen in the Old Testament: “I tell you that to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence.” He resorts to violence in John 2:15, driving moneylenders from the temple with a whip and overturning tables.

Jesus does not seem to mind killing animals, like the God of old (who, after killing nearly all animal life in the flood, thought Noah’s burnt animal offering had such a “pleasing odor” that he decides to never do it again; Genesis 8:20-21). In Mark 5:12-13, Jesus casts demons out of a person into pigs, who promptly kill themselves. One would think an all-powerful being could have accomplished his tasks without animal abuse.

For a text many believe to be the infallible Word of God, it seems to have man’s fingerprints all over it, his cruelty and ignorance.

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Fierce debate between the religious and the secular over the justifications for God-ordered executions in the Old Testament sometimes ignores the morality of the method of execution itself.

That is, Jews and Christians argue that in the early age of human history, it was right and just for a God of Love to order his people to murder non-virgin girls, homosexuals, nonbelievers, disobedient sons, people who worked on the Sabbath or criticized God’s laws, and so on (see Absolutely Horrific Things You Didn’t Know Were in the Bible); atheists and agnostics argue such orders make any (manmade) character an immoral monster — doubly so because later generations (after the intervention of Christ) were told to love one another as a response to such “sins,” meaning anyone born in the early days was simply terribly unlucky (see Either God Changes or He’s Psychotic: Comparing Testaments Old and New). The debate then ends in a stalemate, naturally, and no one gets around to arguing over whether a loving God would select a stoning as the best method to carry out judgement.

And select it he does. In the bible, stoning is explicitly God’s idea. Take Leviticus 24:13-14: “Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Bring the one who has cursed outside the camp, and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head; then let all the congregation stone him.'” Other directives to stone nonviolent people, supposedly given by God to Moses in Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and elsewhere, are numerous and easy to find.

So say for a moment that disobedient sons and the like did indeed deserve execution for their crimes, because they disobeyed God’s laws. We can give believers the benefit of the doubt for a moment and say the Judeo-Christian god exists and that ending a sinner’s life (and presumably sending him or her straight to hell) was appropriate, moral, and just. Now the question arises: how should the execution be carried out?

A loving, all-merciful deity would surely choose a method of execution less painful than stoning. He would probably order methods of instant death, or at least its attempt. Why not have the strongest man in the village smash the victim’s temple with an iron tool in an attempt to kill her immediately, in one blow? Why couldn’t the Hebrews march the sinner up to a cliff of such a height that it might guarantee death on impact? Why not hold the sinner down and suffocate him? It’s not instant, but it’s better than a stoning. And wouldn’t you rather be drowned than stoned to death? That’s also an option. Surely you’d choose a hanging, too, if given a choice. Even decapitation, with its risk of the victim living a few heartbeats after the blade comes down, seems preferable.

But no, even with less painful and quicker possibilities on the table, the deity of the bible goes with stoning — the method used by the likes of the Taliban and ISIS! It wasn’t enough that men, women, and children had to die for working on a particular day of the week. They had to suffer as well.

Such things are important to ponder. Perhaps God is not as merciful as you. Indeed, he is clearly not “all-merciful.” An all-merciful deity would be as merciful as any being (including us) could possibly be or even imagine at every given moment! Platitudes about how “God’s ways are not our ways” and “You can’t judge God using your own morals” do little to erase the facts of the case: God could have ordered less painful methods of execution, but chose not to. That says a great deal about his character. Either religious persons worship a being that is not all-merciful or perhaps, like so many other gods, he is simply a manmade fiction, and death penalty by stoning was simply primitive people behaving primitively.

We will never know how many people died by this brutal method because of the words of a deity in a scroll. But in the age of cellphones and cameras, we can get a sense of what it was like, this chosen punishment of the Almighty.

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Many on the religious right insist that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, meaning the federal government and Constitution were intentionally founded on Christian principles by Christian men, who intended the faith to take a central role in governance and law.

The Constitution (and its Bill of Rights) was an important document in world history because it greatly expanded personal freedoms and slightly widened democracy (it kept political power in the hands of the aristocracy). However, and even more radically, the Constitution made no mention of God or Jesus Christ. This was a departure from the Declaration of Independence, the 1776 Articles of Confederation, and many state constitutions, which mentioned God, his glory, and the rights he gave man. It was very unlike most European states.

This caused much controversy. (Sources available in The Godless Constitution, by Kramnick and Moore.)

The Constitution enraged many Christians

The U.S. Constitution was signed in September 1787, to a mixed response.

One writer in November 1787 condemned the framers’ “silence” and “indifference about religion.” A Virginia newspaper warned of “pernicious effects” of the Constitution’s “cold indifference toward religion.” Thomas Wilson of Virginia called the document “deistical,” and lamented that the framers didn’t think of God during their work. A 1787 Philadelphia pamphlet declared “there was never a nation in the world whose government was not circumscribed by religion” and that “the new Constitution, disdains…belief of a deity, the immortality of the soul, or the resurrection of the body, a day of judgments, or a future state of rewards and punishments.”

A delegate at the New Hampshire ratification warned that if the Constitution passed, “Congress might deprive the people of the use of the holy scriptures.” A writer in a Boston newspaper warned in January 1788 that God would turn his back on America, like he did with Saul in the Old Testament. Charles Turner of Massachusetts warned it would lead to “ruin.” Later, Timothy Dwight declared at Yale College that the War of 1812 would be lost because we “offended Providence. We formed our Constitution without any acknowledgement of God.” Minister Horace Bushnell even blamed the Civil War on our “infidel” government!

When the Constitution and Bill of Rights did mention religion, it angered Christians further. The First Amendment said the government would not support one particular religion, nor prevent people from following any particular religion. Article 6 of the Constitution declared there would be no religious tests for political office. Amazingly, this law, according to Maryland delegate Luther Martin, was “adopted by a very great majority…and without much debate” at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, despite the fact that 11 of the 13 states had religious qualifications for being a politician. If you were not Protestant, you could not govern. And in Rhode Island, only Protestants could vote! One of the two states that banned religious tests, Virginia, did so because of earlier efforts by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. This led to some hysteria.

Protestant Christians were terrified that no religious qualification meant we’d see “a papist [Catholic], a Mohomatan [Muslim], a deist, yea an atheist at the helm of government.” Minister David Caldwell, a delegate at the North Carolina ratification, warned we’d have “Jews and pagans of every kind” in office. Thomas Lusk of Massachusetts, not seeing the irony, predicted “Popery and the Inquisition may be established in America.” A pamphlet in North Carolina cautioned that the Pope in Rome might be elected president! Many Christians feared the anti-slavery and anti-war Quakers would be elected. A New York newspaper denounced the idea of politicians who were Quakers (“who will make the blacks saucy”), Muslims (“who ridicule the doctrine of the Trinity”), deists (“abominable wretches”), Negroes (“the seed of Cain”), beggars (“who…ride with the Devil”), and Jews (who might “rebuild Jerusalem”).

Fortunately, cooler, more tolerant, and less religious heads prevailed.

Proposals and petitions to have religious tests for federal office were struck down by the Constitutional Convention. So were ideas to add religious language to the document, like delegate William Williams’ suggestion the preamble be changed to: “We the people of the United States in a firm belief of the being and perfection of the one living and true God, the creator and supreme Governor of the World, in His universal providence and the authority of His laws…”

Some people pointed out that men of all faiths or no faith fought in the Revolutionary army. Jews and other groups protested for equal rights. Tenche Coxe of Philadelphia, former member of the Continental Congress, declared, “Ecclesiastical tyranny, that long standing and still remaining curse of the people, can be feared by no man in the United States,” and that we would become an “asylum of religious liberty.” James Iredell, future associate justice of the Supreme Court, called religious tests “discrimination.” Reverend Daniel Shute said they came from “bigotry.” Reverend Isaac Backus called them “the greatest engine of tyranny in the world.” Reverend Samuel Langdon called the lack of religious tests a “great ornament of the Constitution.”

The fact that the Constitution was secular, despite much precedent for religion in government, is overall a testament to the influence and power of non-Christians like Madison and Jefferson at the Constitutional Convention. Most of the famous founding fathers opposed religion in government, and some had some very nasty words for Christianity indeed.

The Founders’ Heresy Enraged Many Christians

In 1831, New York minister Bird Wilson lamented, “The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels.”

Not what one usually hears from the religious right today.

The Founding Fathers, sons of the Enlightenment and followers of the more secular John Locke, were greatly influenced by deism. Some did not believe in the Judeo-Christian God. Deism is the belief that a higher power exists and created the universe, but does not intervene in the material world any longer. Nature is the only way to “see” God. Thus, miracles were impossible, prayer irrelevant, the Bible mythological. In this view, Jesus Christ was a fraud.

John Adams was a Christian, but condemned religious violence and religious dogma. George Washington, while writing little on faith matters, regularly made mention of God, and encouraged his men “to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier.” But there is some controversy over how seriously Washington took Christianity (many quotes attributed to him, such as “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible” and “What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ” are total fabrications). It is highly possible Washington was a deist. Jefferson wrote of Washington (Anas, February 1, 1800):

When the clergy addressed General Washington on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never on any occasion said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so. However [Dr. Rush] observed the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over without notice. Rush observes he never did say a word on the subject in any of his public papers except in his valedictory letter to the Governors of the states when he resigned his commission in the army, wherein he speaks of the benign influence of the Christian religion. I know that Gouvemeur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets & believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system than he himself did.

James Madison and Ben Franklin were known to be deists, as were Jefferson and Thomas Paine, though these two flirted dangerously with atheism. Jefferson even rewrote the New Testament, cutting out all supernatural events, including the Resurrection (look up The Jefferson Bible).

Regardless of their differing views, the most famous Founding Fathers disliked the Church in some way. They generally believed in a secular government, well-documented in many places, from national treaties to personal letters. Not all of these men signed the Constitution, but those that did helped make it godless.

George Washington: Protect religion from tyranny, but beware its dangers

“No one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.”

Letter to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia, May 10, 1789

“Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.”

Letter to Edward Newenham, June 22, 1792

“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.”

Letter to Edward Newenham, Oct. 20, 1792

John Adams: Be a Christian, but you’re not in a Christian nation

“Conclude not from this that I have renounced the Christian religion…. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my Religion.”

Letter to Jefferson, Nov. 4, 1816

“As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?”

Letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816

“The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Treaty of Tripoli, approved by the Senate and signed by Adams, 1797

“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an æra in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses…”

“Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind.”

Defence of the Constitutions, 1786

“Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.”

Letter to his son John Quincy Adams, Nov. 13, 1816

“A general Suspicion prevailed that the Presbyterian Church was ambitious and aimed at an Establishment as a National Church. I was represented as a Presbyterian and at the head of this political and ecclesiastical Project. The Secret Whisper ran through them all the Sects “Let Us have Jefferson Madison, Burr, any body, whether they be Philosophers, Deist or even Atheists, rather than a Presbyterian President.[“] This Principle is at the Bottom of the Unpopularity of national Fasts and Thanksgivings, Nothing is more dreaded than the National Government meddling with Religion.”

“We Shall have the civil Government overawed and become a Tool. We Shall have Armies and their Commanders under the orders of the Monks. We Shall have Hermits commanding Napoleons. I agree with you, there is a Germ of Religion in human Nature So Strong, that whenever an order of Man can persuade the People by flattery or Terror, that they have Salvation at thier disposal, there can be no End to fraud, Violence or Usurpation.”

Letter to Benjamin Rush, June 12, 1812

Benjamin Franklin: No need to worship, and don’t let the church use the state

“I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it.”

Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion, 1728

“The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”

Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1759

“When a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its Professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the Civil Power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”

Letter to Richard Price, October 9, 1780

Thomas Jefferson: Jesus was a fairytale, and separate church and state

“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

“Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”     

Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

“We find in the [gospels]…a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications.”

Letter to William Short, August 4, 1820

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say There are twenty gods, or no God. It neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket.”

“Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned… What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.”

Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religious, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Letter to Danbury Baptist Association, January 1, 1802

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the Despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”

Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

James Madison: No official religion, period

“What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.”

A Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785

“A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning Government and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have in turn divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to cooperate for their common good.”

Federalist No. 10, 1787

“The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion.”

Detached Memoranda, c. 1817

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize.”

Letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774

“Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822

“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, June 20, 1785

Thomas Paine: A demon likely wrote the bible

“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.”

“The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.”

“The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar, not many years before; and they generally have their origin in violent deaths, or in the execution of innocent persons.”

“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

The Age of Reason, 1794

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The tagline of Ray Comfort’s new documentary, The Atheist Delusion, promised atheism would be “destroyed with one scientific question.”

Kirk Cameron said it featured “high-resolution logic,” Ken Ham called it “compelling.” The trailer featured atheistic young people calling Comfort’s questions “eye-opening,” saying “I’ll definitely consider this” and even “I’m lying to myself.” The movie was supposed to explain “Why Millions Deny the Obvious” (a second tagline).

As a former Christian and current atheist, such things caught my attention. What were these claims that were supposedly opening the minds of atheists to the “Truth”? Could they possibly take more than mere minutes to dismantle? Upon viewing the film, there is truthfully just one word in the English tongue to properly describe it: embarrassing.

The atheists whose gears are clearly turning at half-speed, who fail to see each of Comfort’s points from a mile away, who are left utterly struggling for words are embarrassing (though, in their defense, even pastors have off days sometimes).

Comfort’s arguments, which rely on hopelessly weak analogies, silly metaphors, gaps in humanity’s scientific knowledge, and meaningless semantics are all embarrassing. The only thing this film “destroys” is a segment of poorly prepared college students from the University of California — Irvine who apparently need to read this article as badly as Christians.

First, Comfort recycles the famous “watchmaker” analogy, here using a book. Could a book make itself? When the inevitable answer is No, that is somehow evidence that existence must also have a creator.

This is, to any critical thinker, rather unsatisfying, as the creator’s existence would by extension of this hopeless analogy also require a creator. But to the religious, existence needs an explanation, but God does not. Something has to be the “uncaused,” as Comfort calls God. Strange that it would be something we have no proof of (a deity) that a thoughtful person would deem the “uncaused,” but not something we do have proof of (existence itself). It is further strange that Christians deem life and planets and existence so complex they all must require a deity, while that deity, being able to create existence, would be even more complex and marvelous than existence! So how is it that we then give deities a free pass? To the atheist, it is just as sensible (if not more so) to suppose existence has always existed, that it was “uncaused,” and that “nothing” was never a thing.

“But the Big Bang — ” the creationist objects. Comfort doesn’t really discuss the Big Bang specifically, but does insist something can’t come from nothing. All that needs to be said here is that we do not know for certain that existence did not “exist” before the Big Bang. We do not know if there was nothing, nor if true nothingness is even possible. Can Comfort prove for certain that there was true nothingness? That would be impressive, as astro-physicists cannot. It is, and perhaps always will be, beyond the scope of human science. We may never be able to confirm if theories concerning existence before (or independent of) the Big Bang, multiverse theories — parallel universes, daughter universes, bubble universes, infinite universes, and so on — are valid. At the moment, Comfort is simply filling a gap in scientific knowledge with God (a strategy used by humans since we cowered at thunder) and relying on an unproven premise at the same time.

It would indeed be wonderful if a loving deity that required no explanation for his existence created our existence. But the idea has no real explanatory value concerning our existence. And there certainly isn’t hard evidence for it.

Regarding evidence, Comfort addresses another topic. He asks the atheists, “Are you open to evidence?” As sensible people, they say Yes. One woman said, “It would just have to be extraordinarily compelling.”

Comfort then presents his cringe-worthy “evidence.” He explains that DNA, as scientists say, is “the instruction book for life,” that there are 3.2 billion letters in the 46 chromosomes making up the human genome. “DNA is the genetic information encoded in the cells of every living thing,” he explains, “that instructs our cells in how to grow and how to function.”

“The fact that there is intelligent information tells us there must be an intelligent designer.” Such “intelligent information” works “to selectively arrange the building blocks of life. That knowhow and forethought does not exist in any of the materials from which life is made.” DNA has an “external nature.” He concludes, “Where did that specified information come from? It’s origin is certainly supernatural.”

The atheists struggle to even form words to counter this, to my astonishment. Allow me to assist again.

First, “intelligent information” is hollow semantics. Comfort puts the word “intelligent” in front of “information” to make his argument sound more reasonable, in the same way he emphasizes how DNA is like a “book” with “letters” to prop up his analogy. Yes, DNA contains “information,” but putting an adjective in front of it doesn’t make it supernatural. Neither does suggesting genetic coding has “knowhow” and “forethought” independent of its material nature.

Second, explaining that DNA determines how our cells grow, change, and function is as far as Comfort will go in his explanation of what DNA is, relying on vague terms like “letters” — and perhaps “information” is even too vague. Why doesn’t he explain the “information” is entirely made up of chemicals? Why not explain that the “letters” in the “book” are adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, chemicals held together by sugar phosphate? Why not describe purines and pyrimidines, the organic bits that make up the chemicals? Why not talk about the nitrogen atoms of the purines and pyrimidines? Why not describe how the arrangement of A, G, C, and T determines what a cell is and does? How the arrangement is used by enzymes to make mRNA and then proteins, from which a cell is mostly built?

Because doing that would point out the obvious: the “information” isn’t external, it’s biological. It isn’t independent of matter, it cannot exist without it. The code doesn’t have “forethought”; it’s an interaction of chemicals. He doesn’t do this because “instructions” coming from the simple arrangement of mindless chemicals doesn’t help his case as well as pretending they aren’t rooted in matter, aren’t related to and could never have come from nature, and that therefore “God did it.” This is nothing more than a religious person believing natural biological processes to be too complex to exist without a designer, like the “gap” argument regarding the Big Bang (only in this case it’s more embarrassing, as much more is known about DNA and how it functions, even if we don’t know for certain yet how it arose).

I sincerely hope the people Comfort interviewed aren’t biology students, because otherwise it’s time to weep for the future of the American scientific community.

Third, I can’t help but mention that Comfort’s point that all life has DNA actually helped scientists prove once and for all that Darwin was right. By mapping the genetic code of Earth’s lifeforms, scientists determined — and continue to determine daily — that all life on earth actually shares the same DNA. DNA is passed on through reproduction. You share more DNA with your parents and siblings than you do with your more distant relatives. In the same way, humans share more DNA with some living things than with others. We share 98% with chimps, 85% with zebra fish, 36% with fruit flies, and 15% with mustard grass. It is not surprising that creatures similar to us (warm-blooded, covered in hair, give birth to live young) are closer relatives than less similar ones. But all life shares DNA, no matter how different. When mapped out by genetic similarity, we see exactly what Darwin envisioned: a family tree with many different branches, all leading back to a common ancestor.

Those are the two major arguments in The Atheist Delusion. Using a lack of scientific knowledge, then ignoring scientific knowledge, to build a case for a deity.

Yes, there is more to the film. Comfort insisting the Bible had some insights into science that man at the time could never have discovered; asking why, if evolution is true, do we not see creatures with “half-evolved teeth” or “half-evolved legs”; asking how a chicken saw without eyes or felt without a brain if it supposedly evolved; asking why trees just happen to provide oxygen and cows just happen to provide leather, meat, and milk; concluding that the atheists he was speaking with still wanted to be atheists because they wanted to continue looking at porn and fornicating. These things would take even less time to level, but as they were not the major arguments in the film, and in the interest of brevity, I will leave that to others.

At the end, some of the atheists said Comfort’s points made them think; others actually said they now believed in God’s existence, that Comfort had given them proof of an intelligent designer; a few said, “Yes, I’m no longer an atheist,” and one even prayed with Comfort to become a Christian.

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Ancient secular writings that mention Jesus Christ — or someone with a similar name or title (“Christ” meaning “anointed one”) — are important to both believers and nonbelievers.

For believers, non-biblical sources are icing on the cake, adding more evidence a divine Jesus existed to the evidence that is the New Testament. For nonbelievers, the gospels are full of fictions, like many other holy books throughout human history, and so it is only reasonable to examine writings by people who weren’t participating in the dissemination of fiction (though such examinations must also include serious scrutiny and skepticism).

Such a statement might raise the inquiry, “Why should writers who weren’t Christians be trusted over those who were? What if secular writers were crafting fiction — purging the story of supernatural happenings?”

That’s possible, and it makes sense that an historian might ignore stories of divine intervention, but there is no evidence secular writers were deliberately suppressing the truth. On the other hand, with multiple copies we can see some of these documents actually becoming more religious as time passes. Christian scribes embellished secular writings (they also modified the bible, by the way, as biblical scholars admit and mention in your bible’s footnotes). That is evidence of changing earlier writings to fit your belief system. We don’t have comparable evidence that the reverse happened, that nonbelievers altered texts that claimed Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead (with so many diverse supernatural beliefs in the Roman Empire, one might wonder why they would bother).

Also, it seems obvious that the texts with the most extraordinary claims require the largest grain of salt (a parallel to the old saying — very pertinent to religion — that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to be believable). The most outrageous reports need more skepticism than the mundane. So if we have one text that says a man raised a friend from the dead and another text that says the man was a wise leader with a large following, those are very different claims and require different intensities of scrutiny and critical thinking. (Again, that does not mean the mundane claim gets a free pass and should be accepted as truth without question.) In that sense, it may be sensible to more readily accept mundane claims than incredible claims, as a Christian might be incline to do should a Hindu or Muslim speak of miracles or UFO enthusiasts speak of abductions.

Either way, let’s look at the non-biblical writings that mention Jesus of Nazareth, and the reader can decide for him- or herself if they actually aid the extraordinary claims of the New Testament (an important question to ask, I think, is would comparable writings about Muhammad give legitimacy to Islam and the Koran?). Sources include Evidence for the Historical Jesus by well-known Christian apologist Josh McDowell and Godless by pastor-turned-atheist Dan Barker.

Thallus: historian, allegedly writing between AD 50 and 100

None of Thallus’ histories actually survived to the present.

His name is only mentioned because Christian historian Julius Africanus, writing c. AD 221, claims in his Chronography that Thallus took part in the debate over what caused a great darkness to descend upon the earth at the time of Christ’s crucifixion: “Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun — unreasonably, as it seems to me.” Africanus noted that “it was at the season of the Paschal full moon that Christ died,” arguing correctly that an eclipse cannot occur at the time of a full moon. Obviously, if such a debate occurred and Thallus was attempting to explain away the event, he would be acknowledging that the event occurred.

Yet none of the original writings of Julius Africanus exist, only copies. So we cannot know for certain if this was not inserted by religious scribes. If we were able to rule that possibility out, there would still be no way to know if Africanus was being truthful or accurate. There is no other ancient document that even mentions Thallus. Some believe one document written by Eusebius in the 4th century mentions him — though the manuscript is damaged and cuts off the beginning of the name, leaving merely “__allos.”

Dan Barker notes that there is no other evidence, beyond the insistence of Africanus and the gospels (with the possible exception of Phlegon; see below), of an eclipse when Christ died, quite surprising considering its natural impossibility and the fact that Josephus, and other secular historians, also recorded the events of that age.

(Some prominent historians of the age and time, it should be noted, did not mention Jesus at all. Philo of Alexandria [Philo-Judaeus], a writer who chronicled Jewish history during the time of Jesus’ life and was a resident of Jerusalem during all the Gospel events, never mentioned Jesus. Likewise, historian Justus of Tiberius was a native of Galilee. His history of the Jews is lost, but Christian scholar Photius complained in the 9th century [Bibliotheca, code 33] that Justus didn’t mention Jesus.)

Flavius Josephus: Jewish historian, Galilean military commander, aide to Emperor Vespasian, writing AD 93

A Jew named Josephus, in The Antiquities of the Jews, wrote of John the Baptist and his death by order of Herod. He mentions that John’s baptisms were not conducted “to gain pardon for whatever sins they committed” but as an outward expression of devotion coming only after “the soul was already cleansed by right behavior.” Later, Josephus writes of “James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ” and James’ trial and execution before the Sanhedrin. Josephus also writes a paragraph on Christ himself (now called the Testimonium), though many Christian and secular scholars agree it was doctored by later Christian copyists (for instance, Edwin Yamauchi acknowledges this in Lee Strobel’s widely-read Case for Christ). The passage reads:

Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works — a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named for him are not extinct to this day.

The pieces believed to be authentic by Christian scholars and some secular ones include Jesus performing wonderful works, leading many Jews and Gentiles, being condemned to death by Pilate, and his followers not forsaking him.

Yet biblical and secular scholars generally agree that the bit about it not being “lawful to call him a man,” mentioning “the truth,” him rising from the dead, and the use of the word “Christians” and the phrase “to this day” are all changes made to the text later on. The debate about what is authentic is quite long, but there are convincing reasons to be suspect.

For instance, the believer Origen, in the second century, uses Josephus’ book to defend Christianity from the views of Celsum, but never once used the invaluable paragraph! In fact, “no form of the Testimonium Flavianum is cited in the extant works of Justin Martyr, Theophilus Antiochenus, Melito of Sardis, Minucius Felix, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Julius Africanus, Pseudo-Justin, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Methodius, or Lactantius. According to Michael Hardwick in Josephus as an Historical Source in Patristic Literature through Eusebius, each of these authors shows familiarity with the works of Josephus.”

The paragraph mentions “Christians,” a term not believed used until the 2nd century. The copies with the paragraph appear only in the 4th century, first quoted by Eusebius, who wrote elsewhere that it was all right for historians to insert fiction into their work (and the Testimonium contains word choices Josephus didn’t typically use but Eusebius often did). The Testimonium sits awkwardly between stories where Josephus condemns Jewish governors, rebels, would-be messiahs, and agitators, and offers lessons with his criticisms — yet the passage on Jesus has a different tone, being positive and supportive, without any sort of moral. After this affectionate paragraph, Josephus tells the story of “another outrage” — making the flow of stories much more sensible when the Testimonium is removed. Perhaps most importantly, despite the passage making it sound as if Josephus believed Jesus was the messiah and rose from the dead, he doesn’t bother writing about him anywhere else in his books! He even devoted twice as much space to John the Baptist.

Josephus’ mention of “James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ” being stoned was also possibly inserted later. Hegesippus, a Christian Jew, wrote in 170 AD that Jesus’ brother James was killed in a riot. Somehow, it is likely one of these stories is incorrect.

Since even faithful biblical scholars acknowledge Josephus’ paragraph on Jesus was doctored, it is possible the entire paragraph was inserted later by a priest or scribe.

Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Younger): writer, Roman governor of Bithynia, writing c. AD 112

10 volumes of Pliny’s letters survived to the present.

In Epistles, Pliny wrote to Emperor Trajan asking what methods were permissible in punishing Christians, who refused to worship Roman gods and were thus withholding profits from the temples. “I interrogated them whether they were Christians; if they confessed it, I repeated the question twice, adding the threat of capital punishment; if they persevered, I ordered them executed.” He writes those who recanted were made to worship Trajan’s statue and the Roman gods and “curse Christ.” But Pliny, interested in “the nature of their beliefs,” describes the Christians as indeed regarding Christ a deity. They sang “a hymn to Christ, as to a god” and believed in a “contagious superstition.” Emperor Trajan wrote back, saying the only way the accused could provide “practical proof” of their denial was by “invoking our gods.”

If this is accurate reporting, it tells nothing new: secular scholars know the term “Christian” was used in the 2nd century, that followers believed Jesus was God, and that the Romans didn’t care for them much in those years.

Cornelius Tacitus: historian, Roman senator, Roman consul, proconsul of Asia, writing AD 116

In his Annals, Tacitus wrote of the fire that swept Rome in AD 64. Emperor Nero, to eliminate a rumor that he himself had ordered the fire, allegedly “substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself.” The Christians were promptly “torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed were burned to serve as lamps by night.”

This is likely a valuable corroboration with the New Testament as to what happened to the historical person of Jesus. It may be encouraging to believers, who might ask why such a “superstition” would “break out once more” after being “checked” unless Jesus had actually risen from the dead, but of course there is nothing to say the “break out” didn’t occur after a fictional story of Jesus’ resurrection was concocted while he rotted in the ground like other mortals. Further, most other religions also fail to putter out after a revered leader dies, usually growing stronger (the rise of Islam after Muhammad’s death or the worship of past pharaohs in Egypt, for example, or the fact that Buddha was molded into a divine character after he passed despite his earlier insistence he was just a man).

But some scholars suspect that Tacitus, writing of a time when he was only 8, may have gotten a few facts wrong. Historians are unsure if Christianity reached Rome by 64 AD, nor that Nero actually persecuted Christians — though he likely did persecute Jews. No Christian scholars, priests, or writers quoted this passage in the 2nd century, which doesn’t mean it’s not authentic but may raise some small doubts. However, in the 4th century, one of Sulpicius Severus’ writings (which were full of mythological stories by anyone’s standards) contains an identical passage. The paragraph may have been pulled from Severus’ work and Tacitus’ history doctored with it.

But as we shall see with Suetonius, there may be reason to give Tacitus the benefit of the doubt.

Suetonius: historian, annalist of the Roman Imperial House, writing c. AD 120

Suetonius, in Life of Claudius, wrote: “As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, [Claudius] expelled them from Rome.” Chrestus is suspected to be a misspelling of Christus, though there is much debate over the matter. However, it could be that hostilities between traditional Jews and Christian preachers led to the expulsion of Jews from Rome (c. AD 50), also mentioned in Acts 18. However, Suetonius may be more important in that his Life of Nero echoes what Tacitus wrote, that after the great fire “punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a body of people addicted to a novel and mischievous superstition.” This is evidence that perhaps Tacitus did write the words above and that they were accurate.

However, “Chrestus” was a common Latin name, and since Jesus is not mentioned by name, this could have been someone else. We also don’t know what kind of disturbances this refers to (simple preaching? riots?), nor if an historian would credit a man long dead with “instigating” anything (mightn’t it be more sensible to either speak of a current leader or clarify that it was the belief in Chrestus that was to blame?), nor why a writer from AD 120 would call the troublemakers “Jews” instead of “Christians” (a label believed to be used by that time).

Barker also mentions that Suetonius wasn’t the best historian anyway: he wrote that Caesar Augustus physically rose to heaven upon his death.

Lucian of Samosata: Greek satirist, writing c. AD 170

Lucian wrote in The Death of Peregrine, “The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day — the distinguish personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account… You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains the contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed upon them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws.”

Here Lucian is only repeating what Christians believed in the 2nd century. It doesn’t tell us much about Jesus as an historical figure.

Phlegon: historian, writing in the 2nd century

Julius Africanus reports in his Chronography (allegedly — recall none of his originals exist today) that Phlegon (in his Chronicles) “records that in the time of Tiberius Caesar at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth hour to the ninth.” A Christian writer, Origen, wrote in the early third century (Against Celsus) that Phlegon mentioned in Chronicles the eclipse and a great earthquake at the time of the crucifixion, and even ascribed to Christ “a knowledge of future events (although falling into confusion about some things which refer to Peter, as if they referred to Jesus).”

Here we don’t have the original words of Phlegon, only a mention of his quote by one Christian writer (Origen) who thinks Phlegon was a bit confused as to who said or did what and (perhaps) another Christian writer (Africanus) whose texts might have been altered by others.

The Sanhedrin (Babylonian Talmud): written AD 70-200

This Jewish manuscript says, “It has been taught: On the eve of Passover they hanged Yeshu” because “he practiced sorcery and enticed and led Israel astray.” Hanged was often used at the time to mean crucified, according to scholars — another good corroboration of Jesus’ fate.

Although this is a religious book, like the next one, it seemed important to include because it comes from the Jews (some Jews didn’t take too kindly to the new religion) and because they come relatively soon after Jesus lived (Islamic holy books also mention Jesus, but they arrived many centuries later). This passage suggests Christ had some sort of convincing power, here explained as sorcery. Yet many other people in human history have practiced sorcery, or been accused of doing so, and a Christian would be reasonably skeptical if I suggested a sorcerer could only do what he did because he was God himself.

The Hullin (Tosefta): written AD 70-200

The Jewish Tosefta mentions that a man named Jacob “came to heal” R. Elazar ben Damah, who had been bitten by a snake, “in the name of Yeshu.”

If accurate reporting, this may simply tell us that there were followers of Christ who claimed spiritual powers. Or, like any other tale of the supernatural, whether in a Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or Hindu text, it could simply be fictional.

Mara Bar-Serapion: Syrian, date unknown but likely 3rd century

This personal letter to Mara’s imprisoned son mentions that the Jews had killed their “wise king.”

However, there were many messiahs who were killed in Palestine in these times, for instance the Essene Teacher of Righteousness. Since the letter’s date is probably nowhere near the events of Jesus’ death, and since it does not mention Jesus by name, it is not particularly useful.

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