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“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.” (Chapter 2, p. 31)

“Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it...”
(Chapter 7, p.237)

To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries. This may explain some of the sheer strangeness of the Bible. But unfortunately it is this same weird volume that religious zealots hold up to us as the inerrant source of
our morals and rules for living. Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it, as Bishop John Shelby Spong, in The Sins of Scripture, rightly observed.

event horizon wrote:So, you do or don't disagree with Dawkins' view that Ibrahim was a religious fanatic and mentally abused his son when he attempted to sacrifice him?

shafique wrote:I also don't share his views about Abraham you describe either (but if you can post his actual words, I can be more specific and categoric).

event horizon wrote:Since Dawkins' views on the God of the OT is based, in part, on stories such as these, then I suppose you would have to reject what Dawkins says.

shafique wrote:I asked whether you disputed any of the conclusions that Dawkins listed above.

If you don't, I'll move on to the next quotes - but however, I don't want to assume you don't have any answers to Dawkins' summary. Do you have any objections?

Richard Dawkins wrote:“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.” (Chapter 2, p. 31)

Richard Dawkins wrote:“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction:

1.jealous and proud of it;
2. a petty,
3. unjust,
4. unforgiving control-freak;
5. a vindictive,
6. bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser;
7. a misogynistic,
8.homophobic,
9. racist,
10. infanticidal,
11. genocidal,
12. filicidal,
13. pestilential,
14. megalomaniacal,
15. sadomasochistic,
16. capriciously malevolent bully.” (Chapter 2, p. 31)

The fact that something is written down is persuasive to people not used to asking questions like: 'Who wrote it, and when?' 'How did they know what to write?' 'Did they, in their time, really mean what we, in our time, understand them to be saying?' 'Were they unbiased observers, or did they have an agenda that coloured their writing?' Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly theologians have made an overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened in the history of the real world. All were written long after the death of Jesus, and also after the epistles of Paul, which mention almost none of the alleged facts of Jesus' life. All were then copied and recopied, through many different 'Chinese Whispers generations' (see Chapter 5) by fallible scribes who, in any case, had their own religious agenda.

A good example of the colouring by religious agendas is the whole heart-warming legend of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, followed by Herod's massacre of the innocents. When the gospels were written, many years after Jesus' death, nobody knew where he was born. But an Old Testament prophecy (Micah 5:2) had led Jews to expect that the long-awaited Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.

In the light of this prophecy, John's gospel specifically remarks that his followers were surprised that he was not born in Bethlehem:
'Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?'

Matthew and Luke handle the problem differently, by deciding that Jesus must have been born in Bethlehem after all. But they get him there by different routes. Matthew has Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem all along, moving to Nazareth only long after the birth of Jesus, on their return from Egypt where they fled from King Herod and the massacre of the innocents. Luke, by contrast, acknowledges that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth before Jesus was born. So how to get them to Bethlehem at the crucial moment, in order to fulfil the prophecy? Luke says that, in the time when Cyrenius (Quirinius) was governor of Syria, Caesar Augustus decreed a census for taxation purposes, and everybody had to go 'to his own city'. Joseph was 'of the house and lineage of David' and therefore he had to go to 'the city of David, which is called Bethlehem'. That must have seemed like a good solution. Except that historically it is complete nonsense, as A. N. Wilson in Jesus and Robin Lane Fox in The Unauthorized Version (among others) have pointed out. David, if he existed, lived nearly a thousand years before Mary and Joseph. Why on earth would the Romans have required Joseph to go to the city where a remote ancestor had lived a millennium earlier? It is as though I were required to specify, say, Ashby-de-la-Zouch as my home town on a census form, if it happened that I could trace my ancestry back to the Seigneur de Dakeyne, who came over with William the Conqueror and settled there.

Moreover, Luke screws up his dating by tactlessly mentioning events that historians are capable of independently checking. There was indeed a census under Governor Quirinius - a local census, not one decreed by Caesar Augustus for the Empire as a whole - but it happened too late: in AD 6, long after Herod's death. Lane Fox concludes that 'Luke's story is historically impossible and internally incoherent', but he sympathizes with Luke's plight and his desire to fulfil the prophecy of Micah.

event horizon wrote:We've already agreed that you don't agree with Dawkins over the issue of Ibrahim being a religious fanatic -

shafique wrote:So, just to be clear - the two points we're waiting for you replies to are:

1. the list of attributes of God from the OT - do you disagree that the OT does show God acting in these ways?

2. the quote about how the story of Jesus being born in Bethlehem being inserted to fit in with OT prophecies in the later Gospels (written perhaps a century after the events) - shows that the Bible is not a historical document. Do you challenge the facts presented?

event horizon wrote:You disagree with Dawkins' view that Ibrahim was a religious fanatic

shafique wrote:So, just to be clear - the two points we're waiting for you replies to are:

1. the list of attributes of God from the OT - do you disagree that the OT does show God acting in these ways?

2. the quote about how the story of Jesus being born in Bethlehem being inserted to fit in with OT prophecies in the later Gospels (written perhaps a century after the events) - shows that the Bible is not a historical document. Do you challenge the facts presented?

event horizon wrote:Ok - so you don't think that someone who puts his own son on an altar, binds him, has a dagger held tight in his hand, ready to pounce on his son because a voice in his head told him to do so, is a religious extremist.

shafique wrote:So, just to be clear - the two points we're waiting for you replies to are:

1. the list of attributes of God from the OT - do you disagree that the OT does show God acting in these ways?

2. the quote about how the story of Jesus being born in Bethlehem being inserted to fit in with OT prophecies in the later Gospels (written perhaps a century after the events) - shows that the Bible is not a historical document. Do you challenge the facts presented?