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Movie Review: “Son of God”

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“Son of God” movie atheist

I attended a free showing of Son of God, sponsored by Seattle’s Mars Hill church. They bought out three screens, and they encouraged their membership to attend and bring an unbeliever. The gospel story may be as good an occasion as any to evangelize, but I can’t imagine any unbeliever hearing much that was new.

Though the movie ended with the Great Commission and I was wearing my “Atheist: I believe in you!” t-shirt, I wasn’t able to tempt any Christians.

Beach Boy Jesus

The movie was based on the recent 10-part miniseries, The Bible. Jesus was played by Diogo Morgado, a 6′ 3″ model from Portugal. I suspect that a Jew from 2000 years ago would have looked substantially browner, shorter, and less gorgeous.

Megyn Kelly from Fox News got into this debate last Christmas when she said, “Jesus was a white man, too … he’s a historical figure—that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa.” Assuming she’s talking about St. Nicholas, the 4th-century bishop from Lycia (now Turkey), “Santa” probably wasn’t white either.

Overall impressions

This is a feel-good movie for Christians, with plenty of agony to make them appreciate Jesus’s sacrifice (which doesn’t do much for me, BTW). While atheists may find many individual elements of the gospel story that are new to them, very few Americans aren’t familiar with the Jesus story.

The main plot shows Pilate the Roman governor and Caiaphas the high priest trying to keep order in the prelude to the Passover. Interwoven is Jesus preaching, but much of this devolves into familiar but out-of-context platitudes. For example, in one vignette we get “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” and then “Love your neighbor.” In like manner the obligatory John 3:16 was shoehorned in somewhere.

How do you make a Jesus movie?

In the late second century, church father Tatian harmonized the four gospels into the Diatessaron, a big, fat amalgam of the four gospels. Though the Diatessaron did not become popular, Christian apologists today often harmonize conflicting passages in a similar way by arguing that they’re all true.

That struggle was evident with this movie. We would see a story element from one gospel, but then this would highlight the absence of the conflicting version from another gospel. For example, we see Mary and Joseph early in the story with baby Jesus and the Luke nativity story (which doesn’t have magi) combined with the Matthew nativity story (which doesn’t have shepherds).

Mary reappears later in the story, but this conflicts with Mark, which makes clear that Jesus’s family thinks that he’s crazy. According to Mark, his family is not a part of his adult ministry.

On Palm Sunday, Jesus rides triumphantly into Jerusalem on a donkey, but this conflicts with Matthew, which says he rode on two donkeys.

Jesus next cleanses the temple of money changers, but this conflicts with John, who has the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of the ministry.

During the crucifixion, we see the darkness and earthquake from Matthew, but Matthew’s zombie apocalypse is omitted.

Jesus preaches for 40 days after his resurrection, but this conflicts with Luke, which has him return to heaven after just one day.

The gross part

The movie was rated PG-13 for “intense and bloody depiction of The Crucifixion, and for some sequences of violence.” I’m sure Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ was much worse, but this was pretty gruesome. And that’s a conflict, too. The movie takes the flogging and crown of thorns from Mark, but Luke and John have no flogging and a placid Jesus, who seems to be more concerned about those around him than about his own pain.

It’s impossible to tell a Jesus story that respects all of the gospels.

Final thoughts

  • John the disciple is our story teller, and appearances of him as an old man on Patmos bookends the movie (yes, I know that these may not be the same guy). He says that all the other disciples died as martyrs, which isn’t true.
  • When Jesus realizes at the Last Supper that he is to die a painful death, it comes as a shock. This makes sense of his plea to God, “may this cup be taken from me,” but this conflicts with the omniscient Jesus according to John, who knew things from the beginning of time.
  • The story is completely Jewish, and it ends with Peter carrying on the tradition of Jesus. The fact that the gospels were written within a Greek context (not Aramaic) and that the movie includes nothing of Paul isn’t mentioned. This makes for a simpler though less complete story.
  • The Obama-Satan was cut from the movie (I suppose the scene would be Satan’s tempting of Jesus).
  • When Pilate asked who he should release from prison, I had a hard time not channeling Monty Python’s Pilate from Life of Brian and shouting out (with an Elmer Fudd speech problem), “Welease Wodewick!”

The movie ends with Jesus assuring John that he’s coming soon. No, I’m afraid that didn’t happen, either.

Many false prophets have gone out into the world.
— 1 John 4:1

Photo credit: Christian Film Database

Marriage—Designed for Procreation?

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The most popular argument against same-sex marriage from Christians that I see is that the purpose of marriage is procreation. (It makes me wonder if the only advice they would give a couple considering marriage would be about sex positions and lubricating oils.)

Where did this idea come from? My guess is that a couple of Christian strategists had a conversation something like this.

First Guy: We’ve got to find some way to differentiate same-sex marriage from straight marriage.

Other Guy: Yeah—some significant difference.

First Guy: So what would a gay marriage not be able to do that a straight marriage can?

Other Guy: Let’s see—they can love each other, they can support each other through difficult times …

First Guy: They can provide sexual satisfaction, they’ll have two incomes in many cases …

Other Guy: Hey, wait a minute—they can’t make babies!

First Guy: Sure, that’s it! Let’s just spin it to imagine that that’s the sole purpose of marriage!

Other Guy: The sole purpose? But what about all that other stuff?

First Guy: Whatever—the argument just has to be plausible at first glance. It doesn’t have to actually make sense.

Seriously? Is that all you get out of the marriage vows? “I promise to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, in joy as well as in sorrow,” doesn’t sound like “Make babies!” to me.

The real sin: infertility in straight couples

And what would these Christian whiners do with marriages that don’t produce children? Some couples don’t want children and others can’t have them. More than 10% of couples have a fertility problem. In other words, if every single homosexual person paired up and got married tomorrow, they would still be far exceeded in number by the straight couples simply unable to make babies. As anti-gay-marriage advocates lie awake at night and worry about other people’s happiness, I wonder if this fact troubles them as well.

And what about couples beyond child-bearing age? My wife and I are too old for more babies, for example. Does that make our marriage invalid or inferior?

It’s easy to smoke out these Christians’ true opinions on the subject. Ask these opponents to same-sex marriage why a straight couple should get married instead of living together, and the procreation argument goes out the window, replaced with profound thoughts about love and commitment—precisely the reason same-sex couples want to get married.

The marriage-creates-babies idea is clung to like a life preserver, but the simple fact is that marriage doesn’t make babies, it’s sex. And, as I’ve said in a previous post, let’s remember that the apostle Paul was against sex and made clear that the best marriage was no marriage at all.

What if the options were same-sex couple vs. single parent?

A variant of this argument is that a straight couple provides a better environment for a child than a same-sex couple. I’ve heard evidence on each side of this question, but I’m in no position to evaluate it. What seems certain to me is that other factors in life—having enough money, no domestic violence, no drug use, a safe neighborhood, and so on—can overshadow the parents’ gender.

But this argument is irrelevant in those situations when two biological parents simply aren’t an option. For example, imagine a lesbian woman, divorced with a child. The mother could live alone, she could live with a woman partner, or the two women could get married. What’s the best situation for the child? Mom and Dad isn’t an option; they’re divorced. Mom and Stepdad aren’t an option; Mom’s a lesbian. Seems to me that there’s room in this situation to allow for Mom’s happiness, and that could provide another adult to help with the parenting. Where’s the problem? We probably agree that single-parent households aren’t best for raising children, and opposing same-sex marriage only stands in the way.

“But we don’t discriminate!”

A final element of the Christian position is a rearguard action. Concerned about the charge of bias, they argue that their position does not discriminate against homosexuals. After all, they say, the restriction that someone can only marry someone of the opposite sex applies to everyone equally.

I’m sure this absurd argument was as foul-smelling when it was applied to those in love with someone of a different race in 1967 when mixed-race marriages were still prohibited in 17 states. “There’s no discrimination here. You can marry anyone you want … as long as that person is of the same race as you.”

Christians, you’re being led around by Chicken Little politicians. Think for yourself. Same-sex marriage doesn’t affect your marriage or mine one bit.

Read this series from the beginning: “Does the Old Testament Condemn Homosexuality?”

Christians don’t need to be born again.
They need to grow up.
— John Shelby Spong

 

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/23/12.)

The Irrelevant Wisdom of the Ten Commandments

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Ten CommandmentsFew Christians can list the Ten Commandments in order, but almost all are familiar with them:

  1. Have no other gods before me
  2. No graven images
  3. Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain
  4. Keep the Sabbath day
  5. Honor your mother and father
  6. Don’t kill
  7. No adultery
  8. Don’t steal
  9. Don’t lie
  10. Don’t covet

These are the well-known Ten Commandments from Exodus 20. What could be ambiguous about this list? Stay tuned as we run through the story.

It takes 11 more chapters for God to finish giving all his secondary commandments, first rules for how the people should conduct themselves and then rules for the temple and priests.

After weeks of waiting for Moses to return from Mt. Sinai, the anxious Israelites make a golden calf in chapter 32. Moses is furious when he returns. He smashes the tablets, has the calf ground up and force-fed to the faithless people, and orders the Levites to slaughter thousands of their fellow tribesmen.

Then follows an indeterminate amount of time during which God descended on Moses’ tent as a pillar of smoke and “the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend.”

As a side note, it’s interesting that this appearance of God to Moses (Ex. 33:11) as well as that to Abraham (Gen. 18:1–2) is denied in other parts of the Bible. We’re later told, “No one has seen God at any time” (John 1:18) and “No man has seen or can see [God]” (1 Tim. 6:16).

Back to our story: Moses goes up Sinai a second time in Exodus 34. God says, “I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets which you shattered,” so we know that this nothing new, just a replacement set of commandments. But the contents are very different:

  1. Make no covenant with the Canaanite tribes
  2. Destroy their altars
  3. Make no idols (“molten gods”)
  4. Observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread
  5. “The first offspring from every womb belongs to me”
  6. Rest on the seventh day
  7. Celebrate the Feast of Weeks
  8. No leavened bread during Passover
  9. Bring the first fruits of the soil to the Lord
  10. “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk”

The chapter ends with these words: “And [Moses] wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.” This is the first time this label is used in the Bible.

You want to display the Ten Commandments in public? Go for it, but put up this list. It’s the official list, after all. These are the ten that wound up in the Ark of the Covenant.

Contrast this with the story of the first tablets, which concludes at the end of chapter 31, “[God] gave Moses the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God.” There is no mention of a “ten commandments,” and these stone tablets presumably contain all of the rules given in chapters 20 through 31.

Another detour: chapter 34 has this savage claim, “[God] will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations” (Ex. 34:7). And yet, three books later, we get this contradiction: “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin” (Deut. 24:16).

I’ve heard this rationalized this way: Deut. 24 is talking about what man must do. Man needs to treat people fairly and punish only the wrongdoers. Ex. 34 is talking about what God will do. God has a long memory and will hold a grudge against you to punish your descendants. It’s odd that Christians would imagine that God does something that is clearly immoral in our eyes. Anyway, God figures it out later: “The one who sins is the one who will die” (Ezekiel 18:4).

Speaking of punishments, the Ten Commandments list crimes without giving punishments. For you traditionalists who like the “thou shalt not” set of commandments, Positive Atheism has handy list of the corresponding punishments. God has a pretty limited imagination, and you can guess what they are: “He who sacrifices to any god, other than to the LORD alone, shall be utterly destroyed” (Ex. 22:20), “the one who blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death” (Lev. 24:16), and so on.

Display the Ten Commandments in public, just put up the correct ten. Let’s finally put a stop to the abomination that is young goat cooked in goat milk.

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, 
you must always come back to the pleasant fact 
that there are only ten of them. 
— H. L. Mencken

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/19/12.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

 

What Does the New Testament Say about Homosexuality?

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new testament bible homosexuality same-sex marriageThere are two primary places in the New Testament where homosexuality is a condemned practice.

Source #1: First Corinthians

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9–10).

The early Christians built their religion on Scripture—what we call the Old Testament. As I noted in the last post on this subject, Leviticus categorizes homosexuality as a ritual abomination—that is, something that’s bad by definition, not by its nature. Leviticus puts gay sex in the same category as eating a ham sandwich or sowing a field with two different crops.

Christians have rejected all of the Old Testament’s ritual abominations (animal sacrifices, kosher laws, and so on), and they can’t now come back to retrieve a few that they’re nostalgic for.

And it’s not even clear what Paul was referring to. The word translated “men who have sex with men” is the Greek word arsenokoitai, and it’s not certain what it means. Different Bible versions have translate it differently. One source notes:

“Arsenokoitai” is a Greek word that appears to have been created by Paul when he was writing 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. No record remains of any writer having using the term before Paul.

The word is a hapax legomenon, a word used so infrequently that its meaning is unclear. (Another example is the Hebrew reem, guessed to mean “unicorn” in the King James Bible but in later versions as “ox.”)

Source #2: First Timothy

We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine (1 Tim. 1:9–10).

Here again, ritual abominations like homosexuality are mixed in this list with actual crimes such as murder.

As an aside, it may be worth wondering who wrote this book. Though its first line says that it’s from Paul, this book is widely considered to be pseudepigraphical (that is, written by someone claiming to be an important figure). So we have a book of unknown authorship with a wide range of possible dates of authorship. It’s part of the canon, but not much of an authority.

But that’s not all these books say …

If we’re to find moral advice in these two books, let’s look at a few other things they say.

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 (1 Cor. 14:34–5).

For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man (1 Cor. 11:8–9).

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner (1 Tim. 2:11–14).

(Yeah, it’s about time we got some old-fashioned Bible values back in society! Let’s correct society’s lax approach toward women.)

Note 1 Timothy’s reference to Genesis. The Garden of Eden story makes clear to this author that women are inferior to men. That doesn’t put Genesis in a good light. But Genesis is where many Christians go for their definition of marriage: “a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). (That they skip over all the places where God has no problem with polygamy reveals the agenda.)

Let me suggest another source of advice. Romans 14 recommends that we be flexible about others’ ways. If someone has more or fewer restriction about what he eats, for example, just let it slide. As Ambrose noted, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Maybe Christians can apply this laissez-faire thinking to homosexuality as well.

Sympathy for homosexuals?

I’ve heard some Christians say that we should treat homosexuals with sympathy. This sounds like giving sympathy to those pathetic individuals cursed with left-handedness in society.

The Catholic Church held for over a thousand years that being left handed made you a servant of the Devil and that anything left-handed was evil. (Source)

Sympathy might have been the best response in a world that saw lefties as evil or demon possessed, but society has gone beyond that. Left-handedness is irrelevant. No one cares. We don’t give sympathy because none is necessary. Shouldn’t that be the goal with homosexuals, another of society’s minorities?

While I know this sympathy is meant as a generous sentiment, it doesn’t come across that way. “Hate the sin; love the sinner” may be as distasteful for the homosexual as “I love you, but you’re going to hell” aimed at the atheist. In either situation, being told that you deserve an eternity of torture in hell for living your life in a way that is honest to who you are and that hurts no one else is simply offensive.

Pointless rules

Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan? The Pharisee and the Levite in the story were ritually clean as they walked past the beaten man lying in the dirt. They avoided him because touching blood or a dead person caused ritual uncleanness. But the Torah didn’t forbid touching such things; it simply stated that you were ritually unclean after doing so and had to cleanse yourself. No, the moral of the story isn’t to help people in need. According to the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, “Jesus, your big hero, was saying that if you have some rule or conventional wisdom that causes you to do harm to people, violate the goddamn rule.”

Jesus broke lots of rules—going postal on the money changers, harvesting grain and healing on the Sabbath. Remember “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”? The prohibition against homosexuality is another that the Christian needs to break.

You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image
when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/16/12.)

Christianity’s Unbroken Record of Failure

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SChristianity failurehow one scientific truth about nature or new technology that was discovered first in the pages of the Bible.

Show one disease eliminated from the earth or one missing limb restored through prayer.

Show one person who can preach the gospel in every human language.

Show one Bible prophecy or one prediction by a Christian prophet that is accepted as fulfilled by non-Christians.

Show one supernatural event in the Bible that is accepted by historians.

Show one earthquake or volcano that was halted by an incantation or holy relic.

Show one tsunami or plague whose damage was undone by divine action.

Show any supernatural claim within Christianity that is accepted by non-Christians.

An unbroken record of failure

The Bible has stories of people miraculously cured of disease, but so might a book of fairy tales. The Bible has no discussion of how to avoid germs, no advice to boil water, no sanitation rules for the placement of latrines. It doesn’t even have a recipe for soap.

Jesus could have eliminated plague and smallpox and saved the lives of billions, but instead he withers a fig tree and does less curing of disease in his career than a typical doctor does today. The Bible makes clear that every believer will be able to perform the works of Jesus and more, and yet no medical miracle claims are validated by science.

Some in the early days of the Pentecostal movement claimed the Holy Spirit gave missionaries fluency in any language, though that claim is a little too testable. The “gift of tongues” today usually means a gibberish utterance in no human language.

God hasn’t guided his most cherished creation past problems like war, genocide, slavery, prejudice, pogroms, overpopulation, and environmental disasters. Nor has he helped undo the damage from natural disasters. Faith has never moved a mountain, though the Bible says that it will. And prayer doesn’t do anything measurable.

Christian response

Lots of worldviews can encourage you to do good things, and Christianity is one of them. For this post, I’m focused on just the supernatural claims. The Christian may respond with tangible here-and-now contributions of Christianity to society.

  • Majestic cathedrals were built just for Christianity. Show one grand building built by science. How about the Royal Society? Or Scientific American magazine. Or Bell Labs. (And keep in mind that science and engineering put those physical buildings up, not faith.)
  • The Sistine Chapel ceiling is a masterpiece inspired by Christianity. Show one great work of art inspired by science. How about the Large Hadron Collider? Or the Hubble space telescope. Or the Eiffel Tower. Astronomy has given us mind-expanding works of art—photos of a distant galaxy, earthrise from the moon, and the earth caught in Saturn’s rings—that Christianity couldn’t begin to imagine. And it’s not like Christianity has a monopoly on religious art. Consider the ancient Indian, Chinese, Mesoamerican, Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art inspired by their religions (see the Egyptian stone relief above).
  • Christianity inspired Michelangelo’s art. Show a Michelangelo of science. How about Richard Feynman? Or Albert Einstein. Or Stephen Hawking.

The Christian may respond to demands for evidence that God doesn’t perform like a monkey on a leash. What we see is nicely explained by God not performing at all.

“Religious truth” bears the same resemblance to “truth”
that “homeopathic medicine” bears to “medicine,”
“creation science” bears to “science,”
or “Fox News” bears to “news.”
— Richard S. Russell

Inspiration credit: the core of this post came from Richard S. Russell.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Does the Old Testament Condemn Homosexuality? (2 of 2)

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Bible HomosexualityLast time we looked at the Sodom and Gomorrah story. Let’s move on to the book of Leviticus.

You must not have sexual intercourse with a male as one has sexual intercourse with a woman; it is an abomination (Leviticus 18:22).

Sounds pretty damning, but the word “abomination” also describes eating forbidden food (Deut. 14:3), sacrificing blemished animals (Deut. 17:1), performing divination and similar magic (Deut. 18:12), and women wearing men’s clothing (Deut. 22:5). These are ritual abominations.

Making sense of ritual abominations

Mary Douglas clarifies the confusing purity laws in Leviticus, where things are clean or unclean seemingly arbitrarily. She argues that “clean” things are proper members of their category. A proper fish has fins and scales, so that makes it an abomination to eat improper sea animals like clams and shrimp. A proper land animal—one that is part of civilized society—is cloven hoofed and cud chewing like a cow or goat. To be clean, any animal or wild game must share these characteristics—hence no rabbits (not cloven hoofed) or pigs (not cud chewers). “Unclean” means “imperfect members of its class.”

A sacrifice must be a perfect animal, hence no blemishes. A priest must be a perfect man, hence he can’t be blind or lame. Don’t mix seeds in a field; don’t mix textiles in a garment.

Homosexuality fits easily into this taxonomy—proper sex is man with woman, so man/man or man/animal sex is explicitly forbidden. But it’s ritually forbidden, not forbidden because of any innate harm.

Leviticus, take 2

Here’s another popular bludgeon:

If a man has sexual intercourse with a male as one has sexual intercourse with a woman, the two of them have committed an abomination. They must be put to death; their blood guilt is on themselves (Lev. 20:13).

First, note that this again is nothing more than ritual abomination.

Second, note the punishment. Don’t point to the Bible to identify the crime but then ignore its penalty. There is no crime if there is no penalty. Do modern Christians truly think that the appropriate response to male homosexuality is death?

Third, note what else this chapter demands: unclean animals can’t be eaten (20:25), exile for a couple that has sex during the woman’s period (:18), death to spiritual mediums (:27), death for adultery (:10), and death for anyone who curses his father or mother (:9). It comes as a package of out-of-date tribal customs—with what justification can a Christian select the anti-homosexual verse and ignore the rest?

Cafeteria Christianity

If Jesus was the once-and-for-all sacrifice that did away with the need for the Old Testament ritual laws (Heb. 7:11–12 and 8:6–13), then get rid of them all.

God said, “I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you” (Gen. 17:7). Verses like this would saddle Christians with all the Old Testament customs, from the sacrifices to the crazy stuff like genocide that they’d like to distance themselves from, and they’ll say that these verses apply to Jews only. Fair enough—then stop cherry picking Old Testament passages from sections of the Old Testament that don’t apply to you.

This selective reading reminds me of Rev. O’Neal Dozier, an honorary co-chair of Rick Santorum’s election committee, who said that homosexuality is the “paramount of sins” and that it is “something so nasty and disgusting that it makes God want to vomit.” My first impulse to this energetic condemnation is to wonder if Haggard’s Law applies, but more to the point, why is homosexuality at the top of the list? Why should it be any worse than any other “abomination” such as eating shrimp, telling a fortune, or a woman wearing pants? (Unless, of course, Rev. Dozier is simply using the Bible as a sock puppet to have it speak his opinions, which is certainly where the evidence points.)

Apologists like Dozier who say that the Bible is clear in its rejection of homosexuality won’t say the same thing about the Bible’s support for genocide, slavery, and polygamy. They’ll say, “Okay, slow down and let me tell you why the surface reading isn’t correct.” The predicament for today’s Christian is the clash between modern morality and the warlike culture of the early Israelites.

A common response to God’s embarrassing actions in the Old Testament is to say that he is mysterious and inscrutable to our simple human minds. But then these same Christians will contradict themselves and say with certainty that God is against homosexuality, abortion, and taxes.

Apologists who pick and choose which commandments must be taken literally are beating the copper of the Bible against the anvil of their faith. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Why is the atheist the one letting the Bible speak for itself?

Or if the Bible is simply the sock puppet used to give an argument credibility, I’d appreciate Christians dropping the middleman, admitting that their beliefs come from their innate moral sense, and defending them as such.

Morality is doing what is right regardless of what we are told. 
Religious dogma is doing what we are told regardless of what is right.
— Unknown

Photo credit: Wikimedia

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/12/12.)