The End of Christianity (20 page)

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Authors: John W. Loftus

Tags: #Religion, #Atheism

BOOK: The End of Christianity
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However, we know that—if we know anything—the universe is not a hierarchy where at the top of the pecking order sits a king with the psychological profile of a narcissistic, bipolar ancient Near Eastern ruler running the whole show. We can see the absurdity in imagining the existence of a god whose psychological profile displays culturally relative and historically contingent human desires. Note also that none of these divine psychological characteristics were in their biblical contexts understood as being mere metaphorical depictions or the result of any supposed divine “accommodation.”
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Nor can they be rationalized and explained away as the product of the deliberate and intentional “anthropopathic” representation of something that is in reality supposed to be ineffable. These ways of looking at it come only when we have to repress the fact that we no longer believe in God, aka the god of the Bible.

A third and final aspect of the representation of the mind of God seems equally absurd. We find in Yahweh's psychological profile moral values that the god considers to be eternally and universally normative but that are obviously local cultural taboos. Analogous to the disconcerting manner in which Yahweh's knowledge about the world never rises above that of his speech-writers, so, too, the divine ethics seem suspiciously similar to the projected morality of a people immersed in superstition.

For example, consider the divine desire for sacrifices. When you think about it, it all boils down to the idea of a creator who expects some of his creatures (humans) to kill and burn certain of his other creatures (animals) in order to provide divine nourishment (Yahweh likes the smell of roasting meat, according to Lev. 1:6) and to remove guilt (Lev. 1–7). Or how about the fact that Yahweh believes that giving birth to a girl leaves the mother unclean for a period, the duration of which is twice as long as compared to when she gives birth to a boy (Lev. 12:4–5)? And why does Yahweh consider it morally wrong should garments be made from two different materials or should fields be sown with two different varieties of seed (Lev. 19:19)? Why does Yahweh find human physiological processes objectively offensive, when he created them? (Lev. 12). Why are some animals held to be horrible abominations, even by their own creator (Lev. 11; Deut. 14)?

Yahweh's moral code appears all too similar to what humans from ancient Near Eastern cultures already considered as being the case—long before the religion of Yahweh even got started. Yahwism and its taboos are latecomers in the history of religions, and much of the moral beliefs contained in its value systems can be traced to other pagan religions predating its rise in Israel and Judah (circumcision and pork taboos were already established practices in Egypt, for example).
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Thus “God” and divine commands have a history that gives the game away. Many fundamentalist believers might not be too bothered by this because they consider the cultic laws outdated—even when Yahweh never envisaged their end. Such Christians are only repressing the fact that they themselves no longer believe in Yahweh, who has in the meantime been upgraded to something more intellectually credible. All Christian theology is actually Yahwistic atheism.

YAHWEH'S WORLD

A third and final absurd conception in the Old Testament was already hinted at above: the idea that the entire cosmos is a monarchy and that Yahweh's eternal divine abode in the skies operates like a kingdom (Deut. 32:8–9; 1 Sam. 8:7; Dan. 6:27; etc.). Yahweh's own abode is believed to be a palace in which the deity himself sits on a throne (Ps. 11:4; etc.). A favorite form of transportation for the god is horse-drawn chariots (2 Kings 2:11–12; 6:17; Zech. 6:1–8; etc.). Yahweh also needs an army whose weapon of choice is the sword (Gen. 3:22; 32:1–2; Josh. 5:13–15; 2 Sam. 24:16,27; etc.). Yahweh is wise but not omniscient and makes use of councilors (1 Kings 22:20–23; Isa. 6:3; Jer. 23:18; Ps. 82:1; 89:5; Job 1:6; etc.) and intelligence services that spy on the subjects in order to ascertain their loyalty (Job 1–2; Zech. 3; 1 Chron. 21; etc.). The ram's horn was a popular musical instrument in Yahweh's abode (Exod. 19:16), and the inhabitants of heaven eat bread and dress in pure white linen (Ps. 78:25; Ezek. 9:2; Dan. 10:5; etc.). Yahweh even engages in writing on scrolls (see the “book” [of life] in Exod. 32:32; Pss. 69:29; 139:16; Dan. 7:10; 10:21; etc.).
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To appreciate the impossibility of this state of affairs, the reader should take the time to reflect on the historically temporary and culturally relative nature of objects like scrolls, horse-drawn chariots, swords, dresses of linen, and shofars. These are all-too-human, time-period artifacts. There was once a time in the past when they did not exist. Before such things were used by humans, people wrote on stone and clay; fought with clubs, bows, and spears; and ran on foot. Then humans themselves designed or invented these objects Yahweh uses, and then the objects themselves evolved through time. Some cultures never used these objects and have never even heard of them. Eventually, due to cultural and technological development and change, both the political institution of monarchy and many of these artifacts Yahweh makes use of fell into disuse and today are only kept for interest's sake as antiques. Few people today write on scrolls, fight battles against enemies with swords, dress in linen, blow on rams’ horns, or ride in horse-drawn chariots to reach a destination. Yet if the Old Testament texts are to be believed, ultimate reality is the god of Israel who forever uses Iron-Age artifacts. In Yahweh's sky-palace, things like shofars, swords, scrolls, and chariots have been around forever and will be so ever more.

This state of affairs should not surprise us. There is a reason why Yahweh's creation was assumed to be a monarchy rather than a chiefdom or a democracy. The Christian “God” is not simply the object of worship from all eternity past but the national deity “Yahweh” of an all-too-local and all-too-recent period religion. The oldest evidence of Yahwism dates faith in this god back no more than 3,000–3,500 years. This explains why “God,” aka Yahweh, acts, speaks, and behaves like a typical late Bronze and early Iron Age god and cannot but play the role of that type of character in the stories about him. He is a slave to the divine nature as conceived of in the theatrical roles available for godhood at the time. For all his idiosyncrasies, Yahweh instinctively acts like a god of his time.

On this point, witting and unwitting embarrassment at the culturally constructed nature of what is supposed to be objectively and eternally just “true” has led apologists to the only obvious way of salvaging credibility: reinterpretation. Many contemporary theologians go out of their way to insist that all religious language referring to the divine and the supernatural world is to be understood as being metaphorical or symbolical. “God” was just “accommodating” himself (Calvin). But the theory that all language dealing with the divine world is to be understood as mythical or metaphorical so that humans can grasp it becomes a postbiblical generalization when it is thought of as being applicable to all Old Testament texts. For while some references to human artifacts used by Yahweh are indeed of this type, a naive literalism is also present in many instances. It is only those who cannot admit to themselves they no longer believe in Yahweh as depicted in the Bible who need to resort to such reinterpretation to make the deity seem less obviously impossible. Believers in God need to repress the fact that their deity used to be Yahweh, whose entire reality is so obviously absurd that it needs continual revising to hide the fact that humans of a particular time have imagined that reality
as such
functions like the only cultural and political setup they themselves were familiar with.

This need for reinterpretation of the divine world is nowhere as evident as in the understanding of the biblical concept of “heaven.” The modern believer will insist that it is some sort of spiritual dimension and laugh at people who claimed they could not find God in space. But the fact is, for the ancient Israelites and Yahweh himself, heaven really was simply a divine palace in the sky. Moreover, the concept of “spirit” had nothing to do with something that was otherworldly, but in the Hebrew it denotes a natural albeit immaterial substance like the wind. There was no natural-supernatural or physical-spiritual dualism in the modern sense—which is why Yahweh's breath was equated with the wind and why he can breathe life into dust (Gen. 2). That his abode was located in what we nowadays call the sky is evident in the movement from and toward heaven in biblical narrative. Yahweh comes down on Sinai (literally, Exod. 17–19), and Elijah goes up in a chariot (literally, 2 Kings 2). Yahweh looks down from heaven at humans, and people looked up to heaven as they prayed (see Ps. 14). The reason why Yahweh rides the fast clouds (Isa. 19), why thunder is literally the divine voice (Job 37), is because he and his worshippers believed he was literally up there. That is why Jesus allegedly went up with a cloud and will return on one—because heaven was literally up there. Believers who think of the earth as round and endorse a modern cosmology with an empty sky and who are not disorientated and shocked out of their faith when reading the Old Testament have simply not understood it.
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To understand the idea behind this cosmography, again think of human society or the layout of any large modern city. The divine abode was simply considered the “uptown” of the cosmos—the palace or fortress on the hill. The deity lives “up there” separate from humans because the religious system teaches a cosmic apartheid between gods and humans—when you are a god, you don't mix with the riffraff too often and only appear among them rarely. That is the only reason why the divine appeared and spoke so seldom to humans (nothing more). And when he did come down, he had accommodation ready and waiting—his seven-star private palace, the temple, the word for which in Hebrew is the same as the word for palace and which was the nice, cool, and quiet house of God where a large staff fed him with wine, animal fat, and oiled vegetables twice a day and lavished him with gifts (the real motive for sacrifices). The idea of Yahweh's “food” is not uncommon in the text (see Ezek. 44:7 and Lev.).

On the last point, Christians tend to imply that the idea of human sacrifice as food for the divine is a primitive pagan practice and utterly abhorrent. Many like to point to the differences between the Bible and other ancient religions in that the Old Testament forbade such a practice. However, once again the celebrations and back-patting are premature. To be sure, many Old Testament texts do reject the idea of child sacrifices. However, preredacted sources in the Old Testament laws for the dedication of the firstborn itself show that there was a time when it was believed that Yahweh approves of it (Exod. 13:2; Lev. 27:28–29).
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Its acceptance is implied in the story of Jephthah's daughter (Judg. 11:29–40). We also find remains of this practice in the story of Abraham and Isaac (Gen. 22) where Yahweh has no problem with the burning of the body even if he stops his servant in the act in order to keep his promise. Possibly most overlooked, however, is that the idea that human sacrifice is necessary and acceptable returned in Christianity. Here we find a theological importance of the blood of a tortured and murdered man as an offering to remove sin. That Christians, too, can thus become lyrical about the killing of a human being (or a god) shows the repaganization of Yahwism (which itself was never pure and has no essence) and reveals how easily one can become desensitized through brainwashing. This is clearly evident when Christians find nothing out of order when ritually consuming the flesh and blood of their god. Most versions of Yahweh would not have approved.

Another disconcerting truth and all-too-human need in Yahweh's psyche comes to us in Yahweh's motive for creating humans. In the world of Yahweh, the meaning of human life was to be slaves (euphemistically called “servants”) to the deity. According to one of the myths, humans were created in order to rule in the place of the god so that he does not have to do it (Gen. 1:26–28). In another myth, quite incidentally in Genesis 2:5, it is implied that the meaning of human life is to toil the earth (Gen. 1–2). Again Yahweh is shown to be averse to menial labor and wants servants to do the work that is beneath him. Not exactly flattering, but at least humans were given the pleasure of flattering the divine ego and in return at least got minimum wage (food, health plan, security, etc.).

Believers today simply have not taken seriously the absurdity in the Old Testament's understanding of the cosmos as a kind of city-state ruled by a monarch in the sky whose every whim has to be catered to on the penalty of death. Christians are so brainwashed that the idea that humans are servants of a cosmic dictator still appears comforting to many. They speak about a personal relationship with the deity as a father, not realizing that any father who treats his children in the way Yahweh allegedly did would surely have to go for psychological observation and probably get life in prison (although it may be admitted that eternal torture in hell is a New Testament belief; the god of the Old Testament knows no such place). Those who consider the Bible as affirming human dignity do not seem to understand that it knows no human rights. But because Christians have for so long read a reinterpreted Bible, they can no longer see what is in there. Critical biblical scholars who are simply trying to educate them about what is the case in the text are therefore ironically in danger of being considered “unbiblical.”

All of the above, however, makes no sense given the history of life on earth. The fact is that earth is now estimated to be roughly 4.5 billion years old, and on a scale of a calendar year, humans arrived on the scene during the last minute before midnight on December 31. Humanoids and religious practices have been around for tens of thousands of years. Yet we are now told to believe in what is supposed to be the “real God” even though his Iron Age (1200–500 BCE) character and supernatural setup appeared on the scene late in the history of religion at some point during the second half of the second millennium BCE—and just happens to eternally resemble the culture of this era. I'm sorry, but this is all very hard to swallow. It is no more believable than claiming any other god with an identifiable history of origin and reconstruction in myth just happens to be the ultimate reality. Does the word “absurd” still have any meaning in religious circles today?

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