Friday, November 24, 2006

Bible & Koran - Deist Warning Labels




Someone had given my daughter a christian bible, something I would not have done. I don't forbid it, in fact, I have quite a few different versions of the bible at home, and have studied it extensively. I never pushed it on my kids because, as Thomas Paine said over 200 years ago, the bible is "a history of wickedness." It is full of murder, rapine, and robbery, committed in the name of God. As a Deist I do believe in God, but I cannot possibly believe the libelous claims the bible makes about God. It is full of evil things that shock the mind of a child, (which is why I never pushed my kids to read it,) and when my daughter began reading it, she certainly was shocked at what she read!
The problem her reading it has caused is that she now says that she is an atheist. An atheist! --- because of what she read. She is still too young to properly analyse and understand what she read, and so she incorrectly assumed that either everything she read is the infallible truth (including that God is a monster that would order crimes like the genocide, murder, and robbery that the bible says the Jews committed in his name,) or that there is no God.
She chose the latter, when she should have chose a third option: that there really is a God, but just not the false one depicted in the books of revealed religions. Christians say that their book is or was "inspired" by "the word of God", but there is no claim at all that any of these many books of "sources" of Hebrew Scripture was inspired or was in any sense the "Word of God"; they were commonplace lay chronicles and books of history or literature; so that very large and material portions of "inspired" Hebrew Scriptures are from entirely uninspired and human sources. But I say that only nature is the true, unchanging "Word of God", that God reveals himself through science and natural laws. Thomas Paine said,
"The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they may be. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God."
It's shameful the damage that reading the bible does to people's minds. Because of the horrors and perverted logic that readers are exposed to, I believe that if we must have bibles they should all come with warning labels to warn readers of the dangers that exposure to its contents may cause, particularly in young people during their formative years. To this end I have created a PDF file which contains eight warning labels that you can cut out and paste to the inside cover, (and anywhere else you can find space inside,) of all bibles, korans, and other superstition books of revealed religions. You can get it for free by clicking here. and send copies to all your friends and relatives!

OTOH: If you disagree and still believe that children should be taught the bible, then at least make it easy for them to understand. Show them

It's pretty impressive for an illustrated Bible made entirely of Legos. Rev. Brendan Powell Smith has spent the past four years staging and photographing particularly intense biblical scenes in the living room of his home. The thirty-two-year-old son of an Episcopalian Sunday-school teacher insists his project is meant to explore the Scriptures, not mock them. "My version of Noah's Ark focuses a little more on the people who didn't make it onto the boat." See more at The Brick Testament.


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