I've been a skeptic all my life. Even as a child, I found my books about dinosaurs and scientific origins of the Earth far more satisfying than the biblical tales. Before I had entered kindergarten, I read accounts based on science and reason and (perhaps instinctively) gave such arguments much more weight than "The Bible tells me so". Even when it came to more mundane things, like eating my vegetables, I would need to know why before I would accept it.
So when I say that there is something in the Bible that made me a nonbeliever, that's not really true. I've been a skeptic from moment one.
HOWEVER - the epiphany I'm about to describe here was when I came to the conclusion that even if everything in the Bible were true, I would still choose not to worship God. And, incidentally, I wouldn't worship Satan either - that's just twisted.
It happened when I was about fifteen. I was pretty firmly set by then in my opinion that the Bible was nothing more than a collection of parables, historical fiction, and myth - this was actually the attitude I'd always had, and I distinctly remember being completely shocked at the age of seven when I first realized that there were people, lots of them, who took it all seriously. But I digress.
I decided that it was no good for me to hold this attitude if I didn't really know what was in the Bible, and I had never read it. So, I sat down one day with the Bible and started reading.
I got through Genesis just fine, with my old attitudes intact.
Then came Exodus.
I got no further.
I couldn't! Reading about the story of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt shook me to the core. Not because I believed it was a faithful account of history, but because... God was EVIL.
There is no other word for it.
How else to describe the vile acts committed by this all-powerful diety? Throughout Exodus, God murders, mutilates, tortures, brainwashes, and otherwise wreaks havoc on both the Egyptians and the Israelites. He does so without pity or compassion.
He threatens to kill Moses because Moses is hesitant to mutilate the genitals of his infant son.
(from here on out I will just name the passages, instead of quoting them, or this will get too long)
Now, for some reason, Moses is all right with this. Forgiving guy - or perhaps he just lacks the courage of his convictions. Anyway, things don't really get moving until Moses goes before Pharoah, armed with some of God's magic tricks, and demands, "Let my people go!"
Of course, Pharoah does no such thing. Was it because he didn't want to lose his slaves, or because he just liked having Moses around? Well, we'll never really know, because God hardened his heart and gave Pharoah no choice. (7:3, 7:13)
So much for human free will! And this raises an interesting point, since the answer to "Why does God let bad things happen?" is always "Human beings have free will and we make bad things happen ourselves." Now we see that this is false, that God is perfectly willing to interfere with human hearts and minds when it suits His purposes.
Even more sinister is that God is clearly playing a game with human lives here. Surely God could have simply softened Pharoah's heart, let the him see the evil of his ways, and cheerfully allow the Israelites to go in peace. Why, then, does God continuously take the opposite approach? What does He gain from keeping the Israelites and the Egyptians at each others' throats, and creating a situation that their descendants have fought bloody war over for thousands of years? What the hell kind of compassionate, loving God is this??
It gets worse, as God begins visiting plagues on the Egyptians - many of whom, remember, are not a lot better off than the Israelites and would probably be happy to see them go so that there would be more food to go around. God, however, punishes all the Egyptians, whether they were evil or not. Six thousand years later, someone would adopt a similar attitude regarding the descendents of the Israelites. He was named Hitler.
First plague: changing the river Nile to blood. This, presumably, had the effect of ruining the crops up and down the river, causing widespread famine among all the Egyptians (this was the only fertile farmland they had). Naturally, they also could not drink the water, and presumably thousands died of thirst. But Pharoah's heart had been hardened, so this had no effect.
Second plague: Frogs. (Frogs??) Well, I guess enough of anything is problematic. Pharoah gets sick of the frogs pretty quickly, and makes a deal to let Moses and the Israelites go, whereupon Moses kills all the frogs and they stink up Egypt. But then Pharoah changes his mind. At least he does it on his own this time, though - I guess frogs weren't threatening enough for God to have to intervine this time, and in any event the famine is over (all the frogs' legs you can eat!).
Third plague: Lice, a little nastier than frogs. Not nasty enough though. The exact wording of passage 8:19 makes it a little tough to say whether Pharoah hardened his own heart or if God did it for him, but nevertheless the Israelites fail to get their tickets out of Egypt on this one.
Fourth plague: Flies. Same results as lice. But God's not done tortuing the Egyptians yet, and he has no intentions of letting up until he's had the chance to kill some people directly. Since that doesn't happen until plague ten, there's a lot more God-generated suffering to come.
Fifth plague: God kills all the Egyptians' livestock (God frequently kills animals en masse). This is the first of three times that God will kill the livestock. Again, the heart of the Pharoah is hardened, though whether by himself or God is uncertain (9:7)
Sixth Plague: Boils. God infects everyone with pox. This is pretty nasty, and it seems that this time God definitely must intervene to keep the Pharoah from actually letting the Israelites go, which of course would never do. God's not done smiting the Egyptians yet, after all.
Seventh Plague: Hail. God actually shows a sliver of mercy this time, by allowing the servants of the Pharoah to bring their cattle into their houses before the hail strikes. Of course, all the Egyptian's cattle are already dead thanks to plague #5, so this isn't really all that helpful. At the end of the hail, all the livestock in the Egyptians' fields are killed again, and the crops which would have died in the bloody waters of the Nile are also killed again, and God manages to get a few actual people this time. Pharoah is actually considering letting the Egyptians go this time, but then changes his mind. Or rather, God changes it for him (10:1).
Eighth plague: Locusts, to finish the job that the blood and the hail started. God will not rest until the Egyptians face total destruction, and will not even let them save themselves by allowing Pharoah to let the Israelites go. At this point, God is really starting to remind me of a schoolyard bully, grabbing a smaller child and repeatedly forcing his victim's hand into his own face, saying, "Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!" This is not a God I can even respect, let alone love and worship. And he's not even done yet. He hardens Pharoah's heart again. God will simply not let the torture stop, no matter how much the Egyptians might now be begging to let the Israelites go!
Ninth Plague: Darkness. After all the rest that's happened to Egypt, I'd think a little darkness would actually be a great comfort. Just to be sure, God hardens the Pharoah's heart again. By now Pharoah is justifiably sick of Moses and orders him away upon pain of death.
Tenth Plague: His bloodthirst unsatisfied, God murders the firstborn children of all the Egyptians, babies to full-grown men, including the livestock which has already been killed twice. He has Moses warn the Pharoah of this, though one wonders why He bothers, because He just hardens Pharoah's heart again. Why is God visiting all these horrors upon the Egyptians, but then refusing to let the submit to Him? Can it be that He simply wants them to suffer, body and soul? Is there another possible explaination?
In the night, then, God visits every house in Egypt and kills the firstborn (except for the Israelites, who have blood spread on their doorframes - honestly, if God needs such signals to determine which babies to kill, He's not as omnipotent as we have been led to believe).
Now, at last, the Egyptians have had enough, and take it upon themselves to tell the Israelites to go. God's not done making them suffer yet, though - having killed all their crops and livestock to starve them, and their first-born children for His own reasons, He now compels the Egyptians to hand over all their material wealth to the Israelites in order to impoverish them. Sucks to be an Egyptian. And another shot against Free Will, as God messes with people's heads again and makes them do his bidding.
As the Israelites leave Egypt, God begins to instruct them in His bloodthirsty ways. He tells them, first of all, that it was all His doing that led them out of Egypt (though again, we'll never know if Pharoah might not have been happy to let them go without any trouble, since God's been hardening his heart since moment one).
He tells them to eat nothing but unleavened bread for a week. Why? Because!
He gives instructions for what they should do when they get to the Land of the Canaanites: Kill all the firstborn males, whether from men or beasts, but not of the Israelis - only those of inferior people. Why? Because God did it, and they should too.
And he's not even done with the Egyptians yet! In a tactic akin to giving a stimulant to a tortured prisoner who's been beaten unconscious, God hardens the Pharoah's heart YET AGAIN and sends the Egyptian armies (which must be starving) after the Israelites. We all know what happens next - God arranges to part the Red Sea, so the Israelites can cross, and then ruthlessly sends it crashing back down upon the Egyptians, drowning them to the last man. He does this after the Egyptians have already decided to retreat.
The Israelites, filled with joy at seeing their enemies murdered by their evil diety, sing praises to God, repeating gleefully the events that brought the Egyptians to destruction. It seems that the Children of Israel learn quickly.
At this point, I stopped reading. I literally could go no further, feeling sick to my stomach that a billion people or more throughout the world worshipped this God and called Him just and righteous. I wondered how humanity could be so low that we would celebrate such horrible, bloody events such as Passover. I honestly could not believe that this was supposedly God who loves us as His childern.
It was in this moment that I decided that this God was utterly undeserving of my worship or praise - indeed, I felt nothing but disgust for Him and His followers. Since that time, my attitude has softened, as I came to assume that most churchgoers viewed the story of Exodus as metaphorical rather than literal, or they made up excuses for God's behavior, or they simply didn't know the story that well. Jehovah Himself I have no such sympathy for. I despise this God as I would the evilest of all beings.
Fortunately, this hatred does not consume me, because I simply do not believe. I do not hate this wicked God any more than I do Darth Vader - they are, to my mind, fictional characters. This is mostly because I think the world would be a much worse place with such a God in charge of things. But I do question both the moral and intellectual judgement of those who do claim to believe in this God, and worship Him, because by doing so they endorse His actions - however evil and murderous they may be.
So when I say that there is something in the Bible that made me a nonbeliever, that's not really true. I've been a skeptic from moment one.
HOWEVER - the epiphany I'm about to describe here was when I came to the conclusion that even if everything in the Bible were true, I would still choose not to worship God. And, incidentally, I wouldn't worship Satan either - that's just twisted.
It happened when I was about fifteen. I was pretty firmly set by then in my opinion that the Bible was nothing more than a collection of parables, historical fiction, and myth - this was actually the attitude I'd always had, and I distinctly remember being completely shocked at the age of seven when I first realized that there were people, lots of them, who took it all seriously. But I digress.
I decided that it was no good for me to hold this attitude if I didn't really know what was in the Bible, and I had never read it. So, I sat down one day with the Bible and started reading.
I got through Genesis just fine, with my old attitudes intact.
Then came Exodus.
I got no further.
I couldn't! Reading about the story of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt shook me to the core. Not because I believed it was a faithful account of history, but because... God was EVIL.
There is no other word for it.
How else to describe the vile acts committed by this all-powerful diety? Throughout Exodus, God murders, mutilates, tortures, brainwashes, and otherwise wreaks havoc on both the Egyptians and the Israelites. He does so without pity or compassion.
He threatens to kill Moses because Moses is hesitant to mutilate the genitals of his infant son.
Quote:
4:24 And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him, and sought to kill him.
4:25 Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.
4:26 So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.
(from here on out I will just name the passages, instead of quoting them, or this will get too long)
Now, for some reason, Moses is all right with this. Forgiving guy - or perhaps he just lacks the courage of his convictions. Anyway, things don't really get moving until Moses goes before Pharoah, armed with some of God's magic tricks, and demands, "Let my people go!"
Of course, Pharoah does no such thing. Was it because he didn't want to lose his slaves, or because he just liked having Moses around? Well, we'll never really know, because God hardened his heart and gave Pharoah no choice. (7:3, 7:13)
So much for human free will! And this raises an interesting point, since the answer to "Why does God let bad things happen?" is always "Human beings have free will and we make bad things happen ourselves." Now we see that this is false, that God is perfectly willing to interfere with human hearts and minds when it suits His purposes.
Even more sinister is that God is clearly playing a game with human lives here. Surely God could have simply softened Pharoah's heart, let the him see the evil of his ways, and cheerfully allow the Israelites to go in peace. Why, then, does God continuously take the opposite approach? What does He gain from keeping the Israelites and the Egyptians at each others' throats, and creating a situation that their descendants have fought bloody war over for thousands of years? What the hell kind of compassionate, loving God is this??
It gets worse, as God begins visiting plagues on the Egyptians - many of whom, remember, are not a lot better off than the Israelites and would probably be happy to see them go so that there would be more food to go around. God, however, punishes all the Egyptians, whether they were evil or not. Six thousand years later, someone would adopt a similar attitude regarding the descendents of the Israelites. He was named Hitler.
First plague: changing the river Nile to blood. This, presumably, had the effect of ruining the crops up and down the river, causing widespread famine among all the Egyptians (this was the only fertile farmland they had). Naturally, they also could not drink the water, and presumably thousands died of thirst. But Pharoah's heart had been hardened, so this had no effect.
Second plague: Frogs. (Frogs??) Well, I guess enough of anything is problematic. Pharoah gets sick of the frogs pretty quickly, and makes a deal to let Moses and the Israelites go, whereupon Moses kills all the frogs and they stink up Egypt. But then Pharoah changes his mind. At least he does it on his own this time, though - I guess frogs weren't threatening enough for God to have to intervine this time, and in any event the famine is over (all the frogs' legs you can eat!).
Third plague: Lice, a little nastier than frogs. Not nasty enough though. The exact wording of passage 8:19 makes it a little tough to say whether Pharoah hardened his own heart or if God did it for him, but nevertheless the Israelites fail to get their tickets out of Egypt on this one.
Fourth plague: Flies. Same results as lice. But God's not done tortuing the Egyptians yet, and he has no intentions of letting up until he's had the chance to kill some people directly. Since that doesn't happen until plague ten, there's a lot more God-generated suffering to come.
Fifth plague: God kills all the Egyptians' livestock (God frequently kills animals en masse). This is the first of three times that God will kill the livestock. Again, the heart of the Pharoah is hardened, though whether by himself or God is uncertain (9:7)
Sixth Plague: Boils. God infects everyone with pox. This is pretty nasty, and it seems that this time God definitely must intervene to keep the Pharoah from actually letting the Israelites go, which of course would never do. God's not done smiting the Egyptians yet, after all.
Seventh Plague: Hail. God actually shows a sliver of mercy this time, by allowing the servants of the Pharoah to bring their cattle into their houses before the hail strikes. Of course, all the Egyptian's cattle are already dead thanks to plague #5, so this isn't really all that helpful. At the end of the hail, all the livestock in the Egyptians' fields are killed again, and the crops which would have died in the bloody waters of the Nile are also killed again, and God manages to get a few actual people this time. Pharoah is actually considering letting the Egyptians go this time, but then changes his mind. Or rather, God changes it for him (10:1).
Eighth plague: Locusts, to finish the job that the blood and the hail started. God will not rest until the Egyptians face total destruction, and will not even let them save themselves by allowing Pharoah to let the Israelites go. At this point, God is really starting to remind me of a schoolyard bully, grabbing a smaller child and repeatedly forcing his victim's hand into his own face, saying, "Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!" This is not a God I can even respect, let alone love and worship. And he's not even done yet. He hardens Pharoah's heart again. God will simply not let the torture stop, no matter how much the Egyptians might now be begging to let the Israelites go!
Ninth Plague: Darkness. After all the rest that's happened to Egypt, I'd think a little darkness would actually be a great comfort. Just to be sure, God hardens the Pharoah's heart again. By now Pharoah is justifiably sick of Moses and orders him away upon pain of death.
Tenth Plague: His bloodthirst unsatisfied, God murders the firstborn children of all the Egyptians, babies to full-grown men, including the livestock which has already been killed twice. He has Moses warn the Pharoah of this, though one wonders why He bothers, because He just hardens Pharoah's heart again. Why is God visiting all these horrors upon the Egyptians, but then refusing to let the submit to Him? Can it be that He simply wants them to suffer, body and soul? Is there another possible explaination?
In the night, then, God visits every house in Egypt and kills the firstborn (except for the Israelites, who have blood spread on their doorframes - honestly, if God needs such signals to determine which babies to kill, He's not as omnipotent as we have been led to believe).
Now, at last, the Egyptians have had enough, and take it upon themselves to tell the Israelites to go. God's not done making them suffer yet, though - having killed all their crops and livestock to starve them, and their first-born children for His own reasons, He now compels the Egyptians to hand over all their material wealth to the Israelites in order to impoverish them. Sucks to be an Egyptian. And another shot against Free Will, as God messes with people's heads again and makes them do his bidding.
As the Israelites leave Egypt, God begins to instruct them in His bloodthirsty ways. He tells them, first of all, that it was all His doing that led them out of Egypt (though again, we'll never know if Pharoah might not have been happy to let them go without any trouble, since God's been hardening his heart since moment one).
He tells them to eat nothing but unleavened bread for a week. Why? Because!
He gives instructions for what they should do when they get to the Land of the Canaanites: Kill all the firstborn males, whether from men or beasts, but not of the Israelis - only those of inferior people. Why? Because God did it, and they should too.
And he's not even done with the Egyptians yet! In a tactic akin to giving a stimulant to a tortured prisoner who's been beaten unconscious, God hardens the Pharoah's heart YET AGAIN and sends the Egyptian armies (which must be starving) after the Israelites. We all know what happens next - God arranges to part the Red Sea, so the Israelites can cross, and then ruthlessly sends it crashing back down upon the Egyptians, drowning them to the last man. He does this after the Egyptians have already decided to retreat.
The Israelites, filled with joy at seeing their enemies murdered by their evil diety, sing praises to God, repeating gleefully the events that brought the Egyptians to destruction. It seems that the Children of Israel learn quickly.
At this point, I stopped reading. I literally could go no further, feeling sick to my stomach that a billion people or more throughout the world worshipped this God and called Him just and righteous. I wondered how humanity could be so low that we would celebrate such horrible, bloody events such as Passover. I honestly could not believe that this was supposedly God who loves us as His childern.
It was in this moment that I decided that this God was utterly undeserving of my worship or praise - indeed, I felt nothing but disgust for Him and His followers. Since that time, my attitude has softened, as I came to assume that most churchgoers viewed the story of Exodus as metaphorical rather than literal, or they made up excuses for God's behavior, or they simply didn't know the story that well. Jehovah Himself I have no such sympathy for. I despise this God as I would the evilest of all beings.
Fortunately, this hatred does not consume me, because I simply do not believe. I do not hate this wicked God any more than I do Darth Vader - they are, to my mind, fictional characters. This is mostly because I think the world would be a much worse place with such a God in charge of things. But I do question both the moral and intellectual judgement of those who do claim to believe in this God, and worship Him, because by doing so they endorse His actions - however evil and murderous they may be.
)
hey i'm tired I wanna go and sleep alright? plus i'm immature). So his lawn ninja appears and all your friends get their lawn ninjas (see your friends have lawn ninjas, it's all cool) but his lawn ninja beats them up. 
