The HyperTexts
A Simple Proof that the Bible is Not "Infallible"
Is the Bible the "infallible" and "inerrant" word of God, as many Christians claim?
No, it is easy to prove that the Bible is far from "infallible"
or "inerrant." According to the Bible, Jesus Christ said that a good tree cannot bear bad fruit [Matthew
7:18]. If Jesus was wrong, the Bible contains an error. If Jesus was correct, and if
God is perfectly loving, wise and just (as most Christians claim), and if the Bible is
God's inerrant word, then obviously the Bible cannot contain palpably evil
commandments issued by its Author. But the Bible does contain many palpably evil commandments
that are directly attributed to its god, Jehovah. The
Bible says
that Moses spoke to God face-to-face, as a man speaks to a friend, and that God
gave Moses the commandments that are now enshrined in the Bible. Bible
literalists will often try to worm around the Bible's evil commandments by
claiming they were directed at people other than the Israelites.
This is NOT true. The opening
verses of Deuteronomy clearly explain that Moses is speaking “unto ALL
Israel” and that the commandments were given to him by Jehovah for ALL
Israel:
"These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this
side Jordan in the wilderness ... Moses spake unto the children of Israel,
according unto all that the Lord had given him in commandment
unto them." (Deuteronomy 1:1-3)
So according to Deuteronomy, Moses was speaking to ALL Israel
and he told them everything he had been given in commandment by
Jehovah. But the book of Deuteronomy does not pass the "bad fruit" test of Jesus
Christ. The evil commandments given by someone pretending to speak for Jehovah
include:
• Stoning children to death for misdemeanors, a
ghastly form of execution (Deuteronomy 21:18–21). Children can be murdered in
this grotesquely cruel way for being stubborn and eating or drinking too much.
That would include most children in any era, especially ours today.
• Murdering girls by stoning them to death if they
don’t prove their virginity by bleeding on their wedding nights (Deuteronomy
22:13–21). When women are stoned to death in Muslim nations, many Christians
call Islam a false religion. But here the author of Deuteronomy commands it in
the name and authority of Jehovah. However the real Creator would have known
that all girls don’t bleed the first time they have sex. So this is clearly
someone pretending to speak for Jehovah because the real Creator could not have
made this mistake.
• If a girl is raped, either murder her or sell her
to her rapist (Deuteronomy 22:22–31). If she is raped in a town, assume she
didn’t cry out and murder her. If she was raped in a field, assume she did cry
out and no one heard her, so let her live. If she is not engaged, instead of
murdering the girl she can be sold to her rapist with the money going to her
father. Is this the “word of God” or the cruel barbaric insanity of primitive
men? This would allow any rapist with money to assemble a harem of sex slaves!
As we will see below, the Bible clearly commands and/or
condones the worst crimes known to mankind: slavery, sex slavery, matricide, infanticide, ethnic cleansing
and genocide ...
compiled by Michael R. Burch
The Genesis
creation account claims that man was condemned to suffer and die because he
gained the knowledge of good and evil by eating the "forbidden fruit."
Therefore, if Christians don't know good from evil, they should not suffer or
die. But it is more than obvious that over the last 2,000 years billions of
Christians have suffered and died without being able to discern good from evil
because they cannot see the evil nature of many Bible verses.
For example:
• Samuel, one of the early judges (leaders) and
prophets of Israel, orders genocide against neighbouring people: “This is what
the Lord Almighty says ... ‘Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction
all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and
infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” (1 Samuel 15:3) Samuel also hacked Agag to pieces while he begged for mercy.
• The writers of the Bible seemed to delight in the
slaughter of innocents, even infants: “Happy is he who repays you for what you
have done to us: he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”
(Psalm 137:9) But as Mohandas Gandhi pointed out, "An eye for an eye leaves the
whole world blind."
• If suffering and death are the penalty for
disobedience and/or acquiring the knowledge of good and evil, then why do
animals suffer and die, not having disobeyed God and not having man's knowledge
of good and evil? And why did God only give Adam and Eve the knowledge of good
and evil after it was too late for Adam and Eve to
know that it was wrong to eat the forbidden fruit? Since they had no knowledge
of good and evil when they ate the forbidden fruit, they were clearly blameless.
Why didn't God place the fruit a bit higher, to keep it away from innocent
children with no knowledge of right and wrong?
• The garden of Eden story turns God into a monster.
I knew this when I read the Bible as a young boy. But because most Christians
seem not to understand the injustice of what God did to Adam, Eve and all the
innocent animals, they must not have the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore,
according to the Bible, Christians should never suffer and die, since they don't
know good from evil. Most Christians also don't seem to know that it is wrong
for a God who chooses to remain hidden to demand human belief. Therefore,
according to the Bible, they should never suffer and die, since they don't know
good from evil. Most Christians also don't seem to know that because Jesus
roundly and repeatedly denounced hypocrisy, he should not practice hypocrisy
himself. But Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan in which he praised a
man who put religion aside to treat an unconscious man (who could not choose
whether or not to accept the help of his savior) with compassion. But according
to Christians who do not seem to know right from wrong, and therefore should
never suffer and die, Jesus will send the saints of other religions to an
eternal hell, many of whom never heard of him and thus were "unconscious" of
him. Billions of human beings never heard of Jesus and knew nothing about hell
when they were alive. Of course it would be terribly unjust for them to wake up
in hell for having lived "unconscious" of Jesus and hell, and yet according to
many Christians, a hypocritical Jesus will refuse to save them.
Thus, according to many Christians, Jesus himself does not know right from wrong
and should never have suffered or died.
• Conversely, if Jesus follows his own good advice
and saves people who were unconscious of him, emulating the Good Samaritan whom
he praised, then the worst thing anyone could possibly do is preach the "good
news" and tell anyone else about Jesus, if only people who know about Jesus can
go to hell.
• How can mothers be happy in heaven, if they know
their children are suffering in hell? Only the bad mothers would remain in
heaven. All the good mothers would tell God and Jesus to go to hell and storm
out of heaven in protest!
• The book of Judges says that God hardened David's
heart to take a census that resulted in God becoming enraged and killing
thousands of people. The writer of Chronicles knew that this was terribly
unfair, so in his account of the same census, he said that Satan hardened
David's heart. That is the first appearance of the name Satan in the Bible. (For
thousands of years of Bible chronologies there had never been a mention of
anyone named Satan.) Unless God and Satan are the same being, the Bible clearly
contradicts itself. It seems obvious that two writers of the Bible (or copyists
thereof) simply disagreed about whether God could be unjust and do evil things.
A third, more likely scenario is that the census and deaths were unrelated. Does
God kill thousands of people just because someone counts them?
• The book of Revelation prophesied that Jesus would
kill the children of a woman who was committing adultery at that time.
Revelation 2:20-23: "But I have {this} against you, that you tolerate the woman
Jezebel ... Behold, I will cast her upon a bed {of sickness}, and those who
commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her
deeds. And I will kill her children with death." If
Jesus killed children for something their mother did, he was unjust and a
murderer. If he didn't, the writer of Revelation was a false prophet and the
Bible is not infallible or inerrant.
• There are many other errors in the Bible. Hares do
not chew the cud. The mustard seed is not the smallest seed (orchid seeds are
smaller). Stones of the Jerusalem temple have been uncovered that are still
standing on top of each other. The earth is not flat and immovable, with fixed
foundations, which several Bible verses say.
• American Christians owned slaves because they
believed verses in the Bible that clearly command and/or condone slavery, even
sex slavery. Exodus 21:7-8 says fathers can sell their own daughters as sex slaves,
with the option to buy them back if they don't please their new masters. The
same evil
passage also clearly says that male slaves must eventually be freed, but that
female sex slaves must remain slaves their entire lives.
• Numbers
31:8-18 says that "men of God" like Moses and his warriors can slaughter defenseless
mothers and their male babies, keeping only their virgin daughters alive,
obviously as sex slaves. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible condones slavery,
as Jefferson Davis pointed out in his ringing endorsements of American slavery.
Jesus never said a word against slavery even though he ministered to slaves of
the Romans, according to the New Testament. Paul, the great Christian
evangelist, even returned a Christian slave, Onesimus, to his Christian master,
Philemon, without
condemning the institution. The Bible clearly commands slaves to obey their
masters. How is it possible that a loving, wise, just God gave human beings this
enormous book called the Bible and yet never once called slavery an abomination?
• The New Testament also commands and condones slavery, for
example: “Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not
only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.” (1 Peter 2:18)
• The New Testament also teaches that women should submit
like slaves to their male masters: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have
authority over a man; she must be silent.” (1 Timothy 2:12). Also, “Wives,
submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:22)
• If the Bible is "infallible" then killing
women, children and the handicapped must be
"the will of God." After all, Moses, Joshua and King David (all called "types"
of Christ by Christian theologians, priests and pastors) were mass murderers who
slaughtered defenseless women, children and the handicapped in the name of God.
The Bible calls David "the man after God's own heart," but the Bible also says
that David killed every woman when he "smote the land" and that he ordered the
slaughter of the lame and blind when Jerusalem was taken from the Jebusites. If
the Bible is infallible and David is the man after God's own heart, then God
must be like Hitler, who murdered women and the
handicapped. But then how can Christians claim that God is loving,
compassionate, wise or just?
• Moses, Joshua and King David were practitioners of ethnic
cleansing and genocide, the "slaying of everything that breathes." How is
it possible that the God of the Bible and the Hebrew prophets didn't know that
ethnic cleansing and genocide were evil? How could Jesus claim that all
scripture came from God when the Hebrew Bible clearly commands and condones the
most terrible of crimes: slavery, sex slavery, matricide, infanticide, ethnic
cleansing and genocide?
• Moses told his followers to stone children to
death if they were "stubborn," or if they had sex before marriage, even if
they were raped (Deuteronomy 22). How is it possible that Christians
"believe" the Bible when it tells them to murder young girls who had been raped?
• The Bible teaches that child sacrifice is "the
will of God," as when God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son: ‘Take your son,
your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him
there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.’
(Genesis 22:2)
• According to the Bible, Jesus said that thinking
about sex is the same as committing adultery, while
another Bible verse says that all adulterers go to the lake of fire. But in what
dimension is eternal torture a suitable punishment for people having sex, or
just thinking about sex?
• According to the Bible, Jesus sends human beings
to "hell" if they don't believe in him. But Jesus either chooses to remain
hidden or is unable to communicate with most human beings. In either case, he
obviously has no right to demand human belief. Christians obviously have no
knowledge of good and evil if they think it is "fair" for Jesus to send people
to hell for not believing in him. And yet this is what the vast majority of
Christians have always believed.
Over the last 2,000 years, billions of Christians
have lived and died having no understanding of good and evil, because they
"believed" the Bible, which repeatedly claims that evil is good because the
witchdoctors who wrote large parts of the Bible attributed all sorts of evil to
God. When they wanted to steal other men's land, murder them and take their
daughters as sex slaves, they said ethnic cleansing and sex slavery were "the
will of God." When they wanted the best cuts of meat for free, they said God
slavered after animal sacrifices like a wild beast. When they wanted the
commoners to be docile and subservient, they threatened them with murder by
stoning if they had extramarital sex, or converted to other religions, or just
thought for themselves. According to Genesis, Christians should not suffer or
die because by believing the witchdoctors' black magic they have no knowledge of
good and evil. But of course Christians do suffer and die. Therefore, the Bible
is clearly not infallible and its God is unjust for sentencing them to suffer
and die on false premises.
The HyperTexts