Saturday, May 12, 2012

GIDEONS AND HANDING OUT BIBLES IN SCHOOLS - DARK NATURE OF THE BIBLE - RELIGION'S PLACE IN FREE SOCIETY


POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY MILLER IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

We need the Bible?

Please, you're talking about a selection of old manuscripts, many of them the work of mentally unbalanced hermits, priests, and jingoes.

It is not correctly even called a book. It has no coherence and no subject, just random mutterings and legends and unpleasant tales of savagery.

The "books" contained represent a careful selection from hundreds of other oddball old manuscripts, and their translations from original tongues has been heavily influenced by ideology, often meanings being quite distorted.

Of course, when you call something the word of a god, you can accept anything associated with it.

The Bible has unquestionably helped instigate and justify more brutality and injustice than can be listed - from the Inquisition and the conquests of Mexico and Peru to slavery and the modern horrors of Israel's occupation and mistreatment of millions.
_______________________________________________


'As an example of how the Bible is "genetically embedded in our history", it should be noted that the following passage from the Bible formed part of the legal basis for the enslavement of Africans:

'"However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)"'

And that "book" alone contains more insanity than any modern rational person can deal with: stoning and torture and brutal treatment of women and meaningless prohibitions about what you can wear and what you can eat.

When we get to The Revelations, we are dealing with the ranting of a paranoid schizophrenic.

The trouble with talking about "The Bible" is this: you conflate charming myths like Jesus' birth or David and Goliath with all the other nasty stuff jammed between those covers.

Leviticus alone is reason enough to relegate The Bible to musty old library shelves.
____________________________

"The fanatical and unpleasnat tone of the atheists posting here shows there is a major need for religious education in Canada.

"Hand out more Bibles’


The fanatical side of things is precisely what we find in "books" like Leviticus or The Revelations and in the advocacy of readers like the person commenting.

If there has been a failure of religious education as the reader suggests, whose responsibility is that?

Obviously, it is the religious institutions themselves. They are clearly not doing their job for their own people, if the writer is correct.

But a free society, everywhere and always, contains people who do not belong to any religious group, and it is entirely their right not to and not to be subjected to religious instruction or literature.

Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion.

Religious instruction or literature has no place in public schools or other public institutions.

This principle seems so obvious, but it is the fanaticism of religious zealots which makes it otherwise.

Do whatever you feel the need to at home or at church, but leave others alone.

That principle is the basis for a civil and enlightened society.

After all, even among the religious, there are so many groups and denominations and sets of beliefs that one religious text cannot be acceptable to all believers.

To say otherwise is merely to reveal a tyrant's mindset.

We spent centuries burning people at the stake for so much as a small heterodox understanding of the mass. Western society has paid a dear price for religious freedom.

One can just imagine the reaction of unthinking people like the reader were the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita given out to children in public schools.