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.
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'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.
