Debunking Christianity: Christopher Hitchens On the Ten Commandments With Better Ones

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Christopher Hitchens shares his views on why the Ten Commandments doesn't makes sense. Watch his pontification below with my comments following.





Okay, Let's take his points one-by-one. You can read the ten commandments at Exodus 20:1-22.

1 & 2. The first and second commandment does not mean that no images should be made...just none with the purpose of bowing down and worshiping them. This is what "graven image" means. Hitchens is trying to say that the commandment is against art, but we know it can't mean that because God commanded sculptures and art in the Tabernacle and in the Temple.
3. The third commandment is about reverencing God. It about not cursing with God's name. Alleging that we don't know what the command means is silly because you know why you have God's name on your lips.
4. Keeping the Sabbath is described as worshiping only on Saturday, but many Christians worship on Sunday because of the fact that Jesus rose on the 1st days of the week and the sabbath was meant to mean something symbolic and it was never applied to Gentile believers outside of theocratic Israel. I will be making a fuller post on this later.
5. Hitchens seem to be okay honoring father and mother. Finally we agree on something.
6. Hitchens points out that after being told not to kill, Levites were commanded to kill apostates. The problem is that the commandment is not to murder. Not all killing is murder. When the Levites killed those who were not loyal to God it wasn't murder it was justice.
7. The seventh commandment against adultery, Hitchens tries to mitigate it in saying that it's not as bad as murder (shows he knows that the 6th command was against murder not killing), theft, and perjury). He clearly doesn't think adulterers should die for cheating on their spouse. Thing is God Hitxcdisagrees.
8. Hitchens has no problem with number 8. He even goes as far saying that stealing if frowned upon nearly all societies. The "elephant" in the room of course is why? Why is it wrong to steal? Is it wrong because we all think it's wrong or is it objectively wrong? It's objectively wrong because it's a sin against God to steal because everything belongs to God and it is he that gives you everything you have. If someone takes it from you, they take it from God.
9. Hitchen actually seems to like this one. The 9th commandment is about how we should not lie on anyone. Hitchens seems to think it's talking about in a court of law. It is, but it's also broader than that. God is saying to not lie on anyone at anytime.
10. Hitchens offers three objections to the 10th commandment against coveting another person's possessions.
a. He says the commandments equivocates wives with cattle. I disagree because to say that would mean that you think its okay for a woman to covet another woman's husband. No way. On top of the New Testament explicitly states that a husband belongs to his wife and a wife to her husband.
b. He objects because God is punishing us for a thought crime. This is nothing new. Jesus said that if you lust after a woman in your mind you have committed adultery. It's fair.
c. God did not put covetousness in us because God neither tempts us with evil, nor is he tempted by evil.

Hitchens claims that these commands are inconsistent but he provides no evidence then he rewrites the ten commandments for the 21st Century.
1. "Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity of color." The Bible agrees!
2. "Do not even think of using people for personal property." The Bible agrees. Slave holders in Ancient Israel were not to think they owned slaves as property. Neither were Christians in the New Testament.
3."Despise those who use violence or the threat of violence in sexual relationships." The Bible agrees. Considering that sexual relationships are just supposed to be within marriage, and the Bible specifically describes how husbands and wives should relate to one another, there would not be violence.
4. "Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child." Of course the Bible agrees.
5. "Do not condemn people for their inborn nature." Sorry doesn't work. Some people steal...that is their inborn nature. Some people lie incessantly...that is their inborn nature. So should we not prosecute thieves? Or people who lie in court? Sin is sin. Just like you can be delivered from your inborn nature of stealing or lying, you can be delivered from Homosexuality. No sin is worse than another.
6. "Be aware that you too are an animal and subject to the whim of nature." So? How does this help us be more moral?
7. "Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus." The Bible agrees you don't wanna be a false prophet or teacher.
8. Most definitely a joke.
9. "Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions and terrible sexual repression." The Bible agrees that extremists are bad and warns us against being that way.
10. Be willing to renounce any God or any religion if any holy commandment contradicts any of the above. Hitchens failed to show how the 10 commandments contradict any of his 10 commandments.

Debunking Christianity: Christopher Hitchens On the Ten Commandments With Better Ones

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Bible Defended - Common Sense Atheism » Top 20 Evil Bible Stories

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I found the following article on a website. It started with the following quote. The words front he post will be in black and mine will be in blue.

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

- Richard Dawkins

There is plenty of evil in “the Good Book,” but here are some highlights:

Notice how none of these examples are given a context, nor any discussion on why it was not necessary or why the author thinks that he know what "evil" is. It is important to recognize that there are people who really see God this way and read the Bible from this mindset. It is a mindset that says "How dare you, God, have the gall to tell me how to live the life you gave me!"

1. God drowns the whole earth.
In Genesis 7:21-23, God drowns the entire population of the earth: men, women, children, fetuses, and perhaps unicorns. Only a single family survives. In Matthew 24:37-42, gentle Jesus approves of this genocide and plans to repeat it when he returns.

Did God capriciously just decide to wake up one day and say "I think I'll destroy earth today!"?  No. Look at the text. God did not tell Noah to build the ark on Monday and sent the flood on Tuesday. Recall how people were described:

The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.  So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them." - Genesis 6:5-7

and

Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. - Genesis 6:11-12

2. God kills half a million people.
In 2 Chronicles 13:15-18, God helps the men of Judah kill 500,000 of their fellow Israelites.

It was a war....not genocide - and only soldiers and not non-combatants.  This was after Judah and Benjamin split from the other 10 tribes. Do not forget that Judah won because they trusted God.

3. God slaughters all Egyptian firstborn.
In Exodus 12:29, God the baby-killer slaughters all Egyptian firstborn children and cattle because their king was stubborn.

We aren't talking about babies...but adults also! I mean come'on  - 9 plagues came before and they didn't let Israel go. How is it God's fault? Don't forget Egypt was killing all sons born to Israel slaves.  They got a taste of the horror what they visited on their slaves.

4. God kills 14,000 people for complaining that God keeps killing them.
In Numbers 16:41-49, the Israelites complain that God is killing too many of them. So, God sends a plague that kills 14,000 more of them.

Um...the author does not seem to know why the Israelites kept dying because of their own disobedience!

5. Genocide after genocide after genocide.
In Joshua 6:20-21, God helps the Israelites destroy Jericho, killing “men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.” In Deuteronomy 2:32-35, God has the Israelites kill everyone in Heshbon, including children. In Deuteronomy 3:3-7, God has the Israelites do the same to the people of Bashan. In Numbers 31:7-18, the Israelites kill all the Midianites except for the virgins, whom they take as spoils of war. In 1 Samuel 15:1-9, God tells the Israelites to kill all the Amalekites – men, women, children, infants, and their cattle – for something the Amalekites’ ancestors had done 400 years earlier.

Remember that in ancient times, this is what people did! You move into a territory, you kill the inhabitants. This is the point. God commanded it to punish the inhabitants for their sins. 

6. God kills 50,000 people for curiosity.
In 1 Samuel 6:19, God kills 50,000 men for peeking into the ark of the covenant. (Newer cosmetic translations count only 70 deaths, but their text notes admit that the best and earliest manuscripts put the number at 50,070.)

The numerical discrepancies come from reading numbers in Hebrew. Those people died not for curiosity but disobedience and disdaining God. God was sending a message. He has every right to make that point anyway he wants to make it.

7. 3,000 Israelites killed for inventing a god.
In Exodus 32, Moses has climbed Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments. The Israelites are bored, so they invent a golden calf god. Moses comes back and God commands him: “Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.” About 3,000 people died.

Picture it, Moses is on Sinai getting the ten commandment and down in the camp. Israel was breaking all of them! Aside from the idea that they had not had the law yet,they still knew that God brought them out of Egypt and they should have been thankful enough to worship only Him.

8. The Amorites destroyed by sword and by God’s rocks.
In Joshua 10:10-11, God helps the Israelites slaughter the Amorites by sword, then finishes them off with rocks from the sky.

Um....it was a war remember?

9. God burns two cities to death.
In Genesis 19:24, God kills everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from the sky. Then God kills Lot’s wife for looking back at her burning home.

Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of its wickedness. No different than executing a pedophile or rapist. a for Lot's wife...the angel told her to not look back and she disobeyed. When we disobey God, why doesn't he have the right to allow us to suffer the consequences? Simple, He does.

10. God has 42 children mauled by bears.
In 2 Kings 2:23-24, some kids tease the prophet Elisha, and God sends bears to dismember them. (Newer cosmetic translations say the bears “maul” the children, but the original Hebrew, baqa, means “to tear apart.”)

Um they weren't children. Think juvenile delinquents tried as adults.

11. A tribe slaughtered and their virgins raped for not showing up at roll call.
In Judges 21:1-23, a tribe of Israelites misses roll call, so the other Israelites kill them all except for the virgins, which they take for themselves. Still not happy, they hide in vineyards and pounce on dancing women from Shiloh to take them for themselves.

God didn't do that. God didn't tell them to do it.  Here the Bible is describing what happened. The Bible is not saying that we should be have this way or to do those things! So why did things like this happened?

In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit. - Judges 21:25

12. 3,000 crushed to death.
In Judges 16:27-30, God gives Samson strength to bring down a building to crush 3,000 members of a rival tribe.

Not a tribe...the Philistines who were trying to subjugate Israel.  Samson sacrificed himself to kill as many of Israel's enemies as possible.

13. A concubine raped and dismembered.
In Judges 19:22-29, a mob demands to rape a godly master’s guest. The master offers his daughter and a concubine to them instead. They take the concubine and gang-rape her all night. The master finds her on his doorstep in the morning, cuts her into 12 pieces, and ships the pieces around the country.

Again descriptive not prescriptive! God did not tell anyone to do any of this. 

14. Child sacrifice.
In Judges 11:30-39, Jephthah burns his daughter alive as a sacrificial offering for God’s favor in killing the Ammonites.

Again descriptive not prescriptive! God did not tell Jephthah to do any of this.

15. God helps Samson kill 30 men because he lost a bet.
In Judges 14:11-19, Samson loses a bet for 30 sets of clothes. The spirit of God comes upon him and he kills 30 men to steal their clothes and pay off the debt.

God purposed to put Samson in a position to be opposed to the Philistines. There was a purpose in what happened. Don't forget Samson was angry because he lost the bet unfairly. They cheated.

16. God demands you kill your wife and children for worshiping other gods.
In Deuteronomy 13:6-10, God commands that you must kill your wife, children, brother, and friend if they worship other gods.

Worshipping other gods was a capital offense in Ancient Israel. It won't fly in many Muslim countries today either. Each society gets to pick its own laws and God deserves that kind of loyalty and devotion.

17. God incinerates 51 men to make a point.
In 2 Kings 1:9-10, Elijah gets God to burn 51 men with fire from heaven to prove he is God.

There were skeptics In Elijah's time too just like today!  Besides, this is out of context. the men were sent to arrest Elijah. The point wasn't to show that Yahweh was God but to protect Elijah and prove a point don't go talk to foreign deities.

18. God kills a man for not impregnating his brother’s widow.
In Genesis 38:9-10, God kills a man for refusing to impregnate his brother’s widow.

Onan was sleeping his brother's widow but when he orgasmed he pulled out and this was to degrading to her because he did not have to marry her if he did not want to have children.  He was being selfsh. That is why he died.

19. God threatens forced cannibalism.
In Leviticus 26:27-29 and Jeremiah 19:9, God threatens to punish the Israelites by making them eat their own children.

Again, God does not make threats. He makes promises. This was about people who disobey God and turn on him. Things would get so bad that they weould eat their own children. This actually happened too.

20. The coming slaughter.
According to Revelation 9:7-19, God’s got more evil coming. God will make horse-like locusts with human heads and scorpion tails, who torture people for 5 months. Then some angels will kill a third of the earth’s population. If he came today, that would be 2 billion people.

It's not evil...ity's wrath. wrath that all of humanity deserves. If you want to escape this wrath you need only to turn to Christ. Put your trust in Him and believe He is who He said He is - that He died for you and rose again all that so you don't have to be separated from God forever.

Common Sense Atheism » Top 20 Evil Bible Stories