Does God Exist? A Definitive Non-Philosophical Case, by John W. Loftus
This essay began as an opening statement in a debate with Scott Tomlinson, who is on the board of Reasonable Faith, an organization whose founder and owner is the premier apologist of our era, William Lane Craig. The debate took place on March 13, 2023, at the Reston Bible Church, in Dulles, Virginia. Let it be said I didn’t do all that well. But I did good enough. Since Craig has refused to debate me as a former student of his, I consider debating Scott a second best choice.
What follows is an extended and updated essay based on my opening statement, which I’m publishing after some further thought. [You can see the original PowerPoint (with a few errors) at https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2023/03/my-debate-power-point.html]
The thing I like most about debates is they force me to put into words my strongest arguments on a given subject at a given time. See what you think, especially since I wrote the 2016 book, Unapologetic: Why Philosophy Must End, severely downplaying the role of philosophy of religion as it’s practiced. This is better than fruitlessly debating the five ways of Aquinas.
To believe in a god who created the universe doesn’t automatically lead believers to their own specific religious sect. The truth is there are an utterly overwhelming number of non-Christian religionists who agree that a different creator god exists, just not Scott’s. So god-arguments are beside the point if we want to debate something interesting. None of these arguments, even if shown to be true, point to a specific religion, or religious sect.
Until Scott can show that they do, I don’t need to respond to his god-arguments. I want Scott to tell us why he really believes. He doesn’t believe because of any sophisticated philosophical argument. He believes because he accepts the Bible with its evangelical 20th century interpretation.
So his god-arguments are irrelevant, used to reinforce a faith that doesn’t actually need them, which are rejected by some key figures in the history of his Christian faith, like the influential philosopher Immanuel Kant, who in the 18th century had to admit, “I have found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith” [Critique of Pure Reason, p. bxxx], and Karl Barth, the greatest theologian of the last century, who also rejected these god-arguments, with a big fat Nein!
Some key evangelicals agree, who criticize these philosophical arguments:
--Alvin Plantinga: “I don’t know of an argument for Christian belief that seems very likely to convince one who doesn’t already accept its conclusion.” [Warranted Christian Belief, p. 201.]
--Richard Swinburne: “I cannot see any force in an argument to the existence of God from the existence of morality.” [The Existence of God, 2nd, ed., p. 215.]
--John Feinberg: “I am not convinced that any of the traditional arguments succeed.” [Can You Believe it’s True: Christian Apologetics in a Modern, Postmodern Era, p. 321]. I studied analytical philosophy under his brother Paul at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
So why should I bother with them?
The philosophical and scientific case in support of religion is very bad. Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, is a Professor of Philosophy at City College (NY), who holds two PhD’s, one in biology and another in philosophy. He Tweeted: “I’m sorry but I can’t any longer take seriously any essay or paper that itself takes talk of god seriously. It’s simply a non starter.” [March 28, 2023]
In response, The Real Atheology Podcast Tweeted, “given the serious work done by many Theistic philosophers, I have to disagree with your comments here.” Pigliucci then responded, “I don’t consider any theologian to be ‘serious.’ They may be, and often are, analytically rigorous. But so is the concept of p-zombies. And yet I think it’s a waste of time.” Pigliucci again Tweeted, “Consider, for instance, the Medieval Scholastics. They were rigorous and did a lot of work. But it was, as David Hume famously put it, only a bunch of sophistry and illusions. Why? Because it was based on indefensible assumptions and lack of empirical evidence.” [March 30, 2023].
I agree, and I have rigorously defended such a viewpoint in my book Unapologetic. [You can see an online excerpt of it, titled, “Why I Changed My Mind On the Value of the Philosophy of Religion?” https://www.academia.edu/65144743/Why_I_Changed_My_Mind_On_the_Value_of_the_Philosophy_of_Religion ]
So in what follows I want do something different for good reasons, addressing the topic, “Does the God of the Bible Exist?”
What is almost always overlooked in debating the existence of the theistic god is that such an entity has had a complex evolution over the centuries from Elohim, to Yahweh, to Jesus, then to the god of the philosophers, without asking if the original gods had any merit. I will critically scrutinize each of these gods in what follows.
Atheist philosophers of religion try to disprove the existence of the Christian god by arguing against the philosophical proofs put forth. This is okay as it goes, but it overlooks the fact that Christians will just come up with different conceptions of “God”, despite the fact that these new conceptions are foreign to the gods we find in the Bible.
There is a better approach. It’s the one that changed my mind, from a former Christian apologist to an atheist. It involves taking the Bible seriously.
What this means is that if we want to understand the Bible we shouldn’t try to dismiss it depending on what we think it should say. Rather, we should honestly try to understand what it says. Agreed?
Unfortunately, when it comes to the Bible, Christians take it literally until such time as the literal interpretation becomes indefensible. Then they find some other meaning, no matter how strange. In other words it says what it says until refuted by reason, morality, and/or science, then it says something other than what it says. Keep this in mind as you read. Come back to read it again if needed.
Tonight I’ll explain a few Bible passages in an attempt to help listeners understand them without recourse to skepticism, or anti-supernaturalism. Okay?
Dr. Jaco Gericke wrote: “If you read the Scriptures and are not shocked out of all your religious beliefs you have not understood them.” Gericke has PhD’s in the Old Testament and the Philosophy of Religion. His chapter “Can God Exist if Yahweh Doesn’t?” in my book, The Christian Delusion, gave me the idea for this debate opener.
1) THE GOD ELOHIM DOESN’T EXIST!
To see this let’s focus on the first chapter in Genesis. It can be difficult to understand. It requires understanding the immediate context, the larger context, and the wider contexts of the Bible in the surrounding cultures of their day.
How to Better Understand Genesis 1:
--Interpret it Using Other Passages.
--Accept the consensus of scientists working in their respective fields on anything relevant to the claims and stories we find in the Genesis texts. There isn't any higher authority. No non-scientist can dispute the consensus until that consensus changes. Only further science can change the consensus, not any prescientific biblical verses.
--Use Archaeological Evidence.
--Use the Earliest Manuscripts.
--Understand Akkadian literature like the Enuma Elish, which is called “The Babylonian Genesis” Agreed?
The Enuma Elish (c. 1600 BCE) predates Genesis 1.
--Both are products of the same Mesopotamian conceptual world.
--There are important similarities: Darkness precedes creation. Same division of the waters above and below. Light exists before the creation of the sun, moon, and stars. The sequence of the days of creation are the same. Both gods rest afterward. Plus most importantly, it has a chaos god. More on this later.
When we take the Bible seriously we discover a significant but unsuccessful cover-up about the gods we find in the Bible, who evolved over the centuries from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism.
Let’s look at Genesis 1. I’ll point out 7 things about the first two verses, usually translated like this:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was without form and void, and darkness covered the surface of the abyss, and the Spirit of God was moving over the waters.”
1st) This is not describing the absolute beginning of time! The word “the” in verse one, “In the beginning” is not there.
Better Translations:
-- “When God began to create the heavens and earth.” (NRSV)
--“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.” (New American Bible)
2nd) Genesis is not describing a creation out of nothing! Instead, it’s describing the making of something from pre-existing matter. This is stated well by a translators note in New English Translation (NET):
“Genesis itself does not account for the original creation of matter. The ‘heavenly/sky’ did not exist prior to the second day of creation, and the ‘earth/dry land’ did not exist as we know it, prior to the third day.”
Genesis 1 begins ominously. What exists is a formless empty earth, hidden beneath a darkened watery chaos.
3rd) Genesis 1 is not describing the origin of heaven where the saints go when they die! It’s describing the origin of the “skies” above us.
4th) Nor is it describing the origin of the planet earth, since it hadn’t been discovered yet! It’s describing the origin of “dry land”.
5th) Nor does the “Spirit of God” move over the waters! The word used can be translated “spirit” or “breath” or “wind” because the ancients believed wind came from the breath of their gods. It’s best translated as “the wind of God”. We no longer attribute the wind, or hurricanes, to God’s Spirit or his breath.
Biblical scholar Dr. Kipp Davis offered the following comment: “This is most likely akin to the wind-weapon fashioned by Marduk in his defeat of the chaos monster, Tiamat. The way that the “wind of god” is pictured brooding (“hovering”) over the watery chaos is a combative posture of dominance over a vanquished enemy.”
6th) Who was making the world in Genesis chapter one?
It was Elohim, a plural word for “gods”. Dr. Randall Heskett: “Elohim, even after monotheism, still includes the heavenly hosts, who are part of the divine council.” [Heskett is an Old Testament and Hebrew scholar.] This includes “the sons of god” (Job 38:7). Elohim says, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26), which includes these celestial beings. More on Elohim directly below.
7th) The word “abyss” is misleading, since what is being described in Genesis 1:2 is not just vastly deep and darkened waters. It’s describing a primordial “chaos” which is being manipulated and maintained by mischievous chaos gods! More on chaos gods after we first look at Elohim.
So here is a better translation of Genesis 1:1-2:
“Elohim made the skies and the dry land, beginning with land that was without form and void, with darkness covering the surface of the chaos, and the wind of Elohim was hovering over the waters.” [The original grammar is a bit difficult to translate. If nothing else, consider this a slightly interpretive translation using corrected wording.]
I could use the word “God” instead of Elohim since the verbs indicate a singular male God. (i.e., “God he said ‘Let there be Light…’”). It’s just that it’s more complicated than that. Dr. Heskett suggested “In the beginning, when the henotheistic god—who became a monotheistic god but kept his henotheistic name—created the heavens and earth.” He adds, “elohim is the resonance of henotheism, before the move to monotheism.”
Who is Elohim?
The Hebrew word Elohim is derived from the name of the Caananite god El, a shortened version of which is El Elyon, or “God Most High”. El was the head of the Canaanite pantheon of gods.
We see him enter the drama in Genesis 14:18-20:
“Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of El Elyon, and he blessed Abram, saying: ‘Blessed be Abram by El Elyon, Creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to El Elyon, who delivered your enemies into your hand.’”
El had a wife named Asherah, the Queen of Heaven. El had many “sons of god” with her, deities in their own right.
In Genesis 6 these embodied deities married women, had genitalia, and produced human giants called Nephilim as offspring, to be raised by their mothers!
These same deities were in heaven watching the drama unfold in the book of Job.
That the Hebrews worshiped El is sure, we can see it in geographic places and names, such as
Beth-el = “House of El”
Peni-el = “Face of El
Micha-el = “Who is like El?”
Dani-el = “Judged by El”
Isra-el = “Struggled with El”
Ishma-el “Heard by El”
…along with a whole host of others!
We shouldn’t be surprised that a Canaanite god made the earth and the skies above. Biblical scholar Mark S. Smith says:
“Archaeological data in the Iron I age suggests that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature.” [Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel. (2002). pp. 6–7].
What About Chaos Gods?
Most ancient cultures believed there was someone or something causing chaos before the creative gods came along to put a stop to their mischief. Chaos was usually personified as a god, the first god. They were typically associated with a wild, unpredictable, scary sea.
Chaos Gods Were Plentiful:
Apophis – The Egyptian Chaos God
Eris – The Greek Chaos Goddess
Chaos – The Roman God of Chaos
Tiamat – The Mesopotamian Chaos Goddess
--Tiamat was a chaos goddess of the saltwater ocean depicted as a monster, a dragon. In the Enuma Elish, the chief god Marduk killed Tiamat and used her carcass to make the skies and dry land.
--The Hebrew word in Genesis 1:2 for “chaos” is the Akkadian equivalent for Tiamat. Dr. Heskett: “They are one and the same.”
So Elohim was fighting chaos gods!
Chaos gods like Rahab:
“By his power he churned up the sea; by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces. (Job 26)
“You crushed Rahab, with your strong arm you founded the world and all that is in it.” (Psalms 89)
Biblical scholar Dr. James Barr wrote:
“This point of view, this way of seeing the matter, was almost certainly present to the minds of some biblical writers.” [Beyond Fundamentalism, pp. 132-33)]. Which authors? The authors/editors of Genesis 1, Job, Psalms, and Isaiah:
Isaiah 51:9–16:
“Awake, awake, arm of Yahweh, as in generations of old. Was it not you who cut Rahab to pieces, who pierced that monster through?”
Yahweh Responds:
“I am Yahweh your Elohim, who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar, and who say to Zion, ‘You are my people.'”
If you don’t have a concept of an eternal god this is the alternative! In an ancient polytheistic world gods are born from and return to chaos, just as people were born and died without them knowing their own origins.
In a polytheistic world gods also fight each other, just like we do. That’s because human beings invent gods that resemble themselves, given what we know about the world. As our world changes so also our gods change with the times.
Look At the 6 Days of “Making” rather than “Creating.” Haven’t you wondered who Elohim was speaking to?
Question: Who Was Elohim Commanding?
Day 1: Elohim said, “Let there be…
Day 2: Elohim said, “Let there be…
Day 3: Elohim said, “Let the waters…
Day 4: Elohim said, “Let there be…
Day 5: Elohim said, “Let the waters…
Day 6: Elohim said, “Let the earth…
Answer: Chaos gods!
With each day Elohim was freeing the skies and the land from the power of their grip. He is described as doing this just as Yahweh sent ten plagues against the gods of Egypt he was fighting, even though those gods were not mentioned.
What we find is Elohim lighting the darkness from above, making dry land to surface, and filling it with life.
Day 1: “Let there be light”
Elohim took a dark, formless, empty earth that was engulfed in water, and said, “Let there be light”. This wasn’t sunlight, which was to be created on Day 4. Rather, it’s more like the dim light we see in a theatre before the show begins.
Day 2: “Let there be a dome in the middle of the water in order to separate the water.”
Elohim took some of the waters, lifted them up into the sky, and held them up in the sky with a “gigantic metal dome” (per translator note in New American Bible). After all, the myth-makers had already entered the Iron Age. Then the dome was supported by huge pillars (Job 9). What supported the pillars themselves is relegated to myth and mystery, the bedrock of faith. Or, is it really turtles all the way down after all?
Later we find Elohim opened the floodgates of the dome in the sky to flood the earth (Genesis 7:11), which never happened, per science!
Day 3: “Let the dry land appear and vegetation to grow.”
Dry land surfaced from beneath the waters. This was reaffirmed in the New Testament: “By the word of God the earth was made from water...” 2 Peter 3:5
But science shows the earth was a very hot gaseous ball which had a billion years of rust before there was water.
Day 4: “Let there be lights in the sky to separate the day from the night.” Elohim fixed the sun, moon, stars, and galaxies by the billions in the same dome that held back the waters from the land. Picture them like recessed lighting in a ceiling, something absurd given modern astronomy.
We learn Elohim’s throne is not far above the dome in the sky, because he worried men might actually build a Tower of Babel up to him (Genesis 11)!
We’re told Jesus was taken by Satan to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem and tempted, where he could see all the kingdoms of the world! How is that possible on this globe we live on? What about kingdoms in China, India, Brazil and Europe?
Jesus “ascended” up to the sky, from which “every eye” will see him return–-because they believed heaven was literally up there, and that the earth was flat!
The earth is depicted as immovable (Joel 2:10; Isaiah 13:13; Revelation 6:12–13), and flat (Ps. 75:3; 104:5; Is. 11:12; Job 28:24). It uses the phrase: “The ends of the earth” (Deut. 13:7; Job 28:24; Ps. 48:10).
Edward Babinski did a massive amount of research on this and concludes: “Taking the Bible at its word means thinking in terms of a flat earth.” [See his chapter on “Biblical Cosmology” in my book, The Christian Delusion.]
In Elohim’s world the stars move: “The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.” Eccl. 1:5.
…and they stop: “The sun stopped in the middle of the sky for about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since.” Joshua 10.
…and they point down: The Star of Bethlehem pointed the Magi to the baby Jesus.
Day 5: Elohim made all aquatic and flying animals according to their “kind” without any understanding of how species originated via evolution. Plus, Elohim showed no awareness of dinosaurs.
Imagine that! A creator god who knows nothing about the universe!
--Day 6: Elohim said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” What could this mean? Taking the Bible seriously means Elohim had a body like ours!
--Genesis 5:1-3 repeats this language: “Elohim made man in his likeness.” Then it says, “Adam had a son in his own likeness, and he named him Seth.” As we find in Adam so also we find in Elohim, a fleshly body. Maybe the idea of God being likened to "the man in the sky" isn't that far off the mark after all!
--Day 7: Elohim was tired so he rested. But only embodied beings can get tired, surely not an omnipotent spiritual being. This follows what we know of the Babylonian god Marduk, in the Ennma Elish, in that he made humans to work, so he could rest.
Genesis 32:22-32 tells us Jacob wrestled with Elohim and prevailed. Jacob struggled with a man one night. The man asked to be released, but Jacob refused until he blessed him. So Jacob was named “Israel” because he “struggled with Elohim and had overcome.” Jacob called the place Peniel, “because I saw Elohim face to face, and yet my life was spared.” [On this see the 2022 book, God: An Anatomy, by Francesca Stavrakopoulou.]
Elohim Doesn’t Exist!
--It’s a Canaanite embodied deity.
--Invented by superstitious people.
--There is no excuse for a real creator to utterly fail a basic science class, regardless of whether the days of creation were sequential or not!
--There is no excuse for a real creator to mislead his creatures about something so important.
2) THE GOD YAHWEH DOESN’T EXIST!
Dr. Jaco Gericke: “The entity most readers refer to when they speak of God is an upgraded version of a middle-Eastern tribal deity called Yahweh.”
Just like Elohim, Yahweh also had a body:
“Adam and Eve heard the sound of Yahweh as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from Yahweh among the trees of the garden. But Yahweh called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.’” (Genesis 3:8-19)
Yahweh let Moses see his body:
Moses wanted to see Yahweh, so Yahweh said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you…But you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Then Yahweh said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.’” Exodus 33.
In the Old Testament, whenever you come across “the Lord Our God”, or “the Lord God” or even “Lord”, Christian translators have hidden the truth behind those words. It’s “Yahweh” or “Yahweh your god.”
You can see this with these two examples:
“I am Yahweh your Elohim, who brought you out of slavery in Egypt.” Deuteronomy 5:6.
“Will you not possess what Chemosh your Elohim gives you? All that Yahweh our Elohim has given us, we will possess.” Judges 11:24.
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain the oldest text of the book of Deuteronomy. It predates the manuscripts used for the Biblical texts by a thousand years, and it says Yahweh was a son of El Elyon, who gave him the Hebrew people to rule over.
Deuteronomy 32:8-9, 43:
“When Elyon divided the nations; When he separated the sons of Adam, he established the borders of the nations according to the sons of Elohim. Yahweh’s portion was his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance…Praise, O heavens, his people, Kneel before him, all you Elohim.” (Dead Sea Scrolls, 4QDeut)
Now we can see this attempted cover-up:
--The Masoretic Hebrew text inserted “sons of Israel”
--The Greek Septuagint inserted “angels of god”
--The Dead Sea Scrolls (c. 3rd century BCE) says “sons of God”.
New English Translation note on Deuteronomy 32: “Sons of God is undoubtedly the original reading.” This, I submit, is the proverbial smoking gun, showing an important deceptive redaction of the original text by the biblical myth-makers. [See Thom Stark's discussion of this in chapter 4 of his 2011 book, The Human Faces of God, titled, “Yahweh's Ascendancy”.
Now look at Psalm 82: “The downfall of unjust gods” (a title given by the translators of New American Bible):
“Elohim presides in the divine council; he renders judgment in the midst of the Elohim (i.e., gods): ‘How long are you going to judge unfairly? Defend weak people and orphans. Protect the rights of the oppressed…I declare: Elohim though you be, you are all sons of Elyon. Yet like any mortal you shall die; like any prince you shall fall.’”
What we see here is no different than what we find in other cultures connected through the trade route of the Fertile Crescent, whose deities were polytheistic/henotheistic families of gods with a supreme one ruling over them. Beyond them there were large pantheons of gods in other lands and times. Why should it be different with El Elyon, Asherah, and Yahweh? By the way, Yahweh had brothers were Chemosh (Kemosh), Baal, and Milcom.
Mark Smith sees the union of El and Yahweh later in the early Hebrew monarchy. El became identified as a name of Yahweh, while Asherah ceased to be a distinct goddess. The attributes of El, Asherah, and Baal (a storm-god) were assimilated into Yahweh. Yahweh eventually reigned over the Hebrews in Palestine, a territory given him by El Elyon.
Readers might assume the final deity is an omnipotent one. But Yahweh begins as a tribal god who is far from being all-powerful. We are told, “Yahweh was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” Judges 1:19.
Imagine that! An all powerful god cannot defeat men in iron chariots! What could he do against tanks and fighter jets?
Dr. Jaco Gericke: “In the Old Testament texts are to be believed, ultimate reality is the god of Israel who forever uses Iron-Age artifacts. Time-period artifacts like ram horn shofars, swords, scrolls and chariots, are described as if they have been around forever and will be used forever.”
Yahweh rides on chariots (Psalms 68:17; 104:3; Isaiah 66:15), and brought Elijah up to heaven in one (2 Kings 2). He also needs an army to do his bidding, but why?
Dr. Jaco Gericke: “There was a time before the Iron-Age when these artifacts didn’t exist. People wrote on stone and clay, fought with clubs, bows and spears and ran on foot. Some cultures never used these artifacts and have never even heard of them. Modern people today don’t write on scrolls, fight battles with swords, blow on ram’s horns or ride in horse-drawn chariots.”
Yahweh is a Monster! Four Cases:
1) The Story of Job!
--Yahweh is with his sons.
--A spy accused Job.
--Yahweh did not know.
--Job’s pointless suffering.
--Yahweh boasts.
Yahweh enlisted the barbaric thought police, a spy, a “satan” to find out if anyone was being hypocritical, because Yahweh didn’t know. The satan was a fully credentialed member of the divine court, Yahweh's little helper. Satan accused Job. So Yahweh allowed the satan to test Job with trials and tribulations to find out the truth, because again, Yahweh didn’t know. If he already knew, then Job’s sufferings were pointless.
Yahweh lives in a separate palace in the sky and acts like a petty narcissistic king who could treat his subjects terribly simply because he could do so, just like any other despotic Mediterranean king they knew. Job was a pawn who was tortured for the pleasure of Yahweh and his sons. At the end Yahweh doesn’t reveal why Job suffered, just that Job wasn’t capable of understanding it, so he was faulted for demandimg an answer from the Almighty.
In the debate Scott said evil cannot be an attribute of God, because “evil is not a great-making quality.” In Job’s tale power alone is indeed a great making quality! The one with the greatest power is in charge and can do what he wants, even in doing evil by sending disasters (Isaiah 45:7; Lamentations 3:28; Amos 3:6). The concept of a Satanic being had not yet been invented by the myth-makers. [On this see The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil’s Biblical Roots, by T.J. Wray and Gregory Mobley, 2005].
Imagine that! An all knowing god who doesn’t know it all, and doesn't care for the "collateral damages."
Yahweh is a Monster! 2) Genocide!
“In the cities of these peoples that Yahweh your god is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction as Yahweh your god has commanded.” Deuteronomy 20:16-18.
“Thus says the Lord of hosts, 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 15:1-3. [On this see chapter 6 in Thom Stark’s book, The Human Faces of God, 2011].
Yahweh is a Monster! 3) Slavery!
“Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.” Exodus 21:20-21.
“Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life.” Leviticus 25:44–46.
Is this a perfectly good God?
If you were enslaved,
a) Could Yahweh not have said anything different?
b) Does this express your god’s complete and utter love toward you as an individual? [On this see Hector Avolas’s book, Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship, 2013.]
Yahweh is a Monster! 4) Child Sacrifice! [On this See Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son, 1993].
“You shall not delay to offer from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. The first-born of your sons you shall give to me. You shall do likewise with your oxen and with your sheep: seven days it shall be with its dam; on the eighth day you shall give it to me.” Exodus 22:29-30.
Let’s spend some time on this absolutely horrific command. Hebrew people understood Yahweh’s command and acted accordingly.
Abraham was not morally repulsed by the command to sacrifice his son Isaac, and there is no command against such a practice by Yahweh afterward (Genesis 22). Jepthah sacrificed his daughter (Judges 11). King Solomon set up sites for his foreign wives to sacrifice children to the goddess Asherah, and Chemosh (I Kings 11:1-7). King Ahab sacrificed his two sons when rebuilding Jericho. “He laid its foundations at the cost of his firstborn son Abiram, and he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub, in accordance with the word of the Lord spoken by Joshua son of Nun.” (I Kings 16:33-34); There were also Kings Ahaz (II Kings 16:2-3); Hoshea (II Kings 17:7); and Manasseh (II Kings 21; II Chronicles 33:6) who all set up places for child sacrifices.
In Micah 6:6-8 child sacrifices were considered the highest form of sacrifice:
What God Requires of Man
With what shall I come to Yahweh, And bow myself before Elohim on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Does Yahweh take delight in thousands of rams, in ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts; the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul.
He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does Yahweh require of you. But to do justice, to love kindness; And to walk humbly with your Elohim?
There is clearly an ascending order of magnitude for sacrifices that the prophet thought pleased Yahweh, first by sacrificing 1) yearling calves, to 2) thousands of rams, to 3) his firstborn child, then concluding it would be better if he hadn’t sinned at all. The logic is that child sacrifice was the highest sacrifice to Yahweh, next to living a life without sin, which wouldn’t require any sacrifice.
In his book, The Human Faces of God (2011), Thom Stark calls human sacrifice what it is, “Making Yahweh happy.”
Archeologically speaking, there is evidence that supports the biblical account that children were sacrificed at the founding of cities, gates, and other structures. “In the sanctuary in Gezer were found two burnt skeletons of six-year-old children and the skulls of two adolescents that had been sawed in two. At Megiddo a girl of fifteen had been killed and buried in the foundations of a large structure.” [Nigel Davies, Human Sacrifice, In History and Today, 1988, p. 61.]
About this Dr. Kipp Davis says, “the physical evidence for child sacrifice in the Levant is scant, but this is also unsurprising. Children would have been sacrificed within days or weeks after birth, and mostly cartilaginous nature of a newborn infant’s skeleton will decompose to nothing.” [See note #1]
What we have are the written records of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E that “demonstrate beyond all doubt that the Israelites of the period made burnt offerings of their sons in the Tophet fires lighted in the Valley of Gehinnon outside Jerusalem (II Kings 23:10). Usually the infants were ‘passed over’ or ‘passed through’ the fire, in honour of Molech.” [Davies, Human Sacrifice, pp. 63-64.]
Topheth, means “place of fire” which was located in a “high place”, a site of worship and sacrifice. Dr. Kipp Davies claims “Molech IS NOT a god!” “Most likely,” he says, “מלך was a form of offering—a child sacrifice ritual that could be carried out for any god, including Yahweh.”
Whatever the ritual was like, when the fires were hot enough, the infant was placed into the flames. The bone-chilling screams of the babies must have been extremely hard to listen to!
At the very least Yahweh should never have given any indications that child sacrifice worked! But we read in the Bible that King Mesha of Moab sacrificed his first born son to Chemosh, which caused the Israelites to retreat in defeat. Mesha’s sacrifice brought a great “wrath” (ketzef) against the Israelite warriors in the story, indicating that Chemosh acted on their behalf! 2 Kings. 3:26–27.
Francesca Stavrakopoulou concludes her book, King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities (2004), by saying: “Despite the biblical exhortation that child sacrifice is alien to Yahweh worship, practiced by the foreign and idolatrous, and consistently outlawed by Yahweh, closer inspection of this biblical portrayal instead locates child sacrifice within the mainstream of its presentation of Yahweh. . . . Child sacrifice appears to be a native and normative element of Judahite religious practice” (p. 318).
Susan Niditch, in her book, War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence, (1993) says, “While there is considerable controversy about the matter, the consensus over the last decade concludes that child sacrifice was a part of ancient Israelite religion to large segments of Israelite communities of various periods.” “Child sacrifice appears to be a native and normative element of Judahite religious practice.” p. 47.
S. Ackerman argues that within the ancient Israelite community, “the cult of child sacrifice was felt in some circles to be a legitimate expression of Yawistic faith.” Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah, 1992), p. 137.
Imagine that! A perfectly good god who commands the most horrific deeds to be done!
Eventually the myth-makers got sick of child sacrifice, and believed Yahweh was angry because of it. So the redactors did what they could do to stop it.
King Josiah’s Strategy: Rewrite History Then Eradicate It!
The High Priest Hilkiah was an early facilitor of fake news. He lied by saying he discovered a previously unknown book of law when repairs were being made to the Temple in about 622 BCE. Allegedly it condemned child sacrifices. Strangely, no one thought to preserve this book. Some say it may be an early edition of Deuteronomy. But one thing sure, is that the further back in time we go, the less likely Hilkiah would find a book that condemned child sacrifices.
King Josiah was surely in on the con, especially since he promoted a most outrageous lie about himself and his reforms. The lie was that both his name and his attempts to eradicate child sacrifice were predicted 300 years beforehand, something unheard of when it came to any other prophecy of this type. We know it’s a lie because the original prophet who is said to predict it was coincidentally made to die immediately afterward, which explains why no one had ever heard of him. Then his remains were atypically buried alongside of an old prophet, whose grave was pointed out in Josiah’s day as “evidence” of the prophecy, yet never dug up. Also, and more significantly, the prediction was made before child sacrifice was considered by the myth-makers to be sick. We know King Josiah was in on it, because no one else could force the other priests and scribes to keep silent about it. [Compare I Kings 13:1-32 with II Kings 23:1-26, and the introduction my book, "The Case Against miracles."]
So King Josiah “defiled the high places…which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. And he broke in pieces the pillars, and cut down the Asherim, and filled their places with the bones of men…. And he slew all the priests of the high places who were there, upon the altars, and burned the bones of men upon them.” II Kings 22-23.
“Josiah defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech.” II Kings 23:10.
Jeremiah’s Strategy: Just Deny Yahweh Ever Commanded It!
Josiah’s reforms didn’t last past his reign. In any case, the myth-makers said Yahweh’s anger was not assuaged. So Jeremiah' strategy was to simply deny Yahweh ever sanctioned child sacrifices: “The sons of Judah have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and daughters in the fire; which I did not command, and it did not come into my mind” (Jere. 7:31). Jeremiah even claimed the scribes had lied (Jer. 8:8). So Jeremiah predicted Yahweh's judgment:
Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind. So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter (Jere. 19:3-6).
Ezekiel’s Strategy: Have Yahweh Say He Was Teaching His People How Bad They Were For Obeying His Commands!
Roughly 600 years after Yahweh commanded child sacrifice the prophet Ezekiel invented a hindsight justification for condemning it. He made Yahweh say, “I gave them statutes that were not good in making them offer by fire all their first-born, that I might horrify them; I did it that they might know that I am Yahweh.” Ezekiel 20:25–27. Whatever this bizarre claim means, Yahweh was not concerned about the numbers of babies who were killed for centuries!
[SIDE NOTE ON INERRANCY]: No matter how we look at it there are lies in the Bible. Surely King Josiah and his High Priest Hilkiah lied about finding a book, and its contents, along with a 300 year old faked prophecy. In addition, either the text of Exodus 22:29-30 is a forgery, where Yahweh commands child sacrifice, or Jeremiah was lying, or Ezekiel was lying. This means the doctrine of inerrancy is hopelessly indefensible.]
Thomas Paine: “To believe the Bible to be true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of God; And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.” [The Age of Reason (Radford, VA: Wilder Publications, 2007), p. 71].
In many cases child sacrifice was primarily condemned because it was offered to other deities (II Kings 17:17 23:10; II Chronicles 28:3; 33:4-10; Psalm 106:38; Isaiah 57:5,6; Ezekiel 16:20,21; 20:26,31; 23:37,39; cf. Acts 7:43), not because child sacrifice was wrong in and of itself.
Yahweh is to be blamed for legitimizing child sacrifices in the first place. Once that was accepted as a divine command the only question left was which god people should sacrifice their firstborn children to. If Yahweh existed as a perfectly good, all-knowing deity, he should’ve condemned it from the very beginning, with no exceptions, and enforced it by doling out stiff punishments to people who did it.
Eventually child sacrifice to foreign gods was so prevalent it was named as one of the major reasons Yahweh sent the Assyrians to destroy the kingdom of Israel in the North in 722 BCE, and why he sent the Babylonians to conquer and take captive the Judaeans in South in 587 BCE. 2 Kings 17:14–18; 2 Kings 25.
When the Judaeans were defeated by Babylonia in 587 BCE, they interpreted events in defiance of the facts. The prophets didn’t blame Yahweh; they blamed their own sins. They had brought ruin on themselves. And since their god Yahweh brought down upon them the mightiest empire of the world from a distant foreign land, they concluded Yahweh was the only God!
Consequently, this is how monotheism was born, and this is what later editors wrote back into their own sacred texts, making it difficult to see that the Hebrews began as a thoroughly polytheistic people who accepted child sacrifice to their god.
Monotheism was finally accepted and taught by the myth-makers: “I am Yahweh, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who by myself spread out the earth” Isaiah 44:24.
But Yahweh lied by saying no gods came before him:
“You are my witnesses,” declares Yahweh. No god was formed before me, and there will be none after me.” Isaiah 43:10.
In this passage Yahweh is also saying he had a beginning and will go out of existence, like other polytheistic gods.
Oddly, Yahweh challenged the other gods, saying:
“Set forth your case, says Yahweh; bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob. Do good, or do harm, that we may be afraid and terrified. You, indeed, are nothing and your work is nothing at all; whoever chooses you is an abomination.” Isaiah 41:21-24.
Who talks to beings that do not exist? Instead we would speak to the myth-makers instead. We might say, “Set forth your case, bring your proofs. Show that your gods do good, or do harm, that we may be afraid and terrified. Your gods, indeed, are nothing and their work is nothing at all; whoever chooses them is believing in an abomination.”
Although monotheism had arrived, Yahweh was still an embodied god. He had a throne to sit on (Ezek. 1; Daniel 7; Matt. 25:31; Rev. 5:1), and he rewards people by allowing them to see his face (Matt. 5:8; 18:11, Rev. 22:3-4). The first martyr Stephen saw Jesus “standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:56)
3) THE GOD JESUS DOESN’T EXIST!
If the embodied polytheistic moral monster Yahweh and his sons don’t exist, then the embodied god Jesus depicted in the Gospels doesn’t exist, since he’s the alleged son of Yahweh, a part of the Trinity, and in complete agreement with everything Yahweh said and did.
Justin Martyr was the grandfather of the entire tradition of Christian apologetics, whom contemporary apologists ignore. He wrote apologetic works, one of which is The First Apology, written to Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius (c. 155-157 CE). In it he argued against the persecution of Christians by defending Christianity. He wrote:
When we say that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing new from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Zeus.
For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Zeus: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Æsculapius, who was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus.
For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Cæsar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre? And what kind of deeds are recorded of each of these reputed sons of Zeus, it is needless to tell to those who already know. [From Chapter 21]
Dr. Richard Miller comments as follows: “Justin contends there is ‘nothing new’ about the Christian tales of Jesus. They are the same in kind as the Greco-Roman demi-gods: sired by human and divine parents, a tragic death, immortalization / resurrection, ascension, etc., which are the adorning themes of a superhero, not of real events in time and space."
“Justin essentially says: ‘Our new hero is just like your own, except ours is awesome, whereas yours are the deceptions of demons.’”
“Justin offers no historical evidence.”
“Justin’s ‘case’ is that Jesus had more ancient prophetic oracles, or was a more perfect symbol of morality, and that’s it.” [On this see Miller's book, Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity. 2017.]
Why doesn’t Justin offer any historical evidence? Because none was needed, just as there was none needed for the sons of Zeus. Hero deification was based solely on the perceived greatness of the deceased.
But Jesus was not a perfect symbol of morality!
He acted just like other ancient deities as we’ve seen, since he was one with Yahweh, his father (John 10: 30).
Jesus was Job’s tormentor, commanded genocide, slavery, child sacrifice, PLUS threatened an eternal punishment in hell.
Furthermore, in the Book of Revelation Jesus is depicted as a horrible revengeful deity. [See Bart Ehrman’s 2023 book Armageddon: What The Bible Really Says About the End Time.]
From Ehrman’s Preface:
The book repeatedly indicates that God is angry and that Christ seeks to avenge his own unjust death, not just on those who were responsible for it; his vengeance falls on the “inhabitants of earth." His followers too want revenge and are told to go out and get it. The largest section describes God and his “Lamb” inflicting horrible suffering on the planet; war, starvation, horrid disease, drought, earthquake, torture, and death. The catastrophes end with the Battle of Armageddon, where Christ destroys all the armies of earth and calls on the scavengers of the sky to gorge themselves on their flesh. This, then, is the climax of the history of earth.
But it is not the end of all things. After that there will be a final judgment. God’s faithful followers, his 'slaves,' will be saved; everyone else who has ever lived will be brought back to life, judged for their wickedness, and then thrown, while still alive, into a lake of burning sulfur.
Furthermore, if Jesus had prophetic support then where is to be found?
There is none! I defy someone to come up with one.
No prophecy of a Trinitarian God
No prophecy of a Virgin Birth
No prophecy of an Incarnation
No prophecy of a suffering Messiah
No prophecy of a resurrection
No prophecy of a second coming
[On this see Robert Miller’s book, Helping Jesus Fulfill Prophecy, which David Madison reviewed right here. See also section two of my book The Case Against Miracles.]
The Jews and Prophesies:
They were supposedly beloved of Yahweh.
They believed in Yahweh.
They believed Yahweh does miracles.
They hoped for a messiah.
They knew their prophecies.
But they did not believe!
4) FINALLY, THE GOD OF THE PHILOSOPHERS DOESN’T EXIST!
If Christians think that an omni-everything god can legitimately be based on the Bible, or its theology, they are fooling themselves. They are inventing their own versions of god just like ancient people in the Bible did. If anything, the problem of horrendous suffering renders that god-concept extremely improbable to the point of refutation. [On this see my 2021 anthology God and Horrendous Suffering].
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[1] Not willing to spend much time on this let's hope Wikpedia is accurate enough:
Traditionally, the name Moloch has been understood as referring to a Canaanite god.[2] However, since 1935, scholars have debated whether or not the term refers to a type of sacrifice on the basis of a similar term, also spelled mlk, which means "sacrifice" in the Punic language.[3] This second position has grown increasingly popular, but it remains contested.[4] Among proponents of this second position, controversy continues as to whether the sacrifices were offered to Yahweh or another deity, and whether they were a native Israelite religious custom or a Phoenician import.[5]
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