How Religion Promotes Intolerance and (Gulp!) — Even Murder

Nolan Dalla

13 years ago

The Old Testament is a literary circus of ludicrous assertions and contradictions. But it’s also the basis of much of Western Civilization and the foundation of Judeo-Christian belief. Many even believe The Old Testament is the literal “word of God.” Here’s a closer examination of Biblical texts and their influence on our lives.

The Old Testament is the most destructive book ever written.

By “destructive,” I mean detrimental to humanity.

It’s the foundation for most Judeo-Christian faith. Many Jews and Christians believe The Old Testament is the literal word of God. Every letter, word, phrase, and paragraph was bolted to the printed page as a pronouncement straight from the deity. It’s what he wants. It’s his plan. It’s his “how-to” playbook.

If this horrible book really stands as the literal word of God, then someone’s got some explaining to do.

The Old Testament is a literary circus of ludicrous assertions and contradictions. If logic is our stick, The Old Testament can be busted open easier than a pinata at a Mexican birthday party. Filled with voluminous passages which flat out justify intolerance, racism, slavery, torture, and even murder, these noxious texts have served as guideposts of wickedness for centuries. They are in fact, perilous detours away from the highway of rationality and reason.

Before, these texts were cited to justify horrible crimes against humanity, including the Inquisition and the Crusades. Now, they’re used to deny equality, preserve monocracy, and inhibit science. But what stands far and away as the most troublesome fruition of these religions is the clear and compulsory stipulation of intolerance.

Consider one of many Old Testament passages which read as follows:

“If your brother, the son of your father or of your mother, or your son or daughter, or the spouse whom you embrace, or your most intimate friend, tries to secretly seduce you, saying ‘Let us go and serve other gods’ unknown to you or your ancestors before you, gods of the peoples surrounding you, whether near you or far away, anywhere throughout the world, you must not consent, you must not listen to him; you must show him no pity, you must not spare him or conceal his guilt. No, you must kill him, your hand must strike the first blow in putting him to death and the hands of all the rest of the people following. You must stone him to death since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God.” (Deuteronomy 13:7-11)

That’s got to be the vilest excerpt from any so-called “religious” book of anything on record.

You must kill him?

Your hand must strike the first blow?

You must stone him to death?

Gulp!

Death is the prescribed penalty for praying to a different God or no God at all? This is God talking?

Here’s the assumption of a rational person: If these really are indeed the words of the Jewish and Christian God, then he is a sick savage. A beast. A monster.

Anywho claims these preposterous Old Testament texts are really the “word of God” is a brainwashed lunatic. They, nor their bronze-age ideas, deserve the respect of a sane person. They don’t even deserve our pity given the centuries of destruction kindled by the application of their ideas and the chokehold they continue to have over education, culture, society, and even governments to this day.

Religion is not only anti-logic, anti-science, anti-equality, anti-individuality, and anti-humanity. It’s also anti-moral.