A collection of essays and rants, inspired and taken from a series that I have been writing for several years concerning this subject. A stirring account of how certain issues are poisoned by organized religions and why we as a society would be much...
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"Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who had to drown His own?" - Robert G. Ingersoll
When it comes to killing in the name of God, I'm not sure many Christians are fully aware of how much human Sacrifice has been a part of biblical history. Some might be shocked to realize that it's been a part of many religions (even Christianity) as long as there has been a biblical history to document. Killing people in the name of God (despite it being against a certain Commandment) seems perfectly all right if it pleases your Lord. The Bible has many such cases of it, especially within the Old Testament that has numerous stories of animal and human sacrifice. Within the book itself, it describes how God likes the aroma of burning flesh. Animal sacrifice occurs more often than human, but both occur all in the name of a God who supposedly loves you and is all good.
Huh?
The most well known example of this comes from the first book, when Abraham is asked to sacrifice his own son by God Himself:
"Take your son, your only son – yes, Isaac, whom you love so much – and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will point out to you." (Genesis 22:1-18)
So not only is Abraham asked to kill his only child, who even God knows he loves likely more than he loves himself, he is asked to do so in the most cruel and inhumane way possible: burned alive. I don't know about you, but this is seriously fucked up.
As a father of two boys, I have a serious problem with this story as it clearly contradicts with the whole idea of an all loving God. If such an all loving being existed, that entity would value all life and the love someone has for their children. Not here as God asks Abraham to not only kill his only son, but to make sure he suffers before his passing. No clean, painless death. He must suffer to the extreme. I'm sorry but when I think of this request, all loving is the last thing that comes to mind.
So what does Abraham do? He does as he is told and takes his own son up on a mountain and builds an altar upon which to burn him. He even lies to his son and has him help build the altar. Abraham then ties his son to the altar and prepares to complete his duty. At the very last possible moment, God tells him this was just a test of his faith and that he is to abort. This is the part that apologists of the Bible try to use to convince themselves that God is all loving. Bullshit. Making Abraham go 90% of the way and stop him at the last minute was in itself cruel.
Another sick part of this story was that God still wanted to smell some burnt flesh so he tells Abraham to burn a ram, which Abraham completed without question. This leaves me to wonder how many members of PETA are aware of these passages and still consider themselves deeply religious?Even though Abraham didn't kill his son, it is still an incredibly cruel and evil thing to do. Just the idea of setting everything up must have been torture to the old man. And what about his son? Being strapped to the altar and nearly killed in the name of God. Coming that close to death traumatizes someone, and do you think his son would ever help his old man set any altar up ever again after that incident? Would you?
