Hate Mail

Michael Miller, Page 7

[Editor's note: you'd think he'd take the hint and leave me alone after sending two unanswered messages, but noooooooo! He continued to jabber at me, so I decided that I might as well try to make something constructive out of this exchange by publishing it as an example of the fundamentalist mindset. With that in mind, I started replying again]

April 2, 2001:

Just thought I would point out some errors on your Biblcial Morality page. First: Job's wife was never murdered. For it was her that said to him to curse God and die. Have you actually read the Bible all the way through?

[Editor's note: my first draft of the Biblical Morality page contained the statement that God murdered Job's entire family, instead of merely murdering all of his children and letting his wife live as an object lesson in how you should love God more than your children. He seized upon the nitpick as if it somehow reduced the magnitude of God's evildoing.

For those keeping score, this is an example of the "red herring" fallacy. I made a point about how Job's treatment was blatantly immoral, and instead of answering that point, he chose to attack a nitpick about the sheer magnitude of Job's arbitrary suffering and loss, rather than defending the morality of it]

I've read a lot of it, but it's hard to sit through so much overt hatred and immorality (particularly the Old Testament, which is downright horrifying most of the time), so I can only take small doses at a time. But thanks for reminding me of how Job's wife was condemned for getting angry about her murdered children, and in so doing, providing me with yet more evidence of the abhorrence of Biblical "family values".

Second: on the Matt. 15:26 passage. The term "dogs" does not refer to wild dogs (scavenging animals roaming around the countryside) in this context, but to small dogs taken in as house pets.

In other words, inferiors. Subservients. Exactly what I was saying. [Editor's note: Matthew 15:26 depicts Jesus describing Canaanites as "dogs"].

It is thus not a derogatory term per se, but is instead intended by Jesus to indicate the privileged position of the Jews (especially his disciples) as the initial recipients of Jesus' ministry.

In other words, Jews are better. They're the beloved children, while other races are the house pets who beg for scraps from the table. How charming.

The woman's response of faith and her willingness to accept whatever Jesus would offer pleased him to such an extent that he granted her request.

Just as the dog can eventually please the master if he begs hard enough for his table scraps. How lovely. Thanks for helping me confirm that not only was Jesus racist, but that his racism echoes into modern Christian fundamentalist thought. Worse yet, if you're any indication, the proponents of such racism and religious bigotry are completely unapologetic!

This is actually a quote from an online commentary, and I know you hate "appeals to authority" (how stupid is that?) but it said it in better terms than I could.

How stupid is it to condemn those who think that they can avoid logic by appealing to authority? It's hardly stupid; it's the foundation of the scientific method and one of the pillars of the philosophy of logic (with which you are quite clearly unfamiliar).

Luke 14:26 is referring to the fact that you are to put God first before anything or anyone else. Sounds reasonable from someone who created you and then redemed you.

You forgot "tortured and abused you, not to mention subjecting you to all manner of arbitrary and immoral edicts and being so vain that he demands periodic worship in perpetuity." What a great guy, eh? If God really is our "heavenly father", he is an abusive father. He beats his children if they disobey even the most arbitrary rule, he expects them to worship him constantly, and he is even willing to murder them if they won't follow his orders. Hell, he might even murder them simply to make a point, as he demonstrated in the Book of Job.

The idea of worshipping such a being is abhorrent. By any conceivable standard of ethics, he is irretrievably evil. He is capricious, vengeful, and incredibly vindictive. He visits punishment for even the most minor disobedience upon not only the "offender" but also his children and their children's children. He regards his own glorification as superior to any and all other ethical principles. If he created us only so that he could bask in our adulation and worship upon threat of eternal torture, then he is a hopelessly narcissistic monster.

I can't believe anybody can seriously believe in relativism. Here is a good logical refutation of relativism from a website that I gave the link to below.

Relativism? I presume by that, you refer to the moral relativism of the Old Testament God, whose concept of ethics is based not on universal rules but on his own narcissistic desire for constant glorification and worship. Every atrocity of the Old Testament is explained away by Christian fundamentalists such as yourselves, who are clearly promoting moral relativism in its most disturbing form: as a justification for atrocities.

http://www.carm.org/relativism/relativism_refute.htm
Just though you might want to be more accurate about what you are talking about.

I am being quite accurate. I accurately describe humanism as a set of absolute moral principles which make no exceptions, while Christian fundamentalism would excuse even the most heinous acts of murder, torture, and genocide using the excuse that it is acceptable when viewed from God's perspective as opposed to ours.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with the author of that article when he says that moral relativism is unacceptable. That is precisely why I find Biblical morality abhorrent, and why I encourage all others to find a better way.

[Editor's note: perhaps I should have been more specific about what I agreed with, but I was in a hurry at the time. I agreed with the author's implicit conclusion that moral relativism is invalid. However, if you visit the link you will see that the author's "logical" argument is bizarre in the extreme, and he thinks he can completely refute relativism in all its forms, which is excessive and illogical. For one thing, relativism is an experimentally verifiable principle in physics, thus neatly refuting his bizarre claim that it is logically self-contradictory]

It's not too late for you. You can still try to study the principles of logic and humanism, and the methods of science, so that you can break free from your cultural and religious indoctrination and learn to embrace the world of tolerance, brotherhood, and equality outside. A man should not spend his entire life mired in the immorality of fundamentalist hatred and bigotry; there is a better way. Most Christians in this world are not like you and your fundamentalist ilk; perhaps you should try to understand what made them embrace morality and reject Old Testament hatred.

Continue to Michael Miller, Page 8

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