God's body count

Jerry Coyne cites an interesting, year-old blog entry by Steve Wells (the creator of The Skeptic's Annotated Bible) in which he tallies up all the smiting and smoting chronicled in the bible.

He shows two sets of figures: those reported in the bible itself, and estimates when the bible doesn't give figures.

Bible total: 2,476,636
Estimated total: 24,634,205

I have to agree with Richard Dawkins when he wrote:

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. Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror.

Well, at least that's how he's depicted by his loyal followers.

Yes God is not very Christ like. lol

Continuing this train of thought... Greta Christina posted an interesting AlterNet article discussing William Lane Craig's recent ravings about God's absolute morality (or lack thereof). It's an interesting read and makes some really good points.

See, here's the thing. When faced with horrors in our past -- our personal history, or our human history -- non-believers don't have any need to defend them. When non-believers look at a human history full of genocide, infanticide, slavery, forced marriage, etc. etc. etc., we're entirely free to say, "Damn. That was terrible. That was some seriously screwed-up shit we did. We were wrong to do that. Let's not ever do that again."

But for people who believe in a holy book, it's not that simple. When faced with horrors in their religion's history -- horrors that their holy book defends, and even praises -- believers have to do one of two things. They have to either a) cherry-pick the bits they like and ignore the bits they don't; or b) come up with contorted rationalizations for why the most blatant, grotesque, black-and-white evil really isn't all that bad.

This is the kind of thing that comes to mind when I hear the accusation that atheists have no moral compass or claims that we would have no distinction between good and bad if not for God and/or the bible. Plato wrote of Euthyphro's dilemma: "Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?" WLC seems to think it is the latter:

According to the version of divine command ethics which I've defended, our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a holy and loving God. Since God doesn't issue commands to Himself, He has no moral duties to fulfill. (emphasis mine) He is certainly not subject to the same moral obligations and prohibitions that we are. For example, I have no right to take an innocent life. For me to do so would be murder. But God has no such prohibition. He can give and take life as He chooses. We all recognize this when we accuse some authority who presumes to take life as "playing God." Human authorities arrogate to themselves rights which belong only to God. God is under no obligation whatsoever to extend my life for another second. If He wanted to strike me dead right now, that's His prerogative.

Still, I've seen christian apologists balk at the idea that God could have made slightly different rules than they think he did. In a discussion between Thunderf00t and Ray (Banana Man) Comfort, Thunderf00t asked Ray if he would be okay with prostitution and homosexuality if the bible endorsed (or at least didn't proscribe) such things. Ray wouldn't even consider the notion because he simply refused to entertain the idea that God would ever allow such abominations to occur. In other words, at the same time that he was arguing that we would have no way to know good from evil without God he was suggesting that good and evil are so obvious (to him at least) that even God would have no choice.

One explanation (that has never yet been ruled out) is that God has only ever been a convenient mouthpiece (ala the mighty Oz/man behind the curtain) for justifying what ever nastiness we wish to inflict on others without having to provide logical reasons. Steven Weinberg famously said, "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." Do people do nasty things because God commanded them or do God's commands simply reflect the nasty shit people dreamed up at one time or another?