Atrocities in the Bible - revisited

To those who asked why I seldom comment on the Israeli genocidal destruction of Gaza, my explanation is a simple one: there's absolutely nothing that a people who will choose and worship a fiendish ogre like Jehovah will do that will shock me.  

There is little to be gained by my adding my voice to the thunderous denunciation of the criminal Zionist settler regime in Occupied Palestine.

Although it does not give me any pleasure, I will tell a lie if I say that I do not feel some satisfaction in seeing the actions of the Zionists confirm all that we have been saying and writing about the duplicity of the Collective West.  

“All of the Western nations have been caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism; this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the West has no moral authority.” - James Baldwin

Through its control of the world's media, the West has been able to effectively zombify much of the world's population. Few are willing to look behind the nice media-constructed facade that paints a rosy picture of a people whose criminal actions over the centuries will shame a nation of savages.

After watching the Collective West (with very few exceptions) curated, supported, and armed the criminal Zionist settlers, who but the most purblind idiot will today listen and believe any Western official who stands behind a gallery to pontificate about Western values of freedom, human rights, blah blah blah?

I was sufficiently stupefied by the persistence of those who read the Bible with all its contradictions, absurdities, and atrocities, but yet continued to the Bible around to disturb our peace that I wrote and published a book on the Christian religion - actually collections of my essays.

I called my book, Africa: Destroyed by the gods, a deliberate choice of title. Permit me a shameless plug: you can buy your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Africa-Destroyed-gods-Femi-Akomolafe-ebook/dp/B01HPSMK8O

This is chapter 11 of my book - you can consider it a freebie to enjoy to get you motivated to buy your copy.

“I am for religion against religions.” – Victor Hugo.

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.” – Frantz Fanon

“O my body, make of me always a man who questions!” – Frantz Fanon.

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” – Albert Einstein.

“If there be an infinite Being, he does not need our help – we need not waste our energies in his defense.” – Robert Green Ingersoll.

Predictably our article, ‘Absurdities in the Bible’ excited some Christians, and, as we predicted, all of them were Africans.

Also, as we foretold, none of them write to refute any of the facts we presented with counter facts; all were mindless drivels that deserve utter scorn.

I hold no dogma too dear to disallow me from changing my mind/opinion in the presence of new facts.

I shall withdraw and publicly apologize if any facts are presented that refute anything that I write.

To date, no one has written to challenge a single fact we posited; all the so-called adherents of a religion that claimed to be tolerant are to throw insults and mudslings.

It is pretty easy to insult; thinking and freely expressing yourself appears to be the main challenge to some people.

Sorry, but I simply have better employment for my time to jump into the gutter with simpletons who refused to use their brains.

As we have consistently maintained in this column, we do not know what the Christians hope to gain by the claim that their god caused the Bible to be written; and that the collection of stupid tales contain an accurate rendering of his dictation.

The fiction that the Bible was the work of an intelligent, all-knowing god could be maintained in an age when few could read or write.

But in an age when knowledge is so widely available and when information can be accessed almost instantaneously, it makes absolutely no sense to cling tenaciously to any ancient fiction.

In the aforementioned piece, we dealt with some of the absurdities contained in the book Christians peddle as the Holy Bible.

We started by offering a simple definition of absurdity and demonstrated with ample facts that the Christian Bible contained far too many absurdities, that it cannot and should not be attributed to any intelligent person, much less an omnipotent and omniscient god.

Let’s examine some very shocking atrocities found in the Bible; the book the Christians parade as the work of their god.

Once again, we offer a definition of the term we employed.

Atrocity: shockingly cruel act: 1. a shockingly cruel act, especially an act of wanton violence against an enemy in wartime; 2. extreme cruelty: extreme evil or cruelty; 3. something very bad: something repellent or extremely bad of its kind.

The same dictionary defines the word ‘holy’ as something having a character that evokes reverence.

The simple question is: should we revere a book that contains dreadful atrocities, i.e. has shocking cruel acts as the Christian Bible demonstrably does?

The Christians, especially those of them in Africa, should realize the enormous damage they do to the credibility of their god, by claiming for him the authorship of the book that contains very despicable acts of insane and mindless cruelties.

Absolutely nothing is gained by claiming for a god, the authorship of a book from where we read such barbaric and shocking atrocities we read in the Bible.

Since we cannot list all of the atrocities in the Bible in a single article, we give a list of the most egregious and truly shocking ones.

1. “The Lord is a man of war: The Lord is his name.” Exodus 15:3.

2. Exodus 7:1-21 – “And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet… And Moses and Aaron did so, as the LORD commanded; and he lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood. And the fish that was in the river died, and the river stank and the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the river, and there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt.”

How could any sane and intelligent person read this shocking act of cruelty and give praise to its perpetrator?

3. Exodus 12:29-30 – And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.

So, do Christians rejoice and give thanks to their god for this gruesome act of infanticide? Do they vibrate with gratitude to their god for killing innocent cattle?

To give a modern example: the Nigerian government is currently engaged in a war with the Boko Haram sect. How would Nigerians feel should their President

i. Send his magicians to go and wow the leader of Boko Haram with magical tricks;

ii. Proceed to kill (by pestilence like Jehovah did) all the firstborn of Boko Haram members?

This is the ridiculous message the Christians carry around, and it is what they tell us is the work\word of the all-knowing god.

4. Genesis 38:8-10 “And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.”

Do we need to say anything more about this?

5. 1 Kings 2:1-6 “My son, I will soon die, as everyone must… Solomon, don’t forget what Joab did to me by killing Abner son of Ner, and Amasa son of Jether, the two commanders of Israel’s army. He killed them as if they were his enemies in a war, but he did it when there was no war. He is guilty, and now it’s up to you to punish him in the way you think best. Whatever you do, don’t let him die peacefully in his old age.”

What a wonderful advice to impart to your son on your deathbed!

6. Exodus 21:20 – “And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.”

Incredible!

7. II Kings 2:23-24 – “And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.”

And Christians dance and rejoice when they read this!

8. I Chronicles 21:9-14 – “And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people unto David… And God was displeased with this thing; therefore he smote Israel. And David said unto God, I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing: but now, I beseech thee, do away the iniquity of thy servant; for I have done very foolishly . . . So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.”

9. Genesis 6:5-7:24 – “The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds, and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

Why would any intelligent, omniscient, and omnipotent god waste time creating things that would displease him?

10. 2 Samuel 21:6-9 – “Let seven men from his sons be given to us, and we will hang them before the LORD in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the LORD.” … Then he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the mountain before the LORD, so that the seven of them fell together, and they were put to death in the first days of harvest at the beginning of barley harvest.”

11. Leviticus 25:44-46 – “As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you. Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession. You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves. But in respect to your countrymen, the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another.”

This would surely have made slave masters very happy, indeed!

12. Deuteronomy 21:10-14 – “When you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails, and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave since you have dishonored her.”

13. Exodus 22:18 – “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

14. Leviticus 20:27 – “Men and women among you who act as mediums or who consult the spirits of the dead must be put to death by stoning. They are guilty of a capital offense.”

15. Deuteronomy 13:6-10 – “If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; …Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.”

16. Exodus 35:2-3 – “For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a day of sabbath rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it is to be put to death. Do not light a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day.”

17. Genesis 17:14 – “And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.”

18. Deuteronomy 22:20-21 – “But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.”

19. Leviticus 24:16 “ And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.”

20. Numbers 21:5-6 – “…they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food! Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died.”

21. Numbers 31:1-18 – “The LORD said to Moses, “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people” Moses sent them into battle, a thousand from each tribe, along with Phinehas son of Eleazar, the priest, who took with him articles from the sanctuary and the trumpets for signaling. They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man. Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba—the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks, and goods as plunder. They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, and brought the captives, spoils, and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest, and the Israelite assembly at their camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho.” “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the LORD in the Peor incident so that a plague struck the LORD’s people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”

22. Judges 21:7-14 “How can we provide wives for those who are left, since we have taken an oath by the LORD not to give them any of our daughters in marriage?” Then they asked, “Which one of the tribes of Israel failed to assemble before the LORD at Mizpah?” They discovered that no one from Jabesh Gilead had come to the camp for the assembly. For when they counted the people, they found that none of the people of Jabesh Gilead were there. So the assembly sent twelve thousand fighting men with instructions to go to Jabesh Gilead and put to the sword those living there, including the women and children. “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin.” They found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man, and they took them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan. Then the whole assembly sent an offer of peace to the Benjamites at the rock of Rimmon. So the Benjamites returned at that time and were given the women of Jabesh Gilead who had been spared. But there were not enough for all of them.

23. Luke, 19:27 -“But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.”

24. Samuel 6:19 – “And he smote the men of Bethshemesh because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people lamented because the LORD had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter.”

25. In Psalm 109: 9-13, we read, “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath, and let the strangers spoil his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off, and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.”

26. 1 Samuel 15:33 – “And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the LORD in Gilgal.”

27. Samuel 6:6-7 “And when they came to Nachon’s threshing floor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it.” And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah, and God smote him there for his error, and there he died by the ark of God.

28. 1 Kings 18:40 – “And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.”

29. Isaiah 14:21 “Prepare a place to slaughter his children for the sins of their ancestors; they are not to rise to inherit the land and cover the earth with their cities.”

30. Exodus 34:7 – “Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.”

31. Revelation 19:20 – “Then the beast was captured and with him the false prophet who worked signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone.”

32. 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9 “… And to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might…”

33. Revelation 6:12-14 – “I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs dropped from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.”

34. 1 Samuel 21:11 – “And the servants of Achish said unto him, is not this David the king of the land? Did they not sing one to another of him in dances, saying, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousand?”

35. Deuteronomy 32: 23, we read these incomparable words of love, “I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them.” In the same book in 32: 24 “They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. While in 32: 25, Jehovah raved, “The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs.” In Exodus 22: 24, the compassionate heavenly father vowed, “And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.”

36. Matthew, 10:34 -“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword.”

Hmmmm.

These are some of the atrocities we read in the book the Christians claim were written by their god.

The difficult thing for us remains how any sane, intelligent person with the benefit of modern education could read the Christian Bible, read all the absurdities, the indecencies, the atrocities, and the violence, and still proclaim it the word of a wise, intelligent, benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient god!

Today, we rightly feel indignant and we condemn leaders who committed atrocities against their people. Human beings have advanced to the stage where we now have international tribunals that try to call errant leaders to account for their crimes, yet the Christians tell us that we must continue to worship a god that, according to their Bible, routinely and very senselessly massacre thousands of human beings, including innocent children and women. And this supposedly benevolent god did not spare cattle either.

They tell us that we must believe in a book that had Jehovah’s generals committing atrocities and violating innocent children and women.

They tell us that, to be saved, we must believe that their god caused all the terrible suffering violence, and atrocities in the Bible to happen.

These atrocious stories are too difficult to attribute to a god of a savage tribe, yet the Christians insist that we must believe that they happened and that it was the handwork of their omniscient and omnipotent and benevolent god!

Every civilized soul cannot but recoil and be appalled by the monstrous cruelties one reads in the Christian Bible.

It certainly must take a deluded mind, dulled by intellectual inertia, to believe that a god will be responsible for these atrocities and that he will cause them to be written in a book.

And we don’t know what to say of the minds that read these atrocities and still tell us that they were committed by a loving god!

No sane, educated, intelligent, and honest person can read the Bible and believe that a god caused the book to be written, little wonder that the Bible compilers inserted Mark 16:16: “He that believeth not shall be damned” – Mark 16:16.

Tchaah

©️Fẹmi Akọmọlafẹ

November 23, 2024

Fẹmi Akọmọlafẹ is a farmer, writer, and published author.

My latest book, “Africa: A Continent on Bended Knees” is available on: 

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Africa-Continent-Bended-Femi-Akomolafe-ebook/dp/B08FGZNJ5T

On Booknook.store: https://booknook.store/product/africa-a-continent-on-bended-knees/

My other books on Amazon

Africa: it shall be well: https://tinyurl.com/sn64ocd

Africa: Destroyed by the gods: https://tinyurl.com/vglfk7w

Get a FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: It shall be well’ here: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-a-free-chapter/

Get a FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: Destroyed by the gods’ here: http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-free-chapter/

Kindly help me share the books’ links with your friends and, grin, please purchase your copies.

Comradely,

Femi Akomolafe