"Why won't God heal amputees?"

Here Jesus shows that he is completely comfortable with the concept of slavery. Jesus heals the slave without any thought of freeing the slave or admonishing the slave's owner.
Colossians, chapter 3, verse 22:

Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task, work heartily...
Here God shows that he is in complete acceptance of a slave's position, and encourages slaves to work hard. This sentiment is repeated in Titus, chapter 2 verse 9:

Bid slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to be refractory, nor to pilfer, but to show entire and true fidelity.
Once again God shows that he is quite enamored of slavery.
God loves slavery

If the Bible is written by God, and these are the words of the Lord, then you can come to only one possible conclusion: God is an impressive advocate of slavery and is fully supportive of the concept.

If you are a Christian, I realize that what I am about to suggest is uncomfortable. However, it is crucial to the conversation that we are having in this book. What I wish to suggest to you is that these pro-slavery passages in the Bible provide all the evidence that we need to prove that God did not write the Bible. Simply put: there is no way that an all-loving God would also be a staunch supporter of slavery.

What does your common sense tell you about God? Doesn't it seem that an all-loving, just God would think of slavery as an abomination just like any normal human being does? If any sort of all-knowing, all-loving God had written the Bible, shouldn't the Bible say, "Slavery is wrong -- you may have no slaves"? Shouldn't one of the Commandments say, "thou shalt not enslave"?

As you can see, these slavery passages present us with a paradox:

On the one hand, we all know that slavery is an outrage and a moral abomination. As a result, slavery is now completely illegal throughout the developed world.

On the other hand, the creator of the universe states in writing that slavery is perfectly acceptable. Beating your slaves is fine. Enslaving children is fine. Separating slave families is fine. According to the Bible, we should all be practicing slavery today.
The intensity of this paradox is remarkable.

The importance of the Bible

Most people in the United States are Christians, and therefore in the United States we take the Bible completely for granted. It is like gravity or the morning sunrise -- the Bible is there all the time, so you don't even think about it.

Because we take it for granted, we tend to forget just how important the Bible is to our lives. Let me give you three examples of just how significant this book is.

First of all, think about Jesus. Everyone in the United States has heard of Jesus. We all know that Jesus was born on Christmas. We know that Jesus died on the Cross and was resurrected three days later. We know that God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). And so on. How do we know all of that? Because of the Bible. If the Bible did not exist, no one would have ever heard of Jesus. Without the Bible there would be no Christianity.

Second, there are the Ten Commandments. According to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, "Ninety-nine percent of Americans believe in the ten commandments." [ref] Scalia has also pointed out that the Ten Commandments are "a symbol of the fact that government derives its authority from God." [ref] Where do the Ten Commandments come from? The Bible. And because they come from the Bible, we assume they come from God. The Bible is God's word.
Third, think about your soul. Chances are that you believe that you have a soul. In addition you probably believe that, when you die, your soul lives on forever. You also believe that your soul goes either to heaven or hell. Where did those ideas come from? They come from the Bible. The Bible is the place in our culture that tells us about heaven and hell. Without the Bible, these concepts would not exist. The whole notion of "everlasting life" is based on the Bible.

It really is quite amazing when you think about it. We take Jesus, the Ten Commandments, heaven and hell completely for granted. Nearly every person in America has heard of them, and few would question their existence. The place where these core concepts originate is the Bible. Without the Bible, these concepts would not exist. The Bible has a gigantic impact on the lives of people around the world. The only reason it has this impact is because Christians believe that God is the author.

Let's say that the Bible were not the word of God. Imagine that it was written by a group of random men 2,000 or 3,000 years ago and God had nothing to do with it. Would you believe in heaven and hell? Would you believe in the Ten Commandments? Would you believe in Jesus? No. Of course not. If primitive men wrote the Bible rather than God, no one would care about the Bible. Homer was a primitive man, and 3,000 or so years ago he wrote a book called "The Odyssey." In this book Homer talks about a Cyclops, a goddess named Athena and a place called Hades, along with many other things. Do we believe any of it? Of course not -- it was a fanciful story written by a man. We ignore the Odyssey in our daily lives because the author was human.

The Bible and Slavery

So now we have opened the Bible and looked at it, and inside the Bible -- God's word -- we have found ten extremely clear and outrageous passages about slavery. What these passages indicate, without any question, is that the Bible supports slavery. The Bible thinks that slavery is great. According to the Bible you are free to buy slaves and you are free to beat your slaves. There is no denying that, in the Bible, slavery is perfectly acceptable.

If you are a Christian, you automatically and unquestioningly believe in Jesus, the Ten Commandments, heaven and hell. Why? Because you believe that the Bible came from God.

The problem is that if you support the Ten Commandments and believe in Jesus, you must also support slavery. The same God and the same Bible that tells us about the Ten Commandments and Jesus is also telling us about slavery.

Take a moment right now to ask yourself this simple question: Do you believe in slavery? Having read how God feels about slavery in the Bible, do you now believe that in America and around the world we should repeal all anti-slavery laws and re-open the slave trade? If you are Christian, what choice do you have? God fully advocates slavery in the Bible, and you believe the word of God.

If you are going to believe that the Ten Commandments came from God because they are in God's Bible, then you must also believe that all of these slavery passages came from God. You, Justice Scalia and everyone else who believes that God wrote the Bible should be perfectly comfortable with the slave trade.
 
An all-or-nothing book
If you do not believe that God wrote the slavery passages in the Bible, then the obvious question to ask yourself is this: How can you possibly know which parts came from God and which parts were inserted by primitive men? How can you pick and choose like that? You have absolutely no way to know whether the slavery passages came from God or primitive men.

It is when you start thinking about the Bible in this way that you understand something very important about the Bible. Either the entire Bible really is God's Word, or the entire Bible was written by primitive men with absolutely no input from God. Here is the reason for this very strong dividing line:

If part of the Bible came from God and part came from primitive men, how can you possibly know which is which? How do you know if Jesus really is resurrected, or if that's just a make-believe story inserted by primitive men? How do you know if God wrote the Ten Commandments or not? If any part of the Bible has been polluted by primitive men, you have to reject the whole thing. There is no way to know who wrote what, so the entire book is invalid.
There really is no middle ground. The Bible has to be an all-or-nothing book. Either the entire Bible came from God, or none of it did.
Drawing a conclusion

With this all-or-nothing reality about the Bible now understood, you can see that there are only two possible explanations for the slavery passages in the Bible:

The Bible is right, and God loves slavery. The entire Bible is God's word, so these slavery passages must be God's word too. The laws in the United States and other modern nations that make slavery illegal defy God's word. Justice Scalia should be promoting slavery in exactly the same way that he promotes the Ten Commandments.

The Bible condones slavery because the Bible was written by slave-owning men, not by God.
Chances are that you have a problem with the first explanation. God would not champion the abomination that is slavery. We all know that.
Therefore, what you are left with is the second explanation.

Here is the thing that I would like to help you understand: You, as a rational human being, know that slavery is wrong. You know it. That is why every single developed nation in the world has made slavery completely illegal. Human beings make slavery illegal, in direct defiance of God's word, because we all know with complete certainty that slavery is wrong (see also Chapter 28). If God actually had anything to do with the Bible, then the eleventh commandment would be, "Thou shalt not enslave."

What does your common sense now tell you about a Bible that supports slavery in both the Old and the New Testaments? Given the fact that the Bible clearly condones slavery, and given the fact that the Bible is an all-or-nothing book, does it make more sense for you to believe that God wrote the Bible, or that primitive men wrote the Bible without any input from God? Be honest with yourself. Make a choice, and then let's look at another example that is just as outrageous...
 
Quote from lkh:

An all-or-nothing book
If you do not believe that God wrote the slavery passages in the Bible, then the obvious question to ask yourself is this: How can you possibly know which parts came from God and which parts were inserted by primitive men? How can you pick and choose like that? You have absolutely no way to know whether the slavery passages came from God or primitive men.

It is when you start thinking about the Bible in this way that you understand something very important about the Bible. Either the entire Bible really is God's Word, or the entire Bible was written by primitive men with absolutely no input from God. Here is the reason for this very strong dividing line:

If part of the Bible came from God and part came from primitive men, how can you possibly know which is which? How do you know if Jesus really is resurrected, or if that's just a make-believe story inserted by primitive men? How do you know if God wrote the Ten Commandments or not? If any part of the Bible has been polluted by primitive men, you have to reject the whole thing. There is no way to know who wrote what, so the entire book is invalid.
There really is no middle ground. The Bible has to be an all-or-nothing book. Either the entire Bible came from God, or none of it did.
Drawing a conclusion

With this all-or-nothing reality about the Bible now understood, you can see that there are only two possible explanations for the slavery passages in the Bible:

The Bible is right, and God loves slavery. The entire Bible is God's word, so these slavery passages must be God's word too. The laws in the United States and other modern nations that make slavery illegal defy God's word. Justice Scalia should be promoting slavery in exactly the same way that he promotes the Ten Commandments.

The Bible condones slavery because the Bible was written by slave-owning men, not by God.
Chances are that you have a problem with the first explanation. God would not champion the abomination that is slavery. We all know that.
Therefore, what you are left with is the second explanation.

Here is the thing that I would like to help you understand: You, as a rational human being, know that slavery is wrong. You know it. That is why every single developed nation in the world has made slavery completely illegal. Human beings make slavery illegal, in direct defiance of God's word, because we all know with complete certainty that slavery is wrong (see also Chapter 28). If God actually had anything to do with the Bible, then the eleventh commandment would be, "Thou shalt not enslave."

What does your common sense now tell you about a Bible that supports slavery in both the Old and the New Testaments? Given the fact that the Bible clearly condones slavery, and given the fact that the Bible is an all-or-nothing book, does it make more sense for you to believe that God wrote the Bible, or that primitive men wrote the Bible without any input from God? Be honest with yourself. Make a choice, and then let's look at another example that is just as outrageous...
More...
I think I speak for everyone, Christians and Heathens alike, when I say, as magnanimously as possible, er, Would you Shut the Fuck Up? Your love of your own relentless voice going on and on in redundant banality in this thread is like a broken record that still thinks it's playing music at the dance long after everyone has gone home and crawled into bed for a good night's sleep.

Do be quiet.

H
 
Quote from hcour:

I think I speak for everyone, Christians and Heathens alike, when I say, as magnanimously as possible, er, Would you Shut the Fuck Up? Your love of your own relentless voice going on and on in redundant banality in this thread is like a broken record that still thinks it's playing music at the dance long after everyone has gone home and crawled into bed for a good night's sleep.

Do be quiet.

H
More...

Have i upset your security blanket? There are almost 1300 page views. People are reading and perhaps reflecting on what it all means. All i can hope to accomplish is to save a few minds from the clutches of superstition that religion is.
 
Why does God love animal sacrifice?


For most people, the last chapter offers sufficient evidence to prove to themselves that God did not write the Bible. Clearly, an all-loving God cannot be a huge proponent of slavery. Therefore, since the Bible specifies that slavery is perfectly acceptable in the eyes of the Lord, it is easy to conclude that primitive men wrote the Bible rather than God.

However, if you need additional evidence, then we can approach the Bible from another angle and reach the same conclusion.

To any normal human being, the idea of animal and human sacrifice is both abhorrent and nauseating. The dictionary defines "sacrifice" in this way:

The act of offering something to a deity in propitiation or homage, especially the ritual slaughter of an animal or a person. [ref]
This, quite clearly, is something that primitive savages would do. There is no need to beat around the bush: We all know, without question, that animal and human sacrifice is an absurdity. Sacrificing and burning an animal on an altar does not have any beneficial effect for anyone.
The Aztecs in Mexico would take a virgin to the top of a pyramid, slice her still-beating heart out of her chest and eat it -- or whatever -- and we all know that their practices were insane and barbaric beyond belief. [ref] The death of the virgin did absolutely nothing to improve crop yield or rainfall, nor did it "appease" the Aztec gods (since those gods were completely imaginary). It is impossible to understand why the Aztecs would do something so bizarre and disgusting. Was it mass delusion? Rampant superstition taken to the Nth degree? Total desperation? A horrific combination? There is no way to know, but we do know that the behavior of the Aztecs was insane.

Any normal person is disgusted by religious sacrifice, and you would imagine that God is too. Ritual slaughter like this has nothing to do with an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, prayer-answering creator of the universe. The idea of killing an animal, splattering its blood about and then burning its flesh is, quite obviously, absurd and ridiculous. God would have nothing to do with animal sacrifice.

But then we examine the Bible -- the holy word of God and the single authoritative source of all information about Jesus -- and find passages like these:

Leviticus Chapter 1

The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting. He said, "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'When any of you brings an offering to the Lord , bring as your offering an animal from either the herd or the flock.
"If the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he is to offer a male without defect. He must present it at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting so that it will be acceptable to the Lord . He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him. He is to slaughter the young bull before the Lord , and then Aaron's sons the priests shall bring the blood and sprinkle it against the altar on all sides at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. He is to skin the burnt offering and cut it into pieces. The sons of Aaron the priest are to put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire. Then Aaron's sons the priests shall arrange the pieces, including the head and the fat, on the burning wood that is on the altar. He is to wash the inner parts and the legs with water, and the priest is to burn all of it on the altar. It is a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the Lord .

Burning flesh is an aroma pleasing to the Lord? Does this make any sense to you as a rational human being?
Here is another example:

Leviticus Chapter 5

'If a person sins because he does not speak up when he hears a public charge to testify regarding something he has seen or learned about, he will be held responsible.
'Or if a person touches anything ceremonially unclean-whether the carcasses of unclean wild animals or of unclean livestock or of unclean creatures that move along the ground-even though he is unaware of it, he has become unclean and is guilty.

'Or if he touches human uncleanness-anything that would make him unclean-even though he is unaware of it, when he learns of it he will be guilty.

'Or if a person thoughtlessly takes an oath to do anything, whether good or evil-in any matter one might carelessly swear about-even though he is unaware of it, in any case when he learns of it he will be guilty.

'When anyone is guilty in any of these ways, he must confess in what way he has sinned and, as a penalty for the sin he has committed, he must bring to the Lord a female lamb or goat from the flock as a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for him for his sin.

'If he cannot afford a lamb, he is to bring two doves or two young pigeons to the Lord as a penalty for his sin-one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. He is to bring them to the priest, who shall first offer the one for the sin offering. He is to wring its head from its neck, not severing it completely, and is to sprinkle some of the blood of the sin offering against the side of the altar; the rest of the blood must be drained out at the base of the altar. It is a sin offering. The priest shall then offer the other as a burnt offering in the prescribed way and make atonement for him for the sin he has committed, and he will be forgiven.

You are an intelligent human being, so think this through. Here is the logic expressed in Leviticus chapter 5:
"Today I accidentally touched something that was 'ceremonially unclean,' and I didn't know about it at the time, but fortunately a priest brought it to my attention, and I am guilty. Now, I can't afford a lamb. But I can get two young pigeons for a shekel over at Saul's bird emporium, and then I can take them both to the priest. He will wring the head from the neck of one of them, but not sever it completely. And he will sprinkle the blood, and drain the rest. And then the priest will burn the other pigeon. Then I am forgiven. Thank God!"
What does your common sense tell you about this? It probably tells you that it is impossible to imagine an all-loving, all-knowing God demanding this, and you are correct.
Here is another example:

Leviticus Chapter 7, The priest's share

The Lord said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites: 'Anyone who brings a fellowship offering to the Lord is to bring part of it as his sacrifice to the Lord . With his own hands he is to bring the offering made to the Lord by fire; he is to bring the fat, together with the breast, and wave the breast before the Lord as a wave offering. The priest shall burn the fat on the altar, but the breast belongs to Aaron and his sons. You are to give the right thigh of your fellowship offerings to the priest as a contribution. The son of Aaron who offers the blood and the fat of the fellowship offering shall have the right thigh as his share. From the fellowship offerings of the Israelites, I have taken the breast that is waved and the thigh that is presented and have given them to Aaron the priest and his sons as their regular share from the Israelites.' "
Does it seem more likely that God commanded this, or that primitive men looking for the "priest's share" wrote this?
 
Here is another example:

Leviticus Chapter 9

[Moses] then presented the other ram, the ram for the ordination, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on its head. Moses slaughtered the ram and took some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron's right ear, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. Moses also brought Aaron's sons forward and put some of the blood on the lobes of their right ears, on the thumbs of their right hands and on the big toes of their right feet. Then he sprinkled blood against the altar on all sides. He took the fat, the fat tail, all the fat around the inner parts, the covering of the liver, both kidneys and their fat and the right thigh.
Then from the basket of bread made without yeast, which was before the Lord, he took a cake of bread, and one made with oil, and a wafer; he put these on the fat portions and on the right thigh. He put all these in the hands of Aaron and his sons and waved them before the Lord as a wave offering. Then Moses took them from their hands and burned them on the altar on top of the burnt offering as an ordination offering, a pleasing aroma, an offering made to the Lord by fire. He also took the breast-Moses' share of the ordination ram-and waved it before the Lord as a wave offering, as the Lord commanded Moses.

We have Moses putting the blood of a freshly slaughtered animal on the ears, thumbs and toes of other people.
What does your common sense tell you about these passages?

When looking at passages like these in the Bible, everyone can see the problem. Animal sacrifice is abhorrent, and it has nothing to do with an all-knowing and all-loving God.

For most people, no further evidence is needed. It is obvious that primitive men wrote the Bible, not God. God would have nothing to do with the Bible if these passages are in it, and the Bible is an all-or-nothing book (see Chapter 13 for details). No all-powerful, all-loving God wants people to kill animals, splatter their blood, cut them up into pieces, arrange the pieces on an altar and burn them so that he can "smell the pleasing aroma." There is no difference between the Bible's book of Leviticus and the insanity of the Aztecs.

Therefore, in the same way that the slavery passages in the previous chapter prove that God did not write the Bible, these animal sacrifice passages prove that God did not write the Bible. The whole notion of an all-knowing, all-powerful God purposefully writing this material is patently absurd to any rational human being.

Key Point
All of this material about animal sacrifice is found in the Old Testament of the Bible. This is the same place where we find the Ten Commandments. Only about 20 pages separate Exodus chapter 20 -- the source of the Ten Commandments -- from Leviticus Chapter 1.



Human Sacrifice

If you are a Christian, how do you handle these passages in the Bible? A Christian has a problem, because it is hard to put faith in a book that harbors numerous passages where God demands animal sacrifice. As with the slavery problem discussed in the previous chapter, there are two possible approaches for a Christian:

Pretend that the passages are not there and change the subject when they are mentioned.

Try to develop some sort of highly convoluted rationalization on God's behalf to explain the passages.
Christians tend to take the latter approach, and then they do something quite unexpected. You would imagine that Christians would try to distance themselves as far as possible from animal sacrifice. But they do not.
Suprisingly, many Christians embrace these parts of the Bible. Only in the context of this abhorent practice does the horrific death of Jesus on the cross (as portrayed in the movie The Passion of the Christ) make even a modicum of sense. For Christians, the human race had to actually move into the realm of human sacrifice to finally appease their God. Senselessly killing animals was not sufficient. According to the Christian faith, Jesus is the human sacrifice that satisfied God.

For example, here is something that a Christian minister might say:

If you read all those dry regulations for sin sacrifices in Leviticus and if you read about the requirements for the Passover lamb, you will realize that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice for sin. He is the first-born son, not of a sheep or a goat, but of God. He is innocent of all sin, He volunteers of His own free will—that is, He was convicted only by His own confession. He freely submitted to His Father’s will. He is, by the Levitical code, a perfect sacrifice, and therefore He perfectly removes all sin. He meets all the requirements for a fellowship offering, and thus places us in fellowship with God. Since even on the cross, none of His bones were broken, He also meets all the requirements for a Passover lamb, whose blood protects us from the angel of death, thus He prepares us for the Resurrection.[ref]
As uncomfortable as this sounds, this is the core belief of the Christian church. Christ had to die as a human sacrifice for our sins to appease the "God" of Leviticus. The most prominent religion on this planet, practiced by two billion people, has human sacrifice as its central tenet.
When we read about animal sacrifice in the Old Testament, what we discover is a God who must be insane. No rational human being can accept that an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God could possibly support animal sacrifice.

But then we turn to the New Testament and find that God has moved beyond insanity. God becomes a monstrous absurdity who demands human sacrifice. In other words, Christians are dwelling in the same realm as the virgin-killing Aztecs.

Contemplating the crucifixion

Have you ever thought about how bizarre the crucifixion story is? Imagine the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe sitting on his magnificent throne in heaven. He looks down onto earth and says to himself:

Those evil humans down on earth. I hate what they are doing. All this sin...
Since I am all-knowing I know exactly what the humans are doing and I understand exactly why they commit each sin. Since I created the humans in my own image and personally programmed human nature into their brains, I am the direct author of all of this sin. The instant I created them I knew exactly what would happen with every single human being right down to the nanosecond level for all eternity. If I didn't like how it was going to turn out, I could have simply changed them when I created them. And since I am perfect, I know exactly what I am doing. But ignore all that. I hate all these people doing exactly what I perfectly designed them to do and knew they would do from the moment I created them...

So here's what I am going to do. I will artificially inseminate a virgin. She will give birth to an incarnated version of me. The humans will eventually crucify and kill the incarnated me. That will, finally, make me happy. Yes, sending myself down and having the humans crucify me -- that will satisfy me. I feel much better now.

It makes no sense, does it? Why would an all-knowing being need to have humans kill himself (Jesus is God, after all) to make himself happy? Especially since it is a perfect God who set the whole thing in motion exactly the way he wanted it? The whole story of the crucifixion is absurd from top to bottom if you actually stop to think about it.
Chapter 21 explains where this bizarre story actually comes from. It has nothing to do with "God".

Thinking about our sacrificial God

Have you ever stopped to think about it? If you are a Christian, have you ever thought about how uncomfortable this is? You are worshipping a God who demanded animal sacrifice, and then was finally "appeased" by human sacrifice. Many Christians seem to actually revel in human sacrifice. How else can we explain the tens of millions of Christians who flocked to the movie The Passion of the Christ?

Key Point
Many Christians actually seem to revel in human sacrifice. Tens of millions of Christians flocked to the movie "The Passion of the Christ".

Have you ever consciously thought about how truly uncomfortable this situation is?

Please simply take a moment and think about what you have read in this chapter. Here are two points of view for you to consider:

God wrote the Bible and the Bible is the word of the Lord. God demanded animal sacrifice and he specified how he wanted the sacrifices done in minute detail in the Bible because God enjoys animal sacrifice. These ritualized animal killings allowed humans to atone for our many sins against God, and the aroma of the burning flesh was pleasing to the Lord. By moving to the level of human sacrifice, Christians were finally able to appease their God.

Animal sacrifice is absurd, abhorrent, ridiculous and revolting. Human sacrifice even more so. The Bible was written by primitive men, not by God. Those primitive men were as insane as the Aztecs.
Use both your head and your heart to analyze the situation. Which point of view makes more sense to you?
 
Quote from lkh:

Have i upset your security blanket? There are almost 1300 page views. People are reading and perhaps reflecting on what it all means. All i can hope to accomplish is to save a few minds from the clutches of superstition that religion is.
More...

Peace be with you. I have heard your cries and will answer. People are reading and perhaps reflecting on what it all means...thanks to you. All I can hope to accomplish is to save a few minds from the clutches of superstition that religion has become.

Namaste,

Jesus
 
Quote from lkh:


Use both your head and your heart to analyze the situation. Which point of view makes more sense to you?
More...

For the Chief Musician. The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none who does good.

Psalm 14:1
 
Why is God so sexist?


If you are a Christian woman, then in this chapter I would like to talk with you directly and openly about God. And let me get right to the point. When we look at the Bible -- God's Word -- God seems to have a major problem with women.

The dictionary defines a misogynist as "One who hates women." [ref] It defines the word "sexist" as:

Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women.
Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender
Do you, as a woman, think of God as sexist, or as a misogynist? Probably not -- why would a Christain woman worship God if he were obviously a sexist? When we think of God, we generally do not think of him as hating anyone. Under the Standard Model of God, we think of God as an all-knowing and all-loving father. We think of him as being fair. We think of God as loving each person equally, regardless of any distinction like skin color or gender.
Yet, strangely, we find that God treats women quite differently than he treats men. For example, we find this in 1 Corinthians chapter 14:

As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
This seems like a straightforward passage. And God is the one who inspired the Bible. In Isaiah 40:8 God says that the word of the Lord will last forever, and he says the same thing again in 1 Peter 1:24-25. So here we have God, in his eternal and everlasting Word, saying that it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
Why would God personally create man and woman in his own image, and then silence the women? What possible reason does an all-loving, all-knowing God have to be sexist?

Even more interesting is this question: why would you, as a woman, worship a God who acts like this?

The breadth of God's sexism

There are many places in the Bible where God talks about women. This quote from 1 Corinthians 11, for example, is odd:

But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head--it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her wear a veil. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.) That is why a woman ought to have a veil on her head, because of the angels.
What, exactly, is God saying there? You may find it hard to believe that something that confusing is in the Bible, yet if you look it up you will find it is there.
Then there is this section from 1 Timothy chapter 2:

Also that women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion. Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.
It is hard to miss God's meaning when he says something as direct as, "I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent." (see chapter 12)
If you think about it, you will realize that God started this type of sexism at the very beginning of the Bible. In Genesis chapter 17 God says:

This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.
God makes no mention of forming any sort of covenant with women.
There are many other examples that we can find in the Bible:

In Matthew 25:1 Jesus says: "At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom."

In John 20:17 Jesus says to Mary: "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father," as though the touch of a woman is somehow improper, but a few verses later, is happy to have Thomas touch him.

In Genesis chapter 3, God punishes Eve, and all women for thousands of years, with greatly increased pain during childbirth. No such pain is inflicted on Adam.

In Ephesians 5:22-24 we find this: "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything."

In 1 Peter 3:7 we find: "Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers."

In 1 John 2:13, John says, "I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, dear children, because you have known the Father." No mention is made of women.

In Numbers 31:14-18 we find: "Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle. "Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them. "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, 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." Making sex slaves of women apparently is God's will.

And so on. There are many, many examples like these throughout the old and new testaments.
There are other, broader examples of misogyny that are readily apparent in the Bible:
Are any of Jesus' disciples women? No.
Are any of the elders in the book of Revelation women? No.
Are any of the books of the Bible written by women? No.
Etc...
God, it would seem, wants nothing to do with women.
 
The modern rejection of God's misogyny

How do you, as a woman, feel about all of this sexism?

Keep in mind that God's misogyny as portrayed in the Bible has affected society for centuries. The United States constitution, for example, was originally drafted to specifically deny rights to women. Women could not even vote in the United States until 1920, and only then after decades of battle in the women's suffrage movement.

If you think about it, you will realize that something else is odd. In spite of the Bible and its far-reaching effects, and in spite of the fact that the Bible is supposed to be God's eternal Word, modern human beings have advanced well beyond the Bible's teachings. In fact, we totally reject God's sexism. Modern human beings completely ignore God:

We make women the CEOs of major corporations.
We elect women to high government offices.
We appoint women as presidents of universities.
We fill our schools with female teachers.
We allow women to speak freely in church.
We do all of this in direct defiance of God's Law in the Bible because we know God and his eternal word is wrong.
Why do we completely defy the Bible like this? Why do you, as a woman, reject God's Word when it comes to sexism? I would offer this possibility: We do it because the Bible's attitude toward women is completely irrational. There is no rational reason for women and men to be treated in any way other than equally, and modern, intelligent human beings know that with complete certainty. Therefore, we have to reject what God says in the Bible.

Can you see the contradiction there? We are mere mortals, and we have told our all-powerful God that he is completely wrong.

The funny thing is, billions of Christians still worship God and claim that the Bible is the word of God. Women will happily stand up in church and proclaim how much they love God, in complete defiance of God's word. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia will trumpet his support for the Ten Commandments, which come from the same book that tells women to shut up and be subservient (see Chapter 13 for details on Justice Scalia).

What is going on here?

Rationalizing misogyny

If you are an unbiased observer, you probably find this situation to be mystifying. There is not any room for misinterpretation when God says, "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission." Nor when God says, "I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent." Why would God say that if he did not mean it? And why would Christians allow women to speak in church and teach in our schools given that God specifically forbids it?

A religious person might say, "God had to 'fit in' with the customs of the time." We discussed this argument in Chapter 13 when discussing slavery. What does your common sense tell you? If God -- the all-powerful creator of the universe and father of mankind -- wanted women treated equally, all that he had to do was set things in motion when he created Adam. Or God could have written a twelfth commandment that said, "Thou shalt treat men and women equally." God could portray men and women as equals throughout the Bible. Half of Jesus' apostles could have been women -- that would have made things utterly clear. If God wanted men and women to be equal, he would have made it happen.

You can think about it, and think some more. No matter how you slice it, the sexism is there, plain as day in the Bible. There is no ambiguity. We are forced to conclude God is an all-powerful misogynist, are we not?

In chapter 17 we will discuss the following comment in detail, but it is important to introduce it here: if God is going to take the time to write and publish "the Word of God," why does the book contain so many problems?

Why isn't each page of the Bible astonishing us with its brilliance and insight, and filling us with wonder?
Why, instead, does the Bible contain so much nonsense or, in this case, bigotry?
Why are Christians constantly having to justify, rationalize, excuse and explain the Bible? In this case, we find modern Christians trying to defend a God who obviously dislikes women on many different levels.
Why didn't God understand how he would look to intelligent human beings in the twenty first century, and get it right when he wrote the Bible? The fact is that we are forced to completely ignore God when he says, "I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent." No one believes that, most especially the 50% of the population who are female.
If you are a Christian, I would ask you to consider the two possible ways to explain the sexism that we are seeing in the Bible:
You can assume that God actually did write the Bible and truly is sexist and misogynistic. In that case we are directly defying God's word today by allowing women to be equal to men.

Or you can assume that God had nothing to do with the Bible. In that case, the Bible is meaningless and we can discard it, as discussed in Chapter 13.
Drawing a simple conclusion

To any unbiased observer, the reason for sexism in the Bible is very easy to understand: The Bible was not written by God. It was written by primitive men who were flagrant sexists. Just look at how men in primitive countries like Afghanistan treat women today. Those are the kind of men who wrote the Bible.

And we all know it -- Christians and non-Christians alike. The reason why modern societies (including most Christians living in those societies) completely reject sexism is because we all know that the Bible's sexism is wrong. It is exactly the same situation we see when Christians face slavery and animal sacrifice in the Bible. Christians and non-Christians alike reject the Bible's teachings in these areas because the Bible is obviously wrong. The part that is profoundly strange is that, while completely rejecting these parts of the Bible, Chistians will claim that other parts of the Bible are God's word. They seem to be blind to the obvious contradiction.

At some point, Christians have to accept the evidence that we all can see: Either God wrote the Bible, or he did not. If he did, then he is wrong, and we should reject the Bible and him. If he did not, then we should reject the Bible.

This fact should now be apparent to every woman, and to any rational man.
 
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