In God's Defence

[ThomasP]

Your 10 videos about the Bible and the buried truth is a great starting point for your enlightenment. You found a lot of obvious problems and contradicting evidence in the Bible. What you had failed to find was that God had nothing at all to do with the creation of that small minded book they call the Bible. Yet many Christians sincerely believe that the Bible is the word of God.

I would love to know by what authority do these Christians call the Bible the Word of God? It is not them calling it so that makes it so, any more than the Mahometans calling the Koran the Word of God makes the Koran to be so. The Popish Councils of Nice and Laodicea, under the cruel leadership of emperor Constantine, about 350 years after the time the person called Jesus Christ is said to have lived, voted the books that now compose what is called the New Testament to be the Word of God. This was done by yeas and nays, as many countries still vote a law into force.

The Pharisees of the second temple, after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, did the same by the books that now compose the Old Testament, and this is all the authority there is, which to me is no authority at all. I am as capable of judging for myself as they were, and I think more so, because, as they made a living by their religion, they had a self-interest in the vote they gave.

Some Christians may have an opinion that the men at that council, or Constantine himself, were divinely inspired by God to create the Bibile, but they cannot prove it because one cannot see into the mind of another order to know how he comes by his thoughts; and the same is the case with the word revelation. There can be no evidence of such a thing, for you can no more prove revelation than you can prove what another man dreams of, neither can he prove it himself.

It is often said in the Bible that God spoke unto Moses, but how do Christians know that God spoke unto Moses? Because, they will say, the Bible says so. The Koran says, that God spoke unto Mahomet, but do most Christians also believe that too? No. Why not? Because, they will say that they do not believe it; and so because they do, and because they don't is all the reason they can give for believing or disbelieving except that they will say that Mahomet was an impostor. And how do you know Moses was not an impostor?

For my own part, I believe that all are impostors who pretend to hold verbal communication with the God. It is the way by which the world has been imposed upon; but if you think otherwise you have the same right to your opinion that I have to mine, and must answer for it in the same manner. But all this does not settle the point, whether the Bible be the Word of God, or not. It is therefore necessary to go a step further. The case then is: -

Christians form their opinion of God from the account given of Him in the Bible; and I form my opinion of the Bible from the wisdom and goodness of God manifested in the structure of the universe, and in all works of creation. The result in these two cases will be, that Christians, by taking the Bible for their standard, will have a bad opinion of God; and I, by taking God for my standard, shall have a bad opinion of the Bible.

The Bible represents God to be a changeable, passionate, vindictive being; making a world and then drowning it, afterwards repenting of what he had done, and promising not to do so again. Setting one nation to cut the throats of another, and stopping the course of the sun till the butchery should be done. But the works of God in the creation preach to us another doctrine. In that vast volume we see nothing to give us the idea of a changeable, passionate, vindictive God; everything we there behold impresses us with a contrary idea - that of unchangeableness and of eternal order, harmony, and goodness.

The sun and the seasons return at their appointed time, and everything in the creation claims that God is unchangeable. Now, which am I to believe, a book that any impostor might make and call the Word of God, or the creation itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? For the Bible says one thing, and the creation says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.

It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man. That bloodthirsty man, called the prophet Samuel, makes God to say, (I Sam. xv. 3) `Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'

That Samuel or some other impostor might say this, is what, at this distance of time, can neither be proved nor disproved, but in my opinion it is blasphemy to say, or to believe, that God said it. All our ideas of the justice and goodness of God revolt at the impious cruelty of the Bible. It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.

What makes this pretended order to destroy the Amalekites appear the worse, is the reason given for it. The Amalekites, four hundred years before, according to the account in Exodus xvii. (but which has the appearance of fable from the magical account it gives of Moses holding up his hands), had opposed the Israelites coming into their country, and this the Amalekites had a right to do, because the Israelites were the invaders, as the Spaniards were the invaders of Mexico. This opposition by the Amalekites, at that time, is given as a reason, that the men, women, infants and sucklings, sheep and oxen, camels and asses, that were born four hundred years afterward, should be put to death; and to complete the horror, Samuel hewed Agag, the chief of the Amalekites, in pieces, as you would hew a stick of wood. I will bestow a few observations on this case.

In the first place, nobody knows who the author, or writer, of the book of Samuel was, and, therefore, the fact itself has no other proof than anonymous or hearsay evidence, which is no evidence at all. In the second place, this anonymous book says, that this slaughter was done by the express command of God: but all our ideas of the justice and goodness of God give the lie to the book, and as I never will believe any book that ascribes cruelty and injustice to God, I therefore reject the Bible as unworthy of credit.

As I have now given you my reasons for believing that the Bible is not the Word of God, that it is a falsehood, I have a right to ask all Christians their reasons for believing the contrary; but I know they can give me none, except that they were educated to believe the Bible; and as the Turks give the same reason for believing the Koran, it is evident that education makes all the difference, and that reason and truth have nothing to do in the case.

Christians believe in the Bible from the accident of birth, and the Turks believe in the Koran from the same accident, and each calls the other infidel. But leaving the prejudice of education out of the case, the unprejudiced truth is, that all are infidels who believe falsely of God, whether they draw their creed from the Bible, or from the Koran, from the Old Testament, or from the New.

When one has examined the Bible with the attention that I have done (for I do not think most Christians know much about it), and permit yourself to have just ideas of God, you will most probably believe as I do. But I wish you to know that I say all this not for the purpose of changing the opinion of Christians. I say all this to satisfy Christians that my disbelief of the Bible is founded on a pure and religious belief in God; for in my opinion the Bible is a gross libel against the justice and goodness of God, in almost every part of it.

In God's Defence,
Thomas Eugene Paine

[Sajih]

It is clear from your text that you do not believe in God at all and your attack on his holy prophets and scriptures suggests to me that your intentions are sadistic and immoral. I suggest you go and plant your evil seeds of doubt and deceit on some other website for I do not have the time or energy to deal with negativity. Our mission here on this website is to unite not divide, to gather and not scatter as you are clearly attempting to do because you do not believe in the One True God but rather your father the devil.

I feel sorry for your soul; for it is lost in the deepest darkness and I pray to our Lord God; whose name you defile; to have mercy on your soul both in this world and the afterlife.
For now you have been warned; any further evil postings will see you barred!

[Marwan]

Dear Mr Thomas Paine,

Welcome to our church forums. As it appears that you are not familiar with common courtesy...it is normal human behaviour for one to greet & introduce themselves before stating their case. If you were not in such a hurry to post your ramblings, you would have noticed that we have a section here where you can greet and introduce yourself to the forum. This is not a requirement for posting, but it's just common courtesy that any normal human being that was raised correctly would know.

I now have no frame of referance about you. I do not know what country you are in, how old you are, what background you came from, etc. In fact the only thing I know about you is that you're a male who probably completed a college degree. I know this only because of your masculine name (Thomas), and from the intelligent sentence structure and grammar you used in your post (even if the information itself was mostly nonsense).

You remind me of another person we had here on our forums, who was selling the same snake-oil as you. His name was Gary Devaney. He has a lot of the same beliefs as you about God (evidence in nature, etc). Here is the link to that post just in case you haven't looked around our board yet:
http://www.churchofeverlastinggod.org/My...php?tid=29

As you can read from Mr Devany's post, Sajih had a an in-depth conversation with him about his beliefs, and in the end Mr Devaney admitted he was wrong. At the time, Sajih was very patient and wanted to help Mr Devaney. But you caught us at a bad time right now, as Sajih is still grieving from losing his Brother recently. Then having to read a post like yours, is just really bad timing on your behalf.

So please save us all a lot of time and trouble, click the link above, and just read Mr Devaney's entire thread...then apply it all to yourself.

When you are ready to see the truth, we will be here to guide you out of the darkness of your disbelief.

With God's Blessings,
-Marwan