Opinion Piece

Not long ago I was blessed with a visit to my front door by two Jehovah’s Witnesses. Having taught evolution for 40 years, I was disinclined to waste any time trying to convince them that the Earth is a lot older than 10,000 years, and that humans, like all other life forms, are the product of evolution rather than divine creation. So I politely directed them to the gate.

Afterwards, I began to reflect and to marvel at how two adult humans could believe such nonsense. Our conversation had not lasted long enough for me to ask them about Eve’s conversation with a talking snake, or about how two kiwi could have crossed the Tasman sea and found their way to the Ark and back again. Moreover, I wondered how anyone of sound mind could consider the Old Testament to be a moral guide for life, when it is clearly the precise opposite.

In what must be his most famously quoted sentence, Richard Dawkins put it beautifully in Chapter 2 of his book The God Delusion:

“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.”

This sentence was considered to be “controversial” because it upset a lot of people. But it was also incontrovertible because every one of those 19 descriptors is more than adequately illustrated by the “Good Book” itself.

In his book God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, Dan Barker, an ex-evangelical fundamentalist Christian, devotes each entire chapter to biblical quotes that more than justify each of Dawkins’ epithets. Moreover, as Barker shows, Dawkins had seriously understated the psychopathic malevolence of the Old Testament God.

Among the most defining character traits of the Old Testament God is bloodthirstiness. Ezekiel 32:6 puts it well: “I will drench the land even to the mountains with your flowing blood; and the watercourses will be full of you.”

Unsurprisingly, God had no time for non-violence, for as Jeremiah 48:10 says: “. . . and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from bloodshed.” And as 1 Kings 20:35-36 relates, God instructed a man to strike another man and that if he refused, he would be killed by a lion. He refused and duly paid the penalty.

In Psalm 137:8-9 God manages to combine bloodthirstiness with sadism and infanticide: “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!”

Jealousy is usually a sign of insecurity, so it’s odd that a being powerful enough to create the universe should be so subject to pettiness and jealousy. According to Exodus 20:5, God is just that, punishing not only those who don’t worship him, but punishing their descendants: “. . . for I the Lord am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me.”

According to Isaiah 13:11-16, God seems to take pleasure in punishing innocent children: “I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty . . . Their infants will be dashed to pieces before your eyes . . . ”

And then there’s the callous treatment of women by men, even women of their own families. Genesis 19:1-11 describes how men from the city of Sodom had surrounded Lot’s house, wanting to have sex with two angels who were staying with him. He tried to dissuade them, offering his two virgin daughters to be gang-raped by the men instead. Though it was not God who ordered this appalling act, there was not a word of criticism from God, who considered Lot to be an upright man.

It’s pretty clear by now that Old Testament God was without scruples. So it’s no surprise that a bit of ethnic cleansing didn’t trouble his conscience, as Leviticus 26-31 quotes him: “. . . And I will make your cities waste.”

No doubt there will be some Old Testament apologists who will accuse Dawkins and Barker of cherry-picking the “juicy” bits and ignoring evidence that God is not the evil psychopath he is accused of being. In the foreword to Barker’s book, Dawkins challenges readers to search the Old Testament for evidence that God is “magnanimous, generous, encouraging, forgiving, charitable, loving, friendly, good-humoured, supportive of women, homosexuals and children, freedom-loving, open-minded, broad-minded, non-violent”. In other words, try to find any qualities that make God worthy as a deity. Any takers?

By 2017 standards, the God of the Old Testament is a morally degenerate character reflecting the values of over two millenia ago. In other words, the values of the patriarchal society that created him.

¦ Martin Hanson is a retired science teacher who lives in Nelson

Martin Hanson