Not so good God

This fashionable article of faith, embraced by many Bible-centric Christians, is one of the more astonishing beliefs in modern religion. The Bible, overflowing with heinous examples of intolerance, savagery and vengefulness, doesn't portray God as especially loving - he's often a monster.

Thomas Paine wrote, "Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of God."

The God of the Old Testament was extraordinarily spiteful, insecure and pathetically needy of worship. He even called himself a "jealous God," and threatened to punish generations of children whose fathers dared worship another deity (Exodus 20:5). God also, less than lovingly, commanded those who worship other gods be stoned until they die (Deuteronomy 17:2-5).

When not creating inane rules and demanding sacrificially charred animals, this deity seemed to delight in smiting, brutalizing and plaguing mankind.

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What kind of an "all-loving" father would permit, much less advocate, the absurdly disproportional punishment of eternal torture for limited earthly transgressions?

Perhaps it was the morally obscene fires of perdition, and overall depravity of the "good book," that compelled Mark Twain to conclude, "It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."

Modern Christians are free to believe any absurdity they like. Their own sacred scriptures, however, containing bountiful instances of manifest cruelty and malevolence, refute any contention that their deity represents a flawlessly benevolent and all-loving being.

Here's the rest.