Now this God either did or he did not believe in and command murder and
rapine in the days when he used to sit around evenings and chat with
Abraham and Moses and the rest of them. His especial plans and desires
were "revealed" or they were not. The ideas of justice and right were
higher in those days than they are now, or else we are wiser and better
than God, or else the Bible is not his revealed will. You can take your
choice. My choice is to keep my respect for divine justice and honor,
and let the Bible bear the burden of its own mistakes.
If religion is a revelation, then it is not a growth, and it would have
been most perfect in design and plan when it was nearest its birth.
Now accepting the Bible theory of Jehovah, we find that when the
communications of God were immediate and personal there could have been
no mistake as to his will. To deal with it as a growth or evolution
toward better things is to abandon the whole tenet of a revealed law
of God. But to deal with it as a revelation is to make God a being too
repulsive and brutal to contemplate for one moment with respect.
He either did or did not tell those men those things. Which will you
accept?
He divided men into two classes. Of one he made tyrants and butchers;
of the other, victims. He made woman weak in order that she might be the
more easily overcome by vice; helpless, in order that she might the more
easily be made the victim of brutal lust! He made children to be the
beasts of burden, the human sacrifices, the defenceless property of
criminals and fiends. He did these things, or the prophets romanced
about it, or some one else romanced about them. Which?
If I accept the former alternative. I can have nothing but loathing and
contempt for the Diety and his followers. If the latter, it clouds the
character of no one. It simply places the ignorance of the past on the
same plane with the ignorance of the present. It rescues the reputation
of the Infinite at the trifling expense of a few musty fables.
I choose the latter! I prefer to believe either that a few men were
themselves deceived, or that they tried to deceive others--it does
not much matter which. I prefer to adopt this belief, and so keep the
character of even a supposititious God above reproach.
If we accept a God at all let us accept an honest one.