My New Book Title: "Jesus is a Moral Monster!"
By John W. Loftus at 6/02/2014

Think that will draw some attention? ;-) No one dares to say this about Jesus. Well, I'm going to. Work on the book has just begun. Any thoughts?
 
MY RESPONSE: The book will sell fine as long as it keeps in mind that the important thing is attracting people away from Jesus and the torment belief in him can lead to.

Jesus good teachings were not his but taken from other people. His unique teachings were malevolent and fundamentalist. For example we are to love others for God's sake for God is the ultimate good - Jesus said nobody is good but God alone and God is to be loved totally. Loving somebody for somebody else's sake or something else's sake (their money perhaps?) is not really loving them at all though it can look like love. Jesus inflicted damage on the psyches of many of his followers and we wonder why they have been so bloodthirsty and cruel and intolerant? Religions that do not follow Jesus have not sanctioned and enabled as much spilling of blood as those that do.

Jesus vowed to commit suicide for sinners: "No man takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father" John 10:18.  He deliberately refused to avoid his suicide mission though he knew a terrible death was coming.  He didn't have to be a prophet to see that!  Teachings like that have a negative impact on vulnerable minds.

The purpose of scripture is to reveal God's will and it is to be obeyed if it is God's will even if it is violent. Jesus stood for that principle and argued that God wanted him to embrace crucifixion instead of trying to avoid it. Thus he illustrated the point. God knows what he is doing even if we think he does not. He opened the way for people to issue evil commands in the name of God.

The reality is that the scriptures of Christianity claim to be authored by God and they command violence. Jesus endorsed those scriptures. If Christianity hadn't ignored the Jewish Law, it would still be stoning people to death for adultery.

Violent scriptures will lead to some believers endorsing violence or enabling it if not actively engaging in it. Why wait until something happens before making it compulsory for believers to repudiate the violence commanded?

Too many people are involved in religion without having made an informed decision to be part of it. Those who endorse a religion of violence without understanding that it is violent and venerates evil books are being exploited.

One of Christ's core teachings was that marriage is unbreakable and that a new marriage is adulterous. No sane person agrees with that vicious doctrine.

Christianity when practiced without cherrypicking and watering down is deadly. Jesus clearly approved of taking the Old Testament as God's unerring word despite its commanding that certain sinners must be brutally murdered. Moderate Christianity paves the way for the real thing. Atheists seem to understand the religion better.

Jesus - "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 5:17-20.

Those who say that Jesus was good wilfully overlook the fact that he said that he did not come to reject the Law of Moses (which claims to be authored ultimately by God) but to perfect it which implies approval that it established a religion of rites and priests and sacrifices and rules.

The Law demands in the name of God that heretics and homosexuals and adulterers be put to death. Jesus if he claimed to be God was taking responsibility for commanding these things. Even if he changed these rules (debatable) he still regarded them as right up until then probably on the basis that as God owns our lives he has the right to order people to kill.

I pay no attention to Christians who dispute the charge that Jesus was dangerous for they lie like politicians. Their opinions do not change the fact that Christ was a man of his bigoted and fanatical times.

I don't want a religious war with Christians. But Christians may need to repudiate anything that casts them in a bad light even if that means becoming humanist.

My problem as an atheist with Christianity is that though people claiming to be Christian tend to have a very humanistic approach to life, they are cherry-picking. The reality is that the consistent Christian will rant and rave religion like Jesus did and praise God for decreeing murder by stoning in the Old Testament. It's about the principle.

Christian faith is supposed to be a gift from God inspired by the Holy Spirit. In other words, faith is a means of knowing spiritual and religious truth. If you encourage faith, and if you would not force your beliefs on others, then what if somebody says they know by faith that they should force for there is some mysterious divine reason why they must? The moderate believer and the fanatic both have faith, their attitudes are the same, the only difference is in what they think God wants them to do. So if faith does not result in trouble and violence we thank luck for that not faith. It does not change the fact that it opens the door to them. The risk of becoming violent when you do away with a reality check and rest on faith is still embraced and taken and this is criminal for there is no need to tell yourself you know what you in fact don't really know. If faith is knowledge and given by God, the God of truth, then as we have to force something on other people, then why not force our morals on them? Why not force gay people into the closet? Why not force husbands and wives to stay in terrible marriages? Why not jail atheists who speak up for atheism? If faith is knowledge then force is fine. Why not abuse children by manipulating them to believe, by conditioning them? Faith and trust are often confused. They are not the same. Faith is a leap without sufficient justification, trust is a leap with sufficient justification. The wife of faith will not believe her husband is committing adultery when she sees him leaving a hotel room several times with another woman. The trusting wife will believe it for she trusted him up to now because he was a good husband and now she has seen evidence that he has changed. She does not believe in him in spite of good evidence that she should not believe.

The Bible teaches that people who die unreconciled with God make an irrevocable choice and will suffer in Hell forever. Jesus called this eternal punishment. He said that anybody who insults another by calling him a fool will get this punishment - thus he paved the way for religions like Catholicism to come along and tell little children that they will go to Hell forever if they unrepentedly have a deliberate sexual feeling or thought. He sanctioned disproportionate punishment that led to the cruelty of medieval law where people were put to death for minor misdeeds.

The first problem with Jesus and his Hell is that nobody has the right to accuse us of being capable of becoming evil forever. Even the worst of us has several good points.

The second is that if we may become so evil that we reject love forever then that is a case where the rule "love the sinner and hate the sin cannot apply". That rule is based on the notion that sinners have a good side and if we show them love they may give up the sin we find hateful and abhorrent. So Hell necessarily implies that hate speech and hate are acceptable. Love the sinner and hate the sin is suspect because can you really judge a sin and not the person who commits the sin? After all the sin is supposed to show what kind of person we are dealing with. It is the person that is the problem not the sin.

The third is that if sin is so bad that it can take us to Hell forever, no sane person will be able to tolerate it in themselves or others. The teaching leads to violence if it is really taken seriously.

Not all who say they take it seriously actually do. If Jesus was anti-religion, does that mean he wants us to avoid organised religion? But if we have faith and we eschew organised religion, then each of us is her or his own religion!

The Book of Revelation gives us a Jesus who is out to carry violent weapons, the bow, and fighting in war to make his conquest.  He is on a white horse.  See Revelation 6:2.  We are not told until later that this rider is Jesus.  Revelation 19:11-13 says the rider is the Word, that is a name for Jesus.  He is a warrior king.  Jesus then is the first of the fearsome four horsemen of the apocalypse. The others are as bad and they cause great evil.  Jesus must be the worst for he is first in the list and leads the way.  Who are we to say that Jesus was good and non-violent when the Book of Revelation is against us?

Jesus was a bad egg but those who set up his religion for him were probably no better if not worse.