What should you do if god orders you to commit mortal sins? You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Do you not have the moral duty, as imposed by that god himself, to refuse such orders? What are some of these orders god commanded which go against the moral code he imposed on humanity? And what punishment does god deserve for breaking his own rules and commit mortal sins?
1. What does someone deserve to die for?
“For the wages of sin is death…” Romans 6:23
“See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; …” Deuteronomy 30:15-16
Of all god’s commandments, you should of course first and foremost keep the Ten Commandments: Exodus 20: “1 And God spoke all these words: 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7 “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. 8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. 12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. 13 “You shall not murder. 14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You shall not steal. 16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Some sins are worse than others. According to the classical view held by various Christian denominations, the following so called seven deadly sins are punishable by death: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. These sins are not enumerated verbatim in the bible, but have over time been distilled out of the bible and Christian theology through people like John Cassian, pope Gregory I and Thomas of Aquinas.
These capital punishment deserving sins are joined by the 'peccata clamantia': sins punishable by death, which are sometimes specifically referred to in the bible, sometimes explicitly contradicted by the bible and sometimes absent from the bible, including: a) homicide, abortion, infanticide, fratricide, patricide, and matricide (“the blood of Abel”) b) non-creative sexual acts like sodomy, withdrawal…(“the sins of the Sodomites”) c) oppression of the poor d) injustices to the wage earner
Last but not least are the sins that god will never forgive and for which you will always burn in hell: sins against the Holy Spirit. These sins are however arbitrarily defined by as many theologians as there are Christian bloggers or vloggers…. and omit or contradict the doctrine of Trinity (which says that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not the same but are the same, or 3 equals 1).
Bottom line: Break any of god’s commandments and you (deserve to) die. This is of course inevitable: we all die, whether we break god’s rules or not. But what about god?
2. God breaks the second commandment
The second commandment: “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them…”
but
In Numbers (21:6-9) god orders Moses to cast a bronze snake, put it up a pole and have the Israelites who were bitten by venomous snakes look upon it in order to be saved from certain death. Why didn't god simply snap his fingers and instantly cure the victims, in stead of breaking his own commandment by resorting to some idol-worshipping voodoo?
…and from the same second commandment: “for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me”
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the neutral act of anger becomes the sin of wrath when it is directed against an innocent person(*), when it is unduly strong or long-lasting, or when it desires excessive punishment. Malicious envy is similar to jealousy in that they both feel discontent towards someone's traits, status, abilities, or rewards. Not only does god break his own second commandment when he orders Moses to make a bronze snake, he explicitly admits in the very same commandment to being guilty of the capital sins of envy towards the other gods he knows and holds council with (I am jealous) and the capital sin of wrath, directing his anger towards someone’s children, grandchildren or even great-grandchildren who cannot possibly be held accountable for their ancestor’s mistake by any moral standard.
(*) An often heard and cheap remark of religious apologists is that no one is innocent, not even unborn babies.
"The Brazen Serpent" by Anton Van Dyck, ca. 1618-1620 Museo Del Prado, Madrid
3. God breaks the sixth commandment
3.1. “Thou shall not murder” – Exodus 20:13
but
Thou shall kill anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow – Exodus 21:12
Thou shall kill anyone who attacks their father or mother – Exodus 21:15
Thou shall kill anyone who kidnaps someone, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession – Exodus 21:16
Thou shall kill anyone who curses their father or mother – Exodus 21:17
Thou shall kill every sorceress – Exodus 22:18
Thou shall kill anyone who has sexual relations with an animal – Exodus 22:19
Thou shall kill whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord – Exodus 22:20
I will kill whoever takes advantage of a widow or the fatherless. – Exodus 22:22
My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out. – Exodus 23:23
Thou shall kill anyone who desecrates the Sabbath. – Exodus 31:14
If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbour—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death. – Leviticus 20:10
Leviticus 20: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16: Kill! Kill! Kill!
Exodus 32:27-29
…“This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.” In this passage god not only orders the Hebrew Schutzstaffel (SS) to murder thousands, and thereby break the sixth commandment, but also to commit fratricide and infanticide. This on the very same day Moses descends the mountain with the new stone tablets - engraved by god himself and containing the command not to kill.
The list of trespasses by god against his sixth commandment just goes on and on, and not just within the book of Exodus…the bible is rife with mortal sins committed or ordered, sanctioned or rewarded by god.
Probably one of the most famous examples of a mortal sin god orders a human being to execute is in Genesis, where Abraham is instructed to kill his son Isaac. And yes, for every passage in the bible where god kills or orders the killing of someone, Christian-Jewish-Muslim apologists always have their different interpretation of what the words in the text mean to excuse the crimes of god.
3.2. Sinful youngsters, a sinful bald prophet and a sinful god
When a group of children mock the prophet Elisha, god makes two bears attack and maul 42 of them. A few of the excuses:
The young men were not children but probably young men.
There were a lot more than the 42 who were attacked.
They were not merely mocking Elisha, but his status as a man of god and therefore god himself.
They chose to mock Elisha in spite of being old enough to discern good from evil.
They were injured but not killed.
The Palestinian brown bear is not to be compared with the American black or grizzly bear.
The passage is not to be taken literally but is an allegory.
And so on…and so on.
Here’s a summary by John Simpson on Quora (https://www.quora.com/Why-did-God-send-bears-to-kill-42-children-for-making-fun-of-a-bald-man):
“In summary, 2 Kings 2:23-24 is not an account of God mauling young children for making fun of a bald man. Rather, it is a record of an insulting demonstration against God’s prophet by a large group of young men. Because these young people of about 20 years of age or older (the same term is used of Solomon in 1 Kings 3:7) so despised the prophet of the Lord, Elisha called upon the Lord to deal with the rebels as He saw fit. The Lord’s punishment was the mauling of 42 of them by two female bears. The penalty was clearly justified, for to ridicule Elisha was to ridicule the Lord Himself. The seriousness of the crime was indicated by the seriousness of the punishment. The appalling judgment was God’s warning to all who would scorn the prophets of the Lord.”
The excuses debunked:
The word used in the bible translated as children in some versions of the bible can indeed mean young men, but can also mean children. How do you know which was the case? Either way… it is irrelevant.
They may not merely have been mocking Elisha’s baldness, but they just as well may have. Either way… it is irrelevant.
The mauling of the young men by two bears may or may not have resulted in their deaths. If they were “merely” seriously injured, several of them if not all would have died of their wounds, given the medical expertise of the contemporary trauma surgeons and state of the art medical facilities of the Iron Age. Either way, it is irrelevant:
The young men MOCKED Elisha. They did not touch him (although some religious nut may of course claim that ‘to mock’ means to beat up or to physically attack as well). The punishment does not fit the crime. Let’s call once more on Christian theology itself:
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the neutral act of anger becomes the sin of wrath when it is directed against an innocent person, when it is unduly strong or long-lasting, or when it desires excessive punishment. "If anger reaches the point of a deliberate desire to kill or seriously wound a neighbor, it is gravely against charity; it is a mortal sin.
Plainly put: how do any of those apologist’s justifications make it right? They don’t!
Both god and his prophet are guilty of mortal sin once again.
Luckily, god himself may only be an allegory.
4. God breaks the eighth and tenth commandments
4.1. God is a thief
“Thou shall not steal”… You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."
but
“Israel, however, put him to the sword and took over his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, but only as far as the Ammonites, because their border was fortified. Israel captured all the cities of the Amorites and occupied them, including Heshbon and all its surrounding settlements.” – Numbers 21:24-25
“After Moses had sent spies to Jazer, the Israelites captured its surrounding settlements and drove out the Amorites who were there.” – Numbers 21:31
“Then they turned and went up along the road toward Bashan, and Og king of Bashan and his whole army marched out to meet them in battle at Edrei. The Lord said to Moses, “Do not be afraid of him, for I have delivered him into your hands, along with his whole army and his land. Do to him what you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon.” So they struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army, leaving them no survivors. And they took possession of his land.” – Numbers 21:32-35
“They fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man. Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba—the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the Israelite assembly at their camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho.” – Numbers 31: 7-12
“The plunder remaining from the spoils that the soldiers took was 675,000 sheep, 72,000 cattle, 61,000 donkeys and 32,000 women who had never slept with a man. The half share of those who fought in the battle was: 337,500 sheep, of which the tribute for the Lord was 675; 36,000 cattle, of which the tribute for the Lord was 72; 30,500 donkeys, of which the tribute for the Lord was 61; 16,000 people, of whom the tribute for the Lord was 32. Moses gave the tribute to Eleazar the priest as the Lord’s part, as the Lord commanded Moses.” – Numbers 32:41
Need we continue? The murder, rape and enslavement of thousands of men, women pregnant or not, infant girls and boys, unborn babies, the theft, destruction and plunder of other people’s land and property…all under god’s orders and divine plan or executed by god himself. In Exodus 21:16 god orders kidnappers to be put to death, but a few pages later he orders the kidnapping of 16,000 women and girls, of whom he reserves 32 for his personal pleasure. The entire book of Exodus could be summed up as the Israelites' (or their god's) plan to escape slavery in Egypt and to annihilate its eastern neighbors and steal their lands.
4.2. God is a rapist and an adulterer
In Genesis 6, we read how the sons of god (wholly divine beings, like the children of Zeus and Hera) raped human women and thus spawned a hybrid race of demigods. These giant half breeds in turn raped any earthly woman of their liking, creating another diluted form of divine-human offspring (the so-called mighty men, the men of renown). As most bible readers know, interracial sex/procreation is one of the most disgusting things in god’s eyes, so he decides to wipe out both rapists and raped with the great flood, and all earthly wickedness with it. The bible itself tells us how miserably this plan failed.
Curiously enough however, some 2,500 years later this omniscient god has completely forgotten what made him so exorbitantly angry (capital sin: wrath) that he drowned the entire world and decides: to impregnate an earthly woman to give birth to himself/his son. In the gospel arbitrary called according to Luke, Mary at least is allowed to verbally consent (but how would you refuse such an almighty and easily angered god, right?). In 'Matthew', she doesn’t get the least say in the matter. God can justly kill his own offspring and all humankind when they mate, but when he commits the exact same abominable crime, it is all excused once again for the undefined greater good.
The main point here however is that this teenage girl was already betrothed to a man. So does god pay the bride price of Mary to her father? Nope. Does god marry the girl he raped (in his nebulous form)? Of course he doesn’t. He just orders the fiancé of the girl to marry her anyway, no matter what his own holy law prescribed. But as the situation after god’s uncontrollable urge stands, according to that law, both adulterer and adulteress should be… killed.
5. God sanctions abortion and infanticide
Exodus 4:22-23 “This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.”
Numbers 5:16-22 explains how a priest can abort a foetus as proof of its mother’s infidelity.
Numbers 31:17 "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him."
1 Samuel 15: 2-3 “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. 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.”
Hosea 9:16 “Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit; yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb.”
Hosea 13: 16 “Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.”
6. Leading by example
We gave but a few examples of instances where the destroyer god breaks the rules he wrote down with his own finger. Throughout the entire bible he sins gravely, repeatedly and shamelessly. God repents some of his actions a few times in the bible, but not his crimes. God is clearly a sinner. The fact that he refuses to show remorse, would never repent and maliciously persists in committing the most evil crimes, makes him the entity most in need of salvation, while being totally beyond it.
Religious bible defenders will of course oppose the above conclusion, no matter how logically it follows from the rules god himself gave. They do this with a very simple circular argument:
1. God is all-good
2. Therefore, everything he does is good.
3. Evil committed by god is only evil in our eyes because we are intellectually too limited to understand the goodness of that evil.
4. Evil acts committed by god are therefore not evil, they are good.
5. Those acts cannot be evil, even if we see them as such, because god is all-good.
I am human and I too am all good. I am free from sin and never commit any evil. I never commit evil because I am all-good. Even if you point at an action of mine which is evil, it only seems an evil act because you are too stupid to understand the bigger picture. Such act only seems evil in your eyes, but is still a good act, because I am all-good.
Makes sense, right?
Wat doesn't make sense is why/how inherently good people persist in worshipping such a barbaric, primitive and disgusting fictional deity. By his own standards, god should be sentenced to death by every Jew, Christian and Muslim. If no human is able to carry out that sentence, then god should be consistent and kill himself…which of course he can’t, as the biblical god’s nature is inconsistent and hopelessly contradictory: a direct result of being the brain fart of primitive and morally bankrupt people.
Charles Dalet PHD, January 2021