CHILD ABUSE:

God showed his contempt for children by issuing ten commandments which instructed us to worship him, to keep the sabbath, to make him number one, to respect parents, neighbours, their animals and property, but not one mention of how to treat children. Any reasonably caring mortal would have put them top of the list; certainly above "thy neighbour's ass". But to God, children weren't worth a mention.

When I was about twelve years old I raised this point with the local vicar. He was unable to give a satisfactory explanation. Even at that young age, I recognised that the Hebrew God was a phoney.

Now that I've read the whole book I discover that the writers of the Bible were emotional spastics; bitter old men who despised children. In Exodus, God says: "And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death": Exodus 21:15. So a child may have a sadistic father, a drunken brute who enjoys beating his children senseless, and if the battered child strikes out in self defence he can be righteously murdered.

In Leviticus 20:9 God carries that a stage further and insists upon the death penalty merely for insolence: "For everyone that curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death." What child hasn't at some time or other cursed his or her parents?

CRUEL JESUS:

When asked by the scribes and Pharisees why his disciples ate food with dirty hands, Jesus reminded them that they too were breaking God's law by not murdering rebelious children: "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, he that curseth father or mother, let him die the death."

Unperturbed by the horrible effect his words could have had, Jesus pointed out to his accusers that they were hypocrites upbraiding him for breaking God's hygiene regulations when they themselves broke God's law by allowing stroppy children to live: "Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites..." Matthew 15:3-7

So around about the period when Jesus was supposed to have lived, some of the more brutal of God's laws had been allowed to lapse. But to get himself out of a tight corner Jesus was quite prepared to risk pricking the religious conscience of the Pharisees, even if it meant re-establishing the child-murder law.

Re-read that passage. Most Bible students miss things like that, but to my mind, it's the little seemingly unimportant things which give the clue to the man's real nature. Would anyone with a hint of compassion about them risk the re-introduction of such a monstrous law?

Even two thousand years later I had to wrestle with my conscience before repeating the more vicious of God's laws because to this day there exist fundamentalist Christian sects which administer murderous discipline to their children. Only because I believe, Ieft unchallenged, the Bible will bring about the destruction of all mankind have I decided to overcome my reservations. Jesus had none. All he was concerned about was silencing his critics, and too bad for the children who might have been murdered as a result.

Christian apologists are loathe to admit that Jesus was not the good-natured, caring person they've been conditioned to believe he was. But only the most sinister kind of megalomaniac would say:

"If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life, also, he cannot be my disciple." Jesus of Nazareth: Luke 14:26

GOD THE BRUTAL FATHER:

In Deuteronomy (21:19-21) we find another of the sort of law Jesus was referring to: "Then shall his father and mother lay hold on him and bring him out to the elders of the city, and unto the gate of his place. And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard. And all the men of the city shall stone him with stones, that he die."

From Proverbs 13:24 we get the passage which made child abuse respectable: "He that spareth the rod hateth his son." Boy, how that one's been embraced by generations of child batterers! And in Proverbs 19:18, brutality is seen as a virtue while compassion is slammed: "Chasten thy son while there is still hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying."

I remember hearing a father on talk-back radio boast how he "disciplined" his young son every day with a cane. It made no difference whether or not the child had misbehaved, the caning had become a ritual "for his own good". He quoted the following passage from Proverbs 23:14: "Thou shalt beat him with a rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell."

There is no way of telling how much suffering has been caused to children because of those detestable passages from the "Good Book". Every brute who enjoys the feel of his fist thudding into an infant's tender flesh can point to the Bible as his "divine authority". If there was nothing else evil in that book except for those few passages, I would still hate it with every cell and every fibre in my body. As it happens, it reeks of evil from Genesis to Revelation.

"The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion."

Thomas Paine

FOSTERING FEAR:

Here are instructions to fill the minds of children with dread: "Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of his law: And that their children, which have not known anything, may hear, and learn to fear the Lord your God": Deuteronomy 31:12-13

SLAUGHTER OF CHILDREN:

Now turn to the book of Isaiah, chapter 14 verse 21. I've yet to meet a Christian who isn't embarrassed by this. It's interesting hearing them turn verbal somersaults trying to justify it:

"Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers."

This ghastly instruction is perfectly consistent with God's obscene vendetta against children; it was he who ordered the punishment of generations of innocents for trivial misdemeanors committed years previously by their fathers and forefathers.

"I thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me": Exodus 20:5. This means that my son's grandchildren may be born crippled or blind because a great grandfather they never heard of, hated the Jew-God. Is that the kind of deity you worship, O Christian?

Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house... And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die. Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die. And Nathan departed unto his house. And the Lord struck the child that U-ri-ah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick... And it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child died": 2 Samuel 12:11-18

Gives you a warm glow doesn't it.

GOD'S VINDICTIVE NATURE:

Did you notice in the chapter on 'sex', the following statement: "And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms": Hosea 2:4. Could the new-born babe help it if his mother was a prostitute? What satisfaction does God get out of being cruel to innocent children?

Elisha and God make a fine pair: "And he (Elisha) went up from thence unto Beth-el: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, go up, thou bald head, go up, thou bald head. And he turned back and looked upon them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them": 2 Kings 23-24

Elisha, you may recall, was the man so close to God, he shared with Jesus the knack of reviving corpses. But today he was in a mood to create some (corpses). And Big Daddy couldn't resist being of service.

The Bible stands accused of legitimising child abuse. Never has there been so culpable a book. People have no idea what cruelty is contained within the pages of this so-called "Inspired Word of God".

"Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones" Psalms 137:9

MASS CHILD-MURDER:

"And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle...there was not a house where there was not one dead." Exodus 12:29-30

God couldn't even spare the child of an imprisoned man whose lot in life was already wretched.

The Egyptians were being punished for enslaving Hebrews. While Moses was shouting "Let my people go!", what was God up to? "And the Lord said unto Moses, When thou goest to return in to Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall NOT let the people go": Exodus 4:21

With Pharaoh's heart suitably hardened, God could justify sending plagues, locusts, lice, frogs and hail to murder Egyptian children. Also to destroy, redestroy, and re-redestroy virtually every living creature. It was all a big glorious game to God.

"Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant."

Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794

Because, when murdering the Egyptian children, God "passed over" the Jewish children, thus sparing them, this massacre is celebrated annually by world Jewry. Perhaps it's time Germans started celebrating the Belsen and Auswitz Passovers when God saw to it that only Jews, gypsies, and other despicables got gassed?

Finally Pharaoh releases the Jews, but God still has one super game to play; he wants to drown the Egyptian army in the Red Sea: "And I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them: and I will get me honour upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen": Exodus 14:17

So God goads the Egyptians into pursuing Moses, then leads them into a deadly trap.

"I will get me honour" – Just think about that for a moment, Christians. You are worshipping a "God" of such low-life, despicable mentality that he needs to get himself honour by drowning an army. He has already murdered thousands of innocent Egyptians with numerous plagues but he's still a little bit honour-deficient, so he needs to drown an army to top up his honour quotient and make himself feel whole again.

How patently absurd!

God then instructs Moses to capture slaves.

Torture, as opposed to everyday Biblical cruelty. Most of it is committed by Bible heroes, men whom school children are taught to respect and admire. David, forefather of the alleged "Jesus" is a fine example: "And he brought out the people that were in it and cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes. Even so dealt David with all the cities of the children of Ammon.": 1 Chronicles 20:3

And as an encore: "And he put them under saws and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick kiln": 2 Samuel 12:31

As a potter I can testify to the intense heat given off by even the crudest of kilns. I shudder to think of the agonies suffered by those unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of super-Jew David.

Slightly less imaginative perhaps, but almost as vicious was Judah: "But A-do-ni-be-zek fled; and they pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes": Judges 1:6

A-do-nibe-zek then mumbles something about 70 kings also having their thumbs and toes amputated. But it makes little sense.

Another example of torture springs to mind; Gideon, the man whose name launched a zillion free Bibles, says to the princes of Suc-coth: "Therefore when the Lord hath delivered Ze-bah and Zal-munna into mine hand, then I will tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briars... And he took the elders of the city, and thorns of the wilderness and briars, and with them he taught the men of Suc-coth." Judges 8:7 and 16

Thus, with his "many wives and concubine" (Judges 8:30-31) Gideon ruled for 40 years over the Midianites – a nation already totally annihilated by Moses. The Hebrews were rarely troubled by noisy neighbours.

Continues