God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction by Dan Barker. 

4/5 rating. 303 pages.

Book #66 of 2020. Read September 26, 2020.

This was a completely eye-opening book! Dan has extensive knowledge of the bible from his nineteen years of being an evangelical Christian, and eventually a pastor. He became disillusioned and now uses this knowledge to show the issues with religion. This book uses hundreds of direct quotes out of the bible to show the horrors that are perpetrated by the god of the “Good Book.”

My largest issue with religion (especially Christianity) prior to reading this book was what I took as utter hypocrisy by a majority of its adherents. I am certainly no saint, but I often have a better moral compass than avowed Christians. 

After reading this book, it is abundantly clear that the bible is anything but a morally upright book. It may have empowered and inspired countless good acts and moral lives from its followers over the centuries, but this is because of selective reading and more about Enlightenment values and moral progress elsewhere that lead people to search for the powerfully good parts of the bible than because of going back to the text.

I must have missed the Sundays where they preached these passages:

“Therefore, thus says the Lord, Behold, I am bringing evil upon them which they cannot escape; though they cry to me, I will not listen to them.” – Jeremiah 11:11

“Their little ones shall be dashed to pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.” – Hosea 13:16 (Apparently abortion is okay here…)

“I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” – Isaiah 45:7

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” – Luke 14:26 (Jesus’s ideas of family values)

“You always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me.” – Mark 14:7 (Jesus’s selflessness)

These are an infinitesimal sample of the vitriol Dan shows are in the bible.

Quotes:

“Even a cursory look at the bible should be enough to convince a reasonable person that it’s the very last document you should thrust in front of someone if you want to convince them of the love of God.”

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” – Richard Dawkins

“I have presented more than fifteen hundred horrific passages in this book, often describing the context and the Hebrew words, but if a believer can find one or two selections by another author claiming ‘God is not like that,’ somehow I am the one taking it out of context.”

“Actions speak louder than words. If Yahweh behaves like a thug, his reputation can’t be redeemed by one of his minions simply parroting ‘God is love.’”

“Satan, in the bible, murdered only ten people. And even this was accomplished only with the direct authority and approval of God…Poor Satan gets all the blame and none of the respect he desires. Is it any wonder that the legal term for unpredictable, uncontrollable, and destructive events is not ‘act of Satan,’ but ‘act of God?’”

“I had been taught that the bible was a good book….Instead, I found a record of such superstitious silliness and ignorance, such moral obscenities, such ghastly atrocities that I had never even imagined. I found the bible’s personalities, God’s favorites, and even God himself to be utter reprobates. In this book, where I had expected to find simple guidelines, every kind of behavior that was repugnant to me was glorified and rewarded, even perpetrated and commanded by God himself.” – Ruth Hurmence Green

“The one word that sums up the scenario between Genesis and Malachi is ‘jealousy.’ Almost every page, every story, every act, every psalm, every prophecy, every command, every threat in those 39 ancient books points back to the possessiveness of one particular god who wanted to own and control his chosen lover by demanding total devotion.”

“And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms. For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully.” – (Hosea 2:4-5)

“If a righteous person turns from their righteousness and commits sin, they will die for it; because of the sin they have committed they will die.” (Ezekiel 18:26)

“All who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman.” (2 Chronicles 15:13)

“God can speak volumes about lampstands, but can’t afford a single verse against sexually molesting children.”

“That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:6-7)

“The Lord brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up. The Lord sends poverty and wealth; he humbles and he exalts.”  (Samuel 2:6-7)

“The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” (Proverbs 16:33)

“Almost 15,000 of God’s chosen people were killed by a super-fast virus, simply for voicing disagreement. The U.S. Constitution guarantees the freedom to ‘petition the government for a redress of grievances,’ but don’t try that against a bloodthirsty God.” (Numbers 16:42-49)

“Go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (1 Samuel 15:3)

“Massacring men, women, and children does not raise an eyebrow, but keeping a little war booty is ‘evil.’ Notice that throughout the Old Testament, ‘evil’ and ‘wicked’ are not moral judgments. Saul is called ‘evil’ because he disobeyed orders.”

“And the women sang to one another as they made merry, ‘Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands.’ Saul was very angry, for this saying displeased him.” (1 Samuel 18:7-8)

“You must demolish completely all the places where the nations whom you are about to dispossess served their gods, on the mountain heights, on the hills, and under every leafy tree. Break down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles with fire, and hew down the idols of their gods, and thus blot out their name from their places.” (Deuteronomy 12:2-3)

“Lot, described as a good and righteous man, had offered his young daughters to be gang-raped. This is evidence that goodness and wickedness in the bible have nothing to do with morality.”

“Since the Sodomites rejected Lot’s daughters, this indicates that the writers intended the fictional mob to be ‘wicked’ sex-crazed homosexuals. The ‘wickedness’ was not the sexual act between men; it was the refusal to provide offspring for the patriarch. This biblical tale is a warning for those who are so ‘deviant’ that they will not procreate.”

“In those days also saw I Jews that had married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab: And their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in the Jews’ language, but according to the language of each people. And I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, Ye shall not give your daughters unto their sons, nor take their daughters unto your sons, or for yourselves….Shall we then hearken unto you to do all this great evil, to transgress against our God in marrying strange wives?…Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and of the Levites. Thus cleansed I them from all strangers.” (Nehemiah 13:23-30)

“Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim…when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.” (Judges 12:4-6)

“O daughter Babylon, you devestator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (Psalm 137:8-9)

“You shall not let anything that breaths remain alive. You shall annihilate them.” (Deuteronomy 20:16-17)

“Noah’s flood was a swift and gruesome genocide of 20 million people. That was 99.99996 percent of the entire human population.”

“The God of the Old Testament committed, commanded, and condoned many more human annihilations. Their totals were smaller in number than the flood, but they were no lesser genocides.”

“When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amonites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.” (Deuteronomy 7:1-2)

“And the Lord our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain.” (Deuteronomy 2:32-34)

“God was less humane than the Israelites. They wanted to keep boys and women alive, but God said ‘only the virgins.’” (About Numbers 31:7-40)

“[H]e left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded.” (Joshua 10:40)

“For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be utterly destroyed, and should receive no mercy but be exterminated, as the Lord commanded Moses.”

“Try to imagine worshipping a master who demands that you slaughter your son or daughter to gain his approval.”

“So shall it be with all the men that set their faces to go into Egypt to sojourn there; they shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence: and none of them shall remain or escape from the evil that I will bring upon them.” (Jeremiah 42:17)

“Nevertheless he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known.”

“Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?” (Amos 3:6)

“Notice that Isaiah 3:17 says ‘the LORD’ will lay bare their secret parts. That is Yahweh, the Lord Jealous, committing this shameful crime. And what was the offense of the ‘daughters of Zion’ that earned such wrath? They were dressing as they pleased, walking proudly, drawing notice for being – horrors! – unsubmissive women!”

“I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7)

“The point of [Job] is simply: ‘The Lord is powerful. He can make you suffer. Don’t ask why. Be faithful. Might makes right. God can do whatever he wants.’”

“Morally healthy people do not admire anyone who is so easily ‘incited’ by the Devil.” (About book of Job)

“Who can command and have it done, if the Lord has not ordained it?” (Lamentations 3:37)

“[T]hey showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.”

“The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.” (Proverbs 16:4)

“If the Israelites were prohibited from mixing with pagan wives, why did God arrange for Samson to marry the Philistine in the first place? It turns out that even the marriage was a sham. In God’s eyes, holy matrimony is not sacred. Samson quickly dumped her.”

“And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?” (Exodus 4:11)

“Every year during Passover, the Jews hold a festive feast where they celebrate the Tenth Plague. They eat unleavened bread, drink wine, sing, and commemorate the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent children.”

“The purpose of the heart-hardening, violence, drowning, bloodshed, and malevolence, God boasts, is ‘so that I will gain glory for myself.’ That is the perfect example of a bully.”

“The emotion most often expressed by the God of the Old Testament is not love. Not mercy. Not empathy. Not joy. The Lord Jealous is most often described as a God of anger.”

“I trampled then in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained my clothing.” (Isaiah 63:3)

“As I purposed to do evil to you, when your fathers provoked me to wrath, and I did not relent, says the Lord of hosts.” (Zechariah 8:14)

“When I was a child, my mother told me that nobody can make you angry. If you are angry, it is because you choose to be.”

“Therefore, thus says the Lord, Behold, I am bringing evil upon them which they cannot escape; though they cry to me, I will not listen to them.” (Jeremiah 11:11)

“Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.” (Isaiah 13:16)

“[F]or it is a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them…” (Isaiah 27:11)

“For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be utterly destroyed, and should receive no mercy but be exterminated…” (Joshua 11:20)

“Their little ones shall be dashed to pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.” (Hosea 13:16)

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)

“You always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me.” (Mark 14:7)

“The so-called Golden Rule had been said many times by earlier religious leaders. (Five hundred years earlier, Confucius said it better: ‘Do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you.’)”

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