The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Welcome back to Monday School – the fast-acting nonsense reliever in convenient entry form!

As you may recall, last week we began analyzing the many problems associated with the Bible’s story of Moses, the Exodus, and God’s very strange ways. Picking up right where we left off….

11) Pharaoh’s Magicians & Might Makes Right 

Having for some odd reason decided that Moses must first get Pharaoh’s permission before he can lead the Hebrews to freedom, God basically tells Moses to get that permission by performing a series of miracles and magic tricks. But Pharaoh’s own magicians can perform miracles and magic tricks, too. Moses and his God win in the end not because they are unique but simply because their miracles and magic end up being more powerful. The moral of the story seems to be “Might makes right.” Compare that to the American revolutionaries like Jefferson and Paine who based their escape from tyranny on an ennobling, logical defense of democracy and human rights. Compare that to the civil disobedience and passive resistence movements advocated and practiced by such heralds of peaceful change as Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. who sought not merely to escape their adversaries but to transform them for the better. The fact that Moses and the Hebrews almost immediately went on to enslave other people after winning their own freedom reinforces the basic selfishness and moral bankruptcy of their “Might makes right” position.

12) Pharaoh’s God-Hardened Heart 

When the miracles and plagues of Moses persuade Pharaoh to release the Hebrews, God repeatedly steps in and hardens Pharaoh’s heart – apparently just so Moses has an excuse to whack Pharaoh one more time. How can a supposedly all-good God do this? How can a just God punish someone for their actions when those actions are directly attributed to God the Cosmic Puppeteer? Once again, the God of the Bible is revealed to be an unjust fiend.

13) God’s Slaughter Of The Innocents 

The Bible presents Pharaoh as the all-powerful, all-important ruler of Egypt who alone may decide the fate of the Hebrews. Yet God and Moses repeatedly inflict punishment not on this Pharaoh but on the innocent people and animals of Egypt. It is hard to see how God’s killing of all the first-born Egyptians in Exodus 12:29-30 makes Him morally any better than Herod and his slaughter of the innocents in Matt. 2:16. Indeed, since God is God, such slaughter is either impossible by definition (since we define God as all-good) or reveals God to be Satan in disguise. In either case, the Bible is necessarily lying, and the God it describes is more worthy of condemnation than worship or praise. Imagine how morally outrageous it would have been if the U.S. had had the power to kill Hitler and end WWII in 1943 but had instead opted to try to convince Hitler to end the war himself by carpet-bombing Germany’s schools and orphanages. Why should a far greater power like God be held to a lesser standard?

14) God’s Misplaced Promised Land 

Having chosen the Hebrews as His people, how could a just God promise them a land already occupied by other people? How could an all-powerful, all-good God tell the Hebrews to go into this land and slaughter its innocent residents when He could have given the Hebrews (or these innocent other people) an unpopulated continent or a whole world of their own? How could an all-knowing God instead purposely create a situation in which bloodshed was unavoidable? Exactly how is such a God morally superior to a young boy who puts two scorpions in a small jar, shakes it, then stands back to watch the inevitable result?

15) Unreasonable Expectations 

Even though the Hebrews were allegedly led by a man as talented as Moses, and even though they were constantly given miraculous signs of God’s existence and power, they still repeatedly turned away from Him. If God’s “Chosen People” rejected Him despite His best effects to win their hearts and keep them in line, why are we expected to accept Him just because of the Bible – a book of mere words?

16) A Poor Grasp Of Human Psychology 

The simple fact of the matter is, of course, that millions of people today DO believe in God on the basis of the Bible alone. Indeed, millions of people believe in Islam just on the basis of the Koran, others are Mormons because of the Book of Mormon, etc., etc. Judging from this and from history, people seem by and large pretty gullible – so hungry to believe in something that they’ve repeatedly demonstrated the ability to believe in almost anything on the basis of virtually no evidence at all. Despite this obvious characteristic of humans, we are told in the Bible that the Hebrews were so far removed from gullibility that they actually rejected belief in God despite His constant presence, many signs, and obvious personal interest in them. Now, is it more likely that the Hebrews really were so psychologically different from the rest of humanity or that their psychology and their God have been misrepresented by the Bible’s authors? Is it more likely that the miraculous events in the Bible really occurred and were shrugged off by the people who saw and benefited from them or that these miracles were the invention of later writers?

17) A Pathetically Weak, Insecure God 

Again and again in the Old Testament, one of God’s biggest fears is that the Hebrews will meet other people, intermarry with them, and leave Him for their gods. In an attempt to maintain their worship and belief in Him, God repeatedly threatens and punishes the Hebrews – and stillthey leave Him for these other gods virtually every chance they get. If the God of the Bible is really so great and unique, why can’t He win allegiance in a free market place of gods? Why must He constantly resort to special “protectionist” measures like the killing of those who are of other religions and the banning of a free exchange of ideas? Is it more likely that such a pathetically weak, jealous, and unappetizing God actually exists or that He was invented by a priestly class in an attempt to maintain their hold over simple-minded ancient people through fear and intimidation?

18) The Unworthiness Of The Hebrews 

Although the Bible assures us that the Hebrews are God’s Chosen People, they repeatedly not only refuse to choose Him as their God but display most if not all of the worst human qualities known despite all His signs and attention and guidance. Why would a just and all-powerful God ever have chosen them? On what basis did He make His choice? Why did He have to choose anybody at all? Why didn’t He choose everybody? The God of the Bible makes no sense except as the invention of one small, all-too-typical ancient tribe in desperate need of a psychological boost while trying to survive in a hostile world.

19) God Himself Recognizes The Unworthiness Of The Hebrews 

And not only does God recognize this – He resolves to start over with better people. But Moses convinces Him that would be wrong because it would make Him look bad in the eyes of the Egyptians. Moses also scores a point by reminding God (an allegedly all-knowing being) of His promises to Abraham and Isaac. In the end, Moses has out-argued God! The deity who is – by definition – omniscient and perfect is said by the Bible to have repented of His plans because of a speech delivered by a poor speaker. (Exodus 32:7-14.) In essence, God Himself blinked when confronted by Moses, the “meekest of men” according to Numbers 12:3. How can this have ever possibly occurred? And yet the Bible would have us believe it occurred not once but twice! (See Numbers 14:11-20.)

20) God’s Ignorance 

Given that God says after the Flood that man’s heart is continually evil from his youth, why is He constantly surprised and enraged by the Hebrews?

21) God’s Absurd Misemphasis 

After having dealt with the creation of the universe, the fall of man, the Flood and much else besides in a very few pages, the Bible proceeds to devote many, many pages to God’s detailed orders for travel, sacrifices, the layout of camps, the making of garments – few things are too minor for Him to overlook or delegate to others, it seems, once He gets the Hebrews out of Egypt. In Numbers 8:4, God is even said to have spent His time designingcandlesticks. And frequently the Bible repeats many of these tedious passages. Can God really be so intensely interested in such minutia and yet so uninterested in the Chinese? Did God really tell the Hebrews how to bury their excrement so He wouldn’t be offended by it but neglect to tell them the importance of washing their hands? (Deuteronomy 23:12-14.) Isn’t it far likelier that this curious misemphasis came not from God at all but from leaders and writers who were ignorant of science and history and were trying to give their orders greater legitimacy by attributing them to God? Do perfect Gods or imperfect men care more for lengthy genealogies which boost one’s self-importance? Do perfect Gods or ignorant people warn against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk three different times in their holy book but say nothing at all about how too much sun leads to skin cancer?

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There’s much more that can be said about the flaws of the Bible’s account of God, Moses, and the Hebrews, but life is short and we have a lot of material to cover. Interested students are encouraged to read the relevant Old Testament books for themselves and share their findings as Monday School moves on next week to other things.