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.

Hate Mondays? Maybe you need to attend Monday School – “The Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense They Tried To Teach You Yesterday!” It’s easier than sleeping from Sunday to Tuesday. And everyone who refrains from throwing spitballs gets an “A”!

Today’s Lesson: Who Are The Truly Great People Of The Bible?

The Bible is full of noble, good, righteous, and holy men and women.

That’s what I was led to believe as a child, anyway – apparently by people who never actually read what the Bible says about the folks who fill its pages.

Having now run my eyes over its pages for myself, it is hard for me to think of a single individual in it that I would want as a friend for my children, let alone a role model.

Consider the possible candidates:

1) Adam - The Bible presents him as a weak-willed little weasel who ate the Forbidden Fruit, then tried to pin all the blame for his action on his wife. (Gen. 3:1-12)

2) Cain - First person ever born on Earth. And the first murderer. Of his own brother! (Gen. 4:1-8)

3) Noah - Although the Bible says that he was perfect and righteous, it also says that he got drunk, passed out naked, then put a curse on the son who discovered him in this state. That curse made that son a slave of his brothers – and apparently it carried down to all his descendants. (Gen. 9:20-28)

4) Lot & Company - The Bible tells us that God thought enough of Lot to save him, his wife, and his two daughters from His destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah – but it’s a mystery why He didn’t let these people perish with everyone else. A) When a mob of ruffians surrounded Lot’s house, Lot offered them his two virginal daughters to do with as they liked if they’d just leave him and his guests alone (Gen. 19:4-8). B) Lot’s wife disobeyed God as she fled Sodom and Gomorrah and so was turned into a pillar of salt (Gen. 19:17-26). C) Lot’s two daughters later got their father drunk so they could have sex with him, conceiving children in the process (Gen. 19:30-36).

5) Abraham - This holy figure of Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike married his sister, let two kings take her to bed with them after his marriage, and took her maid as his concubine (Gen. 20:11-12; Gen. 12:10-16; Gen. 16:1-2). Even though the Egyptian pharaoh who took Abraham’s wife for himself did so in ignorance after Abraham had deceived him, God punished this pharaoh with a plague while meting out no punishment for Abraham (Gen. 12:17). More famously, Abraham was so dependent upon an outside authority for his moral sense that when God sadistically asked him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, Abraham unquestioningly tried to obey until an angel told him God was just testing him (Gen. 22:1-12). Such blind obedience to authority is presented by the Bible as praiseworthy; history repeatedly shows us just how awful the consequences of such obedience can be.

6) Jacob - Isaac’s son, Jacob, had two wives (Gen. 29:15-30). He cheated his brother Esau out of both his birthright and their father’s blessing (Gen. 25:29-34; Gen. 27). Amazingly, even though Jacob acquired these things quite dishonestly, God didn’t protest in the least. Indeed, He honored Jacob exactly as He should have honored Esau (Gen. 28:12-17). (Whoever said “Crime doesn’t pay” never read the Bible!)

7) Simeon & Levi - Jacob’s two sons, Simeon and Levi, committed an atrocity yet were still honored by God. This happened (according to the Bible) after their sister, Dinah, was raped by a prince. To avenge this crime, her brothers got the prince and all the men under him to undergo circumcision after promising the prince that he and his men would be welcomed into their tribe if they agreed. While the prince and his men were recovering from this operation, Simeon and Levi swooped down on their city and killed ALL the males in it (not just the guilty prince), then stole away their wives, children, animals, and wealth. Jacob, when he heard of this crime, chastised his sons – on the grounds that it was bad public relations! God Himself then protected Jacob and his sons from being brought to justice by those who pursued them. Afterwards, God didn’t smite Jacob or his descendants for their evil ways. He didn’t even give them a good talking-to. Instead, He promised them land and power (Gen. 34; Gen. 35:5-12).

8) Moses - Moses is allegedly the greatest prophet in the Bible and the highly moral deliverer of the Ten Commandments. Yet this “holy” man murdered an Egyptian (Ex. 2:11-12). Later, after presenting those Commandments which include “Thou shalt not kill,” he ordered his loyal followers to kill 3000 of their brothers and companions for worshiping the golden calf (Ex. 32:27-28). Even though Aaron – Moses’s favorite – led the people in building the calf (Ex. 32:21-23), he’s spared. After God orders Moses to go to war against the Midianites (on morally ambiguous grounds), he has a fit when his soldiers spare women and children. In an incredible passage, Moses orders them to kill ALL the male children and non-virginal women and keep the (32,000!) virgins for themselves (Num. 31:14-18; Num. 31:35). By the Bible’s own account, Moses is thus one of the most brutal and cruel mass murderers in history. What he did was sickening, but it is even more sickening when one contrasts his actions here with those of Ex. 32:7-14 and Num. 14:11-20. In those passages, God tells Moses He’s going to kill all the Hebrews and start over. Moses boldly stands up to God, tells Him He’s wrong – and God actually admits He is! Moses could have exhibited some of that same gumption and moral outrage when God ordered him to kill thousands of defenseless women and children – but he didn’t. The utterly one-sided, cold-blooded nature of the slaughter that resulted is revealed in Num. 31:48-49 which says that the Hebrews suffered no casualties themselves….

9) Joshua – Joshua was God’s hand-picked successor to Moses. And with God’s guidance and help, we’re told, he slaughtered even more people than his predecessor. Joshua 6:21, 8:24-26, and 10:28-43 detail just some of the wanton destruction Joshua allegedly wreaked on the men, women, and children of city after city as he conducted a virtual campaign of extermination against those whose main crime seems to have been living on the land a supposedly wise and just God had promised the Hebrews. The chief lesson Joshua’s biography seems to teach: God Almighty sometimes orders and endorses the most outrageous war crimes – and that’s good. I beg to differ.

10) Jael – This wife of Heber the Kenite is called the most blessed of all women by the Bible (Judges 5:24). Why? Because she invited a Canaanite general into her tent during a time of peace, told him he had nothing to fear, let him fall asleep – then skillfully hammered a nail into his temple (Judges 4:17-21). With blessed women like that around, who needs Lizzie Borden?

11) Samson – Samson is one of the most celebrated heroes of the Bible, yet he acted in quite horrible ways with some regularity. After losing a wager with the Philistines, he killed and robbed 30 men (who had nothing to do with his loss) to get the money he needed to pay off – allegedly with God’s help (Judges 14:19). After his wife was taken from him, he tied firebrands to the tails of 300 foxes and set them loose through the Philistines’s fields, obviously destroying the property of many innocent people, to say nothing of the foxes (Judges 15:4-5). When the Philistines quite understandably arrested this ancient terrorist, he allegedly killed 1000 of them with the jawbone of an ass (Judge 15:14-20). Did God chide Samson for these wild, bloody acts? No – He protected him and allowed him to rule over Israel for 20 years. The next thing we learn is that Samson visited a harlot (Judges 16:1). Then we learn that he’s a liar (Judges 16:7, 11, and 13). At the end of his life, he allegedly killed up to 3000 people when he pulled the temple down on himself in a final act of indiscriminate vengeance. Does such a “holy” man have more in common with Mahatma Gandhi or Osama bin Laden?

12) David – David was allegedly another holy Hebrew leader (and the ancestor of Jesus), yet he, too, slaughtered thousands of foreigners (2 Sam. 8:5 and 13) – many in cold blood (2 Sam. 8:2). He also seduced and impregnated Bathsheba, knowing full well that she was already Urriah’s wife. To get Urriah out of the way, David cleverly sent him on a suicide mission (2 Sam. 11:2-5; 14-17). True, this supposedly angered God, but the punishment He inflicted on David seems odd: He killed Bathsheba’s baby seven days after it was born (2 Sam. 12:14-18). This infant, of course, was innocent of any crime, yet I’ve never seen a group of pro-lifers marching outside a house of God in protest. Later, David supposedly took a census of the Hebrews against God’s orders – and God supposedly punished him by killing 70,000 of them (2 Sam. 24:10-15). (Maybe I’m missing something, but wouldn’t that just make taking the next census all the easier?) The Bible also tells us that David had many wives and concubines (2 Sam. 5:13). And it tells us that David danced so wildly, his genitals could be seen by a crowd. When his wife rebuked him for this behavior (like a good Southern Baptist might), he told her off and apparently never had sex with her again because of her remarks (2 Sam. 6:14-23). Despite all this, the Bible later actually claims that David always did what was right in God’s eyes all the days of his life except for The Urriah Affair (1 Kings 15:5).

13) Amnon, Absalom, & Solomon – David’s sons seem to have been no more moral than he was. Amnon seduced his own sister, then was killed by his brother, Absalom (2 Sam. 13). Solomon, who has been held up for generations as a wise and holy Biblical leader, allegedly had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Despite (or because of?) his great wisdom, those wives and concubines turned him away from God and convinced him to worship many pagan gods. What did God do in response? Out of respect for David, nothing (even though He repeatedly promises in the OT to kill any Hebrew who reverts to paganism). Instead, God promises to tear the kingdom out of the hands of Solomon’s innocent son (1 Kings 11:9-12). (Modern historians believe that things probably fell apart after Solomon’s death because Solomon was actually a very poor, very oppressive ruler.)

14) Jehu – Jehu was a guy who allegedly used deception to round up the worshipers of Baal, then slaughtered them (2 Kings 10:18-30). The God of the Bible approves (even though Proverbs 19:5 and 9 says that liars will be utterly destroyed). The message seems clear: We may lie in the service of God, and we can earn His praise by butchering those who worship “false” gods. That’s precisely the sort of “morality” which inspired centuries of religious warfare, inquisitions, and witch hunts in Europe and elsewhere.

Ok, that’s enough for now. It seems I’ve once again exhausted my supply of Pepto Bismol….