Gospel Doctrine for the Godless

An ex-Mormon take on LDS Sunday School lessons

Category: Moses

OT Lesson 17 (Deuteronomy)

4 May 2014 / / 1 Comment

“Beware Lest Thou Forget”

Deuteronomy 6; 8; 11; 32

LDS manual: here

Reading

The real lesson manual has cherry-picked some scriptures from Deuteronomy — only four books out of the original 34. That’s okay, I suppose; the whole thing is kind of a rehash of Exodus and Leviticus. And in fact the word Deuteronomy means ‘second law‘ — we’ve already seen it the first time. But cherry-picking is not how we roll around here at GDG, so here’s a quick rundown of the whole book.

Moses is giving a final pep talk. “Hey,” he says, “remember the time we killed all the Amorites? And all those giants we defeated?”

2:11 Which also were accounted giants, as the Anakims; but the Moabites called them Emims.

“And we killed all the Heshbonites, including the children?”

2:33 And the LORD our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people.
2:34 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:

“And Og, the king of Bashan? and sixty cities, killing everyone?”

3:3 So the LORD our God delivered into our hands Og also, the king of Bashan, and all his people: and we smote him until none was left to him remaining.
3:4 And we took all his cities at that time, there was not a city which we took not from them, threescore cities, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan.

“Well, you have to obey Jehovah, the one who commanded all these killings — in his mercy. ;)”

4:31 (For the LORD thy God is a merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them.

I assume, since the winking smiley emoticon hadn’t been invented yet, that the 😉 in the above paragraph was a typographic convention in Jacobean times.

“So remember to kill everyone when you take their land.”

7:2 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:
7:16 And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them

“Oh, but love them.”

10:19 Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

“But destroy the symbols of their religions.”

12:2 Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree:
12:3 And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.

“And if anyone — even in your own family — worships a different god, kill them.”

13:6 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;
13:7 Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
13:8 Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
13:9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
13:10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die;

God hates trees. Deforestation is kind of a problem in our day, but in Moses’s day, it was something of a goal.

16:21 Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees near unto the altar of the LORD thy God, which thou shalt make thee.

“When you go to destroy a city, give them a chance to become your slaves first. (That’s called a peace offer.) But if they put up a fight, kill the men and take the women.”

20:10 When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.
20:11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
20:12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:
20:13 And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:
20:14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.
20:15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.

“Unless God really hates them. Then just kill them all.”

20:16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:
20:17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:

“If you take over a city, and you see a woman you like, take her home and shave her head. Then after a month, she’s yours.”

21:10 When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the LORD thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive,
21:11 And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife;
21:12 Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house, and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails;
21:13 And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife.

“Kill rebellious children.”

21:18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
21:19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
21:20 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.
21:21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

“If a woman’s not a virgin when you marry her, kill her.”

22:13 If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her,
22:14 And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid:
22:15 Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate:
22:16 And the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her;
22:17 And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city.
22:18 And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him;
22:19 And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days.
22:20 But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel:
22:21 Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

Stoning for adultery still happens. Brunei will be starting it up next year. Here’s a handy infographic about it.

Just to be clear, religious belief has convinced some people in the 21st century that this is a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with people who cheat on their spouses.

“Also, don’t let your wives grab other men’s junk, not even as a method of conflict resolution.”

25:11 When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets:
25:12 Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.

The always wonderful Brick Testament, ladies and gentlemen.

“Speaking of junk, here’s the list of people who can’t attend church: Nobody with testicle wounds or dickless; no bastards, and no Ammonites or Moabites. Geez, God really hates them!”

23:1 He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD.
23:2 A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD.
23:3 An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever:

“However, he doesn’t mind blind people, strangers, the fatherless, or widows.”

27:18 Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way. And all the people shall say, Amen.
27:19 Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen.

“If you don’t obey all these things, then God’s going to give you haemorrhoids.”

28:27 The LORD will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.

This video by nonstampcollector is fitting in so many ways.

28:30 Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her: thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein: thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof.

“And you’ll eat your own babies when your neighbours besiege your cities.”

28:53 And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the LORD thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee:

Notice that the Israelites brag about their ability to do this to other people when they besiege their cities — they just don’t want it to happen to them.

And endeth Moses: “I think that’s about it.”

Remember: this is God’s chance to give a message to mankind. He could have given us any kind of knowledge: about science, medicine, anything.

What he did instead was tell who you can own, and who you should kill. Spoiler alert: Everyone. And all in the name of brand protection!

Which is why Richard Dawkins was accurate in describing him thus:

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.

And check out Steve’s blog post, giving scriptural support to each of these charges.

Main points from this lesson

“Beware lest thou forget”

In Dueteronomy, there’s a big emphasis on always remembering the god of the Old Testament.

6:12 Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

In two separate places, God commands the Israelites to put his words on their hands, foreheads, and the posts of their houses.

6:6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
6:8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
6:9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

An unusual choice of fashion accessory, to be sure.

The lesson manual picks up this theme:

Why do you think Moses told the people to place passages of scripture between their eyes, on their hands, on the posts of their houses, and on their gates? How would such constant reminders affect our actions? What can we do in our homes to remind us of the Lord, his words, and our covenants with him? Do the pictures on our walls, the books we read, and the movies and television shows we watch remind us of the Lord, or do they suggest a longing for the world?

Let’s talk about pictures on the walls for a second. In the last ten years or so, Mormons have invented a tradition of putting pictures of their leaders on the walls of their homes. You can go to the homes of many Latter-day Saints and find a picture like this official portrait:

Or this:

Maybe this excellent Photoshop job:

Please not this:

Chillaxin’ in the temple.

There’s like a cottage industry for these things.

Whoops, wrong leaders. Only two of them. But does anyone else get a North Korea thing off of this? Why the leader worship?

Ironically, the “First Presidency portrait” meme is probably in violation of the “no graven images” meme.

4:23 Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, which the LORD thy God hath forbidden thee.

Now my memory is as bad as the next person, but what’s behind the constant exhortation to remember? If this god is as great as they say, why would someone need to keep him on their mind all the time? Wouldn’t it be obvious that he was real and powerful? Why is his existence and his influence so tenuous that it’s possible to forget it? Why does it need constantly shoring up?

Things that are true don’t need shoring up. They need to be publicised, of course, because information works best when it’s distributed. But things that are true don’t need to be believed in and constantly reiterated, like religious doctrines do.

The constant admonishment to remember religious norms is really about creating a bubble where the religious views won’t be challenged. The accompanying graphic in the manual resembles nothing less than an ideological bubble, where competing ideas just bounce off.

Boing!

Again, when someone constructs a religious bubble, what they’re saying is that their ideas can’t compete with others on an equal footing. It’s a sure sign that the idea is weak.

Failed prophecies

How do you know if a prophet is a prophet? According to Deuteronomy, a prophet is fake if his prophecies don’t come true.

18:20 But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
18:21 And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken?
18:22 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

By that definition, Moses fails the prophet test. More to the point, Joseph Smith fares no better.

Additional ideas for teaching

Rape in the Bible

How can you get a wife, according to Deuteronomy? Here’s one way: If you “lay hold on” a girl, just pay her father fifty shekels, and she’s your wife!

22:28 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;
22:29 Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.


Now Christian apologists don’t like this very much, and to get around it, they play some word games.

The best apologist explanation I could find is that in the Torah, the word used for ‘seize’ is ‘tabas’. The word ‘tabas’ has multiple uses and doesn’t necessarily mean seized by force. For example, it could be used to describe the handling of a harp. From what I can tell, there is no formal word in the Hebrew language for ‘rape’, although I could be entirely wrong about the whole thing.

Of course! Since words have multiple meanings, just pick the one that corresponds to what you want. So when it says lays hold on her, it really means: he plays her like a harp. Yow. That’s some imagery.

I suppose that in Deut. 21:9, when parents are supposed to lay hold on their rebellious children (and stone them), it really just means caress them. With stones.

A quick and handy guide to biblical rape:

One more.

An unusual approach to crime investigation

If you find a dead body in the field, and you don’t know who killed him, here’s what you do: Cut off a cow’s head, and wash your hands over it. This will remove the sin.

21:1 If one be found slain in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath slain him:
21:2 Then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities which are round about him that is slain:
21:3 And it shall be, that the city which is next unto the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take an heifer, which hath not been wrought with, and which hath not drawn in the yoke;
21:4 And the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley, which is neither eared nor sown, and shall strike off the heifer’s neck there in the valley: 21:5 And the priests the sons of Levi shall come near; for them the LORD thy God hath chosen to minister unto him, and to bless in the name of the LORD; and by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried:
21:6 And all the elders of that city, that are next unto the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley:
21:7 And they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.

Well, that would certainly make CSI a touch more surreal. And a lot shorter.

OT Lesson 13 (Exodus)

29 March 2014 / / 4 Comments

Bondage, Passover, and Exodus

Exodus 1–3; 5–6; 11–14

LDS manual: here

Reading

Ch. 1–2: All Joseph’s family moves down to Egypt, where they reproduce with speed that could only be described as Nephite. In just a few hundred years, from the original gang of seventy, there’s millions of them. But there’s a new Pharaoh in town, who enslaves the Hebrews and orders midwives to kill all the boys. Moses escapes. (We’ll see this story remixed into the Jesus legend.)

Ch. 3–4: Moses is raised by Pharaoh’s daughter, but after killing an Egyptian — first making sure no one is watching — he’s forced into hiding. While there, God appears to him in a burning bush.

He explains that he intends to “smite Egypt”.

3:20 And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go.

Who the hell listens to a bush anyway? Frankie Boyle, everyone.

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Just to be extra convincing, God gives Moses a stick that turns into a snake, and water that turns into blood. And for an encore, by reaching into his cloak, Moses can give his hand leprosy! That’ll do it.

Moses complains that he’s not very eloquent, but God’s like “I know that — who do you think makes people deaf or blind?” Wow, okay, God. Not only that, he explains in advance:

4:21 And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into 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.

God starts to act a bit erratic, though. He inexplicably decides to kill Moses, but it’s Moses’ wife to the rescue!

4:24 And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him, and sought to kill him.
4:25 Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.
4:26 So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.

I can see why God would be impressed and leave them alone. He probably put his sunglasses on and said, “You just bought yourself six more months,” and walked away.

Bizarre stuff. Could this be why the manual skips chapter 4?

Ch. 5–10: Moses goes to Pharaoh and gives him a rather ominous first discussion: God Has a Plan for You. Pharaoh won’t let the Israelites go, so after a brief magic contest with Pharaoh’s magicians, Moses smites the place with plagues: bloody water, frogs, lice, flies, dead livestock, boils, thunder and hail, locusts, and darkness. With every plague, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart; he wouldn’t miss a chance to kill some kids.

Ch. 11: God says: ‘Okay, so here’s the plan. We’re gonna blow this place, so first, everyone “borrow” everything you can from your neighbours. Then, I’ll kill all the firstborn Egyptian children to create a diversion. Meanwhile, you guys kill lambs, and smear the blood on your door posts.’

Why did he have them do that? Well, the lamb was a symbol of Jesus, and God liked people to act out things symbolically. So when people say that God is a great scientist or a great engineer… no. Apparently he’s an Arts major. Great. That explains everything.

Ch. 12–14: The Israelites flee toward the Red Sea, with Pharaoh’s army in hot pursuit. God pulls his shenanigans: he blocks them with a cloud, and personally pulls the wheels off of their chariots. Finally, God parts the Red Sea, allowing the Israelites to pass through on dry ground. The Egyptian armies follow, but — kersplash — they’re sunk and no trace of them is ever found.

No, seriously, no trace of an Egyptian army has ever been found in the Red Sea.

Main points from this lesson

No evidence for Hebrews in Egypt

There’s no evidence that a large number of Hebrews were in Egypt during this time.

Linguistics: If Hebrews and Egyptians lived in the same place for four hundred years, then we should expect them to have borrowed words from each other. Sure, they both would have had their reasons not to share vocabulary; Egyptians, because the Hebrews were slaves; Hebrews, because the Egyptians weren’t Hebrews. But we should expect a great number of words to have filtered in. Instead, we find only a few words that could be explained by later contact.

Archeology: If a migration of Hebrews came into Canaan from Egypt after living there for 400 years, we’d expect the pots we find in Canaan to change style suddenly. In fact, we see no sudden change.

There’s a Reddit thread for everything, and this one on the imaginary Exodus looks pretty near comprehensive. Browse if you have the time.

Does it matter if god kills people?

If there’s one thing about children that we can agree on, it’s that they shouldn’t be murdered. Yet the god of the Bible kills kids again and again. Knowing this could have certain advantages:

Yet when I bring this point up with Latter-day Saints (and other Christians), they’re quite unbothered by it. Which is very strange — on the one hand, they’re sincerely pro-life when it comes to foetuses, but they’re frighteningly blasé about this tendency of their god to kill them once they’re born. (They seem to forget that their god only allows about one embryo in five to make it to birth, making God the greatest abortionist of all.)

Mormons that I’ve encountered tend to give the following excuses for God’s predilection for filicide:

  • It doesn’t matter because the children get whisked up to heaven where they play with puppies and eat ice cream.

This is a presupposition, not an argument. You can get away with a lot if you’re allowed to magic up a fictional rationale, but it will be unconvincing to anyone who doesn’t share your presupposition.

  • It doesn’t matter because everyone has to die sometime.

Even though I have to die someday, I’d rather not be murdered, especially not in childhood. Being killed often entails some kind of pain, and as a moral person, I have this idea that it’s wrong to cause pain unnecessarily.

  • It doesn’t matter because God made us, so he gets to destroy us.

This argument reminds me of a passage from Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger, about a boy with strange powers, including the power to fashion live animals from dirt. This is a longish excerpt, but imagine how you’d feel if you saw this scene.

At last I made bold to ask him to tell us who he was.

“An angel,” he said, quite simply, and set another bird free and clapped his hands and made it fly away.

A kind of awe fell upon us when we heard him say that, and we were afraid again; but he said we need not be troubled, there was no occasion for us to be afraid of an angel, and he liked us, anyway. He went on chatting as simply and unaffectedly as ever; and while he talked he made a crowd of little men and women the size of your finger, and they went diligently to work and cleared and leveled off a space a couple of yards square in the grass and began to build a cunning little castle in it, the women mixing the mortar and carrying it up the scaffoldings in pails on their heads, just as our work-women have always done, and the men laying the courses of masonry—five hundred of these toy people swarming briskly about and working diligently and wiping the sweat off their faces as natural as life. In the absorbing interest of watching those five hundred little people make the castle grow step by step and course by course, and take shape and symmetry, that feeling and awe soon passed away and we were quite comfortable and at home again. We asked if we might make some people, and he said yes, and told Seppi to make some cannon for the walls, and told Nikolaus to make some halberdiers, with breastplates and greaves and helmets, and I was to make some cavalry, with horses, and in allotting these tasks he called us by our names, but did not say how he knew them. Then Seppi asked him what his own name was, and he said, tranquilly, “Satan,” and held out a chip and caught a little woman on it who was falling from the scaffolding and put her back where she belonged, and said, “She is an idiot to step backward like that and not notice what she is about.”

It caught us suddenly, that name did, and our work dropped out of our hands and broke to pieces—a cannon, a halberdier, and a horse. Satan laughed, and asked what was the matter. I said, “Nothing, only it seemed a strange name for an angel.” He asked why.

“Because it’s—it’s—well, it’s his name, you know.”

“Yes—he is my uncle.”

He said it placidly, but it took our breath for a moment and made our hearts beat. He did not seem to notice that, but mended our halberdiers and things with a touch, handing them to us finished, and said, “Don’t you remember?—he was an angel himself, once.”

“Yes—it’s true,” said Seppi; “I didn’t think of that.”

“Before the Fall he was blameless.”

“Yes,” said Nikolaus, “he was without sin.”

“It is a good family—ours,” said Satan; “there is not a better. He is the only member of it that has ever sinned.”

…

Two of the little workmen were quarreling, and in buzzing little bumblebee voices they were cursing and swearing at each other; now came blows and blood; then they locked themselves together in a life-and-death struggle. Satan reached out his hand and crushed the life out of them with his fingers, threw them away, wiped the red from his fingers on his handkerchief, and went on talking where he had left off: “We cannot do wrong; neither have we any disposition to do it, for we do not know what it is.”

It seemed a strange speech, in the circumstances, but we barely noticed that, we were so shocked and grieved at the wanton murder he had committed—for murder it was, that was its true name, and it was without palliation or excuse, for the men had not wronged him in any way. It made us miserable, for we loved him, and had thought him so noble and so beautiful and gracious, and had honestly believed he was an angel; and to have him do this cruel thing—ah, it lowered him so, and we had had such pride in him. He went right on talking, just as if nothing had happened, telling about his travels, and the interesting things he had seen in the big worlds of our solar system and of other solar systems far away in the remotenesses of space, and about the customs of the immortals that inhabit them, somehow fascinating us, enchanting us, charming us in spite of the pitiful scene that was now under our eyes, for the wives of the little dead men had found the crushed and shapeless bodies and were crying over them, and sobbing and lamenting, and a priest was kneeling there with his hands crossed upon his breast, praying; and crowds and crowds of pitying friends were massed about them, reverently uncovered, with their bare heads bowed, and many with the tears running down—a scene which Satan paid no attention to until the small noise of the weeping and praying began to annoy him, then he reached out and took the heavy board seat out of our swing and brought it down and mashed all those people into the earth just as if they had been flies, and went on talking just the same. An angel, and kill a priest! An angel who did not know how to do wrong, and yet destroys in cold blood hundreds of helpless poor men and women who had never done him any harm! It made us sick to see that awful deed, and to think that none of those poor creatures was prepared except the priest, for none of them had ever heard a mass or seen a church. And we were witnesses; we had seen these murders done and it was our duty to tell, and let the law take its course.

Ask: How would you feel if you saw someone squash a bunch of people flat, even if he had created them?
Answer: It seems like the kind of thing a morally callous individual would do, and one would wonder if there weren’t something wrong with his moral sense.

Ask: Could God have accomplished his purpose to liberate Israel without killing anyone? If he was able to harden Pharaoh’s heart, could he have softened it?
Answer: If he’s omnipotent, then yes.
Ask: Then why didn’t he?

It’s bizarre and cruel for a god to decide to enact his will in this way, when other avenues are available.

A question on a Facebook thread caught my attention. It’s from Alan Gegax, and I’m sharing it here with his permission:

I was thinking about the God who is presented in the Bible. He had a problem in the beginning when Adam and Eve gained moral knowledge. Part of his solution, introduce death into the world. He had a problem with the world turning to shit. His solution, drown everyone and everything. He had a problem with Jews being kept in Egypt. His solution, kill everyone’s firstborn, then kill the chasing Egyptian soldiers. He had a problem with Jews who needed a homeland. His solution, genocide against the Canaanites. He had a problem with forgiving sins. His solution, kill Jesus.

Has there ever been a major problem in the world that God didn’t solve via murder? I know He’s claimed to heal individuals (though not as often as He smites them), but on large-scale stuff, it kind of seems like murder is His go-to solution. Am I wrong here?

No, I don’t think so. And next year when we get to Revelation, we’ll see how he solves the ultimate problem of evil on earth by killing billions more. This god has a fairly uncreative approach to problem-solving.

Additional suggestions for teaching

The church offers counterfeits

The real lesson manual points to the magicians’ ability to imitate Moses’ rod-snake, and asks:

What are some ways Satan counterfeits God’s power and blessings today?

From time to time, I’d hear in church that Satan had counterfeits for God’s favourite things: Satan’s counterfeit for revelation was divination, the Lord had his church, Satan had counterfeit churches, and so on.

But to say that the LDS Church is real, and other things are counterfeit is upside-down; it’s the church that offers counterfeits.

  • Counterfeit family The church tries to build a counterfeit family by co-opting kinship terms (Brother, Sister), referring to the “ward family” with the Bishop as the “father of the ward”, and of course a Heavenly Father and Mother that children are taught to look to and feel love for. Having a family is a normal human thing, but the church trades on this family metaphor in order to turn the feelings one has for one’s family toward itself. I think the goal of the church is not to strengthen the family; its goal is to supplant it.
  • Counterfeit way of finding information In science, you learn things by observation, experimentation, and careful control for bias. What’s the church’s method? Knowledge from feels! A burning in your bosom means something’s true. This is epistemic hedonism — if it feels good, believe it — and a disastrous counterfeit that sees people making bad life decisions based on no evidence.
  • Counterfeit history We’ve already seen how the church has an alternate version of history that contradicts the evidence that we have from multiple disciplines. There’s no evidence for events like the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and so on, but Mormon doctrine falls flat without them.
  • Counterfeit morality A healthy approach to morality gives guidelines on how to treat other people. When Mormons talk about ‘morality’, what are they talking about? Basically just sex. If you’re engaging in non-church-sanctioned bonking, you’re immoral and unclean, even if you’re doing so consensually and responsibly. If you’re celibate, you can pass for all kinds of morality in the church, no matter how unethical a person you really are. How did they manage to hijack the language this way? This is a one-dimensional view of morality, and it’s a counterfeit.
  • Counterfeit healing Mormons try to cure each other of diseases by rubbing oil on each other. In the 21st fucking century. The largest prayer studies have shown no effect, but medical science does.
  • Counterfeit authority You have to check out the Benson talk “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet“. Here are some of the points:

4. The prophet will never lead the Church astray.
5. The prophet is not required to have any particular earthly training or credentials to speak on any subject or act on any matter at any time.
…
8. The prophet is not limited by men’s reasoning.

Yep, the prophet is right, he doesn’t have to know anything to be right, and he’s righter than people who do know things. Wow — do you think you could convince people to give you an intellectual pass like this? With religion, you can.

The church offers counterfeit love, counterfeit friendship, and in the form of the Relief Society, its own counterfeit women’s organisation. It takes normal human things and subverts them for its own benefit.

OT Lesson 1 (God)

4 January 2014 / / 4 Comments

“This Is My Work and My Glory”

Moses 1

Link to the reading in the SAB: Moses 1
LDS manual: here

Background

The Old Testament is the longest and most involved of the four volumes of LDS scripture, so we’re going to get started this week by not reading any of it. Instead, we’re going to start with some OT fanfic, the Book of Moses. In Joseph Smith’s time, it was widely thought that Moses had written the first five books of the OT, which made him a natural choice for a protagonist. That turned out wrong, but at least this is a less-obvious blunder than the Book of Abraham, which we’ll tear into in the next lesson.

Main points for this lesson

The Old Testament: Wow, it really is that bad.

The Old Testament is a work of cruelty, discrimination, misogyny, and homophobia. Its protagonist, a primitive Hebrew deity, is largely concerned with cementing his own reputation as a major player in the world pantheon, while caring surprisingly little for human well-being. Despite being (allegedly) all-powerful and all-good, he allows (and in some cases, encourages) a shocking array of atrocities, including rape, child-murder, and genocide. If the Bible were any other book, it would carry a warning sticker.

The fact that the events of the Old Testament are largely fictional hardly mitigates its barbarism, since Christians all over the world routinely defend its contents, and are shocked, angered, or disappointed to be informed that they have no factual basis in reality.

Jesus is the god of the Old Testament.

From the real manual:

Note: Class members should understand that Jehovah, not Heavenly Father, appeared to Moses in this vision. Jehovah was the premortal Jesus Christ and the God of the Old Testament.

That’s something to keep in mind as we trawl through the carnage of the Old Testament this year — it’s actually Jesus doing it.

One popular dodge that Christians (including Mormons) use to excuse this cruelty is “But that was the Old Testament!” While this does explain away the archaic and unpleasant Mosaic rules, it doesn’t do much to excuse the inexcusable conduct of Jehovah, and the fact that Mormons think these atrocities were authored by Jesus himself makes explaining them away even more problematic. Christianity has set up a good cop/bad cop duality in the form of God/Jesus (even though they think the two are the same person), but with Jesus and Jehovah being the exact same person, Latter-day Saints cannot reasonably avail themselves of it.

Moses 1:6

And I have a work for thee, Moses my son; and thou art in the similitude of mine Only Begotten; and mine Only Begotten is and shall be the Savior, for he is full of grace and truth

In this scripture, Jehovah has apparently forgotten that he’s Jesus. Perhaps the Mormon view of the pre-mortal Jesus was still evolving at the time the Book of Moses was written, or perhaps God was having some trouble grasping the whole Godhead concept.

The manual explains it like this:

His words are those of the Father, and sometimes, as in Moses 1:6, he speaks in the first person for the Father.

Why would Jesus sometimes say that he’s the Father? Why would he not communicate clearly who he is? This is confusing, and God is not supposed to be the author of confusion. This is simply a clumsy dodge to explain away an inconsistency.

Object Lesson

Have a class member read the following paragraph:

Hi, I’m Steve! Well, I’m really Dave, but me and Steve are really close. In fact, we’re so close that sometimes I don’t realise I’m Dave, and I call myself Steve! But I’m really Steve! Whoops, I did it again! Dave! No, wait, Steve! Wait…

Ask: How would you respond to someone whose identity was so poorly defined or possibly compromised?

 Possible answers: Gaze upon them with pity, back away slowly, don’t give them any money.

Moses 1:7–11

In these scriptures, God visits Moses, and tells him he is a son of God.

Ask: How does it make you feel to be told you are a child of God?

Possible answer: It appeals to my sense of vanity and need to feel significant.

 

Then, when God goes away, Moses collapses.

And it came to pass that it was for the space of many hours before Moses did again receive his natural strength like unto man; and he said unto himself: Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed.

Ask: Is a person a child of God, or are they nothing? Which is it?

Answer: Whichever the Church needs to emphasise at any given time. It wouldn’t do to rip people down all the time; they’d get sick of it. It would be a better idea to build them up sometimes, so they feel like you’re the source of their good feelings. Then they’re ready for you to yank the rug out from under them when needed.

Make sure you saddle them with arbitrary moral rules that they’ll be unable to observe. This will keep them locked into an orbit of failure and redemption, with you at its centre.

  1. They feel great because of their relationship with you
  2. They inevitably fail to maintain your impossibly high standards, and feel like they’ve betrayed you
  3. They come to you for forgiveness, and feel great again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Here’s another problem with the whole ‘child of God’ idea: it’s meant to give you self-esteem, not because of who you are, but because of your relationship to someone else. Your worth doesn’t come from anything related to you; it’s because of who your father is. As this scripture says, you’re nothing. Your worth always ties back to someone else. This is not the way to build a lasting sense of self-worth; it builds dependency.

Some believers might read this post and think, “well, that’s actually right: I am nothing, God is everything, and I am dependent on him.” If this is the case, ponder how amazingly well this strategy has worked on you. You are hooked.

Additional Teaching Ideas

Do a Google search for “signs of an abusive relationship”. This list is like many others. Take a look at these warning signs.

  1. He pushes for quick involvement.
  2. There is jealousy.
  3. He is controlling.
  4. He has very unrealistic expectations.
  5. There is isolation.
  6. He blames others for his own mistakes.
  7. He makes everyone else responsibile for their feelings. 
  8. There is hypersensitivity.
  9. He is cruel to animals and children.
  10. His “playful” use of force during sex.
  11. There is verbal abuse.
  12. There are rigid gender roles.
  13. He has sudden mood swings.
  14. He has a past of battering.
  15. There are threats of violence.

How many of these warning signs does God show? (We’ll be revisiting this list throughout the year.)

Show the following graphic:

Ask: If your friend was in a relationship where their partner told them these things, what advice would you give to your friend?

 Answer: If you were any kind of friend at all, you’d be encouraging them to dump the jerk, if not offer to go and get their things for them.

If your relationship with your god does not resemble this description, good. Your concept of god is probably healthier than the one presented in the Book of Moses.

Conclusion

The relationship described in Moses 1 is a bad deal. Relationships are difficult when there’s a significant power imbalance, and this would be the ultimate power imbalance. We should wish to have nothing to do with a being who can read our thoughts, demands our loyalty, and who can impose eternal consequences for our compliance (or non-compliance) to their wishes. As Christopher Hitchens points out, we should be grateful that this is not true.

from 2:13
The reasons why I’m glad that this is not true, would I suppose be the gravamen of my case. Some people I know, who are atheists, will say the wish they could believe it. Some people I know who are former believers say they wish they could have their old faith back. They miss it.
I don’t understand this at all. I think it is an excellent thing there is no reason to believe in the absurd propositions I just… admittedly rather briefly rehearsed to you.
The main reason for this I think is that it is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority, who can convict you of thoughtcrime, while you are asleep.
Who can subject you — who must indeed subject you — to a total surveillance, around the clock, every waking and sleeping minute of your life, — I say: of your life — before you were born, and even worse, and where the real fun begins: after you’re dead. A celestial North Korea.
Who wants this to be true?! Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate?

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