The Bible A Dangerous Moral Guide, Refuted

MARSHALL GAUVIN AN ANACHRONISTIC MORAL JUDGE

Let me begin this address, in which I hope to show that the Bible is a dangerous moral guide, by eliminating from the Scriptures the notion of divine authority. Actually, just a summary repeat of Gauvin's credo against theism. This is outside my purview so I'll get to where Gauvin actually addressed the issue of the Bible as a moral guide. It doesn't start until several paragraphs of whittling have passed:

In this world man must have truth. Truth is the priceless jewel of the soul. It is the enduring glory of thought that leads the destinies of the world from the throne of man's inquiring brain. The whole round of human well-being, all correct human relations, rest on truth. Without truth there could be no civilization. To seek the truth is one of the noblest occupations in which man can engage. To proclaim it to the world, however unpopular it may be, is one of the most splendid of virtues. He only said it 500 times, not bad. On the contrary, to uphold and spread falsehood is immoral. The Bible upholds falsehood; therefore the Bible is a dangerous moral guide. Gauvin didn't know much about the ancient world. The ancients considered falsehood in some cases honorable; see here. Of course we'd bet even Gauvin would not hesitate to lie to Nazis about the Jews in his cellar. In Jeremiah, chapter 20, verse 7, Jeremiah complains: "O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived." In chapter 4, verse 10, the prophet again charges God with deception: "Ah, Lord God surely thou has greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem." The imputation against God is stronger in the ninth verse of the fourteenth chapter of Ezekiel: "And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet."

What strange assertions and avowals to find in a so-called inspired book! Think of an infinite God who would stoop to deceive his children! What anachronism to paint it in such black and white terms! see here. Gauvin once again repeats himself 30 different ways for effect, and also cites 1 Kings, so we go to:

Nor is the New Testament a spotless champion of veracity. In the third chapter of Romans, Paul offers this astounding justification of falsehood: "For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?" I still don't know how Skeptics get to this one. See here. According to Paul, a man is not a sinner if he lies for the glory of God. In this matter the apostle to the Gentiles has the hearty concurrence of many modern preachers. In. II. Corinthians, 12, 16, Paul writes: "Being crafty, I caught you with guile" --that is to say deceit, falsehood. Guess Gauvin doesn't know much about ancient Greco-Roman rhetorical irony. Sere here. After a bit more repetetive stuff Gauvin says:

What teaching could be more pernicious than the following advice to the rogue? (Deut. 14, 21): "Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien." Could anything be more perverse than the permission to sell to the alien--any foreign born, unnaturalized resident--for food, the flesh of an animal that died of itself? People in this time ATE carrion, folks. It was hard to get food. Heck, we eat roadkill today; what would Gauvin say about this? Gauvin is apparently thinks they sold such animals without the buyers knowing that they died on their own! Such an animal might have died of disease and its flesh might, therefore, be poisonous. Those who wrote the book of Deuteronomy were aware of this. They felt their stomachs turning over at the thought of eating carrion. No, they didn't, actually. They felt their stomachs turn over at the idea of any part of such an animal going to waste in a time of scarce resources. Such flesh, however, must not be lost. It must be eaten by somebody--preferably somebody who will buy it. Therefore they enjoined the Jewish people to give this diseased and poisonous flesh to the strangers dwelling among them, or to sell it to aliens. And may we not conclude that it would be asking too much to expect an enterprising Jew to give away what he might sell? Hmm, a hint of anti-Semitism, there? Never mind. The point is that even a diseased animal might be wanted; the ancients would figure some part of it could be useful and edible, or at the very worst, if it all turned out bad, turned into clothes or other useful items. Gauvin is thoroughly decontextualized; but this is what Skeptics think is scholarship! After spending a paragraph or two about "how would you like it if your butcher did this to you and you got sick," none of which changes the contextual realities noted above of which Gauvin was not informed, we get to:

I cheerfully admit that the Bible says, "Thou shalt not steal." At the same time it must be acknowledged that that book, without which, so the dear clergy contend, there would be no honesty in the world, is loud in its praise of stealing. Hmm, and what is stealing? Gauvin has an expanded definition:

In the third chapter of Exodus, this command to steal is put into the mouth of God: "And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians: and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty: But every woman shall borrow of her neighbor, and of her that sojourneth in the house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians." The twelfth chapter says: "and the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians." Yep. But two problems: 1) These were reparations for 400 years of slavery; 2) the word "borrow" is a little misleading; the word means to ask of people, so that it is hardly as though a knife were being put to the Egyptians' throats. After a paragraph about the unfairness of it all, Gauvin does comment on the first point:

To defend these passages as the clergy sometimes do, by pleading that the Egyptians had oppressed the Israelites, does not help the matter in the least. For it was Pharaoh who had been the task-master over the Jews, and the Egyptians who were robbed were the common people. And even though the Egyptians did owe the Jews something, a real God, if he were honest, would enable his people to collect their dues without resorting to falsehood and theft. As noted, to call it "falsehood" or "theft" is misdirected to begin with. Other than that, it's the usual error of anachronism: Gauvin reads the text as a modern individualist, insensate to the collectivist nature of the ancient personality and society. The "common people" of Egypt supported the Pharaoh; in turn they supported his policies. Gauvin apparently has this illusion of a democratic society in which the average Egyptian could have or would have dissented, and done something about it like vote against Pharaoh in the next general election!

Over and over again in the Old Testament, the Jews are commanded to steal the property of their neighbors. Not only that: these robberies are represented as being committed with the direct assistance of God. And in some instances, as in the case of the Midianites, the story of whose massacre is related in the thirty-first chapter of Numbers, God, as one of the bandits, is allotted a share of the spoil! Not quite. See analysis here. Gauvin is not specific otherwise, but if he wants to talk about land being taken or war spoils, then the Jews DID have rights to the land by the grant given them through Abraham; the Canaanites were squatters, and when challenged to leave, their refusal to do so was a way of saying, "We think our god is better than yours, wanna fight about it?" After a summary statement on this, Gauvin goes on with the expected:

A fearful record of misery and suffering is the history of human slavery. From the dawn of civilization until modern times this colossal crime trampled the face of man in the dust of degradation. Thousands of years before a line of the Bible was written, every nation in the world had its slaves. Gauvin goes on like this for several lines saying the same thing 500 different ways, which is a great emotional tactic but doesn't add to the argument. So let's just cut to the chase; the answer is here. Gauvin is in complete error to say of "slaves" of this time ("indentured servants" would be better in most cases) that "his lot would be the fate of his generations yet unborn" (as Miller shows, slavery was only temporary, unless the slave decided otherwise; or unless the slave was a criminal or prisoner of war); contrary to Gauvin, slaves could and did own property (including other slaves of their own!); and Gauvin is whistling in the wind to speak of these slaves not being able to "enjoy the drama of life with the fullest appreciation of the free," as if a hungry peasant in 1450 BC would give a flying daboom about not being able to go to the movies. Miller's article reverses all of Gauvin's anachronistic contentions about ancient "slavery" in the Bible, and it is no surprise he quickly changes the subject to American slavery, a far different social institution (of which, he blames Christianity, not mentioning that the bulk of abolitionists were Christians!). Now get this comment:

The Bible allows the master to kill his slave and go unpunished. In the chapter above quoted, we read: "If a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished; for he is his money." Only when the slave falls dead beneath the blow shall the master be punished. But let the blow be equally fatal, let the man or the woman linger in agony and die the next day, and the murderous master must not be punished. Why? The reason given is a curious one:--the slave is his master's money!Who but an inspired writer could have framed such an ingenious justification of murder? --the slave may be killed with impunity if the mortal blow is not fatal immediately because he is his master's money! Uh, no -- it's because if the slave lived to the next day, then it would be open that the slave died of causes unrelated to the beating. Of course, this is a didactic law code; it is a rule of thumb, not a hard and fast rule. In any event, skip all of Gauvin's song and dance (literally: he added a nice little poem to tug at the heartstrings) and get educated in context instead. We move now to this premiere of political correctness:

Every thoughtful person, not a bigot, knows that religious persecution is an outrage and a crime. If a man has any rights at all, he certainly has the right to follow the light of conscience in religious matters. Multiple offenses here. What Gauvin calls "conscience" did not exist in the ancient world. "Conscience" for the ancients was what everyone else was doing, external. This is a modern concept of "rights" unknown until our day. The rest of Gauvin's comments merely amount to saying that the Bible is "narrow, bigoted, intolerant" because it does not admit that other religions may be true (which is fine for Gauvin, since he thought none were) and demanded the death of false prophets. Of course for Gauvin, since there was no issue of eternal life in failing to follow YHWH, this must be a crime. He goes on:

Such is the religious liberty of the Bible. If your nearest and dearest relative asks you to join him in the worship of any God but Jehovah, it is your duty to assist in putting him to death. If your son suggests the worship of another God, he must cease to be the object of your tender regard. And so on with the sympathy points. It all runs down to that Gauvin begs the question of the falsehood of claims about God as source of eternal life, so there is no crime against others and "tender regard" is to be preferred -- emotion, not reason, interesting for a "freethinker". Gauvin claims to stand for the light of reason, but his largest paragraph here is a weepy story asking what you would do if your walking in the sunshine one day, happy, stewing flowers around, and your loved one claimed to be a sun worshipper: would you kill her? Hmm. So would sympathy stop me from killing someone who was an axe murderer, then, too? It's all the same: just beg the question of the error and the seriousness of it. After some more about how intolerant it is to believe any one religion is true, and how the NT is intolerant this way, Gauvin hauls up the old bogey, eternal punishment:

By the word "damned" the church has always understood eternal torment in the fires of another world. Christianity has ever been, and is, a religion of belief according to that religion, he who holds the right belief will enjoy eternal happiness in heaven, but he who doubts or denies the Christian creed will endure the agonies of hell through all the future's never ending years. For many centuries, this bigoted and heartless faith deformed and brutalized, the intellect of the world. Etc etc etc for the next 500 million paragraphs. We cut short the verbosity and point here, particularly part 2. Gauvin continues with a vague and non-specific diatribe about the church persecuting others -- don't expect any historical analysis of the social world of the day, as we did with the Spanish Inquisition. Don't expect documentation of the claim that "enough to populate a world were burned alive" (the actual number was closer to 30 to 50 thousand) -- and we get to:

What could be more revolting, more completely suffused with horror, than cannibalism? Um, two people starving the death slowly and painfully? Ask the folks who crashed in the Andes mountains some years back. Yet the Bible upholds the eating of human flesh -- the flesh, not of strangers, but of your own loved ones. "Upholds" -- what it really does is, "predicts". The cites Gauvin delivers from Deut. and Jeremiah predict the inevitable result of war in the ancient world, of siegecraft by enemies. For more see here. And once again, rather than endure Gauvin's repetitive droning, we move to:

Since the Bible upholds so many other crimes, we need not be surprised to find that it advocates murder. In the thirty-second chapter of Exodus occurs this command: "Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor." The order was obeyed, and, according to the story, three thousand men were killed. For what? Because some ignorant wretches had worshipped a golden calf! Same as before. "Murder" implies a not guilty party. Since Gauvin thinks all religions are bunk, these "ignorant" (um, yes, they must have had their eyes closed on the way out of Egypt) people were just hurting no one.

Listen to this perfectly fiendish command, from the fifteenth chapter of I Samuel: "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." How humane! Very much so! see here. Gauvin thinks it is more humane to let the remnants starve to death slowly. After a few more such bits, and of emotional scenes of "woeful mothers, their eyes streaming with tears," and "plaintive wails" (actually, the more likely scenario is honorable mothers, standing straight and tall, acknowledging their fate and looking into the eyes of the soldiers with a hint of a challenge, a last quiet look of dignity, and an implicit request for a quick, clean, and honorable death), with highlights on the Midian episode we covered in the link above -- see also here about the book of Joshua -- we get to:

The Bible says, "Thou shalt not kill," and then proceeds to recite a long and gruesome catalogue of murders, massacres and wars of conquest, for which it claims the approval or command of God. Gauvin has no concept of the intent of the commandment. See here. Gauvin is a dangerous moral anachrinizer.

The thirteenth chapter of Romans enjoins: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." These words justify the basest political tyranny according to these words, resistance to despots is rebellion against Deity. The Bible would have us believe that the lovers of freedom who dethrone tyrants and establish republics are criminals in the sight of God! Hardly. Gauvin needs to be reminded that there were no "lovers of freedom" as he knew them in this day; a tyrant was overthrown so that another could be put in his place. The "republics" were not of our model, precisely. Now Gauvin winds up with a laundry list of anachronisms:

Lying, cheating, stealing, slavery, religious prosecution, cannibalism, murder, war and tyranny are but some of the crimes that the Bible sanctions and defends. In Abraham's preparation to sacrifice Isaac, See here in Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter, See here in David's hanging of the seven sons of Saul, Um, yeah -- heirs to his throne who would start a coup in one minute, causing untold death -- is Gauvin insensitive or what! and in the law of the twenty-seventh chapter of Leviticus, the Bible ranges itself on the side of human sacrifices. It does? We're not told how. In the lives of the patriarchs, of Gideon, of Saul, of David, of Solomon and in the statute in the twenty-first chapter of Deuteronomy, pertaining to the rights of the children of the hated wife, there is sanction of and legislation for polygamy. See here. Once again Gauvin is insensitive to the survival needs of ancient people. In the twenty-second chapter of Exodus is found the injunction: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," a line winged with the ignorant spirit of murder, that lit the fires during the Christian centuries under hundreds of thousands of innocent women charged with the impossible crime of witchcraft. Hundreds of thousands! Try maybe 50K. Also, not all were women, not all were burned, and not all were executed by the Church. In allowing a man to banish his wife at will, according to the twenty-first chapter of Deuteronomy, "At will"? No, it requires a very specific action on her part, most likely fornication. or to subject her to the barbaric test of jealousy, prescribed in the fifth chapter of Numbers, Barbaric! Try merciful, in context. See here. the Bible gives instances of its cruel subjection and degradation bf women, as it upholds human sacrifices, polygamy, the witchcraft superstition and the brutal treatment of women, the Bible is a dangerous moral guide. Gauvin is a dangerous anachronist, as usual. See series here.

Where the moral teachings of the Bible are not pernicious, they are often worthless, as for example, the advice to take no thought for the morrow, Sound advice in the ancient world, because survival for today was enough of a problem, and a waste of resources. to turn the other cheek to the smiter, Gauvin thinks this is bad advice? Great moralists like King and Gandhi disagreed. Who the heck is Gauvin? An airplane mechanic. to lend your goods to any borrower, Not sure what Gauvin refers to here, so no comment possible. to go two miles with the man who would compel you to go one, Actually, the "man" would be a Roman soldier and you'd have no choice to go the one. to sell all you have and give the proceeds to the poor, and other such counsels of perfection: which, if followed, would wreck and strand civilization. Though the latter of course was just given to one man, not all men. So much for Gauvin's moral vision. You can just stay poor, though. Gauvin closes with a short spate of vague generalization, blaming Christianity for destroying Greco-Roman civiliztion (actually, barbarian invasions did that), for the "Dark Ages" (the time of universities and many great advances), and for unspecified "sorrow," "wars," etc (too bad Gauvin didn't live to se Stalin and Mao in action). He closes with he inspired hope that things are changing. Well, it's 1922. Gauvin is to be found nowhere other than in SecWeb archives. He would be unknown to 99.99% of us otherwise. He's not on the shelves of Barnes and Noble. So much for misplaced hopes. Gauvin is a dangerous anachronist.